>>from around the globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent 2020 sponsored by Intel and AWS. Yeah, welcome to the Cubes Live coverage of AWS reinvent 2020. I'm Lisa Martin and I have a Cube alumni joining me Next. Aaron Kelly, the GM of product marketing at AWS Aaron. Welcome back to the program. >>Thanks, Lisa. It's great to be here. >>Likewise, even though we don't get to all be crammed into Las Vegas together, uh, excited to talk to you about Amazon Connect, talk to our audience about what that is. And then let's talk about it in terms of how it's been a big facilitator during this interesting year, that is 2020. >>Great, yes, for sure. So Amazon Connect is a cloud contact center where we're really looking to really reinvent how contact centers work by bringing it into the cloud. It's an Omni Channel, easy to use contact center that allows customers to spin up contact centers in minutes instead of months. Its very scalable so can scale to 10 tens of thousands of agents. But it also scaled down when you when it's not in use and because it's got a pay as you go business model. You only pay when you're engaging with collars or customers. You're not paying for high upfront per agent fees every month. So it's really been a great service during this pandemic, as there's been a lot of unpredictable spikes in demand, uh, that customers have had to deal with across many sectors, >>and we've been talking for months now about the acceleration that Corbett has delivered with respect to digital transformation. And, of course, as patients has been wearing fin globally. I think with everybody when we're calling a contact center, we want a resolution quickly. And of course, as we all know is we all in any industry are working from home. So are they. So I can imagine during this time that being able to have a cloud contact center has been transformative, I guess, to help some businesses keep the lights on. But now to really be successful moving forward, knowing that they can operate and scale up or down as things change. >>Yeah, that's exactly right. And so one of the key benefits of connect his ability to very quickly on board and get started, you know, we have some very interesting and examples like Morrisons, which is a retailer in the UK They wanted to create a new service as you highlighted, which was a door, you know, doorstep delivery service. And so they needed to spin up a quick new contact center in order to handle those orders. They were able to do it and move all their agents remotely in about a day and be able to immediately start to take those orders, which is really powerful, you know. Another interesting example is the Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training. Which part of their responsibility is to deliver unemployment benefits for their citizens? Obviously a huge surge of demand there they were able to build an entirely new context center in about nine days to support their citizens. They went from a knave ridge of about 74 call volume sort of capacity per minute to 1000 call on capacity per minute. And in the first day of standing up this new context center, they were able to serve 75,000 Rhode Island citizens with their unemployment benefits. So really ah, great example of having that cloud scalability that ability to bring agents remotely and then helping citizens in need during a very, very difficult time, >>right? So a lot of uses private sector, public sector. What are some of the new capabilities of Amazon connected? You're announcing at reinvent. >>Yeah, So we announced five big capabilities this during reinvent yesterday that really spanned the entire experience, and our goal is to make it better for agents so they're more efficient. That actually helps customers reduce their costs but also create a better collar experience so that C sat could go up in the collars, can get what they need quickly and then move on. And so the first capability is Amazon Connect Voice I D, which makes it easier to validate that the person calling is who in fact, they say they are so in this case, Lee. So let's say you're calling in. You can opt in tow, have a voice print made of you. The next time you call in, we're able to use machine learning to match that voiceprint to know. Yes, it is Lisa. I don't need to ask Lisa questions about her mother's maiden name and Social Security number. We can validate you quickly as an agent I'm confident it's you. So I'm less concerned about things like fraud, and we can move on. That's the first great new feature. The second is Amazon Connect customer profiles. So now, once you join the call rather than me is an agent having to click around a different systems and find out your order history, etcetera. I could get that all surface to me directly. So I have that context. I can create a more personalized experience and move faster through the call. The third one is called Wisdom. It's Amazon Connect wisdom, which now based on either what you're asking me or a search that I might make, I could get answers to your questions. Push to me using machine learning. So if you may be asking about a refund policy or the next time a new product may launch, I may not know rather than clicking around and sort of finding that in the different systems is pushed right to me. Um, now the Fourth Feet feature is really time capability of contact lens for Amazon connect, and what this does is while you were having our conversation, it measures the sentiment based on what you're saying or any keywords. So let's say you called it and said, I want a refund or I want to cancel That keyword will trigger a new alert to my supervisor who can see that this call may be going in the wrong direction. Let me go help Aaron with Lisa. Maybe there's a special offer I can provide or extra assistance so I can help turn that call around and create a great customer experience, which right now it feels like it's not going in that direction. And then the last one is, um, Amazon Connect tasks where about half of an agents time is spent on task other than the call follow up items. So you're looking for a refund or you want me Thio to ship you a new version of the product or something? Well, today I might write that on a sticky note or send myself a reminder and email. It's not very tracked very well. With Amazon Connect task, I can create that task for me as a supervisor. I could then X signed those tax and I can make sure that the follow up items air prioritized. And then when I look at my work. You is an agent. I can see both calls, my chats and my task, which allows me to be more efficient. That allows me to follow up faster with you. My customer, Andi. Overall, it's gonna help lower the cost and efficiency of the Contact Center. So we're really excited about all five of these features and how they improve the entire life cycle of a customer contact. >>And that could be table stakes for any business in terms of customer satisfaction. You talked about that, but I always say, You know, customer satisfaction is inextricably linked to employee satisfaction. They need. The agents need to be empowered with that information and really time, but also to be able to look at. I want them to know why I'm calling. They should already know what I have. We have that growing expectation right as a consumer. So the agent experience the customer experience. You've also really streamline. And I could just see this being something that is like I said, kind of table stakes for an organization to reduce churn, to be able to service more customers in a shorter amount of time and also employee satisfaction, right, >>right that's that. That's exactly right. Trader Grills, which is one of our, you know, beta customers using some of these capabilities. You know, they're saying 25% faster, handle times so shorter calls and a 10% increase in customer satisfaction because now it's personalized. When you call in, I know what grill you purchased. And so I have a sense based on the grill, you purchase just what your question might be or what you know, what special offers I might have available to me and that's all pushed to me is an agent, So I feel more empowered. I could give you better service. You have, you know, greater loyalty towards my brand, which is a win for everyone, >>absolutely that empowerment of the agent, that personalization for the customer. I think again we have that growing demanded expectation that you should know why I'm calling, and you should be able to solve my problem. If you can't, I'm gonna turn and find somebody else who can do that. That's a huge risk that businesses face. Let's talk about some of the trends that you're seeing that this has been a very interesting year to say the least, what are some of the trends in the context center space that you guys were seeing that you're working Thio to help facilitate? >>Yeah, absolutely. So I think one of the biggest trends that we're seeing is this move towards remote work. So as you can imagine, with the pandemic almost immediately, most customers needed to quickly move their agents to remote work scenario. And this is where Amazon Connect was a great benefit. For as I mentioned before, we saw about 5000 new contact centers created in March in April. Um, Atiya, very beginning of the pandemic. So that was a very, uh, that's a very big trend we're seeing. And now what we're seeing is customers were saying, Hey, when I have something like Amazon Connect that's in the cloud, it scales up. It provides me a great experience. I just need really a headset in a Internet connection from my agents. I'm not dealing with VPNs and, ah, lot of the complexity that comes with trying to move on on premises system remote. We're seeing a huge, you know, search of adoption and usage around that the ability to very quickly create a new context center around specific scenarios are use cases has been really, really powerful. So, uh, those are the big trends moving to remote remote work and a trend towards, um, spinning of new context that is quickly and then spending them back down as that demand moves or or those those those situations move >>right. And as we're all experiencing, the one thing that is a given during this time is the uncertainty that remains Skilling up. Skilling down volume changes. But looking as if a lot of what's currently going on from home is going to stay for a while longer, I actually not think about it. I'm calling into whether it's, you know, cable service or whatnot. I think What about agent is actually on their couch at home like I am working? And so I think it's being able to facilitate that because is transformative, and I think I think I'll step out on limbs side, you know, very potentially impact the winners and the losers of tomorrow, making sure that the consumer experience is tailored. It's personalized to your point and that the agents are empowered in real time to facilitate a seamless and fast resolution of whatever the issue is. >>Well, and I think you hit on it earlier as well. Agents wanna be helpful. They wanna solve a customer problem. They wanna have that information at their fingertips. They wanna be on power to take action. Because at the end of their day, they want to feel like they helped people, right? And so being able to give them that information safe from wisdom or being able to see your entire customer profile, Right? Right. When you come on board or know that you are Lisa, um, and have the confidence that I'm talking to Lisa, I'm not. This is not some sort of, you know, fishing, exercise, exercise. These are all really important scenarios and features that empower the agent, lowers cost significantly for the customer and creates a much better customer experience for you. The collar? >>Absolutely. And we all know how important that is these days to get some sort of satisfying experience. Last question. Erin, talk to us about, you know, as we all look forward, Thio 2021. For many reasons. What can we expect with Amazon? Connect? >>Well, we're going to continue to listen to our customers and hear their feedback and what they need, which what we certainly anticipate is continued focus on that agent efficiency, giving agents mawr of the information they need to be successful and answer customers questions quickly, continuing to invest in machine learning as a way of doing that. So using ML to identify that you are who you say you are, finding that right information. Getting data that I can use is an agent Thio. Handle those tasks and then automate the things that you know I really shouldn't have to take steps is a human to go do so if we need to send you a follow up email when when your product ships or when your refund is issued. Let me just put that in the system once and have it happened when it executes. So that level of automation continuing to bring machine learning in to make the agent experience better and more efficient, which ultimate leads to lower costs and better see set. These are all the investments. You'll see a sui continue for it next year. >>Excellent stuff, Erin, thank you so much for joining me on the program today, ensuring what's next and the potential the impact that Amazon connect is making. >>Thanks, Lisa. It's great to be here >>for Aaron Kelly. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the cubes. Live coverage of AWS reinvent 2020.

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube presenting accelerating automation with definite brought to you by Cisco. Hey, welcome back. You're ready, Jeff Freak here with the Cube coming to you from our Palo Alto studios with ongoing coverage of Cisco Definite create. We've been going to definite create, I think, since the very beginning. This year, of course. Like everything else, it's it's virtual. So we're excited to cover it virtually and digitally like we have a lot of other shows here in 2020 and we're excited to have our next guest. We've got Kun Jacobs. He's the director of systems engineering. Francisco, Good to see you. Coun. Thank >>you for having me. >>And joining him is Eric Nippy is the VP of system systems Engineering. Francisco. Good to see Eric. >>Good to be here. Thank you. >>Pleasure. So before we jump into kind of what's going on now, in this new great world of program ability and control, I want to kind of go back to the future for a minute. Because when I was doing some research for this interview, it was kun. I saw an old presentation that you were giving from 2006 about the changing evolution of the changing evolution of networking and moving from. I think the theme was a human centered, human centered network, and you were just starting to touch a little bit on video and online video. Oh my goodness, how far we have come. But but I would love to get kind of historical perspective because we've been talking a lot. And I know Eric Son plays football about the football analogy of the network is kind of like an offensive lineman where if they're doing a good job, you don't hear much about them. But they're really important to everything, and the only time you hear about him was when the flag is thrown. So if you look back with the historical perspective load and the numbers and the evolution of the network as we've moved to this modern time and you know thank goodness, because if Cove it hit five years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, you know all of us in the information space would not have been able to make this transition, so I just I just love to get some historical perspective because you've been kind of charting this and mapping this for a very long time. >>Yeah, we absolutely have. I think you know what you're referring to was back in the day the human network campaign and to your point that the load, the number of hosts, the traffic just overall, the intelligence of the network has just evolved tremendously over the last decade and a half, 15 years or so. And you look at where we are now in terms of the programmable nature of the network and what that enables in terms of new degrees of relevance that we can create for the customers on how you know the role of I t. Has changed entirely again, especially during this pandemic. You know, the fact that it's now as a service and elastic eyes is absolutely fundamental to being able to ensure, on an ongoing basis a great customer experience. And so it's been It's been a very interesting right, indeed. Yeah, >>And then and then just to close the loop, the one of your more later interviews talking to Sylvia. You're the question is, are you developer an engineer? So And your whole advice to all these network engineers is just Just don't jump in and start doing some coding and learning. So you know, the focus and really the emphasis and where the opportunity to differentiate is a complete is completely 15 years over to the, you know, really software to find side. >>Oh, absolutely. So, I mean, you look at how the software world and the network has come together and how we're applying now, you know, basically the same construct of C I C D pipeline to network infrastructure. Look at network really as code and get all of the benefits from that in the familiarity of it, the way that our engineers have had to evolve in that is just, you know, quite quite significant in like the skill set. And the best thing is jump in, you know, dip your toe in the water, but continue to evolve that skill set. And, you know, don't don't be shy. It's It's a leap of faith for some of us who've been in the industry a bit longer. You know, we like to look at ourselves as the craftsman of the network, but now it's definitely software Centris City and the, um, program ability. >>Right? So, Eric, you've got some digital exhaust out there, too, that I was able to dig up Going back to 2000 and 2 752 page book in the very back corner of a dark, dirty, dusty Amazon warehouse is managing Cisco Network Security 752 pages. Wow. How has security changed? From a time where before I could just read a book, a big book, you know, throw some protocols in and probably block a bunch of ports to the world that we live in today, where everything is connected, everything is a p. I driven. Everything is software defined. You've got pieces of workload spread out all over the place. And, Oh, by the way, you need to bake security in at every single level of the application stack. >>Yeah, No eso Wow. Kudos that you you found that book. I'm really impressed there, so thank you. Little street credit. So I want to get on something that you you talked about because I think it's very important to to this overall conversation if we think about the scale of the network and coun hit on it briefly. You talked about it as well. We're seeing a massive explosion of devices by the you know it's estimated By the end of this year, there's gonna be about 27 billion devices on the global Internet. That's about 3.7 devices for every man, woman and child life. And if we extrapolate that out over the course of the next decade on the growth trajectory, we're on. And if you look at some of the published research on this, it's estimated there could be upwards of 500 billion devices accessing the global Internet on a on a daily basis in the primarily that that that is I o T devices. That's digitally connected devices. Anything that can be connected will be connect, but then introduces a really interesting security challenge because every one of those devices that is accessing the global Internet is within a company's infrastructure. Accessing pieces of corporate data is a potential attack factor, so we really need Thio and I think the right expression for this is we need to reimagine security because security is, as you said, not about perimeters. You know, I wrote that book back in 2002. I was talking about firewalls and a cutting edge technology was intrusion, prevention and intrusion detection. Now we need to look at security. Really? In the in the guise of under the under the under the realm of really two aspects the identity. Who is accessing the data in the context, What data is being access and that is going to require a level of intelligence, a level of automation and technologies like machine learning, an automated intelligence. They're going to be our artificial intelligence. Rather are gonna be table stakes because the sheer scale of what we're trying to secure is going to be untenable under current. You know, just current security practices mean the network is gonna have to be incredibly intelligent and leverage again, a lot of that AI type of data to match patterns of potential attacks and ideally, shut them down before they ever cause any type of damage. >>Yeah, it's really interesting. I mean, one thing That cove it has done a bunk many things is kind of re taught us all about the power of exponential curves and how extremely large those things are and how fast they grow. We had Dave Rennes in on it Google Cloud a couple years ago, and I remember him talking about early days of Google when they were starting to map out kind of, as you describe kind of map out their growth curves, and they just figured out they could not hire if they hired everybody, they couldn't hire enough people to deal with it, right? So really kind of rethinking automation and re thinking about the way that you manage these things and and the level right, the old Is it a pet or is it or is it, um, part of the herd? And I think it's interesting what you talked about coun really human powered Internet and being driven by a lot of this video. But to what you just said, Erik, the next big wave right is I, O. T and five G. And I think you know, you talk about 3.7 of devices per person. That's nothing compared toa right, all these sensors and all these devices and all these factories because five G is really targeted to machine to machines, which there's ah lot of them, and they trade a lot of information really, really quickly. So, you know, I want to go back to Yukun thinking about this next great wave in a five G i o t kind of driven world where it's kind of like one voice kind of fell off compared to I p traffic on the network, I think you're going to see the same thing. Kind of human generated data relative to machine generated data is also gonna fall off dramatically. Is the machine generated data just skyrockets through the roof? >>Yeah. No, absolutely. And I think thio also what Eric touched on the visibility on that and they'll be able to process that data at the edge that's going to catalyze cloud adoption even further. And it's gonna, you know, make the role of the network the connectivity of it all, and the security within that crucially important. And then you look at the role of program ability. Within that, we're see the evolution going so fast. You look at the element of the software defined network in an I. O. T. Speed space. We see that we have hosts there that are not necessarily, you know, behaving like other hosts would on a network, for example, manufacturing floor production, robot or security camera. And what we're seeing is we're seeing you know, partners and customers employing program ability to make sure that we overcome some of the shortcomings, uh, in terms of where the network is at. But then how do you customize it in terms of the relevance that it can provide, bringing on board those those hosts in a very transparent way on then, you know, keep keep the agility of it and keep the speed of innovation going right, >>right. So, Eric, I want to come back to you and shift gears kind of back to the people will leave the A. D and the machines along along for middle minute. But I'm curious about what does beat the boss. I mean, I I go to your LinkedIn profile and it's just filled with congratulatory statements, but everyone's talking about beating the boss. You know, it's it's a really, you know, kind of interesting and different way toe to motivate people to build this new skill set in terms of getting software certifications within the Cisco world. And I just thought it was really cute the way that you clearly got people motivated because there's posts all over the place and they've all got their their nice big badge of their certification. But, you know, at a higher level, it is a different motivation to be a developer versus and engineering a technician. And it's a, you know, kind of a different point of view. And I just wonder if you could share, you know, some of the ways that you're kind of encouraging, you know, kind of this transformation within your own workforce as well as the partners, etcetera and really adopting kind of almost a software first in this program kind of point of view versus, you know, I'm just wiring stuff up. >>Apparently, a lot of people like to beat me. So I mean, that in of itself was was a was a great success. But, you know, if we think we take a step back, you know, what is Cisco about as an organization? I mean, obviously, he looked back to the very early days of our vision, right? It was. It was to change the way the world, you know, worked, played, live and learn. And if you think about and you hit on this when we were you know, your discussion with with With Kun in the early days of Cove it. We really saw that play out as so much shifted from, you know, in person type of interactions to virtual interactions in the network that that our customers, our partners, our employees built over the course of the last several last three decades really help the world continue Thio to to do business for students to continue to go thio school or, you know, clinicians to connect with patients. If I think about that mission to meet program ability is just the next generation of that mission, uh, continuing to enable the world to communicate, continuing to enable customers, employees, partners to, uh, essentially leverage the network for more than just connectivity. Now the leverage it for critical insight again, If we look at some of the some of the use cases that we're seeing for social distancing and contact tracing, the network has a really important place to play there because we can pull insight from the but it isn't necessarily and out of the box type of integration. So I look at program ability and and what we're doing with debt net to give relevance to the network for those types of really critical conversations that every organization is having right now. It's a way to extrapolate its away thio full critical data so that I can make a decision and I if that decisions automated or if that decision requires some type of a manual intervention, regardless, we're still about connecting, or in this case, we're connecting insight with the people who need it most. The definite pounds we ran is really in respect for how critical this new skills that's going to be. It's not enough. Like I said, just to connect the world anymore. We need to leverage that network, the network for that critical insight. And when we dropped were created to beat the boss challenge, it was really simple. Hey, guys, I think this is important and I am going to go out, and I'm gonna achieve the certification myself because I want to continue to be very relevant. I'm gonna continue to be able to provide that insight for my customers and partners. So therefore I'm going for it. Anybody can get there before me. Maybe there's a little incentive tied to and the incentive, although it's funny, we interviewed a lot of ah, a lot of our team who achieved it Incentive with secondary. They just wanted have bragging rights like, Yeah, I beat Eric, Right, Right. >>Absolutely. No, that Z you know, put your money where your mouth is, right? If it's important than what you know, you should do it too. And you know, the whole not asking people to do what you wouldn't do yourself. So I think there's a lot of good leadership, uh, leadership lessons there as well. But I wanna extend kind of the conversation on the Koven impact. Right? Because I'm sure you've seen all the social media means you know who's driving your digital transformation, the CEO of the CMO or cove it. And we all know the answer to the question. But you know, you guys have already been dealing with kind of increased complexity around enterprise infrastructure, world in terms of cloud and public cloud and hybrid cloud and multi cloud, and people are trying to move stuff all the way around. Now suddenly had this co vid moment right in March, which is really a light switch moment. People didn't have time to plan or prepare for suddenly everybody working from home and it's not only you but your spouse and your kids and everybody else. So but now we're six months plus into this thing, and I would just love to get your perspective, you know, and kind of the change from Oh, my goodness, we have to react to the light switch moment. What do we do to make sure people can can get get what they need when they need it from where they are? But but then really moving from this is an emergency situation. Stopgap situation toe. This is going to extend for some period of time. And even when it's the acute crisis is over, you know this is going to drive. Ah, riel change in the way that people communicate in the way that people where they sit and do their job and kind of how customers are responding accordingly as the you know, kind of the narrative has changed from an emergency stop gap to this is the new normal that we really need thio to plan for. >>So I think I think you said it very well. I think anything that could be digitized any any interaction that could be driven virtually waas. And what's interesting is we, as you said. We went from that light switch moment where, and I believe the status this and I'll probably get the number wrong. But like in the United States here at the beginning, at the end of February, about 2% of the knowledge worker population was virtual, you know, working from home or in a remote work environment. And over the course of about 11 days, that number went from 2% to 70% in interesting that it worked. You know, there was a lot of hiccups along the way, and there was a lot of organizations making really quick decisions on How do I enable VPN scale of mass? How doe I, you know, leverage. You know, things like WebEx for virtual meetings in virtual connectivity much faster now that as you said that we've kind of gotten out of the fog of war or frog fog of battle organizations, we're looking at what they accomplished. And it was nothing short of Herculean and looking at this now from a transition. Thio Oh my gosh, we need to change, too. We have an opportunity to change and we're looking. We see a lot of organizations specifically around financial services, health care through the K through 20 educational environment, all looking at how can they doom or virtually for a couple of reasons? Obviously, there is a significant safety factor, and again, we're still in that we're still in the height of this pandemic. They want to make sure their employees, their customers, students patients remain safe. But second, we've found in discussions with a lot of senior I T executives and our customers that people are happier working from home. People are more productive working from home. And that again, the network that's been built over the course of the last few decades has been resilient enough to allow that to happen. And then, third, there is a potential cost savings here outside of people. The next most expensive resource that organizations are paying for is real estate. If they can shrink that real estate footprint while providing a better user experience at the locations that they're maintaining again leveraging things like location services, leveraging things like, uh, unified collaboration that's very personalized to the end users experience, they're going to do that and again they're going to save money. They're gonna have happier employees, and ultimately they're gonna make their their employees in their customers a lot safer. So we see, we believe that there is in some parts of the economy, a shift that is going to be more permanent. And some estimates put it as high as 15% of the current workforce is going to stay today in a virtual or a semi virtual working environment for the foreseeable future. >>Interesting. And I would say I'd say 15% is low, especially if you if you qualify it with, you know, part time, right? There was a great interview were doing and, you know, talk about working from home. He used to work from home as the exception, right? Because the cable person was coming or you get a new washing machine or something, where now that's probably get, you know, in many cases will shift to the other where I'm generally gonna work from home unless you know somebody's in town or have an important meeting or there's some special collaboration. Uh, that drives me to be in. But, you know, I wanna go back to Yukun and and really doubled down on. You know, I think most people spend too much time focusing, especially. We'll just say within the virtual events base where we play on the things you can't do virtually. We can't meet in the hall. We can't grab a quick coffee to drink instead of focusing on the positive things like we're accomplishing right here. You're in Belgium, right? Eric is in Ohio, were in California. Um, and you know, we didn't take three days to travel and and check into a hotel and and all that stuff to get together for this period of time. So there's a lot of stuff that digital enables. And I think, you know, people need to focus more on that versus continuing to focus on the two or three things that that it doesn't replace, and it doesn't replace those. So let's just get that off the table and move on with our lives because those are coming back anytime soon. >>No, totally. I think it's the balance of those things. It's guarding the fact that you're not necessarily working for home. I think the trick there is you could be sleeping at the office, but I think the positives airway way more out spoken. I you know, I look at myself I got much more exercise time in these last couple of months than I usually do because you don't travel. You don't have the jet lag and the connection. And then you talked about those face to face moments. I think a lot of people are, in a way, wanting to go back to the office part time, as Eric also explained. But a lot of it you could do virtually. We have virtual coffees with team or, you know, even here in Belgium are are local. General manager has, ah, virtual aperitif. Every Friday obviously skipped the one this week. But you know, there's there's ways to be very creative with the technology and the quality of the technology that the network enables, Um, you know, to to get the basketball world right, >>So I just we're gonna wrap the segment. I wanna give you guys both the last word. You both Francisco for a while and you know, Susie, we and the team on Definite has really grown this thing. I think we were there at the very beginning couple of 456 years ago. I can't keep track of time anymore, but you know, it's really really grown. And, you know, the timing is terrific to get into this more software defined world, which is where we are. I wonder if you could just, you know, kind of share a couple of thoughts is, you know, with a little bit of perspective. And you know what you're excited about today and kind of what you see coming down the road. Since you guys have been there for a while, you've been in the space. Uh, let's start with Yukun. >>Okay? I think the possibility it creates, I think, really program ability, software defined is really about the art of the possible. It's what you can dream up and then go code Eric talked about the relevance of it and how it maximizes that relevance. And a customer base is, um, you know, and then it is the evolution off the teams in terms of the creativity that they can bring to it. We're seeing really people dive into that in customers, um, co creating with us on. I think that's where we're going in terms of like the evolution off the value proposition there in terms of what technology can provide, but also how it impacts people as we discussed and and redefines process. >>I love that the art of the possible, which is a lot harder to execute in, uh, hardware than software certainly takes a lot longer. >>America, I >>love to get your thoughts. >>Absolutely. So I started my career in Cisco turning, putting I P phones onto the network. And back then, you know, it was, you know, 1 4002 when three idea of putting telephones onto the network was such a of just such an objectionable idea. And so many purists were telling us all the reasons it wouldn't work. Now, if we go forward again 19 years, the idea of not having them plugging into the network is a ridiculous idea. So we have a We're looking at an inflection point in this industry, and it's really it's not about programming is not necessarily about programming. It's about doing it smarter. It's about being more efficient. It's about driving automation. But again, it's about unlocking the value of what the network is. We've moved so far past what you know, just connectivity. The network touches everything and is more workload. Moves to the cloud is more workload moves to things like containers. The network is the really the only common element that ties all of these things together. The network needs to take its rightful place, uh, in the in the i t. Lexicon as being that critical for that critical insight provider for for how users are interacting with the network. How users air interacting with applications, how applications are interacting with one another. Program ability is a way to do that more efficiently with greater, greater degree of certainty, with much greater relevance into the overall delivery of I t services and digitization. So to me, I think we're gonna look back 20 years from now, probably even 10 and say, Man, we used to configure things manually. What was that like? I think I think really, this is This is the future, and I think we want to be aligned with where we're going versus where we've been. >>Well, coun Eric. Thank you for sharing your perspective. You know, it's it's really nice to have, you know, some historical reference on. It's also nice to be living in a new age where you can you can, you know, stay at the same company and and still refresh. You know, new challenges, new opportunities and grow this thing because a zoo said I remember those i p first i p phone days and I thought, Well, Ma Bell must be happy because the old Mother's Day problem is finally solved when we don't have to have a >>dedicated connection >>between every mother and every child in the middle of May. So good news. So thank you very much for sharing your, uh, your insights and really, really enjoyed the conversation. >>Thank you. >>Yeah. All >>right. He's kun. He was Eric. I'm Jeff. You're watching the Cube for continuing coverage of Cisco Definite Connect. