>> From the Cube Studios in Palo Alto in Boston bringing you data-driven insights from the Cube and ETR. This is Breaking Analysis with Dave Vellante. >> The unraveling of market enthusiasm continued in Q4 of 2022 with the earnings reports from the US hyperscalers, the big three now all in. As we said earlier this year, even the cloud is an immune from the macro headwinds and the cracks in the armor that we saw from the data that we shared last summer, they're playing out into 2023. For the most part actuals are disappointing beyond expectations including our own. It turns out that our estimates for the big three hyperscaler's revenue missed by 1.2 billion or 2.7% lower than we had forecast from even our most recent November estimates. And we expect continued decelerating growth rates for the hyperscalers through the summer of 2023 and we don't think that's going to abate until comparisons get easier. Hello and welcome to this week's Wikibon Cube Insights powered by ETR. In this Breaking Analysis, we share our view of what's happening in cloud markets not just for the hyperscalers but other firms that have hitched a ride on the cloud. And we'll share new ETR data that shows why these trends are playing out tactics that customers are employing to deal with their cost challenges and how long the pain is likely to last. You know, riding the cloud wave, it's a two-edged sword. Let's look at the players that have gone all in on or are exposed to both the positive and negative trends of cloud. Look the cloud has been a huge tailwind for so many companies like Snowflake and Databricks, Workday, Salesforce, Mongo's move with Atlas, Red Hats Cloud strategy with OpenShift and so forth. And you know, the flip side is because cloud is elastic what comes up can also go down very easily. Here's an XY graphic from ETR that shows spending momentum or net score on the vertical axis and market presence in the dataset on the horizontal axis provision or called overlap. This is data from the January 2023 survey and that the red dotted lines show the positions of several companies that we've highlighted going back to January 2021. So let's unpack this for a bit starting with the big three hyperscalers. The first point is AWS and Azure continue to solidify their moat relative to Google Cloud platform. And we're going to get into this in a moment, but Azure and AWS revenues are five to six times that of GCP for IaaS. And at those deltas, Google should be gaining ground much faster than the big two. The second point on Google is notice the red line on GCP relative to its starting point. While it appears to be gaining ground on the horizontal axis, its net score is now below that of AWS and Azure in the survey. So despite its significantly smaller size it's just not keeping pace with the leaders in terms of market momentum. Now looking at AWS and Microsoft, what we see is basically AWS is holding serve. As we know both Google and Microsoft benefit from including SaaS in their cloud numbers. So the fact that AWS hasn't seen a huge downward momentum relative to a January 2021 position is one positive in the data. And both companies are well above that magic 40% line on the Y-axis, anything above 40% we consider to be highly elevated. But the fact remains that they're down as are most of the names on this chart. So let's take a closer look. I want to start with Snowflake and Databricks. Snowflake, as we reported from several quarters back came down to Earth, it was up in the 80% range in the Y-axis here. And it's still highly elevated in the 60% range and it continues to move to the right, which is positive but as we'll address in a moment it's customers can dial down consumption just as in any cloud. Now, Databricks is really interesting. It's not a public company, it never made it to IPO during the sort of tech bubble. So we don't have the same level of transparency that we do with other companies that did make it through. But look at how much more prominent it is on the X-axis relative to January 2021. And it's net score is basically held up over that period of time. So that's a real positive for Databricks. Next, look at Workday and Salesforce. They've held up relatively well, both inching to the right and generally holding their net scores. Same from Mongo, which is the brown dot above its name that says Elastic, it says a little gets a little crowded which Elastic's actually the blue dot above it. But generally, SaaS is harder to dial down, Workday, Salesforce, Oracles, SaaS and others. So it's harder to dial down because commitments have been made in advance, they're kind of locked in. Now, one of the discussions from last summer was as Mongo, less discretionary than analytics i.e. Snowflake. And it's an interesting debate but maybe Snowflake customers, you know, they're also generally committed to a dollar amount. So over time the spending is going to be there. But in the short term, yeah maybe Snowflake customers can dial down. Now that highlighted dotted red line, that bolded one is Datadog and you can see it's made major strides on the X-axis but its net score has decelerated quite dramatically. Openshift's momentum in the survey has dropped although IBM just announced that OpenShift has a a billion dollar ARR and I suspect what's happening there is IBM consulting is bundling OpenShift into its modernization projects. It's got a, that sort of captive base if you will. And as such it's probably not as top of mind to the respondents but I'll bet you the developers are certainly aware of it. Now the other really notable call out here is CloudFlare, We've reported on them earlier. Cloudflare's net score has held up really well since January of 2021. It really hasn't seen the downdraft of some of these others, but it's making major major moves to the right gaining market presence. We really like how CloudFlare is performing. And the last comment is on Oracle which as you can see, despite its much, much lower net score continues to gain ground in the market and thrive from a profitability standpoint. But the data pretty clearly shows that there's a downdraft in the market. Okay, so what's happening here? Let's dig deeper into this data. Here's a graphic from the most recent ETR drill down asking customers that said they were going to cut spending what technique they're using to do so. Now, as we've previously reported, consolidating redundant vendors is by far the most cited approach but there's two key points we want to make here. One is reducing excess cloud resources. As you can see in the bars is the second most cited technique and it's up from the previous polling period. The second we're not showing, you know directly but we've got some red call outs there. Reducing cloud costs jumps to 29% and 28% respectively in financial services and tech telco. And it's much closer to second. It's basically neck and neck with consolidating redundant vendors in those two industries. So they're being really aggressive about optimizing cloud cost. Okay, so as we said, cloud is great 'cause you can dial it up but it's just as easy to dial down. We've identified six factors that customers tell us are affecting their cloud consumption and there are probably more, if you got more we'd love to hear them but these are the ones that are fairly prominent that have hit our radar. First, rising mortgage rates mean banks are processing fewer loans means less cloud. The crypto crash means less trading activity and that means less cloud resources. Third lower ad spend has led companies to reduce not only you know, their ad buying but also their frequency of running their analytics and their calculations. And they're also often using less data, maybe compressing the timeframe of the corpus down to a shorter time period. Also very prominent is down to the bottom left, using lower cost compute instances. For example, Graviton from AWS or AMD chips and tiering storage to cheaper S3 or deep archived tiers. And finally, optimizing based on better pricing plans. So customers are moving from, you know, smaller companies in particular moving maybe from on demand or other larger companies that are experimenting using on demand or they're moving to spot pricing or reserved instances or optimized savings plans. That all lowers cost and that means less cloud resource consumption and less cloud revenue. Now in the days when everything was on prem CFOs, what would they do? They would freeze CapEx and IT Pros would have to try to do more with less and often that meant a lot of manual tasks. With the cloud it's much easier to move things around. It still takes some thinking and some effort but it's dramatically simpler to do so. So you can get those savings a lot faster. Now of course the other huge factor is you can cut or you can freeze. And this graphic shows data from a recent ETR survey with 159 respondents and you can see the meaningful uptick in hiring freezes, freezing new IT deployments and layoffs. And as we've been reporting, this has been trending up since earlier last year. And note the call out, this is especially prominent in retail sectors, all three of these techniques jump up in retail and that's a bit of a concern because oftentimes consumer spending helps the economy make a softer landing out of a pullback. But this is a potential canary in the coal mine. If retail firms are pulling back it's because consumers aren't spending as much. And so we're keeping a close eye on that. So let's boil this down to the market data and what this all means. So in this graphic we show our estimates for Q4 IaaS revenues compared to the "actual" IaaS revenues. And we say quote because AWS is the only one that reports, you know clean revenue and IaaS, Azure and GCP don't report actuals. Why would they? Because it would make them look even, you know smaller relative to AWS. Rather, they bury the figures in overall cloud which includes their, you know G-Suite for Google and all the Microsoft SaaS. And then they give us little tidbits about in Microsoft's case, Azure, they give growth rates. Google gives kind of relative growth of GCP. So, and we use survey data and you know, other data to try to really pinpoint and we've been covering this for, I don't know, five or six years ever since the cloud really became a thing. But looking at the data, we had AWS growing at 25% this quarter and it came in at 20%. So a significant decline relative to our expectations. AWS announced that it exited December, actually, sorry it's January data showed about a 15% mid-teens growth rate. So that's, you know, something we're watching. Azure was two points off our forecast coming in at 38% growth. It said it exited December in the 35% growth range and it said that it's expecting five points of deceleration off of that. So think 30% for Azure. GCP came in three points off our expectation coming in 35% and Alibaba has yet to report but we've shaved a bid off that forecast based on some survey data and you know what maybe 9% is even still not enough. Now for the year, the big four hyperscalers generated almost 160 billion of revenue, but that was 7 billion lower than what what we expected coming into 2022. For 2023, we're expecting 21% growth for a total of 193.3 billion. And while it's, you know, lower, you know, significantly lower than historical expectations it's still four to five times the overall spending forecast that we just shared with you in our predictions post of between 4 and 5% for the overall market. We think AWS is going to come in in around 93 billion this year with Azure closing in at over 71 billion. This is, again, we're talking IaaS here. Now, despite Amazon focusing investors on the fact that AWS's absolute dollar growth is still larger than its competitors. By our estimates Azure will come in at more than 75% of AWS's forecasted revenue. That's a significant milestone. AWS is operating margins by the way declined significantly this past quarter, dropping from 30% of revenue to 24%, 30% the year earlier to 24%. Now that's still extremely healthy and we've seen wild fluctuations like this before so I don't get too freaked out about that. But I'll say this, Microsoft has a marginal cost advantage relative to AWS because one, it has a captive cloud on which to run its massive software estate. So it can just throw software at its own cloud and two software marginal costs. Marginal economics despite AWS's awesomeness in high degrees of automation, software is just a better business. Now the upshot for AWS is the ecosystem. AWS is essentially in our view positioning very smartly as a platform for data partners like Snowflake and Databricks, security partners like CrowdStrike and Okta and Palo Alto and many others and SaaS companies. You know, Microsoft is more competitive even though AWS does have competitive products. Now of course Amazon's competitive to retail companies so that's another factor but generally speaking for tech players, Amazon is a really thriving ecosystem that is a secret weapon in our view. AWS happy to spin the meter with its partners even though it sells competitive products, you know, more so in our view than other cloud players. Microsoft, of course is, don't forget is hyping now, we're hearing a lot OpenAI and ChatGPT we reported last week in our predictions post. How OpenAI is shot up in terms of market sentiment in ETR's emerging technology company surveys and people are moving to Azure to get OpenAI and get ChatGPT that is a an interesting lever. Amazon in our view has to have a response. They have lots of AI and they're going to have to make some moves there. Meanwhile, Google is emphasizing itself as an AI first company. In fact, Google spent at least five minutes of continuous dialogue, nonstop on its AI chops during its latest earnings call. So that's an area that we're watching very closely as the buzz around large language models continues. All right, let's wrap up with some assumptions for 2023. We think SaaS players are going to continue to be sticky. They're going to be somewhat insulated from all these downdrafts because they're so tied in and customers, you know they make the commitment up front, you've got the lock in. Now having said that, we do expect some backlash over time on the onerous and generally customer unfriendly pricing models of most large SaaS companies. But that's going to play out over a longer period of time. Now for cloud generally and the hyperscalers specifically we do expect accelerating growth rates into Q3 but the amplitude of the demand swings from this rubber band economy, we expect to continue to compress and become more predictable throughout the year. Estimates are coming down, CEOs we think are going to be more cautious when the market snaps back more cautious about hiring and spending and as such a perhaps we expect a more orderly return to growth which we think will slightly accelerate in Q4 as comps get easier. Now of course the big risk to these scenarios is of course the economy, the FED, consumer spending, inflation, supply chain, energy prices, wars, geopolitics, China relations, you know, all the usual stuff. But as always with our partners at ETR and the Cube community, we're here for you. We have the data and we'll be the first to report when we see a change at the margin. Okay, that's a wrap for today. I want to thank Alex Morrison who's on production and manages the podcast, Ken Schiffman as well out of our Boston studio getting this up on LinkedIn Live. Thank you for that. Kristen Martin also and Cheryl Knight help get the word out on social media and in our newsletters. And Rob Hof is our Editor-in-Chief over at siliconangle.com. He does some great editing for us. Thank you all. Remember all these episodes are available as podcast. Wherever you listen, just search Breaking Analysis podcast. I publish each week on wikibon.com, at siliconangle.com where you can see all the data and you want to get in touch. Just all you can do is email me david.vellante@siliconangle.com or DM me @dvellante if you if you got something interesting, I'll respond. If you don't, it's either 'cause I'm swamped or it's just not tickling me. You can comment on our LinkedIn post as well. And please check out ETR.ai for the best survey data in the enterprise tech business. This is Dave Vellante for the Cube Insights powered by ETR. Thanks for watching and we'll see you next time on Breaking Analysis. (gentle upbeat music)

(gentle music) >> Welcome back to our coverage here on theCUBE of AWS re:Invent 22. We are on day three, starting to wind down, but still a lot of exciting topics to cover here on the AWS Global Showcase, part of the startup program there at AWS. Joining us now, two representatives from LTI Mindtree. You say LTI Mindtree? I thought they were two different companies. Well, they're actually one and the same. Been together just a mere two weeks now. We'll hear more about that from Sid Bohra, who is the Chief Business Officer at LTI Mindtree and Ashish Varerkar, who is the Vice President of Cloud Success at LTI Mindtree. Gentlemen, thanks for being with us here on theCUBE. >> Pleasures all ours. >> Thank you. >> And congratulations. So two weeks in the making in its infancy, still in the honeymoon period, but how's the two weeks been? Everything all right? >> Well, two weeks have been very exciting. >> I'll bet. >> Well, I would say the period prior to that was just as exciting as you can imagine. >> John: Oh, sure. And we are super excited about what the future holds for this company because we truly believe that we have a remarkable opportunity to create value for our clients as one company. >> Well let's talk about LTI Mind tree then a little bit. Ashish, I'll let you carry the ball on this. Tell us about your services, about your core focus, and about those opportunities that Siddharth was just telling us about. >> So I think with the two companies coming together, we have a larger opportunity to like go to market with our end to end business transformation services and leveraging cloud platforms, right? So, and that's what we do. My responsibility particularly is to see to it that what customers are deploying on cloud is aligned to their business outcomes and then take it forward from there. >> Yeah, Vice President of Cloud Success, that gives you a lot of runway, right? Does it not? I mean, how do you define success in the cloud? Because there are a lot of different areas of complexity with which companies are dealing. >> So I think you would agree that in today's scenario, customers are not looking for a platform, right? But they're looking for a platform which can deliver business value. They're looking at business value and resiliency and then at the end, the cost, right? So if you're able to deliver these three things to the customer through the cloud implementation, I think that's success for us. >> Right. We've talked about transformation a lot this week and modernization, right, which is those are two pretty key buzzwords right now we're hearing a lot of. So when you see said, you know, companies come to you and they say, okay, it's time for us to make this commitment. Do they make it generally wholeheartedly? Is there still some trepidation of the unknown? Because there's a lot of, as we've said, complexity to this, it's multidimensional. We can go public, we can go hybrid, we can go multicloud. I mean, we got a lot of flavors. >> Yeah >> Absolutely. >> No, we see a spectrum. There are customers who are very early in the journey of getting onto cloud and are a little uncertain about what value they can get out of it. And on the other end of the spectrum, there are companies who are well into the journey who have understood what are the benefits of truly leveraging cloud who also understand what are the challenges they will face in getting onto the journey. So we get to meet a spectrum of customers, I would say. If you ask me where do bulk of them lie, I would say early in their journey. I would say there are only a handful who have that maturity where they can predict what's exactly going to happen on the cloud journey, what value they will accumulate through the process. So there's a lot of hand holding to be done, a lot of, you know, solving together to be done with our clients. >> You know, it is such a dynamic environment too, right? You have new opportunities that seem to be developed and released on a daily basis, almost, right? There's a large amount of flexibility, I would think, that has to be in place because where you think you're going to go today might not be where you wind up in six months. >> That's true. >> Is that fair? >> Absolutely fair. And I think from that perspective, if you look at the number of services that AWS provides, right? And what customers are looking for is how can they compose their business processes using this multiple services in a very seamless manner. And most of the announcements that we have seen during the re:Invent as well, they're talking about seamless connectivity between their services. They're talking about security, they're talking about creating a data fabric, the data zone that they announced. I think all these things put together, if you're able to kind of connect the dots and drive the business processes, I think that's what we want to do for our customers. >> And the value to AWS, it just can't be underscored enough I would assume, because there's comfort there, there's confidence there. When you bring that to the table as well along with your services, what kind of magnitude are we talking about here? What kind of force do you think? How would you characterize that? >> Well I think, you know, firstly, I would say that most of our engagements are not just services. Ashish and team and the company have invested heavily in building IP that we pair with our services so that we bring non-linearity and more, I would say, certainty to the outcomes that our customers get. And I can share some examples in the course of the conversation, but to answer your question in terms of magnitude, what we are collaborating with AWS on for our clients ranges from helping customers build more resiliency. And I'm talking about life sciences companies build more resiliency in the manufacturing R and D processes. That's so critical. It was even more critical during the pandemic times because we were working with some of the pharma companies who were contributing to the efforts in the pandemic. That's one end of the spectrum. On the other side, we are helping streaming companies and media companies digitize their supply chain, and their supply chains, the media supply chain, so that it is more effective, it's more efficient, it's more real time, again, using the power of the cloud. We are helping pharmaceutical companies drive far greater speed in the R and D processes. We are helping banking companies drive far more compliance in their anti-money laundering efforts and all of those things. So if you look at the magnitude, we judge the magnitude by the business impact that it's creating and we are very excited about what AWS, LTI Mindtree, and the customer are able to create in terms of those business impacts. >> And these are such major decisions. >> That's right. >> For a company, right, to make, and there are a number of factors that come into play here. What are you hearing from the C-Suite with regard to what weighs the most in their mind and is there, is it a matter of, you know, fear missing out? Or is it about trying to stay ahead of your competition, catching up the competition? I mean, generally speaking, you know, where are the, where's the C-Suite weighing in on this? >> I think in the current times, I think there is a certain level of adoption of cloud that's already happened in most enterprises. So most CIOs in the C-suite- >> They already get it. They already get it. >> They kind of get it, but I would say that they're very cagey about a bunch of things. They're very cagey about, am I going to end up spending too much for too little? Am I going to be able to deliver this transformation at the speed that I'm hoping to achieve? What about security? Compliance? What about the cost of running in the cloud? So those are some really important factors that sometimes end up slowing the cloud transformation journeys down because customers end up solving for them or not knowing for them. So while there is a decent amount of awareness about what cloud can do, there are some, a whole bunch of important factors that they continue to solve for as they go down that journey. >> And so what kind of tools do you provide them then? >> Primarily, what we do is, to Siddharth's point, right? So on one end, we want to see to it that we are doing the business transformation and all our cloud journeys start with a business North Star. So we align, we have doubled down on, say, five to six business domains. And for each of these business domains industries, we have created business North Star. For these business North Star, we define the use cases. And these use cases then get lit up through our platform. So what we have done is we have codified everything onto our platform. We call it Infinity. So primarily business processes from level one, level two, level three, level, and then the KPIs which are associated with these business processes, the technical KPIs and the business KPIs, and then tying it back to what you have deployed on cloud. So we have end to end cloud transformation journeys enabled for customers through the business North Star. >> And Infinity is your product. >> Can I add something? >> Please do. Yeah, please. >> Yeah so, you know, Ashish covered the part about demystifying if I were to do this particular cloud initiative, it's not just modernizing the application. This is about demystifying what business benefit will accrue to you. Very rare to find unless you do a very deep dive assessment. But what the platform we built also accelerates, you talked about modernization early in the conversation, accelerates the modernization process by automating a whole bunch of activities that are often manual. It bakes insecurity and compliance into everything it does. It automates a whole bunch of cloud operations including things like finops. So this is a life cycle platform that essentially codifies best practices so that you are not getting success by coincidence, you're getting success by design. So that's really what, that's really how we've approached the topic of realizing the true power of cloud by making sure that it's repeatedly delivered. >> Right. You know, I want to hit on security too because you brought that up just a few moments ago. Obviously, you know, we all, and I'd say we, we can do a better job, right? I mean, there's still problems, there's still challenges, there are a lot of bad actors out there that are staying ahead of the game. So as people come to you, clients come to you, and they raise these security concerns, what's your advice to them in terms of, you know, what kind of environment they're going into and what precautions or protections they can put in place to try to give themselves a little bit of peace of mind about how they're going to operate? >> You want to take it? >> So I think primarily, if you are going to cloud, you are going with an assumption that you are moving out of your firewalls, right? You're putting something out of your network area. So and from that perspective, the parameter security from the cloud perspective is very, very important. And then each and every service or the interactions between the services and what you integrate out of your organization, everything needs to be secured through the right guard rates. And we integrate all those things into our platform so that whatever new apps that get deployed or build or any cost product that gets deployed on cloud, everything is secure from a 360 degree perspective. So primarily, maintaining a good security posture, which on a hybrid cloud, I would not say only cloud, but extending your on-prem security posture to cloud is very, very important to when you go to implementing anything on could. >> If you had a crystal ball and we were sitting down here a year from now, you know, what do you think we'd be talking about with regard to, you know, developing these end-to-end opportunities that you are, what's the, I wouldn't say missing piece, but a piece that you would like to have refined to the point where you come back next year and say, John, guess what we did? Look what we were able to accomplish. Anything that you're looking at that you want to tackle here in 2023? Or is there some fine tuning somewhere that you think could even tighten your game even more than it is already? >> We have a long, long way to go, I would say. I think my core takeaway in terms of where the world of technology is headed because cloud is, you know, is essentially a component of what customers want to achieve. It's a medium through which they want to achieve. I think we live in a highly change oriented economy. Every industry is what I call getting re-platformed, right? New processes, new experiences, new products, new efficiency. So a year from now, and I can tell you even for few years from now, we would be constantly looking at our success in terms of how did cloud move the needle on releasing products faster? How did cloud move the needle on driving better experience and better consumer loyalty, for example. How did cloud move the needle on a more efficient supply chain? So increasingly, the technology metrics like, you know, keeping the lights on, or solving tickets, or releasing code on time, would move towards business metrics because that's really the ultimate goal of technology or cloud. So I would say that my crystal ball says we will increasingly be talking business language and business outcomes. Jeff Bezos is an incredible example, right? One of his annual letters, he connected everything back into how much time did consumers save by using Amazon. And I think that's really where in the world, that's the world we are headed towards. >> Ashish, any thoughts on that? >> I think Siddharth put it quite well. I would say if you are able to make a real business impact for our customers in next one year, helping them in driving some of their newer services on cloud through cloud, that would be a success factor for us. >> Well gentlemen, congratulations on the merger. I said two weeks. Still very much in the honeymoon phase and I'm sure it's going to go very well and I look forward to seeing you back here in a year. We'll sit down, same spot, let's remember, fifth floor, and we'll give it a shot and see how accurate you were on that. >> Absolutely. >> Wonderful. It's been a pleasure. >> Thank you gentlemen. >> Thank you for joining us. >> Thank you. >> Very good. Ashish, good to see you, sir. >> Thank you. >> A pleasure. We'll continue here. We're at the Venetian at AWS re:Invent 22, continue at the AWS Global Showcase startup. I'm John Walls. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in high tech coverage. (gentle music)

