Nir Zuk, Palo Alto Networks | Palo Alto Networks Ignite22
>> Presenter: theCUBE presents Ignite '22, brought to you by Palo Alto Networks. >> Hey guys and girls. Welcome back to theCube's live coverage at Palo Alto Ignite '22. We're live at the MGM Grand Hotel in beautiful Las Vegas. Lisa Martin here with Dave Vellante. This is day one of our coverage. We've been talking with execs from Palo Alto, Partners, but one of our most exciting things is talking with Founders day. We get to do that next. >> The thing is, it's like I wrote this weekend in my breaking analysis. Understanding the problem in cybersecurity is really easy, but figuring out how to fix it ain't so much. >> It definitely isn't. >> So I'm excited to have Nir here. >> Very excited. Nir Zuk joins us, the founder and CTO of Palo Alto Networks. Welcome, Nir. Great to have you on the program. >> Thank you. >> So Palo Alto Networks, you founded it back in 2005. It's hard to believe that's been 18 years, almost. You did something different, which I want to get into. But tell us, what was it back then? Why did you found this company? >> I thought the world needed another cybersecurity company. I thought it's because there were so many cybersecurity vendors in the world, and just didn't make any sense. This industry has evolved in a very weird way, where every time there was a new challenge, rather than existing vendors dealing with a challenge, you had new vendors dealing with it, and I thought I could put a stop to it, and I think I did. >> You did something differently back in 2005, looking at where you are now, the leader, what was different in your mind back then? >> Yeah. When you found a new company, you have really two good options. There's also a bad option, but we'll skip that. You can either disrupt an existing market, or you can create a new market. So first, I decided to disrupt an existing market, go into an existing market first, network security, then cyber security, and change it. Change the way it works. And like I said, the challenges that every problem had a new vendor, and nobody just stepped back and said, "I think I can solve it with the platform." Meaning, I think I can spend some time not solving a specific problem, but building a platform that then can be used to solve many different problems. And that's what I've done, and that's what Palo Alto Networks has done, and that's where we are today. >> So you look back, you call it now, I think you call it a next gen firewall, but nothing in 2005, can it be next gen? Do you know the Silicon Valley Show? Do you know the show Silicon Valley? >> Oh! Yeah. >> Yeah, of course. >> You got to have a box. But it was a different kind of box- >> Actually. >> Explain that. >> Actually, it's exactly the same thing. You got to have a box. So I actually wanted to call it a necessary evil. Marketing wouldn't go for that. >> No. >> And the reason I wanted to call it a necessary evil, because one of the things that we've done in order to platform our cyber security, again, first network security now, also cloud security, and security operations, is to turn it into a SaaS delivered industry. Today every cyber security professional knows that, when they buy cyber security, they buy usually a SaaS delivered service. Back then, people thought I was crazy to think that customers are going to send their data to their vendor in order to process, and they wanted everything on premise and so on, but I said, "No, customers are going to send information to us for processing, because we have much more processing power than they have." And we needed something in the infrastructure to send us the information. So that's why I wanted to call it the necessary evil. We ended up calling it next generation firewall, which was probably a better term. >> Well, even Veritas. Remember Veritas? They had the no hardware agenda. Even they have a box. So it is like you say, you got to have it. >> It's necessary. >> Okay. You did this, you started this on your own cloud, kind of like Salesforce, ServiceNow. >> Correct. >> Similar now- >> Build your own data centers. >> Build your own data center. Okay, I call it a cloud, but no. >> No, it's the same. There's no cloud, it's just someone else's computer. >> According to Larry Ellison, he was actually probably right about that. But over time, you've had this closer partnership with the public clouds. >> Correct. >> What does that bring you and your customers, and how hard was that to navigate? >> It wasn't that hard for us, because we didn't have that many services. Usually it's harder. Of course, we didn't do a lift and shift, which is their own thing to do with the cloud. We rebuild things for the cloud, and the benefits, of course, are time to market, scale, agility, and in some cases also, cost. >> Yeah, some cases. >> In some cases. >> So you have a sort of a hybrid model today. You still run your own data centers, do you not? >> Very few. >> Really? >> There are very, very few things that we have to do on hardware, like simulating malware and things that cannot be done in a virtual machine, which is pretty much the only option you have in the cloud. They provide bare metal, but doesn't serve our needs. I think that we don't view cloud, and your viewers should not be viewing cloud, as a place where they're going to save money. It's a place where they're going to make money. >> I like that. >> You make much more money, because you're more agile. >> And that's why this conversation is all about, your cost of goods sold they're going to be so high, you're going to have to come back to your own data centers. That's not on your mind right now. What's on your mind is advancing the unit, right? >> Look, my own data center would limit me in scale, would limit my agility. If you want to build something new, you don't have all the PaaS services, the platform as a service, services like database, and AI, and so on. I have to build them myself. It takes time. So yeah, it's going to be cheaper, but I'm not going to be delivering the same thing. So my revenues will be much lower. >> Less top line. What can humans do better than machines? You were talking about your keynote... I'm just going to chat a little bit. You were talking about your keynote. Basically, if you guys didn't see the keynote, that AI is going to run every soc within five years, that was a great prediction that you made. >> Correct. >> And they're going to do things that you can't do today, and then in the future, they're going to do things that you can't... Better than you can do. >> And you just have to be comfortable with that. >> So what do you think humans can do today and in the future better than machines? >> Look, humans can always do better than machines. The human mind can do things that machines cannot do. We are conscious, I don't think machines will be conscious. And you can do things... My point was not that machines can do things that humans cannot do. They can just do it better. The things that humans do today, machines can do better, once machines do that, humans will be free to do things that they don't do today, that machines cannot do. >> Like what? >> Like finding the most difficult, most covert attacks, dealing with the most difficult incidents, things that machines just can't do. Just that today, humans are consumed by finding attacks that machines can find, by dealing with incidents that machines can deal with. It's a waste of time. We leave it to the machines and go and focus on the most difficult problems, and then have the machines learn from you, so that next time or a hundred or a thousand times from now, they can do it themselves, and you focus on the even more difficult. >> Yeah, just like after 9/11, they said that we lack the creativity. That's what humans have, that machines don't, at least today. >> Machines don't. Yeah, look, every airplane has two pilots, even though airplanes have been flying themselves for 30 years now, why do you have two pilots, to do the things that machines cannot do? Like land on the Hudson, right? You always need humans to do the things that machines cannot do. But to leave the things that machines can do to the machines, they'll do it better. >> And autonomous vehicles need breaks. (indistinct) >> In your customer conversations, are customers really grappling with that, are they going, "Yeah, you're right?" >> It depends. It's hard for customers to let go of old habits. First, the habit of buying a hundred different solutions from a hundred different vendors, and you know what? Why would I trust one vendor to do everything, put all my eggs in the same basket? They have all kind of slogans as to why not to do that, even though it's been proven again and again that, doing everything in one system with one brain, versus a hundred systems with a hundred brains, work much better. So that's one thing. The second thing is, we always have the same issue that we've had, I think, since the industrial revolution, of what machines are going to take away my job. No, they're just going to make your job better. So I think that some of our customers are also grappling with that, like, "What do I do if the machines take over?" And of course, like we've said, the machines aren't taking over. They're going to do the benign work, you're going to do the interesting work. You should embrace it. >> When I think about your history as a technology pro, from Check Point, a couple of startups, one of the things that always frustrated you, is when when a larger company bought you out, you ended up getting sucked into the bureaucratic vortex. How do you avoid that at Palo Alto Networks? >> So first, you mean when we acquire company? >> Yes. >> The first thing is that, when we acquire companies, we always acquire for integration. Meaning, we don't just buy something and then leave it on the side, and try to sell it here and there. We integrate it into the core of our products. So that's very important, so that the technology lives, thrives and continues to grow as part of our bigger platform. And I think that the second thing that is very important, from past experience what we've learned, is to put the people that we acquire in key positions. Meaning, you don't buy a company and then put the leader of that company five levels below the CEO. You always put them in very senior positions. Almost always, we have the leaders of the companies that we acquire, be two levels below the CEO, so very senior in the company, so they can influence and make changes. >> So two questions related to that. One is, as you grow your team, can you be both integrated? And second part of the question, can you be both integrated and best of breed? Second part of the question is, do you even have to be? >> So I'll answer it in the third way, which is, I don't think you can be best of breed without being integrated in cybersecurity. And the reason is, again, this split brain that I've mentioned twice. When you have different products do a part of cybersecurity and they don't talk to each other, and they don't share a single brain, you always compromise. You start looking for things the wrong way. I can be a little bit technical here, but please. Take the example of, traditionally you would buy an IDS/IPS, separately from your filtering, separately from DNS security. One of the most important things we do in network security is to find combining control connections. Combining control connections where the adversaries controlling something behind your firewall and is now going around your network, is usually the key heel of the attack. That's why attacks like ransomware, that don't have a commanding control connection, are so difficult to deal with, by the way. So commanding control connections are a key seal of the attacks, and there are three different technologies that deal with it. Neural filtering for neural based commanding control, DNS security for DNS based commanding control, and IDS/IPS for general commanding control. If those are three different products, they'll be doing the wrong things. The oral filter will try to find things that it's not really good at, that the IPS really need to find, and the DN... It doesn't work. It works much better when it's one product doing everything. So I think the choice is not between best of breed and integrated. I think the only choice is integrated, because that's the only way to be best of breed. >> And behind that technology is some kind of realtime data store, I'll call it data lake, database. >> Yeah. >> Whatever. >> It's all driven by the same data. All the URLs, all the domain graph. Everything goes to one big data lake. We collect about... I think we collect about, a few petabytes per day. I don't write the exact number of data. It's all going to the same data lake, and all the intelligence is driven by that. >> So you mentioned in a cheeky comment about, why you founded the company, there weren't enough cybersecurity companies. >> Yeah. >> Clearly the term expansion strategy that Palo Alto Networks has done has been very successful. You've been, as you talked about, very focused on integration, not just from the technology perspective, but from the people perspective as well. >> Correct. >> So why are there still so many cybersecurity companies, and what are you thinking Palo Alto Networks can do to change that? >> So first, I think that there are a lot of cybersecurity companies out there, because there's a lot of money going into cybersecurity. If you look at the number of companies that have been really successful, it's a very small percentage of those cybersecurity companies. And also look, we're not going to be responsible for all the innovation in cybersecurity. We need other people to innovate. It's also... Look, always the question is, "Do you buy something or do you build it yourself?" Now we think we're the smartest people in the world. Of course, we can build everything, but it's not always true that we can build everything. Know that we're the smartest people in the world, for sure. You see, when you are a startup, you live and die by the thing that you build. Meaning if it's good, it works. If it's not good, you die. You run out of money, you shut down, and you just lost four years of your life to this, at least. >> At least. >> When you're a large company, yeah, I can go and find a hundred engineers and hire them. And especially nowadays, it becomes easier, as it became easier, and give them money, and have them go and build the same thing that the startup is building, but they're part of a bigger company, and they'll have more coffee breaks, and they'll be less incentive to go and do that, because the company will survive with or without them. So that's why startups can do things much better, sometimes than larger companies. We can do things better than startups, when it comes to being data driven because we have the data, and nobody can compete against the amount of data that we have. So we have a good combination of finding the right startups that have already built something, already proven that it works with some customers, and of course, building a lot of things internally that we cannot do outside. >> I heard you say in one of the, I dunno, dozens of videos I've listened to you talked to. The industry doesn't need or doesn't want another IoT stovepipe. Okay, I agree. So you got on-prem, AWS, Azure, Google, maybe Alibaba, IoT is going to be all over the place. So can you build, I call it the security super cloud, in other words, a consistent experience with the same policies and edicts across all my estates, irrespective of physical location? Is that technically feasible? Is it what you are trying to do? >> Certainly, what we're trying to do with Prisma Cloud, with our cloud security product, it works across all the clouds that you mentioned, and Oracle as well. It's almost entirely possible. >> Almost. >> Almost. Well, the things that... What you do is you normalize the language that the different cloud scale providers use, into one language. This cloud calls it a S3, and so, AWS calls it S3, and (indistinct) calls it GCS, and so on. So you normalize their terminology, and then build policy using a common terminology that your customers have to get used to. Of course, there are things that are different between the different cloud providers that cannot be normalized, and there, it has to be cloud specific. >> In that instance. So is that, in part, your strategy, is to actually build that? >> Of course. >> And does that necessitate running on all the major clouds? >> Of course. It's not just part of our strategy, it's a major part of our strategy. >> Compulsory. >> Look, as a standalone vendor that is not a cloud provider, we have two advantages. The first one is we're security product, security focused. So we can do much better than them when it comes to security. If you are a AWS, GCP, Azure, and so on, you're not going to put your best people on security, you're going to put them on the core business that you have. So we can do much better. Hey, that's interesting. >> Well, that's not how they talk. >> I don't care how they talk. >> Now that's interesting. >> When something is 4% of your business, you're not going to put it... You're not going to put your best people there. It's just, why would you? You put your best people on 96%. >> That's not driving their revenue. >> Look, it's simple. It's not what we- >> With all due respect. With all due respect. >> So I think we do security much better than them, and they become the good enough, and we become the premium. But certainly, the second thing that give us an advantage and the right to be a standalone security provider, is that we're multicloud, private cloud and all the major cloud providers. >> But they also have a different role. I mean, your role is not the security, the Nitro card or the Graviton chip, or is it? >> They are responsible for securing up to the operating system. We secure everything. >> They do a pretty good job of that. >> No, they do, certainly they have to. If they get bridged at that level, it's not just that one customer is going to suffer, the entire customer base. They have to spend a lot of time and money on it, and frankly, that's where they put their best security people. Securing the infrastructure, not building some cloud security feature. >> Absolutely. >> So Palo Alto Networks is, as we wrap here, on track to nearly double its revenues to nearly seven billion in FY '23, just compared to 2020, you were quoted in the press by saying, "We will be the first $100 billion cyber company." What is next for Palo Alto to achieve that? >> Yeah, so it was Nikesh, our CEO and chairman, that was quoted saying that, "We will double to a hundred billion." I don't think he gave it a timeframe, but what it takes is to double the sales, right? We're at 50 billion market cap right now, so we need to double sales. But in reality, you mentioned that we're growing the turn by doing more and more cybersecurity functions, and taking away pieces. Still, we have a relatively small, even though we're the largest cybersecurity vendor in the world, we have a very low market share that shows you how fragmented the market is. I would also like to point out something that is less known. Part of what we do with AI, is really take the part of the cybersecurity industry, which are service oriented, and that's about 50% of the cybersecurity industry services, and turn it into products. I mean, not all of it. But a good portion of what's provided today by people, and tens of billions of dollars are spent on that, can be done with products. And being one of the very, very few vendors that do that, I think we have a huge opportunity at turning those tens of billions of dollars in human services to AI. >> It's always been a good business taking human labor and translating into R and D, vendor R and D. >> Especially- >> It never fails if you do it well. >> Especially in difficult times, difficult economical times like we are probably experiencing right now around the world. We, not we, but we the world. >> Right, right. Well, congratulations. Coming up on the 18th anniversary. Tremendous amount of success. >> Thank you. >> Great vision, clear vision, STEM expansion strategy, really well underway. We are definitely going to continue to keep our eyes. >> Big company, a hundred billion, that's market capital, so that's a big company. You said you didn't want to work for a big company unless you founded it, is that... >> Unless it acts like a small company. >> There's the caveat. We'll keep our eye on that. >> Thank you very much. >> It's such a pleasure having you on. >> Thank you. >> Same here, thank you. >> All right, for our guests and for Dave Vellante, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in live emerging and enterprise tech coverage. (upbeat music)
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brought to you by Palo Alto Networks. We get to do that next. but figuring out how to Great to have you on the program. It's hard to believe that's and I thought I could put a stop to it, So first, I decided to Yeah. You got to have a box. You got to have a box. because one of the things that we've done So it is like you say, you got to have it. You did this, you started Build your own data center. No, it's the same. According to Larry Ellison, and the benefits, of So you have a sort option you have in the cloud. You make much more money, back to your own data centers. but I'm not going to be that was a great prediction that you made. things that you can't do today, And you just have to And you can do things... and you focus on the even more difficult. they said that we lack the creativity. to do the things that machines cannot do? And autonomous vehicles need breaks. to make your job better. one of the things that of the companies that we acquire, One is, as you grow your team, and they don't talk to each other, And behind that technology is some kind and all the intelligence So you mentioned in not just from the technology perspective, and you just lost four years that the startup is building, listened to you talked to. clouds that you mentioned, and there, it has to be cloud specific. is to actually build that? It's not just part of our strategy, core business that you have. You're not going to put It's not what we- With all due respect. and the right to be a the Nitro card or the They are responsible for securing customer is going to suffer, just compared to 2020, and that's about 50% of the and D, vendor R and D. experiencing right now around the world. Tremendous amount of success. We are definitely going to You said you didn't want There's the caveat. the leader in live emerging
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Jed Dougherty, Dataiku | AWS re:Invent 2022
(bright music) >> Welcome back to Vegas, guys and girls. We're pleased that you're watching theCUBE. We know you've been with us. This is our fourth day. We know you've been with us since day one. Why wouldn't you be? Lisa Martin, here. As I mentioned, day four of theCUBE's coverage of AWS re:Invent. There are north of 55,000 people that have been at this event this week. We're hearing hundreds of thousands online. It really feels like old times, which is awesome. We're pleased to welcome back a gentleman from Dataiku who's actually new to theCUBE but Dataiku is not. Jed Dougherty is here, the VP of Platform Strategy. Thanks to joining me today, Jed. >> Oh, I'm so happy to be here. >> Talk a little bit, for anybody that isn't familiar with Dataiku, tell the audience a little bit about the technology, what you guys do. >> Dataiku is an end-to-end data science machine learning platform. We take everything from data ingestion, piplining of that data, bringing it all together, something that's useful for building models, deploying those models and then managing your ML ops workflow. So, really all the way across. And we sit on top of, basically, tons of different AWS stack as well as lots of the partners that are here today. >> Okay, got it. >> Snowflake, Databricks, all that. >> Got it, so one of the things that, it was funny, I think it was Adam's keynote Tuesday morning. I didn't time it, I watched it, but one of my guests said to me earlier this week that Adam spent exactly 52 minutes talking about data. >> Yeah. >> 52 minutes. Obviously, we can't come to an event like this without talking about data. Every company these days has to be a data company. Whether it's my grocery store or a retailer, a hospital, and so- >> Jed: It is the lifeblood of every modern company. >> It is, but you have to be able to access it. You have to be able to harness it, access it, derive insights from it, and be able to act on that faster than the competitors that are waiting, like, right back here. One of the things Adam Selipsky talked about with our boss, John Furrier, who's the co-CEO of theCUBE, they had a sit-down about a week before re:Invent. John always gets a preview of the show and Adam said, you know, he thinks the role of data analyst is going to go away. Or at least the term, because with data democratization that needs to happen. Putting data in the hands of all the business users, that every business user, whether you're in technology or marketing or ops or finance, it's going to have to analyze data to do their jobs. >> Could not agree more. >> Are you hearing that from customers? >> 100% >> Yeah. >> I was just at the CTO Summit of Bank of America two weeks ago out in California, and they told, their CTO had a statistic, 60,000 technologists in Bank of America, all asking data-type questions. You can have the best team of data scientists in the world, and they do. They have some of the best data scientists in the world there. And this team of data scientists could answer any one of the questions that those 60,000 people might have but they can't answer all of them, right? You need those people to be able to answer their own questions. I don't know if the term data analysts are going away. I think, yeah, everybody's just going to have to become a bit more of one. Just like how Excel taught everybody how to use the spreadsheet, in the future, in the next five, 10 years, the democratization of AI means that tools like Dataiku and other data science tools are going to teach everybody how to analyze data. >> Talk about Dataiku as a facilitator of that, of that democratization. Giving, like the citizen technologist who might be in finance, the ability to do that. >> So, a lot of data science tools are aimed at your hardcore coder, right? Somebody who wants to be sitting at a notebook writing (indistinct) or something like that and running models on some big fancy Spark server. Dataiku is still going to be running models on some big fancy Spark server but we're really obfuscating the challenge of writing code away from the user. So we target low code, no code, and high code users all working together in a collaborative platform. So we really do, we believe that there is always going to be a place for data scientists. That role is not going away. You will always need hardcore coders to take on those moonshot very challenging topics. But for every day AI, anybody should be able to do this and it should be open to anybody. >> Right. >> Jed: Really aim to facilitate that. >> I would love to hear some feedback, you know, this is day four of the show as I was saying, and day four is packed. I mean, this is energy-level-wise, guys, it is the same as it was when we started here on Friday night. But I'd love to hear, Jed, from your perspective some of the customer conversations that you've had, what are some of the challenges? They're coming to you saying, "Jed, Dataiku, help us eradicate these challenges so we can transform our business." >> What I'm hearing from customers and partners and AWS here is, over and over, we don't want to buy tools anymore. We want to buy solutions. We want a vertical solution that's pre-built for our industry. And we want it to be, not necessarily click and run out of the box, but we want a template that we can build off of quickly. And I've heard that customers are also looking to understand how tools can be packaged together. You got how many booths are here? 1000 booths? >> Yes, easily. >> You have 1000 different products being talked about, right behind us. Customers need to know which of these products are friends with each other and how they fit together so that they are making sure that when they purchase a set, a suite of tools to do their jobs, it's all going to work naturally together. So, being able, I think this is a really vital concept for GSIs as well. GSIs needs to understand how to package sets of tools together to deliver a full solution to clients. People don't want to be, you know, I think 10 years ago, five years ago, AWS was in the business of selling servers in the cloud. But basically what you do is, you would buy an EC two instance and you install whatever software you wanted on it. I don't know that they're in that business still but customers don't want to buy servers from AWS anymore. They want to buy solutions. >> Right. >> Rent, whatever. >> Yeah. (chuckles) >> That is the big repeated message that I've heard here. >> So you brought up a good point that there are probably 1000 booths here. You could be here every day and not get to see everything that's going on. Plus this show was going on across the strip. We're only getting a fraction of the people that are here. But with that said, to your point, there are so many tools out there. Customers are looking for solutions. One of the things that we say about theCUBE is, we extract the signal from the noise. How does Dataiku get past the noise? How do you get up the stack to really impact customers so they understand the value that you're delivering? >> I think that Data science and ML sound like a very complicated topic but our value prop is relatively simple. And we appeal both to your end users who are excited to learn about how data science works and how they can leverage these tools in their day-to-day jobs, as well as appealing to IT. IT, right now, at major organizations they want to be able to build a full stack that makes sense. And the big choices they're making right now are around infrastructure. Where am I going to run my compute? So, they're choosing between Snowflake or Databricks or a native AWS compute solution, right? And so they make this big choice around compute and then they realize, "Oh, how many of our users across our organization are actually able to leverage this big compute choice?" Oh, maybe 100, maybe 200. That's not incredibly useful for what we've just decided to completely stand behind. Dataiku, all of a sudden, opens that up to 1000s of users across your organization. So it makes IT feel empowered by being able to help more people. And it makes users feel empowered by being able to use a great tool and start answering their own questions. >> And where are your customer conversations these days? As we look at AI and ML, emerging technologies, so many customers and companies, knowing we have to go in this direction. We have to have AI to speed the business. Are you seeing more of the conversations are still in IT or are they actually going up the stack? >> (chuckles) It's a great question. When you're going into large organizations, there's two sales motions, right? There's convincing the business users that this is a great thing and then convincing IT that it's not going to be too painful. You always have to go to both places. IT doesn't want to take on a boondoggler, or there's an albatross, I don't remember the word, but, something that they're going to have to deal with for the next 10 years and then eventually dismantle and pull apart. I think a lot of IT got very scared about big data platforms and solutions because of Hadoop. To be honest, Hadoop was incredibly powerful but maybe not as mature of technology as IT would've liked it to be. From a maintenance and administration standpoint. So yes, you will always have to sell to IT and help IT feel comfortable with the platform. But no, the conversations that I want to have are the use case conversations with a Chief Data Officer, Chief Revenue Officer, Chief Marketing Officer. That's who I really want to convince that this is going to be a worthwhile opportunity. >> And what are some of the key, sorry. What are some of the key use cases that Dataiku is tackling in the market these days? >> So we work a lot. Two of the biggest organizations, or verticals, that I work with personally are finance and pharmaceuticals. In finance, we are closely embedded with wealth management organizations. So, a lot of that is around customer entertainment, churn, relatively obvious, simple concepts but ones where it's worth a lot of money. In pharma, we work both on the supply side. So, doing supply chain optimization, ensuring the right drugs get to the right places at the right time. As well as on the business and marketing side. So, ensuring that your ad spend is correctly distributed across different advertising platforms. >> So if you're working with a financial organization, I want to understand from a consumer, from the end user's perspective, although obviously this technology impacts the end user who's trying to do a transaction. What's in it for me? And I don't know as the end user that Dataiku is under the hood. >> You'd never know. >> Which is good. I shouldn't have to worry about the technology. >> Jed: You shouldn't have to worry about that at all. >> What's in it for the end user customer? What are they gaining from this? >> So, from a very end user perspective, if you think about when you logged onto maybe your Bank of America, your Chase app, five or 10 years ago, maybe you didn't even have it on your phone five years ago. Or when you logged into your account online. We do 95% of our banking online right now, right? I go into a physical location, what? I don't know, once every six months or something? Get a cashier's check? I don't know. The experience that you're getting and the amount of information you're getting back about your spending habits, where your money is going, what your credit score is, all of these things are being driven by these big data organizations inside the banks. Also, any type, this is a little creepier, but any type of promotional emails or the types of things that you get feedback on when you use your credit card and the offers that you get through that, are all being personalized to you through the information that these banks are collecting about your spending habits. >> Yeah, but we want that as a consumer, we want the personalized. >> Yeah, of course. We want it to be magic slash not creepy. (laughs) >> Right, I want them to recommend the best card for me. >> Right. >> The next best thing. >> It's good for me, it's good for them. >> Don't serve me up something that I've already bought. That always bugs me when I'm like, I already bought that. >> I get that all the time. I'm like, yeah, I have that card already. It's in my wallet. Why are you telling me? >> We only have a couple of minutes left Jed, but talk to me about from a platform strategy perspective, what's next for Dataiku and AWS? >> So we are making a matrix transition right now and it's core to our platform. For a long time, the way that we've installed Dataiku is, we help our customers install it on their AWS account so it runs inside their tenant. This is very comfortable for, for example, large banking clients, pharma clients that have personally identifiable information, all that kind of thing. They own everything. However, as we were talking about before, we're really moving from providing a tool to providing solutions. And part of that is obviously a move to SaaS. So two years ago we released a SaaS offering. We've been expanding it more and more to, this year, we want to be pushing SaaS first. So Dataiku online should be the first option when new customers move on. And that is a huge platform shift. It means making sure that we have the right security in place. It means making sure that we have the right scaling in place, that we have 24-7 support. All this has been a big challenge. A big fascinating challenge, actually, to put together. >> Awesome. Last question for you. Say you get a brand new DeLorean, I hear they're coming back, and you want to put, you really, really want to put a bumper sticker on it, 'cause why not? And it's about Dataiku and it's like a sizzle reel kind of thing. >> A sizzle real, alright. >> Yeah. What does it say? >> Extraordinary people, everyday AI. >> Wow. Drop the mic, Jed. That was awesome. Thank you so much for coming on the program. We really appreciate the update on Dataiku. What you guys are doing for customers, your specialization and solutions for verticals. Awesome stuff, we'll have to have you back. >> Thank you so much. >> Alright, my pleasure. >> Bye-Bye. >> For my guest, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in live enterprise and emerging tech coverage. (bright music)
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Horizon3.ai Signal | Horizon3.ai Partner Program Expands Internationally
hello I'm John Furrier with thecube and welcome to this special presentation of the cube and Horizon 3.ai they're announcing a global partner first approach expanding their successful pen testing product Net Zero you're going to hear from leading experts in their staff their CEO positioning themselves for a successful Channel distribution expansion internationally in Europe Middle East Africa and Asia Pacific in this Cube special presentation you'll hear about the expansion the expanse partner program giving Partners a unique opportunity to offer Net Zero to their customers Innovation and Pen testing is going International with Horizon 3.ai enjoy the program [Music] welcome back everyone to the cube and Horizon 3.ai special presentation I'm John Furrier host of thecube we're here with Jennifer Lee head of Channel sales at Horizon 3.ai Jennifer welcome to the cube thanks for coming on great well thank you for having me so big news around Horizon 3.aa driving Channel first commitment you guys are expanding the channel partner program to include all kinds of new rewards incentives training programs help educate you know Partners really drive more recurring Revenue certainly cloud and Cloud scale has done that you got a great product that fits into that kind of Channel model great Services you can wrap around it good stuff so let's get into it what are you guys doing what are what are you guys doing with this news why is this so important yeah for sure so um yeah we like you said we recently expanded our Channel partner program um the driving force behind it was really just um to align our like you said our Channel first commitment um and creating awareness around the importance of our partner ecosystems um so that's it's really how we go to market is is through the channel and a great International Focus I've talked with the CEO so you know about the solution and he broke down all the action on why it's important on the product side but why now on the go to market change what's the what's the why behind this big this news on the channel yeah for sure so um we are doing this now really to align our business strategy which is built on the concept of enabling our partners to create a high value high margin business on top of our platform and so um we offer a solution called node zero it provides autonomous pen testing as a service and it allows organizations to continuously verify their security posture um so we our company vision we have this tagline that states that our pen testing enables organizations to see themselves Through The Eyes of an attacker and um we use the like the attacker's perspective to identify exploitable weaknesses and vulnerabilities so we created this partner program from a perspective of the partner so the partner's perspective and we've built It Through The Eyes of our partner right so we're prioritizing really what the partner is looking for and uh will ensure like Mutual success for us yeah the partners always want to get in front of the customers and bring new stuff to them pen tests have traditionally been really expensive uh and so bringing it down in one to a service level that's one affordable and has flexibility to it allows a lot of capability so I imagine people getting excited by it so I have to ask you about the program What specifically are you guys doing can you share any details around what it means for the partners what they get what's in it for them can you just break down some of the mechanics and mechanisms or or details yeah yep um you know we're really looking to create business alignment um and like I said establish Mutual success with our partners so we've got two um two key elements that we were really focused on um that we bring to the partners so the opportunity the profit margin expansion is one of them and um a way for our partners to really differentiate themselves and stay relevant in the market so um we've restructured our discount model really um you know highlighting profitability and maximizing profitability and uh this includes our deal registration we've we've created deal registration program we've increased discount for partners who take part in our partner certification uh trainings and we've we have some other partner incentives uh that we we've created that that's going to help out there we've we put this all so we've recently Gone live with our partner portal um it's a Consolidated experience for our partners where they can access our our sales tools and we really view our partners as an extension of our sales and Technical teams and so we've extended all of our our training material that we use internally we've made it available to our partners through our partner portal um we've um I'm trying I'm thinking now back what else is in that partner portal here we've got our partner certification information so all the content that's delivered during that training can be found in the portal we've got deal registration uh um co-branded marketing materials pipeline management and so um this this portal gives our partners a One-Stop place to to go to find all that information um and then just really quickly on the second part of that that I mentioned is our technology really is um really disruptive to the market so you know like you said autonomous pen testing it's um it's still it's well it's still still relatively new topic uh for security practitioners and um it's proven to be really disruptive so um that on top of um just well recently we found an article that um that mentioned by markets and markets that reports that the global pen testing markets really expanding and so it's expected to grow to like 2.7 billion um by 2027. so the Market's there right the Market's expanding it's growing and so for our partners it's just really allows them to grow their revenue um across their customer base expand their customer base and offering this High profit margin while you know getting in early to Market on this just disruptive technology big Market a lot of opportunities to make some money people love to put more margin on on those deals especially when you can bring a great solution that everyone knows is hard to do so I think that's going to provide a lot of value is there is there a type of partner that you guys see emerging or you aligning with you mentioned the alignment with the partners I can see how that the training and the incentives are all there sounds like it's all going well is there a type of partner that's resonating the most or is there categories of partners that can take advantage of this yeah absolutely so we work with all different kinds of Partners we work with our traditional resale Partners um we've worked we're working with systems integrators we have a really strong MSP mssp program um we've got Consulting partners and the Consulting Partners especially with the ones that offer pen test services so we they use us as a as we act as a force multiplier just really offering them profit margin expansion um opportunity there we've got some technology partner partners that we really work with for co-cell opportunities and then we've got our Cloud Partners um you'd mentioned that earlier and so we are in AWS Marketplace so our ccpo partners we're part of the ISP accelerate program um so we we're doing a lot there with our Cloud partners and um of course we uh we go to market with uh distribution Partners as well gotta love the opportunity for more margin expansion every kind of partner wants to put more gross profit on their deals is there a certification involved I have to ask is there like do you get do people get certified or is it just you get trained is it self-paced training is it in person how are you guys doing the whole training certification thing because is that is that a requirement yeah absolutely so we do offer a certification program and um it's been very popular this includes a a seller's portion and an operator portion and and so um this is at no cost to our partners and um we operate both virtually it's it's law it's virtually but live it's not self-paced and we also have in person um you know sessions as well and we also can customize these to any partners that have a large group of people and we can just we can do one in person or virtual just specifically for that partner well any kind of incentive opportunities and marketing opportunities everyone loves to get the uh get the deals just kind of rolling in leads from what we can see if our early reporting this looks like a hot product price wise service level wise what incentive do you guys thinking about and and Joint marketing you mentioned co-sell earlier in pipeline so I was kind of kind of honing in on that piece sure and yes and then to follow along with our partner certification program we do incentivize our partners there if they have a certain number certified their discount increases so that's part of it we have our deal registration program that increases discount as well um and then we do have some um some partner incentives that are wrapped around meeting setting and um moving moving opportunities along to uh proof of value gotta love the education driving value I have to ask you so you've been around the industry you've seen the channel relationships out there you're seeing companies old school new school you know uh Horizon 3.ai is kind of like that new school very cloud specific a lot of Leverage with we mentioned AWS and all the clouds um why is the company so hot right now why did you join them and what's why are people attracted to this company what's the what's the attraction what's the vibe what do you what do you see and what what do you use what did you see in in this company well this is just you know like I said it's very disruptive um it's really in high demand right now and um and and just because because it's new to Market and uh a newer technology so we are we can collaborate with a manual pen tester um we can you know we can allow our customers to run their pen test um with with no specialty teams and um and and then so we and like you know like I said we can allow our partners can actually build businesses profitable businesses so we can they can use our product to increase their services revenue and um and build their business model you know around around our services what's interesting about the pen test thing is that it's very expensive and time consuming the people who do them are very talented people that could be working on really bigger things in the in absolutely customers so bringing this into the channel allows them if you look at the price Delta between a pen test and then what you guys are offering I mean that's a huge margin Gap between street price of say today's pen test and what you guys offer when you show people that they follow do they say too good to be true I mean what are some of the things that people say when you kind of show them that are they like scratch their head like come on what's the what's the catch here right so the cost savings is a huge is huge for us um and then also you know like I said working as a force multiplier with a pen testing company that offers the services and so they can they can do their their annual manual pen tests that may be required around compliance regulations and then we can we can act as the continuous verification of their security um um you know that that they can run um weekly and so it's just um you know it's just an addition to to what they're offering already and an expansion so Jennifer thanks for coming on thecube really appreciate you uh coming on sharing the insights on the channel uh what's next what can we expect from the channel group what are you thinking what's going on right so we're really looking to expand our our Channel um footprint and um very strategically uh we've got um we've got some big plans um for for Horizon 3.ai awesome well thanks for coming on really appreciate it you're watching thecube the leader in high tech Enterprise coverage [Music] [Music] hello and welcome to the Cube's special presentation with Horizon 3.ai with Raina Richter vice president of emea Europe Middle East and Africa and Asia Pacific APAC for Horizon 3 today welcome to this special Cube presentation thanks for joining us thank you for the invitation so Horizon 3 a guy driving Global expansion big international news with a partner first approach you guys are expanding internationally let's get into it you guys are driving this new expanse partner program to new heights tell us about it what are you seeing in the momentum why the expansion what's all the news about well I would say uh yeah in in international we have I would say a similar similar situation like in the US um there is a global shortage of well-educated penetration testers on the one hand side on the other side um we have a raising demand of uh network and infrastructure security and with our approach of an uh autonomous penetration testing I I believe we are totally on top of the game um especially as we have also now uh starting with an international instance that means for example if a customer in Europe is using uh our service node zero he will be connected to a node zero instance which is located inside the European Union and therefore he has doesn't have to worry about the conflict between the European the gdpr regulations versus the US Cloud act and I would say there we have a total good package for our partners that they can provide differentiators to their customers you know we've had great conversations here on thecube with the CEO and the founder of the company around the leverage of the cloud and how successful that's been for the company and honestly I can just Connect the Dots here but I'd like you to weigh in more on how that translates into the go to market here because you got great Cloud scale with with the security product you guys are having success with great leverage there I've seen a lot of success there what's the momentum on the channel partner program internationally why is it so important to you is it just the regional segmentation is it the economics why the momentum well there are it's there are multiple issues first of all there is a raising demand in penetration testing um and don't forget that uh in international we have a much higher level in number a number or percentage in SMB and mid-market customers so these customers typically most of them even didn't have a pen test done once a year so for them pen testing was just too expensive now with our offering together with our partners we can provide different uh ways how customers could get an autonomous pen testing done more than once a year with even lower costs than they had with with a traditional manual paint test so and that is because we have our uh Consulting plus package which is for typically pain testers they can go out and can do a much faster much quicker and their pain test at many customers once in after each other so they can do more pain tests on a lower more attractive price on the other side there are others what even the same ones who are providing um node zero as an mssp service so they can go after s p customers saying okay well you only have a couple of hundred uh IP addresses no worries we have the perfect package for you and then you have let's say the mid Market let's say the thousands and more employees then they might even have an annual subscription very traditional but for all of them it's all the same the customer or the service provider doesn't need a piece of Hardware they only need to install a small piece of a Docker container and that's it and that makes it so so smooth to go in and say okay Mr customer we just put in this this virtual attacker into your network and that's it and and all the rest is done and within within three clicks they are they can act like a pen tester with 20 years of experience and that's going to be very Channel friendly and partner friendly I can almost imagine so I have to ask you and thank you for calling the break calling out that breakdown and and segmentation that was good that was very helpful for me to understand but I want to follow up if you don't mind um what type of partners are you seeing the most traction with and why well I would say at the beginning typically you have the the innovators the early adapters typically Boutique size of Partners they start because they they are always looking for Innovation and those are the ones you they start in the beginning so we have a wide range of Partners having mostly even um managed by the owner of the company so uh they immediately understand okay there is the value and they can change their offering they're changing their offering in terms of penetration testing because they can do more pen tests and they can then add other ones or we have those ones who offer 10 tests services but they did not have their own pen testers so they had to go out on the open market and Source paint testing experts um to get the pen test at a particular customer done and now with node zero they're totally independent they can't go out and say okay Mr customer here's the here's the service that's it we turn it on and within an hour you're up and running totally yeah and those pen tests are usually expensive and hard to do now it's right in line with the sales delivery pretty interesting for a partner absolutely but on the other hand side we are not killing the pain testers business we do something we're providing with no tiers I would call something like the foundation work the foundational work of having an an ongoing penetration testing of the infrastructure the operating system and the pen testers by themselves they can concentrate in the future on things like application pen testing for example so those Services which we we're not touching so we're not killing the paint tester Market we're just taking away the ongoing um let's say foundation work call it that way yeah yeah that was one of my questions I was going to ask is there's a lot of interest in this autonomous pen testing one because it's