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube presenting accelerating automation with definite brought to you by Cisco. >>Hey, welcome back. You're ready, Jeff Freak here with the Cube coming to you from our Palo Alto studios with ongoing coverage of Cisco Definite create. We've been going to definite create, I think, since the very beginning. This year, of course. Like everything else, it's it's virtual. So we're excited to cover it virtually and digitally like we have a lot of other shows here in 2020 and we're excited to have our next guest. We've got Kun Jacobs. He's the director of systems engineering. Francisco, Good to see you. Coun. >>Thank you for having me. >>And joining him is Eric Nappy is the VP of systems systems Engineering. Francisco. Good to see Eric. >>Good to be here. Thank you. >>Pleasure. So before we jump into kind of what's going on now, in this new great world of program ability and control, I want to kind of go back to the future for a minute. Because when I was doing some research for this interview, it was kun. I saw an old presentation that you were giving from 2006 about the changing evolution of the changing evolution of networking and moving from. I think the theme was a human centered, human centered network, and you were just starting to touch a little bit on video and online video. Oh my goodness, how far we have come. But but I would love to get kind of historical perspective because we've been talking a lot. And I know Eric Son plays football about the football analogy of the network is kind of like an offensive lineman where if they're doing a good job, you don't hear much about them. But they're really important to everything, and the only time you hear about him was when the flag is thrown. So if you look back with the historical perspective load and the numbers and the evolution of the network as we've moved to this modern time and you know thank goodness, because if Cove it hit five years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, you know all of us in the information space would not have been able to make this transition, so I just I just love to get some historical perspective because you've been kind of charting this and mapping this for a very long time. >>Yeah, we absolutely have. I think you know what you're referring to was back in the day the human network campaign and to your point that the load, the number of hosts, the traffic just overall, the intelligence of the network has just evolved tremendously over the last decade and a half, 15 years or so. And you look at where we are now in terms of the programmable nature of the network and what that enables in terms of new degrees of relevance that we can create for the customers on how you know the role of I t. Has changed entirely again, especially during this pandemic. You know, the fact that it's now as a service and elastic eyes is absolutely fundamental to being able to ensure, on an ongoing basis a great customer experience. And so it's been It's been a very interesting right, indeed. Yeah, >>And then and then just to close the loop, the one of your more later interviews talking to Sylvia. You're the question is, are you developer an engineer? So And your whole advice to all these network engineers is just Just don't jump in and start doing some coding and learning. So you know, the focus and really the emphasis and where the opportunity to differentiate is a complete is completely 15 years over to the, you know, really software to find side. >>Oh, absolutely. So, I mean, you look at how the software world and the network has come together and how we're applying now, you know, basically the same construct of C I C D pipeline to network infrastructure. Look at network really as code and get all of the benefits from that in the familiarity of it, the way that our engineers have had to evolve in that is just, you know, quite quite significant in like the skill set. And the best thing is jump in, you know, dip your toe in the water, but continue to evolve that skill set. And, you know, don't don't be shy. It's It's a leap of faith for some of us who've been in the industry a bit longer. You know, we like to look at ourselves as the craftsman of the network, but now it's definitely software Centris City and the, um, program ability. >>Right? So, Eric, you've got some digital exhaust out there, too, that I was able to dig up Going back to 2000 and 2 752 page book in the very back corner of a dark, dirty, dusty Amazon warehouse is managing Cisco Network Security 752 pages. Wow. How has security changed? From a time where before I could just read a book, a big book, you know, throw some protocols in and probably block a bunch of ports to the world that we live in today, where everything is connected, everything is a p. I driven. Everything is software defined. You've got pieces of workload spread out all over the place. And, Oh, by the way, you need to bake security in at every single level of the application stack. >>Yeah, No eso Wow. Kudos that you you found that book. I'm really impressed there, so thank you. Little street credit. So I want to get on something that you you talked about because I think it's very important to to this overall conversation if we think about the scale of the network and coun hit on it briefly. You talked about it as well. We're seeing a massive explosion of devices by the you know it's estimated By the end of this year, there's gonna be about 27 billion devices on the global Internet. That's about 3.7 devices for every man, woman and child life. And if we extrapolate that out over the course of the next decade on the growth trajectory, we're on. And if you look at some of the published research on this, it's estimated there could be upwards of 500 billion devices accessing the global Internet on a on a daily basis in the primarily that that that is I o T devices. That's digitally connected devices. Anything that can be connected will be connect, but then introduces a really interesting security challenge because every one of those devices that is accessing the global Internet is within a company's infrastructure. Accessing pieces of corporate data is a potential attack factor, so we really need Thio and I think the right expression for this is we need to reimagine security because security is, as you said, not about perimeters. You know, I wrote that book back in 2002. I was talking about firewalls and a cutting edge technology was intrusion, prevention and intrusion detection. Now we need to look at security. Really? In the in the guise of under the under the under the realm of really two aspects the identity. Who is accessing the data in the context, What data is being access and that is going to require a level of intelligence, a level of automation and technologies like machine learning, an automated intelligence. They're going to be our artificial intelligence. Rather are gonna be table stakes because the sheer scale of what we're trying to secure is going to be untenable under current. You know, just current security practices mean the network is gonna have to be incredibly intelligent and leverage again, a lot of that AI type of data to match patterns of potential attacks and ideally, shut them down before they ever cause any type of damage. >>Yeah, it's really interesting. I mean, one thing That cove it has done a bunk many things is kind of re taught us all about the power of exponential curves and how extremely large those things are and how fast they grow. We had Dave Rennes in on it Google Cloud a couple years ago, and I remember him talking about early days of Google when they were starting to map out kind of, as you describe kind of map out their growth curves, and they just figured out they could not hire if they hired everybody, they couldn't hire enough people to deal with it, right? So really kind of rethinking automation and re thinking about the way that you manage these things and and the level right, the old Is it a pet or is it or is it, um, part of the herd? And I think it's interesting what you talked about coun really human powered Internet and being driven by a lot of this video. But to what you just said, Erik, the next big wave right is I, O. T and five G. And I think you know, you talk about 3.7 of devices per person. That's nothing compared toa right, all these sensors and all these devices and all these factories because five G is really targeted to machine to machines, which there's ah lot of them, and they trade a lot of information really, really quickly. So, you know, I want to go back to Yukun thinking about this next great wave in a five G i o t kind of driven world where it's kind of like one voice kind of fell off compared to I p traffic on the network, I think you're going to see the same thing. Kind of human generated data relative to machine generated data is also gonna fall off dramatically. Is the machine generated data just skyrockets through the roof? >>Yeah. No, absolutely. And I think thio also what Eric touched on the visibility on that and they'll be able to process that data at the edge that's going to catalyze cloud adoption even further. And it's gonna, you know, make the role of the network the connectivity of it all, and the security within that crucially important. And then you look at the role of program ability. Within that, we're see the evolution going so fast. You look at the element of the software defined network in an I. O. T. Speed space. We see that we have hosts there that are not necessarily, you know, behaving like other hosts would on a network, for example, manufacturing floor production, robot or security camera. And what we're seeing is we're seeing you know, partners and customers employing program ability to make sure that we overcome some of the shortcomings, uh, in terms of where the network is at. But then how do you customize it in terms of the relevance that it can provide, bringing on board those those hosts in a very transparent way on then, you know, keep keep the agility of it and keep the speed of innovation going right, >>right. So, Eric, I want to come back to you and shift gears kind of back to the people will leave the A. D and the machines along along for middle minute. But I'm curious about what does beat the boss. I mean, I I go to your LinkedIn profile and it's just filled with congratulatory statements, but everyone's talking about beating the boss. You know, it's it's a really, you know, kind of interesting and different way toe to motivate people to build this new skill set in terms of getting software certifications within the Cisco world. And I just thought it was really cute the way that you clearly got people motivated because there's posts all over the place and they've all got their their nice big badge of their certification. But, you know, at a higher level, it is a different motivation to be a developer versus and engineering a technician. And it's a, you know, kind of a different point of view. And I just wonder if you could share, you know, some of the ways that you're kind of encouraging, you know, kind of this transformation within your own workforce as well as the partners, etcetera and really adopting kind of almost a software first in this program kind of point of view versus, you know, I'm just wiring stuff up. >>Apparently, a lot of people like to beat me. So I mean, that in of itself was was a was a great success. But, you know, if we think we take a step back, you know, what is Cisco about as an organization? I mean, obviously, he looked back to the very early days of our vision, right? It was. It was to change the way the world, you know, worked, played, live and learn. And if you think about and you hit on this when we were you know, your discussion with with With Kun in the early days of Cove it. We really saw that play out as so much shifted from, you know, in person type of interactions to virtual interactions in the network that that our customers, our partners, our employees built over the course of the last several last three decades really help the world continue Thio to to do business for students to continue to go thio school or, you know, clinicians to connect with patients. If I think about that mission to meet program ability is just the next generation of that mission, uh, continuing to enable the world to communicate, continuing to enable customers, employees, partners to, uh, essentially leverage the network for more than just connectivity. Now the leverage it for critical insight again, If we look at some of the some of the use cases that we're seeing for social distancing and contact tracing, the network has a really important place to play there because we can pull insight from the but it isn't necessarily and out of the box type of integration. So I look at program ability and and what we're doing with debt net to give relevance to the network for those types of really critical conversations that every organization is having right now. It's a way to extrapolate its away thio full critical data so that I can make a decision and I if that decisions automated or if that decision requires some type of a manual intervention, regardless, we're still about connecting, or in this case, we're connecting insight with the people who need it most. The definite pounds we ran is really in respect for how critical this new skills that's going to be. It's not enough. Like I said, just to connect the world anymore. We need to leverage that network, the network for that critical insight. And when we dropped were created to beat the boss challenge, it was really simple. Hey, guys, I think this is important and I am going to go out, and I'm gonna achieve the certification myself because I want to continue to be very relevant. I'm gonna continue to be able to provide that insight for my customers and partners. So therefore I'm going for it. Anybody can get there before me. Maybe there's a little incentive tied to and the incentive, although it's funny, we interviewed a lot of ah, a lot of our team who achieved it Incentive with secondary. They just wanted have bragging rights like, Yeah, I beat Eric, Right, Right. >>Absolutely. No, that Z you know, put your money where your mouth is, right? If it's important than what you know, you should do it too. And you know, the whole not asking people to do what you wouldn't do yourself. So I think there's a lot of good leadership, uh, leadership lessons there as well. But I wanna extend kind of the conversation on the Koven impact. Right? Because I'm sure you've seen all the social media means you know who's driving your digital transformation, the CEO of the CMO or cove it. And we all know the answer to the question. But you know, you guys have already been dealing with kind of increased complexity around enterprise infrastructure, world in terms of cloud and public cloud and hybrid cloud and multi cloud, and people are trying to move stuff all the way around. Now suddenly had this co vid moment right in March, which is really a light switch moment. People didn't have time to plan or prepare for suddenly everybody working from home and it's not only you but your spouse and your kids and everybody else. So but now we're six months plus into this thing, and I would just love to get your perspective, you know, and kind of the change from Oh, my goodness, we have to react to the light switch moment. What do we do to make sure people can can get get what they need when they need it from where they are? But but then really moving from this is an emergency situation. Stopgap situation toe. This is going to extend for some period of time. And even when it's the acute crisis is over, you know this is going to drive. Ah, riel change in the way that people communicate in the way that people where they sit and do their job and kind of how customers are responding accordingly as the you know, kind of the narrative has changed from an emergency stop gap to this is the new normal that we really need thio to plan for. >>So I think I think you said it very well. I think anything that could be digitized any any interaction that could be driven virtually waas. And what's interesting is we, as you said. We went from that light switch moment where, and I believe the status this and I'll probably get the number wrong. But like in the United States here at the beginning, at the end of February, about 2% of the knowledge worker population was virtual, you know, working from home or in a remote work environment. And over the course of about 11 days, that number went from 2% to 70% in interesting that it worked. You know, there was a lot of hiccups along the way, and there was a lot of organizations making really quick decisions on How do I enable VPN scale of mass? How doe I, you know, leverage. You know, things like WebEx for virtual meetings in virtual connectivity much faster now that as you said that we've kind of gotten out of the fog of war or frog fog of battle organizations, we're looking at what they accomplished. And it was nothing short of Herculean and looking at this now from a transition. Thio Oh my gosh, we need to change, too. We have an opportunity to change and we're looking. We see a lot of organizations specifically around financial services, health care through the K through 20 educational environment, all looking at how can they doom or virtually for a couple of reasons? Obviously, there is a significant safety factor, and again, we're still in that we're still in the height of this pandemic. They want to make sure their employees, their customers, students patients remain safe. But second, we've found in discussions with a lot of senior I T executives and our customers that people are happier working from home. People are more productive working from home. And that again, the network that's been built over the course of the last few decades has been resilient enough to allow that to happen. And then, third, there is a potential cost savings here outside of people. The next most expensive resource that organizations are paying for is real estate. If they can shrink that real estate footprint while providing a better user experience at the locations that they're maintaining again leveraging things like location services, leveraging things like, uh, unified collaboration that's very personalized to the end users experience, they're going to do that and again they're going to save money. They're gonna have happier employees, and ultimately they're gonna make their their employees in their customers a lot safer. So we see, we believe that there is in some parts of the economy, a shift that is going to be more permanent. And some estimates put it as high as 15% of the current workforce is going to stay today in a virtual or a semi virtual working environment for the foreseeable future. >>Interesting. And I would say I'd say 15% is low, especially if you if you qualify it with, you know, part time, right? There was a great interview were doing and, you know, talk about working from home. He used to work from home as the exception, right? Because the cable person was coming or you get a new washing machine or something, where now that's probably get, you know, in many cases will shift to the other where I'm generally gonna work from home unless you know somebody's in town or have an important meeting or there's some special collaboration. Uh, that drives me to be in. But, you know, I wanna go back to Yukun and and really doubled down on. You know, I think most people spend too much time focusing, especially. We'll just say within the virtual events base where we play on the things you can't do virtually. We can't meet in the hall. We can't grab a quick coffee to drink instead of focusing on the positive things like we're accomplishing right here. You're in Belgium, right? Eric is in Ohio, were in California. Um, and you know, we didn't take three days to travel and and check into a hotel and and all that stuff to get together for this period of time. So there's a lot of stuff that digital enables. And I think, you know, people need to focus more on that versus continuing to focus on the two or three things that that it doesn't replace, and it doesn't replace those. So let's just get that off the table and move on with our lives because those are coming back anytime soon. >>No, totally. I think it's the balance of those things. It's guarding the fact that you're not necessarily working for home. I think the trick there is you could be sleeping at the office, but I think the positives airway way more out spoken. I you know, I look at myself I got much more exercise time in these last couple of months than I usually do because you don't travel. You don't have the jet lag and the connection. And then you talked about those face to face moments. I think a lot of people are, in a way, wanting to go back to the office part time, as Eric also explained. But a lot of it you could do virtually. We have virtual coffees with team or, you know, even here in Belgium are are local. General manager has, ah, virtual aperitif. Every Friday obviously skipped the one this week. But you know, there's there's ways to be very creative with the technology and the quality of the technology that the network enables, Um, you know, to to get the basketball world right, >>So I just we're gonna wrap the segment. I wanna give you guys both the last word. You both Francisco for a while and you know, Susie, we and the team on Definite has really grown this thing. I think we were there at the very beginning couple of 456 years ago. I can't keep track of time anymore, but you know, it's really really grown. And, you know, the timing is terrific to get into this more software defined world, which is where we are. I wonder if you could just, you know, kind of share a couple of thoughts is, you know, with a little bit of perspective. And you know what you're excited about today and kind of what you see coming down the road. Since you guys have been there for a while, you've been in the space. Uh, let's start with Yukun. >>Okay? I think the possibility it creates, I think, really program ability, software defined is really about the art of the possible. It's what you can dream up and then go code Eric talked about the relevance of it and how it maximizes that relevance. And a customer base is, um, you know, and then it is the evolution off the teams in terms of the creativity that they can bring to it. We're seeing really people dive into that in customers, um, co creating with us on. I think that's where we're going in terms of like the evolution off the value proposition there in terms of what technology can provide, but also how it impacts people as we discussed and and redefines process. >>I love that the art of the possible, which is a lot harder to execute in, uh, hardware than software certainly takes a lot longer. >>America, I >>love to get your thoughts. >>Absolutely. So I started my career in Cisco turning, putting I P phones onto the network. And back then, you know, it was, you know, 1 4002 when three idea of putting telephones onto the network was such a of just such an objectionable idea. And so many purists were telling us all the reasons it wouldn't work. Now, if we go forward again 19 years, the idea of not having them plugging into the network is a ridiculous idea. So we have a We're looking at an inflection point in this industry, and it's really it's not about programming is not necessarily about programming. It's about doing it smarter. It's about being more efficient. It's about driving automation. But again, it's about unlocking the value of what the network is. We've moved so far past what you know, just connectivity. The network touches everything and is more workload. Moves to the cloud is more workload moves to things like containers. The network is the really the only common element that ties all of these things together. The network needs to take its rightful place, uh, in the in the i t. Lexicon as being that critical for that critical insight provider for for how users are interacting with the network. How users air interacting with applications, how applications are interacting with one another. Program ability is a way to do that more efficiently with greater, greater degree of certainty, with much greater relevance into the overall delivery of I t services and digitization. So to me, I think we're gonna look back 20 years from now, probably even 10 and say, Man, we used to configure things manually. What was that like? I think I think really, this is This is the future, and I think we want to be aligned with where we're going versus where we've been. >>Well, coun Eric. Thank you for sharing your perspective. You know, it's it's really nice to have, you know, some historical reference on. It's also nice to be living in a new age where you can you can, you know, stay at the same company and and still refresh. You know, new challenges, new opportunities and grow this thing because a zoo said I remember those i p first i p phone days and I thought, Well, Ma Bell must be happy because the old Mother's Day problem is finally solved when we don't have to have a >>dedicated connection >>between every mother and every child in the middle of May. So good news. So thank you very much for sharing your, uh, your insights and really, really enjoyed the conversation. >>Thank you. >>Yeah. All >>right. He's kun. He was Eric. I'm Jeff. You're watching the Cube for continuing coverage of Cisco Definite Connect. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube covering space and cybersecurity. Symposium 2020 hosted by Cal Poly >>Oven. Welcome back to the Space and Cyber Security Symposium. 2020 I'm John for your host with the Cuban silicon angle, along with Cal Poly, representing a great session here on industry success in developing space and cybersecurity. Resource is Got a great lineup. Brigadier General Steve Hotel, whose are also known as Bucky, is Call Sign director of Space Portfolio Defense Innovation Unit. Preston Miller, chief information security officer at JPL, NASA and Major General retired Clint Crozier, director of aerospace and satellite solutions at Amazon Web services, also known as a W s. Gentlemen, thank you for for joining me today. So the purpose of this session is to spend the next hour talking about the future of workforce talent. Um, skills needed and we're gonna dig into it. And Spaces is an exciting intersection of so many awesome disciplines. It's not just get a degree, go into a track ladder up and get promoted. Do those things. It's much different now. Love to get your perspectives, each of you will have an opening statement and we will start with the Brigadier General Steve Hotel. Right? >>Thank you very much. The Defense Innovation Unit was created in 2015 by then Secretary of Defense Ash Carter. To accomplish three things. One is to accelerate the adoption of commercial technology into the Department of Defense so that we can transform and keep our most relevant capabilities relevant. And also to build what we call now called the national Security Innovation Base, which is inclusive all the traditional defense companies, plus the commercial companies that may not necessarily work with focus exclusively on defense but could contribute to our national security and interesting ways. Um, this is such an exciting time Azul here from our other speakers about space on and I can't, uh I'm really excited to be here today to be able to share a little bit of our insight on the subject. >>Thank you very much. Precedent. Miller, Chief information security officer, Jet Propulsion Lab, NASA, Your opening statement. >>Hey, thank you for having me. I would like to start off by providing just a little bit of context of what brings us. Brings us together to talk about this exciting topic for space workforce. Had we've seen In recent years there's been there's been a trend towards expanding our space exploration and the space systems that offer the great things that we see in today's world like GPS. Um, but a lot of that has come with some Asian infrastructure and technology, and what we're seeing as we go towards our next generation expects of inspiration is that we now want to ensure that were secured on all levels. And there's an acknowledgement that our space systems are just a susceptible to cyber attacks as our terrestrial assistance. We've seen a recent space, uh, policy Directive five come out from our administration, that that details exactly how we should be looking at the cyber principle for our space systems, and we want to prevent. We want to prevent a few things as a result of that of these principles. Spoofing and jamming of our space systems are not authorized commands being sent to those space systems, lots of positive control of our space vehicles on lots of mission data. We also acknowledge that there's a couple of frameworks we wanna adopt across the board of our space systems levers and things like our nice miss cybersecurity frameworks. eso what has been a challenge in the past adopted somebody Cyber principles in space systems, where there simply has been a skill gap in a knowledge gap. We hire our space engineers to do a few things. Very well designed space systems, the ploy space systems and engineer space systems, often cybersecurity is seen as a after thought and certainly hasn't been a line item and in any budget for our spaces in racing. Uh, in the past in recent years, the dynamic started to change. We're now now integrating cyber principles at the onset of development of these life cycle of space. Systems were also taking a hard look of how we train the next generation of engineers to be both adequate. Space engineers, space system engineers and a cyber engineers, as a result to Mrs success on DWI, also are taking a hard look at What do we mean when we talk about holistic risk management for our space assistance, Traditionally risk management and missing insurance for space systems? I've really revolved around quality control, but now, in recent years we've started to adopt principles that takes cyber risk into account, So this is a really exciting topic for me. It's something that I'm fortunate to work with and live with every day. I'm really excited to get into this discussion with my other panel members. Thank you. >>You Preston. Great insight there. Looking forward. Thio chatting further. Um, Clint Closure with a W. S now heading up. A director of aerospace and satellite Solutions, formerly Major General, Your opening statement. >>Thanks, John. I really appreciate that introduction and really appreciate the opportunity to be here in the Space and Cybersecurity Symposium. And thanks to Cal Poly for putting it together, you know, I can't help, but as I think to Cal Poly there on the central California coast, San Luis Obispo, California I can't help but to think back in this park quickly. I spent two years of my life as a launch squadron commander at Vandenberg Air Force Base, about an hour south of Cal Poly launching rockets, putting satellites in orbit for the national intelligence community and so some really fond memories of the Central California coast. I couldn't agree more with the theme of our symposium this week. The space and cyber security we've all come to know over the last decade. How critical spaces to the world, whether it's for national security intelligence, whether it's whether communications, maritime, agriculture, development or a whole host of other things, economic and financial transactions. But I would make the case that I think most of your listeners would agree we won't have space without cybersecurity. In other words, if we can't guaranteed cybersecurity, all those benefits that we get from space may not be there. Preston in a moment ago that all the threats that have come across in the terrestrial world, whether it be hacking or malware or ransomware or are simple network attacks, we're seeing all those migrate to space to. And so it's a really important issue that we have to pay attention to. I also want to applaud Cow Pauling. They've got some really important initiatives. The conference here, in our particular panel, is about developing the next generation of space and cyber workers, and and Cal Poly has two important programs. One is the digital transformation hub, and the other is space data solutions, both of which, I'm happy to say, are in partnership with a W. S. But these were important programs where Cal Poly looks to try to develop the next generation of space and cyber leaders. And I would encourage you if you're interested in that toe. Look up the program because that could be very valuable is well, I'm relatively new to the AWS team and I'm really happy Thio team, as John you said recently retired from the U. S. Air Force and standing up the U. S. Space force. But the reason that I mentioned that as the director of the aerospace and satellite team is again it's in perfect harmony with the theme today. You know, we've recognized that space is critically important and that cyber security is critically important and that's been a W s vision as well. In fact, a W s understands how important the space domain is and coupled with the fact that AWS is well known that at a W s security is job zero and stolen a couple of those to fax A. W. S was looking to put together a team the aerospace and satellite team that focus solely and exclusively every single day on technical innovation in space and more security for the space domain through the cloud and our offerings there. So we're really excited to reimagine agree, envision what space networks and architectures could look like when they're born on the cloud. So that's important. You know, talk about workforce here in just a moment, but but I'll give you just a quick sneak. We at AWS have also recognized the gap in the projected workforce, as Preston mentioned, Um, depending on the projection that you look at, you know, most projections tell us that the demand for highly trained cyber cyber security cloud practitioners in the future outweighs what we think is going to be the supply. And so a ws has leaned into that in a number of ways that we're gonna talk about the next segment. I know. But with our workforce transformation, where we've tried to train free of charge not just a W s workers but more importantly, our customers workers. It s a W s we obsessed over the customer. And so we've provided free training toe over 7000 people this year alone toe bring their cloud security and cyber security skills up to where they will be able to fully leverage into the new workforce. So we're really happy about that too? I'm glad Preston raised SPD five space policy Directive five. I think it's gonna have a fundamental impact on the space and cyber industry. Uh, now full disclosure with that said, You know, I'm kind of a big fan of space policy directives, ESPN, Or was the space policy directive that directed to stand up of the U. S. Space Force and I spent the last 18 months of my life as the lead planner and architect for standing up the U. S. Space force. But with that said, I think when we look back a decade from now, we're going to see that s p d five will have as much of an impact in a positive way as I think SPD for on the stand up of the space Force have already done so. So I'll leave it there, but really look forward to the dialogue and discussion. >>Thank you, gentlemen. Clint, I just wanna say thank you for all your hard work and the team and the people who were involved in standing up Space force. Um, it is totally new. It's a game changer. It's modern, is needed. And there's benefits on potential challenges and opportunities that are gonna be there, so thank you very much for doing that. I personally am excited. I know a lot of people are excited for what the space force is today and what it could become. Thank you very much. >>Yeah, Thanks. >>Okay, So >>with >>that, let me give just jump in because, you know, as you're talking about space force and cybersecurity and you spend your time at Vanderburgh launching stuff into space, that's very technical. Is operation okay? I mean, it's complex in and of itself, but if you think about like, what's going on beyond in space is a lot of commercial aspect. So I'm thinking, you know, launching stuff into space on one side of my brain and the other side of brain, I'm thinking like air travel. You know, all the logistics and the rules of the road and air traffic control and all the communications and all the technology and policy and, you >>know, landing. >>So, Major General Clint, what's your take on this? Because this is not easy. It's not just one thing that speaks to the diversity of workforce needs. What's your reaction to that? >>Yeah. I mean, your observation is right on. We're seeing a real boom in the space and aerospace industry. For all the good reasons we talked about, we're recognizing all the value space from again economic prosperity to exploration to being ableto, you know, improve agriculture and in weather and all those sorts of things that we understand from space. So what I'm really excited about is we're seeing this this blossom of space companies that we sort of referred to his new space. You know, it used to be that really only large governments like the United States and a handful of others could operate in the space domain today and largely infused because of the technological innovation that have come with Cyber and Cyrus Space and even the cloud we're seeing more and more companies, capabilities, countries, all that have the ability, you know. Even a well funded university today can put a cube sat in orbit, and Cal Poly is working on some of those too, by the way, and so it's really expanded the number of people that benefits the activity in space and again, that's why it's so critically important because we become more and more reliant and we will become more and more reliant on those capabilities that we have to