>>Hey everyone, welcome back. It's the Cube live in Las Vegas. We've been here since Monday covering the event wall to coverage on the cube at AWS Reinvent 22, Lisa Martin here with Dave Ante. Dave, we're hearing consistently north of 50,000 people here. I'm hearing close to 300,000 online. People are back. They are ready to hear from AWS and its ecosystem. Yeah, >>I think 55 is the number I'm hearing. I've been using 50 for 2019, but somebody the other day told me, no, no, it was way more than that. Right, right. Well this feels bigger in >>2019. It does feel bigger. It does feel bigger. And we've had such great conversations as you know, because you've been watching the Cube since Monday night. We're pleased to welcome from Sumo Logic. Lynn Doherty, the president of Worldwide Field Operations. Lynn, welcome to the program. >>Thank you for having me. I'm glad to be here. Talk >>To us about what's going on at Sumo Logic. We cover them. We've been following them for a long time, but what's what's new? >>We have a lot going on at Sumo Logic. What we do is provide solutions for both observability and security. And if you think about the challenges that our customers are facing today, everybody as they're doing this digital transformation is in a situation where the data and the digital exhausts that they have is growing faster than their budgets and especially in what looks like potentially uncertain economic times. And so what we do is enable them to bring that together on a platform so that they can solve both of those problems in a really cost effective way. >>What are some of the things that you're hearing from customers in the field where it relates to Sumo logic and aws? What are they asking for? >>They continue to ask for security and, and I think as everybody goes on that journey of digital transformation and, and I think what's going on now is that there are people who are kind of in wave two of that digital transformation, but security continues to be top of mind. And again, as as our customers are moving into potentially uncertain economic times and they're saying, Hey, I've gotta shore up and, and maybe do smarter things with my budget, cybersecurity is one piece of that that is not falling off the table. That their requirements around security, around audits, around compliance don't go away regardless of what else happens. >>How do you fit in the cloud ecosystem generally? AWS specifically? I think AWS is generally perceived as a more friendly environment for the ecosystem partners. We saw CrowdStrike yesterday, you know, stock got crushed. They had a great quarter, but not as great as they thought it could be. Yeah. And one, some of the analysts were saying, well, it could be Microsoft competition at the low end of the market. Okay. AWS is like the ecosystem partners are really strong in security, lot of places to add value. Where does Sumo Logic >>Fit? Yeah, we are all in with aws. So AWS is our platform of choice. It's the platform that we're built on. It's the only platform that we use. And so we work incredibly closely with aws. In fact, last year we were the first ever AWS ISV partner of the year for as Sumo Logic, which we're not as big as some of the other players, but it just is a testament to the partnership that we have with aws. >>When you're out in the field talking with customers, we talked about some of the challenges there, but where are your customer conversations? You talked about security and cyber as is not falling off the table. In fact, it's, it's rising up the stock, it's a board level conversation. So where are the customer conversations that you're having? Are they, are they at the developer level? Are they higher? Are they at the C-suite? What does that look like? >>Yeah, it's, it's actually at both the developer and the C-suite. And so there's really two motions. The first is around developers and practitioners and people that run security operation centers. And they need tools that are easy to use that integrate in their environment. And so we absolutely work with them as a starting point because if, if they aren't happy with the tools that they have, you know, the customer can't go on that digital transformation, can't have effective application usage. But we also need to talk to C-Suite and that to CIO or a CISO who's really thinking often more broadly about how do we do things as a platform and how do we consolidate some of our tools to rationalize what we're using and really make the most of the budget that we have. And so we come at it from both angles. We call it selling above the line and below the line because both of those are really important people for us to work with. >>Above the line being sort of the business executives, >>Business executives and C-suite executives. And then, but below the line are the actual people who are using the product and using a day to day interacting with the tools. >>So how are those above the line and below the line conversations, you know, different? What, what are the, what are the above the line conversations? What are the sort of keywords that, you know, that resonate? Let's start there. >>Yeah, above the line, there's a lot that's around how do we make the most of the investments that we're making. And so there are no shortage of tools, right? You can look around this AWS floor and see that there are no shortage of tools and software products out there. And so above the line it's how do we make use of the budget that we have and get the most out of the investments we've made and do that in a really smart way. Often thinking about platforms and consolidating tools and, and using the tools and getting full value of what they have below the line. I think it's really how do they have really strong ease of use? How do they get the fastest time to value? Because time to value is really important when you're a practitioner, when you're developing an application, when you're migrating and modernizing an application, having tools that are easy to use and not just give you data but give you insights. And so that's what a conversation with a practitioner for us is, is taking data and turning it into insights that they can use. >>You know, and it seems like we never get rid of stuff in it, but there's a big conversation now when you talk to practitioners, okay, well you got some budget pressures, your sales cycles are elongating. What are you doing about, a lot of 'em are saying, well, we're consolidating and nowhere is that more needed probably than insecurity. So how, how are you seeing that play out in the market? Are you able to take advantage of that as Sumo? >>I think there's the old joke that says there is no ciso. Whoever says, if I just had one more tool, I'd be secure. >>And >>Nobody ever says that it's not one more tool. It's having effective tools and having tools that integrate. And so when I think of Sumo Logic in that space, it's number one, we really integrate with so many different tools out there that give, again, not just security information, but security insights. And so that becomes a really important part of the conversation. What, when you talk about tool consolidation, that's absolutely, I think something that has been a journey that a lot of our customers have been on and probably will be on for the foreseeable future. And so that's a place that we can really help because we have a platform that you can leverage our tool on the DevOps side and on the security side. And that's a conversation that we have a lot with our customers. Are >>You helping bridge those two, the security folks, the dev folks? Cause we talk about Shift left and CISO being involved now. Is Sumo Logic helping from a cultural perspective to bridge those two? >>Yeah, well I think it's a really good point that you make. It's, there's part of it that's a technology challenge and then there's part of it that's a cultural challenge and an organization silo challenge that happens. And so it is something that we try to bring our customers together and often start in one area of the business and help move into other areas and bring them together. It, it also comes down to that data growing faster than budgets and customers can no longer afford to keep multiple copies of the same data, the same metrics, and all of that digital exhaust that comes as they move to the cloud and modernize their applications. And so we bring that together and help them get the most use out of it. >>There are a lot of, we've been talking all week in the cube about sort of adjacencies to security. We've talking about data protections now becoming an adjacency. You know, you talk about resilience within an organization, everybody was sort of caught off guard, obviously with the pandemic, not as resilient as they could have been. So it seems like the scope of security is really expanding. You know, they always say it's, it's a team sport, okay, it's a pro mine, but it's true. Right? Whereas it used to be that guy's problem. Yeah. What are you seeing in terms of that evolution? >>Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. I think the pandemics force some of that faster than was happening, but it's absolutely something that is going on that cybersecurity is now built in from the ground up and I've been in cyber security for years and it's moved from an afterthought or something that comes after the fact, Hey, let's build the application and then we'll worry about security to, it needs to be a secure application from the ground up. And so that is bringing together that dev and SEC ops a lot because it needs to be built in, the security piece needs to be built in from the ground up on the development side. >>Absolutely. The, the threat landscape has changed so much in the last couple of years. Has the fraudsters, bad actors, whatever you wanna call 'em, are getting far more sophisticated. Yeah. So security can't be an afterthought. Can't be a built on. Yeah, it's gotta be integrated, built in from the ground up for organizations to be able to be, as they've said, resilient. We're hearing a lot about resiliency and the importance of it. For any business. >>For any business, it's important for every business. And if you think about how we interact with companies now, our view of a bank isn't the branch, it's the app, our view of office, it's this, right? It's, it's on the phone, it's on digital devices, it's on a website. And so that is your interaction, that is your experience. And so that plays into, is it up, is it running, is it responsive? That application performance piece, but also the security piece of is it secure? Is my data protected? You know, do I have any vulnerability? >>Yeah, you must have, being in field operations, a favorite customer story that you really think defines the value proposition beautifully of Sumo Logic. What story is that? >>Wow, that's a good question. I have a lot of favorite stories. You know, we have customers, for example, gaming customers that maybe aren't able to predict what their usage looks like. And that's something that we really help our customers with is the peaks and valleys. And so we have gaming customers or retail customers that we're able to take their data sources and they may be at one level and go to 10 x in a day without any notice. And we're able to handle that for them. And I think that's something that I'm really proud of is that we don't make that the customer's problem. They're, they're peaks and valleys, they're spikes that may happen seasonally in retail. It's Black Friday sales that are coming up. It's a new game that gets released. It's a new music piece that gets released and they are going to see that, but they don't have to worry about that because of us. And so that really makes me proud that we handle that and take that problem off of their shoulders. I >>See Pokemon on the website, that's a hugely popular >>Game, Pokemon now. Yes. >>Last question for you, we've got about 30 seconds left. If you had a billboard to put up in Denver where you live about Sumo Logic and its impact like an elevator pitch or a phrase that you think really summarizes the impact, what would it >>Say? Yeah, well it's a really good question. I've got it on my shirt. I dunno, it's not for the G-rated, but we fix things faster. Fix shit faster. And so for us that's really, ultimately, it's not just about having information, it's not just about having the data, it's about being able to resolve your problems quickly. And whether that's an application or a security issue, we've gotta be able to fix it faster for our customers and that's what we enable them to do. >>Fix bleep faster. Lynn, it's been a pleasure having you on the program. Thank you so much. Thank you for joining us. Awesome step at Sumo Logic. For our guest and for Dave Ante. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching The Cube Live from Las Vegas, the leader in live enterprise and emerging tech coverage.

>> TheCUBE presents UI Path Forward Five brought to you by UI Path. >> Welcome back to UI Path Forward Five. You're watching The Cubes, Walter Wall coverage. This is day one, Dave Vellante, with my co-host Dave Nicholson. We're taking RPA to intelligence automation. We're going from point tools to platforms. Neeraj Mathur is here. He's the director of Intelligent Automation at VMware. Yes, VMware. We're not going to talk about vSphere or Aria, or maybe we are, (Neeraj chuckles) but he's joined by Thomas Stocker who's a principal product manager at UI Path. And we're going to talk about testing automation, automating the testing process. It's a new sort of big vector in the whole RPA automation space. Gentleman, welcome to theCUBE. Good to see you. >> Neeraj: Thank you very much. >> Thomas: Thank you. >> So Neeraj, as we were saying, Dave and I, you know, really like VMware was half our lives for a long time but we're going to flip it a little bit. >> Neeraj: Absolutely. >> And talk about sort of some of the inside baseball. Talk about your role and how you're applying automation at VMware. >> Absolutely. So, so as part of us really running the intelligent automation program at VMware, we have a quite matured COE for last, you know four to five years, we've been doing this automation across the enterprise. So what we have really done is, you know over 45 different business functions where we really automated quite a lot different processes and tasks on that. So as part of my role, I'm really responsible for making sure that we are, you know, bringing in the best practices, making sure that we are ready to scale across the enterprise but at the same time, how, you know, quickly we are able to deliver the value of this automation to our businesses as well. >> Thomas, as a product manager, you know the product, and the market inside and out, you know the competition, you know the pricing, you know how customers are using it, you know all the features. What's your area of - main area of focus? >> The main area of the UiPathT suite... >> For your role, I mean? >> For my role is the RPA testing. So meaning testing RPA workflows themselves. And the reason is RPA has matured over the last few years. We see that, and it has adopted a lot of best practices from the software development area. So what we see is RPA now becomes business critical. It's part of the main core business processes in corporation and testing it just makes sense. You have to continuously monitor and continuously test your automation to make sure it does not break in production. >> Okay. And you have a specific product for this? Is it a feature or it's a module? >> So RPA testing or the UiPath T Suite, as the name suggests it's a suite of products. It's actually part of the existing platform. So we use Orchestrator, which is the distribution engine. We use Studio, which is our idea to create automation. And on top of that, we build a new component, which is called the UiPath Test Manager. And this is a kind of analytics and management platform where you have an oversight on what happened, what went wrong, and what is the reason for automation to **bring. >> Okay. And so Neeraj, you're testing your robot code? >> Neeraj: Correct. >> Right. And you're looking for what? Governance, security, quality, efficiency, what are the things you're looking for? >> It's actually all of all of those but our main goal to really start this was two-front, right? So we were really looking at how do we, you know, deliver at a speed with the quality which we can really maintain and sustain for a longer period, right? So to improve our quality of delivery at a speed of delivery, which we can do it. So the way we look at testing automation is not just as an independent entity. We look at this as a pipeline of a continuous improvement for us, right? So how it is called industry as a CICD pipeline. So testing automation is one of the key component of that. But the way we were able to deliver on the speed is to really have that end to end automation done for us to also from developers to production and using that pipeline and our testing is one piece of that. And the way we were able to also improve on the quality of our delivery is to really have automated way of doing the code reviews, automated way of doing the testing using this platform as well. and then, you know, how you go through end to end for that purpose. >> Thomas, when I hear testing robots, (Thomas chuckles) I don't care if it's code or actual robots, it's terrifying. >> It's terrify, yeah. >> It's terrifying. Okay, great. You, you have some test suite that says look, Yeah, we've looked at >> The, why is that terrifying? >> What's, It's terrifying because if you have to let it interact with actual live systems in some way. Yeah. The only way to know if it's going to break something is either you let it loose or you have some sort of sandbox where, I mean, what do you do? Are you taking clones of environments and running actual tests against them? I mean, think it's >> Like testing disaster recovery in the old days. Imagine. >> So we are actually not running any testing in the production live environment, right? The way we build this actually to do a testing in the separate test environment on that as well by using very specific test data from business, which you know, we call that as a golden copy of that test data because we want to use that data for months and years to come. Okay. Right? Yeah. So not touching any production environmental Facebook. >> Yeah. All right. Cause you, you can imagine >> Absolutely >> It's like, oh yeah we've created a robotic changes baby diapers let's go ahead and test it on these babies. [Collective Laughter] Yeah >> I don't think so. No, no, But, but what's the, does it does it matter if there's a delta between the test data and the, the, the production data? How, how big is that delta? How do you manage that? >> It does matter. And that's where actually that whole, you know, angle of how much you can, can in real, in real life can test right? So there are cases where you would have, even in our cases where, you know, the production data might be slightly different than the test data itself. So the whole effort goes into making sure that the test data, which we are preparing here, is as close to the products and data itself, right? It may not be a hundred percent close but that's the sort of you know, boundary or risk you may have to take. >> Okay. So you're snapshotting, that moving it over, a little V motion? >> Neeraj: Yeah. >> Okay. So do you do this for citizen developers as well? Or is you guys pretty much center of excellence writing all the bots? >> No, right now we are doing only for the unattended, the COE driven bots only at this point of time, >> What are you, what are your thoughts on the future? Because I can see I can see some really sloppy citizen coders. >> Yeah. Yeah. So as part of our governance, which we are trying to build for our citizen developers as well, there there is a really similar consideration for that as well. But for us, we have really not gone that far to build that sort of automation right >> Now, narrowly, just if we talk about testing what's the business impact been on the testing? And I'm interested in overall, but the overall platform but specifically for the testing, when did that when did you start implementing that and, and what what has been the business benefit? >> So the benefit is really on the on the speed of the delivery, which means that we are able to actually deliver more projects and more automation as well. So since we adopted that, we have seen our you know, improvement, our speed is around 15%, right? So, so, you know, 15% better speed than previously. What we have also seen is, is that our success rate of our transactions in production environment has gone to 96% success rate, which is, again there is a direct implication on business, on, on that point of view that, you know, there's no more manual exception or manual interaction is required for those failure scenarios. >> So 15% better speed at what? At, at implementing the bots? At actually writing code? Or... >> End to end, Yes. So from building the code to test that code able to approve that and then deploy that into the production environment after testing it this is really has improved by 15%. >> Okay. And, and what, what what business processes outside of sort of testing have you sort of attacked with the platform? Can you talk to that? >> The business processes outside of testing? >> Dave: Yeah. You mean the one which we are not testing ourself? >> Yeah, no. So just the UI path platform, is it exclusively for, for testing? >> This testing is exclusively for the UI path bots which we have built, right? So we have some 400 plus automations of UI bots. So it's meant exclusively >> But are you using UI path in any other ways? >> No, not at this time. >> Okay, okay. Interesting. So you started with testing? >> No, we started by building the bots. So we already had roughly 400 bots in production. When we came with the testing automation, that's when we started looking at it. >> Dave: Okay. And then now building that whole testing-- >> Dave: What are those other bots doing? Let me ask it that way. >> Oh, there's quite a lot. I mean, we have many bots. >> Dave: Paint a picture if you want. Yeah. In, in finance, in auto management, HR, legal, IT, there's a lot of automations which are there. As I'm saying, there's more than 400 automations out there. Yeah. So so it's across the, you know, enterprise on that. >> Thomas. So, and you know, both of you have a have a view on this, but Thomas's views probably wider across other, other instances. What are the most common things that are revealed in tests that indicate something needs to be fixed? Yeah, so think of, think of a test, a test failure, an error. What are the, what are the most common things that happen? >> So when we started with building our product we conducted a, a survey among our customers. And without a surprise the main reason why automation breaks is change. >> David: Sure. >> And the problem here is RPA is a controlled process a controlled workflow but it runs in an uncontrollable environment. So typically RPA is developed by a C.O.E. Those are business and automation experts, but they operate in an environment that's driven by new patches new application changes ruled out by IT. And that's the main challenge here. You cannot control that. And so far, if you, if you do not proactively test what happens is you catch an issue in production when it already breaks, right? That's reactive, that's leads to maintenance to un-claim maintenance actually. And that was the goal right from the start from the taste suite to support our customers here and go over to proactive maintenance meaning testing before and finding those issues before the heat production. >> Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I'm, I'm still not clear on, so you just gave a perfect example, changes in the environment. >> Yeah. >> So those changes are happening in the production environment. >> Thomas: Yeah. The robot that was happily doing its automation stuff before? >> Thomas: Yeah. Everyone was happy with it. Change happens. Robot breaks. >> Thomas: Yeah. >> Okay. You're saying you test before changes are implemented? To see if those changes will break the robot? >> Thomas: Yeah. >> Okay. How do you, how do you expose those changes that are in the, in a, that are going to be in a production environment to the robot? You must have a, Is is that part of the test environment? Does that mean that you have to have what fully running instances of like an ERP system? >> Thomas: Yeah. You know, a clone of an environment. How do you, how do you test that without having the live robot against the production environment? >> I think there's no big difference to standard software testing. Okay. The interesting thing is, the change actually happens earlier. You are affected on production side with it but the change happens on it side or on DevOps side. So you typically will test in a test environment that's similar to your production environment or probably in it in a pre-product environment. And the test itself is simply running your workflow that you want to test, but mark away any dependencies you don't want to invoke. You don't want to send a, a letter to a customer in a test environment, right? And then you verify that the result is what you actually expect, right? And as soon as this is not the case, you will be notified you will have a result, the fail result, and you can act before it breaks. So you can fix it, redeploy to production and you should be good now. >> But the, the main emphasis at VMware is testing your bots, correct? >> Neeraj: Testing your bots. Yes. Can I apply this to testing other software code? >> Yeah, yeah. You, you can, you can technically actually and Thomas can speak better than me on that to any software for that matter, but we have really not explored that aspect of it. >> David: You guys have pretty good coders, good engineers at VMware, but no, seriously Thomas what's that market looking like? Is that taking off? Are you, are you are you applying this capability or customers applying it for just more broadly testing software? >> Absolutely. So our goal was we want to test RPA and the application it relies on so that includes RPA testing as well as application testing. The main difference is typical functional application testing is a black box testing. So you don't know the inner implementation of of that application. And it works out pretty well. The big, the big opportunity that we have is not isolated Not isolated testing, isolated RPA but we talk about convergence of automation. So what we offer our customers is one automation platform. You create one, you create automation, not redundantly in different departments, but you create once probably for testing and then you reuse it for RPA. So that suddenly helps your, your test engineers to to move from a pure cost center to a value center. >> How, how unique is this capability in the industry relative to your competition and and what capabilities do you have that, that or, or or differentiators from the folks that we all know you're competing with? >> So the big advantage is the power of the entire platform that we have with UiPath. So we didn't start from scratch. We have that great automation layer. We have that great distribution layer. We have all that AI capabilities that so far were used for RPA. We can reuse them, repurpose them for testing. And that really differentiates us from the competition. >> Thomas, I I, I detect a hint of an accent. Is it, is it, is it German or >> It's actually Austrian. >> Austrian. Well, >> You know. Don't compare us with Germans. >> I understand. High German. Is that the proper, is that what's spoken in Austria? >> Yes, it is. >> So, so >> Point being? >> Point being exactly as I drift off point being generally German is considered to be a very very precise language with very specific words. It's very easy to be confused about between the difference the difference between two things automation testing and automating testing. >> Thomas: Yes. >> Because in this case, what you are testing are automations. >> Thomas: Yes. >> That's what you're talking about. >> Thomas: Yes. >> You're not talking about the automation of testing. Correct? >> Well, we talk about >> And that's got to be confusing when you go to translate that into >> Dave: But isn't it both? >> 50 other languages? >> Dave: It's both. >> Is it both? >> Thomas: It actually is both. >> Okay. >> And there's something we are exploring right now which is even, even the next step, the next layer which is autonomous testing. So, so far you had an expert an automation expert creating the automation once and it would be rerun over and over again. What we are now exploring is together with university to autonomously test, meaning a bot explores your application on the test and finds issues completely autonomously. >> Dave: So autonomous testing of automation? >> It's getting more and more complicated. >> It's more clear, it's getting clearer by the minute. >> Sorry for that. >> All right Neeraj, last question is: Where do you want to take this? What's your vision for, for VMware in the context of automation? >> Sure. So, so I think the first and the foremost thing for us is to really make it more mainstream for for our automation developer Excel, right? What I mean by that is, is to really, so so there is a shift now how we engage with our business users and SMEs. And I said previously they used to actually test it manually. Now the conversation changes that, hey can you tell us what test cases you want what you want us to test in an automated measure? Can you give us the test data for that so that we can keep on testing in a continuous manner for the months and years to come down? Right? The other part of the test it changes is that, hey it used to take eight weeks for us to build but now it's going to take nine weeks because we're going to spend an extra week just to automate that as well. But it's going to help you in the long run and that's the conversation. So to really make it as much more mainstream and then say that out of all these kinds of automation and bots which we are building, So we are not looking to have a test automation for every single bot which we are building. So we need to have a way to choose where their value is. Is it the quarter end processing one? Is it the most business critical one, or is it the one where we are expecting of frequent changes, right? That's where the value of the testing is. So really bring that as a part of our whole process and then, you know >> We're still fine too. That great. Guys, thanks so much. This has been really interesting conversation. I've been waiting to talk to a real life customer about testing and automation testing. Appreciate your time. >> Thank you very much. >> Thanks for everything. >> All right. Thank you for watching, keep it right there. Dave Nicholson and I will be back right after this short break. This is day one of theCUBE coverage of UI Path Forward Five. Be right back after this short break.