expensive to do because those skills are required are in need and they're expensive so you kind of cover the entry level and the blockers that are in there I've seen people say to me this pen test becomes a blocker for getting things done so there's been a lot of interest in the autonomous pen testing and for organizations to have that posture and it's an overseas issue too because now you have that that ongoing thing so can you explain that particular benefit for an organization to have that continuously verifying an organization's posture yep certainly so I would say um typically you are you you have to do your patches you have to bring in new versions of operating systems of different Services of uh um operating systems of some components and and they are always bringing new vulnerabilities the difference here is that with node zero we are telling the customer or the partner package we're telling them which are the executable vulnerabilities because previously they might have had um a vulnerability scanner so this vulnerability scanner brought up hundreds or even thousands of cves but didn't say anything about which of them are vulnerable really executable and then you need an expert digging in one cve after the other finding out is it is it really executable yes or no and that is where you need highly paid experts which we have a shortage so with notes here now we can say okay we tell you exactly which ones are the ones you should work on because those are the ones which are executable we rank them accordingly to the risk level how easily they can be used and by a sudden and then the good thing is convert it or indifference to the traditional penetration test they don't have to wait for a year for the next pain test to find out if the fixing was effective they weren't just the next scan and say Yes closed vulnerability is gone the time is really valuable and if you're doing any devops Cloud native you're always pushing new things so pen test ongoing pen testing is actually a benefit just in general as a kind of hygiene so really really interesting solution really bring that global scale is going to be a new new coverage area for us for sure I have to ask you if you don't mind answering what particular region are you focused on or plan to Target for this next phase of growth well at this moment we are concentrating on the countries inside the European Union Plus the United Kingdom um but we are and they are of course logically I'm based into Frankfurt area that means we cover more or less the countries just around so it's like the total dark region Germany Switzerland Austria plus the Netherlands but we also already have Partners in the nordics like in Finland or in Sweden um so it's it's it it's rapidly we have Partners already in the UK and it's rapidly growing so I'm for example we are now starting with some activities in Singapore um um and also in the in the Middle East area um very important we uh depending on let's say the the way how to do business currently we try to concentrate on those countries where we can have um let's say um at least English as an accepted business language great is there any particular region you're having the most success with right now is it sounds like European Union's um kind of first wave what's them yes that's the first definitely that's the first wave and now we're also getting the uh the European instance up and running it's clearly our commitment also to the market saying okay we know there are certain dedicated uh requirements and we take care of this and and we're just launching it we're building up this one uh the instance um in the AWS uh service center here in Frankfurt also with some dedicated Hardware internet in a data center in Frankfurt where we have with the date six by the way uh the highest internet interconnection bandwidth on the planet so we have very short latency to wherever you are on on the globe that's a great that's a great call outfit benefit too I was going to ask that what are some of the benefits your partners are seeing in emea and Asia Pacific well I would say um the the benefits is for them it's clearly they can they can uh talk with customers and can offer customers penetration testing which they before and even didn't think about because it penetrates penetration testing in a traditional way was simply too expensive for them too complex the preparation time was too long um they didn't have even have the capacity uh to um to support a pain an external pain tester now with this service you can go in and say even if they Mr customer we can do a test with you in a couple of minutes within we have installed the docker container within 10 minutes we have the pen test started that's it and then we just wait and and I would say that is we'll we are we are seeing so many aha moments then now because on the partner side when they see node zero the first time working it's like this wow that is great and then they work out to customers and and show it to their typically at the beginning mostly the friendly customers like wow that's great I need that and and I would say um the feedback from the partners is that is a service where I do not have to evangelize the customer everybody understands penetration testing I don't have to say describe what it is they understand the customer understanding immediately yes penetration testing good about that I know I should do it but uh too complex too expensive now with the name is for example as an mssp service provided from one of our partners but it's getting easy yeah it's great and it's great great benefit there I mean I gotta say I'm a huge fan of what you guys are doing I like this continuous automation that's a major benefit to anyone doing devops or any kind of modern application development this is just a godsend for them this is really good and like you said the pen testers that are doing it they were kind of coming down from their expertise to kind of do things that should have been automated they get to focus on the bigger ticket items that's a really big point so we free them we free the pain testers for the higher level elements of the penetration testing segment and that is typically the application testing which is currently far away from being automated yeah and that's where the most critical workloads are and I think this is the nice balance congratulations on the international expansion of the program and thanks for coming on this special presentation really I really appreciate it thank you you're welcome okay this is thecube special presentation you know check out pen test automation International expansion Horizon 3 dot AI uh really Innovative solution in our next segment Chris Hill sector head for strategic accounts will discuss the power of Horizon 3.ai and Splunk in action you're watching the cube the leader in high tech Enterprise coverage foreign [Music] [Music] welcome back everyone to the cube and Horizon 3.ai special presentation I'm John Furrier host of thecube we're with Chris Hill sector head for strategic accounts and federal at Horizon 3.ai a great Innovative company Chris great to see you thanks for coming on thecube yeah like I said uh you know great to meet you John long time listener first time caller so excited to be here with you guys yeah we were talking before camera you had Splunk back in 2013 and I think 2012 was our first splunk.com and boy man you know talk about being in the right place at the right time now we're at another inflection point and Splunk continues to be relevant um and continuing to have that data driving Security in that interplay and your CEO former CTO of his plug as well at Horizon who's been on before really Innovative product you guys have but you know yeah don't wait for a breach to find out if you're logging the right data this is the topic of this thread Splunk is very much part of this new international expansion announcement uh with you guys tell us what are some of the challenges that you see where this is relevant for the Splunk and Horizon AI as you guys expand uh node zero out internationally yeah well so across so you know my role uh within Splunk it was uh working with our most strategic accounts and so I looked back to 2013 and I think about the sales process like working with with our small customers you know it was um it was still very siled back then like I was selling to an I.T team that was either using this for it operations um we generally would always even say yeah although we do security we weren't really designed for it we're a log management tool and we I'm sure you remember back then John we were like sort of stepping into the security space and and the public sector domain that I was in you know security was 70 of what we did when I look back to sort of uh the transformation that I was witnessing in that digital transformation um you know when I look at like 2019 to today you look at how uh the IT team and the security teams are being have been forced to break down those barriers that they used to sort of be silent away would not commute communicate one you know the security guys would be like oh this is my box I.T you're not allowed in today you can't get away with that and I think that the value that we bring to you know and of course Splunk has been a huge leader in that space and continues to do Innovation across the board but I think what we've we're seeing in the space and I was talking with Patrick Coughlin the SVP of uh security markets about this is that you know what we've been able to do with Splunk is build a purpose-built solution that allows Splunk to eat more data so Splunk itself is ulk know it's an ingest engine right the great reason people bought it was you could build these really fast dashboards and grab intelligence out of it but without data it doesn't do anything right so how do you drive and how do you bring more data in and most importantly from a customer perspective how do you bring the right data in and so if you think about what node zero and what we're doing in a horizon 3 is that sure we do pen testing but because we're an autonomous pen testing tool we do it continuously so this whole thought I'd be like oh crud like my customers oh yeah we got a pen test coming up it's gonna be six weeks the week oh yeah you know and everyone's gonna sit on their hands call me back in two months Chris we'll talk to you then right not not a real efficient way to test your environment and shoot we saw that with Uber this week right um you know and that's a case where we could have helped oh just right we could explain the Uber thing because it was a contractor just give a quick highlight of what happened so you can connect the doctor yeah no problem so um it was uh I got I think it was yeah one of those uh you know games where they would try and test an environment um and with the uh pen tester did was he kept on calling them MFA guys being like I need to reset my password we need to set my right password and eventually the um the customer service guy said okay I'm resetting it once he had reset and bypassed the multi-factor authentication he then was able to get in and get access to the building area that he was in or I think not the domain but he was able to gain access to a partial part of that Network he then paralleled over to what I would assume is like a VA VMware or some virtual machine that had notes that had all of the credentials for logging into various domains and So within minutes they had access and that's the sort of stuff that we do you know a lot of these tools like um you know you think about the cacophony of tools that are out there in a GTA architect architecture right I'm gonna get like a z-scale or I'm going to have uh octum and I have a Splunk I've been into the solar system I mean I don't mean to name names we have crowdstriker or Sentinel one in there it's just it's a cacophony of things that don't work together they weren't designed work together and so we have seen so many times in our business through our customer support and just working with customers when we do their pen tests that there will be 5 000 servers out there three are misconfigured those three misconfigurations will create the open door because remember the hacker only needs to be right once the defender needs to be right all the time and that's the challenge and so that's what I'm really passionate about what we're doing uh here at Horizon three I see this my digital transformation migration and security going on which uh we're at the tip of the spear it's why I joined sey Hall coming on this journey uh and just super excited about where the path's going and super excited about the relationship with Splunk I get into more details on some of the specifics of that but um you know well you're nailing I mean we've been doing a lot of things on super cloud and this next gen environment we're calling it next gen you're really seeing devops obviously devsecops has already won the it role has moved to the developer shift left is an indicator of that it's one of the many examples higher velocity code software supply chain you hear these things that means that it is now in the developer hands it is replaced by the new Ops data Ops teams and security where there's a lot of horizontal thinking to your point about access there's no more perimeter huge 100 right is really right on things one time you know to get in there once you're in then you can hang out move around move laterally big problem okay so we get that now the challenges for these teams as they are transitioning organizationally how do they figure out what to do okay this is the next step they already have Splunk so now they're kind of in transition while protecting for a hundred percent ratio of success so how would you look at that and describe the challenge is what do they do what is it what are the teams facing with their data and what's next what are they what are they what action do they take so let's use some vernacular that folks will know so if I think about devsecops right we both know what that means that I'm going to build security into the app it normally talks about sec devops right how am I building security around the perimeter of what's going inside my ecosystem and what are they doing and so if you think about what we're able to do with somebody like Splunk is we can pen test the entire environment from Soup To Nuts right so I'm going to test the end points through to its I'm going to look for misconfigurations I'm going to I'm going to look for um uh credential exposed credentials you know I'm going to look for anything I can in the environment again I'm going to do it at light speed and and what what we're doing for that SEC devops space is to you know did you detect that we were in your environment so did we alert Splunk or the Sim that there's someone in the environment laterally moving around did they more importantly did they log us into their environment and when do they detect that log to trigger that log did they alert on us and then finally most importantly for every CSO out there is going to be did they stop us and so that's how we we do this and I think you when speaking with um stay Hall before you know we've come up with this um boils but we call it fine fix verifying so what we do is we go in is we act as the attacker right we act in a production environment so we're not going to be we're a passive attacker but we will go in on credentialed on agents but we have to assume to have an assumed breach model which means we're going to put a Docker container in your environment and then we're going to fingerprint the environment so we're going to go out and do an asset survey now that's something that's not something that Splunk does super well you know so can Splunk see all the assets do the same assets marry up we're going to log all that data and think and then put load that into this long Sim or the smoke logging tools just to have it in Enterprise right that's an immediate future ad that they've got um and then we've got the fix so once we've completed our pen test um we are then going to generate a report and we can talk about these in a little bit later but the reports will show an executive summary the assets that we found which would be your asset Discovery aspect of that a fix report and the fixed report I think is probably the most important one it will go down and identify what we did how we did it and then how to fix that and then from that the pen tester or the organization should fix those then they go back and run another test and then they validate like a change detection environment to see hey did those fixes taste play take place and you know snehaw when he was the CTO of jsoc he shared with me a number of times about it's like man there would be 15 more items on next week's punch sheet that we didn't know about and it's and it has to do with how we you know how they were uh prioritizing the cves and whatnot because they would take all CBDs it was critical or non-critical and it's like we are able to create context in that environment that feeds better information into Splunk and whatnot that brings that brings up the efficiency for Splunk specifically the teams out there by the way the burnout thing is real I mean this whole I just finished my list and I got 15 more or whatever the list just can keeps growing how did node zero specifically help Splunk teams be more efficient like that's the question I want to get at because this seems like a very scale way for Splunk customers and teams service teams to be more so the question is how does node zero help make Splunk specifically their service teams be more efficient so so today in our early interactions we're building customers we've seen are five things um and I'll start with sort of identifying the blind spots right so kind of what I just talked about with you did we detect did we log did we alert did they stop node zero right and so I would I put that you know a more Layman's third grade term and if I was going to beat a fifth grader at this game would be we can be the sparring partner for a Splunk Enterprise customer a Splunk Essentials customer someone using Splunk soar or even just an Enterprise Splunk customer that may be a small shop with three people and just wants to know where am I exposed so by creating and generating these reports and then having um the API that actually generates the dashboard they can take all of these events that we've logged and log them in and then where that then comes in is number two is how do we prioritize those logs right so how do we create visibility to logs that that um are have critical impacts and again as I mentioned earlier not all cves are high impact regard and also not all or low right so if you daisy chain a bunch of low cves together boom I've got a mission critical AP uh CPE that needs to be fixed now such as a credential moving to an NT box that's got a text file with a bunch of passwords on it that would be very bad um and then third would be uh verifying that you have all of the hosts so one of the things that splunk's not particularly great at and they'll literate themselves they don't do asset Discovery so dude what assets do we see and what are they logging from that um and then for from um for every event that they are able to identify one of the cool things that we can do is actually create this low code no code environment so they could let you know Splunk customers can use Splunk sword to actually triage events and prioritize that event so where they're being routed within it to optimize the Sox team time to Market or time to triage any given event obviously reducing MTR and then finally I think one of the neatest things that we'll be seeing us develop is um our ability to build glass cables so behind me you'll see one of our triage events and how we build uh a Lockheed Martin kill chain on that with a glass table which is very familiar to the community we're going to have the ability and not too distant future to allow people to search observe on those iocs and if people aren't familiar with it ioc it's an instant of a compromise so that's a vector that we want to drill into and of course who's better at Drilling in the data and smoke yeah this is a critter this is an awesome Synergy there I mean I can see a Splunk customer going man this just gives me so much more capability action actionability and also real understanding and I think this is what I want to dig into if you don't mind understanding that critical impact okay is kind of where I see this coming got the data data ingest now data's data but the question is what not to log you know where are things misconfigured these are critical questions so can you talk about what it means to understand critical impact yeah so I think you know going back to the things that I just spoke about a lot of those cves where you'll see um uh low low low and then you daisy chain together and they're suddenly like oh this is high now but then your other impact of like if you're if you're a Splunk customer you know and I had it I had several of them I had one customer that you know terabytes of McAfee data being brought in and it was like all right there's a lot of other data that you probably also want to bring but they could only afford wanted to do certain data sets because that's and they didn't know how to prioritize or filter those data sets and so we provide that opportunity to say hey these are the critical ones to bring in but there's also the ones that you don't necessarily need to bring in because low cve in this case really does mean low cve like an ILO server would be one that um that's the print server uh where the uh your admin credentials are on on like a printer and so there will be credentials on that that's something that a hacker might go in to look at so although the cve on it is low is if you daisy chain with somebody that's able to get into that you might say Ah that's high and we would then potentially rank it giving our AI logic to say that's a moderate so put it on the scale and we prioritize those versus uh of all of these scanners just going to give you a bunch of CDs and good luck and translating that if I if I can and tell me if I'm wrong that kind of speaks to that whole lateral movement that's it challenge right print serve a great example looks stupid low end who's going to want to deal with the print server oh but it's connected into a critical system there's a path is that kind of what you're getting at yeah I use Daisy Chain I think that's from the community they came from uh but it's just a lateral movement it's exactly what they're doing in those low level low critical lateral movements is where the hackers are getting in right so that's the beauty thing about the uh the Uber example is that who would have thought you know I've got my monthly Factor authentication going in a human made a mistake we can't we can't not expect humans to make mistakes we're fallible right the reality is is once they were in the environment they could have protected themselves by running enough pen tests to know that they had certain uh exposed credentials that would have stopped the breach and they did not had not done that in their environment and I'm not poking yeah but it's an interesting Trend though I mean it's obvious if sometimes those low end items are also not protected well so it's easy to get at from a hacker standpoint but also the people in charge of them can be fished easily or spearfished because they're not paying attention because they don't have to no one ever told them hey be careful yeah for the community that I came from John that's exactly how they they would uh meet you at a uh an International Event um introduce themselves as a graduate student these are National actor States uh would you mind reviewing my thesis on such and such and I was at Adobe at the time that I was working on this instead of having to get the PDF they opened the PDF and whoever that customer was launches and I don't know if you remember back in like 2008 time frame there was a lot of issues around IP being by a nation state being stolen from the United States and that's exactly how they did it and John that's or LinkedIn hey I want to get a joke we want to hire you double the salary oh I'm gonna click on that for sure you know yeah right exactly yeah the one thing I would say to you is like uh when we look at like sort of you know because I think we did 10 000 pen tests last year is it's probably over that now you know we have these sort of top 10 ways that we think and find people coming into the environment the funniest thing is that only one of them is a cve related vulnerability like uh you know you guys know what they are right so it's it but it's it's like two percent of the attacks are occurring through the cves but yeah there's all that attention spent to that and very little attention spent to this pen testing side which is sort of this continuous threat you know monitoring space and and this vulnerability space where I think we play a such an important role and I'm so excited to be a part of the tip of the spear on this one yeah I'm old enough to know the movie sneakers which I loved as a you know watching that movie you know professional hackers are testing testing always testing the environment I love this I got to ask you as we kind of wrap up here Chris if you don't mind the the benefits to Professional Services from this Alliance big news Splunk and you guys work well together we see that clearly what are what other benefits do Professional Services teams see from the Splunk and Horizon 3.ai Alliance so if you're I think for from our our from both of our uh Partners uh as we bring these guys together and many of them already are the same partner right uh is that uh first off the licensing model is probably one of the key areas that we really excel at so if you're an end user you can buy uh for the Enterprise by the number of IP addresses you're using um but uh if you're a partner working with this there's solution ways that you can go in and we'll license as to msps and what that business model on msps looks like but the unique thing that we do here is this C plus license and so the Consulting plus license allows like a uh somebody a small to mid-sized to some very large uh you know Fortune 100 uh consulting firms use this uh by buying into a license called um Consulting plus where they can have unlimited uh access to as many IPS as they want but you can only run one test at a time and as you can imagine when we're going and hacking passwords and um checking hashes and decrypting hashes that can take a while so but for the right customer it's it's a perfect tool and so I I'm so excited about our ability to go to market with uh our partners so that we understand ourselves understand how not to just sell to or not tell just to sell through but we know how to sell with them as a good vendor partner I think that that's one thing that we've done a really good job building bring it into the market yeah I think also the Splunk has had great success how they've enabled uh partners and Professional Services absolutely you know the services that layer on top of Splunk are multi-fold tons of great benefits so you guys Vector right into that ride that way with friction and and the cool thing is that in you know in one of our reports which could be totally customized uh with someone else's logo we're going to generate you know so I I used to work in another organization it wasn't Splunk but we we did uh you know pen testing as for for customers and my pen testers would come on site they'd do the engagement and they would leave and then another release someone would be oh shoot we got another sector that was breached and they'd call you back you know four weeks later and so by August our entire pen testings teams would be sold out and it would be like well even in March maybe and they're like no no I gotta breach now and and and then when they do go in they go through do the pen test and they hand over a PDF and they pack on the back and say there's where your problems are you need to fix it and the reality is that what we're going to generate completely autonomously with no human interaction is we're going to go and find all the permutations of anything we found and the fix for those permutations and then once you've fixed everything you just go back and run another pen test it's you know for what people pay for one pen test they can have a tool that does that every every Pat patch on Tuesday and that's on Wednesday you know triage throughout the week green yellow red I wanted to see the colors show me green green is good right not red and one CIO doesn't want who doesn't want that dashboard right it's it's exactly it and we can help bring I think that you know I'm really excited about helping drive this with the Splunk team because they get that they understand that it's the green yellow red dashboard and and how do we help them find more green uh so that the other guys are in red yeah and get in the data and do the right thing and be efficient with how you use the data know what to look at so many things to pay attention to you know the combination of both and then go to market strategy real brilliant congratulations Chris thanks for coming on and sharing um this news with the detail around the Splunk in action around the alliance thanks for sharing John my pleasure thanks look forward to seeing you soon all right great we'll follow up and do another segment on devops and I.T and security teams as the new new Ops but and super cloud a bunch of other stuff so thanks for coming on and our next segment the CEO of horizon 3.aa will break down all the new news for us here on thecube you're watching thecube the leader in high tech Enterprise coverage [Music] yeah the partner program for us has been fantastic you know I think prior to that you know as most organizations most uh uh most Farmers most mssps might not necessarily have a a bench at all for penetration testing uh maybe they subcontract this work out or maybe they do it themselves but trying to staff that kind of position can be incredibly difficult for us this was a differentiator a a new a new partner a new partnership that allowed us to uh not only perform services for our customers but be able to provide a product by which that they can do it themselves so we work with our customers in a variety of ways some of them want more routine testing and perform this themselves but we're also a certified service provider of horizon 3 being able to perform uh penetration tests uh help review the the data provide color provide analysis for our customers in a broader sense right not necessarily the the black and white elements of you know what was uh what's critical what's high what's medium what's low what you need to fix but are there systemic issues this has allowed us to onboard new customers this has allowed us to migrate some penetration testing services to us from from competitors in the marketplace But ultimately this is occurring because the the product and the outcome are special they're unique and they're effective our customers like what they're seeing they like the routineness of it many of them you know again like doing this themselves you know being able to kind of pen test themselves parts of their networks um and the the new use cases right I'm a large organization I have eight to ten Acquisitions per year wouldn't it be great to have a tool to be able to perform a penetration test both internal and external of that acquisition before we integrate the two companies and maybe bringing on some risk it's a very effective partnership uh one that really is uh kind of taken our our Engineers our account Executives by storm um you know this this is a a partnership that's been very valuable to us [Music] a key part of the value and business model at Horizon 3 is enabling Partners to leverage node zero to make more revenue for themselves our goal is that for sixty percent of our Revenue this year will be originated by partners and that 95 of our Revenue next year will be originated by partners and so a key to that strategy is making us an integral part of your business models as a partner a key quote from one of our partners is that we enable every one of their business units to generate Revenue so let's talk about that in a little bit more detail first is that if you have a pen test Consulting business take Deloitte as an example what was six weeks of human labor at Deloitte per pen test has been cut down to four days of Labor using node zero to conduct reconnaissance find all the juicy interesting areas of the of the Enterprise that are exploitable and being able to go assess the entire organization and then all of those details get served up to the human to be able to look at understand and determine where to probe deeper so what you see in that pen test Consulting business is that node zero becomes a force multiplier where those Consulting teams were able to cover way more accounts and way more IPS within those accounts with the same or fewer consultants and so that directly leads to profit margin expansion for the Penn testing business itself because node 0 is a force multiplier the second business model here is if you're an mssp as an mssp you're already making money providing defensive cyber security operations for a large volume of customers and so what they do is they'll license node zero and use us as an upsell to their mssb business to start to deliver either continuous red teaming continuous verification or purple teaming as a service and so in that particular business model they've got an additional line of Revenue where they can increase the spend of their existing customers by bolting on node 0 as a purple team as a service offering the third business model or customer type is if you're an I.T services provider so as an I.T services provider you make money installing and configuring security products like Splunk or crowdstrike or hemio you also make money reselling those products and you also make money generating follow-on services to continue to harden your customer environments and so for them what what those it service providers will do is use us to verify that they've installed Splunk correctly improved to their customer that Splunk was installed correctly or crowdstrike was installed correctly using our results and then use our results to drive follow-on services and revenue and then finally we've got the value-added reseller which is just a straight up reseller because of how fast our sales Cycles are these vars are able to typically go from cold email to deal close in six to eight weeks at Horizon 3 at least a single sales engineer is able to run 30 to 50 pocs concurrently because our pocs are very lightweight and don't require any on-prem customization or heavy pre-sales post sales activity so as a result we're able to have a few amount of sellers driving a lot of Revenue and volume for us well the same thing applies to bars there isn't a lot of effort to sell the product or prove its value so vars are able to sell a lot more Horizon 3 node zero product without having to build up a huge specialist sales organization so what I'm going to do is talk through uh scenario three here as an I.T service provider and just how powerful node zero can be in driving additional Revenue so in here think of for every one dollar of node zero license purchased by the IT service provider to do their business it'll generate ten dollars of additional revenue for that partner so in this example kidney group uses node 0 to verify that they have installed and deployed Splunk correctly so Kitty group is a Splunk partner they they sell it services to install configure deploy and maintain Splunk and as they deploy Splunk they're going to use node 0 to attack the environment and make sure that the right logs and alerts and monitoring are being handled within the Splunk deployment so it's a way of doing QA or verifying that Splunk has been configured correctly and that's going to be internally used by kidney group to prove the quality of their services that they've just delivered then what they're going to do is they're going to show and leave behind that node zero Report with their client and that creates a resell opportunity for for kidney group to resell node 0 to their client because their client is seeing the reports and the results and saying wow this is pretty amazing and those reports can be co-branded where it's a pen testing report branded with kidney group but it says powered by Horizon three under it from there kidney group is able to take the fixed actions report that's automatically generated with every pen test through node zero and they're able to use that as the starting point for a statement of work to sell follow-on services to fix all of the problems that node zero identified fixing l11r misconfigurations fixing or patching VMware or updating credentials policies and so on so what happens is node 0 has found a bunch of problems the client often lacks the capacity to fix and so kidney group can use that lack of capacity by the client as a follow-on sales opportunity for follow-on services and finally based on the findings from node zero kidney group can look at that report and say to the customer you know customer if you bought crowdstrike you'd be able to uh prevent node Zero from attacking and succeeding in the way that it did for if you bought humano or if you bought Palo Alto networks or if you bought uh some privileged access management solution because of what node 0 was able to do with credential harvesting and attacks and so as a result kidney group is able to resell other security products within their portfolio crowdstrike Falcon humano Polito networks demisto Phantom and so on based on the gaps that were identified by node zero and that pen test and what that creates is another feedback loop where kidney group will then go use node 0 to verify that crowdstrike product has actually been installed and configured correctly and then this becomes the cycle of using node 0 to verify a deployment using that verification to drive a bunch of follow-on services and resell opportunities which then further drives more usage of the product now the way that we licensed is that it's a usage-based license licensing model so that the partner will grow their node zero Consulting plus license as they grow their business so for example if you're a kidney group then week one you've got you're going to use node zero to verify your Splunk install in week two if you have a pen testing business you're going to go off and use node zero to be a force multiplier for your pen testing uh client opportunity and then if you have an mssp business then in week three you're going to use node zero to go execute a purple team mssp offering for your clients so not necessarily a kidney group but if you're a Deloitte or ATT these larger companies and you've got multiple lines of business if you're Optive for instance you all you have to do is buy one Consulting plus license and you're going to be able to run as many pen tests as you want sequentially so now you can buy a single license and use that one license to meet your week one client commitments and then meet your week two and then meet your week three and as you grow your business you start to run multiple pen tests concurrently so in week one you've got to do a Splunk verify uh verify Splunk install and you've got to run a pen test and you've got to do a purple team opportunity you just simply expand the number of Consulting plus licenses from one license to three licenses and so now as you systematically grow your business you're able to grow your node zero capacity with you giving you predictable cogs predictable margins and once again 10x additional Revenue opportunity for that investment in the node zero Consulting plus license my name is Saint I'm the co-founder and CEO here at Horizon 3. I'm going to talk to you today about why it's important to look at your Enterprise Through The Eyes of an attacker the challenge I had when I was a CIO in banking the CTO at Splunk and serving within the Department of Defense is that I had no idea I was Secure until the bad guys had showed up am I logging the right data am I fixing the right vulnerabilities are my security tools that I've paid millions of dollars for actually working together to defend me and the answer is I don't know does my team actually know how to respond to a breach in the middle of an incident I don't know I've got to wait for the bad guys to show up and so the challenge I had was how do we proactively verify our security posture I tried a variety of techniques the first was the use of vulnerability scanners and the challenge with vulnerability scanners is being vulnerable doesn't mean you're exploitable I might have a hundred thousand findings from my scanner of which maybe five or ten can actually be exploited in my environment the other big problem with scanners is that they can't chain weaknesses together from machine to machine so if you've got a thousand machines in your environment or more what a vulnerability scanner will do is tell you you have a problem on machine one and separately a problem on machine two but what they can tell you is that an attacker could use a load from machine one plus a low from machine two to equal to critical in your environment and what attackers do in their tactics is they chain together misconfigurations dangerous product defaults harvested credentials and exploitable vulnerabilities into attack paths across different machines so to address the attack pads across different machines I tried layering in consulting-based pen testing and the issue is when you've got thousands of hosts or hundreds of thousands of hosts in your environment human-based pen testing simply doesn't scale to test an infrastructure of that size moreover when they actually do execute a pen test and you get the report oftentimes you lack the expertise within your team to quickly retest to verify that you've actually fixed the problem and so what happens is you end up with these pen test reports that are incomplete snapshots and quickly going stale and then to mitigate that problem I tried using breach and attack simulation tools and the struggle with these tools is one I had to install credentialed agents everywhere two I had to write my own custom attack scripts that I didn't have much talent for but also I had to maintain as my environment changed and then three these types of tools were not safe to run against production systems which was the the majority of my attack surface so that's why we went off to start Horizon 3. so Tony and I met when we were in Special Operations together and the challenge we wanted to solve was how do we do infrastructure security testing at scale by giving the the power of a 20-year pen testing veteran into the hands of an I.T admin a network engineer in just three clicks and the whole idea is we enable these fixers The Blue Team to be able to run node Zero Hour pen testing product to quickly find problems in their environment that blue team will then then go off and fix the issues that were found and then they can quickly rerun the attack to verify that they fixed the problem and the whole idea is delivering this without requiring custom scripts be developed without requiring credential agents be installed and without requiring the use of external third-party consulting services or Professional Services self-service pen testing to quickly Drive find fix verify there are three primary use cases that our customers use us for the first is the sock manager that uses us to verify that their security tools are actually effective to verify that they're logging the right data in Splunk or in their Sim to verify that their managed security services provider is able to quickly detect and respond to an attack and hold them accountable for their slas or that the sock understands how to quickly detect and respond and measuring and verifying that or that the variety of tools that you have in your stack most organizations have 130 plus cyber security tools none of which are designed to work together are actually working together the second primary use case is proactively hardening and verifying your systems this is when the I that it admin that network engineer they're able to run self-service pen tests to verify that their Cisco environment is installed in hardened and configured correctly or that their credential policies are set up right or that their vcenter or web sphere or kubernetes environments are actually designed to be secure and what this allows the it admins and network Engineers to do is shift from running one or two pen tests a year to 30 40 or more pen tests a month and you can actually wire those pen tests into your devops process or into your detection engineering and the change management processes to automatically trigger pen tests every time there's a change in your environment the third primary use case is for those organizations lucky enough to have their own internal red team they'll use node zero to do reconnaissance and exploitation at scale and then use the output as a starting point for the humans to step in and focus on the really hard juicy stuff that gets them on stage at Defcon and so these are the three primary use cases and what we'll do is zoom into the find fix verify Loop because what I've found in my experience is find fix verify is the future operating model for cyber security organizations and what I mean here is in the find using continuous pen testing what you want to enable is on-demand self-service pen tests you want those pen tests to find attack pads at scale spanning your on-prem infrastructure your Cloud infrastructure and your perimeter because attackers don't only state in one place they will find ways to chain together a perimeter breach a credential from your on-prem to gain access to your cloud or some other permutation and then the third part in continuous pen testing is attackers don't focus on critical vulnerabilities anymore they know we've built vulnerability Management Programs to reduce those vulnerabilities so attackers have adapted and what they do is chain together misconfigurations in your infrastructure and software and applications with dangerous product defaults with exploitable vulnerabilities and through the collection of credentials through a mix of techniques at scale once you've found those problems the next question is what do you do about it well you want to be able to prioritize fixing problems that are actually exploitable in your environment that truly matter meaning they're going to lead to domain compromise or domain user compromise or access your sensitive data the second thing you want to fix is making sure you understand what risk your crown jewels data is exposed to where is your crown jewels data is in the cloud is it on-prem has it been copied to a share drive that you weren't aware of if a domain user was compromised could they access that crown jewels data you want to be able to use the attacker's perspective to secure the critical data you have in your infrastructure and then finally as you fix these problems you want to quickly remediate and retest that you've actually fixed the issue and this fine fix verify cycle becomes that accelerator that drives purple team culture the third part here is verify and what you want to be able to do in the verify step is verify that your security tools and processes in people can effectively detect and respond to a breach you want to be able to integrate that into your detection engineering processes so that you know you're catching the right security rules or that you've deployed the right configurations you also want to make sure that your environment is adhering to the best practices around systems hardening in cyber resilience and finally you want to be able to prove your security posture over a time to your board to your leadership into your regulators so what I'll do now is zoom into each of these three steps so when we zoom in to find here's the first example using node 0 and autonomous pen testing and what an attacker will do is find a way to break through the perimeter in this example it's very easy to misconfigure kubernetes to allow an attacker to gain remote code execution into your on-prem kubernetes environment and break through the perimeter and from there what the attacker is going to do is conduct Network reconnaissance and then find ways to gain code execution on other machines in the environment and as they get code execution they start to dump credentials collect a bunch of ntlm hashes crack those hashes using open source and dark web available data as part of those attacks and then reuse those credentials to log in and laterally maneuver throughout the environment and then as they loudly maneuver they can reuse those credentials and use credential spraying techniques and so on to compromise your business email to log in as admin into your cloud and this is a very common attack and rarely is a CV actually needed to execute this attack often it's just a misconfiguration in kubernetes with a bad credential policy or password policy combined with bad practices of credential reuse across the organization here's another example of an internal pen test and this is from an actual customer they had 5 000 hosts within their environment they had EDR and uba tools installed and they initiated in an internal pen test on a single machine from that single initial access point node zero enumerated the network conducted reconnaissance and found five thousand hosts were accessible what node 0 will do under the covers is organize all of that reconnaissance data into a knowledge graph that we call the Cyber terrain map and that cyber Terrain map becomes the key data structure that we use to efficiently maneuver and attack and compromise your environment so what node zero will do is they'll try to find ways to get code execution reuse credentials and so on in this customer example they had Fortinet installed as their EDR but node 0 was still able to get code execution on a Windows machine from there it was able to successfully dump credentials including sensitive credentials from the lsas process on the Windows box and then reuse those credentials to log in as domain admin in the network and once an attacker becomes domain admin they have the keys to the kingdom they can do anything they want so what happened here well it turns out Fortinet was misconfigured on three out of 5000 machines bad automation the customer had no idea this had happened they would have had to wait for an attacker to show up to realize that it was misconfigured the second thing is well why didn't Fortinet stop the credential pivot in the lateral movement and it turned out the customer didn't buy the right modules or turn on the right services within that particular product and we see this not only with Ford in it but we see this with Trend Micro and all the other defensive tools where it's very easy to miss a checkbox in the configuration that will do things like prevent credential dumping the next story I'll tell you is attackers don't have to hack in they log in so another infrastructure pen test a typical technique attackers will take is man in the middle uh attacks that will collect hashes so in this case what an attacker will do is leverage a tool or technique called responder to collect ntlm hashes that are being passed around the network and there's a variety of reasons why these hashes are passed around and it's a pretty common misconfiguration but as an attacker collects those hashes then they start to apply techniques to crack those hashes so they'll pass the hash and from there they will use open source intelligence common password structures and patterns and other types of techniques to try to crack those hashes into clear text passwords so here node 0 automatically collected hashes it automatically passed the hashes to crack those credentials and then from there it starts to take the domain user user ID passwords that it's collected and tries to access different services and systems in your Enterprise in this case node 0 is able to successfully gain access to the Office 365 email environment because three employees didn't have MFA configured so now what happens is node 0 has a placement and access in the business email system which sets up the conditions for fraud lateral phishing and other techniques but what's especially insightful here is that 80 of the hashes that were collected in this pen test were cracked in 15 minutes or less 80 percent 26 of the user accounts had a password that followed a pretty obvious pattern first initial last initial and four random digits the other thing that was interesting is 10 percent of service accounts had their user ID the same as their password so VMware admin VMware admin web sphere admin web Square admin so on and so forth and so attackers don't have to hack in they just log in with credentials that they've collected the next story here is becoming WS AWS admin so in this example once again internal pen test node zero gets initial access it discovers 2 000 hosts are network reachable from that environment if fingerprints and organizes all of that data into a cyber Terrain map from there it it fingerprints that hpilo the integrated lights out service was running on a subset of hosts hpilo is a service that is often not instrumented or observed by security teams nor is it easy to patch as a result attackers know this and immediately go after those types of services so in this case that ILO service was exploitable and were able to get code execution on it ILO stores all the user IDs and passwords in clear text in a particular set of processes so once we gain code execution we were able to dump all of the credentials and then from there laterally maneuver to log in to the windows box next door as admin and then on that admin box we're able to gain access to the share drives and we found a credentials file saved on a share Drive from there it turned out that credentials file was the AWS admin credentials file giving us full admin authority to their AWS accounts not a single security alert was triggered in this attack because the customer wasn't observing the ILO service and every step thereafter was a valid login in the environment and so what do you do step one patch the server step two delete the credentials file from the share drive and then step three is get better instrumentation on privileged access users and login the final story I'll tell is a typical pattern that we see across the board with that combines the various techniques I've described together where an attacker is going to go off and use open source intelligence to find all of the employees that work at your company from there they're going to look up those employees on dark web breach databases and other forms of information and then use that as a starting point to password spray to compromise a domain user all it takes is one employee to reuse a breached password for their Corporate email or all it takes is a single