protect him. It's fundamental that we do. So, >>Bucky, I want you to weigh in on this because actually, you you've flown. Uh, I got a call sign which I love interviewing people. Anyone who's a call sign is cool in my book. So, Bucky, I want you to react to that because that's outside of the technology, you know, flying in space. There's >>no >>rule. I mean, is there like a rules? I mean, what's the rules of the road? I mean, state of the right. I mean, what I mean, what what's going? What's gonna have toe happen? Okay, just logistically. >>Well, this is very important because, uh and I've I've had access thio information space derived information for most of my flying career. But the amount of information that we need operate effectively in the 21st century is much greater than Thanet has been in the past. Let me describe the environment s so you can appreciate a little bit more what our challenges are. Where, from a space perspective, we're going to see a new exponential increase in the number of systems that could be satellites. Uh, users and applications, right? And so eso we're going we're growing rapidly into an environment where it's no longer practical to just simply evolved or operate on a perimeter security model. We and with this and as I was brought up previously, we're gonna try to bring in MAWR commercial capabilities. There is a tremendous benefit with increasing the diversity of sources of information. We use it right now. The military relies very heavily on commercial SAT com. We have our military capabilities, but the commercial capabilities give us capacity that we need and we can. We can vary that over time. The same will be true for remote sensing for other broadband communications capabilities on doing other interesting effects. Also, in the modern era, we doom or operations with our friends and allies, our regional partners all around the world, in order to really improve our interoperability and have rapid exchange of information, commercial information, sources and capabilities provides the best means of doing that. So that so that the imperative is very important and what all this describes if you want to put one word on it. ISS, we're involving into ah hybrid space architectures where it's gonna be imperative that we protect the integrity of information and the cyber security of the network for the things most important to us from a national security standpoint. But we have to have the rules that that allows us to freely exchange information rapidly and in a way that that we can guarantee that the right users are getting the right information at the right. >>We're gonna come back to that on the skill set and opportunities for people driving. That's just looking. There's so much opportunity. Preston, I want you to react to this. I interviewed General Keith Alexander last year. He formerly ran Cyber Command. Um, now he's building Cyber Security Technologies, and his whole thesis is you have to share. So the question is, how do you share and lock stuff down at the same time when you have ah, multi sided marketplace in space? You know, suppliers, users, systems. This is a huge security challenge. What's your reaction to this? Because we're intersecting all these things space and cybersecurity. It's just not easy. What's your reaction? >>Absolutely, Absolutely. And what I would say in response to that first would be that security really needs to be baked into the onset of how we develop and implement and deploy our space systems. Um, there's there's always going to be the need to collect and share data across multiple entities, particularly when we're changing scientific data with our mission partners. Eso with that necessitates that we have a security view from the onset, right? We have a system spaces, and they're designed to share information across the world. How do we make sure that those, uh, those other those communication channels so secure, free from interception free from disruption? So they're really done? That necessitates of our space leaders in our cyber leaders to be joining the hip about how to secure our space systems, and the communications there in Clinton brought up a really good point of. And then I'm gonna elaborate on a little bit, just toe invite a little bit more context and talk about some the complexities and challenges we face with this advent of new space and and all of our great commercial partners coming into therefore way, that's going to present a very significant supply chain risk management problems that we have to get our hands around as well. But we have these manufacturers developing these highly specialized components for the space instruments, Um, that as it stands right now, it's very little oversight And how those things air produced, manufactured, put into the space systems communication channels that they use ports protocols that they use to communicate. And that's gonna be a significant challenge for us to get get our hands around. So again, cybersecurity being brought in. And the very onset of these development thes thes decisions in these life cycles was certainly put us in a best better position to secure that data in our in our space missions. >>Yeah, E just pick up on that. You don't mind? Preston made such a really good point there. But you have to bake security in up front, and you know there's a challenge and there's an opportunity, you know, with a lot of our systems today. It was built in a pre cyber security environment, especially our government systems that were built, you know, in many cases 10 years ago, 15 years ago are still on orbit today, and we're thankful that they are. But as we look at this new environment and we understand the threats, if we bake cybersecurity in upfront weaken balance that open application versus the risk a long as we do it up front. And you know, that's one of the reasons that our company developed what we call govcloud, which is a secure cloud, that we use thio to manage data that our customers who want to do work with the federal government or other governments or the national security apparatus. They can operate in that space with the built in and baked in cybersecurity protocols. We have a secret region that both can handle secret and top secret information for the same reasons. But when you bake security into the upfront applications, that really allows you to balance that risk between making it available and accessible in sort of an open architecture way. But being sure that it's protected through things like ITAR certifications and fed ramp, uh, another ice T certifications that we have in place. So that's just a really important point. >>Let's stay high level for a man. You mentioned a little bit of those those govcloud, which made me think about you know, the tactical edge in the military analogy, but also with space similar theater. It's just another theater and you want to stand stuff up. Whether it's communications and have facilities, you gotta do it rapidly, and you gotta do it in a very agile, secure, I high availability secure way. So it's not the old waterfall planning. You gotta be fast is different. Cloud does things different? How do you talk to the young people out there, whether it's apparent with with kids in elementary and middle school to high school, college grad level or someone in the workforce? Because there are no previous jobs, that kind of map to the needs out there because you're talking about new skills, you could be an archaeologist and be the best cyber security guru on the planet. You don't have to have that. There's no degree for what, what we're talking about here. This >>is >>the big confusion around education. I mean, you gotta you like math and you could code you can Anything who wants to comment on that? Because I think this >>is the core issue. I'll say there are more and more programs growing around that educational need, and I could talk about a few things we're doing to, but I just wanna make an observation about what you just said about the need. And how do you get kids involved and interested? Interestingly, I think it's already happening, right. The good news. We're already developing that affinity. My four year old granddaughter can walk over, pick up my iPad, turn it on. Somehow she knows my account information, gets into my account, pulls up in application, starts playing a game. All before I really even realized she had my iPad. I mean, when when kids grow up on the cloud and in technology, it creates that natural proficiency. I think what we have to do is take that natural interest and give them the skill set the tools and capabilities that go with it so that we're managing, you know, the the interest with the technical skills. >>And also, like a fast I mean, just the the hackers are getting educated. Justus fast. Steve. I mean e mean Bucky. What do you do here? You CIt's the classic. Just keep chasing skills. I mean, there are new skills. What are some of those skills? >>Why would I amplify eloquent? Just said, First of all, the, uh, you know, cyber is one of those technology areas where commercial side not not the government is really kind of leading away and does a significant amount of research and development. Ah, billions of dollars are spent every year Thio to evolve new capabilities. And a lot of those companies are, you know, operated and and in some cases, led by folks in their early twenties. So the S O. This is definitely an era and a generation that is really poised in position. Well, uh, Thio take on this challenge. There's some unique aspects to space. Once we deploy a system, uh, it will be able to give me hard to service it, and we're developing capabilities now so that we could go up and and do system upgrades. But that's not a normal thing in space that just because the the technical means isn't there yet. So having software to find capabilities, I's gonna be really paramount being able to dio unique things. The cloud is huge. The cloud is centric to this or architectural, and it's kind of funny because d o d we joke because we just discovered the cloud, you know, a couple years ago. But the club has been around for a while and, uh, and it's going to give us scalability on and the growth potential for doing amazing things with a big Data Analytics. But as Preston said, it's all for not if if we can't trust the data that we receive. And so one of the concepts for future architectures is to evolve into a zero trust model where we trust nothing. We verify and authenticate everyone. And, uh, and that's that's probably a good, uh, point of departure as we look forward into our cybersecurity for space systems into the future. >>Block everyone. Preston. Your reaction to all this gaps, skills, What's needed. I mean it Z everyone's trying to squint through this >>absolutely. And I wanna want to shift gears a little bit and talk about the space agencies and organizations that are responsible for deploying these spaces into submission. So what is gonna take in this new era on, and what do we need from the workforce to be responsive to the challenges that we're seeing? First thing that comes to mind is creating a culture of security throughout aerospace right and ensuring that Azzawi mentioned before security isn't an afterthought. It's sort of baked into our models that we deploy and our rhetoric as well, right? And because again we hire our spaces in years to do it very highly. Specialized thing for a highly specialized, uh, it's topic. Our effort, if we start to incorporate rhetorically the importance of cybersecurity two missing success and missing assurance that's going to lend itself toe having more, more prepared on more capable system engineers that will be able to respond to the threats accordingly. Traditionally, what we see in organizational models it's that there's a cyber security team that's responsible for the for the whole kit kaboodle across the entire infrastructure, from enterprise systems to specialize, specialize, space systems and then a small pocket of spaces, years that that that are really there to perform their tasks on space systems. We really need to bridge that gap. We need to think about cybersecurity holistically, the skills that are necessary for your enterprise. I t security teams need to be the same skills that we need to look for for our system engineers on the flight side. So organizationally we need we need to address that issue and approach it, um todo responsive to the challenges we see our our space systems, >>new space, new culture, new skills. One of the things I want to bring up is looking for success formulas. You know, one of the things we've been seeing in the past 10 years of doing the Cube, which is, you know, we've been called the ESPN of Tech is that there's been kind of like a game ification. I want to. I don't wanna say sports because sports is different, but you're seeing robotics clubs pop up in some schools. It's like a varsity sport you're seeing, you know, twitch and you've got gamers out there, so you're seeing fun built into it. I think Cal Poly's got some challenges going on there, and then scholarships air behind it. So it's almost as if, you know, rather than going to a private sports training to get that scholarship, that never happens. There's so many more scholarship opportunities for are not scholarship, but just job opportunities and even scholarships we've covered as part of this conference. Uh, it's a whole new world of culture. It's much different than when I grew up, which was you know, you got math, science and English. You did >>it >>and you went into your track. Anyone want to comment on this new culture? Because I do believe that there is some new patterns emerging and some best practices anyone share any? >>Yeah, I do, because as you talked about robotics clubs and that sort of things, but those were great and I'm glad those air happening. And that's generating the interest, right? The whole gaming culture generating interest Robotic generates a lot of interest. Space right has captured the American in the world attention as well, with some recent NASA activities and all for the right reasons. But it's again, it's about taking that interested in providing the right skills along the way. So I'll tell you a couple of things. We're doing it a w s that we found success with. The first one is a program called A W s Academy. And this is where we have developed a cloud, uh, program a cloud certification. This is ah, cloud curriculum, if you will, and it's free and it's ready to teach. Our experts have developed this and we're ready to report it to a two year and four year colleges that they can use is part of the curriculum free of charge. And so we're seeing some real value there. And in fact, the governor's in Utah and Arizona recently adopted this program for their two year schools statewide again, where it's already to teach curriculum built by some of the best experts in the industry s so that we can try to get that skills to the people that are interested. We have another program called A W s educate, and this is for students to. But the idea behind this is we have 12 cracks and you can get up to 50 hours of free training that lead to A W s certification, that sort of thing. And then what's really interesting about that is all of our partners around the world that have tied into this program we manage what we call it ws educate Job board. And so if you have completed this educate program now, you can go to that job board and be linked directly with companies that want people with those skills we just helped you get. And it's a perfect match in a perfect marriage there. That one other piece real quickly that we're proud of is the aws Uh restart program. And that's where people who are unemployed, underemployed or transitioning can can go online. Self paced. We have over 500 courses they can take to try to develop those initial skills and get into the industry. And that's been very popular, too, So that those air a couple of things we're really trying to lean into >>anyone else want to react. Thio that question patterns success, best practices, new culture. >>I'd like Thio. The the wonderful thing about what you just touched on is problem solving, right, And there's some very, very good methodologies that are being taught in the universities and through programs like Hacking for Defense, which is sponsored by the National Security Innovation Network, a component of the I you where I work but the But whether you're using a lien methodologies or design school principals or any other method, the thing that's wonderful right now and not just, uh, where I work at the U. The Space force is doing this is well, but we're putting the problem out there for innovators to tackle, And so, rather than be prescriptive of the solutions that we want to procure, we want we want the best minds at all levels to be able to work on the problem. Uh, look at how they can leverage other commercial solutions infrastructure partnerships, uh, Thio to come up with a solution that we can that we can rapidly employ and scale. And if it's a dual use solution or whether it's, uh, civil military or or commercial, uh, in any of the other government solutions. Uh, that's really the best win for for the nation, because that commercial capability again allows us to scale globally and share those best practices with all of our friends and allies. People who share our values >>win win to this commercial. There's a business model potential financial benefits as well. Societal impact Preston. I want to come to you, JPL, NASA. I mean, you work in one of the most awesome places and you know, to me, you know, if you said to me, Hey, John, come working JP like I'm not smart enough to go there like I mean, like, it's a pretty It's intimidating, it might seem >>share folks out there, >>they can get there. I mean, it's you can get there if you have the right skills. I mean I'm just making that up. But, I mean, it is known to be super smart And is it attainable? So share your thoughts on this new culture because you could get the skills to get there. What's your take on all this >>s a bucket. Just missing something that really resonated with me, right? It's do it your love office. So if you put on the front engineer, the first thing you're gonna try to do is pick it apart. Be innovative, be creative and ways to solve that issue. And it has been really encouraging to me to see the ground welcome support an engagement that we've seen across our system. Engineers in space. I love space partners. A tackling the problem of cyber. Now that they know the West at risk on some of these cyber security threats that that they're facing with our space systems, they definitely want to be involved. They want to take the lead. They want to figure things out. They wanna be innovative and creative in that problem solving eso jpl We're doing a few things. Thio Raise the awareness Onda create a culture of security. Andi also create cyber advocates, cybersecurity advocates across our space engineers. We host events like hacked the lad, for example, and forgive me. Take a pause to think about the worst case scenarios that could that could result from that. But it certainly invites a culture of creative problem solving. Um, this is something that that kids really enjoy that are system engineers really enjoyed being a part off. Um, it's something that's new refreshing to them. Eso we were doing things like hosting a monthly cybersecurity advocacy group. When we talk about some of the cyber landscape of our space systems and invite our engineers into the conversation, we do outweighs programs specifically designed to to capture, um, our young folks, uh, young engineers to deceive. They would be interested and show them what this type of security has to offer by ways of data Analytic, since the engineering and those have been really, really successful identifying and bringing in new talent to address the skill gaps. >>Steve, I want to ask you about the d. O. D. You mentioned some of the commercial things. How are you guys engaging the commercial to solve the space issue? Because, um, the normalization in the economy with GPS just seeing spaces impacts everybody's lives. We we know that, um, it's been talked about. And and there's many, many examples. How are you guys the D o. D. From a security standpoint and or just from an advancement innovation standpoint, engaging with commercials, commercial entities and commercial folks? >>Well, I'll throw. I'll throw a, uh, I'll throw ah, compliment to Clint because he did such an outstanding job. The space forces already oriented, uh, towards ah, commercial where it's appropriate and extending the arms. Leveraging the half works on the Space Enterprise Consortium and other tools that allow for the entrepreneurs in the space force Thio work with their counterparts in a commercial community. And you see this with the, uh, you know, leveraging space X away to, uh, small companies who are doing extraordinary things to help build space situational awareness and, uh, s So it's it's the people who make this all happen. And what we do at at the D. O. D level, uh, work at the Office of Secretary defense level is we wanna make sure that they have the right tools to be able to do that in a way that allows these commercial companies to work with in this case of a space force or with cyber command and ways that doesn't redefine that. The nature of the company we want we want We want commercial companies to have, ah, great experience working with d o d. And we want d o d toe have the similar experience working, working with a commercial community, and and we actually work interagency projects to So you're going to see, uh, General Raymond, uh, hey, just recently signed an agreement with the NASA Esa, you're gonna see interagency collaborations on space that will include commercial capabilities as well. So when we speak as one government were not. You know, we're one voice, and that's gonna be tremendous, because if you're a commercial company on you can you can develop a capability that solves problems across the entire space enterprise on the government side. How great is that, Right. That's a scaling. Your solution, gentlemen. Let >>me pick you back on that, if you don't mind. I'm really excited about that. I mentioned new space, and Bucky talked about that too. You know, I've been flying satellites for 30 years, and there was a time where you know the U. S. Government national security. We wouldn't let anybody else look at him. Touch him. Plug into, um, anything else, right. And that probably worked at the time. >>But >>the world has changed. And more >>importantly, >>um, there is commercial technology and capability available today, and there's no way the U. S government or national security that national Intel community can afford economically >>to >>fund all that investment solely anymore. We don't have the manpower to do it anymore. So we have this perfect marriage of a burgeoning industry that has capabilities and it has re sources. And it has trained manpower. And we are seeing whether it's US Space Force, whether it's the intelligence community, whether it's NASA, we're seeing that opened up to commercial providers more than I've ever seen in my career. And I can tell you the customers I work with every day in a W s. We're building an entire ecosystem now that they understand how they can plug in and participate in that, and we're just seeing growth. But more importantly, we're seeing advanced capability at cheaper cost because of that hybrid model. So that really is exciting. >>Preston. You know you mentioned earlier supply chain. I don't think I think you didn't use the word supply chain. Maybe you did. But you know about the components. Um, you start opening things up and and your what you said baking it in to the beginning, which is well known. Uh, premise. It's complicated. So take me through again, Like how this all gonna work securely because And what's needed for skill sets because, you know, you're gonna open. You got open source software, which again, that's open. We live in a free society in the United States of America, so we can't lock everything down. You got components that are gonna be built anywhere all around the world from vendors that aren't just a certified >>or maybe >>certified. Um, it's pretty crazy. So just weigh in on this key point because I think Clint has it right. And but that's gonna be solved. What's your view on this? >>Absolutely. And I think it really, really start a top, right? And if you look back, you know, across, um in this country, particularly, you take the financial industry, for example, when when that was a burgeoning industry, what had to happen to ensure that across the board. Um, you know, your your finances were protected these way. Implemented regulations from the top, right? Yeah. And same thing with our health care industry. We implemented regulations, and I believe that's the same approach we're gonna need to take with our space systems in our space >>industry >>without being too directive or prescriptive. Instance she ating a core set of principles across the board for our manufacturers of space instruments for deployment and development of space systems on for how space data and scientific data is passed back and forth. Eso really? We're gonna need to take this. Ah, holistic approach. Thio, how we address this issue with cyber security is not gonna be easy. It's gonna be very challenging, but we need to set the guard rails for exactly what goes into our space systems, how they operate and how they communicate. >>Alright, so let's tie this back to the theme, um, Steve and Clint, because this is all about workforce gaps, opportunities. Um, Steve, you mentioned software defined. You can't do break fix in space. You can't just send a technician up in the space to fix a component. You gotta be software defined. We're talking about holistic approach, about commercial talk about business model technology with software and policy. We need people to think through, like you know. What the hell are you gonna do here, right? Do you just noticed road at the side of the road to drive on? There's no rules of engagement. So what I'm seeing is certainly software Check. If you wanna have a job for the next millennial software policy who solves two problems, what does freedom looked like in space Congestion Contention and then, obviously, business model. Can you guys comment on these three areas? Do you agree? And what specific person might be studying in grad school or undergraduate or in high school saying, Hey, I'm not a techie, but they can contribute your thoughts. I'll >>start off with, uh, speak on on behalf of the government today. I would just say that as policy goes, we need to definitely make sure that we're looking towards the future. Ah, lot of our policy was established in the past under different conditions, and, uh, and if there's anything that you cannot say today is that space is the same as it was even 10 years ago. So the so It's really important that our policy evolves and recognizes that that technology is going to enable not just a new ways of doing things, but also force us to maybe change or or get rid of obsolete policies that will inhibit our ability to innovate and grow and maintain peace with with a rapid, evolving threat. The for the for the audience today, Uh, you know, you want some job assurance, cybersecurity and space it's gonna be It's gonna be an unbelievable, uh, next, uh, few decades and I couldn't think of a more exciting for people to get into because, you know, spaces Ah, harsh environment. We're gonna have a hard time just dud being able differentiate, you know, anomalies that occur just because of the environment versus something that's being hacked. And so JPL has been doing this for years on they have Cem Cem great approaches, but but this is this is gonna be important if you put humans on the moon and you're going to sustain them there. Those life support systems are gonna be using, you know, state of the art computer technology, and which means, is also vulnerable. And so eso the consequences of us not being prepared? Uh, not just from our national security standpoint, but from our space exploration and our commercial, uh, economic growth in space over the long term all gonna be hinged on this cyber security environment. >>Clint, your thoughts on this too ill to get. >>Yeah. So I certainly agree with Bucky. But you said something a moment ago that Bucky was talking about as well. But that's the idea that you know in space, you can't just reach out and touch the satellite and do maintenance on the satellite the way you can't a car or a tank or a plane or a ship or something like that. And that is true. However, right, comma, I want to point out. You know, the satellite servicing industry is starting to develop where they're looking at robotic techniques in Cape abilities to go up in services satellite on orbit. And that's very promising off course. You got to think through the security policy that goes with that, of course. But the other thing that's really exciting is with artificial intelligence and machine learning and edge computing and database analytics and all those things that right on the cloud. You may not even need to send a robotic vehicle to a satellite, right? If you can upload and download software defined, fill in the blank right, maybe even fundamentally changing the mission package or the persona, if you will, of the satellite or the spacecraft. And that's really exciting to, ah, lot >>of >>security policy that you've gotta work through. But again, the cloud just opens up so many opportunities to continue to push the boundaries. You know, on the AWS team, the aerospace and satellite team, which is, you know, the new team that I'm leading. Now our motto is to the stars through the cloud. And there are just so many exciting opportunities right for for all those capabilities that I just mentioned to the stars through the cloud >>President, your thoughts on this? >>Yes, eso won >>a >>little bit of time talking about some of the business model implications and some of the challenges that exists there. Um, in my experience, we're still working through a bit of a language barrier of how we define risk management for our space systems. Traditionally traditionally risk management models is it is very clear what poses a risk to a flight mission. Our space mission, our space system. Um, and we're still finding ways to communicate cyber risk in the same terms that are system engineers are space engineers have traditionally understood. Um, this is a bit of a qualitative versus quantitative, a language barrier. But however adopting a risk management model that includes cybersecurity, a za way to express wish risk to miss the success, I think I think it would be a very good thing is something that that we have been focused on the J. P o as we Aziz, we look at the 34 years beyond. How do >>we >>risk that gap and not only skills but communication of cyber risk and the way that our space engineers and our project engineers and a space system managers understand >>Clinton, like Thio talk about space Force because this is the most popular new thing. It's only a couple of nine months in roughly not even a year, uh, already changing involving based on some of the reporting we've done even here at this symposium and on the Internet. Um, you know, when I was growing up, you know, I wasn't there when JFK said, you know, we're gonna get to the moon. I was born in the sixties, so, you know, when I was graduating my degree, you know, Draper Labs, Lincoln Lab, JPL, their pipeline and people wasn't like a surge of job openings. Um, so this kind of this new space new space race, you know, Kennedy also said that Torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans. So in a way that's happening right now with space force. A new generation is here is a digital generation. It's multi disciplinary generation. Could you take a minute and share, uh, for for our audience? And here at this symposium, um, the mission of Space Force and where you see it going because this truly is different. And I think anyone who's young e I mean, you know, if this was happening when I was in college would be like dropping everything. I'm in there, I think, cause there's so many areas thio jump into, um, it's >>intellectually challenging. >>It's intoxicating in some level. So can you share your thoughts? >>Yeah. Happy to do that. Of course. I I need to remind everybody that as a week ago I'm formally retired. So I'm not an official spokesman for US forces. But with that, you know, it said I did spend the last 18 months planning for it, designing and standing it up. And I'll tell you what's really exciting is you know, the commander of, uh, US Base Force General J. Raymond, who's the right leader at the right time. No question in my >>mind. But >>he said, I want to stand up the Space Force as the first fully digital service in the United States. Right? So he is trying >>to bake >>cloud baked cybersecurity, baked digital transformational processes and everything we did. And that was a guidance he gave us every day, every day. When we rolled in. He said, Remember, guys, I don't wanna be the same. I don't wanna be stale. I want new thinking, new capabilities and I want it all to be digital on. That's one of the reasons When we brought the first wave of people into the space force, we brought in space operations, right. People like me that flew satellites and launch rockets, we brought in cyber space experts, and we brought in intelligence experts. Those were the first three waves of people because of that, you know, perfect synergy between space and cyber and intel all wrapped in >>it. >>And so that was really, really smart. The other thing I'll say just about, you know, Kennedy's work. We're going to get to the moon. So here we are. Now we're going back to the Moon Project Artemus that NASA is working next man first woman on the moon by 2024 is the plan and >>then >>with designs to put a permanent presence on the moon and then lean off to march. So there was a lot to get excited about. I will tell you, as we were taking applications and looking at rounding out filling out the village in the U. S. Space Force, we were overwhelmed with the number of people that wanted, and that was a really, really good things. So they're off to a good start, and they're just gonna accomplishment major things. I know for sure. >>Preston, your thoughts on this new generation people out there were like I could get into this. This is a path. What's your what's your opinion on this? And what's your >>E could, uh, you so bold as to say >>that >>I feel like I'm a part of that new generation eso I grew up very much into space. Uh, looking at, um, listen to my, uh, folks I looked up to like Carl Sagan. Like like Neil Tyson. DeGrasse on did really feeling affinity for what What this country has done is for is a space program are focused on space exploration on bond. Through that, I got into our security, as it means from the military. And I just because I feel so fortunate that I could merge both of those worlds because of because of the generational, um, tailoring that we do thio promote space exploration and also the advent of cybersecurity expertise that is needed in this country. I feel like that. We are We are seeing a conversions of this too. I see a lot of young people really getting into space exploration. I see a lot of young people as well. Um uh, gravitating toward cybersecurity as a as a course of study. And to see those two worlds colliding and converse is something that's very near and dear to me. And again, I I feel like I'm a byproduct of that conversion, which is which, Really, Bothwell for space security in the future, >>we'll your great leader and inspiration. Certainly. Senior person as well. Congratulations, Steve. You know, young people motivational. I mean, get going. Get off the sidelines. Jump in Water is fine, Right? Come on in. What's your view on motivating the young workforce out there and anyone thinking about applying their skills on bringing something to the table? >>Well, look at the options today. You have civil space President represents you have military space. Uh, you have commercial space on and even, you know, in academia, the research, the potential as a as an aspiring cyber professional. All of you should be thinking about when we when we When? When we first invented the orbit, which eventually became the Internet, Uh, on Lee, we were, uh if all we had the insight to think Well, geez, you know whether the security implications 2030 years from now of this thing scaling on growing and I think was really good about today's era. Especially as Clint said, because we were building this space infrastructure with a cyber professionals at ground zero on dso the So the opportunity there is to look out into the future and say we're not just trying to secure independent her systems today and assure the free for all of of information for commerce. You know, the GPS signal, Uh, is Justus much in need of protection as anything else tied to our economy, But the would have fantastic mission. And you could do that. Uh, here on the ground. You could do it, uh, at a great companies like Amazon Web services. But you can also one of these states. Perhaps we go and be part of that contingency that goes and does the, uh, the se's oh job that that president has on the moon or on Mars and, uh, space will space will get boring within a generation or two because they'll just be seen as one continuum of everything we have here on Earth. And, uh, and that would be after our time. But in the meantime, is a very exciting place to be. And I know if I was in in my twenties, I wanna be, uh, jumping in with both feet into it. >>Yeah, great stuff. I mean, I think space is gonna be around for a long long time. It's super exciting and cybersecurity making it secure. And there's so many areas defeating on. Gentlemen, thank you very much for your awesome insight. Great panel. Um, great inspiration. Every one of you guys. Thank you very much for for sharing for the space and cybersecurity symposium. Appreciate it. Thank you very much. >>Thanks, John. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, >>I'm >>John for your host for the Space and Cybersecurity Symposium. Thanks for watching.