(upbeat music) >> Hey, everyone. Welcome to this CUBE Conversation that's part of the AWS startup showcase Season Two, Episode Four. I'm your host Lisa Martin. Chase Doelling joins me, the principles strategist at JumpCloud. Chase, welcome to theCUBE. It's great to have you. >> Chase: Perfect. Well, thank you so much, Lisa. I really appreciate the opportunity to come and hang out. >> Let's talk about JumpCloud. First of all, love the name. This is an open directory platform. Talk to the audience about what the platform is, obviously, the evolution of the domain controller. But give us that backstory? >> Yeah, absolutely. And so, company was started, and I think, from serial entrepreneurs, and after kind of last exit, taking a look around and saying, "Why is this piece of hardware still the dominant force when you're thinking about identities, especially when the world is moving to cloud, and all the different pieces that have been around it?" And so, over the years, we've evolved JumpCloud into an open directory platform. And what that is, is we're managing your identities, the devices that are associated to that, all the access points that employees need just to get their job done. And the best part is, is we're able to do that no matter where they are within the world. >> It seems like kind of a reinvention of how modern IT teams are getting worked done, especially in these days of remote work. Talk to me a little bit about the last couple of years particularly as remote work exploded, and here we are still probably, permanently, in that situation? >> Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's probably going to be one of those situations where we stick with it for quite a while. We had a very abrupt force in making sure that essentially every IT and security team could grapple with the fact of their users are no longer coming into the office. You know, how do we VPN into all of our different resources? Those are very common and unfortunate pain points that we've had over the last couple years. And so, now, people have starting to kind of get into the motion of it, working from home, having background and setups and other pieces. But one of the main areas of concern, especially as you're thinking about that, is how does it relate to my security infrastructure, or kind of my approach to my organization. And making sure that too, on the tail end, that a user's access and making sure that they can get into everything that they need to do in order to get work done, is still happening? And so, what we've done, is we've really taken, evolving and really kind of ripping apart this notion of what a directory was. 'Cause originally, it was just like, great, almost like a phone directory. It's where people lived they're going into all those different pieces. But it wasn't set up for the modern world, and kind of how we're approaching it, and how organizations now are started with a credit card and have all of their infrastructure. And essentially, all of their IP, is now hosted somewhere else. And so, we wanted to take a different approach where we're thinking about, not only managing that identity, but taking an open approach. So, matter where the identity's coming from, we can integrate that into the platform but then we're also managing and securing those devices, which is often the most important piece that we have sitting right in front of us in order to get into that. But then, also that final question, of when you're accessing networks applications, can you create the conditions for trust, right? And so, if you're looking at zero trust, or kind of going after different levels of compliance, ISO, SOC2, whatever that might be, making sure that you have all that put in place no matter where your employees are. So, in that way, as we kind of moved into this remote, now hybrid world, it wasn't the office as the gating point anymore, right? So, key cards, as much as we love 'em, final part, whereas the new perimeter, the kind of the new barrier for organizations especially how they're thinking about security, is the people's identities behind that. And so, that's the approach that we really wanted to take as we continue to evolve and really open up what a directory platform can do. >> Yeah. Zero trust security, remote work. Two things that have exploded in the last couple of years. But as employees, we expected to be able to still have the access that we needed to apps, to the network, to WiFi, et cetera. And, of course, on the security side, we saw massive changes in the threat landscape that really, obviously, security elevates to a board level conversation. So, I imagine zero trust security, remote work, probably compliance, you mentioned SOC2, are some of the the key use cases that you're helping organizations with? >> Those are a lot of the drivers. And what we do, is we're able to combine a lot of different aspects that you need for each one of those. And so, now you're thinking about essentially, the use case of someone joins an organization, they need access to all these different things. But behind the scenes, it's a combination of identity access management, device management, applications, networks, everything else, and creating those conditions for them to do their roles. But the other piece of that, is you also don't want to be overly cumbersome. I think a lot of us think about security as like great biometrics, so I'm going to add in these keys, I'm going to do everything else to kind of get into these secured resources. But the reality of it now, is those secure resources might be AWS infrastructure. It might be other Salesforce reporting tools. It might be other pieces, or kind of IP within the organization. And those are now your crown jewel. And so, if you're not thinking about the identities behind them and the security that you have in order to facilitate that transaction, it becomes a board level conversation very quickly. But you want to do it in a way that people can move forward with their lives, and they're not spending a ton of time battling the systems and procedures you put in place to protect it, but that it's working together seamlessly. And so, that's where, kind of this notion for us of bringing all these different technologies into one platform. You're able to consolidate a lot of those and remove a lot of the friction while maintaining the visibility, and answering the question, of who has access to what? And when did they do that? Those are the most critical pieces that IT and security teams are asking themselves when something happens. And hopefully, on the preventative side and not so much on the redacted side. >> Have you seen the escalation up the C-Suite change of the board in terms of really focusing on how do we do identity management? How do we do single sign on? How do we do device management and network access? Is that all the way up to the C-Suite board level as well? >> It certainly can be. And we've seen it in a lot of different conversations, because now you are thinking about all different portions of the organization. And then, two, as we're thinking about times we're currently in, there's also a cost associated to that. And so, when you start to consolidate all of those technologies into one area, now it becomes much more of total cost optimization types of story while you're still maintaining a lot of the security and basic blocking and tackling that you need for most organizations. So, everything you just mentioned, those are now table stakes for a lot of small, medium, startups to be at the table. So, how do you have access to enterprise level, essentially technology, without the cost that's associated to it. And that's a lot of the trade offs that organizations are facing and having those types of conversations as it relates to business preparedness and how we're making sure that we are putting our best foot forward, and we're able to be resilient in no matter what type, of either economic or security threat that the organization might be looking at. >> So, let's talk about the go-to market, the strategy from a sales and marketing perspective. Where are the customer conversations happening? Are they at the IT level? Are they higher up the stack? >> It's really at, I'd say the IT level. And so, by that, I mean the builders, the implementers, everyone that's responsible for putting devices in people's hands, and making sure that they can do their job effectively. And so, those are their, I'd say the IT admins the world as well as the managed service providers who support those organizations, making sure that we can enable them to making sure that their organizations or their client organizations have all the tools that their disposable to make sure that they have the security or the policies, and the technology behind them to enable all those different practices. >> Let's unpack the benefits from an IT perspective? Obviously, they're getting one console that they can manage at all. One user identity for email, and devices, and apps, and things. You mentioned regardless of location, but this is also regardless of operating system, correct? >> That's correct. And so, part of taking an open approach, is also the devices that you're running on. And so, we take a cross OS approach. So, Mac, Windows, Linux, iPhone, whatever it might be, we can make sure that, that device is secure. And so, it does a couple different things. So, one, is the employees have device choice, right? So, I'm a Mac person coming in. If forced into a Windows, it'd be an interesting experience. But then, also too, from the back end, now you have essentially one platform to manage your entire fleet. And also give visibility and data behind what's happening behind those. And then, from the end user perspective as well, everything's tied together. And so, instead of having, what we'll call user ID schizophrenia, it might be one employee, but hundreds of different identities and logins just to get their work done. We can now centralize that into one person, making sure you have one password to get into your advice, get into the network, to get into your single sign on. We also have push MFA associated with that. So, you can actually create the conditions for your most secured access, or you understand, say, "Hey, I'm actually in the office. I'm going to be a hybrid employee. Maybe I can actually relax some of those security concerns I might have for people outside of the network." And all we do, is making sure that we give all that optionality to our IT admins, manage service providers of the world to enable that type of work for their employees to happen. >> So, they have the ability to toggle that, is critically important in this day and age of the hybrid work model, that's probably here to stay? >> It is, yeah. And it's something that organizations change, right? Our own organizations, they grow, they change different. New threats might emerge, or same old existing threats continue to come back. And we need to just have better processes and automations put within that. And it's when you start to consolidate all of those technologies, not only are you thinking about the visibility behind that, but then you're automating a lot of those different pieces that are already tightly coupled together. And that actually is truly powerful for a lot of the IT admins of the world, because that's where they spend a lot of time, and they're able to spend more time helping users tackling big projects instead of run rate security, and blocking, and tackling. That should be enabled from the organization from the get go. >> You mentioned automation. And I think that there's got to be a TCO reduction aspect here with respect to security and IT practices. Can you talk about that a little bit? >> Yeah, absolutely. Let's think about the opposite of that. Let's say we have a laundry list of technology that we need to go out and source. One is, great, where the identity is, so we have an identity provider. Now, we need to make sure that we have application access that might look like single sign on. Now, we need to make sure, you are who you are no matter where you are in the world. Well, now we need multifactor authentication and that might involve either a push button, or biometrics. And then, well, great the device's in front of us, that's a huge component, making sure that I can understand, not only who's on the device, but that the device is secure, that there's certificates there, that there's policies that ensure the proper use of that wherever it might be. Especially, if I'm an employee, either, it used to be on the the jet center going between flying anywhere you need. Now, it's kind of cross country, cross domain, all those different areas. And when you start to have that, it really unlocks, essentially IT sprawl. You have a lot of different pieces, a lot of different contracts, trying to figure out one technology works, but the other might not. And you're now you're creating workarounds for all these different pieces. So, the opposite of that, is essentially, let's take all those technologies and consolidate that into one platform. So, not only is it cheaper essentially, looking after that and understanding all the different technologies, but now it's all the other soft costs around it that many people don't think about. It's all the other automations. It's all the workarounds that you didn't have to do in the first place. It's all the other pieces that you'd spend a lot of time trying to wire it together. Into the hopes of that, it creates some security model. But then again, you lose a lot of the visibility. So, you might have an incident happen over here, or a trigger, or alert, but it's not tied to the rest of the stack. And so, now you're spending a lot of time, especially, either trying to understand. And worse timing, is if you have an incident and you're trying to understand what's happening? Unraveling all of that as it happens, becomes impossible, especially if it's not consolidated with one platform. So, there's not only the hard cost aspect of bringing all that together, but also the soft costs of thinking about how your business can perform, or at least optimize for a lot of those different standard processes, including onboarding, offboarding, and everything else in between. >> Yeah. On the soft cost side, I can imagine. I can see huge benefits for HR onboarding, offboarding. I can see benefits for the employee experience period, which directly relates to the customer experience. So, in terms of the business impact that JumpCloud can make, it seems to be pretty horizontal across any type of organization? >> It is, and especially as you mentioned HR. Because when you think about, where does the origin of someone's identity start? Well, typically, it starts with a resume and that might be in applicant tracking software. Now, we're going to get hired, so we're going to move into HR, because, well, everyone likes payroll, and we need that in our lives, right? But now you get into the second phase, of great, now I've joined the organization. Now, I need access to all of these different pieces. But when you look at it, essentially horizontally, from HR, all the way into the employee experience, and their whole life cycle within the organization, now you're touching multiple different teams And that's one of the other, I'd say benefits of that, is now you're actually bringing in HR, and IT, and security, and everyone else that might be related within these kind of larger use cases of making work happen all coming under. And when they're tightly integrated, it's also a lot more secure, right? So, you're not passing notes along. You're not having a checklist of other stuff, especially when it relates to something as important as someone's identity, which is more often than not, the most common attack vector for people to go after. Because they know it's the keys to the kingdom. There's going to be a lot of different attempts, maybe malware and other pieces, but a lot of it comes back into, can I impersonate, or become the person that I want within the organization, because it's the identity allows you to access all those different pieces. And so, if it's coming from a disjointed process or something that's not as tightly as it could be, that's where it really opens up a lot of different vectors that organizations don't think about. >> Right, and those vectors are only growing and multiplying as we know, and here to stay. When you're in customer conversations what do you describe as maybe the top three differentiators of JumpCloud compared to the competition? >> Well, I think a lot of it is we take an open approach. And so, by that, I mean, it's one we're not locking into, I'd say different vendors or other areas. We're really looking into making sure that we can work within your environment as it stands today, or where you want to migrate in the future. And so, this could be a combination of on-prem resources, cloud resources, or nothing if you're starting a company from today. And the second, is again, coming back into how we're looking at devices. So, we take a cross OS approach that way, no matter what you're operating on, it all comes back from the same dashboard. But then, finally, we leverage a ton of different protocols to make sure it works with everything within your current technology stack, as well as it continues to elevate and evolve over time. So, it could be LD app and Radius, and Sam, and skim, and open ID Connect, and open APIs. And whatever that might be, we are able to tie in all those different pieces. So, now, all of a sudden, it's not just one platform, but you have your whole business tied into as that gives you some flexibility too, to evolve. Because even during the pandemic and the shift for remote, there's a lot of technology choices that shifted. A lot of people are like, "Okay, now's the time to go to the cloud." There might be other events that organizations change. There's other things that might happen. So, creating that flexibility for organizations to move and make those calls, is essentially how we're differentiating ourselves. And we're not locking you into this, walled garden of technology that's just our own. We really want to make sure that we can operate, and be that glue, so that way, no matter what you're trying to do and making sure that your work is being done, we can help facilitate that. >> Nice. No matter what happens. Because boy, at this day, anything's possible. One more question for you about your AWS partnership. Talk to me a little bit about that? >> Yeah, absolutely. So, we are preferred ADP identity provider and SSO provider for AWS. And so, now rebranded under their identity center. But it's crucial for a lot of our organizations and joint customers because again, when we think about a lot of organization IP and how they operate as a business, is tied into AWS. And so, really understanding, who has the right level of access? Who should be in there or not? And when too, you should challenge in making sure that actually there's something fishy there. Like let's make sure that they're not just traveling to Europe on a sabbatical, and it's really who they are instead of a threat actor. Those are some of the pieces when we're thinking about creating that authentication, but then also, the right authorization into those AWS resources. And so, that's actually something that we've been very close to, especially, I'd say that the origins of a company. Because a lot of startups, that's where they go. That's where they begin their journey. And so, we meet them where they are, and making sure that we're protecting not only everything else within their organization, but also what they're trying to get into, which is typically AWS >> Meeting customers where they are. It's all about that. Chase, thank you so much for joining me on the program talking about JumpCloud, it's open directory platform. The benefits, the capabilities, what's in it for IT, HR, security, et cetera. We appreciate all of your insights and time. Where do you want to point folks to go to learn more? >> Well, absolutely. Well, thank you so much for having us. And I'd say, if you're curious about any and all these different technologies, the best part is everything I talked about is free up to 10 users, 10 devices. So, just go to jumpcloud.com. You can create an organization, and it's great for startups, people at home. Any size company that you're at, we can help support all of those different facets in bringing in those different types of technologies all into one roof. >> Awesome. Chase, thank you so much. This is awesome, go to jumpcloud.com. For Chase Doelling, I'm Lisa Martin. We want to thank you so much for giving us some of your time and watching this CUBE Conversation. (upbeat music)

(electronic music) >> Hello everybody, welcome back to Boston. This is Dave Vellante and you're watching theCUBE's continuous coverage of AWS re:Inforce 2022. We're here at the convention center in Boston where theCUBE got started in May of 2010. I'm really excited. Lena Smart is here, she's the chief information security officer at MongoDB rocket ship company We covered MongoDB World earlier this year, June, down in New York. Lena, thanks for coming to theCUBE. >> Thank you for having me. >> You're very welcome, I enjoyed your keynote yesterday. You had a big audience, I mean, this is a big deal. >> Yeah. >> This is the cloud security conference, AWS, putting its mark in the sand back in 2019. Of course, a couple of years of virtual, now back in Boston. You talked in your keynote about security, how it used to be an afterthought, used to be the responsibility of a small group of people. >> Yeah. >> You know, it used to be a bolt on. >> Yep. >> That's changed dramatically and that change has really accelerated through the pandemic. >> Yep. >> Just describe that change from your perspective. >> So when I started at MongoDB about three and a half years ago, we had a very strong security program, but it wasn't under one person. So I was their first CISO that they employed. And I brought together people who were already doing security and we employed people from outside the company as well. The person that I employed as my deputy is actually a third time returnee, I guess? So he's worked for, MongoDB be twice before, his name is Chris Sandalo, and having someone of that stature in the company is really helpful to build the security culture that I wanted. That's why I really wanted Chris to come back. He's technically brilliant, but he also knew all the people who'd been there for a while and having that person as a trusted second in command really, really helped me grow the team very quickly. I've already got a reputation as a strong female leader. He had a reputation as a strong technical leader. So us combined is like indestructible, we we're a great team. >> Is your scope of responsibility, obviously you're protecting Mongo, >> Yeah. >> How much of your role extends into the product? >> So we have a product security team that report into Sahir Azam, our chief product officer. I think you even spoke to him. >> Yeah, he's amazing. >> He's awesome, isn't he? He's just fabulous. And so his team, they've got security experts on our product side who are really kind of the customer facing. I'm also to a certain extent customer facing, but the product folks are the absolute experts. They will listen to what our customers need, what they want, and together we can then work out and translate that. I'm also responsible for governance risk and compliance. So there's a large portion of our customers that give us input via that program too. So there's a lot of avenues to allow us to facilitate change in the security field. And I think that's really important. We have to listen to what our customers want, but also internally. You know, what our internal groups need as well to help them grow. >> I remember last year, Re:invent 2021, I was watching a talk on security. It was the, I forget his name, but it was the individual who responsible for data center security. And one of the things he said was, you know, look it's not at the end of the day, the technology's important but it's not the technology. It's how you apply the tools and the practices and the culture- >> Right. That you build in the organization that will ultimately determine how successful you are at decreasing the ROI for the bad guys. >> Yes. >> Let's put it that way. So talk about the challenges of building that culture, how you go about that, and how you sustain that cultural aspect. >> So, I think having the security champion program, so that's just, it's like one of my babies, that and helping underrepresented groups in MongoDB kind of get on in the tech world are both really important to me. And so the security champion program is purely voluntary. We have over a hundred members. And these are people, there's no bar to join. You don't have to be technical. If you're an executive assistant who wants to learn more about security, like my assistant does, you're more than welcome. Up to, we actually people grade themselves, when they join us, we give them a little tick box. Like five is, I walk in security water. One is, I can spell security but I'd like to learn more. Mixing those groups together has been game changing for us. We now have over a hundred people who volunteer their time, with their supervisors permission, they help us with their phishing campaigns, testing AWS tool sets, testing things like queryable encryption. I mean, we have people who have such an in-depth knowledge in other areas of the business that I could never learn, no matter how much time I had. And so to have them- And we have people from product as security champions as well, and security, and legal, and HR, and every department is recognized. And I think almost every geographical location is also recognized. So just to have that scope and depth of people with long tenure in the company, technically brilliant, really want to understand how they can apply the cultural values that we live with each day to make our security program stronger. As I say, that's been a game changer for us. We use it as a feeder program. So we've had five people transfer from other departments into the security and GRC teams through this Champions program. >> Makes a lot of sense. You take somebody who walks on water in security, mix them with somebody who really doesn't know a lot about it but wants to learn and then can ask really basic questions, and then the experts can actually understand better how to communicate. >> Absolutely. >> To that you know that 101 level. >> It's absolutely true. Like my mom lives in her iPad. She worships her iPad. Unfortunately she thinks everything on it is true. And so for me to try and dumb it down, and she's not a dumb person, but for me to try and dumb down the message of most of it's rubbish, mom, Facebook is made up. It's just people telling stories. For me to try and get that over to- So she's a one, and I might be a five, that's hard. That's really hard. And so that's what we're doing in the office as well. It's like, if you can explain to my mother how not everything on the internet is true, we're golden. >> My mom, rest her soul, when she first got a- we got her a Macintosh, this was years and years and years ago, and we were trying to train her over the phone, and said, mom, just grab the mouse. And she's like, I don't like mice. (Lena laughs) There you go. I know, I know, Lena, what that's like. Years ago, it was early last decade, we started to think about, wow, security really has to become a board level item. >> Yeah. >> And it really wasn't- 2010, you know, for certain companies. But really, and so I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Robert Gates, who was the defense secretary. >> Yes. >> We had this conversation, and he sits on a number, or sat on a number of boards, probably still does, but he was adamant. Oh, absolutely. Here's how you know, here. This is the criticality. Now it's totally changed. >> Right. >> I mean, it's now a board level item. But how do you communicate to the C-Suite, the board? How often do you do that? What do you recommend is the right regime? And I know there's not any perfect- there's got to be situational, but how do you approach it? >> So I am extremely lucky. We have a very technical board. Our chairman of the board is Tom Killalea. You know, Amazon alum, I mean, just genius. And he, and the rest of the board, it's not like a normal board. Like I actually have the meeting on this coming Monday. So this weekend will be me reading as much stuff as I possibly can, trying to work out what questions they're going to ask me. And it's never a gotcha kind of thing. I've been at board meetings before where you almost feel personally attacked and that's not a good thing. Where, at MongoDB, you can see they genuinely want us to grow and mature. And so I actually meet with our board four times a year, just for security. So we set up our own security meeting just with board members who are specifically interested in security, which is all of them. And so this is actually off cadence. So I actually get their attention for at least an hour once a quarter, which is almost unheard of. And we actually use the AWS memo format. People have a chance to comment and read prior to the meeting. So they know what we're going to talk about and we know what their concerns are. And so you're not going in like, oh my gosh, what what's going to happen for this hour? We come prepared. We have statistics. We can show them where we're growing. We can show them where we need more growth and maturity. And I think having that level of just development of programs, but also the ear of the board has has helped me mature my role 10 times. And then also we have the chance to ask them, well what are your other CISOs doing? You know, they're members of other boards. So I can say to Dave, for example, you know, what's so-and-so doing at Datadog? Or Tom Killelea, what's the CISO of Capital One doing? And they help me make a lot of those connections as well. I mean, the CISO world is small and me being a female in the world with a Scottish accent, I'm probably more memorable than most. So it's like, oh yeah, that's the Irish girl. Yeah. She's Scottish, thank you. But they remember me and I can use that. And so just having all those mentors from the board level down, and obviously Dev is a huge, huge fan of security and GRC. It's no longer that box ticking exercise that I used to feel security was, you know, if you heated your SOC2 type two in FinTech, oh, you were good to go. You know, if you did a HERC set for the power industry. All right, right. You know, we can move on now. It's not that anymore. >> Right. It's every single day. >> Yeah. Of course. Dev is Dev at the Chario. Dev spelled D E V. I spell Dave differently. My Dave. But, Lena, it sounds like you present a combination of metrics, so, the board, you feel like that's appropriate to dig into the metrics. But also I'm presuming you're talking strategy, potentially, you know, gaps- >> Road roadmaps, the whole nine yards. Yep. >> What's the, you know, I look at the budget scenario. At the macro level, CIOs have told us, they came into the year saying, hey we're going to grow spending at the macro, around eight percent, eight and a half percent. That's dialed down a little bit post Ukraine and the whole recession and Fed tightening. So now they're down maybe around six percent. So not dramatically lower, but still. And they tell us security is still the number one priority. >> Yes. >> That's been the case for many, many quarters, and actually years, but you don't have an unlimited budget. >> Sure >> Right. It's not like, oh, here is an open checkbook. >> Right. >> Lena, so, how does Mongo balance that with the other priorities in the organization, obviously, you know, you got to spend money on product, you got to spend money and go to market. What's the climate like now, is it, you know continuing on in 2022 despite some of the macro concerns? Is it maybe tapping the brakes? What's the general sentiment? >> We would never tap the breaks. I mean, this is something that's- So my other half works in the finance industry still. So we have, you know, interesting discussions when it comes to geopolitics and financial politics and you know, Dev, the chairman of the board, all very technical people, get that security is going to be taken advantage of if we're seeing to be tapping the brakes. So it does kind of worry me when I hear other people are saying, oh, we're, you know, we're cutting back our budget. We are not. That being said, you also have to be fiscally responsible. I'm Scottish, we're cheap, really frugal with money. And so I always tell my team: treat this money as if it's your own. As if it's my money. And so when we're buying tool sets, I want to make sure that I'm talking to the CISO, or the CISO of the company that's supplying it, and saying are you giving me the really the best value? You know, how can we maybe even partner with you as a database platform? How could we partner with you, X company, to, you know, maybe we'll give you credits on our platform. If you look to moving to us and then we could have a partnership, and I mean, that's how some of this stuff builds, and so I've been pretty good at doing that. I enjoy doing that. But then also just in terms of being fiscally responsible, yeah, I get it. There's CISOs who have every tool that's out there because it's shiny and it's new and they know the board is never going to say no, but at some point, people will get wise to that and be like, I think we need a new CISO. So it's not like we're going to stop spending it. So we're going to get someone who actually knows how to budget and get us what the best value for money. And so that's always been my view is we're always going to be financed. We're always going to be financed well. But I need to keep showing that value for money. And we do that every board meeting, every Monday when I meet with my boss. I mean, I report to the CFO but I've got a dotted line to the CTO. So I'm, you know, I'm one of the few people at this level that's got my feet in both camps. You know budgets are talked at Dev's level. So, you know, it's really important that we get the spend right. >> And that value is essentially, as I was kind of alluding to before, it's decreasing the value equation for the hackers, for the adversary. >> Hopefully, yes. >> Right? Who's the- of course they're increasingly sophisticated. I want to ask you about your relationship with AWS in this context. It feels like, when I look around here, I think back to 2019, there was a lot of talk about the shared responsibility model. >> Yes. >> You know, AWS likes to educate people and back then it was like, okay, hey, by the way, you know you got to, you know, configure the S3 bucket properly. And then, oh, by the way, there's more than just, it's not just binary. >> Right, right. >> There's other factors involved. The application access and identity and things like that, et cetera, et cetera. So that was all kind of cool. But I feel like the cloud is becoming the first line of defense for the CISO but because of the shared responsibility model, CISO is now the second line of defense >> Yes. Does that change your role? Does it make it less complicated in a way? Maybe, you know, more complicated because you now got to get your DevSecOps team? The developers are now much more involved in security? How is that shifting, specifically in the context of your relationship with AWS? >> It's honestly not been that much of a shift. I mean, these guys are very proactive when it comes to where we are from the security standpoint. They listen to their customers as much as we do. So when we sit down with them, when I meet with Steve Schmidt or CJ or you know, our account manager, its not a conversation that's a surprise to me when I tell them this is what we need. They're like, yep, we're on that already. And so I think that relationship has been very proactive rather than reactive. And then in terms of MongoDB, as a tech company, security is always at the forefront. So it's not been a huge lift for me. It's really just been my time that I've taken to understand where DevSecOps is coming from. And you know, how far are we shifting left? Are we actually shifting right now? It's like, you know, get the balance, right? You can't be too much to one side. But I think in terms of where we're teaching the developers, you know, we are a company by developers for developers. So, we get it, we understand where they're coming from, and we try and be as proactive as AWS is. >> When you obviously the SolarWinds hack was a a major mile- I think in security, there's always something in the headlines- >> Yes. But when you think of things like, you know, Stuxnet, you know, Log4J, obviously Solarwinds and the whole supply chain infiltration and the bill of materials. As I said before, the adversary is extremely capable and sophisticated and you know, much more automated. It's always been automated attacks, but you know island hopping and infiltrating and self-forming malware and really sophisticated techniques. >> Yep. >> How are you thinking about that supply chain, bill of materials from inside Mongo and ultimately externally to your customers? >> So you've picked on my third favorite topic to talk about. So I came from the power industry before, so I've got a lot of experience with critical infrastructure. And that was really, I think, where a lot of the supply chain management rules and regulations came from. If you're building a turbine and the steel's coming from China, we would send people to China to make sure that the steel we were buying was the steel we were using. And so that became the H bomb. The hardware bill of materials, bad name. But, you know, we remember what it stood for. And then fast forward: President Biden's executive order. SBOs front and center, cloud first front and center. It's like, this is perfect. And so I was actually- I actually moderated a panel earlier this year at Homeland Security Week in DC, where we had a sneak CISA, So Dr. Allen Friedman from CISA, and also Patrick Weir from OWASP for the framework, CISA for the framework as well, and just the general guidance, and Snake for the front end. That was where my head was going. And MongoDB is the back-end database. And what we've done is we've taken our work with Snake and we now have a proof of concept for SBOs. And so I'm now trying to kind of package that, if you like, as a program and get the word out that SBOs shouldn't be something to be afraid of. If you want to do business with the government you're going to have to create one. We are offering a secure repository to store that data, the government could have access to that repository and see that data. So there's one source of truth. And so I think SBOs is going to be really interesting. I know that, you know, some of my peers are like, oh, it's just another box to tick. And I think it's more than that. I definitely- I've just, there's something percolating in the back of my mind that this is going to be big and we're going to be able to use it to hopefully not stop things like another Log4j, there's always going to be another Log4j, we know that. we don't know everything, the unknown unknown, but at least if we're prepared to go find stuff quicker than we were then before Log4j, I think having SBOs on hand, having that one source of truth, that one repository, I think is going to make it so much easier to find those things. >> Last question, what's the CISO's number one challenge? Either yours or the CISO, generally. >> Keeping up with the fire hose that is security. Like, what do you pick tomorrow? And if you pick the wrong thing, what's the impact? So that's why I'm always networking and talking to my peers. And, you know, we're sometimes like meerkats, you know. there's meerkats, you see like this, it's like, what do we talk about? But there's always something to talk about. And you just have to learn and keep learning. >> Last question, part B. As a hot technology company, that's, you know, rising star, you know not withstanding the tech lash and the stock market- >> Yeah. >> But Mongo's growing, you know, wonderfully. Do you find it easier to attract talent? Like many CISOs will say, you know, lack of talent is my biggest, biggest challenge. Do you find that that's not the challenge for you? >> Not at all. I think on two fronts, one, we have the champions program. So we've got a whole internal ecosystem who love working there. So the minute one of my jobs goes on the board, they get first dibs at it. So they'd already phoning their friends. So we've got, you know, there's ripple effects out from over a hundred people internally. You know, I think just having that, that's been a game changer. >> I was so looking forward to interviewing you, Lena, thanks so much for coming. >> Thank you, this was a pleasure. >> It was really great to have you. >> Thank you so much. Thank you. >> You're really welcome. All right, keep it right there. This is Dave Villante for theCUBE. We'll be right back at AWS Re:inforce22 right after this short break.