employee to have a weak password that's easily guessable all it takes is one and once the attacker is able to gain domain user access in most shops domain user is also the local admin on their laptop and once your local admin you can dump Sam and get local admin until M hashes you can use that to reuse credentials again local admin on neighboring machines and attackers will start to rinse and repeat then eventually they're able to get to a point where they can dump lsas or by unhooking the anti-virus defeating the EDR or finding a misconfigured EDR as we've talked about earlier to compromise the domain and what's consistent is that the fundamentals are broken at these shops they have poor password policies they don't have least access privilege implemented active directory groups are too permissive where domain admin or domain user is also the local admin uh AV or EDR Solutions are misconfigured or easily unhooked and so on and what we found in 10 000 pen tests is that user Behavior analytics tools never caught us in that lateral movement in part because those tools require pristine logging data in order to work and also it becomes very difficult to find that Baseline of normal usage versus abnormal usage of credential login another interesting Insight is there were several Marquee brand name mssps that were defending our customers environment and for them it took seven hours to detect and respond to the pen test seven hours the pen test was over in less than two hours and so what you had was an egregious violation of the service level agreements that that mssp had in place and the customer was able to use us to get service credit and drive accountability of their sock and of their provider the third interesting thing is in one case it took us seven minutes to become domain admin in a bank that bank had every Gucci security tool you could buy yet in 7 minutes and 19 seconds node zero started as an unauthenticated member of the network and was able to escalate privileges through chaining and misconfigurations in lateral movement and so on to become domain admin if it's seven minutes today we should assume it'll be less than a minute a year or two from now making it very difficult for humans to be able to detect and respond to that type of Blitzkrieg attack so that's in the find it's not just about finding problems though the bulk of the effort should be what to do about it the fix and the verify so as you find those problems back to kubernetes as an example we will show you the path here is the kill chain we took to compromise that environment we'll show you the impact here is the impact or here's the the proof of exploitation that we were able to use to be able to compromise it and there's the actual command that we executed so you could copy and paste that command and compromise that cubelet yourself if you want and then the impact is we got code execution and we'll actually show you here is the impact this is a critical here's why it enabled perimeter breach affected applications will tell you the specific IPS where you've got the problem how it maps to the miter attack framework and then we'll tell you exactly how to fix it we'll also show you what this problem enabled so you can accurately prioritize why this is important or why it's not important the next part is accurate prioritization the hardest part of my job as a CIO was deciding what not to fix so if you take SMB signing not required as an example by default that CVSs score is a one out of 10. but this misconfiguration is not a cve it's a misconfig enable an attacker to gain access to 19 credentials including one domain admin two local admins and access to a ton of data because of that context this is really a 10 out of 10. you better fix this as soon as possible however of the seven occurrences that we found it's only a critical in three out of the seven and these are the three specific machines and we'll tell you the exact way to fix it and you better fix these as soon as possible for these four machines over here these didn't allow us to do anything of consequence so that because the hardest part is deciding what not to fix you can justifiably choose not to fix these four issues right now and just add them to your backlog and surge your team to fix these three as quickly as possible and then once you fix these three you don't have to re-run the entire pen test you can select these three and then one click verify and run a very narrowly scoped pen test that is only testing this specific issue and what that creates is a much faster cycle of finding and fixing problems the other part of fixing is verifying that you don't have sensitive data at risk so once we become a domain user we're able to use those domain user credentials and try to gain access to databases file shares S3 buckets git repos and so on and help you understand what sensitive data you have at risk so in this example a green checkbox means we logged in as a valid domain user we're able to get read write access on the database this is how many records we could have accessed and we don't actually look at the values in the database but we'll show you the schema so you can quickly characterize that pii data was at risk here and we'll do that for your file shares and other sources of data so now you can accurately articulate the data you have at risk and prioritize cleaning that data up especially data that will lead to a fine or a big news issue so that's the find that's the fix now we're going to talk about the verify the key part in verify is embracing and integrating with detection engineering practices so when you think about your layers of security tools you've got lots of tools in place on average 130 tools at any given customer but these tools were not designed to work together so when you run a pen test what you want to do is say did you detect us did you log us did you alert on us did you stop us and from there what you want to see is okay what are the techniques that are commonly used to defeat an environment to actually compromise if you look at the top 10 techniques we use and there's far more than just these 10 but these are the most often executed nine out of ten have nothing to do with cves it has to do with misconfigurations dangerous product defaults bad credential policies and it's how we chain those together to become a domain admin or compromise a host so what what customers will do is every single attacker command we executed is provided to you as an attackivity log so you can actually see every single attacker command we ran the time stamp it was executed the hosts it executed on and how it Maps the minor attack tactics so our customers will have are these attacker logs on one screen and then they'll go look into Splunk or exabeam or Sentinel one or crowdstrike and say did you detect us did you log us did you alert on us or not and to make that even easier if you take this example hey Splunk what logs did you see at this time on the VMware host because that's when node 0 is able to dump credentials and that allows you to identify and fix your logging blind spots to make that easier we've got app integration so this is an actual Splunk app in the Splunk App Store and what you can come is inside the Splunk console itself you can fire up the Horizon 3 node 0 app all of the pen test results are here so that you can see all of the results in one place and you don't have to jump out of the tool and what you'll show you as I skip forward is hey there's a pen test here are the critical issues that we've identified for that weaker default issue here are the exact commands we executed and then we will automatically query into Splunk all all terms on between these times on that endpoint that relate to this attack so you can now quickly within the Splunk environment itself figure out that you're missing logs or that you're appropriately catching this issue and that becomes incredibly important in that detection engineering cycle that I mentioned earlier so how do our customers end up using us they shift from running one pen test a year to 30 40 pen tests a month oftentimes wiring us into their deployment automation to automatically run pen tests the other part that they'll do is as they run more pen tests they find more issues but eventually they hit this inflection point where they're able to rapidly clean up their environment and that inflection point is because the red and the blue teams start working together in a purple team culture and now they're working together to proactively harden their environment the other thing our customers will do is run us from different perspectives they'll first start running an RFC 1918 scope to see once the attacker gained initial access in a part of the network that had wide access what could they do and then from there they'll run us within a specific Network segment okay from within that segment could the attacker break out and gain access to another segment then they'll run us from their work from home environment could they Traverse the VPN and do something damaging and once they're in could they Traverse the VPN and get into my cloud then they'll break in from the outside all of these perspectives are available to you in Horizon 3 and node zero as a single SKU and you can run as many pen tests as you want if you run a phishing campaign and find that an intern in the finance department had the worst phishing behavior you can then inject their credentials and actually show the end-to-end story of how an attacker fished gained credentials of an intern and use that to gain access to sensitive financial data so what our customers end up doing is running multiple attacks from multiple perspectives and looking at those results over time I'll leave you two things one is what is the AI in Horizon 3 AI those knowledge graphs are the heart and soul of everything that we do and we use machine learning reinforcement techniques reinforcement learning techniques Markov decision models and so on to be able to efficiently maneuver and analyze the paths in those really large graphs we also use context-based scoring to prioritize weaknesses and we're also able to drive collective intelligence across all of the operations so the more pen tests we run the smarter we get and all of that is based on our knowledge graph analytics infrastructure that we have finally I'll leave you with this was my decision criteria when I was a buyer for my security testing strategy what I cared about was coverage I wanted to be able to assess my on-prem cloud perimeter and work from home and be safe to run in production I want to be able to do that as often as I wanted I want to be able to run pen tests in hours or days not weeks or months so I could accelerate that fine fix verify loop I wanted my it admins and network Engineers with limited offensive experience to be able to run a pen test in a few clicks through a self-service experience and not have to install agent and not have to write custom scripts and finally I didn't want to get nickeled and dimed on having to buy different types of attack modules or different types of attacks I wanted a single annual subscription that allowed me to run any type of attack as often as I wanted so I could look at my Trends in directions over time so I hope you found this talk valuable uh we're easy to find and I look forward to seeing seeing you use a product and letting our results do the talking when you look at uh you know kind of the way no our pen testing algorithms work is we dynamically select uh how to compromise an environment based on what we've discovered and the goal is to become a domain admin compromise a host compromise domain users find ways to encrypt data steal sensitive data and so on but when you look at the the top 10 techniques that we ended up uh using to compromise environments the first nine have nothing to do with cves and that's the reality cves are yes a vector but less than two percent of cves are actually used in a compromise oftentimes it's some sort of credential collection credential cracking uh credential pivoting and using that to become an admin and then uh compromising environments from that point on so I'll leave this up for you to kind of read through and you'll have the slides available for you but I found it very insightful that organizations and ourselves when I was a GE included invested heavily in just standard vulnerability Management Programs when I was at DOD that's all disa cared about asking us about was our our kind of our cve posture but the attackers have adapted to not rely on cves to get in because they know that organizations are actively looking at and patching those cves and instead they're chaining together credentials from one place with misconfigurations and dangerous product defaults in another to take over an environment a concrete example is by default vcenter backups are not encrypted and so as if an attacker finds vcenter what they'll do is find the backup location and there are specific V sender MTD files where the admin credentials are parsippled in the binaries so you can actually as an attacker find the right MTD file parse out the binary and now you've got the admin credentials for the vcenter environment and now start to log in as admin there's a bad habit by signal officers and Signal practitioners in the in the Army and elsewhere where the the VM notes section of a virtual image has the password for the VM well those VM notes are not stored encrypted and attackers know this and they're able to go off and find the VMS that are unencrypted find the note section and pull out the passwords for those images and then reuse those credentials across the board so I'll pause here and uh you know Patrick love you get some some commentary on on these techniques and other things that you've seen and what we'll do in the last say 10 to 15 minutes is uh is rolled through a little bit more on what do you do about it yeah yeah no I love it I think um I think this is pretty exhaustive what I like about what you've done here is uh you know we've seen we've seen double-digit increases in the number of organizations that are reporting actual breaches year over year for the last um for the last three years and it's often we kind of in the Zeitgeist we pegged that on ransomware which of course is like incredibly important and very top of mind um but what I like about what you have here is you know we're reminding the audience that the the attack surface area the vectors the matter um you know has to be more comprehensive than just thinking about ransomware scenarios yeah right on um so let's build on this when you think about your defense in depth you've got multiple security controls that you've purchased and integrated and you've got that redundancy if a control fails but the reality is that these security tools aren't designed to work together so when you run a pen test what you want to ask yourself is did you detect node zero did you log node zero did you alert on node zero and did you stop node zero and when you think about how to do that every single attacker command executed by node zero is available in an attacker log so you can now see you know at the bottom here vcenter um exploit at that time on that IP how it aligns to minor attack what you want to be able to do is go figure out did your security tools catch this or not and that becomes very important in using the attacker's perspective to improve your defensive security controls and so the way we've tried to make this easier back to like my my my the you know I bleed Green in many ways still from my smoke background is you want to be able to and what our customers do is hey we'll look at the attacker logs on one screen and they'll look at what did Splunk see or Miss in another screen and then they'll use that to figure out what their logging blind spots are and what that where that becomes really interesting is we've actually built out an integration into Splunk where there's a Splunk app you can download off of Splunk base and you'll get all of the pen test results right there in the Splunk console and from that Splunk console you're gonna be able to see these are all the pen tests that were run these are the issues that were found um so you can look at that particular pen test here are all of the weaknesses that were identified for that particular pen test and how they categorize out for each of those weaknesses you can click on any one of them that are critical in this case and then we'll tell you for that weakness and this is where where the the punch line comes in so I'll pause the video here for that weakness these are the commands that were executed on these endpoints at this time and then we'll actually query Splunk for that um for that IP address or containing that IP and these are the source types that surface any sort of activity so what we try to do is help you as quickly and efficiently as possible identify the logging blind spots in your Splunk environment based on the attacker's perspective so as this video kind of plays through you can see it Patrick I'd love to get your thoughts um just seeing so many Splunk deployments and the effectiveness of those deployments and and how this is going to help really Elevate the effectiveness of all of your Splunk customers yeah I'm super excited about this I mean I think this these kinds of purpose-built integration snail really move the needle for our customers I mean at the end of the day when I think about the power of Splunk I think about a product I was first introduced to 12 years ago that was an on-prem piece of software you know and at the time it sold on sort of Perpetual and term licenses but one made it special was that it could it could it could eat data at a speed that nothing else that I'd have ever seen you can ingest massively scalable amounts of data uh did cool things like schema on read which facilitated that there was this language called SPL that you could nerd out about uh and you went to a conference once a year and you talked about all the cool things you were splunking right but now as we think about the next phase of our growth um we live in a heterogeneous environment where our customers have so many different tools and data sources that are ever expanding and as you look at the as you look at the role of the ciso it's mind-blowing to me the amount of sources Services apps that are coming into the ciso span of let's just call it a span of influence in the last three years uh you know we're seeing things like infrastructure service level visibility application performance monitoring stuff that just never made sense for the security team to have visibility into you um at least not at the size and scale which we're demanding today um and and that's different and this isn't this is why it's so important that we have these joint purpose-built Integrations that um really provide more prescription to our customers about how do they walk on that Journey towards maturity what does zero to one look like what does one to two look like whereas you know 10 years ago customers were happy with platforms today they want integration they want Solutions and they want to drive outcomes and I think this is a great example of how together we are stepping to the evolving nature of the market and also the ever-evolving nature of the threat landscape and what I would say is the maturing needs of the customer in that environment yeah for sure I think especially if if we all anticipate budget pressure over the next 18 months due to the economy and elsewhere while the security budgets are not going to ever I don't think they're going to get cut they're not going to grow as fast and there's a lot more pressure on organizations to extract more value from their existing Investments as well as extracting more value and more impact from their existing teams and so security Effectiveness Fierce prioritization and automation I think become the three key themes of security uh over the next 18 months so I'll do very quickly is run through a few other use cases um every host that we identified in the pen test were able to score and say this host allowed us to do something significant therefore it's it's really critical you should be increasing your logging here hey these hosts down here we couldn't really do anything as an attacker so if you do have to make trade-offs you can make some trade-offs of your logging resolution at the lower end in order to increase logging resolution on the upper end so you've got that level of of um justification for where to increase or or adjust your logging resolution another example is every host we've discovered as an attacker we Expose and you can export and we want to make sure is every host we found as an attacker is being ingested from a Splunk standpoint a big issue I had as a CIO and user of Splunk and other tools is I had no idea if there were Rogue Raspberry Pi's on the network or if a new box was installed and whether Splunk was installed on it or not so now you can quickly start to correlate what hosts did we see and how does that reconcile with what you're logging from uh finally or second to last use case here on the Splunk integration side is for every single problem we've found we give multiple options for how to fix it this becomes a great way to prioritize what fixed actions to automate in your soar platform and what we want to get to eventually is being able to automatically trigger soar actions to fix well-known problems like automatically invalidating passwords for for poor poor passwords in our credentials amongst a whole bunch of other things we could go off and do and then finally if there is a well-known kill chain or attack path one of the things I really wish I could have done when I was a Splunk customer was take this type of kill chain that actually shows a path to domain admin that I'm sincerely worried about and use it as a glass table over which I could start to layer possible indicators of compromise and now you've got a great starting point for glass tables and iocs for actual kill chains that we know are exploitable in your environment and that becomes some super cool Integrations that we've got on the roadmap between us and the Splunk security side of the house so what I'll leave with actually Patrick before I do that you know um love to get your comments and then I'll I'll kind of leave with one last slide on this wartime security mindset uh pending you know assuming there's no other questions no I love it I mean I think this kind of um it's kind of glass table's approach to how do you how do you sort of visualize these workflows and then use things like sore and orchestration and automation to operationalize them is exactly where we see all of our customers going and getting away from I think an over engineered approach to soar with where it has to be super technical heavy with you know python programmers and getting more to this visual view of workflow creation um that really demystifies the power of Automation and also democratizes it so you don't have to have these programming languages in your resume in order to start really moving the needle on workflow creation policy enforcement and ultimately driving automation coverage across more and more of the workflows that your team is seeing yeah I think that between us being able to visualize the actual kill chain or attack path with you know think of a of uh the soar Market I think going towards this no code low code um you know configurable sore versus coded sore that's going to really be a game changer in improve or giving security teams a force multiplier so what I'll leave you with is this peacetime mindset of security no longer is sustainable we really have to get out of checking the box and then waiting for the bad guys to show up to verify that security tools are are working or not and the reason why we've got to really do that quickly is there are over a thousand companies that withdrew from the Russian economy over the past uh nine months due to the Ukrainian War there you should expect every one of them to be punished by the Russians for leaving and punished from a cyber standpoint and this is no longer about financial extortion that is ransomware this is about punishing and destroying companies and you can punish any one of these companies by going after them directly or by going after their suppliers and their Distributors so suddenly your attack surface is no more no longer just your own Enterprise it's how you bring your goods to Market and it's how you get your goods created because while I may not be able to disrupt your ability to harvest fruit if I can get those trucks stuck at the border I can increase spoilage and have the same effect and what we should expect to see is this idea of cyber-enabled economic Warfare where if we issue a sanction like Banning the Russians from traveling there is a cyber-enabled counter punch which is corrupt and destroy the American Airlines database that is below the threshold of War that's not going to trigger the 82nd Airborne to be mobilized but it's going to achieve the right effect ban the sale of luxury goods disrupt the supply chain and create shortages banned Russian oil and gas attack refineries to call a 10x spike in gas prices three days before the election this is the future and therefore I think what we have to do is shift towards a wartime mindset which is don't trust your security posture verify it see yourself Through The Eyes of the attacker build that incident response muscle memory and drive better collaboration between the red and the blue teams your suppliers and Distributors and your information uh sharing organization they have in place and what's really valuable for me as a Splunk customer was when a router crashes at that moment you don't know if it's due to an I.T Administration problem or an attacker and what you want to have are different people asking different questions of the same data and you want to have that integrated triage process of an I.T lens to that problem a security lens to that problem and then from there figuring out is is this an IT workflow to execute or a security incident to execute and you want to have all of that as an integrated team integrated process integrated technology stack and this is something that I very care I cared very deeply about as both a Splunk customer and a Splunk CTO that I see time and time again across the board so Patrick I'll leave you with the last word the final three minutes here and I don't see any open questions so please take us home oh man see how you think we spent hours and hours prepping for this together that that last uh uh 40 seconds of your talk track is probably one of the things I'm most passionate about in this industry right now uh and I think nist has done some really interesting work here around building cyber resilient organizations that have that has really I think helped help the industry see that um incidents can come from adverse conditions you know stress is uh uh performance taxations in the infrastructure service or app layer and they can come from malicious compromises uh Insider threats external threat actors and the more that we look at this from the perspective of of a broader cyber resilience Mission uh in a wartime mindset uh I I think we're going to be much better off and and will you talk about with operationally minded ice hacks information sharing intelligence sharing becomes so important in these wartime uh um situations and you know we know not all ice acts are created equal but we're also seeing a lot of um more ad hoc information sharing groups popping up so look I think I think you framed it really really well I love the concept of wartime mindset and um I I like the idea of applying a cyber resilience lens like if you have one more layer on top of that bottom right cake you know I think the it lens and the security lens they roll up to this concept of cyber resilience and I think this has done some great work there for us yeah you're you're spot on and that that is app and that's gonna I think be the the next um terrain that that uh that you're gonna see vendors try to get after but that I think Splunk is best position to win okay that's a wrap for this special Cube presentation you heard all about the global expansion of horizon 3.ai's partner program for their Partners have a unique opportunity to take advantage of their node zero product uh International go to Market expansion North America channel Partnerships and just overall relationships with companies like Splunk to make things more comprehensive in this disruptive cyber security world we live in and hope you enjoyed this program all the videos are available on thecube.net as well as check out Horizon 3 dot AI for their pen test Automation and ultimately their defense system that they use for testing always the environment that you're in great Innovative product and I hope you enjoyed the program again I'm John Furrier host of the cube thanks for watching
SUMMARY :
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Michael Nicosia, Salt Security | CrowdStrike Fal.Con 2022
(upbeat music) (logo crystals tingle) >> Hi, everybody, welcome back to FalCon22, I'm Dave Vellante and you're watching theCube's continuous coverage, this is day two. We live in an API economy, but APIs, you know, they're sometimes vulnerable, Michael Nicosia is here, he's the Chief Operating Officer and co-founder of Salt Security, API Security Specialist, Michael, welcome to theCUBE, thanks for coming on. >> Thank you so much, Dave, glad to be here. >> You're very welcome. Why did you and your co-founder, is it Roy? >> Yeah. >> Why did you guys start Salt Security? >> So really easy, I mean, as you mentioned, the proliferation of APIs constantly is growing on a year to year basis. So in 2015, when he and I met, we had this idea that it was going to continue to grow and APIs were going to be critical to every organization from an innovation perspective, from a safety perspective and we thought that current tools out there couldn't protect against the new threat vector that we thought was going to happen. And, you know, you fast forward to 2022 and here we are, it's the largest growing threat vector from an API perspective because APIs are just growing like crazy. >> Right. Well, let's talk about the news, CrowdStrike made an investment in your company. >> Michael: Yes. >> Congratulations. >> Michael: Thank you. >> Tell us about that, why it's important, and to have a strategic partner like that. >> Yeah, so first of all, we're super thrilled about the partnership, I mean, it's amazing. And not only the partnership, the strategic investment for us just signifies the importance of our two companies in terms of what we want to do in the field together or in the market together. So the strategic investment is amazing, the partnership is even more amazing just because it's kind of like, you know, the first in its class from an API security perspective, we've got partners from the cloud providers and then the only other partnerships really have is with API Management vendors. So this is unique in that it goes outside the security ecosystem to provide this partnership and the nice thing about it is it's exclusive, excuse me, and it just continues to validate the leadership where we have an API security, as well as obviously a leadership that CrowdStrike has. >> Exclusive in the sense that CrowdStrike's not going to invest in another API competitor and you're not going to take investment from an endpoint- >> Michael: Exactly. >> Or something like that. >> Endpoint or, you know, really cloud workload situation. >> Anything within that vastly expanding portfolio. >> Michael: Exactly. >> So pretty much anybody. >> Michael: Exactly. >> Except network security, from what I saw in the keynote yesterday, that's sort of on the table, for now. So, okay, so why should customers care about this? What's the benefit to them? >> Yeah, so if you think about, the security profile of organizations and where they seem to have potential risk, threat vectors, you know, endpoint, you know, Cloud obviously API becomes a bigger, threat vector as well. So I think the partnership just solidifies the fact that we want to create a better security profile for organizations and we want to make it safe for them to innovate and continue to do what they do. So I think that's the importance and when you put the two together it just creates a larger value proposition, more stickiness from end point to cloud, to APIs. >> So we have a partner, theCUBE, and in New York city and it's called ETR and they do quarterly surveys of CISOs, CIOs, IT buyers, about 12 to 1500 a quarter. And so I was chatting with those guys last week, they knew we were going to be at CrowdStrike and so they ran some data for all the API security vendors and you guys were, you know they had like the Gartner Magic Quadrant but it's not, you know, vision and execution, it's spending momentum and like presence in their survey, it's like market share, mind share. >> Sure. >> You guys were up and to the right, like, way, way, way ahead, I presume that's why you got the attention of CrowdStrike. I found their data set to be incredibly good, that's how we found CrowdStrike years ago, like, "Wow, who's this company?" >> Yeah. >> You know, companies like CrowdStrike, Okta, Zscaler, Snowflake Off The Charts, but you guys were really noticeable. Talk about the spending momentum you're seeing with customers, where's that coming from? >> Yeah, I mean look, for us it's a continuing growing market, it's accelerating and we're still in the, you know, early stages of the market, which is amazing. But if you think about what organizations do, they innovate, right, they innovate through, you know, software, through applications or APIs. So if you think about, you know, how do they continue to innovate safely? They need a solution, like Salt Security to protect from any bad actors that could potentially create any breaches, vulnerabilities. So I think that that's why CISOs in particular are super excited about talking to us, making sure that they have all of their bases covered especially when it comes to applications that they have within their organization, which continues to grow. >> And not to not to be a methodology geek, but the methodology they use is to essentially say, is a customer spending more or less, they subtract the lesses from the mores and that's what you're left with. And one of the lesses is churn, and if you have high churn, you're spending momentum, >> you know- >> Micheal: Yeah. >> In their methodology goes into the tank. So you have obviously admitted you have very low churn is that what you're saying in the field? >> Micheal: Absolutely. >> Why is that? >> Yeah, I mean, again, I think it's, it goes back to the value that we bring to customers. I think, you know, our solution works, we're the only AI/ML-based solution with deep context so we can really take a closer granular look at the APIs, model those APIs, create a baseline and really protect against them. So I mean, our solution works and it works really well and I think we provide value in that, you know, CISOs don't have to worry about any bad actors trying to infiltrate their applications 'cause they know that Salt Security is there protecting them. >> I know you're not the tech guy but you're the founder, co-founder of a technology company so you got to be conversant in the tech, 'cause this is the way it is in our business, so tell us about the tech, what's so cool about it? What's the differentiation? >> Yeah, I guess, and I mentioned that it's really AI/ML based, you know, we leverage big data and it's really the context associated to that, which means that, you know, we can get into granular details of really baselining the API itself. And what we do really well is, because these are unique attacks and these attacks could be days, weeks, months and we're the only vendor that, that can really correlate across that timeline because of the context-based big data that we leverage to be able to, you know, spot these potential bad actors that we look for. >> And all this happens in the cloud or? >> Absolutely, it's all... >> You have a server in your office? >> No, no, it's all it's a hundred percent SaaS-based, Cloud-based solution, I think that's one of the reasons why the partnership with CrowdStrike is so amazing as well. >> Talk a little bit more about the synergies between CrowdStrike and Salt Security. >> Tons of synergies, I mean, if you think about from, you know, from the part of being a little fluffy culture, the two companies have similar cultures, we go after similar you know, first Cloud, innovative companies. If you think about kind of the technology that CrowdStrike has put forth, revolutionized the endpoint security, and now moving into the Cloud, you know, leveraging AI and ML, we're doing the exact same thing so I think there's a lot of synergies associated with that. And again, the final point that I'll make is that you know, we think together the, you know, better together story is, resonates just because if you think about all of the areas that you know have potential breaches, these threats, we kind of cover 'em all with the partnership. >> When I talk to a founding, you know, co-founder, who's a go to market pro, I like to ask them how did you know when to scale? I mean, you got to have product market fit, I see so many companies failing because they try to go to market before they have, they try to scale go to market before they have product market, but how did you do it? How did you know when to scale? >> You know, it's tricky, and you got to look at a couple of, you know, factors, you got to look at the market, you got to look at, you know, how much potential opportunity exists and you really need to look at, the momentum that is being established. You know, when you talk to CISOs, kind of, you know, talking to them about projects and how, how they prioritize projects and where API security fits, you know, once it begins to be the top three and you start that momentum and obviously you bringing in the revenue. I think that those are signs that we see, that we say, "Okay, we need to double down on making sure we've got coverage across the world in order for us to support demand." >> And you were the first sales rep, right? >> Michael: Yeah. >> Okay. >> Roy and I, I was the first AE, here was the first SE. >> Okay, but your early go-to market pros are probably different than what you're bringing in today, you didn't have, you know, a lot of BDRs at the time, but you guys were hands on consultants- >> Absolutely. >> Like sort of process consultants, sales folks, right? And then you codify that when you're ready to scale and now you're, is that kind of a, what you're doing? >> Absolutely, I mean, you nailed it, I mean, it's in the early stages, it's validating that there's a problem that exists in the market and how important is that problem, you know, to CISOs. So when we first started we met probably about 50 CISOs where we just had that conversation, not about sales, it was more about, "Hey we just want to talk to you about a problem we think exists in the market, love to get your reaction on that problem and then obviously how you're solving that problem and how much of a priority is that problem," How important is it to you? And then once you have those discussions then you can really find those individuals, early adopters if you will, that are ready to buy and then it kind of proliferates from there. >> And then you have a CRO , I presume, right? So what was that like finding him or her, is a really important first sales hire. >> Super important, yeah. >> How did you go about that? How long did it take? >> Yeah so it took about six to eight months and you know it's really tough because, you know, we look at cultural fit, above everything else. So it's not, that, "Can they do the job?" it's culturally, do they fit in? And you know, how much can that individual scale the organization? So there's a lot of factors associated, there's a lot of individuals associated to, you know with the interview process. So that's how we looked at it and obviously we wanted somebody that had experience in a company our size, was able to scale it and so on. The one tricky thing is, and I'll tell you this, is, you know, for Roy and I, you kind of have to let go a little bit, that was really tough, so knowing that you need to do that is something that- >> A little bit of founderitis? >> Micheal: Yeah. >> Dave: It's hard, right? >> Micheal: It's hard. >> Dave: Yeah, it's your baby. >> It's like, whaat? >> I get it, Michael, thanks so much for coming to theCUBE, congratulations on the news- >> Thank you Dave. >> The investment and good luck. >> Awesome, thank you so much, appreciate it. >> You're really welcome. All right, keep it right there, we'll be back right after this short break. Dave Vellante for theCUBE at FalCon22, CrowdStrike's big user event, we'll be right back. (cheerful bouncy music)
SUMMARY :
but APIs, you know, Thank you so much, Why did you and your And, you know, you fast forward to 2022 Well, let's talk about the news, and to have a strategic partner like that. just because it's kind of like, you know, Endpoint or, you know, Anything within that What's the benefit to them? and when you put the two together but it's not, you know, I presume that's why you got Off The Charts, but you So if you think about, you and if you have high churn, So you have obviously admitted I think, you know, our solution works, that we leverage to be able to, you know, that's one of the reasons why more about the synergies and now moving into the Cloud, you know, and you got to look at a Roy and I, I was the first problem, you know, to CISOs. And then you have a and you know it's really Awesome, thank you You're really welcome.
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Kristian Gyorkos, Kong | AWS Marketplace Seller Conference 2022
>>Welcome back everyone to the cubes coverage here in Seattle, Washington for the Avis marketplace seller conference, part of the APN partner network merging with the marketplace to form the Amazon partner organization. I'm John furrier, host of the cube Walter Wall coverage today, Christian Gor cash, who is the VP of alliances at Kong Inc. Welcome to the cube. Thanks for coming on. >>Thank you. Thank you, John. Really glad to be here. Corke exactly. Yeah. It's awesome. >>So Kong we've been following you guys for while Docker Kong cube. You've been part of our cube conversation. Also part of our, our startup showcase fast growing startup, you know, working on stuff that everyone loves APIs. I mean, APIs are so popular now that they now a security concern, right? Yeah. So like it gets squat there everywhere. I won't say API sprawl, but APIs are the connections and that are, is the web. That is the cloud. Okay. Now with cloud native developers who are now in the front lines have taken over it, everyone knows DevOps dev SecOps is now the new it and it's the developers security and data they're below they're the new ops, right? So, so this is where microservices come in, open source service MES new automation is coming down the pike. That's super valuable to businesses as they look at cloud native architecture, what are you guys doing in there? Take a minute to explain Kong's value proposition, the hot products, and then why you're here. >>Yeah. So, you know, I joined Kong now or three years ago, you know, we were still just reaching our hundred employees, mark, which is very important, very startup, but even back then, you know, Kong was relatively well known in industry, you know, so we have one of the most, well the most popular open source project in API gateway area. So con API gateway, you know, we cross now 300 million downloads, even more important is just the scale it, which the product's been used. So between our open source community and enterprise customers, we are now crossing like 11 trillion transactions per month. Now just give you comparison. Like this is like 18, 19 times more than Netflix per month. You know? So for any company that has a technology that operates it at scale, you need to hit few things outta the park. You know, as he mentions cloud data developers, they want simplicity. You know, they want automation. They also want performance and scale and security, which are all critical, you know, to how Kong, you know, start as opensource project. Now, of course we have the whole suite of enterprise products. We also have our con service mesh offering as well as our cloud offerings. >>Yeah. And this is how open source is doing it now, obviously, you know, I, I still remember, I still tell the story to the young startups. Hey, I, there was proprietary software when I was in college. Open source is now everything. Now you've got, got cloud scale. So the dynamic between open source, which has become the software industry open source success doesn't mean it's it's game over. It's the beginning. The commercialization that you guys have gone through is super important. Trillions of transactions. Now you have enterprises working with you. What's the big advantage of the seller relationship that you have with Amazon? Why are customers using it? What are they buying it for? Give the pitch of con for the marketplace customer. >>Yeah, it's actually, we are relatively new in AWS marketplace. You know, so our first transaction that we ever done was actually in July and 2021. So we are just over a year, you know, that journey, you know, when I look what Chris gross talked today, he was talking about, you know, Hey, just publishing marketplace, not enough. You know, you need to understand what's your value proposition. You need to make sure your operations already, your sales is ready. Everything is, is set. And we kind of did this for the first year and a half is spend a lot of time improving our integration with AWS overall, all the first party services relevant to con we also understood, well, what does it take to kind of fine tune our value proposition? We have like three specific sales place. And you know, when we launch our flagship product con connect enterprise and got our first transaction, that was great milestone for, for star like Kong. But then what we've seen is just that work that we've done before really paid off. I mean right now, >>Like what we'll give example. >>Yeah. So, you know, we are focusing on as measure three sales place. Money is we are focused, specific on helping customers who are modernizing and, and their application going to the cloud. And you have a lot of these, you know, lifting shift and are rearchitect and modernized, but most of the attentions on the workloads, what about the connections? You know, so a monolith application had to authentic all the users understand wheres the network and so on. When you build those, when you now decouple this built like 1,000 thousand microservices, you don't want to repeat this for every microservice. So that's where K brings the whole suite from, you know, service match to the API gate to help manage the journey and really support this environment. And we spend a lot of time to just fine tune that message. So that customers understood where, you know, how can we help them on their journey beyond what, for instance, cloud native or AWS API gateway offers them. So we can really help them from day one on the journey and accelerate. And >>I think I it's a no, it's a no braining for a customer to buyer or to come into the marketplace and say, click, I'm gonna buy some data analytics services. I'm gonna buy gateway through Kong. But when they start getting into these microservices, this automation opportunity there, there's more behind the curtain for them with Kong. So I have to ask you with the keynote we heard from Chris, the leader of the marketplace. Now he said that he wants the ISVs to be more native in the cloud. That probably resonates with you. You, >>You guys well with con's relatively simple because we were built at cloud native, you know, so very briefly the whole story of Congo. This is before Ajo, our founders were actually running the, the very popular API exchange col mesh shape. And they had to build their own gateway just to handle the scale and was built on cloud native technologies. And then when everybody's calling you, what are you using to running? This are using PGS. And so else, no, we built ourselves, oh, how can we get our hands on? That's how con actually >>Came to. And that's how the big winners usually happen too. They start build their own, solve their own problem because it's a big scale problem. Exactly. No one's had that problem. >>Yeah. And what we have seen, especially what was very, you know, through, through the pandemic, what we have seen. And it's interesting, you know, being in a startup doing pandemic is like, whoa, will the life just shut down or what we're doing? You know? But actually what we have seen customers prioritize the new business capability. For instance, you have a large parental companies that overnight, they have to understand where the assets are. Yeah. Or banks who are like 45 days of, you know, approving process for the loans. They need to reduce it for a day or two. >>Yeah. And they're adding more developers, too, exactly. To build the modern application. So they need to have that infrastructure as code aspect. Correct. >>And they >>Need in place. >>Yeah. I need to like you have, you know, I don't think that many customers still have waterfall cycles, but they have, have pre pretty long developers development cycles. And now you need to, you know, do this multiple times a day. That's >>Interesting. We talked to a lot of cloud architects and C CIO C says, and you know, the executive just hire more developers take that hill, build. It just don't build a new app. It's not that easy boss. When, when the cloud architect says we have to be fully operationally ready with cloud native infrastructure's code. So with that, you're seeing a lot more enterprises come in now that are more savvy. They getting better. We're seeing Kubernetes more and more. You're seeing containerization. You're seeing that cloud native enterprise acceptance. What does that mean for you guys in the marketplace, as you look at the value proposition, how are you guys working with the marketplace today and where do you see customers buying in the future? >>Yeah, so we as mentioned, you know, we, we are now a year into that journey. We already seen tremendous benefits just in terms of reducing the friction. You know, the whole procurement, you know, you come as a startup with some, some of the largest companies in the world, they used to buy five, 10 billion in software and they have all these processes and you're like, well, but we only have like two people in finance. Sorry. How can you, and where marketplace can really, really helps us is, you know, improve this experience, both sides because they understand like we are fast moving company. They, they want us because of our speed and, and innovation that we, the product's strong. Yeah. They don't want us to get bogged down in all these pro procurement processes either. And so, so that's the first benefit. We also are working very hard to make sure that the customers can provision Kong in AWS and automate across the board. So essentially reducing their time to value dramatically. Yeah. And another thing that we found tremendously beneficial for us is a startup is the whole concept of a standard marketplace contract. Yeah. So instead of us coming with our little MSA or come like 50 page MSA from companies, we now have a middle ground. So we can just agree. You know, there's some differences, some specifics to qu software and it's tremendously reduced costs on both sides. >>Great. For you guys great for the buyers. Yeah. You get deployed services. They're not just buying, they're managing and deploying. Yeah, >>Exactly. Great. >>Quick, final question. Put a plugin for the company. What are you working on now? What's the big news. What's the con update? >>Well, that's an interesting part because I can't tell you because next week we have our con summit. Oh right. In San Francisco. The cubes not so 28, 20 ninth. Yeah. We, we we'll, I think we are gonna fix that in the future. But anyway, this is the first time after pandemic to do this in person, we have number of very exciting announcement, our Kong products, as well as you may hear some news about our AWS partnership, >>We like con we believe that DevOps has happened. Dev sec ops, whatever you gonna call it, dev is now the developers they're in the front lines. They're in the C I CD pipeline. They're shifting left. That's the new they took over it. That's what DevOps does. It's not a title. Now you have security and data ops behind the scenes. That's gonna be middleware. That's gonna have tons of microservices. So more, more, more action coming, all API based. >>Exactly. And the more, you know, the more complexity we can take away from that, the better we, you know, the >>Whole community. Thank you. Spending the time to come on the cube here at the, a us marketplace seller conference. What do you think about the APN merging with the marketplace formed the P the Amazon partner organization. Thumbs up, thumbs down. What's your heard? >>It's excellent. We have a great friend in AP, a great friend, us marketplace. Now both of them work together with huge. >>Fantastic. Yes. Thanks for okay. Cube coverage here in Seattle. I'm John furier APN marketplace together. APOs the new organization making it easier. Of course, we got all the coverage here. Thanks for watching.
SUMMARY :
conference, part of the APN partner network merging with the marketplace to form Yeah. Also part of our, our startup showcase fast growing startup, you know, So con API gateway, you know, we cross now 300 million downloads, The commercialization that you guys have gone through is super important. So we are just over a year, you know, that journey, you know, the whole suite from, you know, service match to the API gate to help manage the journey So I have to ask you with the keynote You guys well with con's relatively simple because we were built at cloud native, you know, And that's how the big winners usually happen too. And it's interesting, you know, being in a startup doing pandemic So they need to have that infrastructure And now you need to, you know, do this multiple times a day. We talked to a lot of cloud architects and C CIO C says, and you know, the executive just hire more You know, the whole procurement, you know, you come as a startup with some, For you guys great for the buyers. Exactly. What are you working on now? announcement, our Kong products, as well as you may hear some news about our AWS partnership, Now you have security and data ops behind the scenes. And the more, you know, the more complexity we can take away from that, Spending the time to come on the cube here at the, a us marketplace seller conference. We have a great friend in AP, a great friend, us marketplace. APOs the new organization making it easier.