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of VM World 2020 brought to you by VM Ware and its ecosystem >>partners. Hello and welcome to the Cube. Special coverage of VM World 2020 Virtual I'm John for host of the Cube were stupid men Day volonte all doing interviews covering the virtual version of VM World. First time it's ever happened. We've been covering VM World for over 10 years, our 11th season with Cube at VM World. And of course, it's difference virtual. But we're doing our part. We're getting in the programs. We need to get the stories out and we got a great guest here. Submit to on who's the chief customer officer of the M where, uh, back to VM, where he ran the end user computing of which we covered air. Watch a lot of great announcements Submit. Great to see you. Thanks for coming on to the Q. Virtual >>John. Great to see you again. And great to be back on the Cube. >>So great to see you. And again I know you. You came in your back into the wheelhouse of VM ware. But as the theme of this show is putting the digital foundation for an unpredictable world. Also, with Covidien going virtual makes a lot of sense. However, VM Ware has been doing extremely well on the business performance side and making all the right tech moves we've been covering them to Cuba is well documented, the business models evolving. The performance is there. You are in a new role for VM, where its newly created chief customer officer tell us why you're back. Why this role? Why is it important? >>Yeah, great question, John. You know, I I joined the anywhere because we end where I look at sort of what bm where is trying to do all aligned with what customers want If you think about customers, they have been up until now, dabbling with cloud building sort of strategies on how to embrace Cloud, which applications will go to which parts off the cloud. And it has been something that has been more off slow RL strategy and with the multi cloud transition plan. Now, VM Ware provides to some extent this, you know, started out with operating system for the hardware, and it has evolved to provide operating system for the cloud it truly runs applications across multiple clouds. And with our partnerships with AWS Azure, Microsoft Google, we're able to sort of give our customers this multi cloud platform for them to run any application, whether that's traditional or modern, in a sort of unified operational fashion. Now this is a different subscription world for customers, right and customers in the world of cloud, especially when they're going into this kind of a transformational journey. Um, you know, it requires we anywhere to think slightly differently. It's not just the traditional cell implement support kind of customer model. You have really help them achieve their out, come over a period of time and then make them successful as they continue to sort of face the uncertainties off the multi cloud world. So So So Pat and Sanjay decided to create this new customer experience office and all different functions from success support digital engagement as well a czar insulting professional services. Tam's were put together so that we can offer integrated experiences to the customer. And that sounded exciting and, you know, we're making tons off interesting innovations there. Some announced that GM World and, uh, very much aligned with an objective to help our customers. >>E. I want to dig into the news and the announcement because I think there's a specific thing I'd like to drill into. But I want to get your thoughts submit because I think VM Ware and I thought to Sanjay about this as well as Pat. Clearly. Cooper Days is the dial tone of the Internet investment cloud Native Project. Monterey speaks to Multi cloud, totally get it. But Cove it has accelerated not only VM where every company, whether they're on the delivery side of it selling side or even consuming of the technology cloud, for instance, has forced the digital transformation. And it's catching some people off guard, right? So what are your thoughts? Because, you know, you have a value projects, you sell it to customers, you implement it, you support it. I mean, that >>was a >>nice grew swing for enterprise vendors like VM Ware. But now, with cove, it and all the digital transformation acceleration, it's causing a lot of people to be ready faster. How >>do you get >>that readiness? What do you bring to the table? What's your view on this? What's your reaction? Because people >>try to >>figure this out. It's confusing. >>I mean, I You know what it's it's very interesting. For example, I will give you an example. There's like, two extremes, and both of them are dealing with a very similar situation, all caused because of prove it. Okay, On one end of the spectrum, there are customers who are saying, Listen, our business is doing extremely well because of digital, and all of a sudden, uh, business needs this rapid agility, which can only be achieved through modern applications, and they're able to sort of move these applications because of elasticity of the cloud and leveraging multiple clouds. To do so is extremely important. If you're on one side of the spectrum on your business, where the business is doing extremely well, you have a percentage of the business that was coming from e commerce. All of a sudden that e commerce has accelerated. You know you can think off certain retailers, you know. Large scale retailers in that segment, and their their multi cloud journeys are accelerated, mostly because off just this surge in demand and change in capabilities that are needed to perform digital engagement with customers at a much much rapid pace, which are very difficult to do without leveraging multiple clouds. That's one extreme. The other extreme is, you know, I'll give you an example from large scale airlines and we all know in the travel hospitality airline business, this is extremely slow business for them, right at this point of time, and they're using the opportunity off this sort of time when things are slower to say, Okay, why don't we take this opportunity to fundamentally change our distilling it and truly embraced multi cloud while doing so? Because there is an opportunity to do so. The workload on the application than the infrastructure does not high little more technology reasons. A little bit more sort of a for downtime reason sort of go through the transformation faster. In other words, both ends of the spectrum. I'm seeing customers move the words sort of this destination fast it. And guess what? There is really no one at this stage outside of VM ware who can help them achieve that because otherwise you set a single voice. You know, there are their players who died. You tow their singular cloud solution and running. You know what I what I tell customers is multi cloud doesn't mean you are running two different architectures on two different clouds, right? That's not multi cloud. Multi cloud means running a singular architectures on multiple clouds, because that's when you get through governance and true operational scale and true experience and elasticity and control. And that's what we, um, where is all about? So we are now engaged with those conversations and helping customers at both the front end right when they're engaged with us at this stage. But we have also down tailored our service delivery and our success off offerings and are how we engage with customers digitally and sort of technically and through people. Uh, in once they start their journey with us, Um, and they sort of embark on leveraging the technology into multi cloud I want. So So that's the sort of shift that has occurred. >>Yeah, I want to unpack the offering in a second, but I want to stay in the customer experience for a minute. We've heard that cliche a customer experience. So digital transmission. Okay, it's actually happening now, and I totally agree with you, by the way there's there's the modernization trend. You just basically spoke to the spectrums. But it's about modernization. Okay, if you think modernization, you think business model business model is Hey, it's pretty light right now. I'm not a lot of people traveling. Let's retool, Let's modernize, Let's use our resource is and modernize our business, which is a lot of applications. It's everything up and down the stack. And then the companies that have a tailwind with Covic, who have had the epiphany and saying, If we don't building modern app or have modern APS in market, we're out of business. So there's a critical urgency to, uh, coming out of it with a growth strategy that's a business model transformation. Totally get that. That's where the customers are. So the question for you is okay. How do you talk to the customer that is saying, Hey, I'm building a modern app. We have to pivot, were forced to pivot whatever word you want to use force to survive. They're now they have to build a modern app. How do you guys support that customer? How does that customer? What does that customer need to be successful? >>Yeah, I mean, I think it starts with an architectural approach right. We bring to the customers and architectural approach across multiple clouds that helped them when they go for their existing applications or new modern applications conforming toe, one operating model and one architectures. Because in this in this time, you know, customers have many critical line of business applications. This airline customer I was talking about, they have 600 applications that are quite critical. They sort of segment them out on which one they will truly modernize because of the business model modernization like you mentioned and which ones they will live with, the way they are for multiple reasons and how it starts with connecting them with a unified architect chair and a unified operating model is how we start with customers. Okay. And that is where the power off the younger comes in. Because, like I said, it becomes this architectural operating system for for the customers to run and adopt multiple clouds. >>You gotta be the chief customer officer. You're the quarterback. You're the one in charge of making sure customers were happy. Okay? And they get what they need. And again, there's different aspects of it. What do you guys announcing it? VM World 2020 virtual, um, that people should pay attention thio around servicing customers in this new subscription and SAS world. >>Yeah, I think besides the technology announcements in terms off modern, sort off, multi cloud platform, the architectural with Project Monterey from the customer experience side, we did announcement to announcements. One was for customers embarking on a journey. We want to make sure that customers get everything they need to be successful on the journey on an ongoing basis. Some off these journeys for large customers, John can take not just sort of three months, but three years because they're dealing with various applications. So for that we announced two pretty simple and easy to embrace offerings. One is AP navigator. AP Navigator enables customers to quickly assess which applications I have to be, you know, on one end, you know, rewritten, completely rewritten and on the other end simply sort of re hosted. Okay, and there are multiple options in between, and we call them as a five, our model with customers, and we guide customers through our own assessment and working with customers on how to sort of segment their applications and use a common architectures across all of them that we can then help and it and secondly, toe help them with. We announced something called Success 3 60 Success 3 60 is Our Mechanism Toe guide and help customers on an ongoing basis for a success plan with continuous, sort off adoption guidance designed workshops as well as providing they're dedicated support that customers need for embracing multiple cloud across all the cloud. With this architectural this way, customers get assured that they're able to get the right up front sort of assessment on applications and ongoing success. Okay, And that's sort of what we announced within customer experience side. And we have been able all of this available two people you know there are critical for large scale engagements, but also digital, you know, just like our customers are innovating with digital. We innovated with our own digital environment, and we brought it all together with something called customer Connect, all available with one single digital experience that's mobile friendly, alert driven, search driven. You know, all the AI that's needed at this point of time in terms of engaging with customers with proactive notifications and guidance in terms of how they're doing with success built into a singular experience so that they can engage with us, and we can engage with them to make them successful. >>And so it's people in technology you guys are bringing to the table. What can customers expect? Because, you know, as they've worked with the M where you've always had great technical support outside its have been a technology driven company. Um, but as you start getting into SAS, you're starting to get into the business model transformation. How do you guys impacting the customers and how you go to market and how you, uh, service your customer base? >>Yeah, I think there are two elements What customers can expect one. They don't have to stand up and engagement and experience mortal completely separate for a small set of applications on a completely different you know, cloud architectures. They could just fit and build a single experience off dealing with the M, where, as a mechanism to enable all of their applications to be hosted, regardless of which cloud there in Uh huh Sandvik they do it at their own pace, right? As then when they're ready for applications. Secondly, and more importantly, for the business model transformation side. We have a model where we continue to show them the value realization. Okay, because these are true business model transformations. At this stage, there is lot off investment that's coming into I P while at the same time, the rest off the business is doing belt type. So there is a continuous pressure on Earth. Customers are I t. That is the champion for the customers, and they're working with developers in line of business teams, and they have to continue to show how what they're investing into as a singular platform or in architecture is going to deliver some kind of a value on an ongoing basis. So we have delivered on an ongoing basis rip boards and feed back and continuous sort of information back to the customers so that they can take back to their businesses on all the investments they're making now are ongoing basis what value the business is getting, because at the end of the day in this, this is probably the first time in the where I I t is probably getting the least belt tightening in the case off sort of an economic downturn, and in fact, it is being looked at as a way to invest out off the downturn. Right? So they're going to be, in a way where there sometimes even going into the boardroom and showing not just governance, but also sort of the investments they made, what kind of value they they got. So those are the two things were providing seamless and at at pace move toe multi cloud with a common experience and second, ongoing value realization that they can communicate whoever they need. Toe >>submit. You know, we've been following VM where for many me personally of persons that was founded. But with the Cube since 2010 star 11th year, You know, we've been critical of times and pointing out the obvious and in some cases, not so obvious successes and challenges. Um and so we've seen the completeness of vision evolved and pat, certainly. You know, he he held the line and he did the right things. And then he executed. So, you know, as you look at the emerald, we're now been complimentary on some of the moves. Certainly on the technology side that you guys have made and then we again we've talked about this many times on the Cube. So complete in this, uh, vision check. Okay, this is wholesome. Michael Dell issues, but gave talks about that. So good vision complete executed business performance is there. But as you talk about sass and subscription, your ability to execute is going to be a key variable and things like the Gartner Magic quadrant for the areas you're competing in. Multi cloud talk about how you guys just set up financially to support that personnel. What is your organization gonna do? Can you share your vision? How you going to be able to execute customers success programs as this uncertainty around multi cloud continues to become reality and things are changing. >>Yeah, I think a couple of things firstly, you know, to be absolutely candid, you know, the pace at which the customers are going to the new multi cloud models is faster now than it was nine months ago. We just discussed that. Okay, so I wouldn't I would be misrepresenting if I said we always were ready for this kind of the case. We're also adjusting and innovating at this stage as fast as possible. The good news is that we were headed in the right direction. Okay, if we were headed in the wrong direction, it would have been much, much harder. Okay. Secondly, I think there is a very strong leadership, the leadership team. I mean, at the end of the day, it's vision, leadership, team investment, the components and, of course, diligence to execute that comes in for the execution. To me vision and the direction was always very, very strong. It motivated me to join the anywhere for this important mission. Second and many other exact. If second the leadership team is as strong as they get, the four team is extremely strong. We have strong leadership team leadership from Pat Michael, of course, as well as Sanjay Rgu Rajiv. Everyone provides strong leadership and then third, you asked about sort of the financial element. You know, they're The company continues to perform quite well, right? We have core businesses that some critical for customers to use as technologies to enable them, you know, to come out off this sort off economic issue we're facing and they're facing. So as a result, you know, financially, we're in a good position to be able to invest back into the business and Secondly, we have made now we've always, always been extremely strong on the technology front. Okay, now with Sanjay and packed sort of saying that we're going to be extremely strong in terms of customer experience front because the world of subscription, the world of cloud, the world off the SAS requires not just great technology but also a great customer experience. So we're seeing tremendous in a continued sort of support financially in terms of investing into the customer experience, from both getting the right set of people offerings as well as technology. So I believe we have all three things. Having said that, you know, some of these things that we're investing in. They need a lot of work, and I'm. While I'm proud of what we have accomplished, I truly believe you know the best is yet to come, and the right investments that we're making are going to continue to sort of enhance our offerings both through people as well as technology. But there's work to be done. You >>know, it's all about, you know, having the consume ability of the technology thio, the value proposition of VM ware and also also is a company being um, open and easy to work with and consumable that way. So I think this is a great time. Certainly. Product wise. Business wise, You guys do extremely well. Congratulations on your new role on the senior leadership is the chief customer officer of VM Ware will be following the stories of your customers. So I really appreciate you taking the time. >>Thank you. Thank you so much, John. Excited to be back. Great >>to have you back on the queue here. VM world coverage of 2020 virtual. I'm John for this. The host of Cube Virtual. Check us out cube dot Net. And also our new cube 3 65 where it's our new modern application for virtual events. Of course, we want to continue to tell the most important stories and cover all the key people making it happen. Submit. Thank you for coming on. This is the Cube. Thanks for watching

>> Male's Voice: From around the globe, its theCUBE. With digital coverage of a special announcement, brought to you by Nutanix. (soft music) >> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman. And welcome to this special announcement for Nutanix, about some new product releases in the public cloud. To help us kick this off for the Asia Pacific and Japan region. Happy to welcome to the program Jordan Reizes, who's the vice president of marketing, for APJ and Nutanix. Jordan, help us introduce it. Thanks Stu. So today we're really pleased to announce Nutanix Clusters, availability in Asia Pacific and Japan, at the same time as the rest of the world. And we think this technology is really important to our geographically dispersed customers, all across the region, in terms of helping them, On-Ramp to the cloud. So, we're really excited about this launch today. And Stu, I can't wait to see the rest of the program. And make sure you stay tuned at the end, for our interview with our CTO, Justin Hurst. Who's going to be answering a bunch of questions that are really specific to the APJ region. >> All right, thank you so much Jordan, for helping us kick this off. We're now going to cut over to my interview with Monica and Tarkan, with the news.