(upbeat music) >> Hey everyone. Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of Coupa Inspire 2022. We are in Las Vegas at the beautiful Cosmopolitan hotel. I'm your host, Lisa Martin. Brian McKillips joins me next, a managing director at Accenture. Brian, it's great to have you on the program. >> Thanks for having me, I'm glad to be here. >> So you have an interesting, you lead a lot of stuff at Accenture and I want to read this off, so I get it right. You lead the intelligent platform services strategy and the industry and functions platform group. Talk to me about those responsibilities. >> Yeah, so the intelligent platform services is the place in the business where we have kind of our large software partners, SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, Workday, Salesforce and Adobe. And we kind of think of ourselves as kind of the engine that powers industry and functional solutions, right? And the way Accenture's gone to market over the last couple of years has been kind of bringing together our breadth of experience all the way from strategy, all the way through operations and these big technology transformations are at the core of that. So that's what we do in intelligent platform services. And we recently launched this what we call the industry and functions platforms group because we realized there's a lot of strategic partners that are critical for us to be have a strong practice around, COUPA being one of them, you know in the supply chain and sourcing and procurement space so that we could create a home to be able to deliver these solutions globally and at scale. So I lead both kind of the strategy across all of IPS and then the new industry and functions platform group. >> Got it. All right. So you're here to talk to me about composable technology. First of all, define that for the audience so they understand what you're talking about. >> Yeah, you bet. So, you know, at Accenture, we're talking a lot about this is the age of compressed transformation, meaning, you know, change is only going to speed up and the need to change and so our clients are really struggling with not only kind of moving fast but that pressure around having to change as dynamics around the world change. So in the age of compressed transformation, we were really talking about how our clients should be kind of reorienting the way they think about their tech stack. And because, you know, historically a lot of us grew up in kind of monolithic implementations with, you know one software provider. But today it's really about composing technology to create new industry, new ways to solve industry problems, functional processes, customer experiences, right? And so composable technology we think about it in three parts. One is a cloud foundation that is, you know, the hyperscalers are a critical part of that. Secondly, our digital core and these are the kind of the historic software packages at the center of a lot of the industry and functional business processes. So you think about SAP and Oracle and Salesforce and things like that. But then around that digital core you have composable elements to be able to plug in. And that could be things like other software packages but it's also kind of industry IP or you know, edge devices, you know think IOT, think smart appliances, think and when you put, pull all those things together you need to be able to not only configure it once but configure and reconfigure as the dynamics of the marketplace change. >> So composable technology isn't necessarily new but has the pandemic been an accelerator of some of the things that you're seeing now in terms of why it's important, what's different about it now as being a foundation for competitive differentiation? >> Yeah, for sure. And it's, you know, I, anybody who's in technology say, you know, you tell them about this idea, they're like, well this isn't new, we've had service oriented architectures for 20 years. >> Right. >> You know, we've been talking about integrating things forever, but the you know, much like we all five to seven years ago we knew that we'd be using our phones to pay for pretty much everything but the tech hadn't caught up, right. Not every restaurant or store that you went to had the point of sale set up, right. So we all kind of knew that was coming. And the same thing has kind of happened around this idea of about composable technology and the three things that are new are one is that the cloud foundation is here, right. >> Yes. >> Where, you know, you now have not only kind of hyperscale high speed compute in at the core you actually have at the edge as well. And the same thing with high speed network, you know you have Starlink, you have 5G rolling out. So you have that cloud foundation that really wasn't there before. The second thing that's happening is the posture of a lot of the ecosystem, major ecosystem players has changed, right. And this started, you know when Satya Nadella took over Microsoft where Microsoft was very much a kind of a closed environment. >> Right. >> Where Satya under his leadership has really kind of changed the posture of being able to integrate into that. And we've seen that really pretty much across the entire landscape. And then lastly, it's become, you know, cheaper and, you know, quicker to be able to integrate with platforms like MuleSoft and others where there's kind of full scale integration platforms. So those are, those are the kind of the things that are new that allows for composable technology to be here in the real world. >> So it's something that's tangible, it's real organizations need to be on this bandwagon I imagine or they're going to be left behind. Gartner had some interesting stats that your team sent over and they were talking about these stats that were very compelling in terms of a seismic shift which always, you hear seismic living in California I think earthquakes, but something substantial. And they said, this seismic shift is going to happen by 2023. And I thought, hang on, that's less than a year away. >> Yeah. >> And they talked about by 2023, organizations that have adopted an intelligent composable approach will outpace competition 80% in the speed of new feature implementation. So if an organization hasn't started on that now is it too late? >> I would say not necessarily too late but they need to look for ways to change their disposition, right. And one of the ways that we've been helping clients do this is through pre-integrated solutions, right. So you know, in the past, the motion would be we would work with a client, they would work with our kind of strategists and consultants and say, what does the the future of supply chain look like for example. And if the client liked it, they would say, okay, I love it, what do I do next? Right. Then there would be another consulting engagement, another consulting engagement and then there would be a blueprint and architecture and at some point there was an implementation and a run. We've actually said we're investing heavily with our ecosystem partners to be able to pre-integrate solutions. So when that supply chain strategist says this is what the post COVID supply chain should look like and the client says, I love it what do I do next, that strategist can turn around and say, well, we've got a pre-integrated solution with SAP at the core sitting on a Microsoft Azure stack integrated with Coupa, wrapped with AI and machine learning and we can drop that and configure it for an environment. So that's how we're working with clients who are in that position that really need to kind of change their disposition is to bring these pre-integrated solutions and drop them in. >> Where are your conversations at the C- Suite level? Because this is, I hear many things in what you just said. Part of it is change management, which is very challenging. There's, people are very resistant to that. >> Brian: Yeah. >> One of the things that we've learned in the last two years is if it's going to come it's going to come but where are your conversations within that executive suite in terms of getting buy-in and going this is the direction we have to go in. >> Brian: Yeah. >> Because our business needs to be not just survive but thrive. >> Yeah. Yeah. These are, I mean, there are certainly of course in kind of traditional channels of tech whether it's, you know, the CIO or the CTO, but increasingly we're seeing this is a CEO discussion and, you know, our CEO Julie Sweet, is very, very market pacing and is having top to top conversations talking about compressed transformation, talking about composable technology because it's no longer just a, you know, a back office function as you know, right. I mean, this is really core to how companies you know, are, change their business models, make money, right. And it's a constant evolution. And that's why we talk about that kind of configuring and reconfiguring, it's not just coming in, implementing once, run it for five years and then when it's time to upgrade, we come back. >> No. >> We really want to be the partner with our clients to basically move in and, you know, across the patch whether it's specific industry processes, specific functional processes, specific customer experiences, we want to be the partner that is constantly tuning and configuring and reconfiguring and composing these solutions from across the ecosystem. >> And helping those businesses in any industry evolve as you talked about this compressed timeline, compressed transformation, such an interesting way of describing it but it's really true, it's what we've been living the last couple of years. >> Brian: Yeah. And so I want to get into Accenture's technology vision. You touched on this a little bit but there was some stats that your team provided that I thought were really, really interesting, a survey that Accenture did, 77% of executives, and we were just talking about the C-suite, state that their tech architecture is becoming critical to the overall success of the organization. So that awareness is there for sure en masse. Another thing that, stat that was interesting was 90% of business and IT execs agree that to be agile we always talk about agility, right, be resilient, organizations need to fast forward this digital transformation at the core. There's that compressed transformation. >> Brian: Yeah. >> Those are very high numbers. >> Brian: Yeah. >> In terms of where organizations say we see where we need to be. What's the vision at Accenture to help organizations get there fast? >> Yeah. Well, I think it's, you know, the thing that came to mind as you were talking is that we have, you know, major clients that have had this had in the, you know consumer packaged goods and apparel space that have had one way that they've done business is directly through retailers, you know, for pretty much their whole existence. Suddenly they need to shift to a direct to consumer model both in terms of marketing, in terms of commerce and that's not, you know, you don't just flip a switch in the back office and, you know, call IT and say hey, hey, can you change around a few things? It's actually shifting the entire core, it touches everything, it touches point of sale, it touches the customer experience, it touches supply chain, it touches employee experience even, right. >> Yeah. >> And so that's why I think it's so important for, you know technology leaders and business leaders to continue to kind of integrate themselves more tightly. >> Yes. >> To be able to make these business model transformations not just, you know, the tech that supports things. >> It's essential. >> Yeah. >> You know, we often in so many shows, Brian, we talk about alignment of business and technology, but it's not trivial. >> Yeah, yeah. >> It's absolutely fundamental to the success of every organization. And they've got to do so and as you said, I'm going to use your, your word, the compressed transformation. >> Yeah. >> A compressed timeframe. So talk to me about some customer examples where you really feel that Accenture and Coupa have helped this organization transform its supply chain to be able to be, use composable technology. >> Brian: Yeah. >> To be a leader in its industry. >> Yeah. Well, one example of that is a major industrial client that we have that has global operations across the world. And they're on a journey to kind of upgrade their digital core ERP that they've been on for a long time. And that's a multi-year journey. But at, you know, today they have needs for sourcing and procurement solutions in specific geographies around the world like Japan, for example. So what we've been able to do and it's a relatively simple example but quickly work with the client and Coupa to identify the right Coupa solution that's born in the cloud that has a great kind of user experience and implement that quickly as well as integrated it into the digital core, right. So they're not separate things. And it becomes part of that architecture, right. It just starts to kind of show the flexibility of when you have, when you come with a kind of composable technology point of view, the way we can help our clients do that. And in some other cases it's even more, you know, more cutting edge. So think about a utilities client, for example that has IOT sensors on their wires and when the, when that wire swings too far they say something's wrong. Automatically it goes back to the digital core cuts a ticket and finds the closest worker. >> Lisa: Okay. >> To then dispatch. The worker then can put on their hollow lens, for example and climb the pole and get directions on how to solve the problem right then and there, right? That's another example of you know, multiple systems, edge devices things coming together in order to create that. And it's only going to get faster, you know, with the metaverse. >> Lisa: Right. >> You know, with web 3.0 coming, with blockchain becoming more and more mainstream, companies need to be thinking about in this age of compressed transformation how to do that composable technology that you can figure and reconfigure. >> Do you think that we're in an age of compressed transformation or is that how it's going to be going forward given the global climate the last two years? >> Yeah. It's definitely going to be that way going forward over the next, you know, probably for the large part of the, the remainder of our career. I mean, we're, our CTO, Paul Daugherty, talks about us being an mega cycle, right? There's so many things changing. And even without these externalities of, you know, political issues and pandemics, you know, the introduction of AI and machine learning, a lot of these technologies I just mentioned, it's, the change is happening in every industry, in every, you know kind of area of the marketplace and in a way that's, you know, that's really exciting, right. And we get to help our clients be able to kind of solve those things not just once, but continually >> There's a tremendous amount of opportunity that's come from compressed transformation, right. A lot of opportunity, a lot of potential. What are some of the things that you're looking forward to say in the next year, as we talked about some of those business and lines of business and IT folks understand we've got to move in this direction. What excites you about the potential that you have to help these organizations really transform? >> Yeah, well, I think, I mean, the, we just came out with our new tech vision which is about the metaverse. And I think that the things that excite me are there's brand new ways like we've lived in a world where transactions take place in a very predictable way with local currencies through a single channel. And that was, that's been sort of fixed for a long time. The fundamentals of the economy or actually in the marketplace are starting to change in terms of how do we transact with things like cryptocurrencies, things like non fungible tokens, you know, all these things that we didn't, you know, they weren't, even the metaverse these were not main line words, even six you know, months ago, 12 months ago. >> Lisa: Right, right. >> Now these things, you know, every it seems like every month there's something new that is, you know, seismic to use your word that is shifting the fundamentals of the marketplace. And I think that's what's really exciting. I mean, that's where, I mean, it's probably one of the most exciting times to be in business, be in the marketplace. It certainly has a lot of challenges. >> Lisa: Yes. >> But, you know, I think we're really about using, you know, the promise of technology to unlock human ingenuity and this is a great time to be able to unlock that human ingenuity. >> And that's such a great alignment with Coupa. I was just in the keynote and there was an Accenture video, Julie Sweet was talking to some other folks about that. Great alignment in the partnership. Brian, thank you for joining me talking about composable technology, what's new, why and the potential that organizations and every business have to use it to unlock competitive advantages. >> Brian: Yeah. >> We appreciate your insights and your time. >> You bet. Pleasure to be here. >> All right. With Brian McKillips, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBEe from Coupa Inspire 2022. (upbeat music)

>> From theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto in Boston, bringing you data driven insights from theCUBE and ETR. This is Breaking Analysis with Dave Vellante. >> New data from ETR's soon to be released April survey, shows a clear deceleration in spending and a more cautious posture from technology buyers. Just this week, we saw sell side downgrades in hardware companies like Dell and HP and revised guidance from high flyer UiPath, citing exposures to Russia, Europe and certain sales execution challenges, but these headlines, we think are a canary in the coal mine. According to ETR analysis and channel checks in theCUBE, the real story is these issues are not isolated. Rather we're seeing signs of caution from buyers across the board in enterprise tech. Hello and welcome to this week's Wikibon CUBE insights powered by ETR. In this Breaking Analysis, we are the bearers of bad news. Don't shoot the messenger. We'll share a first look at fresh data that suggests a tightening in tech spending calling for 6% growth this year which is below our January prediction of 8% for 2022. Now, unfortunately the party may be coming to an end at least for a while. You know, it's really not surprising, right? We've had a two year record run in tech spending and meteoric rises in high flying technology stocks. Hybrid work, equipping and securing remote workers. The forced march to digital that we talk about sometimes. These were all significant tailwinds for tech companies. The NASDAQ peaked late last year and then as you can see in this chart, bottomed in mid-March of 2022, and it made a nice run up through the 29th of last month, but the mini rally appears to be in jeopardy with FED rate hikes, Russia, supply chain challenges. There's a lot of uncertainty so we should expect the C-suite to be saying, hey, wait slow down. Now we don't think the concerns are confined to companies with exposure to Russia and Europe. We think it's more broad based than that and we're seeing caution from technology companies and tech buyers that we think is prudent, given the conditions. You know, looks like the two year party has ended and as my ETR colleague Erik Bradley said, a little hangover shouldn't be a surprise to anybody. So let's get right to the new spending data. I'm limited to what I can share with you today because ETR is in its quiet period and hasn't released full results yet outside of its client base. But, they did put out an alert today and I can share this slide. It shows the expectation on spending growth from more than a thousand CIOs and IT buyers who responded in the most recent survey. It measures their expectations for spending. The key focus areas that I want you to pay attention to in this data are the yellow bars. The most recent survey is the yellow compared to the blue and the gray bars, which are the December and September '21 surveys respectively. And you can see a steep drop from last year in Q1, lowered expectations for Q2 in the far right, a drop from nearly 9% last September to around 6% today. Now you may think a 200 basis point downgrade from our prediction in January of 8% seems somewhat benign, but in a $4 trillion IT market, that's 80 billion coming off the income statements of some tech companies. Now the good news is that 6% growth is still very healthy and higher than pre pandemic spending levels. And the buyers we've talked to this week are saying, look, we're still spending money. We just have to be more circumspect about where and how fast. Now, there were a few other callouts in the ETR data and in my discussions today with Erik Bradley on this. First, it looks like in response to expected supply chain constraints that buyers pulled forward their orders late last year and earlier this year. You remember when we couldn't buy toilet paper, people started the stockpile and it created this rubber banding effect. So we see clear signs of receding momentum in the PC and laptop market. But as we said, this is not isolated to PCs, UiPath's earning guidance confirm this but the story doesn't end there. This isn't isolated to UiPath in our view, rather it's a more based slowdown. The other big sign is spending in outsourced IT which is showing a meaningful deceleration in the last survey, showing a net score drop from 13% in January to 6% today. Net score remember is a measure of the net percentage of customers in the survey that on balance are spending more than last survey. It's derived by subtracting the percent of customers spending less from those spending more. And there's a, that's a 700 basis point drop in three months. This isn't a market where you can't hire enough people. The percent of companies hiring has gone from 10% during the pandemic to 50% today according to recent data from ETR. And we know there's still an acute skills shortage. So you would expect more IT outsourcing, but you don't see that in the data, it's down. And as this quote from Erik Bradley explains, historically, when outsourced IT drops like this, especially in a tight labor market, it's not good news for IT spending. All right, now, the other interesting callout from ETR were some specific company names that appear to be seeing the biggest change in spending momentum. Here's the list of those companies that all have meaningful exposure to Europe. That's really where the focus was. SAP has big exposure to on-premises installations and of course, Europe as well. ServiceNow has European exposure and also broad based exposure in IT in across the globe, especially in the US. Zoom didn't go to the moon, no surprise there given the quasi return to work and Zoom fatigue. McAfee is a bit of a concern because security seemed to be one of those areas, when you look at some of the other data, that is per actually insulated from all the spending caution. Of course we saw the Okta hack and we're going to cover that next week with hopefully some new data from ETR, but generally security's been holding up pretty well. You look at CrowdStrike, you look at Zscaler in particular. Adobe's another company that's had a nice bounce in the last couple of weeks. Accenture, again, speaks to that outsourcing headwinds that we mentioned earlier. And now the Google Cloud platform is a bit of a concern. It's still elevated overall, you know but down and well down in Europe. Under that magic, you know we often show that magic 40% dotted line, that red dotted line of net score anything above that we cite as elevated. Well, some important callouts to hear that you see companies that have Euro exposure. And again, we see this as just not confined to Europe and this is something we're going to pay close attention to and continue to report on in the next several weeks and months. All right, so what should we expect from here? The Ark investment stocks of Cathie Wood fame have been tracking in a downward trend since last November, meaning, you know, these high PE stocks are making lower lows and higher, sorry, lower highs and lower lows since then, right? The trend is not their friend. Investors I talk to are being much more cautious about buying the dip. They're raising cash and being a little bit more patient. You know, traders can trade in this environment but unless you can pay attention to in a minute by minute you're going to get whipsawed. Investors tell me that they're still eyeing big tech even though Apple has been on a recent tear and has some exposure with supply change challenges, they're looking for maybe entry points in, within that chop for Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet. And look, as I've been stressing, 6% spending growth is still very solid. It's a case of resetting the outlook relative to previous expectations. So when you zoom out and look at the growth in data, getting digital right, security investments, automation, cloud, AI containers, all the fundamentals are really strong and they have not changed. They're all powering this new digital economy and we believe it's just prudence versus a shift in the importance of IT. Now, one point of caution is there's a lot of discussion around a shift in global economies. Supply chain uncertainty, persistent semiconductor shortages especially in areas like, you know driver ICs and boring things like parts for displays and analog and micro controllers and power regulators. Stuff that's, you know, just not playing nice these days and wreaking havoc. And this creates uncertainty, which sometimes can pick up momentum in a snowballing effect. And that's something that we're watching closely and we're going to be vigilant reporting to you when we see changes in the data and in our forecast even when we think our forecast are wrong. Okay, that's it for today. Thanks to Alex Merson who does the production and podcasts for Breaking Analysis and Stephanie Chan who provides background research. Kristen Martin and Cheryl Knight, and all theCUBE writers they help get the word out, and thanks to Rob Hof, our EIC over at SiliconANGLE. Remember I publish weekly on wikibon.com and siliconangle.com. These episodes are all available as podcasts wherever you listen. All you got to do is search Breaking Analysis podcasts. etr.ai that's where you can get access to all this survey data and make your own cuts. It's awesome, check that out. Keep in touch with me. You can email me at dave.vellante@siliconangle.com. You can hit me up on LinkedIn. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE insights powered by ETR. Be safe, stay well, and we'll see you next time. (gentle music)