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George Kurtz, CrowdStrike | CrowdStrike Fal.Con 2022
(upbeat music) >> Welcome back to The Cube's coverage of Fal.Con 22. I'm Dave Vellante with Dave Nicholson. This is day one of our coverage. We had the big keynotes this morning. Derek Jeter was one of the keynotes. We have a big Yankee fan here: George Kurtz is the co-founder and CEO of CrowdStrike. George, thanks for coming on The Cube. >> It's great to be here. >> Boston fan, you know, I tweeted out Derek Jeter. He broke my heart many times, but I can't hate on Jeter. You got to have respect for the guy. >> Well, I still remember I was in Japan when Boston was down you know, by three games and came back to win. So I've got my own heartbreak as well. >> It did heal some wounds, but it almost changed the rivalry, you know? I mean, >> Yeah. >> Once, it's kind of neutralized it, you know? It's just not as interesting. I mean, I'm a season ticket holder. I go to all the games and Yankee games are great. A lot of it used to be, you would never walk into Fenway park with, you know pin stripes, when today there's as many Yankee fans as there are... >> I know. >> Boston fans. Anyway, at Fenway, I mean. >> Yeah. >> Why did you start CrowdStrike? >> Biggest thing for me was to really change the game in how people were looking at security. And at my previous company, I think a lot of people were buying security and not getting the outcome that they wanted. Not- I got acquired by a company, not my first company. So, to be clear, and before I started CrowdStrike, I was in the antivirus world, and they were spending a lot of money with antivirus vendors but not getting the outcome I thought they should achieve, which is to stop the breach, not just stop malware. And for me, security should be outcome based not sort of product based. And the biggest thing for us was how could we create the sales force of security that was focused on getting the right outcome: stopping the breach. >> And the premise, I've seen it, the unstoppable breach is a myth. No CSOs don't live by that mantra, but you do. How are you doing on that journey? >> Well I think, look, there's no 100% of anything in security, but what we've done is really created a platform that's focused on identifying and stopping breaches as well as now, extending that out into helping IT identify assets and their hygiene and basically providing more visibility into IT assets. So, we talked about the convergence of that. Maybe we'll get into it, but. >> Dave Vellante: Sure. >> We're doing pretty well. And from our standpoint, we've got a lot of customers, almost 20,000, that rely on us day to day to help stop the breach. >> Well, and when you dig into the CrowdStrike architecture, what's so fascinating is, you know, Dave, we've talked about this: agent bad. Well, not necessarily, if you can have a lightweight agent that can scale and support a number of modules, then you can consolidate all these point tools out there. You talked about in your keynote, your pillars, workloads, which really end points >> Right. >> ID, which we're going to talk about. Identity data and network security. You're not a network security specialist, >> Right. >> But the other three, >> Yes. >> You're knocking down. >> Yeah. >> You guys went deep into that today. Talk about that. >> We did, most folks are going to know us for endpoint and Cloud workload protection and visibility. We did an acquisition almost two years to the day on preempt. And that was our identity play, identity threat protection and detection. And that really turned out to be a smart move, because it's the hottest topic right now. If you look at all the breaches over the last couple years, it's all identity based. Big, big talking points in our keynotes today. >> Dave Vellante: Right. >> And then the third area is on data, and data is really the you know, the new currency that people trade in. So how do you identify and protect endpoints and workloads? How do you tie that together with identity, as well as understanding how you connect the dots and the data and where data flows? And that's really been our focus and we continue to deliver on that for customers. >> And you've had a real dogma, I'll call it, about Cloud Native. I've had this conversation with Frank Slootman, "No we're not going to do a halfway house." You, I think, said it really well today. I think it was you who said it. If you've got On-Prem and Cloud, you got two code bases, >> George Kurtz: Right. >> That you got to maintain. >> That's it, yeah. >> And that means you're taking away resources from one or the other. >> That's exactly right. And what a lot of our competitors have done is they started On-Prem as an AV vendor, and then they took what they had and they basically put it in a Cloud instance called a Cloud, which doesn't really scale. And then, you know, where they need to, they basically still keep their On-Prem, and that just diffuses your engineering team. And most of the On-Prem stuff doesn't even have the features of what they're trying to offer from the Cloud. So either you're Cloud Native or you're not. You can't be halfway. >> But it doesn't mean that you can't include and ingest On-Prem data- >> Well, absolutely. >> into your platform, and that's what I think most people just some reason don't seem to understand. >> Well our agents run wherever. They certainly run On-Prem. >> Dave Vellante: Right. Right. >> And they run in the Cloud, they run wherever. But the crowd in the CrowdStrike is the fact that we can crowdsource this threat information at scale into our threat graph, which gives us unique insight, 7 trillion events per week. And you can't do that if you're not Cloud Native. And that crowd gives the, we call, community immunity. We see all kinds of attacks across 176 different countries. That benefit accrues to all of our customers. >> But how do you envision and maintain and preserve a lightweight agent that can support so many modules? As you do more acquisitions and you knock down new areas and bring in new functionality, go after things like operations technology, how is it that you're able to keep that agent lightweight? >> Well, we started as a platform company, meaning that the whole idea was we're going to build a lightweight agent. First iteration had no security capabilities. It was collect data, get it into a common data architecture or threat graph, in one spot. And then once we had the data then we applied AI to it and we created different workflows. So, the first incarnation was get data into the Cloud at scale. And that still holds true today. So if you think about why we can actually have all these different modules without an impact on the performance, it's we collect data one time. It's a threat data, you know? We're not collecting user data, but threat data collection mechanism. Once we have all that data, then we can slice and dice and create other modules. So the new modules never have to even touch the agent 'cause we've already collected the data. >> I'm going to just keep going, Dave, unless you shove your way in. >> No, no, go ahead. No, no, no. I'm waiting to pounce. >> But okay, so, I think, George, but George, I need to ask you about a comment that you made about we're not just shoving it into a data lake. But you are collecting all the data. Can you explain that nuance? >> Yeah. So there's a difference between a collect and forward agent. It means they just collect a bunch of data. They'll probably store it in a lot of space on the endpoint. It's slow and cumbersome, and then they'll forward it up into another data lake. So you have no context going into no context. Our agent is a smart agent, which actually allows us to always track the context of all these processes in what's happening on the endpoint. And it's a mini graph, meaning we keep track of the relationships. And as we ship that contextual information to the Cloud, we never lose that context. And then it goes into the bigger graph database, always with the same level of context. So, we keep the context of each individual workload or endpoint, and then across the Cloud, we have the context of all of those put together. It's massive. And that allows us to create different insights rather than a data lake, which is, you know, you're looking for, you're creating a bigger needle stack looking for needles. >> And I'm envisioning almost an index that is super, super fast. I mean, you're talking about sub, well second kind of near real time responses, correct? >> Absolutely. So a lot of what we do in terms of protection is already pushed down to the endpoint , 'cause it has intelligence and the AI model. And then again, the Cloud is always looking for different anomalies, not only on each individual endpoint or workload, but across the entire spectrum of our customer base. And that's all real time. It continually self-learns from all the data we collect. >> So when, yeah, when you've made these architectural decisions over time, there was a time when saying that you needed to run an agent could be a deal killer somewhere for people who argued against that. >> George Kurtz: Right. >> You've made the right decision there, clearly. Having everything be crowdsourced into Cloud makes perfect sense. Has that, though, posed a challenge from a sovereignty perspective? If you were deploying stuff On-Prem all over the place, you don't need to worry about that. Everything is here >> George Kurtz: Yeah. >> in a given country. How do you address the challenges of sovereignty when these agents are sending data into some sort of centralized Cloud space that crosses boundaries? >> Well, yeah, I guess what we would, let me go back to the beginning. So I started company in 2011 and I had to convince people that delivering endpoint security from the Cloud was going to be a good thing. >> Dave Vellante: Right. (chuckles) >> You know, you go into a Swiss bank and a bunch of other places and they're like, you're crazy. Right? >> Dave Nicholson: Right. >> They all became customers afterwards, right? And you have to just look at what they're doing. And the question I would have in the early days is, well, let me ask you are you using Dropbox, Box? Are you using a Microsoft? You know, what are you using? Well, they're all sending data to the Cloud. So good news! You already have a model, you've already approved that, right? So let's talk about our benefit. And you know, you can either have an adversary steal your data or you can send threat data to our Cloud, which by the way is in a lot of sovereign Clouds that are out there. And when you actually break it down to what we're sending to the Cloud, it's threat data, right? It isn't user files and documents and stuff. It's threat data. So, we work through all of that. And the Cloud is bigger than CrowdStrike. So you look at Sales Force, Service Now, Workday, et cetera. That's being used all over the place, Box, Dropbox. We just tagged onto it. Like why shouldn't security be the platform of record, and why shouldn't CrowdStrike be the platform of record and be the pillar of Cloud security? >> Explain your observability strategy, 'cause you acquired Humio for, I mean, I think it was $400 million, which is a song. >> Yeah. >> And then Reposify is the latest acquisition. I see that as an extension, 'cause it gives you visibility. Is that part of your security, of your observability play? Explain where you do play and don't play. >> Sure. Well observability is a big, you know, fluffy word. Where we play is in probably the first two areas of observability, right? There's five, kind of, pillars. We're focused on event collection. Let's get events from the endpoints. Let's get events from really anywhere in the network. And we can do that with Humio is now log scale. And then the second piece is with our agents, let's get an understanding of their, the asset itself. What is the asset? What state is it in? Does it have vulnerabilities? Does it have, you know, is it running out of disc space? Is it have, does it have a performance issue? Those are really the first two, kind of, areas of observability. We're not in application performance, we're in let's collect data from the endpoint and other sources, and let's understand if the thing is working, right? And that's a huge value for customers. And we can do that because we already have a privileged spot on the endpoint with our agent. >> Got it. Question on the TAM. Like I look at your TAMs, your charts, I love it. You know, generally do. Were you taking known data from you know, firms like IDC >> George Kurtz: Yeah. >> and saying, okay we're going to play there, now we're made this acquisition. We're new modules, now we're playing there. Awesome. I think you got a big TAM. And I guess that's, that's the point. There's no lack of market for you. >> George Kurtz: Right. >> But I do feel like there's this unknown unquantifiable piece of your TAM. IDC can't see it, 'cause they're kind of looking back >> George Kurtz: Right. >> seein' what the market do last year and we'll forecast it out. It's almost, you got to be a futurist to see it. How do you think about your total available market and the opportunity that's out there? >> Well, it's well in excess of 120 billion and we've actually updated that recently. So it's even beyond that. But if you look at all the modules each module has a discreet TAM and again, for what, you know, what we're focused on is how do you give an outcome to a customer? So a lot of the modules map back into specific TAM and product categories. When you add 'em all up and when you look at, you know, some of the new things that we're coming out with, again, it's well in excess of 120 billion. So that's why we like to say like, you know, we're not an endpoint company. We're really, truly a security platform company that was born in the Cloud. And I think if you see the growth rates, and one of the things that we've talked about, and I think you might have pointed out in prior podcasts, is we're the second fastest company to 2 billion dollars in annual recurring revenue, only behind Zoom. And you know I would argue- great company, by the way, a customer- but that was a black Swan event in a pandemic, right? >> Dave Vellante: I'll say! >> Yeah. >> So we are rarefied air when you think about the capabilities that we have and the performance and the TAM that's available to us. >> The other thing I said in my breaking analysis was 'cause you guys aspire to be a generational company. And I think you got a really good shot at being one, but to be a generational company, you have to have an ecosystem. So I'd love you to talk about the ecosystem, but where you want to see it in five years. >> Well, it really is a good point and we are a partner first company. Ecosystem is really important. Cameras probably can't see all the vendors that are here that are our partners, right? It's a big part of this show that we're at. You see a lot of, well, you see some vendors behind us. >> Yep. >> We have to realize in 2022, and I think this is something that we did well and it's my philosophy, is we are not the only game in town. We like to be, and we are, for many companies the security platform on record, but we don't do everything. We talked about network in other areas. We can't do everything. You can't be good and try to do everything. So, for customers today, what they're looking at is best of platform. And in the early days of security, I've been in it over 30 years, it used to be best of breed products, then it was best of suite, now it's best of platform. So what do I mean by that? It means that customers don't want to engineer their own solution. They, like Lego blocks, they want to pull the platforms, and they want to stitch 'em together via API. And they want to say, okay, CrowdStrike works with Okta, works with Zscaler, works with Proofpoint, et cetera. And that's what customers want. So, ecosystem is incredibly important for us. >> Explain that. You mentioned Okta, I had another question for you. I was at Reinforce, and I saw this better together presentation, CrowdStrike and Okta talking about identity. You've got an identity module. Explain to people how you're not competing with Okta. You guys complement each other, there. >> Well, an identity kind of broker, if you will, is basically what Okta does in others, right? So you log in single sign on and you get access. They broker access to all these other applications. >> Dave Vellante: Right. >> That's not what we do. What we do is we look at those endpoints and workloads and domain controllers and directory services and we figure out, are there vulnerabilities and are there threats associated with them? And we call that out. The second piece, which is critical, is we prevent lateral movement. So if credentials are stolen we can prevent those credentials from being laundered or used and moved laterally, which is a key part of how breaches happen. We then create a trust score on those endpoints and workloads. And we basically say, okay, do we think the trust on the endpoint and workload is high or low? Do we think the identity, you know, is it George on the endpoint, or not? We give that a score. And we pass that along to Okta or Ping or whoever, and they then use that as part of their calculus in how they broker access to other resources. So it really is better together. >> So your execution has been stellar. This is my competition question. You obviously have competition out there. I think architecturally, you've got some advantages. You have a great relationship with AWS. I don't know what's going on with Google, but Kevin's up on stage. >> George Kurtz: Yeah. >> They're now part of Google. >> George Kurtz: We have a great relationship with them. >> Microsoft obviously, a competitor. You obviously do some things in, >> Right. >> in Azure. Are you building the security Cloud? >> We are. We think we are, because when you look at the amount of data that we actually ingest, when you look at companies using us for critical decisions and critical protection, not only on their On-Prem, but also in their Cloud environment, and the knowledge we have, we think it is a security Cloud. You know, you had, you had Salesforce and Workday and ServiceNow and each of them had their respective Clouds. When I started the company, there was no security Cloud. You know, it wasn't any of the companies that you know. It wasn't the firewall companies, wasn't the AV companies. And I think we really defined ourselves as the security Cloud. And the level of knowledge and insights we have in our Cloud, I think, are world class. >> But you know, it's a difference of being those- 'cause you mentioned those other, you know, seminal Clouds. They, like Salesforce, Workday, they're building their own Clouds. Maybe not so much Workday, but certainly Salesforce and ServiceNow built their own >> Yeah. >> Clouds, their own data centers. You're building on top of hyperscalers, correct? >> Well, >> Well you have your own data centers, too. >> We have our own data centers, yeah. So when we first started, we started in AWS as many do, and we have a great relationship there. We continue to build out. We are a huge customer and we also have, you know, with data sovereignty and those sort of things, we've got a lot of our sort of data that sits in our private Cloud. So it's a hybrid approach and we think it's the best of both worlds. >> Okay. And you mean you can manage those costs and it's, how do you make the decision? Is it just sovereignty or is it cost as well? >> Well, there's an operational element. There's cost. There's everything. There's a lot that goes into it. >> Right. >> And at the end of the day we want to make sure that we're using the right technology in the right Clouds to solve the right problem. >> Well, George, congratulations on being back in person. That's got to feel good. >> It feels really good. >> Got a really good audience here. I don't know what the numbers are but there's many thousands here, >> Thousands, yeah. >> at the ARIA. Really appreciate your time. And thanks for having The Cube here. You guys built a great set for us. >> Well, we appreciate all you do. I enjoy your programs. And I think hopefully we've given the audience a good idea of what CrowdStrike's all about, the impact we have and certainly the growth trajectory that we're on. So thank you. >> Fantastic. All right, George Kurtz, Dave Vellante for Dave Nicholson. We're going to wrap up day one. We'll be back tomorrow, first thing in the morning, live from the ARIA. We'll see you then. (calm music)
SUMMARY :
George Kurtz is the co-founder Boston fan, you know, you know, by three games neutralized it, you know? Anyway, at Fenway, I mean. And the biggest thing for us was that mantra, but you do. So, we talked about the And from our standpoint, Well, and when you dig into You're not a network security specialist, that today. If you look at all the breaches and data is really the I think it was you who said it. And that means you're And most of the On-Prem stuff doesn't even and that's what I think most people Well our agents run wherever. Dave Vellante: Right. And you can't do that if So if you think about why we can actually going, Dave, unless you shove No, no, go ahead. that you made about So you have no context And I'm envisioning almost from all the data we collect. when saying that you you don't need to worry about that. How do you address the and I had to convince people Dave Vellante: Right. You know, you go into a Swiss bank And you know, you can 'cause you acquired Humio for, I mean, 'cause it gives you visibility. And we can do that with you know, firms like IDC And I guess that's, that's the point. But I do feel like there's this unknown and the opportunity that's out there? And I think if you see the growth rates, the capabilities that we have And I think you got a really You see a lot of, well, you And in the early days of security, CrowdStrike and Okta of broker, if you will, Do we think the identity, you know, You have a great relationship with AWS. George Kurtz: We have a You obviously do some things in, Are you building the security Cloud? and the knowledge we have, But you know, it's a of hyperscalers, correct? Well you have your we also have, you know, how do you make the decision? There's a lot that goes into it. And at the end of the day That's got to feel good. I don't know what the numbers are at the ARIA. Well, we appreciate all you do. We'll see you then.
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Andy Smith, Laminar | AWS re:Inforce 2022
>>Welcome back to Boston. Everybody watching the cubes coverage, OFS reinforce 22 from Boston, Atlanta chow lobster, the SOS a ruin in my summer, Andy and Smith is here is the CMO of laminar. Andy. Good to see you. Good >>To see you. Great to be >>Here. So laminar came outta stealth last year, 2021, sort of, as we were exiting the isolation economy. Yeah. Why was laminar started >>Really about there's there's two mega trends in the industry that, that created a problem that wasn't being addressed. Right? So the two mega trends was cloud transformation. Obviously that's been going on for a while, but what most people doesn't don't realize is it really accelerated with COVID right? Being all, everybody having to be remote, et cetera, various stats I've read like increased five times, right? So cloud transformation are now you are now problem, right? That's going on? And then the other next big mega trend is data democratization. So more data in the cloud than ever before. And this is, this is just going and going and going. And the result of those two things, more data in the cloud, how am I securing that data? You know, the, the, the breach culture we're in like every day, a new, a new data breach coming up, et cetera, just one Twitter, one yesterday, et cetera. The, those two things have caused a gap with data security teams and, and that's what he >>Heard at attract. Yeah. So, you know, to your point and we track this stuff pretty carefully quarterly, and you saw, it was really interesting trend. You actually saw AWS's growth rate accelerate during the pandemic. Absolutely. You know? Absolutely. So you're talking about, you know, a couple of hundred billion dollars for the big four clouds. If you, if you include Alibaba and it's still growing at 35, you know, 40% a year, which is astounding, so, okay. So more cloud, more data. Explain why that's a, a problem for practitioners. >>Yeah, exactly. The reality is in, in the security, what, what are we doing? What all the security it's about protecting your data in the end, right? Like, like we're here at this at, at reinforce all these security vendors here really it's about protecting your data, your sensitive data. And, but what, what had been happening is all the focus was on the infrastructure, the network, et cetera, et cetera, and not as much focus, particularly on the data and, and the move to the cloud gave the developers and the data scientists, way more power. They don't longer have to ask for permission. And so they can just do what they want. And it's actually wonderful for the business. The business is moving faster, you spin up applications sooner, you get new, new insights. So all those things are really great, but because the developer has so much power, they can just copy data over here, make a backup over here, new et cetera. And, and security has no idea about all these copies of the, of the data that are out there. And they're typically not as well protected as that main production source. And that's the gap that >>Exists. Okay. So there was this shift from sort of perimeter hardening the perimeter, hardening the infrastructure and, and now your premises, it's moving to the data we saw when, when there was during the pandemic, there was definitely a shift to end point security. There was a shift to cloud security rethinking the network, but it was still a lot of, you know, kind of cha chasing the whackamole and people have talked about this is a data problem for years. Yeah. But it was, it's taken a while for, for companies, for the technology industry to, to come at it. You guys are one of the first, if not the first. Yeah. Why do you think it took so long? Is this cuz it's really hard. >>Yeah. I mean, it, it's hard. You need to focus on it. The, the traditional security has been around the network and the box, right. And those are still necessary. It's important to, you know, your use identity to cover the edge, to, to make sure people can't get into the box, but you also have to have data. So what, what happens is there's really good solutions for enterprise data security, looking at database, you know, technology, et cetera. There are good solutions for cloud infrastructure security. So the CSP of the world and the CWPP are protecting containers, you know, protecting the infrastructure. But there really wasn't much for cloud everything you build and run in the cloud. So basically your custom application, your custom applications in the IAS and PAs environments, there really wasn't anything solving that. And that's really where laminar is focused. >>Okay. So you guys use this term shadow data. We talk about shadow. It what's shadow data. >>Yeah. So what we're finding at a hundred percent of our customer environments and our POVs and talking to CISOs out there is that they have these shadow data assets and shadow data elements that they have no clue that existed. So here's the example. Everybody knows the main RDS database that is in production. And this is where, you know, our, our data is taken from. But what people don't realize is there's a copy of that. You know, in a dev environment, somebody went to run a test and they was supposed to be there for two weeks. But then that developer left forgot, left it there. They left the company, oh, now it's been there for two years that there was an original SQL database left over from a lift and shift project. They got moved to RDS, but nobody deleted that thing there, you know, it's a database connected to an application, the application left, but that database, that abandoned database is still sitting. These are all real life customer examples of shadow data that we run into. And there's, and what the problem is that main production data store is secured pretty well. It's following all your policies, et cetera. But all these shadow data resources are typically less well protected unmonitored. And that is what the attackers are after. >>So you're, you know, the old, the, the Watergate follow the money, you're following the data, >>Following the data. >>How do you follow that data if there's so much of it, it, and it's, you know, sometimes, you know, not really well understood where it is. How do you know where >>It is? Yeah. It's the beauty of partnering with somebody like AWS, right? So with each of the cloud providers, we actually take a role in your cloud account and use the APIs from the cloud provider to see all the changes in all the instances are going on. Like it is, the problem is way more complicated in the cloud because I mean, AWS has over 200 services, dozens of ways to store data, right. It's wonderful for the developer, but it's very hard for the security practitioner. And so, because we have that visibility through the cloud provider's APIs, we can see all those changes that are happening. We can then say, ah, that's a data store. Let me go analyze, make a copy, have a snapshot of that and do the analyzing of that data right inside our customer's account without pulling the data out. And we have complete visibility to everything. And then we can give that data catalog over to the customer. >>All right. I gotta ask you a couple Colombo questions. So if you know, we talk about encryption, everything's encrypted everything. If, if the data is encrypted, why then would I need laminar? >>Because I mean, we'll make sure that the data's encrypted okay. Right. Often. So it's not supposed to be and not right. Two is, we're gonna tell you what type of data is inside there. Oh, is this, is this health information? Is it personal identify information? Is it credit cards? You know, et cetera, C so we'll classify the data for you. We will also, then there's things like retention, period. How long should we, I hold onto that data, all the things about what are, who has access, what's the exposure level for that data. And so when you, when you think about data security posture, what's the posture of that data you're looking at at those data policies. It's something that has been very well defined and written down. But in the past, there was just no way to go verify that those, that, that, that policy is actually being followed. And so we're doing that verification automatically. >>So without the context, you can't answer those other questions. So you make sure it's encrypted. If it's not, or you can at least notify me that it's not, you don't do the encryption. Right. Or do you, >>We don't do it ourselves, but we can give you here. Here's the command in and the Amazon to go encrypt it >>Right. Then I can automate that. And then the classification is key because now you're telling me the context. So I can say, okay, apply this policy to that data, retain it for this long, get rid of it after X number of years, or if it's work, process, get rid of it now. Yeah. And then who should have access to that data. And so you can help at least inform how to enforce those policies. >>Exactly. And so we, we, we call it guided remediation because what we're, you know, talking to a CISO, they're like, I need 400 more alerts, like a hole in the head like that. Doesn't do me any good. If you can't tell me how to resolve the, the, the, this security gap that I have or this, then it doesn't do any good. And, and the first, first it starts with who do I need to go talk to? Right. So they have hundreds, if not thousands of developers. Oh, great. You found this issue. I, I, I don't know who to go. Like, I can't just delete it myself, but I need to go talk to somebody really, should this be deleted? We need, do we really, really need to hold onto this? So we, we help guide who the data owner is. So we give you who to talk to. You, give you all the context. Here's the data, here's the data asset that it's in. Here's our suggestion. Here's the problem. Here's our suggestion for >>Solution. And you started the company on AWS >>Started on AWS. Absolutely. >>So what's of course it's best cloud and why not start there? So what's the relationship like, I mean, how'd you get started? You said, okay, Hey, we're we got an idea for a company. We're gonna build it on AWS. We're gonna become a customer. We're gonna, you know, >>We actually, so insight partners is our main investor. Yeah. And they were very helpful in giving us access to literally hundreds of CSOs, who we had conversations with before we actually launched the company. And so we did some shifting and to, to figure out our exact use case. But by the time we came to market, it was in February this year, we actually GAed the product that, where like product market fit nailed because we'd had so many conversations that we knew the problem in the market that we needed to solve. And we knew where we needed to solve it first. And, and the, the, the relationship we AWS is great. We just got on the marketplace, just became a, a partner. So really good. Good >>Start. So I gotta ask you, so I always ask this question. So how do you actually know when you have product market fit? >>You it's about those conversations. Right. You know, so like, I I've been to lots of startups and sometimes you're you're, you, you each have a conversation and then they, they saying, oh, well kind of want this. And we kind of like that. And so it, the more conversations you have, the more, you know, you're solving a real problem. Right. And, and, and, and, and you re react to what that, what that prospect is telling you back and, or that advisor or that whoever we're talking to. And, and every single one of the CISO conversations we had was I don't have a good inventory of my data in the cloud. >>The reason I asked that, cause I always ask the startups, like, when do you scale? Cause I think startups sometimes scale too fast. They try to scale too fast, they'll hire 50 sales people. And then they, you know, churn, you know, they, they got a 50% churn, but they're trying to optimize their go to market when they got 50% of their customers are gonna leave. So it's, it's gotta be the sequential thing. So, so you got product market fit. So are, are you in the scaling phase >>Now? We are. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So now it's about how quickly can we deliver? We, we we're ramping customer base significantly. And, and you know, we've got a whole go to market team in, you know, sales and marketing in the us and, and often off to the races >>And you just run on AWS or you run another clouds. >>It's multi-cloud so AWS, Azure, GCP, et cetera. >>Okay. So then my least my next question is it sort of, you can do this within each of the individual clouds today. Do you see a day and maybe it's here today is where you can create a single experience across those clouds >>Today. It's a single experience across cloud. So our SaaS, we have our SaaS portion runs in AWS, but the actual data analysis runs in each cloud provider. So AWS, Azure, GCP and snowflake too, actually. >>Ah, okay. So I come through your whatever portal, like if I can use that term. Yep. And that's running on AWS. Yes. You're SAS, as you say, and then you go out to these other environments, GCP, Azure, AWS itself, and snowflake. Yep. And I see laminar, is that right? Or >>There's a piece running inside our customer's environment. Okay. So, so we have a customer, they, the, we have, we get a role inside of their cloud account or read only role inside of their cloud account. And we spin up serverless functions in that cloud account. That's where all the analysis happens. And that's why we don't take any data out of the environment. So it all stays there. And, and therefore we don't, we don't actually see the data outside of the environment. Like, I, I can tell you there's a metadata comes out. I can tell you, there are credit cards inside that data store, but I can't tell you exactly which credit card it is cuz I don't know. So all the important actions happens are there and just the metadata metadata comes out. So we can give you a cross cloud dashboard of all your sensitive data. >>And of course, so take the example of snowflake. They're going across clouds, they're building what we call super cloud sort of, of a layer that floats on top. You're just sort of going wherever that data goes. >>Yeah, exactly. So, so each of there's a component that lives in the customer's environment in the, in those multi-cloud environments and then a single view of the world dashboard that is our SaaS component that runs an AWS. So >>You guys are, is, am I correct? You're series a funded >>Series, a funded yeah, exactly. >>And, and already scaling to go to market. Yeah. Which is, which is early to scale. Right. I mean you've got startup experience. Right? >>Absolutely. >>How does it compare? >>Well, what was amazing here was access. I mean, really it was through the relationship with insight. It was access to the CISOs that I had never had at any of the other startups I was with. You're trying to get meetings, you're meeting with a lot of practitioners, you know, et cetera. But getting all those conversations with buyers was, was super valuable for us to say, ah, I know I'm solving a real problem that has value that they will pay for. Right. And, and, and so that, that was a year and a half probably still of all that work going on. We just, just waited to GA until we understood the market >>Better. Yeah. Insight. They're amazing. The way to talk about scaling. I mean, they've just the last 10 years that comp that, that PE firm has just gone wild in terms of just their, their philosophy, their approach, their cadence, their consistency. And now of course their portfolio. >>Yeah. And, and they started doing a little bit earlier and earlier stage. I mean, I, I always think of them as PE too, but you know, they, they did our seed round. Right. They did our a round and, and they're doing earlier stages, but particularly what they saw in Laar was exactly what we started this conversation with. They saw cloud transformation speeding up, they saw data democratization happening. They're like, we need to invest in this now because this is a now a problem to solve. >>Yeah. It's interesting. Cuz when you go back even pre 2010, you talk to, you know, look at insight, they would wait. They would invest in companies unless there was, you know, on the way to five plus million dollar ARR, they weren't doing seed deals. Totally. Like they saw, wow, these actually can be pretty lucrative and we can play and we have a point of view and yeah. So cool. Well, congratulations. I'll give you the final word. What, what should we be watching for from, from Laar as sort of, you know, milestones that you guys want to hit and, and indicators of success. >>Yeah. Now it's all about growth partnerships, you know, integrations with, with other of the players out here. Right. And so, you know, like scaling our AWS partnership is one of the key aspects for us. And so, you know, just look for, look for the name out there and, and you'll start, you'll start to see it a lot more. And, and if, if you have the need, you know, come look us up. Laar security.com. >>Awesome. Well thanks very much for coming to Cuban. Good luck. Appreciate it. All right. >>Wonderful. Thanks. You're >>Welcome. All right. Keep it right there, everybody. This is Dave ante. We'll be back right after this short break from AWS reinvent 2022 in Boston. You're watching the cue.
SUMMARY :
Andy and Smith is here is the CMO of laminar. Great to be Yeah. So the two mega trends was cloud it's still growing at 35, you know, 40% a year, which is astounding, so, okay. And that's the gap that lot of, you know, kind of cha chasing the whackamole and the world and the CWPP are protecting containers, you know, protecting the infrastructure. We talk about shadow. And this is where, you know, our, our data is taken from. How do you follow that data if there's so much of it, it, and it's, you know, sometimes, of that and do the analyzing of that data right inside our customer's account without pulling the data out. So if you know, we talk about encryption, But in the past, there was just no way to go verify that those, that, that, that policy So without the context, you can't answer those other questions. We don't do it ourselves, but we can give you here. And so you can help at And so we, we, we call it guided remediation because what we're, you know, And you started the company on AWS Started on AWS. We're gonna, you know, But by the time we came to market, it was in February this year, So how do you actually know when you have product market fit? the more conversations you have, the more, you know, you're solving a real problem. And then they, you know, churn, you know, they, And, and you know, we've got a whole go to market team in, Do you see a day and maybe it's here today is where you can create a single experience across So our SaaS, we have our SaaS portion runs in AWS, You're SAS, as you say, and then you go out to So we can give you a cross cloud dashboard of all your sensitive data. And of course, so take the example of snowflake. So And, and already scaling to go to market. And, and, and so that, that was a year and a half probably And now of course their portfolio. but you know, they, they did our seed round. They would invest in companies unless there was, you know, on the way to five plus you know, like scaling our AWS partnership is one of the key aspects for All right. You're Keep it right there, everybody.
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Rachel Obstler, Heap | AWS Startup Showcase S2 E3
>> Hello, everyone. Welcome to theCUBE presentation of the AWS startup showcase, market MarTech, emerging cloud scale customer experience. This is season two, episode three of the ongoing series covering the exciting startups from the AWS ecosystem. Talking about the data analytics, all the news and all the hot stories. I'm John Furrier your host of theCUBE. And today we're excited to be joined by Rachel Ostler, VP of product at Heap, Heap.io. Here to talk about from what, to why the future of digital insights. Great to see you, thanks for joining us today. >> Thanks for having me, John. Thanks for having me back. >> Well, we had a great conversation prior to the event here, a lot going on, you guys had acquired Auryc in an acquisition. You kind of teased that out last time. Talk about this, the news here, and why is it important? And first give a little setup on Heap and then the acquisition with Auryc. >> Yeah. So heap is a digital insights platform. So as you mentioned, it's all about analytics and so Heap really excels at helping you understand what your users and customers are doing in your digital application at scale. So when it comes to Auryc, what we really saw was a broken workflow. Maybe, I would even call it a broken market. Where a lot of customers had an analytics tool like Heap. So they're using Heap on one hand to figure out what is happening at scale with their users. But on the other hand, they were also using, like a session replay tool separately, to look at individual sessions and see exactly what was happening. And no one was very effective at using these tools together. They didn't connect at all. And so as a result, neither one of them could really be fully leveraged. And so with this acquisition, we're able to put these two tools together, so that users can both understand the what at scale, and then really see the why, immediately together in one place. >> You know, that I love that word why, because there's always that, you know, that famous motivational video on the internet, "you got to know your why", you know, it's very a motivational thing, but now you're getting more practicality. What and why is the, is the lens you want, right? So, I totally see that. And again, you can teased that out in our last interview we did. But I want to understand what's under the covers, under the acquisition. What was the big thesis behind it? Why the joint forces? What does this all mean? Why is this so important to understand this new, what and why and the acquisition specifically? >> Yeah, so let me give you example of a couple used cases, that's really helpful for understanding this. So imagine that you are a product manager or a, maybe a growth marketer, but you're someone who owns a digital experience. And what you're trying to do, of course, is make that digital experience amazing for your users so that they get value and that may mean that they're using it more, it may mean that new features are easily discoverable, that you can upsell things on your own. There's all sorts of different things that that may mean, but it's all about making it easy to use, discoverable, understandable, and as self-service as possible too. And so most of these digital builders, we call 'em digital builders sometimes. They are trying to figure out when the application is not working the way that it should be working, where people are getting stuck, where they're not getting the value and figure out how to fix that. And so, one really great used case is, I just want to understand in mass, like, let's say I have a flow, where are people dropping off? Right, so I see that I have a four step funnel and between step three and four people are dropping off. Heap is great for getting very detailed on exactly what action they're taking, where they're dropping off. But then the second you find what that action is, quantitatively, you want to watch it, you want to see what they did exactly before it. You want to see what they did after it. You want to understand why they're getting stuck. What they're confused at, are they mouthing over two things, like you kind of want to watch their session. And so what this acquisition allows us to do, is to put those things together seamlessly, you find the point in friction, you watch a bunch of examples, very easily. In the past, this would take you at least hours, if you could do it at all. And then in other used cases, the other direction. So there's the kind of, I think of it as the max to the min, and then there's the other direction as well. Like you have the, or maybe it's the macro to micro. You have the micro to macro, which is you have one user that had a problem. Maybe they send in a support ticket. Well, you can validate the problem. You can watch it in the session, but then you want to know, did this only happen to them? Did this happen to a lot of users? And this is really worth fixing, because all these customers are having the same problem. That's the micro to macro flow that you can do as well. >> Yeah. That's like, that's like the quantitative qualitative, the what and the why. I truly see the value there and I liked the way you explained that, good call out. The question I have for you, because a lot of people have these tools. "I got someone who does that." "I got someone over here that does the quantitative." "I don't need to have one company do it, or do I?" So the question I have for you, what does having a single partner or vendor, providing both the quantitative and the qualitative nails mean for your customers? >> So it's all because now it's immediate. So today with the two tools being separate, you may find something quantitatively. But then to, then to find the sessions that you want to watch that are relevant to that quantitative data point is very difficult. At least it takes hours to do so. And a lot of times people just give up and they don't bother. The other way is also true, you can watch sessions, you can watch as many sessions as you want, you can spend hours doing it, you may never find anything of interest, right? So it just ends up being something that users don't do. And actually we've interviewed a lot of customers, they have a lot of guilt about this. A lot of product managers feel like they should be spending all this time, but they just don't have the time to spend. And so it not only brings them together, but it brings them together with immediacy. So you can immediately find the issue, find exactly where it is and watch it. And this is a big deal, because, if you think about, I guess, like today's economic conditions, you don't have a lot of money to waste. You don't have a lot of time to waste. You have to be very impactful with what you're doing and with your spending of development resources. >> Yeah. And totally, and I think one of the things that immediacy is key, because it allows you to connect dots faster. And we have the aha moments all the time. If you miss that, the consequences can be quantified in a bad product experience and lost customers. So, totally see that. Zooming out now, I want to get your thoughts on this, cause you're bringing, we're going down this road of essentially every company is digital now, right? So digitization, digital transformation. What do you want to call it? Data is digital. This video is an experience. It's also data as well. You're talking, we're going to share this and people are going to experience that. So every website that's kind of old school is now becoming essentially a digital native application or eCommerce platform. All the things that were once preserved for the big guys, the hyper-scalers and the categories, the big budgets, now are coming down to every company. Every company is a digital company. What challenges do they have to transition from? I got a website, I got a marketing team. Now I got to look like a world class, product, eCommerce, multifaceted, application with developers, with change, with agility? >> Well, so I think that last thing you said is a really important part of it, the agility. So, these products, when you're going from a, just a website to a product, they're a lot more complex. Right? And so maybe I can give an example. We have a customer, it's an insurance company. So they have this online workflow. And if you can imagine signing up for insurance online, it's a pretty long complicated workflow. I mean, Hey, better to do it online than to have to call someone and wait on, you know, on the phone. And so it's a good experience, but it's still fraught with like opportunities of people getting stuck and never coming back. And so one of the things that Heap allowed this customer to do was figure out something that wasn't working in their workflow. And so if you think about traditional analytics tools, typically what you're doing is you're writing tracking code and you're saying, "Hey, I'm going to track this funnel, this process." And so maybe it has, you know, five different forms or pages that you have to go through. And so what you're doing when you track it is you say, did you submit the first one? Did you submit the second one? Did you submit the third one? So you know, like where they're falling off. You know where they're falling off, but you don't know why, you don't know which thing got them stuck because each one of these pages has multiple inputs and it has maybe multiple steps that you need to do. And so you're completely blind to exactly what's happening. Well, it turned out because Heap collects all this data, that on one of these pages where users were dropping off, it was because they were clicking on a FAQ, there was a link to a FAQ, and because this was a big company, the FAQ took them to a completely different application. Didn't know how to get back from there and they just lost people. And imagine if you are doing this with traditional means today, right? You don't have any visibility into what's happening on that page, you just know that they fell off. You might think about what do I do to fix this? How do I make this flow work better? And you might come up with a bunch of ideas. One of your ideas could be, let's break it into multiple pages. Maybe there's too much stuff on this page. One of your ideas may have been, let's try a FAQ. They're getting stuck, let's give them some more help. That would be a very bad idea, right? Because that was actually the reason why they were leaving and never coming back. So, the point I'm making is that, if you don't know exactly where people are getting stuck and you can't see exactly what is happening, then you're going to make a lot of very bad decisions. You're going to waste a lot of resources, trying things that make no sense. It is hard enough as a digital builder and all the product managers and growth marketers and marketers out there can attest to this, it's hard enough when you know exactly what the problem is to figure out a good solution. Right? That's still hard. But if you don't know the problem, it's impossible. >> Okay, so let's just level up, the bumper sticker now for the challenges are what? Decision making, what's the, stack rank the top three challenges from that. So it's being agile, right? So being very fast, because you're competing with a lot of companies right now. It's about making really good decisions and driving impact, right? So you have to have all the data that you need. You have to have the, the specific information about what's going on. Cause if you don't have it, you're going to decide to invest in things and you're not going to drive the impact that you want. >> So now you got the acquisition of Auryc and Auryc and you have the, this visibility to the customers that are building, investing, you mentioned, okay. As they invest, whether it's the digital product or new technology in R and D, what feedback have you guys seen from these investments, from these customers, what results have come out of it? Could you share any specific answers to the problems and challenges you have outlined, because you know, there's growth hackers could be failing cause of stupid little product mistakes that could have been avoided in the feedback, you know what I'm saying? So it's like, where can you, where are these challenges addressed and what are some of the results? >> Yeah, so, what we've seen with our customers is that when they are applying this data and doing this analysis on say workflows or goals that they're trying to accomplish, they've been able to move the needle quite a bit. And so, whether it is, you know, increasing conversion rates or whether it is making sure that they don't have, you know, drop off of trial signups or making sure that their customers are more engaged than before, when they know exactly where they're failing, it is much easier to make an investment and move the needle. >> Awesome. Well, let's move on to the next big topic, which I love, it's about data science and data engineering. You guys are a data company and I want to ask you specifically, how Heap uniquely is positioned to help companies succeed, where in the old big tech world, they're tightening the ropes on secure cookies, privacy, data sharing. At the same time, there's been an explosion in cloud scale data opportunities and new technologies. So it seems like a new level of, capability, is going to replace the old cookies, privacy and data sharing, which seem to be constricting or going away. How do you, what's your reaction to that? Can you share how Heap fits into this next generation and the current situation going on with the cookies and this privacy stuff. >> Yep, so it is really important in this world to be collecting data compliantly, right? And so what that means is, you don't want to be reliant on third party cookies. You want to be reliant on just first party information. You want to make sure that you don't collect any PII. Heap is built to do that from the ground up. We by default will not collect information, like what do people put into forms, right? Because that's a obvious source of PII. The other thing is that, there's just so much data. So you kind of alluded to this, with this idea of data science. So first of all, you're collecting data compliantly, you're making sure that you have all the data of what your user actions are doing, compliantly, but then it's so much data that it like, how do you know where to start? Right? You want to know, you want to get to that specific point that users are dropping off, but there's so many different options out there. And so that's where Heap is applying data science, to automatically find those points of friction and automatically surface them to users, so that you don't have to guess and check and constantly guess at what the problem is, but you can see it in the product surface right for you. >> You know, Rachel, that's a great point. I want to call that out because I think a lot of companies don't underestimate, they may underestimate what you said earlier, capturing in compliance way means, you're opting in to say, not to get the data, to unwind it later, figure it out. You're capturing it in a compliant way, which actually reduces the risk and operational technical debt you might have to deploy to get it fixed on compliance. Okay, that's one thing, I love that. I want to make sure people understand that value. That's a huge value, especially for people that don't have huge teams and diverse platforms or other data sources. The other thing you mentioned is owning their own data. And that first party data is a strategic advantage, mainly around personalization and targeted customer interaction. So the question is, with the new data, I own the data, you got the comp- capture with compliance. How do you do personalization and targeted customer interactions, at the same time while being compliant? It just seems, it seems like compliance is restrictive and kind of forecloses value, but open means you can personalization and targeted interactions. How do you guys connect the dots there by being compliant, but yet being valuable on the personalization and targeted? >> Well, it all depends on how the customer is managing their information, but imagine that you have a logged in user, well, you know, who the logged in user is, right? And so all we really need is an ID. Doesn't have, we don't need to know any of the user information. We just need an ID and then we can serve up the information about like, what have they done, if they've done these three actions, maybe that means that this particular offer would be interested to them. And so that information is available within Heap, for our customers to use it as they want to, with their users. >> So you're saying you can enable companies to own their data, be compliant and then manage it end to end from a privacy standpoint. >> Yes. >> That's got to be a top seller right there. >> Well, it's not just a top seller, it's a necessity. >> It's a must have. I mean, think about it. I mean, what are people, what are the, what are people who don't do this? What do they face? What's the alternative? If you don't keep, get the Heap going immediately, what's the alternative? I'm going through logs, I got to have to get request to forget my data. All these things are all going on, right? Is, what's the consequence of not doing this? >> Well, there's a couple consequences. So one is, and I kind of alluded to it earlier that, you're just, you're blind to what your users are doing, which means that you're making investments that may not make sense, right? So you can, you can decide to add all the cool features in the world, but if the customers don't perceive them as being valuable or don't find them or don't understand them, it doesn't, it doesn't serve your business. And so, this is one of like the rule number one of being a product manager, is you're trying to balance what your customers need, with what is also good for your business. And both of those have to be in place. So that's basically where you are, is that you'll be making investments that just won't be hitting the mark and you won't be moving the needle. And as I mentioned, it's more important now in this economic climate than ever to make sure that the investments you're making are targeted and impactful. >> Yeah and I think the other thing to point out, is that's a big backlash against the whole, Facebook, you're the product, you're getting used, the users being used for product, but you're, you guys have a way to make that happen in a way that's safe for the user. >> Yes. Safe and compliant. So look, we're all about making sure that we certainly don't get our customers into trouble and we recommend that they follow all compliance rules, because the last thing you want to be is on the, on the wrong side of a compliance officer. >> Well, there's also the user satisfaction problem of, and the fines. So a lot going on there, great product. I got to ask you real quick before we kind of wrap up here. What's the reaction been to the acquisition? Quantitative, qualitative. What's been the vibe? What are some, what are people saying about it? >> We've got a lot of interest. So, I mentioned earlier that this is really a broken workflow in the market. And when users see the two products working together, they just love it because they have not been able to leverage them being separate before. And so it just makes it so much easier for these digital builders to figure out, what do I invest in because they know exactly where people are having trouble. So it's been really great, we've had a lot of reach outs already asking us how they can use it, try it, not quite available yet. So it's going to be available later this summer, but great, great response so far. >> Awesome. Well, I love the opportunity. Love the conversation, I have to ask you now, looking forward, what does the future look like for companies taking advantage of your platform and tool? What can they expect in terms of R and D investments, area moves you're making? You're the head of product, you get the keys to the kingdom. What's the future look like? What's coming next? >> Yeah, so other than pulling the qual and the quant together, you actually hinted at it earlier when you're asking me about data science, but continuing to automate as much of the analysis as we can. So, first of all, analysis, analytics, it should be easy for everyone. So we're continue to invest in making it easy, but part of making it easy is, like we can automate analysis. We can, we can see that your website has a login page on it and build a funnel for you automatically. So that's some of the stuff that we're working on, is how do we both automate getting up to speed and getting that initial analysis done easily, without any work. And then also, how do we automate more complex analysis? So you have, typically a lot of companies have a data science team and they end up doing a lot of analysis, it's a little bit more complex. I'm not saying data science teams will go away, they will be around forever. There's tons of very complex analysis that they're probably not even getting time to do. We're going to start chipping away at that, so we can help product managers do more and more of that self-service and then free up the data science team to do even more interesting things. >> I really like how you use the word product managers, product builders, digital builders, because while I got you, I want to get your thought on this, because it's a real industry shift. You're talking about it directly here, about websites going to eCommerce, CMOs, a C-suite, they generally observe that websites are old technology, but not going away, because the next level abstraction builds on top of it. What's the new capabilities because for the CMOs and the C-suites and the product folks out there, they're not building webpages, they're building applications. So what is it about this new world that's different from the old web architecture? How would you talk to a CMO or a leader? And to, when they ask what's this new opportunity to take my website, cause maybe it's not enough traffic. People are consuming out in the organic, what's this new expectation and how, what does a new product manager environment look like, if it's not the web, so to speak? >> Well, there's a couple things. So one is, and you alluded to it a bit, like the websites are also getting more complex and you need to start thinking of your website as a product. Now it's, it may not be the product that you sell, but it is, well for eCommerce it's the place that you get access to the product, for B2B SaaS, it is the window to the product. It's a place where you can learn about the product. And you need to think about, not just like, what pieces of content are being used, but you need to understand the user flow, through the application. So that's how it's a lot more like a product. >> Rachel, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE here for this presentation, final word, put a plugin for the company. What are you guys up to? What are you looking for? Take a minute to explain kind of that, what's going on. How do people contact you with a great value proposition? Put a plugin for the company. >> Yeah, well, if you want to up level your product experience or website experience, you want to be able to drive impact quickly, try Heap. You can go to Heap.io, you can try it for free. We have a free trial, we have a free product even. And yeah, and then if you have any questions, you want to talk to a live person, you can do that too, at sales@Heap.io. >> Rachel, thanks so much. Customer-scale experiences with the cloud house league. This is the season two, episode three of the ongoing series. I'm John Furrier, your host. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)
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of the AWS startup Thanks for having me back. you guys had acquired So as you mentioned, the lens you want, right? So imagine that you are a product manager and I liked the way you that you want to watch that are relevant What do you want to call it? And so maybe it has, you know, the data that you need. in the feedback, you know what I'm saying? that they don't have, you know, and I want to ask you specifically, so that you don't have to guess and check I own the data, you got the but imagine that you it end to end from a privacy standpoint. That's got to be a Well, it's not just a top If you don't keep, get the So that's basically where you are, the users being used for product, you want to be is on I got to ask you real quick So it's going to be I have to ask you now, So you have, typically a lot of companies and the C-suites and the the product that you sell, What are you guys up to? Yeah, well, if you want to up level This is the season two, episode
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Shishir Shrivastava, TEKsystems & Devang Pandya, TEKsystems | Snowflake Summit 2022
>>Welcome back everyone to the Cube's live coverage of snowflake summit 22, we are live in Las Vegas. Caesar's forum, Lisa Martin, Dave Valante, Dave. This is day one of a lot of wall action on the, >>Yeah. A lot of content on day one. It, it feels like, you know, the, the reinvent fire hose yes. Of announcements feels like a little mini version of that. >>It does. That's a good, that's a good way of putting it. We've been unpacking a lot of the news. That's come out, stick around, lots more coming. We've got two guests joining us from tech systems global services. Please welcome Devon. Pania managing director and Shai Sheva of us senior and Shire. Shrivastava senior manager, guys. Great to have you on the cube. >>Thank you so much. Good to see you. And it's great to be in person. Finally, it's been a long UE, so excited to be here. >>Agree. The keynote this morning was not only standing room only, but there was an overflow area. >>Oh my goodness. We have a hard time getting in and it is unbelievable announcement that we have heard looking forward for an exciting time. Next two days here >>Absolutely exciting. The, the cannon shotgun of announcements this morning was amazing. The innovation that has been happening at snowflake and you know, this clearly as partner has been, it just seems like it's the innovation flywheel is getting faster and faster and faster. Talk to us a little bit, Devon about tech systems. Give us the audience a little bit of an overview of the company, and then talk to us about the partnership with snowflake. >>Sure. Thank you. Lisa tech system global services is a full stack global system integrator working with 8% of fortune 500 customers helping in accelerating their business as well as technology modernization journey. We have been a snowflake partner since 2019, and we are one of the highest accredited sales and technical certification with snowflake. And that's what we have earned as a elite partner or sorry, emerging partner with snowflake last year. And we are one of the top elite partner as well. >>Yeah. So since 2019, I mean, in the keynote this morning, Frank showed it. I think Christian showed it as well in terms of the amount of, of change innovation that's happened since 2019 Ellen, we were talking before we went live to share about the, the last two years, the acceleration of innovation cloud adoption digital transformation. The last two years is kind of knock your head back. You need a yeah. A whiplash collar to deal with that. Talk about what you've seen in the last three years, particularly with the partnership and how quickly they are moving and listening to their customers. >>Yeah. Yeah. I think last two years really has given pretty much every organization, including us and our customers a complete different perspective. And that's, that's the exact thing which Christian was talking about, you know, disruption, that's the that's that has been the core message, which we have seen and we've got it from the customers. And we have worked on that right from the get go. We have, you know, all our tools and technology. We are working hand in hand with snowflake in terms of our offerings, working with customers, we have tools. We talk about, you know, accelerators quote unquote that's that helps our customers, you know, to take it from on-prem systems to all the way to the snowflake data cloud and that too, you know, fraction of seconds. You talk about data, you talk about, you know, code conversion, you talk about data validation. So, you know, there are ample amount of things, you know, in terms of, you know, innovation, all workload, I've heard, you know, those are the buzzwords today, and those are like such an exciting time out here. >>So before the pandemic, you know, digital transformation, it was, it was sort of a thing, but it was, it was also a lot of complacency around it. And then of course, if you weren't in a digital business, you were out of the business and boom. So you talked to bang about the stack. You guys obviously do a lot in cloud migration. What's changed in cloud migration. And how is the stack evolving to accommodate that? >>That's a great question there when last two years, it's absolutely a game changer in terms of the digital transformation. Can we believe that 90% of world's data that we have produced and captured is in last two years? It's, isn't that amazing? Right. And what IDC is predicting by 20 25, 200 terabytes of data is going to be generated. And most of them is going to be unstructured. And what we are fascinated about is only 0.5% of unstructured data is currently analyzed by the organization to look at the immense opportunity in front of us and with Snowflake's data cloud, as well as some of the retail data cloud finance and healthcare data cloud launching, it's going to immensely help in processing that unstructured data and really bring life to the data in making organization and market leader. >>Quick, quick fall, if I could, why is, is such a small, why is so much data dark and not accessible to organizations? What's >>The, that's a, that's a great question. I think it's a legacy that we have been trained such a way that data has to be structured. It needs to be modeled, but last decade or so we have seen note it hasn't required that way. And all the social media data being generated, how we communicate in a world is all arm structure, right? We don't create structured data and put it into the CSV and things like that. It's just a natural human behavior. And I think that's where we see a lot of potential in mining that dataset and bringing, you know, AI ML capabilities from descriptive to diagnostic analysis, moving forward with prescriptive and predictive analytics. And that's what we heard from snowflake in Christian announce, Hey, machine learning workload is going to be the key lot of investment happening last 10 years. Now it's going to, you know, capitalize on those ROI in making quick decisions. >>Should you talk to me about those customer conversations? Obviously they have they've transformed and evolved considerably. Yeah. But for customers that have this tremendous amount of unstructured data, a lot of potential as you talked about dung, but there's gotta be, it's gotta be a daunting task. Oh yeah. But these days, every company has to be a data company to be successful, to be competitive and to deliver the experience that the demanding consumers expect. Yeah. How do you start with customers? Where do they start? What's that conversation like and how can tech systems help them get rid of that kind of that daunting iceberg, if you will and get around >>It. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think you got the right point there. Unstructured data is just the tip of the iceberg we are talking about and we have just scratched little surface of it, you know, it's it's and as the one was mentioning earlier, it's, it's gone out those days, you know, where we are talking about, you know, gigabytes of data or, you know, terabytes. Now we are talking about petabytes and Zab bytes of data, and there are so many, and that's, that's the data insight we are looking for and what else, you know, what best platform you can get better than, you know, snowflake data cloud. You have everything in there. You talk about programmability today. You know, Christian was talking about snow park, you know, that, that gives you all the cutting edge languages. You talk about Java, you talk about scale, you talk about Python, you know, all those languages. >>I mean, there were days when these languages, you need to bring that data to a separate platform, process it and then connect it. Now it is right there. You can connect it and just process it. So I think that's, that's the beginning. And to start the conversation, we always, you know, go ahead and talk to the customers and, you know, understand their perspective, know where they want to start, you know, what are their pain points and where they, they want to go, you know, what's their end goal, you know, how they want to pro proceed, you know, how they want to mature in terms of, you know, data agility and flexibility and you know, how do they want to offer their customers? So that's, that's the basically, you know, that's our, the path forward and that's how we see it. >>And just, >>Just to add on top of that, Dave, sorry about that. What we have seen with our customers, the legacy mindset of creating the data silos, primarily because it's not that they wanted it that way, but there were limitations in terms of either the infrastructure or the unlimited scalability and flexibility and accent extensibility, right? That's why those kind of, you know, work around has been built. But with snowflake unified data cloud platform, you have everything in unified platform and what we are telling our customers, we need to eliminate the Datalog. Yes, data is a new oil, but we need to make sure that you eliminate the Datalog within the enterprise, as well as outside the enterprise to really combine then and get a, you know, valuable insight to be the market leader. >>You know, when the cube started, it was 2010. And I remember we went to Hadoop world and it was a lot of excitement around big data and yes, and it turned out, it didn't quite live up to the expectations. That's an understatement, but we, we learned a lot and we made some strides and, and now we're sort of entering this, this new era, but you know, the, the, the last era was largely this big batch job right now, today. You're seeing real time, you know, we've, we've projected out real time in, is gonna become more and more of a thing. How do you guys see the, the sort of data patterns changing and again, where do you see snowflake fitting in? >>Yeah. Great question. And they, what I would have to say, just in a one word is removing the complexity and moving towards the simplicity. Why the legacy solutions such as big data didn't really work out well, it had all the capabilities, but it was a complex environment. You need to really be, you know, knowing a lot of technical aspect of it. And your data analyst were struggling with that kind of a tool set. So with snowflake simplicity, you can bring citizen data scientists, you can bring your data scientists, you can bring your data analysts, all of them under one platform, and they can all mine the data because it's all sitting in the one environment, are >>You seeing organizations change the way they architect their data teams? And specifically, are you seeing a decentralization of data teams or you see, you mentioned citizen data scientists, are you seeing lines of business take more ownership of the data or is it still cuz again, that big data era created this data science role, the data engineering role, the data pipeline, and it was sort of an extension of the sort of EDW. We had a, a few people, maybe one or two experts who knew how to use the system and you build cubes. And it was sort of a, you know, in order of magnitude more complex than that could maybe do more, but are you seeing it being pushed out to the lines of business? >>That's a great question. And I think what we are seeing in the organization today is this time is absolutely both it and business coming together, hand in hand. It's not that, Hey, it, you do this data pipeline work. And then I will analyze this data. And then we'll, you know, share the dashboards to the CEO. We are seeing more and more cohesiveness within the organization in making a path forward in making the decision intelligence very, very rapid. So I think that's a great change. We don't need to operate in silos. I think it's coming together. And I think it's going to create a win-win combination for our >>Customers. Just to add one more point, what the one has mentioned. I think it's the world of data democratization we are talking about, you know, data is available there, insights. We need to pull it out and you know, just give it to every consumer of the organization and they're ready to consume it. They are, they are hungry. They are ready to take it. You know, that's, that's, that's something, you know, we need to look forward for. >>Well, absolutely look forward to it. And as you talked about, there's so much potential it's we see the tip of the iceberg, right? There's so much underneath that guys. I wish we had more time to continue unpacking this, but thank you so much for joining Dave and me on the program, talking about tech systems and snowflake, what you guys are doing together and what you're enabling those end customers to achieve. We appreciate your insights. >>Yeah. Thank you so much. It's an exciting time for us. And we have been, you know, partnering with snowflake on retail data cloud launch, as well as some upcoming opportunity with manufacturing and also the financial competency that we have earned. So I think it's a great time for us ahead in future. So >>Excellent. Lots to come from Texas systems guys. Thank you. We appreciate your time. Thank you. >>Appreciate it. Thank you. Let it snow. I would say let >>It snow, snow. Let it snow. I like that. You're heard of your life from hot Las Vegas for our guests and Dave ante. I'm Lisa Martin. We are live in Las Vegas. It's not snowing. It's very hot here. We're at the snowflake summit, 22 covering that stick around Dave and I will be joined where next guests in just a moment.