>> Male's Voice: From around the globe, its theCUBE. With digital coverage of a special announcement, brought to you by Nutanix. (soft music) >> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman. And welcome to this special announcement for Nutanix, about some new product releases in the public cloud. To help us kick this off for the Asia Pacific and Japan region. Happy to welcome to the program Jordan Reizes, who's the vice president of marketing, for APJ and Nutanix. Jordan, help us introduce it. Thanks Stu. So today we're really pleased to announce Nutanix Clusters, availability in Asia Pacific and Japan, at the same time as the rest of the world. And we think this technology is really important to our geographically dispersed customers, all across the region, in terms of helping them, On-Ramp to the cloud. So, we're really excited about this launch today. And Stu, I can't wait to see the rest of the program. And make sure you stay tuned at the end, for our interview with our CTO, Justin Hurst. Who's going to be answering a bunch of questions that are really specific to the APJ region. >> All right, thank you so much Jordan, for helping us kick this off. We're now going to cut over to my interview with Monica and Tarkan, with the news. >> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman. And I want to welcome you to this special event that we are doing with Nutanix. Of course, in 2020 many things have changed. And that has changed some of the priorities, for many companies out there. Acceleration of cloud adoption, absolutely have been there. I've talked to many companies that were dipping their toe, or thinking about, where they were going to cloud. And of course it's rapidly moved to accelerate to be able to leverage work from home, remote contact centers, and the like. So, we have to think about how we can accelerate what's happening, and make sure that our workforce, and our customers are all taken care of. So, one of the front seats of this, is of course, companies working to help modernize customers out there. And, Nutanix is part of that discussion. So, I want to welcome to join us for this special discussion of cloud and Nutanix. I have two of our CUBE alumnus. First of all, we have Monica Kumar. She's the senior vice president of product, with Nutanix. And Tarkan Maner, who's a relative newcomer. Second time on theCUBE, in his new role many time guests. Previously, Tarkan is the chief commercial officer with Nutanix. Monica and Tarkan, thank you so much for joining us. >> Thank you so much. So happy to be back on theCUBE. >> Yeah, thank you. >> All right. So, Tarkan as I was teeing up, we know that, IT staffs in general, CIO specifically, and companies overall, are under a lot of pressure in general. But in 2020, there are new pressures on them. So, why don't you explain to us, the special cloud announcement. Tell us, what's Nutanix launching, and why it's so important today. >> So, Stu first of all, thank you. And glad to be here with Monica. And basically you and I, spend some time with a few customers in the past few weeks and months. I'll tell you, the things in our industry are changing at a pace that we never seen before. Especially with this pandemic backdrop, as we're going through. And obviously, all the economic challenges that creates beyond the obviously, health challenges and across the world, all the pain it creates. But also it creates some opportunities for our customers and partners to deliver solutions to our enterprise customers, and commercial customers, and in a public sector customers, in multiple industries. From healthcare, obviously very importantly, to manufacturing, to supply chains, and to all the other industries, including financial services and public sector again. So in that context, Monica knows as well as she's our leader. You know, our strategy, we're putting lots of effort in this new multi-class strategy as a company. As you know, is too well, Nutanix wrote the book, in digital infrastructures with its own private, (mumbles) infrastructure story. Now they're taking that next level, via our data center solutions, via DevOps solutions, and end user computer solutions. Now, the multicloud fashion, working with partners like AWS. So, in this launch, we have our new, hybrid cloud infrastructure, Nutanix Clusters product now available in the AWS. We are super excited. We have more than 20 tech firms, and customers, and partners at sealable executive level support in this big launch. Timing is usually important, because of this pandemic backdrop. And the goal is obviously to help our customers save money, focus what's important for them, save money for them, and making sure they streamlined their IT operation. So it's a huge launch for us. And we're super excited about it. >> Yeah. And the one thing I would add too, what Tarkan said too is, look, we talk to a lot of customers, and obviously cloud is the constant, in terms of enabling innovation. But I think more with COVID, what's on top of mind is also how do we use cloud for innovation? But really be intelligent about cost optimization. So with this new announcement, what we are excited about is we're bringing, making really a hybrid cloud reality, across public and private cloud. But also making sure customers, get the cost efficiency they need, when they're deploying the solution. So we are super excited to bring true hybrid cloud offering with AWS to the market today. >> Well, I can tell you Nutanix cluster is absolutely one of the exciting technologies I've enjoyed, watching and getting ready for. And of course, a partnership with the largest public cloud player out there AWS, is really important. When I think about Nutanix from the earliest days, the word that we always used for the HI Space and Nutanix specifically, was simplicity. Anybody in the tech space know that, true simplicity is really hard to do. When I think about cloud, when I think about multicloud, simplicity is not the first thing that I think of. So, Tarkan has helped us connect, how is Nutanix going to extend the simplicity that it's done, for so long now in the data center, into places like AWS with this solution? >> So, Stu you're spot on. Look, Monica and I spend a lot of time with our customers. One thing about Nutanix executive team, you're very customer-driven. And I'm not just saying this to make a point. We really spent tons of time with them because our solutions are basically so critical for them to run their businesses. So, just recently I was with a senior executive, C level executive of an airline. Right before that, Monica and I spent actually with one of the largest banks in the world in France, in Paris. Right before the pandemic, we were actually traveling. Talking to, not all the CIO, the chief operating officer on one of these huge banks. And the biggest issue was, how these companies are trying to basically adjust their plans, business plans. I'm not talking about tech plans, IT plans, the business plans around this backdrop with the economic stress. And obviously, now pandemic is in a big way. One of the CIOs told me, he was an airline executive. "Look Tarkan, in the next four months, my business might be half of what it is today. And I need to do more with less, in so many different ways, while I'm cutting costs." So it's a tough time. So, in that context is to... Your actually right. Multicloud is in a difficult proposition, but it's critical, for these companies to manage their cost structures across multiple operating models. Cloud to us, is not a destination, it's a means to an ends. It is an operating model. At the end of the day, the differentiation is still the software. The unique software that we provide from digital infrastructures, to deliver, end to end discreet data center solutions, DevOps solutions for developers, as well as for end user computing individuals, to making sure to take advantage of, these VDI decibels service topic capability. So in that context, what we are providing now to this CIOs who are going through, this difficult time is, a platform, in which they can move their workloads from cloud to cloud, based on their needs, with freedom of choice. Look, one of these big banks that Monica and I visited in France, huge global bank. They have a workloads on AWS, they have workload on Azure, they have workloads on Google, workloads on (indistinct), the local XP, they have workloads in Germany. They have workloads providers in Asia, in Taiwan, and other locations. On top of that, they're also using Nutanix on-prem as well as Nutanix cloud, our own cloud services for VR. And then, this is not just in this nation. This is an operating model. So the biggest request from them is, look, can you guys make this cost effective? Can we use, all these operating models and move our data, and applications from cloud to cloud? In simple terms, can we get, some kind of a flexibility with commits as well as we pay credits they paid for so far? And, those are things we're working on. And I'm sure Monica is going to get a little bit more into detail, as we talk to this. You are super excited, to start this journey with AWS, with this launch, but you're not going to stop there. Our goal is, we just kind of discussed with Monica earlier, provide freedom of choice across multiple clouds, both on-prem and off-prem, for our customers to cut costs, and to focus on what's important for them. >> Yeah, and I would just add, to sum it up, we are really simplifying the multicloud complexity for our customers. And I can go into more detail, but that's really the gist of it. Is what Nutanix is doing with this announcement, and more coming up in the future. >> Well, Monica, when I think about customers, and how do they decide, what stays in their data center, what goes into the public cloud? It's really their application portfolio. I need to look at my workloads, I need to look at my skillset. So, when I look at the cluster solution, what are some of the key use cases? What workloads are going to be the first ones that you expect, or you're having customers use with it today? >> Sure. And as we talk to customers too, this clearly few key use cases that they've been trying to, build a hybrid strategy around. The first few ones are bursting into cloud, right? In case of, a demand of sudden demand, how do I burst and scale my, let's say a VDI environment. or database environment into the cloud? So that's clearly one that many of our customers want to be able to do simply, and without having to incur this extreme complexity of managing these environments. Number two, it's about DR, and we saw with COVID, right? Business continuity became a big deal for many organizations. They weren't prepared for it. So the ability to actually spin up your applications and data in the cloud seamlessly, in case of a disaster, that's another big use case. The third one, of which many customers talk about is, can I lift and shift my applications as is, into the cloud? Without having to rewrite a single line of code, or without having to rewrite all of it, right? That's another one. And last but not least, the one that we're also hearing a lot about is, how do I extend my current applications by using cloud native services, that's available on public cloud? So those are four, there's many more, of course. But in terms of workloads, I mentioned two examples, right? VDI, which is Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, and is a computing, and also databases. More and more of our customers, don't want to invest in again having, on-premises data center assets sitting there idly. And, wait for when the capacity surges, the demand for capacity surges, they want to be able to do that in the cloud. So I'd say those are the few use cases and workloads. One thing I want to go back to what Tarkan was talking about, really their three key reasons, why the current hybrid cloud solutions, haven't really panned out for customers. Number one, it's having a unified management environment across public and private cloud. There's a few solutions out there, but none of them have proved to be simple enough, to actually put into real execution. You know, with Nutanix, the one thing you can do is literally build a hybrid cloud within, under an hour. Under an hour, you can spin up Nutanix Clusters, which you have on-premises, the same exact cluster in Amazon, under one hour. There you go. And you have the same exact management plan, that we offer on-prem, that now can manage your AWS Nutanix Clusters. It's that easy, right? And then, you can easily move your data and applications across, if you choose to. You want to move and burst into public cloud? Do it. You want to keep some stuff on-prem? Do it. If you're going to develop in the cloud, do it. Want to keep production on-prem, do it. Single management plan, seamless mobility. And the third point is about cost. Simplicity of managing the costs, making sure you know, how you're going to incur costs. How about, if you can hibernate your AWS cluster when you're not using it? We allow the... We have the capability now in our software to do that. How about knowing, where to place which workload. Which workload goes into public cloud, which stays on-premises. We have an amazing tool called beam, that gives the customers that ability to assess, which is the right cloud for the right workload. So I can go on and on about this. You know, we've talked to so many customers, but this is in a nutshell. You know, the use cases and workloads that we are delivering to customers right out the gate. >> Well, Monica, I'd love to hear a little bit about the customers that have had early access to this. What customer stories can you share? Understand of course? You're probably going to need to anonymize. But, I'd like to understand, how they've been leveraging clusters, the value that they're getting from it. >> Absolutely. We've been working with a number of customers. And I'll give you a few examples. There's a customer in Australia, I'll start with that. And they basically run a big event that happens every five years for them. And that they have to scale something to 24 million people. Now imagine, if they have to keep capacity on site, anticipating the needs for five years in a row, well, they can't do that. And the big event is going to happen next year for them. So they are getting ready with now clusters, to really expand the VDI environments into the cloud, in a big way with AWS. So from Nutanix on-prem to AWS, and expand VDI and burst into the cloud. So that's one example. That's obviously when you have an event-driven capacity bursting into the cloud. Another customer, who is in the insurance business. For them, DR is of course very important. I mean, DR is important for every industry in every business. But for them, they realize that they need to be able to, transparently run the applications in the case of a disaster on the cloud. So they've been using non Nutanix Clusters with AWS to do that. Another customer is looking at lifting and shifting some of the database applications into, AWS with Nutanix, for example. And then we have yet another customer who's looking at retiring, their a part of the data center estate, and moving that completely to AWS, with Nutanix as a backbone, Nutanix Clusters as a backbone. I mean, and we have tons of examples of customers who during COVID, for example, were able to burst capacity, and spin up hundreds and thousands of remote employees, using clusters into AWS cloud. Using Citrix also by the way, as the desktop provider. So again, I can go on, we have tons of customers. There's obviously a big demand for the solution. Because now it's so easy to use. We have customers, really surprised going, "Wait, I now have built a whole hybrid card within an hour. And I was able to scale from, six nodes, to 60 nodes, just like that, on AWS cloud from on-prem six nodes, to 16 in AWS cloud. Our customers are really, really pleasantly surprised with the ease of use, and how quickly they can scale, using clusters in AWS. >> Yeah. Tarkan I have to imagine that, this is a real change for the conversation you have with customers. I mean, Nutanix has been partner with AWS for a number of years. I remember the first time that I saw Nutanix, at the reinvent show. But, cloud is definitely front and center, in a lot of your customer's conversations. So, with your partners, with your customers, has to be just a whole different aspect, to the conversations that you can have. >> Actually Stu, as you heard from Monica too. As I mentioned earlier, this is not just a destination for the customers, right? I know you using these buzzwords, at the end of day, there's an open end model. If it's an open end model they want to take advantage of, to cut costs and do more with less. So in that context, as you heard, even in this conversation, there is many pinpoint in this. Like again, being able to move the workloads from location to location, cost optimize those things, provide a streamlined operations. Again, as Monica suggested, making the apps, and the data relating those apps mobile, and obviously provide built-in networking capabilities. All those capabilities make it easier for them to cut costs. So we're hearing constantly, from the enterprises is small and large, private sector and public sector, nothing different. Clearly they have options. They want to have the freedom of choice. Some of these workloads are going to run on-prem, some of them off prem. And off prem is going to have, tons of different radiations. So in that context, as I mentioned earlier, we have our own cloud as well. We provide 20 plus skews to 17,000 customers around the world. It's a $2 billion software business run rate is as you know. And, a lot of those questions on-prem customers now, also coming to our own cloud services. With cloud partners, we have our own cloud services, with our own billing, payments, logistics, and service capabilities. With a credit card, you can actually, you can do DR. (mumbles) a service to Nutanix itself. But some of these customers also want to go be able to go to AWS, or Azure, or to a local service provider. Sometimes it's US companies, we think US only. But think about this, this is a global phenomenon. I have customers in India. We have customers in Australia as Monica talked about. In China, in Japan, in Germany. And some of these enterprise customers, public sector customers, they want to DR, Disaster Recovery as a service to a local service provider, within the country. Because of the new data governance, laws and security concerns, they don't want the data and us, to go outside of the boundaries of the country. In some cases, in the same continent, if you're in Switzerland, not even forget about the country, the same city. So we want to make sure, we give capabilities for customers, use the cloud as an operating model the way they want. And as part of this, just you know Stu, you're not alone in this, we can not do this alone. We have, tremendous level of partner support as you're going to see in the new announcements. From HP as one of our key partners, Lenovo, AMD, Intel, Fujitsu, Citrix for end user computing. You're partnering with Palo Alto networks for security, Azure partners, as you know we support (indistinct). We have partners like Red Hat, whose in tons of work in the Linux front. We partnered with IBM, we partner with Dell. So, the ecosystem makes it so much easier for our customers, especially with this pandemic backdrop. And I think what you're going to see from Nutanix, more partners, more customer proof points, to help the customers innovate the cut costs, in this difficult backdrop. Especially for the next 24 months, I think what you're going to see is, tremendous so to speak adoption, of this multicloud approach that you're focusing on right now. >> Yeah, and let me add, I know our partner list is long. So Tarkan also, we have the global size, of course. The WebPros, and HCL, and TCS, and Capgemini, and Zensar, you name it all. We're working with all of them to bring clusters based solutions to market. And, for the entire Nutanix stack, also partners like Equinix and Yoda. So it's a long list of partnerships. The one thing I did want to bring up Stu, which I forgot to mention earlier, and Tarkan reminded me is a superior architecture. So why is it that Nutanix can deliver this now to customers, right? I mean, our customers have been trying to build hybrid cloud for a little while now, and work across multiple clouds. And, we know it's been complex. The reason why we are able to deliver this in the way we are, is because of our architecture. The way we've architected clusters with AWS is, it's built in native network integration. And what that means is, if your customer and end user who's a practitioner, you can literally see the Nutanix VMs, in the same space as Amazon VMs. So for a customer, it's in the exact same space, it's really easy to then use other AWS services. And we bypass any, complex and latency issues with networking, because we are exactly part of AWS VPC for the customer. And also, the customers can use by the way, the Amazon credits, with the way we've architected this. And we allow for bringing your own license, by the way. That's the other true part about simplicity is, same license that our customers use on-premises today for Nutanix, can be brought exactly the same way to AWS, if they choose to. And now of course, we do also offer other licensing models that are cloud only. But I want to point out that DVIOL is something that we are very proud of. It's truly enabling, bring your own license to AWS cloud in this case. >> Well, it's interesting, Monica. Of course, one of the things everybody's watched of Nutanix over the last few years is that move, from an appliance primarily to a software model. And, as an industry as a whole, it's much more moving to the cloud model for pricing. And it sounds like, that's the primary model with some flexibility and options that you have, when you're talking about the cluster solution here, is that correct? >> Yeah, we also offer the pay as you go model of course, and cloud as popular. So, customers can decide they just want to pay for the amount they use, that's fine. Or they can bring their existing on-prem license, to AWS. Or we also have a commit model, where they commit for a certain capacity for the year, and they go with that. So we have two or three different kinds of models. Again, going with the freedom of choice for our customers. We offer them different models they can choose from. But to me, the best part is to bring your own license model. That's again, a true hybrid pricing model here. They can choose to use Nutanix where they want to. >> Yeah. Well, and Monica, I'm glad you brought up some of the architectural pieces here. 'Cause you talked about all the partners that you have out there. If I'm sitting in the partner world, I've been heard nothing over the last few years, but I've been inundated by all of the hybrid solutions. So, every public cloud provider, including AWS now, is talking about hybrid solutions. You've got virtualization players, infrastructure players, all talking out there. So, architecture you talked a bit about. Anything else, key differentiators that you want people to understand, as what sets Nutanix apart from the crowd, when it comes to hybrid cloud. >> Well, like I said, it's because of our architecture, you can build a hybrid cloud in under an hour. I mean, prove to me if you can do with other providers. And again, I don't mean that, having that ego. But really, I mean, honestly for our customers, it's all about how can we, speed up a customer's experience to cloud. So, building a cloud under an hour, being able to truly manage it with a single plan, being able to move apps and data, with one click in many cases. And last but not least, the license portability. All of that together. I think the way, (indistinct) I've talked about this as, we may not have been the first to market, but we believe they are the best to market in this space today. That's what I would say. >> Tarkan and I'd love to hear a little bit of the vision. So, with Monica kind of alluded to, anybody that kind of digs underneath the covers is, it's bare metal offerings from the cloud providers that are enabling this technology. There was a certain partnership that AWS had, that enabled this, and now you're taking advantage of it. What do you feel when you look at clusters going forward, give us a little bit what should we be looking for, when it comes to AWS and maybe even beyond. >> Thank you Stu. Actually, is spot on question. Most companies in the space, they follow these buzzwords, right? (indistinct) multicloud. And when you killed on, you and you find out, okay, you support two cloud services, and you actually own some kind of a marketplace. And you're one of the 19,000 services. We don't see this as a multicloud. Our view is, complete freedom of choice. So our vision includes a couple of our private clouds, government clouds success with our customers. We've got enterprise commercial and public sector customers. Also delivered to them choice, with Nutanix is own cloud as I mentioned earlier. With our own billing payment, we're just as capable starting with DR as a service, Disaster Recovery as a service. But take that to next level, the database as a service, with VDI based up as a service, and other services that we deliver. But on top of that also, as Monica talked about earlier, partnerships we have, with service providers, like Yoda in India, a lot going on with SoftBank in Japan, Brooklyn going on with OBH in France. And multiple countries that we are building this XSP (indistinct) telco relationships, give those international customers, choice within that own local region, in their own country, in some cases in their city, where they are, making sure the network latency is not an issue. Security, data governance, is not an issue. And obviously, third leg of this multilayer stool is, hyperscalers themselves like AWS. AWS has been a phenomenal partner, working with Doug (indistinct), Matt Garmin, the executive team under Andy Jassy and Jeff Bezos, biggest super partners. Obviously, that bare metal service capability, is huge differentiator. And with the typical AWS simplicity. And obviously, with Nutanix simplicity coming together. But given choice to our customers as we move forward obviously, our customer set a multicloud strategy. So I'm reading an amazing book called Silk Roads. It's an amazing book. I strongly suggest you all read it. It's all talking about partnerships. Throughout the history, those empires, those countries who have been successful, partnered well, connect the dots well. So that's what we're trying to learn from our own history. Connecting dots with the customers and partners as we talked about earlier. Working with companies that with Wipro. And we over deliver to the end user computer service called, best of a service door to desk. Database as a service, digital data services get that VA to other new services started in HCL and others. So all these things come together as a complete end to end strategy with our partners. So we want to make sure, as we move forward in upcoming weeks and months, you're going to see, these announcements coming up, one partner at a time. And obviously we are going to measure success, one customer at a time as we more forward with the strategy. >> All right. So Monica, you mentioned that if you were an existing Nutanix customer, you can spin up in the public cloud, in under an hour. I guess final question I have for you is, number one, if I'm not yet a Nutanix customer, is this something I could start in the public cloud. and leverage some capabilities? And, whether I'm an existing customer or a prospect, how do I get started with Nutanix Clusters? >> Absolutely. We are all about making it easy for our customers to get started. So in fact, I know seeing is believing. So if you go to nutanix.com today, you'll see we have a link there for something called a test drive. So we are giving our prospects, and customers the ability to go try this out. Either just take a tour, or even do a 30 day free trial today. So they can try it out. They can just get spun up in the cloud completely, and then connect to on-premises if they choose to. Or just, if they choose to stay in public cloud only with Nutanix, that's absolutely the customer choice. And I would say this is really, only the beginning for us as Tarkan was saying. I mean, I'm just really super excited about our future, and how we are going to enable customers, to use cloud for innovation going forward. In a really simple, manner that's cost efficient for our customers. >> All right. Well, Monica and Tarkan, thank you so much for sharing the updates. Congratulations to the team on bringing this solution out. And as you said, just the beginning. So, we look forward to, talking to you, your partners, and your customers going forward. >> Thank you so much. >> Thank you Stu. Thank you, Monica. >> Hi, and welcome back. We've just heard Nutanix's announcement about Nutanix Clusters on AWS, from Monica and Tarkan, And, to help understand some of the specific implications for the Asia Pacific and Japan region. Happy to welcome Justin Hurst, who is the CTO, for APJ with Nutanix. Justin, thanks for joining us. >> Well, thanks Stu. Thanks for having me. >> Absolutely. So, we know Justin of course, 2020, has had a lot of changes, for everyone globally. Heard some exciting news from your team. And, wondering if you can bring us inside the APJ region. And what will the impact specifically be for your customers in your region? >> Yeah, let's say, that's a great question. And, it has been a tremendously unusual year, of course, for everyone. We're all trying, to figure out how we can adapt. And how we can take this opportunity, to not only respond to the situation, but actually build our businesses in a way, that we can be more agile going forward. So, we're very excited about this announcement. And, the new capabilities it's going to bring to our customers in the region. >> Justin, one of the things we talk about is, right now, there's actually been an acceleration of how customers are looking to On-Ramp to the cloud. So when you look at the solution, what's the operational impact of Nutanix Clusters? And that acceleration to the cloud? >> Well, sure. And I think that, is really what we're trying to accomplish here, with this new technology is to take away a lot of the pain, in onboarding to the public cloud. For many customers I talk to, the cloud is aspirational at this point. They may be experimenting. They may have a few applications they've, spun up in the cloud or using a SaaS service. But really getting those core applications, into the public cloud, has been something they've struggled with. And so, by harmonizing the control plan and the data plan, between on-premises and the public cloud, we just completely remove that barrier, and allow that mobility, that's been, something people have really been looking forward to. >> All right, well, Justin, of course, the announcement being with AWS, is the global leader in public cloud. But we've seen the cluster solution, when has been discussed in earlier days, isn't necessarily only for AWS. So, what can you tell us about your customer's adoption with AWS, and maybe what we should look at down the road for clusters with other solutions? >> Yeah, for sure. Now of course, AWS is the global market leader, which is why we're so happy to have this launch event today of clusters on AWS. But with many of our customers, depending on their region, or their regulatory requirements, they may want to work as well, with other providers. And so when we built the Nutanix cluster solution, we were careful not to lock in, to any specific provider. Which gives us options going forward, to meet our customer demands, wherever they might be. >> All right. Well, when we look at cloud, of course, the implications are one of the things we need to think about. We've seen a number of hybrid solutions out there, that haven't necessarily been the most economical. So, what are the financial considerations, when we look at this solution? >> Yeah, definitely. I think when we look at using the public cloud, it's important not to bring along, the same operational mindset, as traditional on-premise infrastructure. And that's the power of the cloud, is the elasticity. And the ability to burst workloads, to grow and to shrink as needed. And so, to really help contain those costs, we've built in this amazing ability, to hibernate workloads. So that customers can run them, when they need them. Whether it's a seasonal business, whether it's something in education, where students are coming and going, for different terms. We've built this functionality, that allows you to take traditional applications that would normally run on-premises 24/7. And give them that elasticity of the public cloud, really combining the best of both worlds. And then, building tooling and automation around that. So it's not just guesswork. We can actually tell you, when to spin up a workload, or where to place a workload, to get the best financial impact. >> All right, Justin, final question for you is, this has been the works on Nutanix working on the cluster solution world for a bit now. What's exciting you, that you're going to be able to bring this to your customers? >> Yeah. There's a lot of new capabilities, that get unlocked by this new technology. I think about a customer I was talking to recently, that's expanding their business geographically. And, what they didn't want to do, was invest capital in building up a new data center, in a new region. Because here in APJ, the region is geographically vast, and connectivity can vary tremendously. And so for this company, to be able to spin up, a new data center effectively, in any AWS region around the world, really enables them to bring the data and the applications, to where they're expanding their business, without that capital outlay. And so, that's just one capability, that we're really excited about. And we think we'll have a big impact, in how people do business. And keeping those applications and data, close to where they're doing that business. >> All right. Well, Justin, thank you so much for giving us a look inside the APJ region. And congratulations to you and the team, on the Nutanix Clusters announcement. >> Thanks so much for having me Stu. >> All right. And thank you for watching I'm Stu Miniman. Thank you for watching theCUBE. (soft music)