>>Hey everyone. Welcome to this cube conversation featuring next law. I'm your host, Lisa Martin. And today we are joined by Sukkot Sarab CEO and founder of next, next LA Sukkot. Great to have you on the program, >>Lisa, thank you so much for having me here really excited about this. >>Tell us a little bit about next level. What is it that you guys do? >>Yeah. Um, you know, we are in the world of data and one of the biggest challenges that we face, um, as an industry is there is so much data, so much variety. How do we really get it into the hands of people who use data? And, um, the users of data are all across. You know, they shouldn't have to be engineers. They are across the board in different functions. So next, last purpose and mission has always been ready to use data in the hands of the users. So, um, what misled us today is makes it possible for users across the board, whether those are data scientists, whether those are data analysts, whether those are people in various business functions to get the data that they need in the tools that they work with. So, um, we make that possible in a very, no code way, um, for users to get access to the data. Um, and very uniquely actually do that by automating a lot of the data engineering process. We'll talk more about that, but it's an exciting space to be in. >>It is an exciting space to be in. And of course that the volumes of data could just continue to explode and there's, that will not be slowing down anytime. Soon, as we know in businesses, one of the things we saw in the last two years was businesses pivoting so many times and really needing, going from survival mode to thriving mode, but the ability to harness the power and the insights and data is critical for businesses to be successful these days as consumers. We just expect that if it's our business life or personal life, whoever we're interacting with is going to know what we want, and we're going to be able to display that to us quickly. We think about data match. It's a relatively new concept, right? Talk to me about data mesh and what differentiates next left from your competition. >>Yeah. Um, so data mesh is essentially, I would say in the lineage of the concept of democratizing data, the idea has always been that data should get to the users. Now for a long time, these users were dependent on it and engineering to get the data to them. So what the data mesh is doing is it's bringing a framework by which users of data. We call them data, the domains, the different functions that use data. They can have the data to use themselves. They can manage things on their own. And I think that is allowing for a framework in which teams can truly scale. I mean, that bottleneck of depending on engineering to do everything for you is just not going work. And I think in the last two years, even more so we saw that as companies tried to move fast, it started to break down. And I think there is a lot of momentum around this concept of data mesh. For this reason, people are finding that this concept is what can help them scale >>And how does next SLA deliver that single tool so that you can really democratize data and give people with varying levels of technical fluency, the access that they need. I can imagine finance folks with ERP data marketing folks with CRM data. How do you do that with a single tool? >>Yeah. So, um, I think the key thing about getting data in the hands of users, as we think about data democratization has been that, how does it actually happen? How do you give people access to the data? You know, simply giving them passwords to systems is not enough right now the data mesh concept comes with the understanding that there should be an entity, which we call it a data, product data, you know, a data product becomes that sort of common entity that becomes something that people can get access to. They can use, they can collaborate on. Now, what is a data product becomes an important question, of course, and how do we get a data product? So our next step comes in in a very key way is we automatically generate these data products. So again, going back to the thinking that look there, there is not going to be enough engineers to write code for everything. What we are able to do is to say that we can actually, you know, connect to data systems, look to the data, understand it, and package it up as a product, as a data product. And that data product is a core element of the damage. I'm happy to share what a data product is, if it helps people understand and of, >>Yeah. Let's double click into that a little bit. I was noticing on your website about next sets and I wanted to know what that is and how does it reimagine data, product creation. >>Yeah. Um, so let me just break down a little bit about what is the data product in the first place, right. I mean, as consumers, we use products all the time, you know, I'm, I'm, my laptop is here on our desk and that is a product. It is a product made from raw materials, like wood and metal and screws, right. And somebody designed the product, somebody built it and I'm using it. So if we think of the same parallel in the world of data, then API APIs and files and database tables, those are the raw materials. Um, if somebody takes that and packages that up into something that other people can use easily, that is the concept of the data product. Now, what, how is it different from data? Well, you take the core data and you put things around it. Like, what is the distribution of data? >>What is the structure of it? You know, what are the validations that make it work, how to better manage that, who has access to it when you take that raw material and put all of those other structures, it that's when it sort of becomes a data product. And the next step concept in next door is essentially a manifestation of that. It is the concept that these data products do not need to be new copies of data, which is a huge pain by the way. But instead they can be these logical entities. So if I can take us back to the world of compute, where we understand the concept of containers, no, these containers are basically a logical NPP that gives us access to the computation resources. Think of next set as a very similar thing, a logical entity that gives us access to the data resources. And, um, this is something that, you know, we have been able to innovate and automate in such a way that today, when people think of the data mesh and they want to build that, they see us as a component in that whole framework. So data mesh is a much broader framework, but we are sort of the building block for that, through this concept >>Building block. Got it. Talk to me about where your customer conversations are happening. Are they within chief data officer chief information officer? Is it within the C-suite as data is every company these days has to be a data company. >>Oh yeah. Very much in the C-suite. Right. So again, this changes a little bit industry by industry because every industry is organized differently. Um, for example, you know, we have some amazing customer international services there. The conversation often is this the chief data officer or the chief analytics officer. And the key thing that the C suite is thinking is how does this work in the future? How do you know the scale of data challenges are, is the growth of that is so fast. How do we handle things to three years, five years from now? And that's where the strategic conversation is. And that's where things like data mesh become extremely important for companies where we talked to them about, you know, how our technology sort of enables that, right? Um, across other industries, the functions may vary. And one of the things which is very interesting with data, um, compared to other technologies is that it touches almost every aspect of business. It's not limited to engineering. It is your person in HR who is doing HR analytics, source candidates, and profiles are reviewing and all that stuff to finance, to operations, every aspect of business does touch data. So this has to be done in a language and a mechanism that's much more approachable. >>It's gotta be horizontal for all of those different types of users, right. To be able to understand so that ultimately not only did they get access to the data, but they can pull out those insights faster than their competition, whether it's to develop new revenue, streams, new products, new services, you know, the, the person on the other end or the companies on the other end are expecting that real-time interaction. >>Yeah. Yeah. But that's >>No longer a nice to have >>No longer likes to have. And to clarify, right. I mean, the use of data is in multiple ways, right? So analytics is a big use of data, which is how is my business doing and running. Um, we have customers like, um, you know, um, Marchex and Poshmark and bed bath beyond and so on. We'll use us heavily to bring data for the analytics use cases as our companies, for example, like a door dash or Instacart, but that data feeds operational purposes, operational purposes, meaning, understanding the availability of inventory or products across different stores. Not that data has functioned to say, well, if I know what products are available, then I can list them. Then I can go pick them up. And that's not a analytics use case alone. It has a, um, you know, it has an operational use case, right? Um, similarly we see that in audit tracking, we have customers, for example, like Narvar that use us to connect to different shipping tracking system. So the applications of data are in analytics. There are certainly also in operations, which is core business. And they're also, of course, in data science. There's no question that the extension of analytics from looking back on how business is doing to data science, which is, you know, what should we be doing and how should we be more intelligent? So it's across the board, >>Across the board, horizontal, all industries really need to do this, but one of the things that pop into my mind as you were walking through that example was the supply chain challenges that we're all experiencing right now. How can next help organizations mitigate some of the challenges that are going on? >>I think what happens is, you know, technologies like ours, which are the data layer are at a fundamental foundational level. One of the things about next slide is that we are able to bring a data into a much more real time usage. So where in companies, but traditionally moving data on a much more sort of periodic basis. We are our plumbing under the hood. We are completely in real time, which means that we are allowing companies to now get access to that data in a faster way where possible. So again, this is not something that can be fixed overnight, but the role that data can play in is better visibility. Um, and better visibility means those business decisions are being made earlier at the right time. It's more insight. And hopefully that eventually leads to sort of, um, much more efficient, actual on the ground, some movement of products and so on. >>Yeah. That visibility is absolutely critical regardless of the global climate. Right. Talk to me last question here, since we're almost out of time, give me a little bit about your AWS partnership and then talk to me about what's next for next time. >>Um, you know, as, as a technology provider, we ended up, um, running a lot of our own infrastructure on AWS as do many of our customers. And, uh, we have been an AWS partner for multiple years, but very decently, we actually made our product available on AWS marketplace, which means that the access to our technology has become so much easier for companies. Now, uh, next law has started its journey focusing on mid to large enterprises and some of the most complex use cases out there from some of the biggest banks to some of the biggest companies in marketing to some of the core companies in retail, logistics and so on. Now what is happening is that the powerful nature of our product and the ease of use that we have given that need is coming further and further earlier in the life cycle of companies, right? So today new companies are starting up, which said, which are saying that we need to make that sort of investment in data infrastructure earlier. You know, and that's why we have seen even some very small, early startups starting to use next level to come to us for our technology. So we are very much partnered up with AWS because AWS covers the whole gamut from companies that were started yesterday to extremely large enterprises, um, and bring our technology accessible to them. >>Excellent. Well, thank you so much for joining me. It sounds like a tremendous amount of momentum and opportunity at Nexa. We appreciate your insights and best of luck to you. We look forward to hearing more. >>Thank you, Lisa. It's a pleasure talking to it's an exciting space. So time flies, when we talked about that, >>Doesn't it, it really does for sockets sound room. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the queue, leave it here for more coverage and a leader in live tech hybrid events.

(upbeat music) >> Hey everyone, and welcome back to theCUBEs continuing coverage of AWS re:invent 2021 live in Las Vegas. Lisa Martin here, with David Nicholson. We are running one of the industry's largest, most important hybrid tech events this year with AWS and its enormous ecosystem of partners. We've been talking yesterday and today about the next decade and cloud innovation. We're pleased to welcome back one of our CUBE alumni, Alan Henson, the Vice President of Pariveda Solutions. Welcome back to the program. >> Thank you, glad to be here. >> So talk to us about what's going on at Pariveda. What are some of the things that you're focused on in the energy space? >> So for us, specifically, we're looking at energy as it's redefining itself, right? It's no longer just oil and gas. It's no longer just coal. It's renewable energies, it's carbon capture, it's retail energy, it's power generation. We're trying to understand as this energy industry redefines itself, how companies are starting to participate in there and how technologies are really helping them as they redefine their business models and go through their digital transformations. >> I was doing some reading that Amazon is already the largest purchaser of renewable energy in the world and will be 100% renewable energy by 2025. Talk to me about the partnership with AWS. >> So our partnership goes back quite a while. We were one of their early partners. We saw the early potential of AWS, jumped in both feet in the deep end, and we've had a wonderful partnership ever since. More recently over the last couple of three years, as they've really matured their definition of energy, we've been right there with them, partnering with them on a number of different projects across multiple industries and really getting excited about how they define their journey going forward in the energy industry. >> We're in such a state of flux right now. We have been for quite a while, but talk about the energy transition. What is that? Why now? Are we all ready? >> Ooh, great question. So the energy transition is really about us as a society, looking to new sources of energy over fossil fuels. 83% of the world's energy today comes from fossil fuels, about 30% from coal, a little over 50% from oil and gas itself. We as a world are looking at this as this is energy that can't continue to be our primary source. It has been a pivot-able source of energy getting us here. It is cheap, it is reliable, it is abundant. It's very good at what it does today. However, it's causing harm. So we need to address that. So what we're doing looking forward is helping companies understand what does it mean to be net zero? What does it mean to monitor and capture your carbon? What does it mean to transition your business model from a pure oil and gas play to one that's looking at new energies like carbon capture, like wind, like solar. So we're helping all of these companies go through that journey as they figure out those next steps. >> So where does Pariveda come into the picture? Take this down to the level of an engagement with an energy company. Who are the people that you parachute in? >> Sure. >> To engage with the customer? Well let's talk about oil and gas first. The most near-term best solution that we're seeing is really about operational excellence. How can I better run my business so I reduce my footprint? Am I having better maintenance to reduce accidental spills? Am I controlling my unexpected emissions, like flaring? How can I use technology to help me run my business better? Then we have companies in the retail energy, who are looking at their customer base who are purchasing large amounts of energy, who they themselves are striving to be net zero by 2050, 2060 and creating solutions for them so they can begin to capture their carbon solutions. So we typically parachute in a couple of different types of groups. Pariveda is both an advisory services firm and a technology services firm. So based upon where a company is in their journey, we may start more in the strategy space, working with the C-Suite. What does it mean to build and structure an organization to strategically go after this new energy space or perhaps they're focusing more on operational excellence. They're trying to figure out how to leverage technology and process, to run their business better, more cost effectively. More importantly, more ESG friendly. >> ESG is a big buzzword these days. You were talking about conversations at the C-Suite level? Has it always been there or is that something that with climate change and all the things going on, you think of, you know, Hurricane Ida, the drought in California and the fires, the flooding in Washington, is that something that is now more of a focus of the C-suite level? >> I think it has to be. Global warming first became mainstream back in the seventies, when we first started realizing there was going to be an impact from our use of fossil fuels. Originally, it wasn't quite sure the scientific data wasn't there necessarily to support it. But now we're starting to see that there is a climate change. Whether or not it's caused by fossil fuels is a debate for another day. But we are starting to see that. As a result, we're also starting to see a lot of pressures coming from various different areas of our world, the financial industry, wanting to become a lot more transparent about their investment holdings. Which means they're looking at their portfolio and choosing whether or not to put investment into capital projects, which is the heart of oil and gas companies. We're seeing social pressers, not just with campaigns and protests, but where people are choosing to work, the products they're choosing to buy, the brand that they're using to associate their identity. And that's also creating pressures for the C-Suite to start to pay attention because that impacts their whole pipeline of talent. So I think we're starting to see that because of those impacts becoming much more far reaching than just some scientific publications. >> Well, the focus on people is critical. You know, we talk about often people process technology, but the people focus is critical, especially since this has such, from an optics perspective, global visibility. >> Yes, people is critically important, not just from a talent acquisition, but also from a talent development perspective. These organizations are going to be going through some pretty dramatic changes. They're going to be leveraging technology they're already familiar with, perhaps some processes they're already familiar with, but they're ultimately moving into new industries, new competitive markets. So you need to not only be able to recruit the top talent by promoting an image that people can align to, but also be able to build that talent internally so that you can make them effective as you go through these business model transformations. >> You know, there's been a theme that we've seen just in the first full day today here at AWS re:invent. And that theme is that the AWS ecosystem is thriving and critical to the success of what AWS is developing. You've given a great example of an organization, your organization, that connects or bridges the divide between technology and the value that technology can bring. You said it at the outset, you're not going in and talking technology first, typically. It's, let's talk about strategy. Let's talk about people and culture, and then let's find the tools that are best suited to leverage to achieve the goals. Because you started talking about energy, and it's like, well, so which compute instance do I need for that, exactly? Somebody has to connect those dots. >> Absolutely. That's what I love about AWS. They offer a broad suite of services in their overall cloud infrastructure that allow you to start in multiple areas. Let's start with one of the very first projects that we got into that really focused on operational excellence and improving how the organization ran its business. This is a public reference, I'm going to go ahead and say it, we did work with AWS, partnering with them at ExxonMobil to help them redefine how they collaborate with their engineering procurement and construction companies. So this was a cloud platform that allowed them to change the way they interface with those vendors as they took on these large capital projects. We were able to take time out of the system, help that organization run more profitably, which allows them to invest in that new energy technology. Then we moved to retail energy where we've been looking at a large adoption in IOT technologies. That IOT capability of AWS allows organizations to monitor their infrastructure, understand how their equipment is performing, where carbon emissions might be occurring, or other greenhouse gases might be occurring, and bringing that in. Then you bring in the AL and ML stack capabilities. One of the leading ways of detecting emissions right now is image machine learning around emissions, looking at satellite photos to see if there are changes in the atmosphere where there might be a methane leak. So all these technologies work together to help us derive better answers for how to be a better energy company and how to be a more environmentally friendly corporation. >> What's the customer flywheel like? You know, often we talk with AWS there, they talk about really-- we start backwards. We start from the customer, we work forward, our customer obsession. We saw the NASCAR slides this morning of all the logos and I'm sure many more that didn't fit. But talk to me about the alignment between Pariveda, your focus on the customers, how they help you guys innovate and create new solutions, I imagine similar culturally to AWS. >> That's one of my favorite aspects about being a premier partner with AWS is the cultural alignment. We have a process that we call right to left faking. It's beginning with business outcomes before we ever look at the technology, ever start to design the solution, ever start to build that solution. Are we meeting the end user's needs, and where that culturally aligns with AWS is it aligns with their working backwards process where they sit with their primary end users and pick some point in the future and say, if I were to do a press release today, announcing the solution that we just built, what would it say? And then if I had questions, I wanted people to be able to find answers to the frequently asked questions. What would be in those frequently asked questions and what would those answers look like? So those two approaches to starting with the right to left business outcome focus helps us begin with the most important thing that we call "jobs to be done". So we're not working on a symptom, we're working on the actual problem. And that's where we've really aligned with AWS and our cultures have helped us focus on the most critical issues at hand. >> So we've talked a lot about energy and your affiliation with AWS in these efforts, but tell us a little more about Pariveda in terms of in a more broad sense. What's the history? >> Sure. >> Give us the pitch. >> Yeah, absolutely. Pariveda has been around for over 18 years. It started with a vision that our mission should be about developing people to their fullest potential. Start there and everything else will come. Since then, we've developed into both a strategy services firm and a technology services firm where we want to bring together what we consider to be the three primary components of an enterprise architecture. Basically business, product, technology, all wrapped around strategy. And so we want to focus on those areas when we use those to help deliver projects. So whether it's technology, whether we're helping travel and hospitality companies that you probably would recognize, or we're working with sports leagues to help rebrand, we're working in the agricultural industry to change how they capture data from equipment in the field. To working in the medical industry, redefining the way that doctors work with your patients by capturing your entire conversation for them. So they're spending less time translating their notes and instead evaluating their notes to ensure top quality health care, to working energy. So we're based in North America. We have ten offices in the U.S., one in Toronto. We're about 750 strong. And we are really focused on deliberate growth versus just exponential growth. >> Well the outcomes focus is absolutely critical, as you talked about earlier. For every organization, you know, one of the things that we learned during the last 22 months is that real-time data access is no longer a "nice to have". It's absolutely essential. But we're also seeing every company's becoming a data company, but they have to learn how. How can we work with technology partners like AWS, like Pariveda, to be able to capture the value that it -- unlock it quickly so that we can iterate and be able to deliver, especially in this interesting climate that we're in and pivot and pivot and pivot. So that outcomes focus that Pariveda has, is really critical for enabling businesses in every industry to be able to survive and thrive these days. >> You said it well, we agree with you completely. What we've designed at Pariveda is what we call the modern data enterprise, where it looks at the holistic vision of becoming a data company, everything from governance to technology choices, to how I structure my organization to have the right roles, the right leadership, the right executive support, and thinking about the full picture of delivering a successful data platform so that we can really focus on something that one of my mentees calls "data liquidity". It's the ability of a company to convert their data to value as quickly as possible. In order to do that, you have to come at it from multiple angles. >> You do, and that's a competitive differentiator these days. >> Yes, absolutely. It's more than just "Let me bring you a data link and hookup some data pipelines". Again, if that's where you start, you're probably not starting in the right place. We want to start with the end users. What questions are they answering? What jobs they trying to get done? And then moving back and say, well, what data do we need? And what form do we need and how do we present it to them so they can do their job extremely well and create their own competitive differentiation. >> Right. That's really critical. Last question is -- we have just a few seconds left here, Alan -- is so much announced today alone. This is, like David said, the first full day of coverage at re:invent, but from a visionary perspective, what are some of the things that we can expect to see from Pariveda as we finish the year 2021 and enter 2022? >> So let me speak a little selfishly to the energy. What you are going to see is us as an organization are going to work side-by-side with AWS energy to help shape the picture. What does it mean to be an energy company? As these industries start to converge, we're going to build more holistic platforms and more holistic approaches so organizations can figure out "How do I still do the business I need to do today to fund the business I need to so tomorrow?" And you're going to start to see us bringing better messaging to that on both strategy, technology, and product approaches. >> Awesome. Alan, thank you for joining David and me, talking about what's going on with power data, awesome approach. I love the people focus. Great stuff. >> Lisa, David, thank you for having me. >> Oh, our pleasure. For David Nicholson, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE, the global leader in live tech coverage. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Okay, I'm back. I'm John Furrier with theCube. We're here in the middle of the action at Mobile World Congress at Cloud City is where the action is. Danielle Royston and Telco DR. Digital disruption here happening. This next interview I did with Casey Choi, the Executive Vice President at Samsung. I did this remotely. He couldn't be here in person. We wanted to bring him in for a conversation. I had a chance to record this with him. He talks about the intelligent Human Edge or Industry 4.0. It was about Edge computing, Samsung as a leader. Obviously we know what they do. They're part of this IOT revolution, Casey Choi, brilliant executive I really enjoyed my conversation. Take a listen. (upbeat music) Welcome to theCube's coverage of Mobile World Congress, 2021. I'm John Furrier host of theCube. We're here with Cube alumni, Casey Choi's Executive Vice President and GM of the Global Mobile B2B Team, Communications Team at Samsung. Casey, great to see you. Thank you for coming off for the special Remote Mobile World Congress. We're here in person, but also hybrid event. We got a lot of remote interviews. Thank you for taking the time to speak with me. >> John. Great to see you. Great as always to be with you and great to be at least here, virtually with the team and in Barcelona from WC. >> You know, in Samsung, we think about the edge. You are leading a team that's driving this innovation. We've talked in the past about Industry 4.0, but the innovation at the intelligent edge, human edge is a big part of it, with 5G. It's just another G, but it's not just another G you got to have a backbone. You got to have a back haul. You got to have an interconnection. You have commercial, not just consumer technology. So the edge is becoming both this human and device commercial environment. So the industry is quickly moving to this. You call it the 4.0 trend. What do you see happening? This is a clear change over the Telco is not what it used to be. Change is coming fast. A lot of disruption, what's your view? >> Yeah, I think we see a number of things done. And certainly from our perspective, which is, I think we've got somewhat of a unique view on this because of our huge focus really in consumer use and attitudes. And certainly it's been informed by what we've seen, what we've all collectively seen over the last year and a half or so, and are still seeing today. And I think one of the things that we're certainly experiencing is I think the edge is it's expanding further out. I think it's also getting more tightly coupled in many respects to the human factor. And it's not just a set of billions of discrete sensors anymore. And I think the evolution of our thinking around this has changed quite a bit from the IOT Version One variant of this. We put more of what I would call billions of these things, communicating all kinds of information, either to the cloud or the data centers and doing it in a very voluminous way. And what we're saying is with the advent of more the human to machine interface, and certainly the capabilities that we're saying both on the network and the device side, it's really redefining how we're thinking about edge. And certainly here at Samsung and with some of our partners, and we're starting to call this more of the intelligent human edge, where the human factor really begins to play a big role in how we're defining the Internet Of Things. And those things include really people. And this is how we're looking at it. >> I love the theme, the human edge, I think that's very relevant. I want to get a human aspect of here tied into the industry side, because as we emerge from the pandemic and move to a broader economic recovery, you see the psychology of the industry where cloud is one of the shining examples of what the pandemic highlighted cloud speed, cloud agility. And now you're seeing with openness in the Teleco industry, that cloud is coming in, open cloud interoperability. So coming out of the pandemic, cloud is the theme is driving an economic recovery, which is driving the psychology of we're back to real life, we're back to business, but it's not business as usual. The fashion is changing. The attitudes are changing. You mentioned that, and now the disruption of how cloud will be implemented. And it seems to be Telco is where these edge and cloud are just completely radically changing, what was once a kind of a slow moving Telco space. So how do you see the partnerships and coming out of the pandemic, some of the response of cloud impact, cloud technology, public cloud impact on this new Telcom? >> Yeah. Let me try to unpack that a little bit. I think we see two dimensions on this, certainly on the carrier side, the operator's side of the equation, we're certainly partnered with everybody across the globe on that. Certainly there's been a definitive impact around software defined everything, right? So, and this has been accelerated really by the standards that have started to develop around 5G. And even now there's a lot of discussion and I'm sure there'll be a lot of it around WMC about 6G and what is happening there. But I think with the advent of things like O-RAN for example, and some of the activity that we're seeing really around NEC type solutions and opportunities, the traditional role of the carrier and the operator is evolving and has to evolve, right? It is now much more aligned with the provision of these types of services that are very different from the type of data or voice services that we've seen in the past. So certainly we're seeing that transition. The second big transition is really around the notion of hybridity. Now we've been talking about this now in the industry for a while, but I think it's really starting to take firm root the idea of not only multiple clouds, but clouds that are deployed either on prem or certainly, available as a service in its various forms. So I think that combination along with the advances that we're seeing in the technology, and this was both on the connectivity side. So certainly around the ultra reliable, low latency communications, what we're seeing with things like slicing, for example, starting to take root as well as frankly, the devices themselves are getting that much more powerful and compact. This is what we're saying with SOC technologies is what we're seeing with the functions being moved more and more to on device capability. So I think about hybrid, I mean, in my past to think about it more as a small data center. How do you compact it, move it out to somewhere else. Now we're thinking about it more in terms of the type of processing capability that you can put really in the hands of the human or hands of the device. And at that point, you really start to get different use cases, start to emerge from that. So this is how we're thinking about this extension and what I'm talking about more as, an expansion on the edge, further out. >> I love is it splicing or slicing, what's the term? Slicing is the technology? >> Slicing, network slicing. >> Slicing, not splicing cable. >> Yeah. >> Slicing. >> Not splicing cable, no. >> Okay so this come up a lot, so splicing kind of points to this end to end, workflows. You look at some of the modern development, the frameworks of successful, you're seeing these multifunctional teams kind of having an end to end visibility into the modern application workflow from CIC pipeline, whatever. Now, if you take the concept of O-RAN you mentioned Open Radio Access Networks, this kind of brings up this idea of interoperability, because if you're going to have end to end and you add edge to it, you have to have the ability to watch something go end to end, but it's never been like that in the past because you had to traverse multiple networks. So this becomes kind of this hybrid a little bit deeper. Can you share how you see that and how Samsung's working with folks and how you guys are addressing this because you can be at the edge, but ultimately you've got to integrate. So you've got openness, you've got the idea of interoperability issues, and you ultimately have to move around and work with other networks, other clouds and other systems. This is not, it's not always like that. So can you share how this is evolving and how real this is and what is your view on it. >> Yeah, our thinking on this. I mean, let me start by maybe tackling this in a little bit of a different angle. One of the things that we see as one of the barriers around interoperability has really been more on the application side of the equation. And this is actually the third component in making all of this work. And let me just be very clear in what I'm saying here, I think in terms of mobile architectures and really Edge architectures, it has been one of the last bastions, if you will of closed architectures, there've been very much what I would call purpose-built architectures at the edge. Certainly that's been driven by things like the industrial side coming together with more of the commercial side of the equation, but we think it's time really to extend the interoperability of what we are seeing really on the IT side of the equation and really driven by cloud native. This was really in the area of containers. It's in the area of microservices, it's in the area of cloud native development. And if we're really talking about this, we really need to extend that interoperability from the application point of view on the data point of view, really to the end point. And this is where some of the work that we're doing, and we really embarked on in earnest last year with Red Hat and IBM, and with VMware for example, in really opening up that edge architecture to really the open source community, as well as really to the microservices architectures that we have now seen propagate down from the cloud into hybrid architecture. So this has been really one of the key focus areas for us. The network interoperability has really been driven by the standards that we've seen and that have been really adopted by the industry. And when it comes to, for example 5G standards. what we've been more focused on quite honestly, is the interoperability on the application and data side. And we think that by extending, if you will, that write once run many type concepts down into the edge and into the device, that this is going to open up really a wealth of opportunity for us on the application and on the data side. >> That's awesome, I love the openness, love the innovation you guys are doing. I think that's where the action is and that's where the growth is going to be. I do have to ask you how you see edge computing in the IOT era in terms of security. Are we more vulnerable because of it now? And how are you guys addressing the issue of security and data privacy at the edge? What's your opinion on that? What's Samsung doing? >> I mean, we just have to look at the news today, it's obvious that we are more vulnerable, right? There's no doubt that points of vulnerability are being exposed and they're probably being exposed in now industrial areas, right? Certainly with what we've seen, just even recently with some of the attacks that, that have occurred. So a couple of things there, number one, we are relying very heavily on our long history around establishing root of trust in kind of zero trust environments. We've had our Knox platform as an example, we just celebrated, in fact, our 10th year of the product. In fact, it was announced at MWC back about 10 years ago. So this is something that, that we're celebrating, it's an anniversary. Our belief on this is that we really need to ensure that we maintain a hardware-based route across when it comes to the edge. We can't only rely upon software protection at that layer. We can't naturally rely upon some of the network protections that are there. So, we've shipped about 3 billion devices with our Knox Security Suite over the last 10 years. And this is something that we're relying very heavily on. Not only for again, that hardware based root of process. So one of the key solutions, there's our Knox Vault product, which we just released a few months back. This is really a safe within a safe concept, really ensuring that the biometric password and other user data is protected. It's really what drives some of our strategy around making sure that we rely upon something that protects all of the back doors that are resident, not only at the software layer, but at the hardware layer as well. And then management is the other key piece of this, security without the ability of managing these thousands to millions of devices is really somewhat compromised. So we've extended a lot of our Knox management capability at our device level really to address some of those particular attributes, as well as these fleets become more prominent. And they start to take on workloads that are more critical to IOT type workloads. >> Casey, great to have you on. Your insight's awesome. Love what you're doing at Samsung. And again, you're a leader, you've been there, you've seen those cycles of innovation. I have to ask you my final question for you is a personal one and a professional one. The last Mobile World Congress was 2019. In person, last year was canceled a lot's happened in the industry since 20 something months ago. Now we're going to be in person, a lot of hybrid still remotely, but there'll be people in person. The world's changed. What is the big change in the Telco, Telco Cloud, Telco Edge, what's happened in these 20 plus months since the last Mobile World Congress that people should pay attention to? What's the most important thing in your mind? >> Most important? Thank God John. You're putting me on the spot here, right? I think it's wisdom to be quite honest with you. I mean, we've certainly all collectively learned a lot in terms of user patterns and what people need and want. And I hope to think that collective wisdom is going to be a key part of how we drive this going forward. And then if I can just pick one more, I would say re-invention, I think what we're starting to see is that coming out of, again from 2019 to what we're seeing now, we do see this opportunity reinventing and rethinking. And I think that's the difference. And the pace of that is going to really dictate how we look at this and how we collectively solve these challenges. So I hope to think we're wiser and that we're more imaginative coming out of this. And again after being in this industry for 30 years, we've not seen the types of things that we've seen over the last couple. So I hope to think that this is a pivot point for all of us. >> Well, Samsung is certainly a leader in many areas and great to see you on theCube here and the theme in your talks around intelligence, human edge innovation, open. This is a force that's happening. And I think the big change, as you said, the wisdom combined with a reinvention is happening and it's going to be very interesting ride, should be fun to work on. >> It will be John and I thank you for our friendship and our relationship over the years. It's always great to see you and to be with you. And again, we're very optimistic as we always have, coming out of this And again, thanks for the time and have a great MWC. >> You too, Casey Choi, Executive Vice President General Manager of the Global Mobile Business to Business Unit Commercial Unit at Samsung. This is theCube's coverage of Mobile World Congress. I'm John Furrier. Thanks for watching. Okay. We're back here. That was Casey Choi. Talk about wisdom, collective wisdom coming out of the pandemic. Great friend of theCube, great friend of the industry doing great work there. Casey Choi. Like we are doing here on the ground at Mobile World Congress in Cloud City, as well as Adam and the team in the studio. So back to you, Adam and team.

(upbeat music) >> Okay, Chloe, thank you very much. Hey folks, in here in the Cloud City We with Danielle Royston. Great to see you. Watching you up on stage, I got to say, as the CEO of TelcoDR, leader and chief executive of that company. As well as a great visionary, you laid out the vision. It's hard to debate that. I mean, I think there's people who will say that vision, is like freedom, no one can debate it. It's not going to happen. >> Yeah, there's still a lot of debate in our industry about it. There's a lot of articles being written about it. I've referenced one about, you know, should we let the dragons into the castle? For me, I think it's super obvious. I think other industries are like "Duh, we've made the move." And Telco is still like, "Hmm, we're not sure." And so, am I a visionary, I don't know. I'm just sort of just Babe Ruth-ing it a little bit. I think that's where we're going. >> You know you do, you have a lot of content, podcasts, you write blogs, you do a lot of speaking. You brought it all together on stage, right? That has got to feel good. >> Yeah. >> You've got a body of work and it came together very nicely. How did you feel up there? >> Oh my God, it's absolutely nerve wrecking. I sort of feel like, you know, could you tell if my hands were shaking? Right, could you tell that my heart was racing? >> It's a good feeling. >> I don't know. >> Come on! >> I'll be honest, I'm happy it's over, I'm happy. I think I did a really great job and I'm really happy >> Yeah, you did a great job, I love the dragon reference-- >> Have it in the can. >> Fantastic, loved the Game of Thrones vibe there. It was cool-- >> Totally. >> One of the things I wanted pick up on, I thought it was very interesting and unique was the iPhone reference 14 years ago, because that really, to me, was a similar moment because that shifted the smartphone. A computer that happened to make phone calls. And then we all knew who was the leader at that time, Nokia, Blackberry with the phones, and they became toast. That ushered in a whole another era of change, wealth creation, innovation, new things. >> Yeah. Well, up until that moment, carriers had been designing the phones themselves. They were branded with their logos. And so Steve Jobs fought for the design of the iPhone. He designed it with the consumer, with the user in mind. But I think what it really, I mean, it's such a big pivotal moment in our industry because it singled the end of voice revenue and ushered in the era of data. But it also introduced the OTT players, right? That came in through the apps and started a siphon approved from the carriers. And this is like, it's a pivotal moment in the industry, like, changed the industry forever. >> It's a step function, it was a step function change, it's obvious, everyone knew it. But what's interesting is that we were riffing yesterday about O-RAN and Android. So you have iPhone, but Android became a very successful open source project that changed the landscape of the handset. Some are saying that that kind of phenomenon is coming here. Into Telco with software, kind of like an Android model where that'll come in. What's your thoughts on that, reaction to that? >> Yeah, well the dis-aggregation of the hardware, right? We're in the iconic Erickson booth, right? They get most of their revenue from RAN, from Radio Access Networks. And now with the introduction of Open RAN, right? With 50% less CapEx, 40% less OPEX, you know, I think it's easiest for Greenfield operators like Dish, that are building a brand new network. But just this month, Vodafone announced they're going to build the world's largest Open RAN network. Change is happening and the big operators are starting to adopt Open RAN in a real big way. >> So to me, riding the dragon means taking the advantage of new opportunities on top of that dragon. Developing apps like the iPhone did. And you mentioned Android, they got it right. Remember the Windows Phone, right? They tried to take Windows and shove it to the phone-- >> Barely. >> It was a kin phone too. >> I try to delete it from my, look here, beep! >> I'm going to take this old world app and I'm going to shove it into the new world, and guess what, it failed. So if the Telco is trying to do the same thing here, it will fail, but if they start building 5G apps in the cloud and pick the cloud native and think about the consumer, isn't really that the opportunity that you're talking about? >> Well, I think it is, absolutely. And I think it's a wake up call for the vendors in our space, right? And I'm certainly trying to become a vendor with Totogi. I'm really pushing my idea. But you can't take, using your Windows example on the Windows Phone, you can't take a Windows app and stuff it onto a phone and you can't take these old school applications that were written 20 years ago and just stuff them into the cloud, right? Cloud is not a place, it's a way to design applications and it all needs to be rewritten and let's go write, rewrite it. >> It's not a destination as we always say. Let's take a step back on the keynote 'cause I know we just did a couple of highlights there, wasn't the whole thing. We were watching it, by the way, we thought you did a great job, you were very cool and calm under pressure. But take us through the core ideas in the keynote. Break down the core elements of what the talk was about. >> Yeah, I think the headline really is, you know, just like there were good and bad things about the iPhone, right? It killed voice, but introduced data and all these other things. There's good and bad things about the public cloud, right? It's not going to be smooth sailing, no downsides. And so I acknowledge that, even though I'm the self appointed queen, you know? This self appointed evangelist. And so, I think that if you completely ignore the public cloud, try to stick your head in the sand and pretend it doesn't exist, I think there's nothing but downsides for Telcos. And so I think you need to learn how to maximize the advantage there, ride he dragon, like spew some fire and, you know, get some speed and height, and then you can double your ARPU. But I think, going from there, so the next three, I was trying to give examples of what I meant by that, of why it's a double-edged sword, why it's two sides of the coin. And I think there's three areas, which is the enterprise, the network, and a relationship with subscribers. And so that really what the talk, that's what the talk is about >> The three main pillars. >> Yeah, yeah! >> Future, work, enterprise, transition, Open RAN. >> The network and then the relationship with the subscribers. >> Those are the structural elements you see. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. >> What's the most important one you think, right now, that people are focused on? >> I mean, I think the first one, with work, that's an easy one to do, because there's not too much downside, right? I think we all learned that we could work productively from home. The reason public cloud matter there is because we had tools like Zoom and G Suite and we didn't need to be, I mean, imagine if that this had happened even 20 years ago, right? Broadband at the home wasn't ready, the tools weren't ready. I mean, it would have been, I mean a bigger disaster than it was, right? And so this is an opportunity to sort of ride this work from home wave that a lot of CEOs are saying, we're not coming back or we're going to have smaller offices. And all of those employees need fiber to their home. They need 5G at their home. I mean, if I'm a head of enterprise in a Telco, I am shifting my 5G message from like random applications or whatever, to be like, how are you getting big pipes to the home so your workers can be productive there? And that, I don't hear Telco's talking about that and that's a really big idea. >> You know, you say it's a no brainer, but it's interesting you had your buildings crumbling, which was great, very nice effect in the talk. I heard a executive, Wall Street executive the other day, talking about how, "My people will be back in the office. "I'm going to mandate vaccinations, they're going to be back "in the office, you work for me. "Even though it's an employee friendly environment "right now, I don't care". And I was shocked. I go, okay, this is just an old guy. But, and it's not just the fact that it's an old guy, old guard doing that because I take two examples of old guys, Michael Dell and Frank Slootman. >> Yeah. >> Right, Michael Dell, you know, hundred billion dollar company, Frank Slootman, hottest, you know, software company. Both of them, sort of agree. It's a no brainer. >> Yeah. >> Why should I spend all this money on buildings? And my people are going to be more productive. They love it, so. Why fight the fashion? >> Well, I think the office and I can talk about this for a long time and I know we don't have that much time, but on offices, it's a way to see when did you come in and when did you leave, and look over your shoulder and what we're working on. And that's what offices are for. Now, we tell ourselves it's about collaboration and all this other stuff. And you know, these guys are saying, "come back to the office." It's because they don't have an answer on how to manage productivity. What are you working on? Are you off, are you authentically working 40 hours a week? I want to see, I know if at least you're here, you're here. Now, you might be playing, you know, Minesweeper. You might be playing Minesweeper on your computer, but at least you were, your butt was at your computer. So yeah, I think this is a pivotal moment in work. I think Telcos could push it, to work from home. We'll get you the pipes, we'll get you the cloud-based tools to help manage productivity, to change in work style. >> Yeah, and we've covered this in theCube many times, about how software is going to enable this virtual first model, no one's actually built software for virtual first. I think that's going to happen. Again, back to your team software, but I want to ask you about software defined infrastructure. You mentioned O-RAN, and as software eats the world and eats infrastructure, you still need infrastructure. So, talk about the relationship of how you see O-RAN competing and winning with the balance of software versus the commodity argument. >> Yeah, and I think this is really where people get scared in Telco. I mean, authentically nervous, right. Where you're like, okay, really the public cloud is at that network edge, right? We're really going to like, who are we? It's an identity crisis. We're not the towers anymore. We're renting space, right? We're now dis-aggregating the network, putting the edge cloud right there and it's AWS or Google. Who are we, what do we do, are we networks? Are we a tech company? Right, and so I'm like, guys, you are your subscribers and you don't focus on that. I mean, it's kind of like a last thought. >> So you're like a therapist then too, not just an evangelist. >> I'm a little bit of a therapist. >> Okay, lay down on the couch, Telco. >> Let's talk about what your problems are. (laughs) >> They have tower issues. >> All seriousness, no but, the tower is changing is backhauling. Look at direct connects for instance. The rise of direct and killed the exchanges. I mean, broadband, backhaul, last mile, >> Yeah. >> Completely, still issues, >> Yeah. >> But it's going to software and so that's there. The other thing I want to get to quickly, I know we don't have a lot of time, is the love relationship you talk about with subscribers. We had Peter Adderton on, from a Boost Mobile, formerly Boost Mobile, earlier. He was saying, if you don't have a focus on the customer, then you're just selling minutes and that's it. >> Yeah. >> And his point was, they don't really care. >> Yeah. Let's talk about organizational energy, right? How much energy is contained within any organization, not just Telco, but any organization. To some of your people time is the hours they work per week. And then you think of that as a sack on how you're allocating your time and spending your time, right? And so I think they spend 50% of their time, maybe more, fighting servers, machines, the network, right? And having all these battles. How much of that organizational energy is dedicated to driving great subscriber experiences? And it just shrunk, right? And I think that's where the public cloud can really help them. Like ride the dragon. Let the dragon deal with some of this underlying stuff. So that you can ride a dragon, survey the land, focus on your subscriber and back to the software. Use software, just like the OTT players are doing. They are taking away your ARPU. They're siphoning your ARPU, 'cause they're providing a better customer experience. You need to compete on that dimension. Not the network, not the three Telcos in the country. You're competing again, WhatsApp, Apple, Amazon, Facebook. And you spent how much of your organizational energy to focus on that? Very small. >> And that's where digital platforms roll by, it uses the word platform, why? Because everybody wants to be a platform. Why do you want to be a platform? Because I want to be like Amazon, they're a platform. And you think about Netflix, right? It's not, you know, you don't think about Netflix UK or Netflix Spain, right? >> It's global. >> There's one Netflix >> Yeah, yeah. >> You don't think about their marketing department or their sales department or their customer service, you think about the app. >> Yeah. >> You know. One interface. And that's what digital platforms allow you to do. And granted, there's a lot of public policy to deal with, but if you're shooting satellites up in space, >> Yeah. >> You know, now, you own that space, right, global network. >> And what makes Netflix so good, I think, is that it knows you, right? It knows what you're watching and recommends things, and you're like, "Oh, I would like that, that's great." Who knows more about you than your mobile phone? Carry it everywhere you go, right? What you're watching, what you're doing, who you're calling, what time did you wake up? And right now all of that data we talked about a couple of days ago, it's trapped in siloed old systems. And like why do people think Google knows so much about you? Telco knows about you. And to start to use that to drive a great experience. >> And you've got a great relationship with Netflix. The relationship we have with our our carrier is to your admin, "can you call these guys? "I don't know, I lost the password, I can't get in". >> Right. >> It's like-- >> Or you get SIM hacked-- >> I don't have an hour and a half to call your call center 'cause you don't have a chat bot, right. >> I don't have time. >> Chat bot, right. I can't even do the chat bot because my problem is, you're like, I got to talk to someone. All of their systems are built with the intention of a human being on the other side, and there's all this awesome chat bot AI that works. >> Yeah. >> Set it free. >> Yeah, yeah, right. You almost rather go to the dentist, then calling your carrier. >> Well, we're going to wrap things up here on the keynote review. Did you achieve what you wanted to achieve? I mean, controversy, bold vision, leadership, also that came across, but people they know who you are now. You're out there and that's great news. >> Yeah. I think I rocked the Telco universe and I'm really, that was my goal, and I think I accomplish it so, very excited. >> Well, we love having you on theCUBE. It's great to have great conversations, not only are you dynamic and smart, you're causing a lot of controversy, in a good way and getting, waking people up. >> Making people talk, that's a start. >> And I think, the conversations are there. People are talking and having relationships on the ecosystem open, it's all there. Danielle Royston, you are a digital revolution, DR. Telco DR, thanks for coming to theCube. >> Thank you so much, always fun. >> Good to see you. >> Thanks. >> Of course, back to the Cloud City studios. Adam is going to take it from here and continue on day three of theCube. Adam in studio, thanks for having us and take it from here.