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Welcome back everyone to the Cube's live coverage of snowflake summit 22, It, it feels like, you know, the, the reinvent fire hose yes. Great to have you on the cube. Thank you so much. The keynote this morning was not only standing room only, but there was an overflow area. We have a hard time getting in and it is unbelievable announcement that we have The innovation that has been happening at snowflake and you know, this clearly as partner has been, And we are one of the top elite partner as well. I think Christian showed it as well in terms of the amount of, of change innovation that's happened since that's the exact thing which Christian was talking about, you know, disruption, that's the that's that has been the So before the pandemic, you know, digital transformation, it was, it was sort of a thing, And most of them is going to be unstructured. in mining that dataset and bringing, you know, AI ML capabilities from descriptive a lot of potential as you talked about dung, but there's gotta be, it's gotta be a daunting task. of the iceberg we are talking about and we have just scratched little surface of it, you know, it's it's and as the one was mentioning And to start the conversation, we always, you know, go ahead and talk to the customers and, That's why those kind of, you know, work around has been built. and now we're sort of entering this, this new era, but you know, the, the, the last era was largely this big you know, knowing a lot of technical aspect of it. And it was sort of a, you know, in order of magnitude more And then we'll, you know, share the dashboards to the CEO. We need to pull it out and you know, And as you talked about, there's so much potential it's we see the And we have been, you know, partnering with snowflake on Lots to come from Texas systems guys. Let it snow. We're at the snowflake summit, 22 covering that stick around Dave and I will be
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Bill Andrews, ExaGrid | VeeamON 2022
(upbeat music) >> We're back at VeeamON 2022. We're here at the Aria in Las Vegas Dave Vellante with Dave Nicholson. Bill Andrews is here. He's the president and CEO of ExaGrid, mass boy. Bill, thanks for coming on theCUBE. >> Thanks for having me. >> So I hear a lot about obviously data protection, cyber resiliency, what's the big picture trends that you're seeing when you talk to customers? >> Well, I think clearly we were talking just a few minutes ago, data's growing like crazy, right This morning, I think they said it was 28% growth a year, right? So data's doubling almost just a little less than every three years. And then you get the attacks on the data which was the keynote speech this morning as well, right. All about the ransomware attacks. So we've got more and more data, and that data is more and more under attack. So I think those are the two big themes. >> So ExaGrid as a company been around for a long time. You've kind of been the steady kind of Eddy, if you will. Tell us about ExaGrid, maybe share with us some of the differentiators that you share with customers. >> Sure, so specifically, let's say in the Veeam world you're backing up your data, and you really only have two choices. You can back that up to disc. So some primary storage disc from a Dell, or a Hewlett Packard, or an NetApp or somebody, or you're going to back it up to what's called an inline deduplication appliance maybe a Dell Data Domain or an HPE StoreOnce, right? So what ExaGrid does is we've taken the best of both those but not the challenges of both those and put 'em together. So with disc, you're going to get fast backups and fast restores, but because in backup you keep weekly's, monthly's, yearly retention, the cost of this becomes exorbitant. If you go to a deduplication appliance, and let's say the Dell or the HPs, the data comes in, has to be deduplicated, compare one backup to the next to reduce that storage, which lowers the cost. So fixes that problem, but the fact that they do it inline slows the backups down dramatically. All the data is deduplicated so the restores are slow, and then the backup window keeps growing as the data grows 'cause they're all scale up technologies. >> And the restores are slow 'cause you got to rehydrate. >> You got to rehydrate every time. So what we did is we said, you got to have both. So our appliances have a front end disc cache landing zone. So you're right directed to the disc., Nothing else happens to it, whatever speed the backup app could write at that's the speed we take it in at. And then we keep the most recent backups in that landing zone ready to go. So you want to boot a VM, it's not an hour like a deduplication appliance it's a minute or two. Secondly, we then deduplicate the data into a second tier which is a repository tier, but we have all the deduplicated data for the long term retention, which gets the cost down. And on top of that, we're scale out. Every appliance has networking processor memory end disc. So if you double, triple, quadruple the data you double, triple, quadruple everything. And if the backup window is six hours at 100 terabyte it's six hours at 200 terabyte, 500 terabyte, a petabyte it doesn't matter. >> 'Cause you scale out. >> Right, and then lastly, our repository tier is non-network facing. We're the only ones in the industry with this. So that under a ransomware attack, if you get hold of a rogue server or you hack the media server, get to the backup storage whether it's disc or deduplication appliance, you can wipe out all the backup data. So you have nothing to recover from. In our case, you wipe it out, our landing zone will be wiped out. We're no different than anything else that's network facing. However, the only thing that talks to our repository tier is our object code. And we've set up security policies as to how long before you want us to delete data, let's say 10 days. So if you have an attack on Monday that data doesn't get deleted till like a week from Thursday, let's say. So you can freeze the system at any time and do restores. And then we have immutable data objects and all the other stuff. But the culmination of a non-network facing tier and the fact that we do the delayed deletes makes us the only one in the industry that can actually truly recover. And that's accelerating our growth, of course. >> Wow, great description. So that disc cache layer is a memory, it's a flash? >> It's disc, it's spinning disc. >> Spinning disc, okay. >> Yeah, no different than any other disc. >> And then the tiered is what, less expensive spinning disc? >> No, it's still the same. It's all SaaS disc 'cause you want the quality, right? So it's all SaaS, and so we use Western Digital or Seagate drives just like everybody else. The difference is that we're not doing any deduplication coming in or out of that landing zone to have fast backups and fast restores. So think of it like this, you've got disc and you say, boy it's too expensive. What I really want to do then is put maybe a deduplication appliance behind it to lower the cost or reverse it. I've got a deduplication appliance, ugh, it's too slow for backups and restores. I really want to throw this in front of it to have fast backups first. Basically, that's what we did. >> So where does the cost savings, Bill come in though, on the tier? >> The cost savings comes in the fact that we got deduplication in that repository. So only the most recent backup >> Ah okay, so I get it. >> are the duplicated data. But let's say you had 40 copies of retention. You know, 10 weekly's, 36 monthly's, a few yearly. All of that's deduplicated >> Okay, so you're deduping the stuff that's not as current. >> Right. >> Okay. >> And only a handful of us deduplicate at the layer we do. In other words, deduplication could be anywhere from two to one, up to 50 to one. I mean it's all over the place depending on the algorithm. Now it's what everybody's algorithms do. Some backup apps do two to one, some do five to one, we do 20 to one as well as much as 50 to one depending on the data types. >> Yeah, so the workload is going to largely determine the combination >> The content type, right. with the algos, right? >> Yeah, the content type. >> So the part of the environment that's behind the illogical air gap, if you will, is deduped data. >> Yes. >> So in this case, is it fair to say that you're trading a positive economic value for a little bit longer restore from that environment? >> No, because if you think about backup 95% of the customers restores are from the most recent data. >> From the disc cache. >> 95% of the time 'cause you think about why do you need fast restores? Somebody deleted a file, somebody overwrote a file. They can't go work, they can't open a file. It's encrypted, it's corrupted. That's what IT people are trying to keep users productive. When do you go for longer-term retention data? It's an SEC audit. It's a HIPAA audit. It's a legal discovery, you don't need that data right away. You have days and weeks to get that ready for that legal discovery or that audit. So we found that boundary where you keep users productive by keeping the most recent data in the disc cache landing zone, but anything that's long term. And by the way, everyone else is long term, at that point. >> Yeah, so the economics are comparable to the dedupe upfront. Are they better, obviously get the performance advance? >> So we would be a lot looped. The thing we replaced the most believe it or not is disc, we're a lot less expensive than the disc. I was meeting with some Veeam folks this morning and we were up against Cisco 3260 disc at a children's hospital. And on our quote was $500,000. The disc was 1.4 million. Just to give you an example of the savings. On a Data Domain we're typically about half the price of a Data Domain. >> Really now? >> The reason why is their front end control are so expensive. They need the fastest trip on the planet 'cause they're trying to do inline deduplication. >> Yeah, so they're chasing >> They need the fastest memory >> on the planet. >> this chips all the time. They need SSD on data to move in and out of the hash table. In order to keep up with inline, they've got to throw so much compute at it that it drives their cost up. >> But now in the case of ransomware attack, are you saying that the landing zone is still available for recovery in some circumstances? Or are you expecting that that disc landing zone would be encrypted by the attacker? >> Those are two different things. One is deletion, one is encryption. So let's do the first scenario. >> I'm talking about malicious encryption. >> Yeah, absolutely. So the first scenario is the threat actor encrypts all your primary data. What's does he go for next? The backup data. 'Cause he knows that's your belt and suspend is to not pay the ransom. If it's disc he's going to go in and put delete commands at the disc, wipe out the disc. If it's a data domain or HPE StoreOnce, it's all going to be gone 'cause it's one tier. He's going to go after our landing zone, it's going to be gone too. It's going to wipe out our landing zone. Except behind that we have the most recent backup deduplicate in the repository as well as all the other backups. So what'll happen is they'll freeze the system 'cause we weren't going to delete anything in the repository for X days 'cause you set up a policy, and then you restore the most recent backup into the landing zone or we can restore it directly to your primary storage area, right? >> Because that tier is not network facing. >> That's right. >> It's fenced off essentially. >> People call us every day of the week saying, you saved me, you saved me again. People are coming up to me here, you saved me, you saved me. >> Tell us a story about that, I mean don't give me the names but how so. >> I'll actually do a funnier story, 'cause these are the ones that our vendors like to tell. 'Cause I'm self-serving as the CEO that's good of course, a little humor. >> It's your 15 minutes of job. >> That is my 15 minutes of fame. So we had one international company who had one ExaGrid at one location, 19 Data Domains at the other locations. Ransomware attack guess what? 19 Data Domains wiped out. The one ExaGrid, the only place they could restore. So now all 20 locations of course are ExaGrids, China, Russia, Mexico, Germany, US, et cetera. They rolled us out worldwide. So it's very common for that to occur. And think about why that is, everyone who's network facing you can get to the storage. You can say all the media servers are buttoned up, but I can find a rogue server and snake my way over the storage, I can. Now, we also of course support the Veeam Data Mover. So let's talk about that since we're at a Veeam conference. We were the first company to ever integrate the Veeam Data Mover. So we were the first actually ever integration with Veeam. And so that Veeam Data Mover is a protocol that goes from Veeam to the ExaGrid, and we run it on both ends. So that's a more secure protocol 'cause it's not an open format protocol like SaaS. So with running the Veeam Data Mover we get about 30% more performance, but you do have a more secure protocol layer. So if you don't get through Veeam but you get through the protocol, boom, we've got a stronger protocol. If you make it through that somehow, or you get to it from a rogue server somewhere else we still have the repository. So we have all these layers so that you can't get at it. >> So you guys have been at this for a while, I mean decade and a half plus. And you've raised a fair amount of money but in today's terms, not really. So you've just had really strong growth, sequential growth. I understand it, and double digit growth year on year. >> Yeah, about 25% a year right now >> 25%, what's your global strategy? >> So we have sales offices in about 30 countries already. So we have three sales teams in Brazil, and three in Germany, and three in the UK, and two in France, and a lot of individual countries, Chile, Argentina, Columbia, Mexico, South Africa, Saudi, Czech Republic, Poland, Dubai, Hong Kong, Australia, Singapore, et cetera. We've just added two sales territories in Japan. We're adding two in India. And we're installed in over 50 countries. So we've been international all along the way. The goal of the company is we're growing nicely. We have not raised money in almost 10 years. >> So you're self-funding. You're cash positive. >> We are cash positive and self-funded and people say, how have you done that for 10 years? >> You know what's interesting is I remember, Dave Scott, Dave Scott was the CEO of 3PAR, and he told me when he came into that job, he told the VCs, they wanted to give him 30 million. He said, I need 80 million. I think he might have raised closer to a hundred which is right around what you guys have raised. But like you said, you haven't raised it in a long time. And in today's terms, that's nothing, right? >> 100 is 500 in today's terms. >> Yeah, right, exactly. And so the thing that really hurt 3PAR, they were public companies so you could see all this stuff is they couldn't expand internationally. It was just too damn expensive to set up the channels, and somehow you guys have figured that out. >> 40% of our business comes out of international. We're growing faster internationally than we are domestically. >> What was the formula there, Bill, was that just slow and steady or? >> It's a great question. >> No, so what we did, we said let's build ExaGrid like a McDonald's franchise, nobody's ever done that before in high tech. So what does that mean? That means you have to have the same product worldwide. You have to have the same spares model worldwide. You have to have the same support model worldwide. So we early on built the installation. So we do 100% of our installs remotely. 100% of our support remotely, yet we're in large enterprises. Customers racks and stacks the appliances we get on with them. We do the entire install on 30 minutes to about three hours. And we've been developing that into the product since day one. So we can remotely install anywhere in the world. We keep spares depots all over the world. We can bring 'em up really quick. Our support model is we have in theater support people. So they're in Europe, they're in APAC, they're in the US, et cetera. And we assign customers to the support people. So they deal with the same support person all the time. So everything is scalable. So right now we're going to open up India. It's the same way we've opened up every other country. Once you've got the McDonald's formula we just stamp it all over the world. >> That's amazing. >> Same pricing, same product same model, same everything. >> So what was the inspiration for that? I mean, you've done this since day one, which is what like 15, 16 years ago. Or just you do engineering or? >> No, so our whole thought was, first of all you can't survive anymore in this world without being an international company. 'Cause if you're going to go after large companies they have offices all over the world. We have companies now that have 17, 18, 20, 30 locations. And there were in every country in the world, you can't go into this business without being able to ship anywhere in the world and support it for a single customer. You're not going into Singapore because of that. You're going to Singapore because some company in Germany has offices in the U.S, Mexico Singapore and Australia. You have to be international. It's a must now. So that was the initial thing is that, our goal is to become a billion dollar company. And we're on path to do that, right. >> You can see a billion. >> Well, I can absolutely see a billion. And we're bigger than everybody thinks. Everybody guesses our revenue always guesses low. So we're bigger than you think. The reason why we don't talk about it is we don't need to. >> That's the headline for our writers, ExaGrid is a billion dollar company and nobody's know about it. >> Million dollar company. >> On its way to a billion. >> That's right. >> You're not disclosing. (Bill laughing) But that's awesome. I mean, that's a great story. I mean, you kind of are a well kept secret, aren't you? >> Well, I dunno if it's a well kept secret. You know, smaller companies never have their awareness of big companies, right? The Dells of the world are a hundred billion. IBM is 70 billion, Cisco is 60 billion. Easy to have awareness, right? If you're under a billion, I got to give a funny story then I think we got to close out here. >> Oh go ahead please. >> So there's one funny story. So I was talking to the CIO of a super large Fortune 500 company. And I said to him, "Just so who do you use?" "I use IBM Db2, and I use, Cisco routers, and I use EMC primary storage, et cetera. And I use all these big." And I said, "Would you ever switch from Db2?" "Oh no, the switching costs would kill me. I could never go to Oracle." So I said to him, "Look would you ever use like a Pure Storage, right. A couple billion dollar company." He says, "Who?" >> Huh, interesting. >> I said to him, all right so skip that. I said, "VMware, would you ever think about going with Nutanix?" "Who?" Those are billion dollar plus companies. And he was saying who? >> Public companies. >> And he was saying who? That's not uncommon when I talk to CIOs. They see the big 30 and that's it. >> Oh, that's interesting. What about your partnership with Veeam? Tell us more about that. >> Yeah, so I would actually, and I'm going to be bold when I say this 'cause I think you can ask anybody here at the conference. We're probably closer first of all, to the Veeam sales force than any company there is. You talk to any Veeam sales rep, they work closer with ExaGrid than any other. Yeah, we are very tight in the field and have been for a long time. We're integrated with the Veeam Data Boomer. We're integrated with SOBR. We're integrated with all the integrations or with the product as well. We have a lot of joint customers. We actually do a lot of selling together, where we go in as Veeam ExaGrid 'cause it's a great end to end story. Especially when we're replacing, let's say a Dell Avamar to Dell Data Domain or a Dell Network with a Dell Data Domain, very commonly Veeam ExaGrid go in together on those types of sales. So we do a lot of co-selling together. We constantly train their systems engineers around the world, every given week we're training either inside sales teams, and we've trained their customer support teams in Columbus and Prague. So we're very tight with 'em we've been tight for over a decade. >> Is your head count public? Can you share that with us? >> So we're just over 300 employees. >> Really, wow. >> We have 70 open positions, so. >> Yeah, what are you looking for? Yeah, everything, right? >> We are looking for engineers. We are looking for customer support people. We're looking for marketing people. We're looking for inside sales people, field people. And we've been hiring, as of late, major account reps that just focus on the Fortune 500. So we've separated that out now. >> When you hire engineers, I mean I think I saw you were long time ago, DG, right? Is that true? >> Yeah, way back in the '80s. >> But systems guy. >> That's how old I am. >> Right, systems guy. I mean, I remember them well Eddie Castro and company. >> Tom West. >> EMV series. >> Tom West was the hero of course. >> The EMV 4000, the EMV 20,000, right? >> When were kids, "The Soul of a New Machine" was the inspirational book but anyway, >> Yeah Tracy Kidder, it was great. >> Are you looking for systems people, what kind of talent are you looking for in engineering? >> So it's a lot of Linux programming type stuff in the product 'cause we run on a Linux space. So it's a lot of Linux programs so its people in those storage. >> Yeah, cool, Bill, hey, thanks for coming on to theCUBE. Well learned a lot, great story. >> It's a pleasure. >> That was fun. >> Congratulations. >> Thanks. >> And good luck. >> All right, thank you. >> All right, and thank you for watching theCUBE's coverage of VeeamON 2022, Dave Vellante for Dave Nicholson. We'll be right back right after this short break, stay with us. (soft beat music)
SUMMARY :
We're here at the Aria in Las Vegas And then you get the attacks on the data You've kind of been the steady and let's say the Dell or And the restores are slow that's the speed we take it in at. and the fact that we So that disc cache layer No, it's still the same. So only the most recent backup are the duplicated data. Okay, so you're deduping the deduplicate at the layer we do. with the algos, right? So the part of the environment 95% of the customers restores 95% of the time 'cause you think about Yeah, so the economics are comparable example of the savings. They need the fastest trip on the planet in and out of the hash table. So let's do the first scenario. So the first scenario is the threat actor Because that tier day of the week saying, I mean don't give me the names but how so. 'Cause I'm self-serving as the CEO So if you don't get through Veeam So you guys have been The goal of the company So you're self-funding. what you guys have raised. And so the thing that really hurt 3PAR, than we are domestically. It's the same way we've Same pricing, same product So what was the inspiration for that? country in the world, So we're bigger than you think. That's the headline for our writers, I mean, you kind of are a The Dells of the world So I said to him, "Look would you ever I said, "VMware, would you ever think They see the big 30 and that's it. Oh, that's interesting. So we do a lot of co-selling together. that just focus on the Fortune 500. Eddie Castro and company. in the product 'cause thanks for coming on to theCUBE. All right, and thank you for watching
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Video Exclusive: Sales Impact Academy Secures $22M In New Funding
(upbeat music) >> Every company needs great salespeople, it's one of the most lucrative professions out there. And there's plenty of wisdom and knowledge that's been gathered over the years about selling. We've heard it all, famous quotes from the greatest salespeople of our time, like Zig Ziglar and Jeffrey Gitomer, and Dale Carnegie and Jack Welch, and many others. Things like, "Each of us has only 24 hours in a day, "it's all about how we use our time." And, "You don't have to be great to start, "but you have to start to be great." And then I love this one, "People hate to be sold, but they love to buy." "There are no traffic jams on the extra mile, "make change before you have to." And the all time classic, "Put that coffee down. "Coffee is for closers." Thousands of pieces of sales advice are readily available in books, videos, on blogs and in podcasts, and many of these are free of charge. So why would entrepreneurs start a company to train salespeople? And how is it that sharp investors are pouring millions of dollars into this space? Hello everyone, and welcome to this Cube Video Exclusive, my name is Dave Vellante, and today we welcome Paul Fifield who's the co-founder and CEO of Sales Impact Academy who's going to answer these questions and share some exciting news on the startups. Paul, welcome to "The Cube" good to see you again. >> Yeah, good to see you again, Dave, great to be here. >> Hey, so before we get into the hard news, tell us a little bit about the Sales Impact Academy, why'd you start the company, maybe some of the fundamentals of this market, your total available market, who you're targeting, you know, what's the premise behind the company? >> Yeah sure. So I mean, I started the company, it was actually pretty organic in the way it began. I had a 10 year career as a CRO and it was, you know, had a couple of great hits with two companies, but it was a real struggle to basically, you know, operate as a CRO and learn your craft at the same time. And so when I left my last company, I kind of got out there, I wanted to kind of give back a little bit and I started doing some voluntary teaching in and around London, and I actually, one of the companies I started was in New York so I got schooled very much on a sort of US approach to how you build a modern you know, go to market and sales operation. Started going out there, doing some teaching, realized that so many people just didn't have a clue about how to build a scalable and predictable revenue function, and I kind of felt sorry for them. So I literally started doing some, you know, online classes myself, got my co-founder Alex to put curriculum together as well and we literally started just doing online classes, very live, very organic, just a Google Drive and some decks, and it really just blew up from there. >> That's amazing. I mean, so you've my, you know, tongue and cheek up front, but people might wonder, why do you need a platform 'cause there's so much free information out there? Is it to organize, is it a discipline thing? Explain that. >> Well, I think the way I sort of see this is that is that the lack of structured learning and education is actually one of the greatest educational travesties, I think, of the last 50 years, okay. Now sales and go to market is a huge global profession, right? Half the world's companies are B2B, so roughly that's a proxy for half the world's GDP, right? Which is $40 trillion of GDP. Now that 40 trillion rests on kind of the success of the growth and the sales functions of all those companies. Yet in its infinite wisdom, the global education system literally just ignored sales and go to market as a profession. Some universities are kind of catching up, but it's really too little too late. So what I sort of say to people, you imagine this Dave, right. You imagine if the way that law worked as a profession let's say, is that there's no law school, there's no law training, there's no even in work professional continuous professional development in law. The way that it works is you leave university, join a company, start practicing law and just use like YouTube just to maybe like, you know, where you're struggling, just use YouTube to like work out what's going on. The legal profession would be in absolute chaos. And that's what's happened in the sales and go to market profession, okay. What this profession desperately desperately needs is structured learning, good pedagogy, good well designed course and curriculum. And here's the other thing, right? Is the sort of paradox of infinite information is that just because all the information is out there, right, doesn't mean it's actually a good learning experience. Like, where do you find it? What's good? What's not good? And also the other thing I'd point out is that there is this kind of myth that all the information is out there on the internet. But actually what we do, and we'll come into it in a second is, the people teaching on our platform are the elite people from the industry. They haven't got time to do blog posts and just explain to people how they operate. They're going from company to company working at like, you know, working at these kind of elite companies. And they're the people that teach, and that information is not readily available and freely out there on the internet. >> Yeah, real opportunity, you made some great points there. I think business schools are finally starting to teach a little bit about public speaking and presenting, but nobody's teaching us how to sell. As Earl Nightingale says, "To some degree we're all salespeople, "selling our family on living the good life" or whatever. What movie we want to see tonight. But okay, let's get to the hard news. You got fresh funding of 22 million, tell us about that, congratulations. You know, the investors, what else can you share with us? >> Sure. Well, I mean, obviously, you know, immensely proud. We started from very sort of humble beginnings, as I said, we've now scaled very rapidly, we're a subscription business, we're a SaaS business. We'll come onto some of the growth metrics shortly, but just in a couple of years, you know, the last year which ended January, we grew 500% from year one, we're now well over 125 people, and I'm very, very, very honored, flattered, humbled that MIT, obviously one of those prestigious universities in the world, has taken a direct investment by their endowment fund, HubSpot Ventures. Another Boston great has also taken a direct investment as well. They actually began as a customer and loved what we were doing so much that they then decided to make an investment. Stage 2 Capital who invested in our seed round pretty much tripled down, played a huge role in helping us assemble MIT and HubSpot ventures as investors, and they continue to be an incredible VC giving us amazing, amazing support that their LP network of go to market leaders is second to none. And then Emerge Education, who is our pre-seed investor, they're actually based in London, also joined this round as well. >> Great, well actually, let's jump ahead. Let's talk about the metrics. I mean, if Stage Two is involved, they're hardcore. What can you share with us about, you know, everybody's chasing AR and NR and the like, what can you share with us? >> They are both pretty important. Well, I think from a headcount perspective, so as I mentioned our fiscal ends at the end of January, each year. We've gone from 25 to over 125 employees in that time. We've gone from 82 to 260 customers also in that time. And customers now include HubSpot, Gong, Klaviyo, GitHub, GT, Six Cents, so some really sort of major SaaS companies in the space. Our revenue's grown significantly with 5X. So 500% increase in revenue year over year, which is pretty fast, very proud of that. Our learning community has gone from over 3000 people to almost 15,000 professionals, and that makes us comfortably, the largest go to market learning community in the world. >> How did you decide when to scale? What were the sort of signals that said to you, "Okay, we're ready, "we have product market fit, "we can now scale the go to market." What were the signals there, Paul? >> Yeah. Well, I mean, I think for a very small team to achieve that level of growth in customers, to be kind of honest with you, like it's the pull that we're getting from the market. And I think the thing that has surprised me the most, perhaps in the last 12 months, is the pull we're getting from the enterprise. We're you know, I can't really announce, we've actually got a huge pilot with one of the largest companies actually in the world which is going fantastically well, our pipeline for enterprise customers is absolutely huge. But as you can imagine, if you've got distributed teams all over the world, we're living and working in this kind of hybrid world, how on earth do you kind of upscale all those people, right, that are, like I say, that are so distributed. It's impossible. Like in work, in the office delivery of training is pretty much dead, right? And so we sort of fill this really big pain, we solved this really, really big pain of how to effectively upskill people through this kind of live curriculum and this live teaching approach that we have. So I think for me, it's the pull that we're getting from the market really meant that you know, we have to double down. There is such a massive TAM, it is absolutely ridiculous. I mean, I think there are 20 million people just in sales and go to market in tech alone, right. And I mentioned to you earlier, half the world's companies effectively, you know, are B2B and therefore represent, you know, at its largest scope, our TAM. >> Excellent, thank you for that. Tell us more about the product and the platform. How's it work if I'm a customer, what type of investment do I have to make both financially? And what's my time commitment? How do you structure that? >> So the model is basically on a seat model. So roughly speaking, every seat's about a thousand dollars per year per rep. The lift is light. So we've got a very low onboarding, it's not a highly complex technical product, right? We've got a vast curriculum of learning that covers learning for, you know, SDRs, and the AEs, and CS reps, and leadership management training. We're developing curriculum for technical pre-sales, we're developing curriculum for revenue operations. And so it's very, very simple. We basically, it's a seat model, people literally just send us the seats and the details, we get people up and running in the platform, they start then enrolling and we have a customer success team that then plots out learning journeys and learning pathways for all of our customers. And actually what's starting to happen now, which is very, very exciting is that, you know, we're actually a key part of people's career development pathway. So to go from you know, SDR1 let's say to SDR2, you have to complete these three courses with Sales Impact Academy, and let's say, get 75% in your exam and it becomes a very powerful and simple way of developing career pathway. >> Yeah, so really detailed curriculum. So I was going to say, do I as a sales professional, do I pick and choose the things that are most relevant for me? Or are people actually going through a journey in career progression, or maybe both? >> Yeah, it's a mixture of both. We tend to see now, we're sort of starting to standardize, but really we're developing enough curriculum that over, let's say a 15 year period, you could start with us as an SDR and then end as a chief revenue officer, you know, running the entire function. This is the other thing about the crazy world of go to market. Very often, people are put into roles and it's sink or swim. There's no real learning that happens, there's no real development that happens before people take these big steps. And what this platform does so beautifully is is it equips people with the right skills and knowledge before they take that next step in their profession and in their career. And it just dramatically improves their chances of succeeding. >> Who are the trainers? Who's leading the classes, how do you find these guys, how do you structure? What are the content, you know, vectors, where's all that come from? >> Yeah. So the sort of secret source of what we do, beyond just the live instruction, beyond the significant amount of peer to peer learning that goes on, is that we go and source the absolute most elite people in go to market to teach, okay. Now I mentioned to you before, you've got these people that are going from like job to job at the very like the sort of peak of their careers, working for these incredible companies, it's that knowledge that we want to get access to, right. And so Stage 2 Capital is an incredible resource. The interesting thing about Stage 2 Capital as you know Dave, you know, run by Mark Roberge, who was on when we spoke last year and also Jay Po is all the LPs of Stage 2 Capital represent 3 to 400 of the most elite go to market professionals in the world. So, you know, about seven or eight of those are now on an advisory board. And so we have access to this incredible pool of talent. And so we know by consulting these amazing people who are the best people in certain aspects of go to market. We reach out to them and very often they're at a stage in their career where they're really kind of willing to give back, of course there are commercials around it as well, and there's lots of other benefits that we provide our teachers and our faculty, and what we call our coaches. But yeah, we source the very, very best people in the world to teach. >> Now, how does it work as a user of your service? Is it all on demand? Do you do live content or a combination? >> Yeah look, one of the big differentiators is this is a live delivery of learning, okay. Most learning online is typically done on demand, self-directed, and there's a ton of research. There's a great blog post on Andrew's recent site. A short time ago, which is talking about how the completion rates of on demand learning are somewhere between 3 and 6%. That is like, that's awful. >> Terrible. >> I was like why bother? However, we're seeing through that live instruction. So we teach two, one hour classes a week, that's it. We're upskilling very busy people, they're stressed, they've got targets. We have to be very, very cognizant of that. So we teach two, one hour classes a week. Typically, you know, Monday and a Wednesday, or a Tuesday and a Thursday. And that pace of learning is about right, it's kind of how humans learn as well. You know, short bursts of information, and then put that learning and those skills that you've acquired in class literally to work minutes after the class finishes. And so through that, and it sits in your calendar like a meeting, it doesn't feel overwhelming, you're learning together as a team as well. And all that combined, we see completion rates often in excess of 80% for our courses. >> Okay, so they block that time out- >> In the calendar, yeah. >> And they make an investment. Go ahead, please. >> Yeah yeah, exactly, sorry Dave. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So like, you know, we have course lengths. So one of our shorter courses are like four hours long over two weeks. And again, it's just literally in the calendar. We also teach what we call The Magic Learning Hour. And the magic learning hour is this one specific hour in the day that enables teams all over the western hemisphere to join the same class. And that magic learning hour is eight o'clock Pacific 11 o'clock Eastern, >> 4: 00 PM over in the UK, and 5:00 PM in the rest of Europe. And that one time in the day means that these enterprises have got teams all over the western hemisphere joining that class, learning together as a team, plus it's in the calendar and it's that approach is why we're seeing such high engagement and completion. >> That's very cool, the time zone thing. Now who's the target buyer? Are you selling only to sales teams? Can I as an individual purchase your service? >> Yeah, that's a good question. Currently it's a very much like a B2B motion. As I mentioned earlier on, we're getting an enormous pull from the enterprise, which is very exciting. You know, we have an enterprise segment, we have sort of more of a startup earlier stage segment, and then we have a mid-market segment that we call our sort of strategic, and that's typically and most of like venture backed, fast growth tech companies. So very much at the moment a B2B motion. We're launching our own technology platform in the early summer, and then later on this year we're going to be adding what's called PLG or a product led growth, so individuals can actually sign up to SIA. >> Yeah, I mean, I think you said $1,000 per year per rep, is that right? I mean, that's- >> Yeah. >> That's a small investment for an individual that wants to be part of, you know, this community and grow his or her career. So that's the growth plan? You go down market I would imagine, you talked about the western hemisphere, there's international opportunities maybe, local language. What's the growth plan? >> Yeah, I mean look, we've identified the magic learning hour for the middle east and APAC, which is eight o'clock in the morning in Istanbul, right. Is 5:00 PM in Auckland, it's quite fun trying to work out like what this optimum magic learning hour is. What's incredible is we teach in that time and that opens up the whole of the middle east and the whole of APAC, right, right down to Australia. And so once we're teaching the curriculum in those two slots, that means literally you can have teams in any country in the world, I think apart from Hawaii, you can actually access our live learning products in work time and that's incredibly powerful. So we have so many like axis of growth, we've got single users as I mentioned, but really Dave that's single users we'll be winning from the enterprise and that will represent pipeline that we could then potentially convert as well. And look, you make a very good point. You know, we've seen students are now leaving university with over $100,000 dollars in debt. We've got a massive, massive debt problem here in the US with student debt. You could absolutely sign up to our platform at let's say a hundred bucks a month, right. And probably within six months, gain enough knowledge and skill to walk into a $60,000 a year based salary job as an SDR, that's a huge entry level salary. And you could do that without even going to university. So there could be a time here where we become a really viable alternative to actually even going to university. >> I love it. The cost education going through the roof, it's out of reach for so many people. Paul, congratulations on the progress, the fresh funding. Great to have you back in "The Cube." We'd love to have you back and follow your ascendancy. I think great things ahead for you guys. >> Thank you very much, Dave. >> All right, and thank you for watching. This is Dave Vellante for "The Cube, we'll see you next time. (upbeat music)
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And the all time classic, Yeah, good to see you again, Dave, and it was, you know, had Is it to organize, is in the sales and go to You know, the investors, but just in a couple of years, you know, AR and NR and the like, community in the world. "we can now scale the go to market." And I mentioned to you earlier, product and the platform. So to go from you know, the things that are most relevant for me? This is the other thing about Now I mentioned to you before, how the completion rates minutes after the class finishes. And they make an investment. And the magic learning hour and 5:00 PM in the rest of Europe. Are you selling only to sales teams? in the early summer, So that's the growth plan? and the whole of APAC, right, We'd love to have you back All right, and thank you for watching.