>> Woman's Voice: From the CUBE studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a CUBE conversation. >> Hey, welcome back already. Jeff Rick here, with theCUBE. We're having Palo Alto studios, during these kind of crazy times and really taking a moment with the time that we have to reach out to some of the leaders in our community, to give us some insight, to give us some advice, to share their knowledge about some of the things that are going on and some of the specific challenges that really the coronavirus and the COVID 19 situation are causing for all of us. So, we're really excited to have a CUBE alumni, haven't talked to him for a couple of years. Joining us from his house, he's Marten Mickos, the CEO of Hacker One. Marten, great to see you. >> Good to see you, Jeff. Good to be back. Thank you. >> So first off, just a quick check in. How are you doing? How things going at Hacker One? How's the team doing? How are you guys kind of getting through this time of difficulty? >> Well, we are fortunate in our company that we have a business that may be doing even better in these times, because we do security don't need to go into the office and we do it in a distributed way. And so, all of that is wonderful for the company. We do have our first positive case of COVID 19 in the company. He is now fully recovered after a few weeks. He's back at work. So, it means it came pretty close to us and we have others who might be in the danger zone. But overall, we are doing very well and paying a lot of attention on health and staying safe and working from home and making sure we don't take risk because these are serious things that we shouldn't play with. >> Yes. Well, I'm glad to hear that, that person is recovering. And I think April is the month of six degrees of separation where all of us are going to know someone or someone who knows someone who's got this thing, is it? The curves, unfortunately, are still going up in the United States. So, I don't think that's going to change. But, on a lighter note, one of the reasons I wanted to reach out to you is you've got a long history of working with distributed companies. This COVID thing is kind of a forcing function around work from home and it never fails to amaze me how many people are on their first Zoom, and they don't even know what WebEx is, and they've never heard of Skype. And I think we get spoiled in the tech world. We use these tools all the time. But this is a forcing function. It's at the grade schools, the middle schools, the high schools, besides just regular companies. So, when you were running MySQL, back in the day, you had a distributed company, not only across buildings, but across oceans and continents. So, I wonder if you can share kind of, did that start that way? Did you move into that way? Kind of what are some of the early days as you move from everybody in the office to more of a distributed network? >> Yeah, it did start that way at MySQL back in Scandinavia. And I joined. There were 12 people, everybody working from home. The CTO lived just half an hour away from me, but we never saw each other. I worked from home, he worked from home. And I remember when I as the new CEO said that, hey, we will need an office. We need a headquarters where we can have meetings and archives or contracts and stuff. And he said, no office, over my dead body. It will kill the company culture. That was the view >> Why! >> Of the founder. >> That is so progressive. Where did that view come from, Cause that is certainly was not the kind of standard thinking. >> It was weird. It was back in, that was the year 2000, and they had developed a way of working with open source contributors all over the world, over email and IRC back then, which is a predecessor to slack you could say. And they just developed that method of working together and making sure everything is digital, everything is written down. You are honest and forthright in writing as well. So it worked beautifully and they didn't like offices. We ended up having offices and we had many people working from the office but there was nowhere, at no time was it more than 30% of our headcount of about 500 people who work from an office. 70% work from home in 32 different countries across 16 time zones. >> Wow, that's very, very distributed. So, in getting ready for this, I saw some other interviews that you've done and some other conversations on the topic. And one of the things that you brought up that I think is really topical is that this is really more of a mental challenge than really a physical challenge. The tools are there, we have internet, we're very fortunate that way. Didn't have these things in 2000, like we do today. But you talked about the mental challenge, both from a leadership perspective, as well as maybe from the employee perspective. I wonder if you can dig into that a little deeper as you kind of look at your peers that are treading into unchartered waters, if you will. >> Well, I think it's a transition where you become one with the media, like with your laptop or whatever you're looking at and you sort of you invest yourself in what you have in front of you and you give off all of yourself into it. Just like, if somebody is taking a portrait of you with a camera, you have to sort of love the camera and show yourself to the camera for the portrait to be really, really good. Like that's what great photographers do. They get you to open up, even though it's a machine and not another human being. And we have to develop this skill digitally to sit in front of a laptop or a phone or something, and be our whole genuine selves, showing all dimensions and aspects of our personality. Because we don't realize it but when you go to an office, people are paying attention to how you walk, where you stop, what you look like, whether you look angry or happy, whether you look tired or not, when you go to the restroom, when you don't, like who knows all these things that people pay attention to that give away how you feel and how you are. And then somebody may come and say, Hey, Jeff seems to be in a bad mood today or Jeff seems to be in a good mood today. And those are vital functions of a group that works together. So, you must allow the digital world to have the same. You have to bring that part of yourself into the digital reality and sort of open up. And people make the mistake that they just bring their professional selves. They just say, okay, what's the task? What's the work? Let's agree on something, let's listen to everybody. And they don't reserve room for the social side and showing who you are. Because people won't ultimately trust you until they know that you are a human being and you have weaknesses and vulnerabilities and you can be silly and sometimes you look good, and sometimes you don't look good, and sometimes you are to your advantage, and sometimes you aren't. And until you have covered the whole range of your own expressions, you're not believable. >> Yeah. Another topic that came up is measurement, right? In KPIs, and how do you measure people's performance? It wasn't that long ago that Ginni Rometty at IBM came out and said, we don't want remote workers anymore. We want everybody to come check into the office. Well, that's changed a little bit. But, you mentioned that, we're so used to measuring things the way that we've always measured in the past. Are they there at eight? Do they stay till five or six? Do they look busy, as opposed to really focusing on outputs? And you talked about really shifting your mindset with a distributed workforce to make sure you're focusing on the right outcomes, not necessarily focusing on the things that maybe, as you said, as much as subconsciously, you're paying attention to as much as anything. >> It's so easy to fake it in an office. >> I love that. >> You go in there, you look busy and people think you're amazing. But when you work from home, the only thing you have to show for is your work results. So, it becomes much more objective. And of course, you have to create metrics that can be tracked in a way that others can understand what you're doing. But it actually makes it more straightforward because you can't fake it. >> Right. >> The only thing you can be measured by is what you're actually producing. >> It's got to be interesting when we come out of this, right? Cause there's a lot of psychology done around habits and how things become habits. And the way things become habits is you do them for a while, in sequence repeatedly and then that becomes kind of part of your routine. And before, even here at theCUBE, right? Remote interviews were probably, I don't know, 5% of our total output. And now they're going to be 100% for the foreseeable future. So, as you look at kind of people that are new to this, world of remote learning and remote working, it's going to be wild after they do this for a couple weeks hopefully get into the habit, to then, as you said in some prior things, this becomes the new normal and go into the office is the once every so often, when we actually have to have a big team meeting or some specific events. So you think this is going to probably be that tipping point till this becomes the new normal. >> I do think so. I think it will flip so that now, you may think that you and I are having a virtual conversation and it would be a real conversation, if we were in the same room. That will flip. Soon, this will be the real conversation. And if we meet in person, then it's an anomaly, and that's the virtual thing. >> Right. >> Because most of the time, we will connect like this and we will figure out ways to understand each other and know whether we can trust each other and sort of all these things will evolve on the digital side. And there's no reason why they wouldn't. >> Right. >> Other than the reluctance of human beings to change their behavior. >> Inertia is a powerful thing. So let's say >> As they say that, first we form habits, then habits form us. >> There you go. >> And that's how it happens. You create some habit and then you become prisoner of that habit. If you create that and you can't get rid of it. But you just have to force yourself out of it. >> Right, and this is a forcing function, like none other in terms of this whole world. >> Exactly. >> So, shifting gears a little bit to kind of your day job, beyond just leading but actually worrying about security. RSA was the last big show we went to, late January, early February. All about security, Hacker One's all about security. I would imagine now that everybody's working from home and the pressure on bringing your own devices and we're seeing all this funny stuff about Zoom. It's the greatest thing since sliced bread. And now of course everybody's jumping on all of the vulnerabilities, etc. What are you seeing in kind of the hacker world and security world as this huge shift has moved to people working from home and remote schools, etc. >> Well, it's clear that society now has to work from home and figure out distributed ways of getting education or work done. And as a result, criminality will go there as well. So we have to protect ourselves well. The first of the problems is, how do you protect yourself when you work from home? So then you talk about VPNs and how do you handle credentials and authentication and multi factor authentication to make sure that the connection is authentic and protected. So, that's the first one. The first order challenge that we have right now going on. But on a little bit longer scale, we are seeing now companies deciding to start using cloud services even more than before, because they realize that this could come back as evasion like, we are having now, could come back and you will again be at home. And then they say, how do we build our software and ICT infrastructure, such that we are not needed in the office? And the answer is move to the cloud. And when you move to the cloud, you again, the security posture changes somewhat. You don't have to worry about network security anymore, but you do have to worry much more about app sec, application security. So, whatever happens here, they are useful transitions, but they will put demands on security teams and business leaders to re-evaluate what they spend money on in security. We are very fortunate at Hacker One to be on the winning side here. Our services are exactly for this distributed virtual digital world. So, we are needed even more every day more and more because things are going online. But companies will need to rethink those things and stop spending on things that don't make sense anymore. >> Yeah. It is just wild, right? How this forcing function is really making everybody evaluate things a little bit closer and pushing them through that inertia that before you could kind of put it off, put it off, put it off. You can't put it off anymore. Time's now. >> Right. >> Yeah. >> Well, we had a similar like when Y2K happened. We also had a hard limit, and we had to get stuff done. Now it's coming in a different way, sort of the punishment came without announcement, but we are in a similar crunch to get it done. And we will. >> Yeah. But, it will be difficult and it will put a lot of strain to people under the systems. But I do believe it's doable. >> Good. So, I want to shift gears one last time. We talked really about open source. >> Right. >> You've built your career on open source. My SQL was obviously open source and got bought by Sun eventually now, part of Oracle's portfolio then you did Eucalyptus. That was open source, right? Eventually got bought by hp. And now Hacker One, you're using really a network of hackers all over the world, to really help deliver the service. I'm just curious to get your take on the role of open source. It's been such a creative force for development. It's been such a creative force for kind of moving technology forward. How do you see it playing out now? What's the role of open source? Are you seeing projects? Are you seeing people rallying around, bringing the power of data and analytics and cloud to this problem? Cause to me, there's clearly a human toll of people being sick. But it's also a big data problem in terms of resource allocation, trying to sequence this thing and accelerate vaccine development. There's a lot of kind of big data, opportunities here to attack this thing. >> I think open source is even bigger now than it used to be. And it is a very powerful example of the fact that no matter how much we are threatened that we feel like we have to hunker down and isolate ourselves from others and foreign groups or people are dangerous. In reality, the biggest accomplishments in society are always about collaboration by large groups of really intelligent driven people. Because software is eating the world, open source is eating the world. And today, if you don't use open source software, you're just plain stupid. So, it has really taken over the whole world. And it is now enabling all these new innovations and initiatives that we didn't do before in big data, collecting big data, analyzing data. We see it in the whole area of DNA medicine, where the researchers are sharing their findings with everybody. And that's very much like open source software. They don't call it open source software, but the mechanisms are the same. Everybody is doing it for their own good, but by sharing it, they multiply the value of what they did, and it speeds up innovation, so that it outperforms anything done in a closed laboratory or a closed source company. So it's wonderful to have been part of the open source revolution because it is spawning so many other initiatives and phenomena on a societal level. And this is just the beginning. It will go into politics, it will go into news, it will go into the assessment of fake news. Reddit is completely self moderate. They don't hire the moderators. The moderators are provided by the community and they self moderate. And understanding how to self govern, self moderate, at very large scale. That's the key to success in many areas. So, open source software is enormous and yet, it's just one little part of the whole world of community driven innovation. >> Right. Such a great lesson though, because, as we think back to kind of the last kind of national rally around say, World War Two, where Kaiser started building ships, and Ford was building airplanes. And we've got some of that going on with with Elon Musk, and people building respirators and some of these physical things, but there's this whole kind of software and big data, AI, machine learning thing that's happening on the background, around the genome and in the vaccine development that's not quite as visible, but really such an important part of this battle that we haven't seen. And then, of course, the other place is no place to hide. The fact that this is happening all over the globe, at the same time to everyone, regardless of your religion, your politics, your geography. It's really a unique moment in time. Hopefully one that we're not going to... >> It could be our best hope against Coronavirus. The fact that the scientists are right now working together and sharing their findings, quickly going from one test to the next and figuring out what works. And mankind hasn't had that capacity before. But now we do. So, we can't know whether it will take a long time or a short time, but at least we are getting all the resources to bear and we put them together and people share. >> Right. >> Which is what's driving the innovation here. >> Right, Martin. I guess, just a last kind of topic before I let you go, kind of circling fully back to leadership. One of the comments you talked about, about these types of times really favoring the bold. I really liked that line that is, don't be scared. It's really an opportunity for the people who have it together and are making the right priorities, to shine and to really kind of rise above the fray. I wonder if you can share a little bit more your thoughts about that from a leadership point of view. It's a time of challenge, but it's really also a time of opportunity. >> I think it's exactly like you said. It's like the Stockdale paradox. Admiral Stockdale who was a prisoner of war, over seven years, and was tortured during those years. Every day, he decided to, on one hand, be ready to face any brutal reality he might face, but on the other hand, never give up hope that one day, he will come out and have no regrets, not looking back and be a free man again. And that's exactly what happened. Of course, we are not in as dire situation as he was, but society has a similar situation. That we must have the courage to face the exact brutality of and the reality of coronavirus right now, without thinking that we won't come out of it. We will absolutely come out of it. And we will come out of it with innovations and new models that will outshine whatever we had before. And we must be able to maintain this duality of, okay, I'm ready to face the reality and I'm ready to be in isolation, I'm ready to use a face mask, whatever it takes. But also, I will never give up hope about what will come once we come out of this. And with that mindset, as a company, as a family, an individual human being or a society, you can get through any problem. And this is what Admiral Stockdale taught us through his experience, and by sharing it with everybody. >> Well, Marten. Thank you for sharing that story, and thank you for sharing your experience and kind of your point of view. We really appreciate it. These are tough times and it's great to be able to look out to the leaders and to kind of share the burden, if you will, and hear from smart folks that have a point of view. So, thank you very much for your time. Best to your employee. Glad that person is recovering. And as you said, we will get through this and we'll come out stronger the other side. Thanks a lot. >> Absolutely. Thank you, Jeff. Good chatting with you. >> All right, thanks Marten. Jeff Rick here, signing off from the Palo Alto studios from the CUBE. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. (soft music) (soft music)

>> From the heart of Silicon Valley, it's theCUBE covering Comcast Innovation Day. (smooth music) Brought to you by Comcast. >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're at the Comcast Silicon Valley Innovation Center here in Sunnyvale. Very cool facility right off the runway from Moffett. They got a ton of cool toys downstairs which I get to go play with, which I'm looking forward to, but today the conversation was all about CX, customer experience, and you know, Comcast is there. A lot of people like to watch their TVs, interacting with their cable systems for a long, long time, but there's a whole range of new and innovative things that are coming out from Comcast, and we're excited to have an engineer who's kind of down in the bowels here in the engine room building all this stuff. So like to welcome Mike Fine. He's a cable software architect for Comcast. Mike, great to see you. >> Likewise. >> So you had a really cool demo earlier, which is not a demo, right? I think this thing is-- >> Production. >> Now in production, it's called the X1 Eye Control. I think most people know what X1 is. What's X1 Eye Control? >> Yeah. X1 Eye Control is a web application that integrates with off-the-shelf accessibility hardware, so that could be a Tobii eye gaze rig, it could be something called a sip-and-puff, which let's users use their inhalation and exhalation to control the application, or any other off-the-shelf accessibility hardware that can mimic a mouse to a piece of software. >> Too, it's-- >> Yeah. The goal of the project was pretty simple. It was to let people with ALS and other conditions control their TVs independently. >> That's amazing, and you showed a great video. The gentleman on the video is using I think an eye gaze method, but you said you've got integrations to a number of different, you know, kind of ADA-approved interface devices. >> That's right, the journey that this project has taken has been interesting. We started with just the ALS use case, which was the eye gaze, but it turned out that one of our early users had control over his voice, which is somewhat unusual for ALS patients, and so he asked whether he could control it with his voice, so we did that work through he had Dragon NaturallySpeaking, which was nice, so we did that work, and then of course given that we have the voice remote we decided could we make voice work for everybody, which we did, so now the application is on par with a physical remote, and then we even went further and let people type in voice commands, so in case somebody who's perhaps mute or had a speech impediment, or some sort of speech pathology issue that prevented them from using a voice, they could do that as well. >> It's really interesting, I mean you guys have so many kind of interface points to an ecosystem broader than simply what's available at Comcast, whether it's on the front end, as you said, with some of these interfaces with ADA devices, or on the backend if I want to watch my Netflix or I want to watch YouTube, or I want to watch, you know, a different service. You guys have really taken, you know, kind of an open, integrated approach to all these, one might argue, competitive threats to really bring it in as the customer wants to experience. Why did you do that, what's kind of the philosophy driving that? >> Yeah, well, the first thought that comes to mind is that none of it's possible without the right cloud APIs, so somebody very visionary years ago made the decision that everything you can do on your TV or on the mobile app you can do through the cloud, and so a project like this couldn't happen unless it was possible for a piece of software that somebody invented well after the fact to cause a TV to change channels unless there was that underpinning, so like any other piece of software it's a bit of an iceberg. There's a lot of stuff underneath that you don't realize as a user-- >> Right. >> But it's there and that's what makes it possible. >> Right, I'm just curious about some of the challenges in terms of moving UI and UX forward into places that people are not familiar with. And I've joked about it on a number of these interviews that, you know, I still get an email, not only from Comcast, but from Google and from Alexa, suggesting to me ways in which I might use voice. You know, as you sit back from a technologist what are some of the challenges you guys, you know, kind of anticipate, what are some of the ones you didn't anticipate, and how do you help us old people, you know, find new ways to interact with the technology? >> Yeah, it's a great question. I mean there's a lot of us here that spend our days solving that exact problem, right? Part of it is is notifying you of interesting things through SMS or through mobile push, or the messages on the TV, so your team is playing in a game that you want to see, a movie that you've declared interest in has become cheaper, become free, or maybe even buyable if you wanted to do that. Obviously there's lots of AI and ML in terms of putting recommendations in front of you based on your viewing habits, based on broader trends across, you know, because you watch this, other people watch this, so we know this is probably a good solution for you as well, but yeah, we're all, there's a large number of us trying to optimize what we call "time to joy," from the time you pick up your remote to think about what you want to watch to the time you're actually watching something you want to watch; make that as seamless as possible. >> Preston said you guys get like a billion voice commands, what was the period of time? >> A month. >> A month. >> A month, yeah. (chuckles) >> So obviously a big, giant new dataset for you guys now to have at your disposal. >> What are some of the things that you're learning from that inbound, what can you do with it, how do you, you know, now use this direct touch with the customer to, again, kind of recycle and have another iteration on improved experience? >> Right, so voice is a lot like a text chat, like a bot interface in that it's an experience where users are telling you exactly what they want to do, so if a user sits in front of a traditional web application or mobile application and has trouble finding what they want to do, they can't figure out what button to press, what screen to go to, you have no idea, right? You can't infer that they're having a problem, but with voice or somebody interacting with a bot, they type exactly what they mean, or they say exactly what they mean, so we can mine those voice commands and find the popular ones that we don't at that point have implemented, and if we can iterate on that cycle fast enough we can quickly introduce new voice commands that our users are literally asking for as quickly as possible. >> Right. What about the stuff that customers are not asking for, because right? There's one line of thought, which is the customer knows best, but the customer doesn't know-- >> That's right. >> What they don't know. So how do you guys continue to look for more kind of cutting edge stuff that isn't necessarily coming back through a feedback loop? >> Right, yeah, so it's an interesting question. So we're trying to add other non-TV use cases into the mix, right, so controlling your IoT devices at home, controlling your security, seeing your cameras through the Set-Top Box, and so on. So you know, until those use cases exist nobody's asking for them, and so you do have to be a bit visionary in terms of what you want to put out there as voice commands. You know, luckily we have people who, well, we're all customers of the platform generally, so we know what it means to be a user, but you know, we have people that talk with users and have a general sense of what they want to do, and then we figure out what the right commands are. >> Right, not voice specifically, but let's unpack a little bit deeper into the impact of IoT. You know, Nest probably was the first kind of broadly accepted kind of IoT device in the home, and now you got Ring, which everybody loves to take pictures of people stealing their boxes from the front porch, but that puts you guys with the internet connectivity in a very different place than simply providing a football game or the entertainment. So as you think of your role changing in the house, specifically with now these connected devices, how do you think about new opportunities, new challenges that being the person in the middle of that is different than just sending a TV signal? >> Yeah, there's a lot of talk about trying to be the home OS. Certainly we are in a unique position being in the home, both in terms of the router and the internet, but also, you know, often frankly you know when your system's setup a human being came in and helps you understand how to best position the physical devices in your house, and so on, that other companies don't have, right? Those vendors just don't have that builtin advantage. Clearly security has become a big thing for us. Home automation, I sit very close to that group. They're doing amazing things with automating rules like, you know, "Tell me when my door's been open too long," and these sort of things, and so more and more the use cases start to converge, that, for example, when you say, "Good morning," we have this idea of scenes, all right. So when your morning starts you not only want to tune the TV, but you also want to crank up the lights and unlock the door and open the windows, or whatever, and when you go to bed, so the actions that are involved in those use cases span not just TV and not just internet, but all of it. >> Right, it's just funny because I don't think Comcast would be the first name that people would say when they're talking about voice technology and the transformational impact of voice technology, right? They're probably going to say Siri was the first and Alexa's probably the most popular, and you know-- >> Right. >> Google's got Lord knows how many inputs they have, but you guys are really sitting at a central place, and I might argue it's one of the more used voice applications-- >> Absolutely. >> Out there, so from kind of a technology leadership perspective you guys have a bunch of really unique assets in terms of where you are, what you control, what you're sitting on in terms of that internet. You know, how does that really help you and the team think about Comcast as an innovation company, Comcast as a cool tech company, not necessarily Comcast as what used to be just a cable company? >> Right, right. Well you know, as somebody in the valley with friends in the valley it's always interesting to try to differentiate reality from the view that many people have. You know, this is definitely much more than your dad's cable company. It's a consumer and electronic company as much as anything else. We very much position ourselves with all the, you know, with the FAANG companies, et cetera, so you know, when we talked about CX it's no longer the case that whatever's passable for a stodgy cable company passes as CX anymore. Now you're being compared to a set of customers, companies that are providing fantastic user experiences for their customers, and you're being held to that standard, so you know, there's a lot of pressure on us, which is great; we like that. We want to produce fantastic products, and yeah, I don't know if I have a great answer in terms of how to move forward in terms of melding it all together, but we have a lot of smart people in the hallways making that happen. (chuckles) >> So last question is really the impact of AI, because you know, we cover a lot of tech events and a lot of talk about AI, but you know, I think those of us around know that really where AI shines is applied AI in specific applications for specific U cases. So how are you guys, you know, kind of implementing AI, where are some of the opportunities that you see that you can do in the future that you couldn't do the past, whether it be just with much better datasets, whether it be with much faster connectivity and much better compute so that you can ultimately deliver a better customer experience using some of these really modern tools? >> Right, so some of the work is just making what you already do or experience better, so for example showing you recommendations, right? Just make that algorithm better, and so there's a great deal of effort, as you might expect, at a company like this on that problem, but there's also work being done to just take any interactivity between you and the system out of the picture completely. We talked a little bit about this earlier, that, for example, we're working on technology that when you turn your TV on in the morning it should probably tune to the channel that you normally tune to in the morning. That's a pretty simple problem, in a sense, but you know, if I watch your viewing patterns and I see that you turn on a particular news show in the morning, why should you have to pick up the remote and change it from what you watched the night before to that channel? It should just happen. We talked about the Smart Resume stuff, that's obviously a fantastic use case for end users, so there's, you know, it's not surprising it's being used all over the technology set. It's in the home automation world. You know, it's in A/B testing, so trying to figure out the right cohorts to try different things in front of, so it's everywhere as you would expect. >> Right, right, it's pretty amazing. I mean there's just so many things going on, you know, kind of under the covers, some that we can see, some that we can't see where you guys are really kind of progressing, you know kind of the leading edge, cutting edge customer experience with something that people interact with every single day. >> That's right. >> Yeah, cool stuff. Well Mike, thanks for taking a few minutes. Congratulations on the Eye Control; really a cool story, and look forward to more publicity around that because that's a really important piece of technology. >> Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure. >> All right. He's Mike, I'm Jeff, you're watching theCUBE. We're at Comcast Silicon Valley Innovation Center. Thanks for watching, we'll see you next time. (smooth music)

>> Of Silicon Valley. It's the Cube, covering Comcast innovation day brought to you by Comcast. >> Hey, welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with the cube. We're at the Comcast Silicon Valley Innovation Center. It's a really cool space right off of Buffet. And they're doing a lot of new technologies here. It's not the only Innovation Center in the country but it's one here in our backyard. And we're excited to be here. Comcast is having a special event talking about really CX, customer experience. They brought together a bunch of super smart people invited us to stop by and we're going to share some of that with you. And we're excited for our very first guest he's Preston Smalley, the VP of product management of Comcast, Preston great to meet you. >> Good to meet you too, Jeff. >> So really cool event today. We talked about a lot of different things about customer experience and really all the applications that are on the front edge that define that customer experience. And you guys are doing a ton of innovation there. >> No, we are I mean I think it's, we were talking just this morning about all the different ways that we're trying to meet customers, where they're at and building products really around those needs, right? >> Yes, so I think the one of the ones that doesn't get enough credit not enough conversation is the voice. And I've got the voice remote at home. And it's really fascinating, especially in the context of there's so many places that what I'm looking for might be and I don't really know what the licensing and arrangements are that you guys have set up with Hulu or with Netflix or with HBO or if it's on HBO on demand or HBO live. So to be able to have kind of a single point of reference to just push that button and say, "Stanford football," and have it show up, it's amazing. >> No, it really is and I think you know, the voice remote has been one of those big hits where you know, people always love their TV remote but, you know, a number years back we started exploring, could we put a voice you know, search capability directly into that remote. And I think what's great is people they're really leaning into it. So we're seeing a billion voice commands happening a month, >> Billion? >> A billion, one b. Through the remote and I think it's just become a part of their life. Right? And I think it's everything from the simple to saying NBC into the remote to the more complicated things like Notre Dame football or what's my WiFi password? or whatever the things they might be asking out of their device. >> So curious on the development side was like about features, but what were some of the real hurdles that you guys knew you had to overcome? And what were some of the surprise hurdles that you didn't necessarily anticipate? >> Sure. I mean, I think the ones you knew about were we've got to be able to translate speech to text and you know, there's there's existing infrastructure that allows for that and doing that with high accuracy. But the good news is we actually had a head start in organizing the content. And so we already had dealt with text based searching of all the different TV shows and movies and such. And so we had all that base of knowledge that we could then tap into. We're now at a stage where that kind of covers the basics but we're trying to understand how do you both increase the breadth and depth of the kinds of commands that you will do through the voice remote. And so you mentioned some at the beginning things like being able to search, not just the content that we bring but things like Netflix or Amazon Prime or soon Hulu. And so partnering with those companies, you get all that information in a way that works very well with the voice remote. >> Right and then you even have it bilingual, right? You even have Spanish and English. >> That's right. >> And it can flip it can switch back and forth on the fly. >> That's right, yeah, so we support both those languages, including a combo a mixed mode where in households where you're seeing both Spanish and English be interwoven, it'll actually even work in those contexts. And then recently, we've also introduced Canadian French and so we license our technology to Rogers and video Tron up in Canada. And so we've now introduced that capability as well. >> That's great, So a long time ago we interviewed Domino's and it's when they first introduced app ordering. And at first you think well app ordering but there was all this like second order benefits that Domino's replied in terms of accuracy of the orders and supply chain impact. So I'm curious if there's some, you know, kind of second order benefits that you guys are realizing with voice that maybe you didn't think, you know, what are some of the surprises that have come out of that? >> Well, that's a good, good question. I think in terms of surprises, it's the types of things that people are looking for you now have, you now have the ability to figure out what kinds of things people are interested in which you wouldn't have been able to know in a typical browse setting. So for example, we support now over 150 apps on X1 as far as third party streaming apps but we know the ones that we don't support because people are saying and into the remote, whereas we wouldn't have got that information prior. >> Right. >> And so now we can actually go and try and meet those needs. >> Now ,it's interesting. You talk about meeting people where they are and you know, one of the things that's happening today is people have all these options, right? They can get it through their Comcast service if they're doing that but you know they may want to have a direct relationship with Hulu is one that you picked out