(upbeat music) >> Welcome to this BizOps Manifesto Power Panel, Data Lake or Data Landfill. We're going to be talking about that today. I've got three guests joining me. We're going to dive through that. Kieran Taylor is here the CMO of Broadcom's Enterprise Software Division. Kieran, great to have you on the program. >> Thank you, Lisa. >> Kevin Surace is here as well. Chairman and CTO of Appvance, hey Kevin. >> Hey Lisa. >> And Isaac Sacolick Author and CEO of StarCIO. Isaac, welcome. >> Hi Lisa, thanks for having me. >> So we're going to spend the next 25 to 30 minutes talking about the challenges and the opportunities that data brings to organizations. You guys are going to share some of your best practices for how organizations can actually sort through all this data to make data-driven decisions. We're also going to be citing some statistics from the Inaugural BizOps Industry Survey of the State of Digital Business in which 519 business and technology folks were surveyed across five nations. Let's go ahead and jump right in and the first one in that server that I just mentioned 97% of organizations say we've got data related challenges, limiting the amount of information that we actually have available to the business. Big conundrum there. How do organizations get out of that conundrum? Kieran, we're going to start with you. >> Thanks Lisa. You know, I think, I don't know if it's so much limiting information as it is limiting answers. There's no real shortage of data I don't think being captured, recently met with a unnamed auto manufacturer Who's collecting petabytes of data from their connected cars and they're doing that because they don't really yet know what questions they have of the data. So I think you get out of this Data Landfill conundrum by first understanding what questions to ask. It's not algorithms, it's not analytics. It's not, you know, math that's going to solve this problem. It's really, really understanding your customer's issues and what questions to ask of the data >> Understanding what questions to ask of the data. Kevin, what are your thoughts? >> Yeah, look, I think it gets down to what questions you want to ask and what you want out of it, right? So there's questions you want to ask but what are the business outcomes you're looking for, which is the core of BizOps anyway, right? What are the business outcomes and what business outcomes can I act upon? So there are so many business outcomes you can get from data and you go, well, I can't legally act upon that. I can't practically act upon that. I can't, whether it's lay off people or hire people or whatever it is, right? So what are the actionable items? There is plenty of data. We would argue too much data. Now we could say, is the data good? Is the data bad? Is it poorly organized? Is it, noisy? There's all other problems, right? There's plenty of data. What do I do with it? What can I do that's actionable? If I was an automaker and I had lots of sensors on the road, I had petabytes, as Kieran says and I'd probably bringing in petabytes potentially every day. Well, I could make myself driving systems better. That's an obvious place to start or that's what I would do but I could also potentially use that to change people's insurance and say, if you drive in a certain way something we've never been able to do. If you drive in a certain way, based on the sensors you get a lower insurance rate, then nobody's done that. But now there's interesting business opportunities for that data that you didn't have one minute ago and I just gave away. So, (laughs) it's all about the actionable items in the data. How do you drive something to the top line and the bottom line? 'Cause in the end, that's how we're all measured. >> And Isaac, I know you say data is the lifeblood. What are your thoughts on this conundrum? >> Well, I think, you know, they gave you the start and the end of the equation, start with a question. What are you really trying to answer? What you don't understand that you want to learn about your business connect it to an outcome that is valuable to you. And really what most organizations struggle with is a process that goes through discovery, learning what's in the data, addressing data, quality issues, loading new data sources if required and really doing that iteratively and we're all agile people here at BizOps, right? So doing it iteratively, getting some answers out and understanding what the issues are with the underlying data and then going back and revisiting and reprioritizing what you want to do next. Do you want to go look at another question? Is the answer heading down a path that you can drive outcomes? Do you got to go cleanse some data? So it's really that, how do you put it together so that you can peel the onion back and start looking at data and getting insights out of it. >> Great advice, another challenge though, that the survey identified was that nearly 70% of the respondents and again, 519 business and technology professionals from five countries said, we are struggling to create business metrics from our data with so much data, so much that we can't access. Can you guys share best practices for how organizations would sort through and identify the best data sources from which they can identify the ideal business metrics? Kieran, take it away. >> Sure thing, I guess I'll build on Isaac's statements. Every company has some gap in data, right? And so when you do that, that data gap analysis I think you really, I don't know. It's like Alice in Wonderland, begin at the beginning, right? You start with that question like Isaac said, And I think the best questions are really born from an understanding of what your customers value. And if you dig into that, you understand what the customers value, you build it off of actual customer feedback, market research then you know what questions to ask and then from that, hey, what inputs do I need to really understand how to solve that particular business issue or problem. >> Kevin, what are your thoughts? >> Yeah, I'm going to add to that, completely agree but, look, let's start with sales data, right? So sales data is something, everybody watching this understands, even if they're not in sales, they go well, okay, I understand sales data. What's interesting there is we know who our customers are. We could probably figure out if we have enough data, why they buy, are they buying because of a certain sales person? Are they buying because it's a certain region? Are they buying because of some demographic that we don't understand, but AI can pull out, right? So I would like to know, who's buying and why they're buying. Because if I know that I might make more of what more of those people want whatever that is, certain fundamental sales changes or product changes or whatever it is. So if you could certainly start there, if you start nowhere else, say I sell X today. I'd like to sell X times 1.2 by next year. Okay, great. Can I learn from the last five years of sales, millions of units or million or whatever it is, how to do that better and the answer is for sure yes and yes there's problems with the data and there's holes in the data as Kieran said and there's missing data. It doesn't matter, there's a lot of data around sales. So you can just start there and probably drive some top line growth, just doing what you're already doing but doing it better and learning how to do it better. >> Learning how to do it better. Isaac, talk to us about what your thoughts are here with respect to this challenge. >> Well, when you look at that percentage 70% struggling with business metrics, you know what I see is some companies struggling when they have too few metrics and you know, their KPIs, it really doesn't translate well to people doing work for a customer for an application, responding to an issue. So when you have too few in there too disconnected from the work, people don't understand how to use them and then on the flip side I see other organizations trying to create metrics around every single part of the operation, you know, dozens of different ways of measuring user experience and so forth. And that doesn't work because now we don't know what to prioritize. So I think the art of this is management coming back and saying, what are the metrics? Do we want to see impact and changes over in a short amount of time, over the next quarter, over the next six months and to pick a couple in each category, certainly starting with the customer, certainly looking at sales but then also looking at operations and looking at quality and looking at risk and say to the organization, these are the two or three we're going to focus on in the next six months and then I think that's what simplifies it for organizations. >> Thanks, Isaac. So something that I found interesting, it's not surprising in that the survey found that too much data is one of the biggest challenges that organizations have followed by the limitations that we just talked about in terms of identifying what are the ideal business metrics, but a whopping 74% of survey respondents said we failed to have key data available in real time, which is a big inhibitor for data-driven decision-making. Can you guys offer some advice to organizations? How can they harness this data and glean insights from it faster, Kieran, take it away. >> Yeah, I think there are probably five steps to establishing business KPIs and Lisa your first two questions and these gentleman's answers laid out the first two that is define the questions that you want answers for and then identify what those data inputs would be. You know, if you've got a formula in mind, what data inputs do do you need? The remaining three steps. One is, you know, to evaluate the data you've got and then identify what's missing, you know what do you need to then fetch? And then that fetching, you need to think about the measurement method, the frequency I think Isaac mentioned, you know this concept of tools for all. We have too many tools to collect data. So, the measurement method and frequency is important standardizing on tools and automating that collection wherever possible. And then the last step, this is really the people component of the formula. You need to identify stakeholders that will own those business KPIs and even communicate them within the organization. That human element is sometimes forgotten and it's really important. >> It is important, it's one of the challenges as well. Kevin, talk to us about your thoughts here. >> Yeah, again I mean, for sure you've got in the end you've got the human element. You can give people all kinds of KPIs as Isaac said, often it's too many. You have now KPI the business to death and nobody can get out and do anything that doesn't work. Obviously you can't improve things until you measure them. So you have to measure, we get that. But this question of live data is interesting. My personal view is only certain kinds of data are interesting, absolutely live in the moment. So I think people get in their mind, oh, well if I could deploy IOT everywhere and get instantaneous access within one second to the amalgam of that data, I'm making up words too. That would be interesting. Are you sure that'd be interesting? I might rather analyze the last week of real, real data, really deep analysis, right? Build you know, a real model around that and say, okay for the next week, you ought to do the following. Now I get that if you're in the high-frequency stock trading business you know, every millisecond counts, okay? But most of our businesses do not run by the millisecond and we're not going to make a business decision especially humans involved in a millisecond anyway. We make business decisions based on a fair bit of data, days and weeks. So this is just my own personal opinion. I think people get hung up on this. I've got to have all this live data. No, you want great data analysis using AI and machine learning to evaluate as much data as you can get over whatever period of time that is a week, a month a year and start making some rational decisions off of that information. I think that is how you run a business that's going to crush your competition. >> Good advice, Isaac what are your thoughts on these comments? >> Yeah, I'm going to pair off of Kevin's comments. You know, how do you chip away at this problem at getting more real time data? And I'll share two insights first, from the top down, you know, when StarCIO works with a group of CEO and their executive group, you know how are they getting their data? Well, they're getting it in a boardroom with PowerPoints with spreadsheets behind those PowerPoints, with analysts doing a lot of number crunching and behind all that are all the systems of record around the CRM and the ERP and all the other systems that are telling them how they're performing. And I suggest to them for a month, leave the world of PowerPoint and Excel and bring your analysts in to show you the data live in the systems, ask questions and see what it's like to work with real time data. That first changes the perspective in terms of all the manual work that goes into homogenizing that data for them. But then they start getting used to looking at the tools where the data is actually living. So that's an exercise from the top down from the bottom up when we talk to the it groups, you know so much of our data technologies were built at a time when batch processing in our data centers was the only way to go. We ran these things overnight to move data from point a to point B and with the Cloud, with data streaming technologies it's really a new game in town. And so it's really time for many organizations to modernize and thinking about how they're streaming data. Doesn't necessarily have to be real time. It's not really IOT but it's really saying, I need to have my data updated on a regular basis with an SLA against it so that my teams and my businesses can make good decisions around things. >> So let's talk now about digital transformation. We've been talking about that for years. We talked a lot about in 2020, the acceleration of digital transformation for obvious reasons. But when organizations are facing this data conundrum that we talked about, this sort of data disconnect too much can't get what we need right away. Do we need it right away? How did they flip the script on that so that it doesn't become an impediment to digital transformation but it becomes an accelerant. Kieran >> You know, a lot of times you'll hear vendors talk about technology as being the answer, right? So MI, ML, my math is better than your math, et cetera. And technology is important but it's only effective to the point that which people can actually interpret understand and use the data. And so I would put forth this notion of having data at all levels throughout an organization too often. What you'll see is that I think Isaac mentioned it, you know the data is delivered to the C-suite via PowerPoint and it's been sanitized and scrubbed, et cetera. But heck, by the time it gets to the C-suite it's three weeks old. Data at all levels is making sure that throughout organization, the right people have real-time access to data and can make actionable decisions based upon that. So I think that's a real vital ingredient to successful digital transformation. >> Kevin. >> Well, I like to think of digital transformation as looking at all of your relatively manual or paper-based or other processes whatever they are throughout the organization and saying is this something that can now be done for lack of a better word by a machine, right? And that machine could be algorithms. It could be computers, it could be humans it could be Cloud, it could be AI it could be IOT doesn't really matter. (clears throat) And so there's a reason to do that and of course, the basis of that is the data. You've got to collect data to say, this is how we've been performing. This is what we've been doing. So an example, a simple example of digitalization is people doing RPA around customer support. Now you collect a lot of data on how customer support has been supporting customers. You break that into tiers and you say, here's the easiest, lowest tier. I had farmed that out to probably some other country 20 years ago or 10 years ago. Can I even with the systems in place, can I automate that with a set of processes, Robotic Process Automation that digitizes that process now, Now there still might be, you know 20 different screens that click on all different kinds of things, whatever it is, but can I do that? Can I do it with some Chatbots? Can I do it with it? No, I'm not going to do all the customer support that way but I could probably do a fair bit. Can I digitize that process? Can I digitize the process? Great example we all know is insurance companies taking claims. Okay, I have a phone. Can, I take a picture of my car that just got smashed send it in, let AI analyze it and frankly, do an ACH transfer within the hour, because if it costs them insurance company on average 300 to $500 depending on who they are to process a claim, it's cheaper to just send me the $500 then even question it. And if I did it two or three times, well then I'm trying to steal their money and I should go to jail, right? So these are just, I'm giving these as examples 'cause they're examples that everyone who is watching this would go, oh I understand you're digitizing a process. So now when we get to much more complex processes that we're digitizing in data or hiring or whatever, those are a little harder to understand but I just tried to give those as like everyone understands yes, you should digitize those. Those are obvious, right? >> Now those are great examples, you're right. They're relatable across the board here. Isaac, talk to me about what your thoughts are about. Okay, let's do the conundrum. How do we flip the script and leverage data, access to it insights to drive and facilitate digital transformation rather than impede it. >> Well remember, you know, digital transformation is really about changing the business model, changing how you're working with customers and what markets you're going after. You're being forced to do that because of the pace digital technologies are enabling competitors to outpace you. And so we really like starting digital transformations with a vision. What does this business need to do better, differently more of what markets are we going to go after? What types of technologies are important? And we're going to create that vision but we know long-term planning, doesn't work. We know multi-year planning, doesn't work. So we're going to send our teams out on an agile journey over the next sprint, over the next quarter and we're going to use data to give us information about whether we're heading in the right direction. Should we do more of something? Is this feature higher priority? Is there a certain customer segment that we need to pay attention to more? Is there a set of defects happening in our technology that we have to address? Is there a new competitor stealing market share all that kind of data is what the organization needs to be looking at on a very regular basis to say, do we need to pivot, what we're doing? Do we need to accelerate something? Are we heading in the right direction? Should we give ourselves high fives and celebrate a quick win? Because we've accomplished something 'cause so much of transformation is what we're doing today. We're going to change what we're doing over the next three years, and then guess what? There's going to be a new set of technologies. There's going to be another disruption that we can't anticipate and we want our teams sitting on their toes waiting to look at data and saying, what should we do next? >> That's a great segue Isaac into our last question, which is around culture that's always one of those elephants in the room, right? Because so much cultural transformation is necessary but it's incredibly difficult. So question for you guys, Kieran we'll start with you is, should you advise leadership, should really create a culture, a company-wide culture around data? What do you think? >> Absolutely. I mean, this reminds me of DevOps in many ways and you know, the data has to be shared at all levels and has to empower people to make decisions at their respective levels so that we're not, you know kind of siloed in our knowledge or our decision-making, it's through that collective intelligence that I think organizations can move forward more quickly but they do have to change the culture and they've got to have everyone in the room. Everyone's got a stake in driving business success from the C-suite down to the individual contributor >> Right, Kevin, your thoughts >> You know what? Kieran's right. Data silos, one of the biggest brick walls in all of our way, all the time, you know SecOps says there is no way I'm going to share that database because it's got PII. Okay, well, how about if we strip the PII? Well, then that won't be good for something else and you're getting these huge arguments and if you're not driving it from the top, certainly the CIO, maybe the CFO, maybe the CEO I would argue the CEO, drives it from the top. 'Cause the CEO drives company culture and you know, we talk BizOps and the first word of that is Biz. It's the business, right? It's Ops being driven by business goals and the CEO has to set the business goals. It's not really up to the CIO to set business goals. They're setting operational goals, it's up to the CEO. So when the CEO comes out and says our business goals are to drive up sales by this drive down cost by this drive up speed of product development, whatever it is and we're going to digitize all of our processes to do that. We're going to set in KPIs. We're going to measure everything that we do and everybody's going to work around this table. By the way just like we did with DevOps a decade ago, right? And said, Dev, you actually have to work with Ops now and they go, those dangerous guys way over in that other building, we don't even know who they are but in time people realize that we're all on the same team and that if developers develop something that operations can't host and support and keep alive, it's junk right? And we used to do that and now we're much better at it. And whether it's Dev, SecOps or Dev two-way Ops, whatever all those teams working together. Now we're going to spread that out and make it a bigger pyre on the company and it starts with the CEO. And when the CEO makes it a directive for the company I think we're all going to be successful. >> Isaac, what are your thoughts? >> I think we're really talking about a culture of transformation and a culture of collaboration. I mean, again, everything that we're doing now we're going to build, we're going to learn. We're going to use data to pivot what we're doing. We're going to release a product to customers. We're going to get feedback. We're going to continue to iterate over those things. Same thing when it comes to sales, same things that you know, the experiments that we do for marketing, what we're doing today, we're constantly learning. We're constantly challenging our assumptions. We're trying to throw out the sacred cows with status quo, 'cause we know there's going to be another Island that we have to go after and that's the transformation part. The collaboration part is really you know, what you're hearing. Multiple teams, not just Dev and Ops and not just data and Dev, but really the spectrum of business of product, of stakeholders, of marketing and sales, working with technologists and saying, look this is the things that we need to go after over these time periods and work collaboratively and iteratively around them. And again, the data is the foundation for this, right? And we talk about a learning culture as part of that, the data is a big part of that learning, learning new skills and what new skills to learn is as part of that. But when I think about culture, you know the things that slow down organizations is when they're not transforming fast enough, or they're going in five or six different directions, they're not collaborative enough and the data is the element in there that is an equalizer. It's what you show everybody to say, look what we're doing today is not going to make us survive over the next three years. >> The data equalizer, that sounds like it could be movie coming out in 2021. (laughing) Gentlemen, thank you for walking us through some of those interesting metrics coming out of the BizOps Inaugural Survey. Yes, there are challenges with data. Many of them aren't surprising but there's also a lot of tremendous opportunity and I liked how you kind of brought it around to from a cultural perspective. It's got to start from that C-suite to Kieran's point all the way down. I know we could keep talking, we're out of time, but we'll have to keep following, this as a very interesting topic. One that is certainly pervasive across industries. Thanks guys for sharing your insights. >> Than you. >> Thank you, Lisa. >> Thank you, Lisa. >> For Kieran Taylor, Kevin Surace and Isaac Sacolick. I'm Lisa Martin. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto and Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a CUBE Conversation. >> Hello and welcome to this special CUBE Conversation here in the Palo Alto studios, I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE, for this Leading with Observability series with Under the Hood with Splunk Observability, I'm John Furrier with Arijit Mukherji with Splunk, he's a distinguished engineer, great to have you on. These are my favorite talks. Under the Hood means we're going to get all the details, what's powering observability, thanks for coming on. >> It's my pleasure, John, it's always nice to talk to you. >> Leading with Observability is the series, want to take a deep dive look across the spectrum of the product, the problems that it's solving, but Under the Hood is a challenge, because, people are really looking at coming out of COVID with a growth strategy, looking at cloud-native, Kubernetes, you're starting to see microservices really be a big part of that, in real deployments, in real scale. This has been a theme that's been growing, we've been covering it. But now, architectural decisions start to emerge. Could you share your thoughts on this, because this becomes a big conversation. Do you buy a tool here, how do you think it through, what's the approach? >> Exactly, John. So it's very exciting times in some sense, with observability right now. So as you mentioned and discussed a few times, there's a bunch of trends that are happening in the industry which is causing a renewed interest in observability, and also an appreciation of the importance of it, and observability now as a topic, it's like a huge umbrella topic, it covers many many different things like APM, your infrastructure monitoring, your logging, your real user monitoring, your digital experience management, and so on. So it's quite a set of things that all fall under observability, and so the challenge right now, as you mentioned, is how do we look at this holistically? Because, I think at this point, it is so many different parts to this edifice, to this building, that I think having a non-integrated strategy where you just maybe go buy or build individual pieces, I don't think that's going to get you very far, given the complexity of what we're dealing with. And frankly, that's one of the big challenges that we, as architects within Splunk, we are scratching our heads with, is how do we sort of build all of this in a more coherent fashion? >> You know, one of the things, Arijit, I want to get your thoughts on is because, I've been seeing this trend and, we've been talking about it on theCUBE a lot around systems thinking, and if you look at the distributed computing wave, from just go back 20 years and look at the history of how we got here, a lot of those similar concepts are happening again, with the cloud, but not as simple. You're seeing a lot more network, I won't say network management, but observability is essentially instrumentation of the traffic and looking at all the data, to make sure things like breaches and cybersecurity, and also making systems run effectively, but it's distributed computing at the end of it, so there's a lot of science that's been there, and now new science emerging around, how do you do this all? What's your thoughts on this, because this becomes a key part of the architectural choices that some companies have to make, if they want to be in position to take advantage of cloud-native growth, which is multifold benefits, and your product people talk about faster time to market and all that good stuff, but these technical decisions matter, can you explain? >> Yes, it absolutely does. I think the main thing that I would recommend that everybody do, is understand why observability, what do you want to get out of it? So it is not just a set of parts, as I mentioned earlier, but it brings direct product benefits, as we mentioned, like faster mean time to resolution, understanding what's going on in your environment, having maybe fewer outages at the same time, understanding your causes, so many different benefits. So the point is not that one has the ability to do maybe (indistinct) or ability to do infrastructure (indistinct), the main question is aspirationally, what are my goals that are aligned to what my business wants? So what do I want to achieve, do I want to innovate faster? In that case, how is observability going to help me? And this is sort of how you need to define your strategy in terms of what kind of tools you get and how they work together. And so, if you look at what we're doing at Splunk, you'll notice it's extremely exciting right now, there's a lot of acquisitions happening, a lot of products that we're building, and the question we're asking as architects is, suppose we want to use, that will help us achieve all of this, and at the same time be somewhat future-proofed. And I think any organization that's either investing in it, or building it, or buying it, they all would probably want to think along those lines. Like what are my foundational principles, what are the basic qualities I want to have out of this system? Because technologies and infrastructures will keep on changing, that's sort of the rule of nature right now. The question is how do we best address it in a more future-proofed system? At Splunk, we have come up with a few guiding principles, and I'm sure others will have done the same. >> You know, one of the dynamics I want to get your reaction to is kind of two perspectives, one is, the growth of more teams that are involved in the work, so whether it's from cyber to monitoring, there's more teams with tools out there that are working on the network. And then you have just the impact of the diversity of use cases, not so much data volume, 'cause that's been talked about, lot of, we're having a tsunami of data, that's clear. But different kinds of dynamics, whether it's real-time, bursting, and so when you have this kind of environment, you can have gaps. And solar winds have taught us anything, it's that you have to identify problems and resolve them, this comes up a lot in observability conversations, MTTI, mean time to identify, and then to resolve. These are concepts. If you don't see the data, you can't understand what's going on if you can't measure it. This is like huge. >> Yes, absolutely right, absolutely right. So what we really need now is, as you mentioned, we need an integrated tool set, right? What we mean by that, is the tools must be able to work together, the data must be able to be used across the board. So like by use case it should not be siloed or fragmented, that they should work as one system that users are able to learn, and then sort of be able to use effectively without context switching. Another concept that's quite important is, how flexible are you? Are you digging yourself into a fixed solution, or are you depending on open standards that will then let you change out implementations, or vendors, or