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Stephen Kovac, Zscaler | AWS re:Invent 2021
(upbeat music) >> Good evening, guys. Welcome back to Las Vegas, theCUBE is here live at AWS re:Invent 2021. I'm Lisa Martin. We have two live sets, two remote sets, over 100 guests on theCUBE talking with AWS, and its massive ecosystem of partners bringing you this hybrid tech event, probably the biggest of the year, and I'm pleased to welcome Stephen Kovac next, the Chief Compliance Officer at Zscaler. Stephen, how's it going? >> Well, it's going well, Lisa. Thank you for asking, enjoying Vegas, loving the conference, unbelievable. >> Isn't it great to be back in person? >> Oh, it's so great, I've seen people. >> Conversations you can't replicate on video conferencing, you just can't. >> Can't, and you see people you haven't seen in two years, and it's like all of a sudden you're best buddies again. It's just wonderful, it's so great to back. >> It is, and AWS in typical fashion has done a great job of getting everybody in here safely. I'm not at all surprised, that's what I expected, but it's been great. And I hope that this can demonstrate to other companies, you can do this safely. >> You can, I think so. I mean, there's a lot of effort going into this, but as usual AWS does it right. So, you expect that. >> They do. Talk to me about the Zscaler-AWS partnership. What's going on? >> Well, it's a great partnership. So AWS and Zscaler have been partners since the beginning of Zscaler. We are the largest security cloud in the world. We're born and bred in the cloud security company. So literally we wrote one application that does global security, everything from firewall to proxy, secure web gateway, to DLP, to all this in one piece of software. So, in the past where people would buy appliances for all these devices and put them in their own data center, we wrote a software that allows us to put that in the cloud, run it on the cloud globally around the world. And our partnership with AWS is, we originally built that on AWS, and today still AWS is our prime partner, especially in the zero trust side of our business. So, great relationship, long-term and great I think for both of us, it's been a very, very... >> Fruitful partnership, synergistic? >> Synergistic, love that, so yes. >> You mentioned zero trust, and we have seen such massive changes to the security and the threat landscape the last 20, 22 months. Talk to me about the recent executive order calling for zero trust, how does Zscaler's partnership with AWS help you enable organizations, fed, SLED, DoD, to be able to actually bring in and apply zero trust? >> Yeah, great question. Five years ago I was tasked to bring Zscaler into the government side of the business. So I was employee one to do that. It was a great honor to do it. And the first thing we did is we partnered with AWS because we needed to get FedRAMP compliant. We knew we were going to go into DoD. So we needed to go to the Impact Level five. And eventually we'll be able to go up level six with AWS. And so it was our partnership started there. And as you've seen in five years with all the change that's happened, that obviously the breaches like SolarWinds, and the people up here talking about them all week with you I'm sure. The executive order came down from the Biden Administration, who I completely salute for being just tremendous leaders in the cybersecurity space. And the executive order, one of the big pieces of the executive order was every agency must produce a plan for zero trust. So our cloud platform that is on AWS is a zero trust platform. It is the first and only zero trust platform to get authorized by the federal government at the FedRAMP level, and now the IL five level. So, together we are literally capturing and taking over the, being the leader in the zero trust space for the federal government. And I'm going to get a sip of water, so forgive me, I've been here all week talking to a lot of people, so forgive me for that. >> That's one thing that we don't have to deal with when we're on Zoom, right, is you don't really have the risk of losing your voice. >> Stephen: There you go. >> But in terms of the executive order, something that you mentioned, SolarWinds, Colonial Pipeline, we only hear about some of the big ones. The fact that ransomware happens one attack every 10, 11 seconds, it's a matter of when we get hit, not if. >> As you know, the story coming up from me, coming up on stage with you today, I just got myself breached just this morning, just individually. So yes, it's going to get all of us. And especially, I think when you look at zero trust and ransomware and how they worked out how zero trust can prevent it, you look at the SLED market, you know, state, local governments, they don't have the dollars to go spend like DHS does, or say, some of the DoD does. So, our partnership with AWS allows us to produce a product that is very cost-effective on a per user basis, consumption model, which is what AWS has been famous for since day one, right, the consumption model, use it when you need it, don't use it when you don't. We built our software the same way. So, at some point in a year, in a school year, we'll ramp up with some schools up to a hundred thousand users in the district, and over the summer we'll ramp down to a thousand, and we just bill them for that. So it's a beautiful relationship that we partner in not just the executive order, but being a partner in SLED, fed in the sense that matches making our business together, match the government's business. And that makes us a true leader and makes us a cost-effective solution. And if you think about it just for a moment, yesterday, I told you I was testifying in front of the Senate. And one of the questions I got asked was, oh, how many security updates do you guys see a year? I said, a year, well, we do over 200,000 a day. 200,000 security updates from potential hackers every single day. And we're doing that over 200 billion transactions a day run on AWS. So it's tremendous partnership, and to be able to work like that, and at that kind of volume, and be able to go up and down with the, and you got AWS able to scope up and down, and us to be able to ride that wave with them. It's been great. >> One of the things that we always talk about when we talk AWS is they're customer focused or customer obsession that, hey, we start backwards, we work backwards from the customer. Same thing, synergistic from a cultural perspective? >> Absolutely, I mean, one of the things I always love about AWS and I've been a customer of AWS for many years, even prior to my Zscaler days, I love the way they approach things, right? If they're not trying to go out and sell it, they're trying to meet with the customer and find out what the customer needs, and then build a solution. We're the same way. I always tell, you know, when you think of our solutions, Zscaler, I always tell my sales teams, I say it takes four sales calls for people to really understand what we do. And AWS, in the beginning of AWS, it was kind of the same thing. In the old days, you know, we all just built data centers and we had all these racks, and all this expense and mesh is what you did. It was unusual back in the day, 10 years ago, and I've been to every single re:Invent. I mean, the first one there was like, you're actually going to put all your stuff in this unknown cloud thing, and it will be available when you need it? So yes, you know, the way that they did it is the same way we do it together today. And we do it together today. We partner on many deals today where we're both, our teams are in there together, selling together, whether it's the DoD, federal agencies, SLED agencies, and commercial, you know, selling it hand-in-hand because it's that same philosophy is we're going to build what a customer needs. We're not going to tell the customer what they need. We're going to hear what they need, and that's the same relationship. So I'm going to get another sip real quick. >> Go for it. One of the things that has been a theme that we've heard the last couple of days is every company needs to be a data company or private sector, public sector, and if they're not, they're probably not going to be around much longer. How do you help customers get their handle around that? Because the security threats are only increasing. I mean, it's ransomware as a service. The fact that these criminals are getting much more brazen, you just had this happen to yourself, but enabling them to become data-driven organizations and use the data, extract the value from it securely, that's hard. >> It is, I mean, if you think back in the day, I mean, companies didn't have chief compliance officers that worked in the space that we do. Their chief compliance officer back in the day was the guy that was writing your HR issues and what OSHA issues, and of course, I still deal with some of that stuff, but my true job is really around the data, right? You know, how do we build our platforms, what decisions we make on our platforms, how we're going to certify them to support that, and I mean, chief data officers, chief security officers, I mean, you go into companies today, even car dealerships today. I mean, I'm picking one, you never thought of them having a security officer, but they do, they have to, they have to. And I mean, basic school districts, I mean, I don't about you, when I was a kid and went to school, they didn't have computers, but when my kid went to school, they did, but they didn't have a security officer. Now today, every single school district has security officers. I mean, I love how you said it, that data-driven, that data thought is there. It has to be, it's a real threat. And the sad thing is of these ransomware attacks, how many don't get reported. >> Oh, right, we're only hearing about a select few. >> The numbers are something like 88% don't get reported. It's that big. So that just tells you, we hear the big ones, right, Colonial Pipeline, things like that. We don't hear about West Texas or Middle Illinois school district that paid five grand because somebody had something on the school. That's how, as you said, this ransomware as a service security, we call it a security as a service, there's SaaS, which is software as a service, we're security software as a service, and AWS is the infrastructure as a service that we run on. And that's how it works well together. >> Do you guys go into accounts together from a go-to-market perspective? >> We, do, we can always do a better job. And my good friend here at AWS, who's probably listening, we can always do better. But yeah, so it is become something that, especially in the government space we do, in federal, DoD, because the certifications are really important, certifications are important everywhere, and we have many, we talked about all the certifications we have in federal, FedRAMP and IL five, and we have a plethora of those certifications in the commercial space. But they mean in a federal space, they're really the ticket. They call them the ENERGY STAR of approval, good housekeeping piece. So, you know, having that, teaming up with AWS who we partner together and because AWS has the same certs, we can sell at the same levels. And we do a really great job of co-selling in that space together. And I think when they look at us and they say, well, you're AWS, they've got their FedRAMP high, IL five, and you're Zscaler, you got your FedRAMP high, IL five. Yes, we can do business with these guys, and that's important. >> So you guys both open doors for each other. >> We do, we do in many cases, yeah. As a matter of fact, re:Invent five years ago, a buddy of mine here opened a big, big account for us, which is today our largest account in federal came from re:Invent, where came up to me and said, hey, my customer wants to, he's looking to do something, they're an agency that has global footprint, and they're like, we want to do something as a security as a service. They don't want to ship boxes all over the place. And we just met the customer for a coffee, and next thing you know, became our, still today, our probably largest customer in federal. >> Wow, well, this is the 10th re:Invent, you said you've been to all of them. >> Stephen: I have been to all of them. I can't lie, but I can't say I did all the virtual ones. I mean, I was logged in. (laughs) >> That's okay, we'll wink on that one. But, one of the things then, we've just got about a minute left here, is in new leadership, Andy Jassy being promoted to the CEO of Amazon, we've got Adam Selipsky, heard lot of announcements and news from Adam yesterday, but some of the things that we've been talking about on theCUBE is the first 15 years of innovation at AWS, that's going to accelerate. Do you see that also, like if you look forward to the next decade, do you see things moving much faster than they did the past decade? >> I don't think they can't. I mean, I shouldn't say they have to. And the change of the guard as you might call it here, is it's always good to have a change of the guard I think. You know, the question is when's Andy going to go to space? I mean, that's the next. (Lisa laughs) I think you have the guys who got AWS to the dance, and now the dance, who's going to become the belle of the ball. And this next generation of leadership coming in is fabulous. I think they've made great decisions, and I think they're going to do really well. And we're behind them, we support it. I got a chance to meet with most of them, love a chance to meet with Andy, I haven't met with him yet. So Andy, I'd love to meet you sometime soon. But I'm very impressed with what they've done. And yes, I think it's going to be, the last 10 years of growth is going to be a year next year. I think literally, you take 10 years be compressed to a year, and then next year it will be compressed to a day. So it's moving that fast. >> Yep, get your neck brace on, prepare for that whiplash. >> Yeah, right? That's what I said to Jeff when Jeff went to space, that's how fast we're about to travel, right? But it's really relative. >> It is, there is no limit. Well, Stephen, thank you for joining me, talking about Zscaler, AWS, what you guys are doing, how you're helping to revolutionize the public sector, fed, SLED, a lot of great stuff there. Security is an ever-evolving topic, and we appreciate all of your insights. >> Well, it was wonderful to be here. Great to see you again. And great to be back with all our friends at re:Invent. >> All of our friends, exactly. >> Stephen: Thank you so much for the time today. >> My pleasure. For Stephen Kovac, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE, the global leader in live tech coverage. (pleasant music)
SUMMARY :
and I'm pleased to welcome enjoying Vegas, loving the on video conferencing, you just can't. Can't, and you see people And I hope that this can So, you expect that. Talk to me about the especially in the zero and we have seen such massive changes And the first thing we did is you don't really have the But in terms of the executive order, and be able to go up and down with the, One of the things is the same way we do it together today. One of the things that has been a theme And the sad thing is of Oh, right, we're only and AWS is the infrastructure and because AWS has the same certs, So you guys both open and next thing you know, you said you've been to all of them. I did all the virtual ones. is the first 15 years I mean, that's the next. on, prepare for that whiplash. about to travel, right? and we appreciate all of your insights. And great to be back with much for the time today. the global leader in live tech coverage.
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Steve Mullaney, Aviatrix | AWS re:Invent 2021
(bright music) >> Welcome back to AWS re:Invent. You're watching theCUBE. And we're here with Steve Mullaney, who is the president and CEO of Aviatrix. Steve, I got to tell ya, great to see you man. >> We started the whole pandemic, last show we did was with you guys. >> Steve: Don't say we started, we didn't start it. (steve chuckles) >> Right, we kicked it off (all cross talking) >> It's going to be great. >> Our virtual coverage, that hybrid coverage that we did, how ironic? >> Steve: Yeah, was as the world was shutting down. >> So, great to see you face to face. >> Steve: Great to see you too. >> Wow, so you're two years in? >> Steve: Two and a half years yeah. >> Started, the company was standing start $2 billion valuation, raised a bunch of dough. >> Steve: Yeah. >> That's good, you got to feel good about that. >> We were 38 people, two and a half years ago, we're now 400. We had a couple million in ARR, we're now going to be over a 100 million next year, next calendar year, so significant growth. We just raised $200 million, three months ago at a $2 billion valuation. Now have 550 customers, 54 of them are fortune 500, when I started two and a half years ago, we didn't have any fortune 500s, we had probably about a 100 customers. So, massive growth, big growth (indistinct). >> Awesome, I got to ask you, I love to ask CEO's, entrepreneurs, how did you know when to scale? >> You just know it, when you see it. (indistinct) Yeah, there's no formula, you just know it and what you look for is that point where you say, okay, we've now proven the model and until you do that you minimize things and we actually just went through this. We had 12 sales teams, four months ago, we now have 50. 50, five zero and it's that step function as a company, you don't want to linearly grow 'cause you want to hold until you say, it's happening. And then once you say it's happening, okay, the dogs are eating the dog food, this is good then you flip the other way, and then you say, let's grow as fast as we possibly can and that's kind of the mode we're in right now. >> Okay, You've... >> You just know it when you see it. >> Other piece of that is how fast do you scale? And now you're sort of doing that step function as your going. >> Steve: We are going as fast as we possibly can. >> Wow, that's awesome, congratulations and I know you've got to long way to go. So okay, let's talk about the big trends that you're seeing that Aviatrix has taken advantage of, maybe explain a little bit about what you guys do. >> Yeah. So we are, what I like to call Multi- Cloud Native Networking and Network Security. So, if you think of... >> David: What is multicloud native? You got to explain that. >> I got to to explain that. Here's what's happened, it's happening and what I mean by it's happening is, enterprises at two and a half years ago, this is why I joined Aviatrix, all decided for the first time, we mean it now, we are going into Cloud 'cause before that they were just mouthing it. And they said, "We're going into the Cloud." And oh by the way, I knew two and a half years ago of course it was going to be multicloud, 'cause enterprises run workloads where they run best. That's what they do, it's sometimes it's AWS, sometimes it's ads or sometimes it's Google, it's of course going to be multicloud. And so from an enterprise perspective, they love the DevOps, they love the simplicity, the automation, the infrastructure is code, the Terraform, that Cloud operational model, because this is a business transformation, moving to Cloud is not a technology transformation it's the business. It's the CEO saying we are digitizing we have an existential threat to the survival of our company, I want to grow a market share, I want to be more competitive, we're doing this, stop laying across the tracks technology people, will run you over, we're doing this. And so when they do that as an enterprise, I'm BNY Mellon, I'm United Airlines, you name it, your favorite enterprise. I need the visibility and control from a networking and network security perspective like I used to have on-prem. Now I'm not going to do it in the horrible complex operational model the Cisco 1994 data center, do not bring that crap into my wonderful Cloud, so that ain't happening but, all I get from the Native constructs, I don't get enough of that visibility and control, it's a little bit of a black box, I don't get that. So where do I get the best of the Cloud from an operational model, but yet with the visibility and control that I need, that I used to have on-prem from networking network security, that's Aviatrix. And that's where people find us and so from a networking and network security, so that's why I call it multicloud Native because what we do is, create a layer basically an abstraction layer above all the different Clouds, we create one architecture for networking and network security with advanced services not basic services that run on AWS, Azure, Google, Oracle, Ali Cloud, Top Secret Clouds, GovClouds, you name it. And now the customer has one architecture, which is what enterprises want, I want one network, I want one network security architecture, not AWS Native, Azure Native, Google Native. >> David: Right. >> We leverage those native constructs, abstract it, and then provide a single common architecture with demand services, irrespective of what Cloud you're on. >> Dave, I've been saying this for a couple of years now, that Cloud Native... >> Does that make sense Dave? >> Absolutely. >> That abstraction layer, right? And I said, "The guys who do this, who figure this out are going to make a lot of dough." >> Yeah. >> Snowflakes obviously doing it. >> Yeah. >> You guys are doing it, it's the future. >> Yeah. >> And it's really an obvious construct when you look back at the world of call it Legacy IT for a moment... >> Steve: Yeah. >> Because did we have different networks to hookup different things in a data center? >> No, one network. >> One network of course. I don't care if the physical stack comes from Dell, HP or IBM. >> Steve: That's right, I want an attraction layer above that, yeah. >> Exactly. >> So the other thing that happens is, everybody and you'll understand this from being at Oracle, everybody wants to forget about the network. Network security, it's down in the bowels, it's like plumbing, electricity, it's just, it has to be there but people want to forget about it and so you see Datadog, you see Snowflake, you see HashiCorp going IPO in early December. Guess what? That next layer underneath that, I call it the horsemen of the multicloud infrastructure is networking and network security, that's going to be Aviatrix. >> Well, you guys make some announcements recently in that space, every company is a security company but you're really deep into it. >> Well, that's the interesting thing about it. So I said multicloud Native Networking and Network Security, it's integrated, so guess where network security is going to be done in the Cloud? In the network. >> David: Network. >> Yeah in the network. >> What a strange concept but guess what on-prem it's not, you deflect traffic to this thing called a firewall. Well, why was that? I was at Synoptics, I was at Cisco 'cause we didn't care about network security, so that's why firewall companies existed. >> Dave: Right. >> It should be integrated into the infrastructure. So now in the Cloud, your security posture is way worse than it was on-prem. You're connected to the internet by default so guess what? You want your network to do network security, so we announced two things in security; one, we're now a security competency partner for AWS, they do not give that out lightly. We were networks competency four years ago, we're now network security competency. One of the few that are both, they don't do that, that took us nine months of working with them to get there. And they only do that for the people that really are delivering value. And then what we just announced what we call, 'ThreatIQ with ThreatGuard.' So again, built into the network because we are the network, we understand the traffic, we're the control plane and the data plane, we see all traffic. We integrate into the network, we subscribe to threat databases, public databases, where we see what are the malicious IPS. If we have any traffic anywhere in your overall, and this is multicloud, not just AWS, every single Cloud, if we see that malicious traffic going some into IP guess what? It's probably BIT Mining, Bitcoin, crypto mining, it's probably some sort of data ex filtration. It could be some tour thing that you're connected to, whatever it is, you should not have traffic going. And so we do two things we alert and we show you where that all is and then with ThreatGuard, we actually will do a firewall rule right at that gateway, at that point that it's going out and immediately gone. >> You'll take the action. >> We'll take the action. >> Okay. >> And so every single customer, Dave and David, that we've shown this new capability to, it lights up like a Christmas tree. >> Yeah al bet. Okay, but now you've made some controversial statements... >> Steve: Which time? >> Okay, so you said Cisco, I think VMware... >> Dave: He's writing them down. >> I know but I can back it up. >> I think you said the risk, Cisco, VMware and Arista, they're not even in the Cloud conversation now. Arista, Jayshree Ullal is a business hero of mine, so I don't want to... >> Steve: Yeah, mine too. >> I don't want to interrogate her, she's awesome. >> Steve: Yeah. >> But what do you mean by that? Because can't Cisco come at this from their networking perspective and security and bring that in? What do you mean by they're not in the Cloud conversation? >> They're not in the conversation. >> David: Okay, defend that. >> And the reason is they were about four years ago. So when you're four years ago, you're moving into the Cloud, what's the first thing you do? I'm going to grab my CSR and I'm going to try to jam it in the Cloud. Guess what? The CSR doesn't even know it's in the Cloud, it's looking for ports, right? And so what happens is the operational model is horrendous, so all the Cloud people, it just is like oil and water, so they go, oh, that was horrendous. So no one's doing that, so what happens in the Cloud is they realize the number one thing is the Cloud operational model. I need that simplicity, I have to be a single Terraform provider, infrastructure is code. Where do I put my box with my wires? That's what the on-prem hardware people think. >> David: The selling ports your saying? >> The selling boxes. >> David: Yeah. >> And so they'll say, "Oh, we got us software version of it, it runs as a VM, it has no idea it's in the Cloud." It is not Cloud Native, I call that Cloud naive, they don't understand so then the model doesn't work. And so then they say, "Okay, I'm not going to do that." Then the only other thing they can do, is they look at the Cloud providers themselves and they say, "All right, I'm going to use Native constructs, what do you got?" And what happens basically is the Cloud providers say, "Well, we do everything and anything you'll ever need and networking and network security." And the customers, "Oh my God, it's fantastic." Then they try to use it and what they realize is you get very basic level services, and you get no visibility and control because they're a black box, you don't get to go in. How about troubleshooting, Packet Captures, simple things? How about security controls, performance traffic engineering, performance controls, visibility nothing, right? And so then they go, "Oh shit, I'm an enterprise, I'm not just some DevOps Danny three years ago, who was just spinning up workloads and didn't care about security." No, that was the Cloud three years ago. This is now United, BNY, Nike. This is like elite of elite. So when my VC was here, he said, "It's happening." That's what he meant, it's happening. Meaning enterprises, the dogs are eating the dog food and they need visibility and control, they cannot get it from the Cloud providers. >> It's happening in early days Dave. >> So Steve, we're going to stipulate that you can't jam this stuff into Cloud, but those dinosaurs are real and they're there. Explain how you... >> Steve: Well you called them dinosaurs not me but they're roaming the earth and they're going to run out of food pretty soon. (all laughing) The comet hit the earth. >> Hey, they're going to go down fighting. (all laughing) >> But the dinosaurs didn't all die the day after the comet hit the earth... >> Steve: That's right. >> They took awhile. >> Steve: They took a while. >> So, how are you going to saddle them up? That's the question because you're... >> Steve: It's over there walking dead, I don't need to do anything. >> Is it the captain Kirk to con, let them die. >> Steve: Yeah. >> Because you're in the Cloud, you're multicloud... >> Steve: Yeah. >> That's great, but 80% of my IT still on-prem and I still have Cisco switches. Isn't that just not your market or? >> When IBM and DEC did we have to do anything with IBM and DEC in the 90s, early 90s, when we created BC client server, IP architectures? No, they weren't in the conversation. >> David: Yeah. >> So, we dint compete with them, just like whatever they do on-prem, keep doing it, I wish you the best. >> But you need to integrate with them and play with them. >> Steve: No. >> Not at all? >> No, no we integrate, here is the thing that's going to happen, so to the on-prem people, it's all point of reference. They look at Cloud as off-prem, I'm going to take my operational model on-prem and I'm going to push it into the Cloud. And if I push it into multiple Clouds, they're going to call that multicloud, see we are multicloud. You're pushing your operational model into the Cloud. What's happening is Cloud has won, it won two and a half years ago with every enterprise. It's like a rock in the water. And what's going to happen is that operational model is moving out to the edge, it's moving to the branch, it's moving to the data center and it's moving into edge computing. That's what's happening... >> So outpost, so I put an outpost in my data center... >> Outpost looks like... >> Is that Aviatrix? >> Absolutely, we're going to get dragged with that... >> Dave: Okay, alright. >> Because we're the networking and network security provider, and as the company pushes out, that operational model is going to move out, not the existing on-prem OT, IT branch office then pushing in. And so, what's happening is you're coming at it from the wrong perspective. And this wave is just going to push over and so I'm just following behind this wave of AWS and Azure and Google. >> Here's the thing, you can do this and you don't have a bunch of legacy deductible debt... >> Steve: Yeah. >> So you can be Cloud Native, multicloud native, I think you called it? >> Steve: Yeah, yeah. >> I love it, you're building castles on the sand. >> Steve: Yeah. >> Jerry Chen's thing. >> Steve: Yeah. >> Now, the thing is, today's executives, they're not as naive as Ken Olsen, UNIX as, "Snake oil," who would need a PC, so they're not in denial. >> They're probably not in denial, yeah. >> Right, and so they have some resources, so the problem is they can't move as fast as you can. So, you're going to do really well. >> Steve: Yeah. >> I think they'll eventually get there Steve, but you're going to be, I don't know how many, four or five years ahead, that's a nice lead. >> That's a bet I'll take any day. >> David: Then what you don't think they'll ever get there? >> No, 10 years. (steve laughing) >> Okay, but they're not going out of business. >> No, I didn't say that. >> I know you didn't. >> What they're doing, I wish them all the best. >> Because a lot of their customers move... >> I don't compete with them. >> Yeah. We were out of time. >> Yeah. >> What did you mean by AWS is like Sandals? You mean like cool like Sandals? >> Steve: Oh, no, no, no. I don't want to... >> You mean like the vacation place? >> Have you ever been to Sandals? >> I never done it. What do you mean by that? >> There coming, there coming. Which version of sandals (indistinct)? (people cross talking) >> This is for an enterprise by the way, and look, Sandals is great for a lot of people but if you're a Cloud provider, you have to provide the common set of services for the masses because you need to make money. And oh, by the way, when you go to Sandals, go try it, like get a bottle of wine, they say, "We got red wine or white wine?" "Oh, great, what kind of red wine?" "No, red wine and it's in a box." And they hope that you won't know the difference. The problem is some people in enterprises want Four Seasons, so they want to be able to swipe the card and get a good bottle of wine. And so that's the thing with the Cloud, but the Cloud can't offer up a 200 bottle of wine to everybody. My mom loves box wine, so give her box wine. Where ISBs like us come in, is great but complimentary to the Cloud provider for that person who wants that nice bottle of wine because if AWS had to provide all this level of functionality for everybody, their instant sizes would be too big, >> Too much cost for that. (people cross talking) You're right on. And as long as you can innovate fast and stay ahead of that and keep adding value... >> Well, here's the thing, they're not going to do it for multicloud either though. >> David: I wouldn't trust them to do it with multicloud. >> No. >> David: I wouldn't. >> No enterprise would and I don't think they would ever do it anyway. >> That makes sense. Steve, we've got to go man. You're awesome, love to have you on theCUBE, come back anytime. >> Awesome, thank you. >> All right, keep it right there everybody. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in enterprise tech coverage. (bright music)
SUMMARY :
great to see you man. last show we did was with you guys. Steve: Don't say we Steve: Yeah, was as the Started, the company was standing start That's good, you got we didn't have any fortune 500s, and that's kind of the is how fast do you scale? Steve: We are going as So okay, let's talk about the big trends So, if you think of... You got to explain that. It's the CEO saying we are digitizing and then provide a single for a couple of years now, And I said, "The guys who do this, when you look back at the world of call it I don't care if the physical stack I want an attraction and so you see Datadog, you see Snowflake, Well, you guys make Well, that's the you deflect traffic to this and we show you where that all is And so every single Okay, but now you've made some Okay, so you said I think you said the risk, I don't want to interrogate And the reason is they and you get no visibility and control that you can't jam this stuff into Cloud, and they're going to run Hey, they're going to go down fighting. But the dinosaurs didn't all die That's the question because you're... I don't need to do anything. Is it the captain Kirk Because you're in the and I still have Cisco switches. When IBM and DEC did I wish you the best. But you need to integrate with them here is the thing that's going to happen, So outpost, so I put an to get dragged with that... and as the company pushes out, Here's the thing, you can do this building castles on the sand. Now, the thing is, today's executives, so the problem is they can't I don't know how many, No, 10 years. Okay, but they're not What they're doing, I Because a lot of Yeah. I don't want to... do you mean by that? (people cross talking) And so that's the thing with the Cloud, And as long as you can innovate Well, here's the thing, them to do it with multicloud. and I don't think they to have you on theCUBE, the leader in enterprise tech coverage.