or with Netflix or this historical ones, you guys now are enabling an option for those people that choose to directly engage with those content providers and just use Comcast, as an internet provider. Tell us a little bit about what you guys are doing there. >> Yeah, sure. So obviously, we've had strength in the, in the TV space, and being able to organize and aggregate all that streaming content with your traditional television content. What we've done now is take that investment in X1 and pivot it into a new product this year, we call Xfinity flex. And what that product does is it's a streaming device that should be comfortable for an internet only subscriber that they hook up to their TV. It's 4K, HDR, wireless. And through that device, they're able to aggregate all of that streaming content in one place. So whether it's app content that they may already have an existing subscription from or it's ad supported internet content or maybe they want to buy some more content from us right? And so we'll bundle and sell those subscriptions directly and include that as well. And we've actually been pretty surprised, you know, you take something like Netflix which is highly penetrated in the United States we're pretty surprised how many people are still signing up new as a Netflix subscriber in our service and so by just making it easy and just one click away we found that people are they're opting to do that. >> Right, I'm sure they're happy to hear that in Los Gatos just down the road >> Exactly. No, they're a great partner and either way we're helping them >> Right, right >> They're trying to reach what they call kind of the Netflix nevers people that maybe just hadn't gotten Netflix prior, right? And so we're helping them with that. >> Well, it's really interesting, you know, kind of the you know, kind of TV versus computer you speeding the TV's kind of your passive experience, you're sitting on the couch and you just kind of watching where the computer was more two way and then there was dual screen kind of activity, but you guys are bringing a lot of the stuff that was only available on your pc or your phone now directly into the Comcast experience, you know whether it's YouTube or whatever. So it really it's kind of blurring those lines. But I want to shift gears a little bit about, you know, kind of the role of the internet in homes today, has now expanded beyond entertainment. It's expanded beyond information and IoT now is entering the home probably the biggest one is nested, connected thermostats and connected door bells and ring and you know, we're seeing videos from people's rings all over the place. You guys are sitting again, right in the middle of that ecosystem. So how does IoT and connected devices and thermostats and refrigerators and doorbells impacted the way you guys think about delivering internet into the home? >> Well, I think it's really been a watershed moment for the company, moving from, if you go years back to bringing internet to the wall and making it available in the home to saying look, we've got to actually really control the coverage of that WiFi in the home and make sure that it reaches all the corners of the home but then also providing the control that people want of the devices in there we know that for power users we're seeing today, 20 connected devices on the home network. And I know my house, I'm up to 50, right? And I think what customers don't have and don't want is an IT person directly in their home. They want it to just work naturally and easily. >> Right. >> And so one measurement of success that I know is how often my mother in law gives me a call saying, "Hey, Preston, yeah, this thing's not working in my house." It's got to be really easy and straightforward. >> Right and then just in terms of just being a backhauler and the internet traffic that you guys are hearing because all those connected device or your kids devices, they all want 4k streaming, they're watching movies, you know, come down and watch TV on the big screen, no, no, no, you know, I'm watching it in the room. How does that kind of change the way you guys think about delivering bandwidth cause 4K is a lot more, go to NAB, you're just going to soon be 8K's and 12K's and all kinds of crazy stuff. So your role in actually just delivering bandwidth has changed significantly over the last over a year. >> Absolutely, I mean, there was a stat on bandwidth that surprised me even just to look at it, which is in, in the last 18 years, Comcast has increased bandwidth 17 times. And it's just every, you know, we just keep increasing that because the demand is there, you know, 4K takes, you know, more than your 1080p then did your SD and the more streaming that's happening, it's just, it's requiring more bandwidth, so we're happy to provide that. You know, we now offer one gig internet across all of our homes, we reached 56 million homes, I think it's the most in the United States as far as one gig availability. And so regardless of how much bandwidth you want to take, we're going to bring that to you. And I think recognizing that we also need that coverage in the home and out of the home through Xfinity WiFi hotspots, just trying to bring that there. But you mentioned kids too, I wanted to build on that which is, you know, I'm a parent and being able to control how and where my kids go in the internet is important. And so, you know, being able to put limits, whether it's bed time limits on their devices or we've recently introduced in our testing app base limits. So you could say they can't use Instagram or they can only use it 30 minutes a day. And so being able to have that kind of control puts you in the driver's seat as the parent of kids in the home. >> Preston, I think you're going to be busy for a little while here at the innovations center. >> We are for sure. >> All right, well, thanks for spending a few minutes we could talk all day but we'll have to leave it there. >> All right, thanks Jeff. >> Thanks a lot. He's Preston, I'm Jeff. You're watching the cube. We're at the Comcast Silicon Valley Innovation Center in Sunnyvale. Thanks for watching, we'll see you next time. (distinct music)

>> Announcer: Live from Denver, Colorado, it's theCUBE. Covering Commvault GO, 2019. Brought to you Commvault. (upbeat music) >> Hey, welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of Commvault GO '19 from Colorado. Lisa Martin here, with Stu Miniman. Stu and I are pleased to welcome, somebody who knows a lot about Commvault from a couple of different angles, we have Andrew Cochrane, Solutions Architect at Softcat. Andrew, welcome to the program. >> Hi Lisa and Stu, thanks for having me. It's great to be here. >> So you have familiarity, more than familiarity, with Commvault for a long time. You are at Softcat now, you've been there since the beginning part of this year. But you've been working with Commvault on the customer's side for a long time. Let's start there which just giving us your history of what your guys do, what you were doing with Commvault on the customer's side, before we get into the partnership with SoftCat. >> Yes, I started working with Commvault about five years ago. I was working for a large global company, headquarters in the UK, around research and development. We had a lot of different siloed backup technologies. We had big problems with data growth. So I ran a project there, to find a solution that will help us with that in the day that we were doing it, but then also as we grew. As we had big plans to grow, our data we were growing about six or seven average year on year. So we had a major challenge with that data boom. So I started working with Commvault, we selected that as a tool set. And we implemented it and so, were able to reduce our backup down to a much more controlled environment, much more automated, and increase our backup success, and our restore success dramatically from sort of, our SLA was, we didn't have one actually, but it was probably more around 50% up to sort of then 99% success rate. And then, we started that journey and it was definitely a partnership with Commvault then from a customer angle. Because we saw backup as day one, and then it was really how can we progress that, and move from data redaction to data management. So we started looking at what we now refer to as Orchestrate and Activate. So Orchestrate really looking at how can we move workloads, initially it was between sites or it might be for recovery scenarios, and then obviously now the cloud. And then, we started looking at Activate, because we realize we had a challenge of our data's growing more and more. We can protect, which is great. We can move it, but we didn't really know what it was. We knew we had stuff, we know we had a lot of it. But, when you start drilling down beyond the file types, or the sizes of, is it sensitive, is it person identifiable, is there a risk with this data, do we need it, can we delete it, we didn't know. So that's where we started looking at Activate. So that's kind of where my journey start to end as a customer, when we started to get involved with Activate. I sort of left that when we were sort of end of the POC phase, so we knew it could do what we wanted it to do. It's then a matter of scaling that. And then yeah, I joined Softcat beginning of this year to take on a new challenge as a partner. >> All right, so it's great learning you had as the user now you can relate with your customers even more. Just give us a thumbnail sketch of Softcat, and how the Commvault partnership you have, fits into the overall business. >> Yeah, so Softcat, our UK partner, we were around infrastructure services. We're one of the leading UK partners. We cover a broad ranges across hybrid cloud, network, security, digital working space, so we cover a wide gander of different technologies. And Commvault are one of our key vendors that we work with and really one that we work a lot with around the data management piece, and discuss with customers the challenge I had as a customer. And we share that with them and discuss Commvault and how that can help them in their challenges. >> The role that you now have with Softcat what part of your experience with Commvault on the customer side attracted you to shift over to Softcat and partner, and be a partner with Commvault? >> Yeah, yes, I mean my whole career up to this point about 20 years has always been from a customer side, in different organizations, different sectors. And I kind of, I got to the point where I've done a lot different roles, I'd been different infrastructure roles, different end-user compute roles, and I've been on service desks, into the architecture world, and I've kind of had a good round of experience, but I thought I've never experienced the channel of a vendor. So I wanted a new challenge, and Softcat has this Solution Architect role, which is ideal, and I thought actually sitting in the channel, I suppose, still being close to the customer, and being able to understand their challenges and what they're trying to do, because that's been my whole career to that point. But then also, sign to form, relationships with the vendors that were different. So having that closer relationship, that being able to, I suppose amplify almost my voice, 'cause I can having one voice as single customer, but now I see even in 10 months, I think, I'm into triple digits of customers, so I can start to amplify that voice of saying it's not just one, it's all of the customers that I represent and almost starting to be that go-between between the customer and the vendor. And I thought that was really interesting challenges, it's something that I'd be good at hopefully. And it really attracts me to start to sort of sit in that space and start to meet more customers, see their environments, their challenges to see was my experience unique or is everybody having the same sort of challenges and aspirations and start to work together to try and help solution design around those. >> Great so Andrew, I'd love you to bring us inside some of those conversations you're having. >> Yeah. >> We've been having conversations this whole week about the new Commvault, they've got some new products, like Metallic, very much partner driven activity. Which of the product in the Commvault portfolio are resonating most with your customers and what you have heard this week that you want to make sure that you're bringing back to your users? >> Yeah, as far as before this week, the two that really resonated were Complete and Activate. Complete obviously for that almost the stuff that we have to do. We need to protect that data, we need to recover it. So it's always going to been, I think a conversation in any organization. The Activate one is a really interesting discussion point actually, and something which, from my experience before as a customer, I bring into a lot of the conversations I have with my customers. And it's really trying to understand, yes, you might protect it, but do you understand the, like I said the challenge I had as a customer, and quite a lot organizations don't, they don't have the understanding or that ability to automate things, or they might be early on that journey, so it's really, I try and take a slightly difference attack of trying to understand the business. Work with not only, our infrastructure contacts, but also trying to say actually, can we speak to Legal, to Compliance, to Governance, to HR, because data securing are considering things like GDPR and other regulatory bodies. It's not an IT problem, this is the whole organization. Actually we find that Activate is a good way to start to have that discussion with customers. I suppose that was up to this point, and then obviously, now, last couple of days, I think, the one that I'm looking forward to will be Metallic. It's not yet, outside of the US, but I'm waiting for that time because we definitely see a space with SMBs where they want the power of something like Commvault but they also want the simplicity to deploy it and to operate it. And I think Metallic has a really great play there. I've seen it over the last couple of days a few times and I think it's looking real powerful. >> Andrew, I'm curious, you've talked about the products that are resonating with your customers. How many of them are really on the defensive when it comes to data? You know, I'm worry about protecting, I'm worry about government, versus those that are saying okay, I want to be data driven, I'm going through digital transformation, and therefore, understanding and leveraging my data is a key part of that? >> Yeah, I think it's a mix. I've seen so far and it really sort of comes down to the sector they're in. I've find out the sectors that are more governed tend to be more around that security and that protection side. Also like, sort of government, healthcare, any things sort of federal anything like that they seemed to be much more protection oriented. Anything more in the private sector is definitely that transformation, and that's where we have a lot of discussions whether it be digital transmission, a hybrid cloud, it's definitely more data driven. It's interesting seeing those two different perspectives. But I think, at some point, they all start to merge so I think it's just where those sectors are at the moment. >> Where would you say, customers, you said you were working with triple digits. >> Yeah. >> So 30 plus or no, hundred of customers. >> Yeah, hundreds yeah. >> Actually wait. >> It's been a busy time 10 months. (laughs) >> Lisa: That's a lot, that's a lot businesses. Where would you guesstimate they are with respect to readiness for GDPR? I heard some stats recently 70% of organizations are still, aren't ready ready or really fully able to address that. Your take from the UK's stand point. >> Yeah, I think, I'm not sure of the stats from what I've seen, you're right, it's probably high percentage on complying or ready for it. I think the main thing is to address that, and I suppose be aware that you're not ready, and to start on that journey. Because a lot of the regulatory things is about being on that journey, and starting it, and knowing that you got a roadmap to get to, to be, there is no real Nirvana of being compliant it's a constant rolling. And it's a matter of start that journey, identifying the processes, building a virtual team, of like I said, all those different people within the organization, finding out what data you have, but almost that comes after you've almost identified the problem. And the technology will come afterwards to try and help you to go through that. And yeah, I found a lot of the organizations that I've met so far, they're not really ready for that. I think there's still a little bit of a way to go. With all the difference, cause you got GDPR, you've got CCPA, that's going to come-- >> Yeah, yes, yup. >> any day now. >> Which, yeah I don't think a lot of organizations are ready for it. But it's a matter of starting that journey. >> Is that part of the advisory services that Softcat delivers, is to help them understand, there's no recipe for how to get ready, but obviously, you mentioned CCPA, that's probably the tip of the iceberg of more privacy. Laws that are >> Yeah. >> going to be enacted. So looking at the fines that are there, how do you advise customers, I'm sure depends right on how ready or not they are, but what's Softcat's sort of prescription for helping customers, like hey you've got to get, here's the place to start, because GDPR has been around for a while, other things are coming and if you're not compliant and a complying event happens, there's a tremendous risks to the business. >> There is yeah. I mean there's a financial risk, but it's also that impact actually of if you get audited and not compliant, that can have a really detrimental effect especially on a brand. So I mean yeah really we go in and try and first of all identify where an organization is, and that's across the board, we try and identify the problem, where are you, what do we need to do, what are, are there any sort of business challenges that it might have, any objectives, anything that we're trying to do as well as just getting compliant. And then, really it's trying to help formulate a plan. The first place that we start is building a team, of different people, of identifying, even if we do not where it is, by identifying the types of data you'll have, where it might be stored, what we think are the risky points. And starting to work from there really we're trying to formulate a plan of where you need to start actioning things, because some organizations, even if they can't put their finger on it they'll have an idea where it might be. So it's starting to help formulate that plan, formulate the teams that can bring different perspectives, because IT can bring in the technology side, but they might not be, as okay with the legal aspects. So therefore, you need legal, you might need HR, because they'll understand the employee side, you might have customers, so you might need customer relations, to understand who are the customers, what data do keep with them, so you need all these different aspects trying to get them round the table to start to understand almost, what the problem is, within each organization. There's somethings which are common, but organization has this like unique part, they might be more sort of experience in one area, less in others so it's about balancing out that risk of where they need to then focus on. >> So Andrew, I heard at the partner keynote on Monday, they talked about some new initiatives, some new incentives, especially going after new logos, you've only been on the partner side a relatively short time, but curious you're reaction, in your organization, thinking about some of the changes that are happening in the go-to-market from the Commvault standpoint. >> Yeah, yeah, the partner exchange day was a great day. I think a lot of good announcements for the partner world. I mean really there's ways to engage with Commvault better, I think the marketing that's been talked about, is a really a big thing. I think making Commvault stand out from everything else on the market. Showing those brands that we can go talk to other customers about. Sanjay's mentioned it, I think, a couple of times as well is about debunking some myths, about Commvault being complex. That's one that I have to address many times when I go into organizations. So it's great from a partner aspect to see that Commvault gained those things head on really. Because that will help Commvault, but also the partners and also it's customers, because more costumers can enjoy their great technology. So yeah, I think they're doing a lot of great work for the partner on the channel. >> I'm sure your perspective as a long time Commvault customer and now partner are going to be invaluable to the relationship. So we thank you Andrew for coming by theCUBE, and talking with Stu and me about Commvault and Softcat. Lots of exiting things are on the horizon I'm sure. >> Yeah, thank you for having me, it's been great to be at GO, it's been a great event. >> Lisa: It's a great event, isn't it? >> Yeah. >> Excellent, thank you so much. >> Thank you. >> For Stu Miniman, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE Commvault GO '19.

>> from Seattle Washington It's the Q covering AWS Imagine brought to you by Amazon Web service is >> Hey, welcome back there, buddy Geoffrey here with the Cube. We're in downtown Seattle Day Ws Imagine Edie, you event. It's their education event and every education Everything from K through 12. The higher education community College Retraining after service is a really great show. It's a second year. We're happy to be here. We've got somebody has come all the way from Spain to talk about his very special company. It's Ignasi. Nuclear is he is >> the CEO of click dot edu. Yeah, nice. You see? Welcome. >> Thank you are way really pleased to be with you. >> Great. So tell us, kind of what is clicky? Do you What? What is kind of your core value? >> It's ah, platform that makes all the things that the school needs seeing atleast in Spain. So it's a miss system also on elements also the communication with the family that Petra is Ah Wei Tau financial the school and also a lot of things that they are related on >> right? And you've been around for a while. So when did the company started? How was kind of some basic numbers on how many customers do you have? Could you operate in a lot of countries? A lot of schools? >> The as we have schools working with us already in all of Spain, Also in Chile, Colombia, Arneson, UK. On also in a little country in Europe that is called Andorra. So we're really happy because you have more than 1,000,000 off users working with us. >> 1,000,000. Congratulations. And is it mainly do you specialize between, say, K through 12 or higher education? Or we're kind of all over the place? >> Yes, we're focusing K 12 schools. So the one off the important parts are the communication with parents on dhe to follow all the things that the student. That's >> right. So you guys have a very special thing that you're announcing here at the show is really focusing on Alexa for K through 12 which nobody else is doing. That's really something unique that you guys, How did you get in that? What did you see in voice communication and Alexa that you couldn't do in the platform before that? You really saw the opportunity? >> Yes. All the people say is that >> the future or the present Now is the voice on all we will communicate by boys in the future over Internet. You see a lot off young guys doing all the things my boys know, right? Texting, etcetera. So we thought that it could be a nice idea that the communication between parents and also for a students to the school and be on in the other way, could be could be by boys. So we imagine how to do >> it on. We did it. It's really knew. >> When did you start it? When did you start that project? >> This project we began three months ago, >> three months ago. So, >> yeah, it's really, really knew the boy's idea, right? It was in >> a show that I have seen. Ah ah, law. A lot of people were talking about that, but there were, at least in Spain, in the Spanish. Nothing about so with it, we can be the first. So >> we leave. That's >> great. So before we turn the >> cameras on, we're talking about some of the issues that you have in one of the ones is integration to all these systems because, you know, I have kids. I might have multiple kids in a couple different grades. You have kids and a fine looking for access on their homework or their test scores. You know he's got integrate with all those different back ends to keep things private. But you're kind of in a good spot because your system is the one that's on the back end, right? Yeah, so that worked pretty well. And then the other piece, he talked about his two way voice. I don't think a lot of people think in voice communication, yet it's still more of an ask and get a reply asking and get a reply. But you guys are actually pushing notice vacations from the school, out to the families using voice. How's that working out? You know what are some of the use cases? Yeah, >> it's like it's like the parent can ask Toe elixir, for example, What's a home or for tomorrow for one of your son or daughter on DA on The Echo tell you about that. So it's really impressive, because in that moment the system goes to the school system to get that information on our system. Yeah, on Alexa translating voice So it's It's It's funny >> I just think it's funny that I get e mails from all my digital assistants telling me, suggesting things that I should ask them because it's really not native yet as as an interface to work with these machines. But, well, he's mentioned that the young people voices much more natural. So I wonder if there's been some surprises or some things you didn't expect in terms of people comfort level with voice as a way to communicate with me. >> Say, I think it's, ah most natural way also for us that we are not not if but off course. So we communicate better by boys and writing or texting. So, so off course. It's the future because it's another away. So the use off that systems goes up because off that. So I think it's the most the most thing that for for causes more surprising, >> right? And so will you guys supply the Alexa? It's for people's homes. Or is it something they can tap into their existing Alexa Yeah, >> uh, usually, ah, the case for using that is in your home or else on your phone so you can install licks on your phone and you can ask them. I'll see if the UK fun ankle, >> but handle it. But how do I look? How do I hook my existing echo? Yeah, yes, I bought into the school system. >> Yes, because sometimes some universities are They pulled their A coin. I don't know in the university, or but you can use your echo that you are using it for other things. Listen, music me Listen, missing music or whatever >> and you >> can use the >> same. Yeah, you can. You >> only have to, like, download an >> app for >> your phone. There >> is more less is the same us Alexa to >> install, click in the Web or a skill that it's cow. It's called right, and then you >> have it. So what's next? What's on the road? Map on the voice specifically, Where do you see this kind of evolving over the next little while? >> Yes, our our next goal in the parties that they can use the teachers in the school. The boy systems also so for doing what they do every day in ah Maur writing or whatever, we can do it by voice. For example, interview with the parents, a transcript or, for example, to say that somebody hasn't come to the school or toe tell to the Transportacion that something is company. These kind of things is what we are. Imagine it's in our next things that we will do it with voice. >> It'll be Lexa in the classroom, hoping, thinking, Yeah, right. What about privacy? I would imagine knows funny. In the early days of Cloud, security was a was was not good of the show stopper. People were concerned about 10 years later. Now security is a strength of cloud, right? It's probably more secure than most people's data centers or disgruntled employees. I would imagine privacy and security. This is probably pretty top of mind in the school district as well as a lot of personal information. Are they comfortable? Do they kind of get the security of cloud and cloud infrastructure, or is that still sticking point? >> You know that in Europe there are really strict low of our protection off that right, so we are really concerned about that. So we are talking with the school's what kindof systems. They will be comfortable because you want to use it, so we'll have to find >> the clue to do that. But It's really >> important, I think, all over the world, but in the stage or in Europe who are really concerned about that. So we'll see how to find it. But we can create a private skill, right? Yes, because there are birds shown off, Alexa, that is for business. So you can create your provide things on. You don't have to be for that. Somebody's listening. You >> right? All right. So the last last question here at the conference and you come last year? >> No. So what do >> you know? Just your impressions of the conference Has it nice to be with a bunch of like minded, you know, kind of forward thinking educators because because education doesn't always get the best reputation being kind of forward looking. But here you're surrounded. So I just wonder you could share some of your thoughts of the of the event so far. Yeah, >> I think this guy no five ins give you more motivation on you. Increase your you're way t to see that there are a lot of people that is pushing to innovate and do the things different. So really, really interesting to goto some machine learning. Ah, suppose is shown about California. What? They are doing that right? So I'm really interested. >> Good. Get all right. Look Nazi. Thanks for taking a few minutes. And, uh, congratulations on that project. That's really crazy. Thank >> you for your interest in. >> All right, >> Jeff, you're watching the Cube. Where it aws Imagine in downtown Seattle. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

(upbeat rhythmic music) >> Live from Orlando, Florida it's theCUBE covering Enterprise Connect 2019. Brought to you by Five9. >> Welcome back to theCUBE, Lisa Martin, with Stu Miniman, live in Orlando at Enterprise Connect 2019. This is day three of the event. Can you hear all of that buzz behind us? It's been a very full event. 6,500 or so attendees, 140 vendors here in the Exhibitor Hall. New products, new announcements, we're very excited, speaking of new announcements, to welcome for the first time to theCUBE the CEO of Poly, Joe Burton. Joe, welcome to theCUBE. >> Well thanks so much for having us, it's great. >> Our pleasure, so big news Plantronics, Polycom, rebranded as Poly this week. Big coming out part here, this is way more than a rebrand. Walk us through what you guys have just announced, and why this is so exciting for the industry? >> Well it really is an exciting time. An exciting time for all of us. About a year ago, to the day, we announced that Polycom and Plantronics were coming together as one company to provide a end-to-end set of end points for the entire UC industry. So no matter what cloud you're hooking to in the contact center, for unified communications, from the headset that rides on your body, to the desktop, to the huddle room, to the board room, we were going to provide every end point where the end user touches the Collaboration Cloud. Very, very exciting. We were really looking for the right name to take us into the future. And frankly, Plantronics is a wonderful name, but it's very 60s sounding. Formed in 1961 by a couple of airline pilots to build headsets. Polycom, also a very good name, but a little old. We were looking for something short, punchy, tight, that really talked about everything that we do. And we were thinking about going down the route of an entirely new word, going the whole way. And one day a brilliant person on the brand team walked in and said, we can do both. We can have our heritage, our history, and we can go a different direction. Poly, Greek word for many. So many kinds of communication, many people, the power of many. Many ways of interacting. You actually look at our new logo it looks very much like a Polycom speakerphone of the past, it looks like an airline propellor for Plantronics, but it's also three Ps. Plantronics and Polycom coming together to form Poly. >> Joe, I do love that because that iconic speakerphone, heck, I sold some of those back in the 90s when I worked for one of the telecommunications company. There's still one sitting in our conference room in our boss scenario office today. Plantronics, of course, so known for so many of the different devices over the year. So maybe give us a little bit as to the coming together of Plantronics and Polycom, now as Poly. What's that mean for the future as we talk proliferation in devices, the line between what consumers expect and the Enterprise Connect. That's something we've been talking about for a couple of decades now. So what is Poly, into the future? >> You bet. So you see all these amazing communications, cloud providers around. Everybody is innovating in the cloud, they want to provide this software as a service that can enable all these great communications. But at the end of the day all of that Collaboration Cloud, gets accessed through a set of devices. Every single device where the end user touches the Collaboration Cloud actually comes from Poly. Like I said, the headset, the video conferencing, the audio conferencing and beyond. So as Poly we're going to build every single device that you need to access the cloud with a management layer, where you can understand each and every device. Is it on, is it off? Firmware upgrades, security patches, but so much more. You can actually understand usage data you've never seen before. So literally, because we're writing on the person, we're in the conference room, or on the desktop, we're in the open office area. We're in a position where we can actually tell you, these devices are being utilized but not these. That corner of the building is too noisy for good collaboration. Figure out what's going on. Even though the laptops in building 32 are telling you that there's no network problem, at the ear, we're actually seeing packet loss, and here's what we think you should do about it. So we think Poly literally brings something from the human perspective to the collaboration experience that just nobody else can do. >> We've heard a lot about the human element in it. Anytime we talk about emerging technologies, AI, ML, there's always that, oh the concerns about AI taking over jobs. But thematically, at this event, we've heard that it's got to be machines and humans augmenting. Whether we're talking about call center and it's agent delivery, but that human element, that relationship point, that voice, is really resounding at this event. It's absolutely hot again, still critical, whatever you want to call it. >> You're absolutely right. So what we're seeing very much when we look at AI and ML in our devices we're not in anyway seeing something that takes a job as much as helps you be your best self. What if you could be on your game, in the zone, instead of an hour or two a day but two, three, four times that much? And we think with some of the coaching we can do, using some of these AI and ML techniques. Through our devices, we can just help you be the best you can be all the time. >> Joe, at this show, we know it's a complex ecosystem. Something that I heard over and over again though, in the keynotes, is you've got a lot of partnerships. I heard many companies talking about, oh, and here's Poly devices. Heard it in the Microsoft keynote. We're here in the Five9 booth, we understand the partnership there. Talk about some of those partnerships, some of the news that was announced beyond just the company rebranding. >> Absolutely. Partnerships are our life blood. The reason we can be a great partner to so many companies is because, frankly, we don't compete against them for the cloud. We said we're going to do the user experience, we're going to be the end point. The management of the end point. But we've announced a lot of exciting things. Of course, Microsoft's a great partner to us. Zoom, and others, are a great partner. We announced this week a partnership with Google around Google Voice where we're the first and only certified Google Voice set of phones, at this point. Great announcements with Amazon around Chime and Alexa for business. Both in our trio speakerphones but also in the headsets. So I can actually touch the button and access Alexa straight through the headsets as well. And then of course companies like Five9 that are just an amazing, amazing partner to us. They have such an incredible product. Our headsets are on the vast mass majority of their agents. And when we look ahead at some of the unique analytics that we can do out of our headsets, some of the things they're trying to do, we just see an unbeatable combination with so many of these companies. >> What have been some of the feedback that you've