what have you, (static crackles) down the line, relatively easily. So understanding how you're collecting the data, how good can open standards and open source you're using is important. But to your point about missing and gaps, I think full fidelity, like understanding every single transaction, if you can pull it off, is a fascinating superpower, because that's where you don't get the gaps, and if you are able to go back and track any bad transaction, any time, that is hugely liberating, right? Because without that, if you're going to do a lot of sampling, you're going to miss a huge percentage of the user interactions, that's probably a recipe for some kind of trouble down the line, as you mentioned. And actually, these are some of those principles that we are using to build the Splunk Observability Suite, is no sample or full fidelity is a core foundational principle, and for us, it's not just isolated to, let's say application performance management, where user gets your API and you're able to track what happened, we are actually taking this upstream, up to the user, so the user is taking actions on the browser, how do we capture and correlate what's happening on the browser, because (indistinct) as you know, there's a huge move towards single-page applications, where half of my logic that my users are using is actually running on the browser, right? And so understanding the whole thing end to end, without any gaps, without any sampling, is extremely powerful. And so yes, so those are some of the things that we're investing in, and I think, again, one should keep in mind, when they're considering observability. >> You know, we were talking the other day, and having a debate around technical debt, and how that applies to observability, and one of the things that you brought up earlier about tools, and tool sprawl, that causes problems, you have operational friction, and we've heard people say "Yeah, I've got too many tools," and just too much, to replatform or refactor, it's just too much pain in the butt for me to do that, so at some point they break, I take on too much technical debt. When is that point of no return, where someone feels the pain on tool sprawl? What are some of the signaling where it's like, "You better move now (indistinct) too late," 'cause this integrated platform, that's what seems to be the way people go, as you mentioned. But this tool sprawl is a big problem. >> It is, and I think it starts hitting you relatively early on, nowadays, if you ask my opinion. So, tool sprawl is I think, if you find yourself, I think using three or four different tools, which are all part of some critical workload together, that's a stink that there's something could be optimized. For example, let's say I'm observing whether my website works fine, and if my alerting tool is different from my data gathering, or whatever, the infrastructure monitoring metrics tool, which is different from my incident management tool, which is different from my logs tool, then if you put the hat on of an engineer, a poor engineer who's dealing with a crisis, the number of times they have to context switch and the amount of friction that adds to the process, the delay that it adds to the process is very very painful. So my thinking is that at some point, especially if we find that core critical workloads are being fragmented, and that's when sort of I'm adding a bunch of friction, it's probably not good for us to sort of make that sort of keep on going for a while, and it would be time to address that problem. And frankly, having these tools integrated, it actually brings a lot of benefit, which is far bigger than the sum of the parts, because think about it, if I'm looking at, say, an incident, and if I'm able to get a cross-tool data, all presented in one screen, one UI, that is hugely powerful because it gives me all the information that I need without having to, again, dig into five different tools, and allows me to make quicker, faster decisions. So I think this is almost an inevitable wave that everybody must and will adopt, and the question is, I think it's important to get on the good program early, because unless you sort of build a lot of practices within an organization, that becomes very very hard to change later, it is just going to be more costly down the line. >> So from an (indistinct) standpoint, under the hood, integrated platform, takes that tool sprawl problem away, helps there. You had open source technology so there's no lock-in, you mentioned full fidelity, not just sampling, full end to end tracing, which is critical, wants to avoid those gaps. And then the other are I want to get your thoughts on, that you didn't bring up yet, that people are talking about is, real time streaming of analytics. What role does that play, is that part of the architecture, what function does that do? >> Right, so to me, it's a question of, how quickly do I find a problem? If you think about it, we are moving to more and more software services, right? So everybody's a software service now, and we all talk to each other in different services. Now, any time you use a dependency, you want to know how available it is, what are my SLAs and SLOs and so on, and three nines is almost a given, that you must provide three nines or better. Ideally four nines of availability, because your overall system stability is going to be less than the one of any single part, and if you go to look at four nines, you have about four or five minutes of total downtime in one whole month. That's a hard thing to be able to control. And if your alerting is going to be in order of five or 10 minutes, there's no chance you're going to be able to promise the kind of high availability that you need to be able to do, and so the fundamental question is you need to understand problems quick, like fast, within seconds, ideally. Now streaming is one way to do it, but that really is the problem definition, how do I find the problems early enough so that I can give my automation or my engineers time to figure out what happened and take corrective action? Because if I can't even know that there's something amiss, then there's no chance I'm going to be able to sort of provide that availability that my solution needs. So in that context, real time is very important, it is much more important now, because we have all these software and service dependencies, than it maybe used to be in the past. And so that's kind of why, again, at Splunk, we invested in real time streaming analytics, with the idea again being, let the problem, how can we address this, how can we provide customers with quick, high level important alerts in seconds, and that sort of real time streaming is probably the best way to achieve that. And then, if I were to, sorry, go ahead. >> No, go on, finish. >> Yeah, I was going to say that it's one thing to get an alert, but the question then is, now what do I do with it? And there's obviously a lot of alert noise that's going out, and people are fatigued, and I have all these alerts, I have this complex environment, understanding what to do, which is sort of reducing the MTTR part of it, is also important, I think environments are so complex now, that without a little bit of help from the tool, you are not going to be able to be very effective, it's going to take you longer, and this is also another reason why integrated tools are better, because they can provide you hints, looking at all the data, not just one type, not just necessarily logs, or not just necessarily traces, but they have access to the whole data set, and they can give you far better hints, and that's again one of the foundational principles, because this is in the emergent field of AIOps, where the idea is that we want to bring the power of data science, the power of machine learning, and to aid the operator in figuring out where a problem might be, so that they can at least take corrective action faster, not necessarily fix it, but at least bypass the problem, or take some kind of corrective action, and that's a theme that sort of goes across our suite of tools is, the question we ask ourselves is, "In every situation, what information could I have provided them, what kind of hints could we have provided them, to short circuit their resolution process?" >> It's funny you mention suite of tools, you have an Observability Suite, which Splunk leads with, as part of the series, it's funny, suite of tools, it's kind of like, you kind of don't want to say it, but it is kind of what's being discussed, it's kind of a platform and tool working together, and I think the trend seems to be, it used to be in the old days, you were a platform player or a tool player, really kind of couldn't do both, but now with cloud-native, as it's distributed computing, with all this importance around observability, you got to start thinking, suite has platform features, could you react to that, and how would you talk about that, because what does it mean to be a platform? Platforms have benefits, tools have benefits, working together implies it's a combination, could you share your thoughts on that reaction to that? >> That's a very interesting question you asked, John, so this is actually, if you asked me how I look at the solution set that we have, I will explain it thus. We are a platform, we are a set of products and tools, and we are an enterprise solution. And let me explain what I mean by that, because I think all of these matter, to somebody or the other. As a platform, you're like "How good am I in dealing with data?" Like ingesting data, analyzing data, alerting you, so those are the core foundational features that everybody has, these are the database-centric aspects of it, right? And if you look at a lot of organizations who have mature practices, they are looking for a platform, maybe it scales better than what they have, or whatnot, and they're looking for a platform, they know what to do, build out on top of that, right? But at the same time, a platform is not a product, 99% of our users, they're not going to make database calls to fetch and query data, they want an end to end, like a thing that they can use to say, "Monitor my Kubernetes," "Monitor my Elasticsearch," "Monitor my," you know, whatever other solution I may have. So then we build a bunch of products that are built on top of the platform, which provide sort of the usability, so where, it's very easy to get on, send the data, have built-in content, dashboard (indistinct), what have you, so that my day to day work is fast, because I'm not a observability engineer, I'm a software engineer working on something, and I want to use observability, make it easy for me, right? So that's sort of the product aspect of it. But then if you look at organizations that a little bit scale up, just a product is also not good enough. Now we're looking at a observability solution that's deployed in an enterprise, and there are many many products, many many teams, many many users, and then how can one be effective there? And if you look at what's important at that level, it's not the database aspect or the platform aspect, it's about how well can I manage it, do I have visibility into what I am sending, what my bill is, can I control against incorrect usage, do I have permissions to sort of control who can mess with my (indistinct) and so on, and so there's a bunch of layer of what we call enterprise capabilities that are important in an organizational setting. So I think in order to build something that's successful in this space, we have to think at all these three levels, right? And all of these are important, because in the end, it's how much value am I getting out of it, it's not just what's theoretically possible, what's really happening, and all of these are important in that context. >> And I think, Arijit, that's amazing masterclass right there, soundbite right there, and I think it's because the data also is important, if you're going to be busting down data silos, you need to have a horizontally scalable data observability space. You have to have access to the data, so I think the trend will be more integrated, clearly, and more versatile from a platform perspective, it has to be. >> Absolutely, absolutely. >> Well, we're certainly going to bring you back on our conversations when we have our events and/or our groups around digital transformation Under the Hood series that we're going to do, but great voice, great commentary, Arijit, thank you for sharing that knowledge with us, appreciate it. >> My pleasure, thank you very much. >> Okay, I'm John Furrier with theCUBE, here, Leading with Observability content series with Splunk, I'm John Furrier with theCUBE, thanks for watching. (calm music)

>> From the cube studios in Palo Alto in Boston bringing you data-driven insights from the cube in ETR. This is breaking analysis with Dave Vellante. >> There are four A players, in the IS slash pass hyperscale cloud services space, AWS, Azure, Alibaba, and alphabet, pretty clever, huh? In our view, these four have the resources, the momentum, and stamina to outperform all others virtually indefinitely. Now combined, we believe these companies will generate more than $115 billion in 2021 IaaS and PaaS revenue. That is a substantial chunk of market opportunity that is growing as a whole in the mid 30% range in 2021. Welcome to this week's Wiki bond cube insights, powered by ETR. In this breaking analysis, we are initiating coverage of Alibaba for our IaaS and PaaS market segments. And we'll update you on the latest hyperscale cloud market data, and survey data from ETR. Big week in hyperscale cloud land, Amazon and alphabet reported earnings and AWS CEO Andy Jassy was promoted to lead Amazon overall. I interviewed John Furrier on the cube this week. John has a close relationship with Jassy and a unique perspective on these developments. And we simulcast the interview on clubhouse, and then hosted a two hour clubhouse room that brought together all kinds of great perspectives on the topic. And then, we took the conversation to Twitter. Now in that discussion, we were just riffing on our updated cloud estimates and our numbers. And here's this tweet that inspired the addition of Alibaba. Now this gentleman is a tech journalist out of New Delhi and he pointed out that we were kind of overlooking Alibaba and I responded that no, we do not just discounting them but we just need to do more homework in the company's cloud business. He also said we're ignoring IBM, but really they're not in this conversation as a hyperscale IaaS competitor to the big four in our view. And we'll just leave it at that for now on IBM, but, back to Alibaba and the big four, we actually did some homework. So thank you for that suggestion. And this chart shows our updated IaaS figures and includes the full year 2020 which was pretty close to our Q4 projections. You know, the big change is we've added Alibaba in the mix. Now these four companies last year, accounted for $86 billion in revenue, and they grew it 41% rate combined relative to 2019. Now, notably as your revenue for the first time is more than half of that of AWS's revenue which of course hit over $45 billion. AWS's revenue, over top 45 billion last year, which is just astounding. Alibaba you'll note, is larger than Google cloud. The Google cloud platform, I should say GCP, at just over eight billion for Alibaba. Now, the reason Baba is such a formidable competitor, is because the vast majority of its revenue comes from China inside that country. And the company do have plans to continue their international expansion, so we see Alibaba as a real force here. Their cloud business showed positive EBITDA for the first time in the history of the company last quarter. So that has people excited. Now, Google, as we've often reported, is far behind AWS and Azure, despite its higher growth rates Google's overall cloud business lost 5.6 billion in 2020 which has some people concerned. We on the other hand are thrilled, because as we've reported in our view, Google needs to get its head out of its ads cloud is it's future. And we're very excited about the company pouring investments into its cloud business. Look with $120 billion essentially in the balance sheet, we can think of a better use of its cash. Now, I want to stress that these figures are our best efforts to create an apples to apples comparison across all four clouds. Many people have asked about, how much of these figures represent, for example, Microsoft office 365 or Google G suite, which by the way now is called workspaces. And the answer is our intention is $0. These are our estimates of worldwide IaaS in PaaS revenue. You know, some of said, we're too low. Some of said, we're too high. Hey, if you have better numbers, Please share them, happy to have a look. Now you maybe asking, what are the drivers of these figures and the growth that we're showing here? Well, all four of these companies, of course, they're benefiting from an accelerated shift to digital as a result to COVID, but each one has other tailwinds. You know, for example, AWS, it's Capitalizing on its a large headstart. It's created tremendous brand value. And as well, despite the fact that, while we estimate that more than 75% of AWS revenue comes from compute and storage, AWS is feature and functional differentiation combined with this large ecosystem is a very much a driving force of it's growth. In the case of Azure, in addition to its captive software application estate, the company on its earnings calls cited strong growth in its consumption based business across all of its industries and customer segments. As we've said, many times, Microsoft makes it really easy for customers to tap into Azure and a true consumption pricing model, with no minimums and cancel any time. Those kinds of terms make it extremely attractive to experiment and get hooked. We certainly saw this with AWS over the years. Now for Google it's growth is being powered by its outstanding technology, and in particular its prowess in AI and analytics. As well we suspect that much of the losses in Google cloud are coming from large go to market investments for Google cloud platform, and they're paying growth dividends. Now, as Tim Crawford said on Twitter, 6 billion, you know that's not too shabby. Also Google cited wins at Wayfair in Etsy, that Google is putting forth in our view to signal that many retailers they might be are you reluctant to do business with Amazon, was of course a big retailer competitor. These are two high profile names, we'd like to see more in future quarters and likely will. Now let's give you another view of this data and paint a picture of, how the pie is being carved out in the market. Actually we'll use bars because my, millennials sounding boards they hate pie charts. And I like to pay attention, to these emerging voices. At any rate amongst these four, AWS has more than half of the market. AWS and Azure are well ahead of the rest. And we think we'll continue to hold serve for quite some time. Now while we're impressed with Alibaba, they're currently constrained to doing business mostly in China. And we think it'll take many years for Baba and GCP to close that gap on the two leaders if they'll ever even get there. Now let's take a look at, what the customers are saying within the ETR survey data. The chart that we're showing here, this is X, Y chart that we show all the time. It's got net score or spending moments on the vertical axis, and market share or the pervasiveness in the datasets in the survey on the horizontal axis. Now on the upper right, you can see the net scores and the number of mentions for each company and the detailed behind this data. And what we've done here is cut the January survey data of 1,262 respondents, you can see that in filtered in there on the left, and we've filtered the data by cloud meaning the respondents are answering about the companies, cloud computing offerings only. So we're filtering out anything of the non-cloud spend. That's a nice little capability of the ETR platform. Azure is really quite amazing to us. It's got a net score of 72.6%, and that's across 572 responses out of the 1262. AWS is the next most pervasive in the data set with 492 shared accounts and a net score of 57.1%. Now, you may be wondering, well, why is Azure bigger in the dataset than AWS? And when we just told you that the opposite is the case in the market in the previous slide. And the answer is, like this is a survey and it's a lot of Microsoft out there, they're everywhere. And I have no doubt that the respondants notion of cloud doesn't directly map into IaaS and PaaS views of the world, but the trends are clear and consistent. Amazon and Azure, they dominate in this market space. Now for context, we've included functions in the form of AWS Lambda as your functions and Google cloud functions. Because, as you can see, there's a lot of spending momentum in these capabilities in these services. You'll also note, that we've added Alibaba to this chart, and it's got a respectable 63.6% net Score, but there are only 11 shared responses in the data. So they'll go into the bank on these numbers, but look, 11 data points, we'll take it. It's better than zero data points. We've also added VMware cloud on AWS in this chart, and you can see that, that capability that service, that has the momentum and you can see those ones that we've highlighted above the 40% red dotted line, that's where the real action in the market is. So all of those offerings have very strong or strong spending velocity in the ETR data set. Now, for context, we've put Oracle and IBM in the chart. And you can see, they both have, you know they've got a decent presence in the data set. They have 132 mentions and 81 responses respectively. So Oracle, they've got a positive net score of 16.7%, and IBM is in a negative 6.2%. Now, remember this is for their cloud offerings, as the respondents in the data set see them. So what does this mean? It says that among the 132 survey respondents answering that they use Oracle cloud, 16.7% more customers are spending more on Oracle's cloud than are spending less. In the case of IBM, it says more customers are spending less than spending more. Both companies are in the red zone, and show far less momentum than the leaders. Look, I've said many times that the good news is, that Oracle and IBM at least have clouds. But they're not direct competitors of the big four in our view, there just not. They have a large software business, and they can migrate their customers, to their respective clouds and market hybrid cloud services. Their definition of cloud is most certainly different than that of AWS, which is fine, but both companies use what I call a kitchen sink method of reporting their cloud business. Oracle includes, cloud and license support, often with revenue recognition at the time of contract, With a term that's renewable and, it also includes on-prem fees, for things like database and middleware, and if, you want to call that cloud, fine. IBM is just as bad, maybe they're worse and includes so much legacy stuff and its cloud number to hide the ball. It's just not even worth trying to unpack for this episode, I have previously and frankly, it's just not a good use of time. Now, as I've said before, both companies they're in the game that can make good money provisioning infrastructure to support their respective software businesses. I just don't consider them hyperscale class clouds which are defined by the big four, and really only those four. And I'm sure I'll get hate mail about that statement, and I'm happy to defend that position, so please reach out. Okay, but one other important thing that we want to discuss is something that came up this week in our Twitter conversation. Here's a tweet from Matt Baker who had strategic planning for Dell. He was responding to someone who commented on our cloud data, basically saying that, with all that cloud revenue who took the hit, which pockets did it come out of, and Matt was saying, look, it's coming out of customer pockets, but can we please end this zero sum game narrative. In other words, it's not a dollar for cloud that doesn't translate into a lost dollar from on-prem for the legacy companies. So let's take a look at that. For first I would agree, with Matt Baker, it's not a one for one swap of spend but there's definitely been an impact. And here's some data from ETR that can, maybe give us some insight here. What this chart shows is a cut of 915 hyperscale cloud accounts. So within those big four, and within those accounts we show the spending velocity or net score cut within further sectors representative of these on-prem players. So servers, storage and networking, so we cut the data on those three segments. And we're looking here at, VMware, Cisco, Dell, HPE, and IBM, for 2020 and into 2021. It's kind of an interesting picture, it shows the net scores for the January of 20 April, July and October 20 surveys and the January 21 surveys. Now all the on-prem players, they were of course impacted by COVID, IBM seems to be that counter trend line. Not that they weren't impacted, but they have this notable mainframe cycle thing going on. And you know, they're in a down cycle now. So it's kind of opposite of the other guys in terms of the survey momentum. And you can see pretty much, all the others are showing upticks headed into 2021, Cisco, you know kind of flattish, but stable and held up a bit. So to Matt Baker's point, despite the 35% or so growth expected for the big four and 2021 the on-prem leaders are showing some signs of positive spending momentum. So let's dig into this a little bit further, 'cause we're not saying cloud hasn't hurt on prem spending. You know, of course it has. Here's that same picture, over a 10 year view. So you're seeing this long, slow, decline occur, and it's no surprise. If you think about the prevailing model for servers, storage, and networking, on prem in particular. Servers have been perpetually under utilized, even with virtualization. You know, with the exception of like backup jobs, there aren't many workloads that can max out server utilization. So we kept buying more servers to give us performance headroom and ran at 20, 30% utilization, you know in a good day. Yes I know some folks can get up over 50%, but generally speaking servers are well under utilized in storage my gosh, it's kind of the same story, maybe even worse. Because for years it was powered by a mechanical system. So more spindles are required to gain performance, lots of copying going on, lots of, you know, pre-flash waste. And in networking it was a story of got to buy more ports. You've got to buy more ports. In the case of these segments, customers will just defense essentially, forced in this endless cycle of planning, procuring, you know, first planning. They got to get the secure the CapEx, and then they procure, and then they over-provision, and then they manage, you know, ongoing. So then along comes AWS, and says, try this on for size and you can see from that chart, the impact of cloud on those bellwether on-prem infrastructure players. Now, just to give you a little bit more insight on this topic, here's a picture of the wheel charts from the ETR data set. For AWS Microsoft, Google, and we brought in VMware to compare them. A wheel chart shows the percent of customers saying they'll either add a platform new that's the lime green. Increased spending by more than 5%, that's the forest green spend flat relative to last year. That's the gray spend less by more than 5% down, that's the pinkish or leave the platform, that's the Bright red. You subtract the red from the green and you get a percentage that represents net score, AWS with a net score of 60% is off the charts good. Microsoft remember, this includes the entire Microsoft business portfolio, not just Azure, so it's still really strong. Google, frankly, we'd like to see higher net scores and VMware's, you know, so there's a gold standard for on-prem. So we include them, so you can see for reference the strong, but notice they got a much, much bigger flat spending, which is what you would expect from some of these more mature players. Now let's compare these scores to the other, on-prem Kings. So this is not surprising to see, but the greens, they go down, the flats that gray area goes up compared to the cloud guys and the red which is virtually non-existent within AWS, goes into the high teens with the exception of Cisco which despite its exposure to virtually all industries including those hard hit by COVID shows pretty low read scores. So that's, that's good. And I got to share one other, look at this wheel chart for pure storage. We're not really not sure what's happening here, but this is impressive. We're seeing a huge rebound, and you can see we've superimposed as candlestick over comparing previous quarters surveys and, look at the huge up check in the January survey for pure that blue line. That's highlighted in that red dot at ellipse, jumps to a 63% net score from below 20% last quarter. You know, we'll see, I've never seen that kind of uptick before for an established company. And, you know, maybe it's pent up demand or some other anomaly in the data. We'll find out when pure reports in 2021, because remember these are forward looking surveys. But the point is, you still see action going on in hybrid and on-prem, and despite the freight train that is cloud, coming at the legacy players. You know, not that pure is legacy, but it's, you know, it's no longer a lanky teenager. And I think the bottom line, coming back to Matt Baker's point, is there are opportunities that the on-prem players can pursue in hybrid and multi-cloud, and we've talked about this a lot where you're building abstraction layer, on top of the hyperscale clouds and letting them build out their data center presence worldwide, spend on capex, they're going to outspend everybody. And these guys, these on-prem, and hybrid and multi-cloud folks they're going to have to add value on top of that. Now if they move fast, you no doubt there'll be acquiring startups to make that happen. They're going to have to put forth the value proposition and execute on that, in a way that adds clear value above and beyond what the hyperscalers are going to do. Now, the challenge, is picking those right spots, moving fast enough and balancing wall street promises with innovation. There's that same old dilemma. Let's face It. Amazon for years could lose tons of money and not get killed in the street. Google, they got so much cash, they can't spend it fast enough and Microsoft after years of going sideways is finally figured out and the some. Alibaba they're new to our analysis, but it's looking like you know, it's the Amazon of China, Plus ANT despite its regulatory challenges with the Chinese government. So all four of these players, are in the driver's seat in our view. And they're leading in not only cloud, but AI. And of course the data keeps flowing into their cloud. So they're really are in a strong position. Bottom line is we're still early into the cloud platform era and it's morphing. It's from a collection of remote cloud services, into this ubiquitous, sensing, thinking, anticipatory system, that's increasingly automated and working towards full automation. It's intelligent and it's hyper decentralizing toward the edge. One thing's for sure, the next 10 years, they're not going to be the same as the past 10. Okay, that's it for now. Remember I publish each week on Wikibond.com and siliconANGLE.com, these episodes they're all available as podcasts just search for breaking analysis podcast. You can always connect on Twitter. I'm @dvellante or email me at david.Vellante@siliconANGLE.com. I love the comments on LinkedIn and of course in clubhouse the new social app. So please follow me, so that you can get notified when we start a room and riff on these topics. And don't forget to check out etr.plus for all the survey action. This is Dave Vellante for the cube insights powered by ETR be well, and we'll see you next time. (upbeat music)