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Jessica Alexander, CrowdStrike | AWS re:Invent 2021
(upbeat music) >> Hey, welcome to theCUBE's coverage of AWS re:Invent 2021. I'm Lisa Martin, and I'm pleased to be joined by Jessica Alexander, who is the VP of Cloud Solutions Sales and Alliances at CrowdStrike. Jessica, welcome to the program. >> Thank you, Lisa. It's great to be here. >> So we're going to unpack a lot today, some news, what's going on with the threat landscape, what you're seeing across industries, but I want to get started talking a little bit about your team. As I mentioned, VP of Cloud Solutions Sales and Alliances. Talk to me about your team because you have a unique GTM here that I'd like to get into. >> Sure. Thank you, Lisa. Well, we recently launched our new cloud security products, Cloud Workload Protection and Horizon earlier this year. So we wanted to make sure that we accelerated our entry into this new product market, this new addressable market, and so we established not only a cloud sales specialist team that helps our core sellers as well as our partners sell our new cloud security products but we also wanted to make sure it was tightly integrated and aligned with our Cloud Alliances so specifically our co-sell relationship and partnership that we have with AWS. >> Got it. Let's talk about some of the things you mentioned, Aksino acceleration entering into the market. We saw a lot of acceleration in the last 20 months and counting, especially with respect to cloud adoption, digital transformation, but also the threat landscape things have accelerated. Wanted to get some information from you on what you've seen. We've seen and talked to a lot of folks on ransomware stats, you know, it's up nearly 11x in the first half of '21, but you guys have some unique stats and insights on that. Talk to me about what CrowdStrike is seeing with respect to that threat landscape and who it's impacting. >> Sure. You know, we have a unique perspective. CrowdStrike has millions of sensors out in our customer environments, they're feeding trillions of events into the cloud and we're able to correlate this data in real time, so this gives us a very unique perspective into what's happening in adversary activity out in the world. We also get feeds from our incident response teams that are actively responding to issues, as well as our Intel operatives out in the world. So, you know, we correlate these three sources of data into our threat graph in the cloud powered by AWS, which gives us very good insights into activity that we're seeing from an adversary perspective. So we also have a group called the OverWatch team, they are 24 by seven, you know, humans monitoring our cloud and monitoring our customer's networks to detect or, you know, get pre-breach activity information. And what they're seeing is that, you know, over this last year, an adversary is able to enter a network and move laterally into that network within one hour and 32 minutes. Now, you know, this is really fast, especially when you consider that in 2020, that average was four hours and 37 minutes for a threat actor to move laterally, you know, infiltrate a network and then move laterally. So, you know, the themes that we're seeing are adversaries are getting a lot faster and a lot more efficient, and, you know, as more companies are moving to remote work environments, you know, setting up virtual infrastructure for employees to use for work and productivity, you know, that threat landscape becomes more critical. >> Right? It becomes more critical. It becomes bigger. And of course we are in this work from anywhere environment that's going to last or some amount of it will persist permanently. So what you're saying is you're seeing a 4x increase in the speed with which adversaries can get in and laterally move within a network, so dramatically faster in a year over year period, where, so there's been so much flux in every market and of course in our lives, what are some of the things that you're helping customers do to combat this growing challenge? >> Well, it really goes back to being predictive and having that real time snapshot of what's going on and being able to proactively reach out to customers before anything bad happens and, you know, we're also seeing that ransomware continues to be an issue for customers, so, you know, having the ability to prevent these attacks and ransomware from happening in the first place and really taking the advantage that an adversary may have from a speed or intelligence perspective, taking that advantage away by having the Falcon Platform actively monitoring our customer environments is a big advantage. >> So let's talk about, speaking of advantages, what are you guys announcing at re:Invent this year? >> Sure. Well, we have two new service integrations with Amazon EKS, AWS Outpost and AWS Firelands to talk about this year. The cool thing is that, you know, customers are going to get our wonderful breach protection that we have, you know, the gold standard of breach protection, they'll have that available on various cloud services. And what it does is it provides consistent security and simplified operational management across AWS services, as customers extend those from public cloud to the data center, to the edge. And you know, the other great benefit is that it accelerates threat hunting, so we were talking about, you know, being able to predict and see what adversaries are doing. You know, one of the great customer benefits is that they can do that with their own teams and be able to do that on a cloud infrastructure as well. >> And how much of the events of the last 20 months was a catalyst or were catalysts for these integrations that you just mentioned? I imagine the threat landscape growing ransomware becoming a 'when we get hit not if' would have been some of those catalysts. >> Well, you know, we're seeing that the adoption of cloud services, especially for end user computing is growing much faster than traditional on-prem desktops, laptops, as people continue to work remotely and customers need to be, or corporations need to be efficient at how they manage end user computing environments. So, you know, we are seeing that adversary activity is picking up, they're getting smarter about, you know, leveraging cloud services and potential misconfigurations, there're really four key areas that we see customers struggle with, whether it be, you know, the complexity of cloud services, whether it be shadow IT, and a lot of the security folks don't necessarily know where all the cloud services are being deployed, then you've got, you know, kind of the advanced techniques that adversaries are using to get into networks. And then, you know, last but certainly not least is skills shortage. We're finding that a lot of customers want a turnkey solution, where they don't have to have a team of cloud security specialists to respond or handle any misconfigurations or issues that come up. They want to have a turnkey solution, a team that's already watching and reaching out to them to say, "Hey, you may want to look into XYZ and update a policy, or, you know, activate this new, you know, this feature in the platform." >> Yeah. That real time, the ability to have something that's turnkey is critical in this day and age where things are moving so quickly, there's so much being accelerated, good stuff and bad stuff. But also you mentioned that cybersecurity skills gap, which is in its, I think it's in its fifth year now, which is a big challenge for organizations as this scattered, work from anywhere persists as does the growth of the threat landscape. Let's get into now, for, you mentioned the adoption of cloud services has gone up considerably in this interesting time period, how is CrowdStrike helping customers do that securely, migrate from on-prem to the cloud with that security and that confidence that their landscape is protected? >> Yeah, well, we find obviously in the shared responsibility model, the great thing is that, you know, CrowdStrike and AWS team up to help, you know, customers have a better together experience as they migrate to the cloud. AWS is obviously responsible for the security of the cloud and customers are responsible for the security in the cloud. And in speaking with our customers who are moving or have moved to cloud services, and they really want a trusted and simple platform to use when securing their data and applications. So what, you know, they also have hybrid environments that can get complex to support, and, you know, we want to be able to provide them with a unified platform, a unified experience, regardless of where the workload is running or what services that it's using. You know, they have that unified visibility and protection across all of the cloud workloads. We're also, you know, seeing that, especially the reason we're doing this great integration with Outpost and EKS Anywhere is that customers are, you know, taking their cloud services out to their data centers as well as to the edge locations and branch offices, so they want to be able to run EKS on their own infrastructure. So it's important that customers have that portability that regardless of whether it's a laptop or an EC2 instance or an EKS container, you know, they have that portability throughout the continuum of their cloud journey. >> That continuum is absolutely critical as we, you know, talk about cloud and application or continuum from the customer's perspective, the cloud continuum is something that is front and center for customers, I imagine in every industry. >> Oh, for sure, 'cause every industry is adopting cloud maybe at a different speed, maybe for different applications, but, you know, everybody's moving to the cloud. >> So talk to me about what you're announcing with AWS, let's get into a little bit about the partnership that CloudStrike and AWS have, let's unpack that a bit. >> Sure. You know, we've been an AWS advanced technology partner for over five years. We've had our products, we now have six of our CrowdStrike products listed on AWS Marketplace. We're an active co-sell partner and, you know, have our security competency and our well-architected certification. And really it's about building trust with our customers. You know, AWS has a lot of wonderful partner products for customers to use and it's really about building trust that, you know, we're validated, we're vetted, we have a lot of customers who are using our products with AWS, and, you know, I think it's that tight collaboration, for example, if you look at what we're doing with Humio, we've implemented a quick start program, which AWS has to get customers quickly deployed with an integration or a new capability with a partner product. And what this does is it spins up a quick cloud formation template, customer can integrate it very quickly with the AWS Firelands and then, you know, all that log information coming from the AWS containers is easily ingested into the Humio platform. And so, you know, it really reduces the time to get the integration up and running as well as pulling all that data into the Humio platform so that customers can, like we said earlier, go back and threat hunt across, you know, different cloud service components in a quick and easy way. >> Quick and easy is good as is faster time to value. You mentioned the word trust, and, you know, we talk about trust, we've been talking about it for years as it relates to technology, but I'm curious, Jessica, in the last year and a half, if your customer conversations have changed, is trust now even more important than ever as there are so many things in flux, have you noticed any sort of change there in your customer conversations? >> Well, you know, I think trust is extensible. And over the last 10 years, CrowdStrike's done a really great job of building customer trust. And, you know, we started out as, you know, kind of primarily EDR and we've moved into prevention and now we're moving into identity protection and XDR so, you know, I see a pattern that, you know, we've built this amazing core of trust across our existing customers, and as we offer more capabilities, whether it be, you know, cloud security or XDR, identity protection, you know, customers trust us and so they're very willing to say, "ah well, I want to try out these new capabilities that CrowdStrike has because we trust you guys, you know, you've done a lot to protect our brand and, you know, really make our internal teams a lot more efficient and a lot smarter." So, you know, I think while trust is important, it's also something that we get to carry forward as we enter new markets and continue to innovate and provide new capabilities for our customers. >> And really extending that trusted, valued partner relationship that you've already established with customers in every industry. So where can customers go? So the joint GTM customers, and you said products available in the AWS marketplace, but where do you recommend customers go to learn more about how they can work with these joint solutions that CrowdStrike and AWS have together? >> Absolutely. We have a landing page on AWS, if you Google AWS and CrowdStrike, whether it be marketplace or EKS Anywhere, Amazon outposts, we're on all the joint product pages with Amazon, as well as always going to crowdstrike.com and looking up our cloud security products. >> Got it. And last question for you, Jessica, summarize the announcement in terms of business outcomes that it's going to enable your joint customers to achieve. >> Absolutely. You know, I think it goes back to probably the primary reason is complexity. And, you know, with complexity comes risk and blind spots so being able to have a unified platform that no matter where the workload is, or the employee may be, they are protected and have, you know, a unified platform and experience to manage their security risk. >> Excellent. Jessica, thank you so much for coming on the program today, sharing with me, what's new with CrowdStrike, some of the things that you're seeing, and what you're helping customers to accomplish in a very dynamic environment, we appreciate your time and your insights. >> Thank you for having me, Lisa. >> For Jessica Alexander, I'm Lisa Martin, and you're watching theCUBE's coverage of AWS re:Invent 2021. (gentle music)
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AWS reInvent Jessica Alexander
(upbeat music) >> Hey, welcome to theCUBE's coverage of AWS re:Invent 2021. I'm Lisa Martin, and I'm pleased to be joined by Jessica Alexander, who is the VP of Cloud Solutions Sales and Alliances at CrowdStrike. Jessica, welcome to the program. >> Thank you, Lisa. It's great to be here. >> So we're going to unpack a lot today, some news, what's going on with the threat landscape, what you're seeing across industries, but I want to get started talking a little bit about your team. As I mentioned, VP of Cloud Solutions Sales and Alliances. Talk to me about your team because you have a unique GTM here that I'd like to get into. >> Sure. Thank you, Lisa. Well, we recently launched our new cloud security products, Cloud Workload Protection and Horizon earlier this year. So we wanted to make sure that we accelerated our entry into this new product market, this new addressable market, and so we established not only a cloud sales specialist team that helps our core sellers as well as our partners sell our new cloud security products but we also wanted to make sure it was tightly integrated and aligned with our Cloud Alliances so specifically our co-sell relationship and partnership that we have with AWS. >> Got it. Let's talk about some of the things you mentioned, Aksino acceleration entering into the market. We saw a lot of acceleration in the last 20 months and counting, especially with respect to cloud adoption, digital transformation, but also the threat landscape things have accelerated. Wanted to get some information from you on what you've seen. We've seen and talked to a lot of folks on ransomware stats, you know, it's up nearly 11x in the first half of '21, but you guys have some unique stats and insights on that. Talk to me about what CrowdStrike is seeing with respect to that threat landscape and who it's impacting. >> Sure. You know, we have a unique perspective. CrowdStrike has millions of sensors out in our customer environments, they're feeding trillions of events into the cloud and we're able to correlate this data in real time, so this gives us a very unique perspective into what's happening in adversary activity out in the world. We also get feeds from our incident response teams that are actively responding to issues, as well as our Intel operatives out in the world. So, you know, we correlate these three sources of data into our threat graph in the cloud powered by AWS, which gives us very good insights into activity that we're seeing from an adversary perspective. So we also have a group called the OverWatch team, they are 24 by seven, you know, humans monitoring our cloud and monitoring our customer's networks to detect or, you know, get pre-breach activity information. And what they're seeing is that, you know, over this last year, an adversary is able to enter a network and move laterally into that network within one hour and 32 minutes. Now, you know, this is really fast, especially when you consider that in 2020, that average was four hours and 37 minutes for a threat actor to move laterally, you know, infiltrate a network and then move laterally. So, you know, the themes that we're seeing are adversaries are getting a lot faster and a lot more efficient, and, you know, as more companies are moving to remote work environments, you know, setting up virtual infrastructure for employees to use for work and productivity, you know, that threat landscape becomes more critical. >> Right? It becomes more critical. It becomes bigger. And of course we are in this work from anywhere environment that's going to last or some amount of it will persist permanently. So what you're saying is you're seeing a 4x increase in the speed with which adversaries can get in and laterally move within a network, so dramatically faster in a year over year period, where, so there's been so much flux in every market and of course in our lives, what are some of the things that you're helping customers do to combat this growing challenge? >> Well, it really goes back to being predictive and having that real time snapshot of what's going on and being able to proactively reach out to customers before anything bad happens and, you know, we're also seeing that ransomware continues to be an issue for customers, so, you know, having the ability to prevent these attacks and ransomware from happening in the first place and really taking the advantage that an adversary may have from a speed or intelligence perspective, taking that advantage away by having the Falcon Platform actively monitoring our customer environments is a big advantage. >> So let's talk about, speaking of advantages, what are you guys announcing at re:Invent this year? >> Sure. Well, we have two new service integrations with Amazon EKS, AWS Outpost and AWS Firelands to talk about this year. The cool thing is that, you know, customers are going to get our wonderful breach protection that we have, you know, the gold standard of breach protection, they'll have that available on various cloud services. And what it does is it provides consistent security and simplified operational management across AWS services, as customers extend those from public cloud to the data center, to the edge. And you know, the other great benefit is that it accelerates threat hunting, so we were talking about, you know, being able to predict and see what adversaries are doing. You know, one of the great customer benefits is that they can do that with their own teams and be able to do that on a cloud infrastructure as well. >> And how much of the events of the last 20 months was a catalyst or were catalysts for these integrations that you just mentioned? I imagine the threat landscape growing ransomware becoming a 'when we get hit not if' would have been some of those catalysts. >> Well, you know, we're seeing that the adoption of cloud services, especially for end user computing is growing much faster than traditional on-prem desktops, laptops, as people continue to work remotely and customers need to be, or corporations need to be efficient at how they manage end user computing environments. So, you know, we are seeing that adversary activity is picking up, they're getting smarter about, you know, leveraging cloud services and potential misconfigurations, there're really four key areas that we see customers struggle with, whether it be, you know, the complexity of cloud services, whether it be shadow IT, and a lot of the security folks don't necessarily know where all the cloud services are being deployed, then you've got, you know, kind of the advanced techniques that adversaries are using to get into networks. 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Let's get into now, for, you mentioned the adoption of cloud services has gone up considerably in this interesting time period, how is CrowdStrike helping customers do that securely, migrate from on-prem to the cloud with that security and that confidence that their landscape is protected? >> Yeah, well, we find obviously in the shared responsibility model, the great thing is that, you know, CrowdStrike and AWS team up to help, you know, customers have a better together experience as they migrate to the cloud. AWS is obviously responsible for the security of the cloud and customers are responsible for the security in the cloud. And in speaking with our customers who are moving or have moved to cloud services, and they really want a trusted and simple platform to use when securing their data and applications. So what, you know, they also have hybrid environments that can get complex to support, and, you know, we want to be able to provide them with a unified platform, a unified experience, regardless of where the workload is running or what services that it's using. You know, they have that unified visibility and protection across all of the cloud workloads. We're also, you know, seeing that, especially the reason we're doing this great integration with Outpost and EKS Anywhere is that customers are, you know, taking their cloud services out to their data centers as well as to the edge locations and branch offices, so they want to be able to run EKS on their own infrastructure. So it's important that customers have that portability that regardless of whether it's a laptop or an EC2 instance or an EKS container, you know, they have that portability throughout the continuum of their cloud journey. >> That continuum is absolutely critical as we, you know, talk about cloud and application or continuum from the customer's perspective, the cloud continuum is something that is front and center for customers, I imagine in every industry. >> Oh, for sure, 'cause every industry is adopting cloud maybe at a different speed, maybe for different applications, but, you know, everybody's moving to the cloud. >> So talk to me about what you're announcing with AWS, let's get into a little bit about the partnership that CloudStrike and AWS have, let's unpack that a bit. >> Sure. You know, we've been an AWS advanced technology partner for over five years. We've had our products, we now have six of our CrowdStrike products listed on AWS Marketplace. We're an active co-sell partner and, you know, have our security competency and our well-architected certification. And really it's about building trust with our customers. You know, AWS has a lot of wonderful partner products for customers to use and it's really about building trust that, you know, we're validated, we're vetted, we have a lot of customers who are using our products with AWS, and, you know, I think it's that tight collaboration, for example, if you look at what we're doing with Humio, we've implemented a quick start program, which AWS has to get customers quickly deployed with an integration or a new capability with a partner product. And what this does is it spins up a quick cloud formation template, customer can integrate it very quickly with the AWS Firelands and then, you know, all that log information coming from the AWS containers is easily ingested into the Humio platform. And so, you know, it really reduces the time to get the integration up and running as well as pulling all that data into the Humio platform so that customers can, like we said earlier, go back and threat hunt across, you know, different cloud service components in a quick and easy way. >> Quick and easy is good as is faster time to value. You mentioned the word trust, and, you know, we talk about trust, we've been talking about it for years as it relates to technology, but I'm curious, Jessica, in the last year and a half, if your customer conversations have changed, is trust now even more important than ever as there are so many things in flux, have you noticed any sort of change there in your customer conversations? >> Well, you know, I think trust is extensible. And over the last 10 years, CrowdStrike's done a really great job of building customer trust. And, you know, we started out as, you know, kind of primarily EDR and we've moved into prevention and now we're moving into identity protection and XDR so, you know, I see a pattern that, you know, we've built this amazing core of trust across our existing customers, and as we offer more capabilities, whether it be, you know, cloud security or XDR, identity protection, you know, customers trust us and so they're very willing to say, "ah well, I want to try out these new capabilities that CrowdStrike has because we trust you guys, you know, you've done a lot to protect our brand and, you know, really make our internal teams a lot more efficient and a lot smarter." So, you know, I think while trust is important, it's also something that we get to carry forward as we enter new markets and continue to innovate and provide new capabilities for our customers. >> And really extending that trusted, valued partner relationship that you've already established with customers in every industry. So where can customers go? So the joint GTM customers, and you said products available in the AWS marketplace, but where do you recommend customers go to learn more about how they can work with these joint solutions that CrowdStrike and AWS have together? >> Absolutely. We have a landing page on AWS, if you Google AWS and CrowdStrike, whether it be marketplace or EKS Anywhere, Amazon outposts, we're on all the joint product pages with Amazon, as well as always going to crowdstrike.com and looking up our cloud security products. >> Got it. And last question for you, Jessica, summarize the announcement in terms of business outcomes that it's going to enable your joint customers to achieve. >> Absolutely. You know, I think it goes back to probably the primary reason is complexity. And, you know, with complexity comes risk and blind spots so being able to have a unified platform that no matter where the workload is, or the employee may be, they are protected and have, you know, a unified platform and experience to manage their security risk. >> Excellent. Jessica, thank you so much for coming on the program today, sharing with me, what's new with CrowdStrike, some of the things that you're seeing, and what you're helping customers to accomplish in a very dynamic environment, we appreciate your time and your insights. >> Thank you for having me, Lisa. >> For Jessica Alexander, I'm Lisa Martin, and you're watching theCUBE's coverage of AWS re:Invent 2021. (gentle music)
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Breaking Analysis: Cutting Through the Noise of Full Stack Observability
from the cube studios in palo alto in boston bringing you data driven insights from the cube and etr this is breaking analysis with dave vellante full stack observability is the new buzz phrase as businesses go digital customer experience becomes ever more important why because fickle consumers can switch brands in the blink of an eye or the click of a mouse every vendor wants a piece of the action in this market including companies that have provided traditional monitoring log analytics application performance management etc and they're joined by a slew of new entrants claiming end invisibility across the so-called modern tech stack recent survey research from etr however confirms our thesis that no one company has it all new entrants they've got a vision and and they're not encumbered with legacy technical debt however their offerings are immature on the other hand established players with deep feature sets in one segment are pivoting through m a and some organic development to fill gaps meanwhile the cloud players are well positioned and participating through a combination of their own native tooling combined with strong ecosystems in their respective marketplaces to address this opportunity hello everyone and welcome to this week's wikibon cube insights powered by etr in this breaking analysis we dive into a recent etr drill down study on full stack observability and to do so we once again welcome in our colleague eric bradley chief engagement strategist and director of research at etr eric good to see you my friend thanks for coming on uh always good to be here dave thank you so much for having us we appreciate it all right before we get into the survey eric i i want to talk a little bit about full stack observability define what it is and so let me start and then you can chime in so when people talk about full stack observability they're referring to the need to understand the behavior of all the technology components that support an application i.e the stack right throughout the entire system meaning the full piece of the equation right the entire system so the compute we're talking about the storage the network and of course that's all software defined today the containers that are running the software the database other middleware components the pipeline of data and then of course the client-side code everything the html the css everything down to the mobile device and the idea is to give people who can fix problems full visibility into the system with a dashboard of metrics that can be visualized at a high level and then drilled into to see logs or traces or events all the metrics that could help remediate an issue so a simple way to think about this eric is i like to think of it as the ability to see everything in the tech stack that could impact the customer experience right how do you see it if only we're that simple right it's it's a huge thing that we're trying to encompass there with full stack observability and uh even though the vendors might tell you on the first sales call that they can do it it's really not that simple based on everything you just said um in this particular survey we tried our best to look at it and we'll go into it later but you know we had to survey on the application side infrastructure side database side blog management security network it's a very difficult thing to encompass um the holy grail would be able to do it with one vendor and do it with one dashboard i don't think we're there anytime soon all right so let's get into this drill down survey results and talk about what you've learned first what is explain what a drill down study is how often does etr conduct these types of things you know who responds what can you tell us yeah sure so the drill downs are actually basically think of it as a custom type of survey work and that could be customized from two different ways either our clients will come to us with a particular topic and we will hold their hands and make sure that they get the the responses that they need uh and more often than not it's actually us as a research department uh wanting to dig into trends that our larger data encompasses and then we'll say hey we really need to look into that and we've done it with everything from rpa to identity access to you know hearing observability and also vendor specific and and macro trends as you know david this particular one the genesis was really a large amount of interest not only from our community the end users but clients i i can't tell you how much interest there is in observability right now we're constantly getting questions and demands for more research and deeper research in this space yeah so our audience will be familiar with the concept of net score that's the periodic survey every quarter like clockwork etr does that then in addition as eric was saying hot topics like in this case full stack observability so we're talking about respondents in the etr community in this case who have a deep understanding of observability and related topics and and they had varying degrees of knowledge about each vendor's offering so you asked the respondents to concentrate on the ones that they knew well correct yes that is correct so this was a smaller survey that we did the end was a little under 188 i believe um and essentially what we did was we took people that responded in the bigger study on these observability vendors and then sent this drill down out so they were specifically people that have purview over their spend with observability now some of it might be more database infrastructure application or security but everyone here is already qualified as an expert to answer these questions that's correct dave yeah so the first data point is the one we're showing you right here the respondents were asked who uses observability tools and eric i've highlighted app ops in in the site reliability engineers because given the emphasis on customer centricity that we hear all the time from the vendor community you would think these roles would be more highly represented but it's the folks in the boiler room that are using these tools highly technical and specialized roles what are your thoughts on this data you know i was a little surprised as well i i kind of thought the sres would be a little bit higher on this but it really just comes down to you know it's the infrastructure um devops and secops that seem to be using it the most i thought maybe the application operations teams would be a little bit more involved as well so i agree with you i was a little bit surprised on this but you know they're the experts so we have to take the data at their word for it but i think what's really happening here is you're recognizing that the work is being done across the entire enterprise as you mentioned before about full stack this isn't just one aspect it's touching every aspect of the enterprise and that's including the internal i.t teams well and i think too eric that this what i took away from this drill down and we'll get more into it is that the vendor marketing is not aligned with what's actually happening in the field and so there's these early days we'll talk about that some more okay next question i thought this was very interesting etr asked on the scale of one to three three being most preferred which pricing model host-based user-based or amount of data ingested based pricing that the responders preferred and eric so what are your what are your thoughts on this because just doing a quick scan scan pricing is all over the map yeah it really is all over the map from a vendor perspective right and also from an end user perspective and all the interviews and panels that i host pricing's a real concern but it is always but in this particular field it's a real concern and i actually just did a panel yesterday of four of these 88 survey takers to get a little bit deeper so i'm going to kind of remark on what they taught me a little bit yesterday one of them said ingestion pricing might be preferable but because it's so unpredictable that's why we're seeing the results skew away from it another one went so far that said uh ingestion based pricing is a nightmare that keeps him up at night because he's just so afraid he's gonna wake up the next day and see what the bill is so um really what they're looking for here and the reason the pricing is skewing that way in this survey is because they need predictability it's about their budget and it's about their planning even though they would prefer an ingestion-based model the fact that they have to plan for their budgets and they have to concern themselves with spending it's moving more to host based yeah so i mean it is complicated and because so for example i just took a quick snapshot of some of the pricing models like dynatrace appd datadog aws and others they tout their host-based pricing new relic they have a splash page up around its user-based pricing and the tiers datadog talks about its ingestion-based pricing for security monitoring aws prices by ingestion for cloud watch logs splunk prices on index data and calculates a per gigabyte per day metric so metrics dashboards alarms alerts events it's they could all be priced differently yeah that's true a few that got called out on us and i'm sure we're going to get into them later so i don't want to you know kill all of our fodder right now but when we were talking about this slide one person particularly decided to call out new relic and specif specifically for their flexibility around pricing he said that they have the ability to rapidly scale up but also contract as needed and he actually even though he's a user of splunk he's a user of dyna trees user of elastic um he also just really wanted to call out the flexibility of new relic in this area so to your point there's a lot of different ways to price this it's a complex problem but i think the key takeaway for vendors is flexibility is the key you really need to give people the ability to be flexible in what they want all right let's drill into the functionality and explore the usage and adoption of the different features by the respondents so this next chart shows module adoption for application performance monitoring apm database and digital experience down to the user and eric i underlined apm which is the blue bar because it seems it stands out especially for aws and you can see dynast dyna trace but also azure new relic and splunk and then digital experience which is the gray bar because despite all the chatter in the market and the marketing around digital transformation and customer experience other than a slightly higher response percentage for aws not a lot of adoption on that front so the vendor marketing again doesn't match the user behavior does it eric no it doesn't there's a couple of things to point out here but let's stick with that digital experience i i was surprised that it was so low on this slide and overall in our survey i did expect it to be more and not just from the vendor marketing perspective but you and i both know at the end of the day the whole point of this is to actually get into that 360 view of what your customer's doing so i i was a little bit surprised to see it that low when we spoke to the panel yesterday a couple of people said no listen it's not that we aren't doing that it's just that it's not the vendors that you put on this survey and they called out two particular names one is called catchpoint and the other one is thousand dies and i think you're aware a thousand dice i'm going to transition that off to you there yeah so a thousand eyes is now part of cisco and we're gonna talk about that a little bit later but but essentially like as i was saying up front they've got gaps in their in their product line so they've got to do m a and then package that up so you know we'll we'll get into that a little bit down the road but i want to bring up the next graphic because that looks at incident management infrastructure monitoring and log management and and what i did here is i called out infrastructure monitoring which is the gray bar and log management that light blue because aws and azure they stand out in these categories and splunk of course eric for for log management what what do you take away from this data yeah the previous slide and this slide you really have to call out aws cloudwatch and microsoft is your monitor um they are very pervasive in this survey and we could probably do an entire show on just that on the cloud versus independent but a couple of things i do want to point out even though these numbers are so high for these cloud tools the the panelists and the people i spoke to in more detail all said listen i'm going to look at my cloud tools first i'm on their infrastructure they're handing it to me i'm going to look at it and i'll use it for what it's good for however we're in a multi-cloud world and they're not good at things that aren't in their ecosystem so these are not even though these numbers are high i do not believe that you know aws or azure is going to go and take over all the independents in a multi-cloud world they want an independent vendor whether it's a data dog new relic we could talk about all of those later but um you know really i was surprised that the aws particularly was so high and so pervasive in here across the way a splunk what can you say i mean they are the most pervasive vendor you know they they're everywhere uh we had people in the panel call them a swiss army knife and you know that's a good and a bad that they have a lot of breadth of coverage which is great but because there's a breadth of coverage not all of it is great log management without a doubt is what they are great at they're specialized at it but the panelists were saying listen if you go away from their core and you try to use some of the other things they claim that they can do it requires a lot of heavy lifting and then we can get into a little bit later about their cloud cloud sas integration we had some issues with that in the survey as well and great points about the multi-cloud you're probably not going to trust that to your your cloud your public cloud vendor and so a lot of white space available for the traditional on-prem guys okay next the etr survey drilled into network monitoring and security monitoring and then other security functions and eric there are a couple of things that stood out to me in this chart i highlighted security monitoring which is the blue bar because you can again see the adoption from aws and azure and of course splunk and also we called out solar winds because of the large adoption in network monitoring so let me ask you what are you seeing in the data since the solarwinds breach and is there anything else in this chart that you want to call out i could go on for a while about solarwinds but you know the data since i guess it broke around 12 months ago even though the breach was even prior to that uh the headlines were big i think you remember you and i last year did a quick drill down survey just on solarwinds uh and the impact that we thought we would have it uh there's a very real impact happening uh with that said they're not easy to move away from um we asked about is there any one vendor that could take this entire space and the answer was solar winds was best positioned to do that but it's too late now and then i drilled down a little bit and i asked the panel well what can they do to reinvent themselves what can they do to change the reputational damage from this breach and the panelists all said nothing the reputational damage is done the best way for them to reinvent themselves would be to do an m a consolidate with somebody else change their name they truly believe that right now the only reason that people are still using solarwinds is it's not that easy to lift and shift away from but there will be no new net workloads going to these people at least according to the the ones who took our survey um that's on solar winds and we could get you know in more if you want but i think that's kind of you know giving the the the crux of the matter on splunk again what can you say on the security side on the sim side people don't want to use multiple vendors on the other side we were talking about with full stack some might be better at apm some might be better at infrastructure monitoring when you're talking about security you truly do want one vendor to rule them all and splunk does seem to be the one that's most well entrenched on the security side and as long as the policy is consistent across security you really can't say much about them so what they do well their core their the data shows that you know people still trust them great thank you for that okay now the last set of data we want to show we kind of consolidated some things you want the the detail and the drill down you had several drill down questions and what we try to do is consolidate them into a single chart which we had to stare at for a while so for each of the 11 companies etr asked respondents if the features across the top that you see here were strengths weaknesses or neutral and what we've done is we tried to consolidate the chart showing the strengths in the green which we just subjectively said okay that means more than 40 percent of the respondents identified the feature as a strength the weaknesses in yellow meant that more than 20 percent of the respondents cited the feature as a weakness and the neutrals in the gray where neither of those conditions were met but the gray was you know the neutral was high and what we did is we added four stars for standout features where 60 or more of the respondents cited the feature as a strength and we threw in two stars if they were close to 60 you know high 50s even mid 50s but but not single digit weakness for that feature that was got two stars so it was able to sort of visualize a lot of data so eric just a quick scan of this chart chart shows that the two big cloud players aws in particular but also azure they have a relatively strong showing and i say relatively because as you know eric there wasn't a single category of feature for any vendor where more than 70 percent of the respondents cited the strength for that single feature not one and there was a lot of gray and you can see pricing is a sore point for many customers including those evaluating solarwinds new relic elastic datadog dynatrace appd and splunk only aws and grafana were hit not hit hard on pricing and i guess the other thing that stands out to me here is that new relic eric showed some relative strength so the last thing i'll mention before you dive in look at what cisco is doing we talked about this before a little bit the drill down focused on appd but as i mentioned earlier companies that have mature stacks are filling the gaps so if you look at what cisco's doing this space they've put an interface layer over appd inner site and thousand eyes even though they're separate products they're historically priced separately i think they're still trying to figure out the pricing but they are definitely going to market with a strategy that bolts together these three separate products and that's not necessarily a bad strategy because combined they can claim even more depth and breadth eric what do you make of this data yeah just like this chart there is a lot there right so uh on a macro level let's just the obvious situation here is this is a crowded crowded marketplace and consolidation is needed i had one panelist say to me yesterday i can't wait for this to consolidate like this is just crazy that there needs to be consolidation uh now to your point about cisco cisco's taking the same playbook they did with security right they're going out and they're buying great tools and then now we have to make sure that they figure out a way to integrate these better uh the security side took them a little while to do that but they're getting there hopefully they can do this a little bit quicker here what we did here is that um appd is actually very strong on the application monitoring side for the core apm uh maybe not so much on these others and then that's why they go out and do what you're doing what you're saying about now so hopefully they will get there um kind of talking across the board pricing was a problem for all of them right so it just seems to me that you know the end users the buyers just feel like hey i shouldn't be paying this much for this we've got a lot of choices maybe there's some collusion on the pricing side but we have to figure it out because they do not want to pay this much for it it was the number one concern across almost every single vendor another aspect that i really want to call out on this and is something that our research team found really interesting and it's really about the digital transformation as digital transformation continues the workloads are moving towards the cloud and we're clearly seeing in this data that that's benefiting the newer players the data dogs and the new relics versus some of the others like a dynatrace and a splunk and when you go and actually look at the cloud sas integration answer option specifically it becomes very very obvious um you know splunk had a 38 on that number whereas datadog had 61 new relic at 58. so it's just very clear as a digital transformation increases workloads on observability it is lifting all boats but it's lifting some faster than others great points um all right as we said at the top you've got a set of incumbents they're jockeying for position you've got companies like datadog it's got as eric just mentioned strong cloud model elastic's got got the open source mojo and they're going after splunk's install base as is datadog and then you see startups like chaos search they're out now talking about how to do log analytics they do more than that but that's their sort of starter use case and they're going after the elastic and the elk stack which got dinged a bit in the survey on simplicity uh you know ease of standing it up and and so forth not a weakness if you're comfortable with full open source model but maybe not well understood as some of the other solution oriented plays and then you got other new entrants which are not covered in the drill down they're not as pervasive in the marketplace but guys like honeycomb and observe eric you mentioned some others that came out in the panel vmware even is getting into the act they're positioning tanzu around observability with really a strong kubernetes emphasis and there's dozens of other players in the space which we haven't talked about so eric this is jump ball and i'll give you the final word give us your last thoughts yeah there's a again a lot there it's such an interesting space like even ibm right they go out and buy turbonomics right everyone seems to be playing and not only that the ones that are already playing are expanding data dog comes out and says hey we do security now so i don't really know where this is going to end but there's too much happening there needs to be some sort of you know order out of the chaos uh to your point about some of the emerging names we just launched our emerging technology survey this week david those are the ones where we're going to see data on those names so stay tuned for that we don't track them in the core tsis which are more mature public vendors but we will be getting some data on those uh but to your point i really do believe that this space is rapidly expanding and i just kind of want to leave everyone with this there's a lot of growth still left in the panel yesterday i basically said to people how much of your infrastructure are you monitoring today versus how much you want to and the answer was around 65 to 70 percent being monitored now and without a doubt they all want to get to 100 so there is still a lot of room to grow in this space but i just don't know if there's enough room for all of these people that are basically going after the same percentage points so what we're seeing from a vendor strategy now is bundling they're trying to bundle because that's the way they're gonna actually gain that market share right and uh just one last point to you for elastic a lot of people still view elastic as a search functionality so even though they have use cases and observability i still think there's a lot of people that the elastic got into the elk stack in general got into their enterprise for search so that is still kind of where they are and maybe they're not moving as fast as a data dog or a new relic in pure full stack observability eric so great to have you on you guys cover so much space so we're gonna leave it there for now we really appreciate our friends at etr for the the work that they do and thank you eric for joining us today and sharing your insights great stuff welcome dave i always enjoy talking to you you know that and uh everyone else we'll be back in a couple of months with our predictions as well so yeah that's right yeah look for those all right remember these episodes are all available as podcasts wherever you listen all you gotta do is search breaking analysis podcast check out etr's website etr dot plus they've got a whole new packaging and and pricing models so check that out we also publish a full report every week on wikibon.com and siliconangle.com and you can get in touch with me david.velante at siliconangle.com or at divalante on twitter i'm on linkedin all the time this is dave vellante for the cube insights powered by etr have a great week everybody stay safe be well and we'll see you next time you
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Manufacturing Reduce Costs and Improve Quality with IoT Analytics
>>Okay. We're here in the second manufacturing drill down session with Michael Gerber. He was the managing director for automotive and manufacturing solutions at Cloudera. And we're going to continue the discussion with a look at how to lower costs and drive quality in IOT analytics with better uptime and hook. When you do the math, that's really quite obvious when the system is down, productivity is lost and it hits revenue and the bottom line improve quality drives, better service levels and reduces lost opportunities. Michael. Great to see you, >>Dave. All right, guys. Thank you so much. So I'll tell you, we're going to talk a little bit about connected manufacturing, right? And how those IOT IOT around connected manufacturing can do as Dave talked about improved quality outcomes for manufacturing improve and improve your plant uptime. So just a little bit quick, quick, little indulgent, quick history lesson. I promise to be quick. We've all heard about industry 4.0, right? That is the fourth industrial revolution. And that's really what we're here to talk about today. First industrial revolution, real simple, right? You had steam power, right? You would reduce backbreaking work. Second industrial revolution, mass assembly line. Right. So think about Henry Ford and motorized conveyor belts, mass automation, third industrial revolution. Things got interesting, right? You started to see automation, but that automation was done essentially programmed a robot to do something. It did the same thing over and over and over irrespective about of how your outside operations, your outside conditions change fourth industrial revolution, very different breakfasts. >>Now we're connecting, um, equipment and processes and getting feedback from it. And through machine learning, we can make those, um, those processes adapted right through machine learning. That's really what we're talking about in the fourth industrial revolution. And it is intrinsically connected to data and a data life cycle. And by the way, it's important, not just for a little bit of a slight issue. There we'll issue that, but it's important, not for technology sake, right? It's important because it actually drives very important business outcomes. First of all, falling, right? If you look at the cost of quality, even despite decades of, of, uh, companies and manufacturers moving to improve while its quality prompts still account to 20% of sales, right? So every fifth of what you meant or manufactured from a revenue perspective, you've got quality issues that are costing you a lot. Plant downtime, cost companies, $50 billion a year. >>So when we're talking about using data and these industry 4.0 types of use cases, connected data types of use cases, we're not doing it just narrowly to implement technology. We're doing it to move these from adverse, improving quality, reducing downtime. So let's talk about how a connected manufacturing data life cycle with what like, right. But so this is actually the business that cloud areas is in. Let's talk a little bit about that. So we call this manufacturing edge to AI. This is analytics, life something, and it starts with having your plants, right? Those plants are increasingly connected. As I said, sensor prices have come down two thirds over the last decade, right? And those sensors are connected over the internet. So suddenly we can collect all this data from your, um, manufacturing plants, and what do we want to be able to do? You know, we want to be able to collect it. >>We want to be able to analyze that data as it's coming across. Right? So, uh, in scream, right, we want to be able to analyze it and take intelligent real-time actions. Right? We might do some simple processing and filtering at the edge, but we really want to take real-time actions on that data. But, and this is the inference part of things, right? Taking that time. But this, the ability to take these real-time actions, um, is actually the result of a machine learning life cycle. I want to walk you through this, right? And it starts with, um, ingesting this data for the first time, putting it into our enterprise data lake, right? And that data lake enterprise data lake can be either within your data center or it could be in the cloud. You're going to, you're going to ingest that data. You're going to store it. >>You're going to enrich it with enterprise data sources. So now you'll have say sensor data and you'll have maintenance repair orders from your maintenance management systems. Right now you can start to think about do you're getting really nice data sets. You can start to say, Hey, which sensor values correlate to the need for machine maintenance, right? You start to see the data sets. They're becoming very compatible with machine learning, but so you bring these datasets together. You process that you align your time series data from your sensors to your timestamp data from your, um, you know, from your enterprise systems that your maintenance management system, as I mentioned, you know, once you've done that, we could put a query layer on top. So now we can start to do advanced analytics query across all these different types of data sets. But as I mentioned to you, and what's really important here is the fact that once you've stored one histories that say that you can build out those machine learning models I talked to you about earlier. >>So like I said, you can start to say, which sensor values drove the need of correlated to the need for equipment maintenance for my maintenance management systems, right? And then you can build out those models and say, Hey, here are the sensor values of the conditions that predict the need for maintenance. And once you understand that you can actually then build out those models, you deploy the models out to the edge where they will then work in that inference mode, that photographer, I will continuously sniff that data as it's coming and say, Hey, which are the, are we experiencing those conditions that, that predicted the need for maintenance? If so, let's take real-time action, right? Let's schedule a work order and equipment maintenance work order in the past, let's in the future, let's order the parts ahead of time before that a piece of equipment fails and allows us to be very, very proactive. >>So, you know, we have, this is a, one of the Mo the most popular use cases we're seeing in terms of connected, connected manufacturing. And we're working with many different, um, manufacturers around the world. I want to just highlight one of them. Cause I thought it's really interesting. This company is bought for Russia. And for SIA for ACA is the, um, is the, is the, um, the, uh, a supplier associated with out of France. They are huge, right? This is a multi-national automotive, um, parts and systems supplier. And as you can see, they operate in 300 sites in 35 countries. So very global, they connected 2000 machines, right. Um, I mean at once be able to take data from that. They started off with learning how to ingest the data. They started off very well with, um, you know, with, uh, manufacturing control towers, right? >>To be able to just monitor the data from coming in, you know, monitor the process. That was the first step, right. Uh, and you know, 2000 machines, 300 different variables, things like, um, vibration pressure temperature, right? So first let's do performance monitoring. Then they said, okay, let's start doing machine learning on some of these things, just start to build out things like equipment, um, predictive maintenance models, or compute. What they really focused on is computer vision while the inspection. So let's take pictures of, um, parts as they go through a process and then classify what that was this picture associated with the good or bad quality outcome. Then you teach the machine to make that decision on its own. So now, now the machine, the camera is doing the inspections for you. And so they both had those machine learning models. They took that data, all this data was on-prem, but they pushed that data up to the cloud to do the machine learning models, develop those machine learning models. >>Then they push the machine learning models back into the plants where they, where they could take real-time actions through these computer vision, quality inspections. So great use case. Um, great example of how you start with monitoring, move to machine learning, but at the end of the day, or improving quality and improving, um, uh, equipment uptime. And that is the goal of most manufacturers. So with that being said, um, I would like to say, if you want to learn some more, um, we've got a wealth of information on our website. You see the URL in front of you, please go, then you'll learn. There's a lot of information there in terms of the use cases that we're seeing in manufacturing and a lot more detail and a lot more talk about a lot more customers we'll work with. If you need that information, please do find it. Um, with that, I'm going to turn it over to Dave, to Steve. I think you had some questions you want to run by. >>I do, Michael, thank you very much for that. And before I get into the questions, I just wanted to sort of make some observations that was, you know, struck by what you're saying about the phases of industry. We talk about industry 4.0, and my observation is that, you know, traditionally, you know, machines have always replaced humans, but it's been around labor and, and the difference with 4.0, and what you talked about with connecting equipment is you're injecting machine intelligence. Now the camera inspection example, and then the machines are taking action, right? That's, that's different and, and is a really new kind of paradigm here. I think the, the second thing that struck me is, you know, the costs, you know, 20% of, of sales and plant downtime costing, you know, many tens of billions of dollars a year. Um, so that was huge. I mean, the business case for this is I'm going to reduce my expected loss quite dramatically. >>And then I think the third point, which we turned in the morning sessions, and the main stage is really this, the world is hybrid. Everybody's trying to figure out hybrid, get hybrid, right. And it certainly applies here. Uh, this is, this is a hybrid world you've got to accommodate, you know, regardless of where the data is, you've got to be able to get to it, blend it, enrich it, and then act on it. So anyway, those are my big, big takeaways. Um, so first question. So in thinking about implementing connected manufacturing initiatives, what are people going to run into? What are the big challenges that they're going to, they're going to hit? >>No, there's, there's there, there's a few of the, but I think, you know, one of the, uh, one of the key ones is bridging what we'll call the it and OT data divide, right. And what we mean by the it, you know, your, it systems are the ones, your ERP systems, your MES system, Freightos your transactional systems that run on relational databases and your it departments are brilliant at running on that, right? The difficulty becomes an implementing these use cases that you also have to deal with operational technology, right? And those are all of the, that's all the equipment in your manufacturing plant that runs on its proprietary network with proprietary pro protocols. That information can be very, very difficult to get to. Right? So, and it's uncertain, it's a much more unstructured than from your OT. So the key challenge is being able to bring these data sets together in a single place where you can start to do advanced analytics and leverage that diverse data to do machine learning. Right? So that is one of the, if I had to boil it down to the single hardest thing in this, uh, in this, in this type of environment, nectar manufacturing is that that operational technology has kind of run on its own in its own. And for a long time, the silos, the silos, a bound, but at the end of the day, this is incredibly valuable data that now can be tapped, um, um, to, to, to, to move those, those metrics we talked about right around quality and uptime. So a huge opportunity. >>Well, and again, this is a hybrid team and you, you've kind of got this world, that's going toward an equilibrium. You've got the OT side and, you know, pretty hardcore engineers. And we know, we know it. A lot of that data historically has been analog data. This is Chris now is getting, you know, instrumented and captured. Uh, and so you've got that, that cultural challenge and, you know, you got to blend those two worlds. That's critical. Okay. So Michael, let's talk about some of the use cases you touched on, on some, but let's peel the onion a bit when you're thinking about this world of connected manufacturing and analytics in that space, when you talk to customers, you know, what are the most common use cases that you see? >>Yeah, that's a great, that's a great question. And you're right. I did allude to a little bit earlier, but there really is. I want people to think about this, a spectrum of use cases ranging from simple to complex, but you can get value even in the simple phases. And when I talk about the simple use cases, the simplest use cases really is really around monitoring, right? So in this, you monitor your equipment or monitor your processes, right? And you just make sure that you're staying within the bounds of your control plan, right? And this is much easier to do now. Right? Cause some of these sensors are a more sensors and those sensors are moving more and more towards the internet types of technology. So, Hey, you've got the opportunity now to be able to do some monitoring. Okay. No machine learning, we're just talking about simple monitoring next level down. >>And we're seeing is something we would call quality event forensic announces. And now on this one, you say, imagine I'm got warranty plans in the, in the field, right? So I'm starting to see warranty claims kicked off on them. And what you simply want to be able to do is do the forensic analysis back to what was the root cause of within the manufacturing process that caused it. So this is about connecting the dots I've got, I've got warranty issues. What were the manufacturing conditions of the day that caused it? Then you could also say which other, which other products were impacted by those same conditions. And we call those proactively rather than, and, and selectively rather than say, um, recalling an entire year's fleet of a car. So, and that, again, also not machine learning is simply connecting the dots from a warranty claims in the field to the manufacturing conditions of the day so that you could take corrective actions, but then you get into a whole slew of machine learning use case, you know, and, and that ranges from things like quality or say yield optimization, where you start to collect sensor values and, um, manufacturing yield, uh, values from your ERP system. >>And you're certain start to say, which, um, you know, which map a sensor values or factors drove good or bad yield outcomes. And you can identify those factors that are the most important. So you, um, you, you measure those, you monitor those and you optimize those, right. That's how you optimize your, and then you go down to the more traditional machine learning use cases around predictive maintenance. So the key point here, Dave is, look, there's a huge, you know, depending on a customer's maturity around big data, you could start simply with monitoring, get a lot of value, start, then bring together more diverse datasets to do things like connect the.analytics then all and all the way then to, to, to the more advanced machine learning use cases this value to be had throughout. >>I remember when the, you know, the it industry really started to think about, or in the early days, you know, IOT and IOT. Um, it reminds me of when, you know, there was, uh, the, the old days of football field, we were grass and, and a new player would come in and he'd be perfectly white uniform and you had it. We had to get dirty as an industry, you know, it'll learn. And so, so my question relates to other technology partners that you might be working with that are maybe new in this space that, that to accelerate some of these solutions that we've been talking about. >>Yeah. That's a great question. I kind of, um, goes back to one of the things I alluded a little bit about earlier. We've got some great partners, a partner, for example, litmus automation, whose whole world is the OT world. And what they've done is for example, they built some adapters to be able to get to practically every industrial protocol. And they've said, Hey, we can do that. And then give a single interface of that data to the Idera data platform. So now, you know, we're really good at ingesting it data and things like that. We can leverage say a company like litmus that can open the flood gates of that OT data, making it much easier to get that data into our platform. And suddenly you've got all the data you need to, to implement those types of, um, industry 4.0, uh, analytics use cases. And it really boils down to, can I get to that? Can I break down that it OT, um, you know, uh, uh, barrier that we've always had and, and bring together those data sets that really move the needle in terms of improving manufacturing performance. >>Okay. Thank you for that last question. Speaking to moving the needle, I want to Lee lead this discussion on the technology advances. I'd love to talk tech here. Uh, what are the key technology enablers and advancers, if you will, that are going to move connected manufacturing and machine learning forward in this transportation space. Sorry. Manufacturing in >>Factor space. Yeah, I know in the manufacturing space, there's a few things, first of all, I think the fact that obviously I know we touched upon this, the fact that sensor prices have come down and it had become ubiquitous that number one, we can w we're finally been able to get to the OT data, right? That's that's number one, number, number two, I think, you know, um, we, we have the ability that now to be able to store that data a whole lot more efficiently, you know, we've got, we've got great capabilities to be able to do that, to put it over into the cloud, to do the machine learning types of workloads. You've got things like if you're doing computer vision, while in analyst respect GPU's to make those machine learning models much more, um, much more effective, if that 5g technology that starts to blur at least from a latency perspective where you do your computer, whether it be on the edge or in the cloud, you've, you've got more, you know, super business critical stuff. >>You probably don't want to rely on, uh, any type of network connection, but from a latency perspective, you're starting to see, uh, you know, the ability to do compute where it's the most effective now. And that's really important. And again, the machine learning capabilities, and they believed the book, bullet, uh, GP, you know, GPU level, machine learning, all that, those models, and then deployed by over the air updates to your equipment. All of those things are making this, um, there's, you know, there's the advanced analytics and machine learning, uh, data life cycle just faster and better. And at the end of the day, to your point, Dave, that equipment and processes are getting much smarter, uh, very much more quickly. >>Yep. We've got a lot of data and we have way lower costs, uh, processing platforms I'll throw in NP use as well. Watch that space neural processing units. Okay. Michael, we're going to leave it there. Thank you so much. Really appreciate your time, >>Dave. I really appreciate it. And thanks. Thanks for, uh, for everybody who joined. Uh, thanks. Thanks for joining today. Yes. Thank you for watching. Keep it right there.