heard from some of your customers and partners? This week, with such big news coming out and you mentioned a big spectrum-- >> Yeah. >> Of very big partners. Tell us about some of the feedbacks that you're getting from customers. >> Well I have to say, it has really been a thrilling week. The rebranding of the company as Poly, we had done all the research, we thought it was the right thing to do, the right name, the right heritage, plus being fresh. But it has been just overwhelmingly, you nailed it. I think from our customers and partners just a real excitement that they knew that Plantronics and Polycom were a premier end point provider, maybe the premier. But to see us partnered with so many of the cloud providers, as the predominant partner they're just seeing us in a whole new light, it's fantastic. >> Joe, one of the things we've been looking at is how Omnichannel's been changing over time. We talked about this show used to be VoiceCon. >> Yup. >> And a few years ago voice was a little bit lower on people's radar, but today a lot of voice, a lot of video. Of course it plays right into your heritage at the company. I'd love to hear what you're hearing from your customers as to the trends of the importance of voice and the ever growing importance of video. >> I think you nailed it in many ways, Stu. I think everybody has figured out that if voice isn't perfect the collaboration session isn't perfect. Even in a video conferencing call, we can put up with the video pixelating a little bit, as long as the voice is excellent. If the voice goes down, you don't have a session. So voice has to be fantastic. The end point plays a huge part in that. Working very carefully with our partners to make sure voice is absolute, is just fantastic. One of the other things on video that I think is really interesting is, we are really moving to, I guess I would say, a post speeds and feeds world. A few years ago all we heard is, are you VGA, are you force F? To use old words. Are you 1080p, are you 4K? Our product that won best of show yesterday in the product category, the Polycom Studio, a brand new video product for The Huddle Room. Really fascinating. Incredible good video, dead simple to use. I've probably been involved in 60 or 100 demos down here in the booth and done dozens of briefings on it. Nobody has asked me, what's the resolution of the camera? (Stu chuckling) What codec does it use? We've moved into a world of, it looks excellent, tell me about ease of use, tell me about the training. So I really think we're moving to a different world with that consumer expectation you talked about earlier of don't really care about those specifications anymore, it has to just work. >> That's a theme also Joe that we've heard from every guest that we've had on, as well as on the main stage. That that's what consumers, we are so demanding, we are so empowered, we have all this information and we expect that, to transact business as simply as we do things if we're buying something on Amazon or downloading something from Spotify, that simplicity is key. People say, it just has to work. Not so easy to be able to deliver, but it sounds like what you're saying is, people in your booth are getting it and it's so obvious to them that some of those speeds and feeds they just don't matter because it's so effective. >> Well you're absolutely right, the only thing I would disagree on is how hard it is. It really is just a matter of pivoting the company. So this has been a huge part of the Poly story. A couple of years ago as we were starting this journey of Plantronics and then as we brought Polycom in to form Poly we've really turned it on it's head. I mean our product managers, our engineers, we've got them out there with users, we ask users, not leading questions, but just in your wildest dreams, how do you see this working? Show me how you would do this as a consumer and we'll add the absolute minimum pieces in to add enterprise reliability, enterprise security, privacy, et cetera, et cetera. But we're really starting from that end user perspective and absolutely delighting them. And then adding what IT wants as opposed to the other way around which is where I think this industry was stuck for 10 or 15 years. >> Alright. So Joe, as a public company, I'm not going to ask too much but if we look down the road what should we be looking now that you've got the full resources together, you've got the rebranding, what should we expect as industry watchers to see from Poly kind of the next six to 12 months? >> So I think you'll see three or four things. We've talked about it publicly before. Number one, you'll see us just finish refreshing the product portfolio so every single product has the Poly look, has the Poly name, very consumer friendly, consumer forward, a consumer forward design and simplicity. So, best products across the board on the hardware side. Incredible ability to manage the products where you can understand every single one of them and then bringing those analytics and AI type functionality to these products that make the user their best self. That don't do weird things for them, that are a little scary, but really, really, really just anticipate their needs, help them do exactly what they want and you'll see even deeper and more partnerships. We are a partner company, we're going to live and die by partnerships, and we're going to be the best at it. >> Well Joe thank you so much for joining Stu and me on theCUBE. Again, congratulations on a momentous week with the launch of Poly, we look forward to hearing great news to come in the future. >> Fantastic, thank you so much for having me. >> Our pleasure. >> Yup. >> For Stu Miniman, I am Lisa Martin, you're watching theCUBE. (upbeat techno music)

>> Live from Orlando, Florida It's the Cube covering Enterprise Connect twenty nineteen brought to you by five nine. >> Hello from Orlando. We are at Enterprise Connect twenty nineteen, and we're being very graciously hosted by five nine, which is the intelligent Cloud Contact center. We had a great few days, two minute minute myself talking with customers, partners, vendors on this massive change and enterprise, communication and collaboration. We're excited to welcome back to the key one of our alumni, Zs Caravella, the founder and principal analyst at Zeke Research. These It's great to have you here, >> Dawson. To me. Here >> you are. You should have the i p status at Enterprise Connect because you have been to this event some twenty times. >> I believe it's my twentieth. >> Can't imagine. So they didn't They should have rolled out the red carpet. Maybe we'll put a note >> in next year, >> but Yeah. There you go. I >> want to get my own booth. >> There you go. But I can't imagine how much this event has changed. And just your perspectives on Day three here of e. C nineteen and some of the vendors that you're like, Wow. A few years ago, you would never have seen a so and so here. >> Yeah, the shows massive compared to what it used to be the Remember when I first started coming to the show floor was maybe if I was a quarter the size, I mean generous, and it was really dominated by just a handful of companies. But since then, it's gone through several transitions the i p to software to the cloud on. That's gotten a lot more companies interested. And I think also, finally, businesses starting understand that if you're going to transform digitally right, communications has to be part of that fact. If you look at any piece of research right that I know there's a walker study throwing around saying by twenty twenty customer experience to be the number one brand differentiator, that's that's already happening. It's already the number one brand differentiator. And so because of that, more and more companies are now interested in communications. So, you know, ten years ago, fifteen years ago, we didn't have Amazon here. We didn't have Microsoft here. We didn't have Oracle here, but it's been a great thing for the show to see all these other companies that really have really great presidents validate what we've been saying for a long time, and it's a much different show today than it was. >> Yeah, it's really interesting that the thing that opened my eye is some of the companies that air here. I wish I knew which brand used these technologies so that if and when I do have an issue, I'm not gonna have that horrible customer experience that you know we've had in the past. It's like, you know, if I wanted to make a call, it's like, Can I even make a call? And, you know, do I actually get through the I V R. Things like that? I like how you set it up there. Some of these pendulums swings some of these waves of technology. Um, let's talk a little bit about voice because this used to be called Voice Khan, and it went through a rebranding because, you know, voice was in a little bit of kind. But, you know, we know voices. It's still very important. How does that fit in the hall >> when I went through that rebound, Frankly, voice wasn't sexy anymore. Everyone is talking about unified communications. No one was going to call anybody ever again. We're just gonna message or social each other to death and what's happened is voice is kind of important, right? And I think one of the undersea and friends to look at is that voice is becoming simultaneously less important and more important. What I mean by that is that they sound like a little bit of an oxymoron. But if you look across all age demographics right there, everybody has a prefered mode of communications, and it's rarely voice to start a conversation with the company. You message them your social, um, send them an e mail. But somewhere in there, you you eventually want to talk to somebody, and a that moment s o to start the conversation voices less important. But at that moment, you now want to have a conversation with uneducated agent who knows what your problem is and can help you quickly. And so now voices Mohr important than it's ever been before where, but I think the buried entry wasn't all that high, but voices, you know, it's it's important, it's sexy, and especially when people are dealing with emotional issues, they're dealing with money problems right in front of get a refund. If I'm trying to check on the status of my health, I want to talk to somebody. But when I want to talk to somebody, I want to get that conversation with over. It's possible. I think the bar's been raised as you mentioned to. You used to think that the dreaded Ivy are. If you have a dread and ivy are experience, you just want to business that company anymore, right? And so the stakes are higher than the bar's been raised on. What voices >> are you saying that the customers that you were talking to are now starting to get much more prescriptive in terms of understanding their customer journeys and their preferences? You know, before they used to go, we assume we're talking to millennials. They only want they only want ASA Master. Our company's starting to get more focused on. Alright, let's actually do analysis and determine if a voice only one of the next channels that we need to enable, >> uh, well, I wish they were. I think we're really in the early early innings that I think the best companies in the world are doing that. If you look at companies with very high, uh, NPS scores and customer SAT scores there doing that thing already and I think it's a good lesson for the rest of the industry. If you're not doing that, you're gonna fall behind pretty quickly. And I think that is driving companies more to the Saami Channel experience Where, uh, from, uh, from an analytic standpoint, you really have to understand your customer, not at the demographic level, but almost at a custom level because everyone's different, right? I think that's, uh, that's never been possible before. But today, because we've got bigger data sets. Things were in the cloud rise of artificial intelligence. It's made all the stuff possible. So companies like I said, the best cos the world to taken advantage of and they're having a, you know, big differences. That's why there's been such a huge swings in the market leadership right there cos we never heard of before. Market leaders and brands we trusted loved before they're gone. >> Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up, because every company we talked to this week that that CX is at the center of what they're talking about. So, in your research, what is differentiating though those new leaders and, you know, causing some of those swings in the market place hot out of the customer. Look at these and help differentiate and and ever changing marketplace. >> Well, it's what's going on today. It's really about being more contextual, having a deeper understanding a wire. Customers calling, uh, how you could help him faster understanding maybe what products they own. You know what? What are some of the adjacent ones? Ah, no. I think that's going very quickly, become table stakes. And I think where we're moving to is we're going to shift customer service from being largely inbound, driven and reactive. And that's where they I can help react faster to being Mohr, outbound driven and pearl active. Right? So, for instance, let's say I buy a connected refrigerator and my water filter needs changing. Well, right now, I still have to recognize that. And maybe I call that refrigerator company and they can proactively help me because they understand what I have. And they've got a great arm, the Channel contact center. But ultimately that should be a reverse. They should contact me, maybe through a text message saying, Hey, you're we noticed your water filter needs changing. Can we send you one? Yes, it comes and then maybe I call the agent and say, Can you help me install it? Right? So I think within the next three, four years, we're going to see a lot of customer service, Uh, where contextual is the table stakes and then the ability to predict what your customer wants. That's going to be the differentiator. And frankly, that's really exciting. I mean, if you think we've seen change of this industry as you mentioned in the last five years, wait for the next five. >> When you're talking with customers or even doing research and and other venues, it's to mention CX. We talk. We've been talking about it all week, but I get curious when I hear the customer experience and the agent experience just think, How are they not how they separate because of the Asian isn't empowered to be able to, whether it's no the right channel. But I want to be communicated with or have the information where the context about why I'm calling, then the customer experience, right? >> Yeah, well, they're very tightly linked together. You can't have a good customer experience that a good agent experience and you may have the best trained agents in the world that are the most empathetic that are incredibly sensitive with what people want. But if they don't have the data, you're going frustrate your customer. And everybody's been through that situation where you get transferred to somebody else and you gotta start that whole conversation over again and eventually you just hang up and say, I don't want ever to business. So I think you're right. Agent experience Customer experience are very tightly interwoven, and they're they're really dependent on one another. You can't you can't do without the data. And again, that's where all these friends of a I come into play because they're able to send better information to the agents faster, really, through an assistive technology versus replacement. Right? >> So when we came into this show, we knew that the wave of cloud had made a big transformation. We're starting to hear a I is the next wave everybody's talking about. I believe I read something that that you had written that was talking about, you know, whether that is something just internal the company build in versus how it interacts with the customer. Where do you see I having the biggest impact kind of in the short term, and nowhere is that more long. >> It's a great question because I ask my customers all the time. Should we be using intelligence bots? Or if you saw the Google Duplex Nemo, where they have on a I call in order pizza I think it was or something like that. So is a I ready to talk to people? And I think if you think of the entire world of interactions on a two by two grid is an analyst would like to buy two grids, right? And you put complexity of conversation on one axis and frequency of interactions if it's hiking, or if it's low complexity, high frequency, that might be okay to try and automate through a But other than that, everything should flipped. Agent. And I think right now we're very early in the cycle, and so is a business. I'm not sure I trust today. I tow always have the right answer, but it makes a great assistant technology to recommend to the agent. This is what you should say, and the great thing about that is, if the agent says no, that's stupid and says that wasn't helpful. That becomes the input to the learning mechanism for the A I so overtime will get smarter and smarter. But if you if you want to think about just the role of it now, I always use the analogy is like a self driving car. I'm not sure if either one of you would want to jump in a car that has no driver, no steering wheel, no controls. But there's a lot of great aye aye technology in a car like lane change assist, parallel parking assist things like that that can make you a better driver. So let's make our agents better drivers by giving him those assistive technologies. And that's the the short term vision long term. Who knows? But I But I think oh, if company's heir to aggressively they II, they're actually gonna create a nod. The opposite effect, where they hurt customer experience. It's the people that make a difference, so let's make those people better. >> That's one of the things that we've heard consistently throughout this event is the empathy factor machines can't bring. That's really got to be the humans with the A I to deliver on idea, hopefully optimal experience, too. Whatever customer has whatever issue on the back end. >> Yeah, in fact, Roman always talks about that as well. The CEO of five nine and I think he's right from that. Regarded is about having the knowledge of the customer in the empathy to understand. Put yourself in the customer's position and this to your point. Lisa, about CX. In Asian experience, we tied a couple together. If the Asian distressed because they don't have the right information and they're trying a message, this person, or look something up in the database, that frustration is going to come through to the customer. And that further frustrates the customer, right? So of the agents, armed with the right information, they can spend more time focused on the customer and less time trying to find the data that, frankly, they should have at their fingertips all the time. >> So speaking of five nine, you recently attended their analyst event. >> I did >> on. We've had the executives on the team. You know, Jonathan on earlier this week, you know, rock star background. We're goingto throwing on a little bit later. We know him from his Cisco days without breaking any India's, you know, give us a little bit of the insight as to, you know, five nine. You know, what have they been doing? Well, what's what's the new team driving them forward towards? >> Well, I mean, if you look at their stock price from Roland joined, it's it's more than doubled. So obviously there's, um, some good growth there. I think. What? I've always believed that it's very difficult to compete on product alone, right? And if you believe this whole world of it is this customer experience, that's what they do really well, the customers, their customers have a great experience here with five nine, they have a great service organization that makes sure that when you buy five nine, you have a good on boarding experience that set up the way you want it, and that services business makes a big difference. Now they've always had that. Now, where I think the new executive team has made a difference is helping the company understand the scale, move upmarket, more enterprises because the needs their different than down market. And so I think you know, they're gonna have a big impact on the future of five nine. Frankly, I think a lot of what you've seen for growth in the last year has been stuff that was put in place. But I know they're working on a lot of the AI capabilities. We're not breaking in the NBA's. I can tell you that the demonstrations that Jonathan Rosenberg, who's in there incredibly smart guy, I mean he might be the smartest guy in this industry was giving around. How a I can impact customer experience was the best set of concrete examples that I've seen today because it's really easy to give me a pie in the sky hypothetical things. But he really boiled it down in a very grand your level of this possible. This is possible and I'm expecting over the next year, five nine customers will see those things. >> They've done really well in the enterprise market. I think last year in twenty eighteen, they closed very, very strongly. Also, a lot of growth in there. Custom enterprise customers with a Million and Ahrar plus What are you seeing, though, in terms of some of the smaller businesses that probably are facing a lot of the same challenges that enterprises are? Is this an area where they can also leverage five nine two really dial up and deliver Great CX, >> Yeah, but the line has moved up right of people interested in cloud services that used to be too small businesses, and now it's all kinds. But I think for a small business, you can look like a much larger business. I think there's a lot of companies people sometimes think that's a little risky deal the small company. But five nine is a very, very valuable tool because by having that information right away that agents fingertips, they're able to actually replicates, uh, large company experience and on almost validate that the customer made the right decision using them. So I think up and down the stack it for five nine. They provide value tow companies of all sizes. Today, one of them, you know, the interesting aspects of what I've seen two is everybody talks about this twenty four billion dollars tam for Contact Center. I know I've been in that eye, and may I say that because that twenty four billion dollars tam is based on giving contact, Senator people contact center tools, but what I've been noticing over the last years, when people buy five nine, often it's not contact center people using that using it. It's sales people in marketing people, field service. Anybody that needs customer info is using it. And I'll give an example. One of the customers that was at the five nine day I can't see you. They say who they are. They migrated all fifty contacts and regions five nine. And since then they've added one hundred mohr sales people using the tools. So now we've got one hundred fifty people using five nine when there was only fifty contacts. Generations you can see the value is starting to spread across the company, and I think that's a pretty exciting thing. >> It's been interesting we've seen at the show. And in some of the interviews, that line between kind of unified communications and contact center seems to be blurring. It seems to be that >> well, everybody needs that data on the customer info. I actually cameras closer to forty. Forty five billion. To be frank, really, every anybody who uses a serum tool should have five nine capabilities. >> Zia's Thank you so much for sharing your insights and your energy on Day three. If Enterprise connect nineteen, we appreciate your time Thank you. First two minute, man. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the Cube?

>> Live from Orlando, Florida It's the que Covering Enterprise Connect twenty nineteen. Brought to you by five nine. >> Hello from Orlando, Florida Lisa Martin with the cubes to amendments here with me as well. We are at Enterprise Connect twenty nineteen, and we've been graciously hosted this week by five nine. We're pleased to welcome to the Cube for the first time the V p of product marketing from five nine. Scott Coleman Scott Thank you so much for joining me today >> to be here. >> So Day three of this event. Biggest enterprise Connect. If they've had sixty five hundred attendees expected, we're in the Expo Hall, which you could hear all the buzz behind US one hundred forty or so exhibitors announcing new products, new services, etcetera, all talking about putting the customer at the heart of the contact center. Why is that so important >> now? It's a great question, and to your point about the show itself in the floor. Really, The Context center is very much at the center of actual floor itself, in terms of who's hear what they're talking about. It's not an after thought. It's really I think it's an acknowledgement that companies are realising that they have to take the customer experience seriously. And the context center is that point where you either reinforce the brand or you rode it right. So this is now the opportunity for companies to think a little differently about what role in place and how they're going to use it to really build a better relationship. >> Scott. It's been interesting. Lease and I came in tow this show being the first time that we've been at the show. But, you know, we're both consumers. We've looked through it, you know? I think back to the last decade or so there was outsourcing. There was technology, which is I'm just going to say, you know, some of the big technology companies I want to call them. Are you kidding? You can't write hide that. I can't even email them if I wanted to it. You know that the customer relation stupid, very different. But today it feels like the pendulum is swinging back the other way, right, that that customer relations we know when I need to talk to somebody. It's important that I do get to talk to a person and technologies an enabler of that, >> Yeah, absolutely, you know, And the question is, why? What changed? Right? And there's a couple things that really changed to make that happened. Probably the primary thing is customers had more choice. And then the voice right there more choice. Never before. It's no longer the issue, depending on whatever industry you're in, that you're only stuck with a certain cable provider or a retailer down the street I can buy from anywhere in the world, you know. And so I have choice there. There's disrupters in every industry as we've seen over the last decade, and so that that's one element. And just as importantly, they have a voice used to be. I could go home and complained to my my wife I could claim by family members my friends. Now I can actually amplify that through social media and other elements. So not only do I have a ability to move, but also in terms of the voice. I actually have a bigger impact on the brand, right, and those there is really big elements there. >> So along those lines, if you look at the consumer behavior is being so influential companies are they looking at it as more of an opportunity. Go. All right. Maybe we have a few channels. Maybe we're voice only. What? How does finding help a customer that might be voice only, Or maybe multi channel get to Omni Channel so that they can, as I loved what you study. No thiss contact senator. Moment in time is an opportunity to improve the brand or eroded. So how are they working with you guys to enable a customer to be able to have their issues identified, resolved quickly through various channels? >> What's the first thing is when you look at Omni Channel is why, what? Ultimately you want to make sure that you're o engaging with your customer over them channel on the method that they prefer. Right? That's the most important element there. So it's not about having ten, fifteen different ways to communicate. It's letting them do it when, where and how they choose to. That's the most important thing, and it's also then understanding. What else do they expect? Well, first in the expect is they want you. They want you to know them. You know, our research that we've done through our customer service index and a light consistently shows that people first and they want to know is Nomi understand my relationship. So when we work with our customers, we really focus on that as they engage over a phone call and email a chat, another channel. Always make sure that you, at the heart of it, you understand who they are. And one of the ways to do that is draw that information and make it available to the agent. So integration with serum systems with workforce optimization, others is critical so that when they're at the point of engagement, that moment of truth, they're able. Teo acknowledge the customer and probably have a really good understanding of not only their history, but why they're why they're engaging with you. Why they're calling are contacting >> Scott. Wait. We had a great conversation with Darrell, who's part part of your team, about how cloud not only enables the speed and agility, but, you know, I could start using new features much faster and easier. Then, in a non cloud environment. Wonder if you might have some customer stories to help illustrate some of these journeys as to you know, maybe just what they've gotten from Day one, but also, you know, subsequent to your customers that have been with you for a while. The rights that they keep innovating and adopting new things along the road. You >> know, it's funny. I I think of a couple examples. One. We had a customer who, newer, a newer company, a bit of a destructor in their industry, and they actually started out with digital channels on Lee. They had no voice. So they were offering email and Chad and other methods. And then, to their surprise, they found that they needed to introduce voice. They were deal with more millennials folks that they assumed were going to communicate over the right. Well, what happened was there were certain times when they wanted to actually communicate over Voice Channel. Maybe it was a financial issue. Maybe it was emotionally charged or something like that. So they brought. That is, we were able to help them by integrating in first. So they're there Syria to be able to digital channels and then open up voice. Now the other side of it is, we have customers who will start me with Voice Channel, and then they again understanding your customer, your end customers what do they want? Introducing a chat and making sure that those agents have all the relevant information they need to be able to do that. Realizing that email is still around after all these years, there's sometimes you want to communicate that way because you can send a lot of information. So it's really about building out a plan with the customer understanding. What is that customer journey of their customers? And how do they best a treated and helped him along the way >> on that customer journey front, I'm wondering, are the majority of customers that you're meeting with not aware of their customer journey and their customer preferences for different channels? Is that something that you're finding that you're actually from a consul? Tate of Perspective saying. Actually, what's idea here is to really not make assumptions on DH to actually do some investigations, and some studies tto learn. Is that a part of the process with you guys? It's a little >> bit a little bit of that. It's also sometimes that there's a journey purchase journey, a service journey in account management journey. You know the change. Change certain things about your service profile, but it's been developed over time, just through kind of osmosis, right? And so sometimes it's stepping back and understanding. What is that? Defining that journey and saying Where Artless critical path, where it may break down where problems occur So really drawn from that and understanding where those two points where we can Actually, and I say we being with customer helped them to be able to make that better overcome frustrations and delays and so on. So that's a really important element there in terms of channels. It's really just listening, listening to customers. Listen to agents listening to people that are on the front line talking to customers day in, day out and in realizing also, what's the profile of your customer? Your buyer? You know, not everybody is the same, and it doesn't always fit based on age or other demographics. You know, I have my father's eighty nine years old and weighs text messages all the time, you know, And once he embraced that, it's a wonderful method of communication. So, you know, there's a lot of things you have to look at along the way. >> Scott one of one of the biggest challenges in technologies we need to balance simplicity with the custom, ization and all of the choice in the world. I wonder if you might be able to comment. We know you know, from a customer standpoint, from agent standpoint. We wantto get them. The information they want when they need it is simple. It's possible. But on the back end, you know, we look at how many partners five nines has in all the different technologies you work with. You know, my business needs, you know, thes seven letters in the alphabet, not these other things. So how do you balance that from a messaging? And from a product standpoint, well, >> one of the >> things I realized is that one size doesn't fit. All right, companies have are different sizes. They're different complexity preferences along the way. So we really focus on how do you adapt the context center to the needs of that business? And that could be. Sometimes they have preferred vendors. So I'm a sales force, or Oracle or Mike saw for service now or whom you name it shop. I want to continue to use that it may be on work first optimization that I want. I have a certain set of capabilities I required that fits a particular vendor. Not so we really try to. And this is the beauty of the cloud is we can host. You know, elements in there in the case of, like, workforce optimization or in a grate in the case of serum to make that seamless. When you look at it from an agent perspective, it's all about giving them a common look and feel, you know, one term that's been really used. A lot of the show is the single pane of glass, the one agent desktop where they can really navigate because we've all experienced when you call into a context center and the agent is frustrated and these are complaining about the system, I'm sorry I'm trying to figure this out O this darn system. Oh, it's gotta wait or I have to find your information. I don't care. I'm the consumer. I just want my problem solved and frankly, the agents frustrated. But by integrating it within a with the serum, we could have all that information on the desktop on ly the relevant information that the agencies at that moment, you know, if I'm dealing with the purchase. Then I need that information on agent that's going to help me along the way. I don't need to worry about other factors, and I want to be able to customize that a little bit, too. My the way I behaved as an agent. So it is about convenience, intuitiveness, you know, and just ease of use. Long way. >> I'm curious. So here we are. Day three, Almost time with Enterprise Connect. Nineteen. You've been at the event the whole time. What are some of the things that you're hearing say from the analyst community? That is exciting. You about one. The direction that the contact center market is going into, what five nine is going to be able to deliver the rest of the year and beyond. >> You know, it's interesting. A couple of years ago, the buzz and the talk wass voices dead. It's all about everybody's going digital. And that was because of the increase in the number of transaction interacts that occurred over email chat social life. Now I was just talking to an analyst a little bit ago today, said You know, it's really interesting. Voice is hot again. Voice is cool because people are realizing voice has a very distinct role. And so it's not your only digital channels. It's not. You're it's really part of that mix back to comment we had before. So that's one thing you're seeing that you're seeing that with other vendors. You're seeing that with the conversations with customers, that it's really it's part of the mix and it's appropriate. Um, the other thing is, contexts enters hot again. It's kind of, you know, cool. And it's because of that change that we talked about earlier that, uh, it's no longer about cost center. It's no longer about Oh, I have tto answer that customer question. But now I play an integral role in that relationship my company has with the customer and how I can really reinforce the brand. So those are the things I think we're also seeing and talking to the analyst as well. They're saying that excitement and and also conversations that are occurring at the event are very engaging. People are really thinking about how they could change their business, >> and you could feel that and you could hear that here. So, Scott, as you say, the contact center is hot again stew. And I thank you for joining us on the program this afternoon. >> My pleasure. Thank you >> for student a man. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the Cube.