SUMMARY :
When you do the math, that's really quite obvious when the system is down, productivity is lost and it hits revenue and the bottom Thank you so much. So every fifth of what you meant or manufactured from a revenue perspective, And those sensors are connected over the internet. I want to walk you through those machine learning models I talked to you about earlier. And then you can build out those models and say, Hey, here are the sensor values of the conditions And as you can see, they operate in 300 sites To be able to just monitor the data from coming in, you know, monitor the process. And that is the goal of most manufacturers. I think the, the second thing that struck me is, you know, the costs, you know, 20% of, And then I think the third point, which we turned in the morning sessions, and the main stage is really this, And what we mean by the it, you know, your, it systems are the ones, So Michael, let's talk about some of the use cases you touched on, on some, And you just make sure that you're staying within the bounds of your control plan, And now on this one, you say, imagine I'm got warranty plans in the, in the field, And you can identify those factors that I remember when the, you know, the it industry really started to think about, or in the early days, litmus that can open the flood gates of that OT data, making it much easier to if you will, that are going to move connected manufacturing and machine learning forward that data a whole lot more efficiently, you know, we've got, we've got great capabilities to be able to do that, And at the end of the day, to your point, Dave, that equipment and processes are getting much smarter, Thank you so much. Thank you for watching.
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Mark Roberge, Stage 2 Capital & Paul Fifield, Sales Impact Academy | CUBEconversation
(gentle upbeat music) >> People hate to be sold, but they love to buy. We become what we think about, think, and grow rich. If you want to gather honey, don't kick over the beehive. The world is replete with time-tested advice and motivational ideas for aspiring salespeople, Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill, Norman Vincent Peale, Earl Nightingale, and many others have all published classics with guidance that when followed closely, almost always leads to success. More modern personalities have emerged in the internet era, like Tony Robbins, and Gary Vaynerchuk, and Angela Duckworth. But for the most part, they've continued to rely on book publishing, seminars, and high value consulting to peddle their insights and inspire action. Welcome to this video exclusive on theCUBE. This is Dave Vellante, and I'm pleased to welcome back Professor Mark Roberge, who is one of the Managing Directors at Stage 2 Capital, and Paul Fifield, who's the CEO and Co-Founder of Sales Impact Academy. Gentlemen, welcome. Great to see you. >> You too Dave and thanks. >> All right, let's get right into it. Paul, you guys are announcing today a $4 million financing round. It comprises $3 million in a seed round led by Stage 2 and a million dollar in debt financing. So, first of all, congratulations. Paul, why did you start Sales Impact Academy? >> Cool, well, I think my background is sort of two times CRO, so I've built two reasonably successful companies. Built a hundred plus person teams. And so I've got kind of this firsthand experience of having to learn literally everything on the job whilst delivering these very kind of rapid, like achieving these very rapid growth targets. And so when I came out of those two journeys, I literally just started doing some voluntary teaching in and around London where I now live. I spend a bunch of time over in New York, and literally started this because I wanted to sort of kind of give back, but just really wanted to start helping people who were just really, really struggling in high pressure environments. And that's both leadership from sense of revenue leadership people, right down to sort of frontline SDRs. And I think as I started just doing this voluntary teaching, I kind of realized that actually the sort of global education system has done is a massive, massive disservice, right? I actually call it the greatest educational travesty of the last 50 years, where higher education has entirely overlooked sales as a profession. And the knock-on consequences of that have been absolutely disastrous for our profession. Partly that the profession is seen as a bit sort of embarrassing to be a part of. You kind of like go get a sales job if you can't get a degree. But more than that, the core fundamental within revenue teams and within sales people is now completely lacking 'cause there's no structured formal kind of like learning out there. So that's really the problem we're trying to solve on the kind of like the skill side. >> Great. Okay. And mark, always good to have you on, and I got to ask you. So even though, I know this is the wheelhouse for you and your partners, and of course, you've got a deep bench of LPs, but lay out the investment thesis here. What's the core problem that you saw and how are you looking at the market? >> Yeah, sure, Dave. So this one was a special one for me. We've spoken in the past. I mean, just personally I've always had a similar passion to Paul that it's amazing how important sales execution is to all companies, nevermind just the startup ecosystem. And I've always personally been motivated by anything that can help the startup ecosystem increase their success. Part of why I teach at Harvard and try to change some of the stuff that Paul's talking about, which is like, it's amazing how little education is done around sales. But in this particular one, not only personally was I excited about, but from a fun perspective, we've got to look at the economic outcomes. And we've been thinking a lot about the sales tech stack. It's evolved a ton in the last couple of decades. We've gone from the late '90s where every sales VP was just, they had a thing called the CRM that none of their reps even used, right? And we've come so far in 20 years, we've got all these amazing tools that help us cold call, that help us send emails efficiently and automatically and track everything, but nothing's really happened on the education side. And that's really the enormous gap that we've seen is, these organizations being much more proactive around adopting technology that can prove sales execution, but nothing on the education side. And the other piece that we saw is, it's almost like all these companies are reinventing the wheel of looking in the upcoming year, having a dozen sales people to hire, and trying to put together a sales enablement program within their organization to teach salespeople sales 101. Like how to find a champion, how to develop a budget, how to develop sense of urgency. And what Paul and team can do in the first phase of essay, is can sort of centralize that, so that all of these organizations can benefit from the best content and the best instructors for their team. >> So Paul, exactly, thank you, mark. Exactly what do you guys do? What do you sell? I'm curious, is this sort of, I'm thinking in my head, is this E-learning, is it really part of the sales stack? Maybe you could help us understand that better. >> Well, I think this problem of having to upscale teams has been around like forever. And kind of going back to the kind of education problem, it's what's wild is that we would never accept this of our lawyers, our accountants, or HR professionals. Imagine like someone in your finance team arriving on day one and they're searching YouTube to try and work out how to like put a balance sheet together. So it's a chronic, chronic problem. And so the way that we're addressing this, and I think the problem is well understood, but there's always been a terrible market, sort of product market fit for how the problem gets solved. So as mark was saying, typically it's in-house revenue leaders who themselves have got massive gaps in their knowledge, hack together some internal learning that is just pretty poor, 'cause it's not really their skillset. The other alternative is bringing in really expensive consultants, but they're consultants with a very single worldview and the complexity of a modern revenue organization is very, very high these days. And so one consultant is not going to really kind of like cover every topic you need. And then there's the kind of like fairly old fashioned sales training companies that just come in, one big hit, super expensive and then sort of leave again. So the sort of product market fit to solve, has always been a bit pretty bad. So what we've done is we've created a subscription model. We've essentially productized skills development. The way that we've done that is we teach live instruction. So one of the big challenges Andreessen Horowitz put a post out around this so quite recently, one of the big problems of online learning is that this kind of huge repository of online learning, which puts all the onus on the learner to have the discipline to go through these courses and consume them in an on-demand way is actually they're pretty ineffective. We see sort of completion rates of like 7 to 8%. So we've always gone from a live instruction model. So the sort of ingredients are the absolute very best people in the world in their very specific skill teaching live classes just two hours per week. So we're not overwhelming the learners who are already in work, and they have targets, and they've got a lot of pressure. And we have courses that last maybe four to like 12 hours over two to sort of six to seven weeks. So highly practical live instruction. We have 70, 80, sometimes even 90% completion rates of the sort of live class experience, and then teams then rapidly put that best practice into practice and see amazing results in things like top of funnel, or conversion, or retention. >> So live is compulsory and I presume on-demand? If you want to refresh you have an on demand option? >> Yeah, everything's recorded, so you can kind of catch up on a class if you've missed it, But that live instruction is powerful because it's kind of in your calendar, right? So you show up. But the really powerful thing, actually, is that entire teams within companies can actually learn at exactly the same pace. So we teach it eight o'clock Pacific, 11 o'clock Eastern, >> 4: 00 PM in the UK, and 5:00 PM Europe. So your entire European and North American teams can literally learn in the same class with a world-class expert, like a Mark, or like a Kevin Dorsey, or like Greg Holmes from Zoom. And you're learning from these incredible people. Class finishes, teams can come back together, talk about this incredible best practice they've just learned, and then immediately put it into practice. And that's where we're seeing these incredible, kind of almost instant impact on performance at real scale. >> So, Mark, in thinking about your investment, you must've been thinking about, okay, how do we scale this thing? You've got an instructor component, you've got this live piece. How are you thinking about that at scale? >> Yeah, there's a lot of different business model options there. And I actually think multiple of them are achievable in the longer term. That's something we've been working with Paul quite a bit, is like, they're all quite compelling. So just trying to think about which two to start with. But I think you've seen a lot of this in education models today. Is a mixture of on-demand with prerecorded. And so I think that will be the starting point. And I think from a scalability standpoint, we were also, we don't always try to do this with our investments, but clearly our LP base or limited partner base was going to be a key ingredient to at least the first cycle of this business. You know, our VC firm's backed by over 250 CRO CMOs heads of customer success, all of which are prospective instructors, prospective content developers, and prospective customers. So that was a little nicety around the scale and investment thesis for this one. >> And what's in it for them? I mean, they get paid. Obviously, you have a stake in the game, but what's in it for the instructors. They get paid on a sort of a per course basis? How does that model work? >> Yeah, we have a development fee for each kind of hour of teaching that gets created So we've mapped out a pretty significant curriculum. And we have about 250 hours of life teaching now already written. We actually think it's going to be about 3000 hours of learning before you get even close to a complete curriculum for every aspect of a revenue organization from revenue operations, to customer success, to marketing, to sales, to leadership, and management. But we have a development fee per class, and we have a teaching fee as well. >> Yeah, so, I mean, I think you guys, it's really an underserved market, and then when you think about it, most organizations, they just don't invest in training. And so, I mean, I would think you'd want to take it, I don't know what the right number is, 5, 10% of your sales budget and actually put it on this and the return would be enormous. How do you guys think about the market size? Like I said before, is it E-learning, is it part of the CRM stack? How do you size this market? >> Well, I think for us it's service to people. A highly skilled sales rep with an email address, a phone and a spreadsheet would do really well, okay? You don't need this world-class tech stack to do well in sales. You need the skills to be able to do the job. But the reverse, that's not true, right? An unskilled person with a world-class tech stack won't do well. And so fundamentally, the skill level of your team is the number one most important thing to get right to be successful in revenue. But as I said before, the product market for it to solve that problem, has been pretty terrible. So we see ourselves 100%. And so if you're looking at like a com, you look at Gong, who we've just signed as a customer, which is fantastic. Gong has a technology that helps salespeople do better through call recording. You have Outreach, who is also a customer. They have technologies that help SDRs be more efficient in outreach. And now you have Sales Impact Academy, and we help with skills development of your team, of the entirety of your revenue function. So we absolutely see ourselves as a key part of that stack. In terms of the TAM, 60 million people in sales are on, according to LinkedIn. You're probably talking 150 million people in go to market to include all of the different roles. 50% of the world's companies are B2B. The TAM is huge. But what blows my mind, and this kind of goes back to this why the global education system has overlooked this because essentially if half the world's companies are B2B, that's probably a proxy for the half of the world's GDP, Half of the world's economic growth is relying on the revenue function of half the world's companies, and they don't really know what they're doing, (laughs) which is absolutely staggering. And if we can solve that in a meaningfully meaningful way at massive scale, then the impact should be absolutely enormous. >> So, Mark, no lack of TAM. I know that you guys at Stage 2, you're also very much focused on the metrics. You have a fundamental philosophy that your product market fit and retention should come before hyper growth. So what were the metrics that enticed you to make this investment? >> Yeah, it's a good question, Dave, 'cause that's where we always look first, which I think is a little different than most early stage investors. There's a big, I guess, meme, triple, triple, double, double that's popular in Silicon Valley these days, which refers to triple your revenue in year one, triple your revenue in year two, double in year three, and four, and five. And that type of a hyper growth is critical, but it's often jumped too quickly in our opinion. That there's a premature victory called on product market fit, which kills a larger percentage of businesses than is necessary. And so with all our investments, we look very heavily first at user engagement, any early indicators of user retention. And the numbers were just off the charts for SIA in terms of the customers, in terms of the NPS scores that they were getting on their sessions, in terms of the completion rate on their courses, in terms of the customers that started with a couple of seats and expanded to more seats once they got a taste of the program. So that's where we look first as a strong foundation to build a scalable business, and it was off the charts positive for SIA. >> So how about the competition? If I Google sales training software, I'll get like dozens of companies. Lessonly, and MindTickle, or Brainshark will come up, that's not really a fit. So how do you think about the competition? How are you different? >> Yeah, well, one thing we try and avoid is any reference to sales training, 'cause that really sort of speaks to this very old kind of fashioned way of doing this. And I actually think that from a pure pedagogy perspective, so from a pure learning design perspective, the old fashioned way of doing sales training was pull a whole team off site, usually in a really terrible hotel with no windows for a day or two. And that's it, that's your learning experience. And that's not how human beings learn, right? So just even if the content was fantastic, the learning experience was so terrible, it was just very kind of ineffective. So we sort of avoid kind of like sales training, The likes of MindTickle, we're actually talking to them at the moment about a partnership there. They're a platform play, and we're certainly building a platform, but we're very much about the live instruction and creating the biggest curriculum and the broadest curriculum on the internet, in the world, basically, for revenue teams. So the competition is kind of interesting 'cause there is not really a direct subscription-based live like learning offering out there. There's some similar ish companies. I honestly think at the moment it's kind of status quo. We're genuinely creating a new category of in-work learning for revenue teams. And so we're in this kind of semi and sort of evangelical sort of phase. So really, status quo is one of the biggest sort of competitors. But if you think about some of those old, old fashioned sort of Miller Heimans, and then perhaps even like Sandlers, there's an analogy perhaps here, which is kind of interesting, which is a little bit like Siebel and Salesforce in the sort of late '90s, where in Siebel you have this kind of old way of doing things. It was a little bit ineffective. It was really expensive. Not accessible to a huge space of the market. And Salesforce came along and said, "Hey, we're going to create this cool thing. It's going to be through the browser, it's going to be accessible to everyone, and it's going to be really, really effective." And so there's some really kind of interesting parallels almost between like Siebel and Salesforce and what we're doing to completely kind of upend the sort of the old fashioned way of delivering sort of sales training, if you like. >> And your target customer profile is, you're selling to teams, right? B2B teams, right? It's not for individuals. Is that correct, Paul? >> Currently. Yeah, yeah. So currently we've got a big foothold in series A to series B. So broadly speaking out, our target market currently is really fast growth technology companies. That's the sector that we're really focusing on. We've got a very good strong foothold in series A series B companies. We've now won some much larger later stage companies. We've actually even won a couple of corporates, I can't say names yet, but names that are very, very, very familiar and we're incredibly excited by them, which could end up being thousand plus seat deals 'cause we do this on a per seat basis. But yeah, very much at the moment it's fast growth tech companies, and we're sort of moving up the chain towards enterprise. >> And how do you deal with the sort of maturity curve, if you will, of your students? You've got some that are brand new, just fresh out of school. You've got others that are more seasoned. What do you do, pop them into different points of the curriculum? How do you handle it? >> Yeah we have, I'll say we have about 30 courses right now. We have about another 15 in development where post this fundraise, we want to be able to get to around about 20 courses that we're developing every quarter and getting out to market. So we're literally, we've sort of identified about 20 to 25 key roles across everything within revenue. That's, let's say revenue ops, customer success, account management, sales, engineering, all these different kinds of roles. And we are literally plotting the sort of skills development for these individuals over multiple, multiple years. And I think what we've never ceases to amaze me is actually the breadth of learning in revenue is absolutely enormous. And what kind of just makes you laugh is, this is all of this knowledge that we're now creating it's what companies just hope that their teams somehow acquire through osmosis, through blogs, through events. And it's just kind of crazy that there is... It's absolutely insane that we don't already exist, basically. >> And if I understand it correctly, just from looking at your website, you've got the entry level package. I think it's up to 15 seats, and then you scale up from there, correct? Is it sort of as a seat-based license model? >> Yeah, it's a seat-based model, as Mark mentioned. In some cases we sell, let's say 20 or $30,000 deal out the gate and that's most of the team. That will be maybe a series A, series B deal, but then we've got these land and expand models that are working tremendously well. We have seven, eight customers in Q1 that have doubled their spend Q2. That's the impact that they're seeing. And our net revenue retention number for Q2 is looking like it's going to be 177% to think exceeds companies like Snowflakes. Well, our underlying retention metrics, because people are seeing this incredible impact on teams and performance, is really, really strong. >> That's a nice metric compare with Snowflake (Paul laughs) It's all right. (Dave and Paul laugh) >> So, Mark, this is a larger investment for Stage 2 You guys have been growing and sort of upping your game. And maybe talk about that a little bit. >> Yeah, we're in the middle of Fund II right now. So, Fund I was in 2018. We were doing smaller checks. It was our first time out of the gate. The mission has really taken of, our LP base has really taken off. And so this deal looks a lot like more like our second fund. We'll actually make an announcement in a few weeks now that we've closed that out. But it's a much larger fund and our first investments should be in that 2 to $3 million range. >> Hey, Paul, what are you going to do with the money? What are the use of funds? >> Put it on black, (chuckles) we're going to like- (Dave laughs) >> Saratoga is open. (laughs) (Mark laughs) >> We're going to, look, the curriculum development for us is absolutely everything, but we're also going to be investing in building our own technology platform as well. And there are some other really important aspects to the kind of overall offering. We're looking at building an assessment tool so we can actually kind of like start to assess skills across teams. We certify every course has an exam, so we want to get more robust around the certification as well, because we're hoping that our certification becomes the global standard in understanding for the first time in the industry what individual competencies and skills people have, which will be huge. So we have a broad range of things that we want to start initiating now. But I just wanted to quickly say Stage 2 has been nothing short of incredible in every kind of which way. Of course, this investment, the fit is kind of insane, but the LPs have been extraordinary in helping. We've got a huge number of them are now customers very quickly. Mark and the team are helping enormously on our own kind of like go to market and metrics. I've been doing this for 20 years. I've raised over 100 million myself in venture capital. I've never known a venture capital firm with such value add like ever, or even heard of other people getting the kind of value add that we're getting. So I just wanted to a quick shout out for Stage 2. >> Quite a testimony of you guys. Definitely Stage 2 punches above its weight. Guys, we'll leave it there. Thanks so much for coming on. Good luck and we'll be watching. Appreciate your time. >> Thanks, Dave. >> Thank you very much. >> All right, thank you everybody for watching this Cube conversation. This is Dave Vellante, and we'll see you next time.
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emerged in the internet era, So, first of all, congratulations. of the last 50 years, And mark, always good to have you on, And the other piece that we saw is, really part of the sales stack? And so the way that we're addressing this, But the really powerful thing, actually, 4: 00 PM in the UK, and 5:00 PM Europe. How are you thinking about that at scale? in the longer term. of a per course basis? We actually think it's going to be and the return would be enormous. of the entirety of your revenue function. focused on the metrics. And the numbers were just So how about the competition? So just even if the content was fantastic, And your target customer profile is, That's the sector that of the curriculum? And it's just kind of and then you scale up from there, correct? That's the impact that they're seeing. (Dave and Paul laugh) And maybe talk about that a little bit. should be in that 2 to $3 million range. Saratoga is open. Mark and the team are helping enormously Quite a testimony of you guys. All right, thank you
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The New Data Equation: Leveraging Cloud-Scale Data to Innovate in AI, CyberSecurity, & Life Sciences
>> Hi, I'm Natalie Ehrlich and welcome to the AWS startup showcase presented by The Cube. We have an amazing lineup of great guests who will share their insights on the latest innovations and solutions and leveraging cloud scale data in AI, security and life sciences. And now we're joined by the co-founders and co-CEOs of The Cube, Dave Vellante and John Furrier. Thank you gentlemen for joining me. >> Hey Natalie. >> Hey Natalie. >> How are you doing. Hey John. >> Well, I'd love to get your insights here, let's kick it off and what are you looking forward to. >> Dave, I think one of the things that we've been doing on the cube for 11 years is looking at the signal in the marketplace. I wanted to focus on this because AI is cutting across all industries. So we're seeing that with cybersecurity and life sciences, it's the first time we've had a life sciences track in the showcase, which is amazing because it shows that growth of the cloud scale. So I'm super excited by that. And I think that's going to showcase some new business models and of course the keynotes Ali Ghodsi, who's the CEO Data bricks pushing a billion dollars in revenue, clear validation that startups can go from zero to a billion dollars in revenues. So that should be really interesting. And of course the top venture capitalists coming in to talk about what the enterprise dynamics are all about. And what about you, Dave? >> You know, I thought it was an interesting mix and choice of startups. When you think about, you know, AI security and healthcare, and I've been thinking about that. Healthcare is the perfect industry, it is ripe for disruption. If you think about healthcare, you know, we all complain how expensive it is not transparent. There's a lot of discussion about, you know, can everybody have equal access that certainly with COVID the staff is burned out. There's a real divergence and diversity of the quality of healthcare and you know, it all results in patients not being happy, and I mean, if you had to do an NPS score on the patients and healthcare will be pretty low, John, you know. So when I think about, you know, AI and security in the context of healthcare in cloud, I ask questions like when are machines going to be able to better meet or make better diagnoses than doctors? And that's starting. I mean, it's really in assistance putting into play today. But I think when you think about cheaper and more accurate image analysis, when you think about the overall patient experience and trust and personalized medicine, self-service, you know, remote medicine that we've seen during the COVID pandemic, disease tracking, language translation, I mean, there are so many things where the cloud and data, and then it can help. And then at the end of it, it's all about, okay, how do I authenticate? How do I deal with privacy and personal information and tamper resistance? And that's where the security play comes in. So it's a very interesting mix of startups. I think that I'm really looking forward to hearing from... >> You know Natalie one of the things we talked about, some of these companies, Dave, we've talked a lot of these companies and to me the business model innovations that are coming out of two factors, the pandemic is kind of coming to an end so that accelerated and really showed who had the right stuff in my opinion. So you were either on the wrong side or right side of history when it comes to the pandemic and as we look back, as we come out of it with clear growth in certain companies and certain companies that adopted let's say cloud. And the other one is cloud scale. So the focus of these startup showcases is really to focus on how startups can align with the enterprise buyers and create the new kind of refactoring business models to go from, you know, a re-pivot or refactoring to more value. And the other thing that's interesting is that the business model isn't just for the good guys. If you look at say ransomware, for instance, the business model of hackers is gone completely amazing too. They're kicking it but in terms of revenue, they have their own they're well-funded machines on how to extort cash from companies. So there's a lot of security issues around the business model as well. So to me, the business model innovation with cloud-scale tech, with the pandemic forcing function, you've seen a lot of new kinds of decision-making in enterprises. You seeing how enterprise buyers are changing their decision criteria, and frankly their existing suppliers. So if you're an old guard supplier, you're going to be potentially out because if you didn't deliver during the pandemic, this is the issue that everyone's talking about. And it's kind of not publicized in the press very much, but this is actually happening. >> Well thank you both very much for joining me to kick off our AWS startup showcase. Now we're going to go to our very special guest Ali Ghodsi and John Furrier will seat with him for a fireside chat and Dave and I will see you on the other side. >> Okay, Ali great to see you. Thanks for coming on our AWS startup showcase, our second edition, second batch, season two, whatever we want to call it it's our second version of this new series where we feature, you know, the hottest startups coming out of the AWS ecosystem. And you're one of them, I've been there, but you're not a startup anymore, you're here pushing serious success on the revenue side and company. Congratulations and great to see you. >> Likewise. Thank you so much, good to see you again. >> You know I remember the first time we chatted on The Cube, you weren't really doing much software revenue, you were really talking about the new revolution in data. And you were all in on cloud. And I will say that from day one, you were always adamant that it was cloud cloud scale before anyone was really talking about it. And at that time it was on premises with Hadoop and those kinds of things. You saw that early. I remember that conversation, boy, that bet paid out great. So congratulations. >> Thank you so much. >> So I've got to ask you to jump right in. Enterprises are making decisions differently now and you are an example of that company that has gone from literally zero software sales to pushing a billion dollars as it's being reported. Certainly the success of Data bricks has been written about, but what's not written about is the success of how you guys align with the changing criteria for the enterprise customer. Take us through that and these companies here are aligning the same thing and enterprises want to change. They want to be in the right side of history. What's the success formula? >> Yeah. I mean, basically what we always did was look a few years out, the how can we help these enterprises, future proof, what they're trying to achieve, right? They have, you know, 30 years of legacy software and, you know baggage, and they have compliance and regulations, how do we help them move to the future? So we try to identify those kinds of secular trends that we think are going to maybe you see them a little bit right now, cloud was one of them, but it gets more and more and more. So we identified those and there were sort of three or four of those that we kind of latched onto. And then every year the passes, we're a little bit more right. Cause it's a secular trend in the market. And then eventually, it becomes a force that you can't kind of fight anymore. >> Yeah. And I just want to put a plug for your clubhouse talks with Andreessen Horowitz. You're always on clubhouse talking about, you know, I won't say the killer instinct, but being a CEO in a time where there's so much change going on, you're constantly under pressure. It's a lonely job at the top, I know that, but you've made some good calls. What was some of the key moments that you can point to, where you were like, okay, the wave is coming in now, we'd better get on it. What were some of those key decisions? Cause a lot of these startups want to be in your position, and a lot of buyers want to take advantage of the technology that's coming. They got to figure it out. What was some of those key inflection points for you? >> So if you're just listening to what everybody's saying, you're going to miss those trends. So then you're just going with the stream. So, Juan you mentioned that cloud. Cloud was a thing at the time, we thought it's going to be the thing that takes over everything. Today it's actually multi-cloud. So multi-cloud is a thing, it's more and more people are thinking, wow, I'm paying a lot's to the cloud vendors, do I want to buy more from them or do I want to have some optionality? So that's one. Two, open. They're worried about lock-in, you know, lock-in has happened for many, many decades. So they want open architectures, open source, open standards. So that's the second one that we bet on. The third one, which you know, initially wasn't sort of super obvious was AI and machine learning. Now it's super obvious, everybody's talking about it. But when we started, it was kind of called artificial intelligence referred to robotics, and machine learning wasn't a term that people really knew about. Today, it's sort of, everybody's doing machine learning and AI. So betting on those future trends, those secular trends as we call them super critical. >> And one of the things that I want to get your thoughts on is this idea of re-platforming versus refactoring. You see a lot being talked about in some of these, what does that even mean? It's people trying to figure that out. Re-platforming I get the cloud scale. But as you look at the cloud benefits, what do you say to customers out there and enterprises that are trying to use the benefits of the cloud? Say data for instance, in the middle of how could they be thinking about refactoring? And how can they make a better selection on suppliers? I mean, how do you know it used to be RFP, you deliver these speeds and feeds and you get selected. Now I think there's a little bit different science and methodology behind it. What's your thoughts on this refactoring as a buyer? What do I got to do? >> Well, I mean let's start with you said RFP and so on. Times have changed. Back in the day, you had to kind of sign up for something and then much later you're going to get it. So then you have to go through this arduous process. In the cloud, would pay us to go model elasticity and so on. You can kind of try your way to it. You can try before you buy. And you can use more and more. You can gradually, you don't need to go in all in and you know, say we commit to 50,000,000 and six months later to find out that wow, this stuff has got shelf where it doesn't work. So that's one thing that has changed it's beneficial. But the second thing is, don't just mimic what you had on prem in the cloud. So that's what this refactoring is about. If you had, you know, Hadoop data lake, now you're just going to have an S3 data lake. If you had an on-prem data warehouse now you just going to have a cloud data warehouse. You're just repeating what you did on prem in the cloud, architected for the future. And you know, for us, the most important thing that we say is that this lake house paradigm is a cloud native way of organizing your data. That's different from how you would do things on premises. So think through what's the right way of doing it in the cloud. Don't just try to copy paste what you had on premises in the cloud. >> It's interesting one of the things that we're observing and I'd love to get your reaction to this. Dave a lot** and I have been reporting on it is, two personas in the enterprise are changing their organization. One is I call IT ops or there's an SRE role developing. And the data teams are being dismantled and being kind of sprinkled through into other teams is this notion of data, pipelining being part of workflows, not just the department. Are you seeing organizational shifts in how people are organizing their resources, their human resources to take advantage of say that the data problems that are need to being solved with machine learning and whatnot and cloud-scale? >> Yeah, absolutely. So you're right. SRE became a thing, lots of DevOps people. It was because when the cloud vendors launched their infrastructure as a service to stitch all these things together and get it all working you needed a lot of devOps people. But now things are maturing. So, you know, with vendors like Data bricks and other multi-cloud vendors, you can actually get much higher level services where you don't need to necessarily have lots of lots of DevOps people that are themselves trying to stitch together lots of services to make this work. So that's one trend. But secondly, you're seeing more data teams being sort of completely ubiquitous in these organizations. Before it used to be you have one data team and then we'll have data and AI and we'll be done. ' It's a one and done. But that's not how it works. That's not how Google, Facebook, Twitter did it, they had data throughout the organization. Every BU was empowered. It's sales, it's marketing, it's finance, it's engineering. So how do you embed all those data teams and make them actually run fast? And you know, there's this concept of a data mesh which is super important where you can actually decentralize and enable all these teams to focus on their domains and run super fast. And that's really enabled by this Lake house paradigm in the cloud that we're talking about. Where you're open, you're basing it on open standards. You have flexibility in the data types and how they're going to store their data. So you kind of provide a lot of that flexibility, but at the same time, you have sort of centralized governance for it. So absolutely things are changing in the market. >> Well, you're just the professor, the masterclass right here is amazing. Thanks for sharing that insight. You're always got to go out of date and that's why we have you on here. You're amazing, great resource for the community. Ransomware is a huge problem, it's now the government's focus. We're being attacked and we don't know where it's coming from. This business models around cyber that's expanding rapidly. There's real revenue behind it. There's a data problem. It's not just a security problem. So one of the themes in all of these startup showcases is data is ubiquitous in the value propositions. One of them is ransomware. What's your thoughts on ransomware? Is it a data problem? Does cloud help? Some are saying that cloud's got better security with ransomware, then say on premise. What's your vision of how you see this ransomware problem being addressed besides the government taking over? >> Yeah, that's a great question. Let me start by saying, you know, we're a data company, right? And if you say you're a data company, you might as well just said, we're a privacy company, right? It's like some people say, well, what do you think about privacy? Do you guys even do privacy? We're a data company. So yeah, we're a privacy company as well. Like you can't talk about data without talking about privacy. With every customer, with every enterprise. So that's obviously top of mind for us. I do think that in the cloud, security is much better because, you know, vendors like us, we're investing so much resources into security and making sure that we harden the infrastructure and, you know, by actually having all of this infrastructure, we can monitor it, detect if something is, you know, an attack is happening, and we can immediately sort of stop it. So that's different from when it's on prem, you have kind of like the separated duties where the software vendor, which would have been us, doesn't really see what's happening in the data center. So, you know, there's an IT team that didn't develop the software is responsible for the security. So I think things are much better now. I think we're much better set up, but of course, things like cryptocurrencies and so on are making it easier for people to sort of hide. There decentralized networks. So, you know, the attackers are getting more and more sophisticated as well. So that's definitely something that's super important. It's super top of mind. We're all investing heavily into security and privacy because, you know, that's going to be super critical going forward. >> Yeah, we got to move that red line, and figure that out and get more intelligence. Decentralized trends not going away it's going to be more of that, less of the centralized. But centralized does come into play with data. It's a mix, it's not mutually exclusive. And I'll get your thoughts on this. Architectural question with, you know, 5G and the edge coming. Amazon's got that outpost stringent, the wavelength, you're seeing mobile world Congress coming up in this month. The focus on processing data at the edge is a huge issue. And enterprises are now going to be commercial part of that. So architecture decisions are being made in enterprises right now. And this is a big issue. So you mentioned multi-cloud, so tools versus platforms. Now I'm an enterprise buyer and there's no more RFPs. I got all this new choices for startups and growing companies to choose from that are cloud native. I got all kinds of new challenges and opportunities. How do I build my architecture so I don't foreclose a future opportunity. >> Yeah, as I said, look, you're actually right. Cloud is becoming even more and more something that everybody's adopting, but at the same time, there is this thing that the edge is also more and more important. And the connectivity between those two and making sure that you can really do that efficiently. My ask from enterprises, and I think this is top of mind for all the enterprise architects is, choose open because that way you can avoid locking yourself in. So that's one thing that's really, really important. In the past, you know, all these vendors that locked you in, and then you try to move off of them, they were highly innovative back in the day. In the 80's and the 90's, there were the best companies. You gave them all your data and it was fantastic. But then because you were locked in, they didn't need to innovate anymore. And you know, they focused on margins instead. And then over time, the innovation stopped and now you were kind of locked in. So I think openness is really important. I think preserving optionality with multi-cloud because we see the different clouds have different strengths and weaknesses and it changes over time. All right. Early on AWS was the only game that either showed up with much better security, active directory, and so on. Now Google with AI capabilities, which one's going to win, which one's going to be better. Actually, probably all three are going to be around. So having that optionality that you can pick between the three and then artificial intelligence. I think that's going to be the key to the future. You know, you asked about security earlier. That's how people detect zero day attacks, right? You ask about the edge, same thing there, that's where the predictions are going to happen. So make sure that you invest in AI and artificial intelligence very early on because it's not something you can just bolt on later on and have a little data team somewhere that then now you have AI and it's one and done. >> All right. Great insight. I've got to ask you, the folks may or may not know, but you're a professor at Berkeley as well, done a lot of great work. That's where you kind of came out of when Data bricks was formed. And the Berkeley basically was it invented distributed computing back in the 80's. I remember I was breaking in when Unix was proprietary, when software wasn't open you actually had the deal that under the table to get code. Now it's all open. Isn't the internet now with distributed computing and how interconnects are happening. I mean, the internet didn't break during the pandemic, which proves the benefit of the internet. And that's a positive. But as you start seeing edge, it's essentially distributed computing. So I got to ask you from a computer science standpoint. What do you see as the key learnings or connect the dots for how this distributed model will work? I see hybrids clearly, hybrid cloud is clearly the operating model but if you take it to the next level of distributed computing, what are some of the key things that you look for in the next five years as this starts to be completely interoperable, obviously software is going to drive a lot of it. What's your vision on that? >> Yeah, I mean, you know, so Berkeley, you're right for the gigs, you know, there was a now project 20, 30 years ago that basically is how we do things. There was a project on how you search in the very early on with Inktomi that became how Google and everybody else to search today. So workday was super, super early, sometimes way too early. And that was actually the mistake. Was that they were so early that people said that that stuff doesn't work. And then 20 years later you were invented. So I think 2009, Berkeley published just above the clouds saying the cloud is the future. At that time, most industry leaders said, that's just, you know, that doesn't work. Today, recently they published a research paper called, Sky Computing. So sky computing is what you get above the clouds, right? So we have the cloud as the future, the next level after that is the sky. That's one on top of them. That's what multi-cloud is. So that's a lot of the research at Berkeley, you know, into distributed systems labs is about this. And we're excited about that. Then we're one of the sky computing vendors out there. So I think you're going to see much more innovation happening at the sky level than at the compute level where you needed all those DevOps and SRE people to like, you know, build everything manually themselves. I can just see the memes now coming Ali, sky net, star track. You've got space too, by the way, space is another frontier that is seeing a lot of action going on because now the surface area of data with satellites is huge. So again, I know you guys are doing a lot of business with folks in that vertical where you starting to see real time data acquisition coming from these satellites. What's your take on the whole space as the, not the final frontier, but certainly as a new congested and contested space for, for data? >> Well, I mean, as a data vendor, we see a lot of, you know, alternative data sources coming in and people aren't using machine learning< AI to eat out signal out of the, you know, massive amounts of imagery that's coming out of these satellites. So that's actually a pretty common in FinTech, which is a vertical for us. And also sort of in the public sector, lots of, lots of, lots of satellites, imagery data that's coming. And these are massive volumes. I mean, it's like huge data sets and it's a super, super exciting what they can do. Like, you know, extracting signal from the satellite imagery is, and you know, being able to handle that amount of data, it's a challenge for all the companies that we work with. So we're excited about that too. I mean, definitely that's a trend that's going to continue. >> All right. I'm super excited for you. And thanks for coming on The Cube here for our keynote. I got to ask you a final question. As you think about the future, I see your company has achieved great success in a very short time, and again, you guys done the work, I've been following your company as you know. We've been been breaking that Data bricks story for a long time. I've been excited by it, but now what's changed. You got to start thinking about the next 20 miles stair when you look at, you know, the sky computing, you're thinking about these new architectures. As the CEO, your job is to one, not run out of money which you don't have to worry about that anymore, so hiring. And then, you got to figure out that next 20 miles stair as a company. What's that going on in your mind? Take us through your mindset of what's next. And what do you see out in that landscape? >> Yeah, so what I mentioned around Sky company optionality around multi-cloud, you're going to see a lot of capabilities around that. Like how do you get multi-cloud disaster recovery? How do you leverage the best of all the clouds while at the same time not having to just pick one? So there's a lot of innovation there that, you know, we haven't announced yet, but you're going to see a lot of it over the next many years. Things that you can do when you have the optionality across the different parts. And the second thing that's really exciting for us is bringing AI to the masses. Democratizing data and AI. So how can you actually apply machine learning to machine learning? How can you automate machine learning? Today machine learning is still quite complicated and it's pretty advanced. It's not going to be that way 10 years from now. It's going to be very simple. Everybody's going to have it at their fingertips. So how do we apply machine learning to machine learning? It's called auto ML, automatic, you know, machine learning. So that's an area, and that's not something that can be done with, right? But the goal is to eventually be able to automate a way the whole machine learning engineer and the machine learning data scientist altogether. >> You know it's really fun and talking with you is that, you know, for years we've been talking about this inside the ropes, inside the industry, around the future. Now people starting to get some visibility, the pandemics forced that. You seeing the bad projects being exposed. It's like the tide pulled out and you see all the scabs and bad projects that were justified old guard technologies. If you get it right you're on a good wave. And this is clearly what we're seeing. And you guys example of that. So as enterprises realize this, that they're going to have to look double down on the right projects and probably trash the bad projects, new criteria, how should people be thinking about buying? Because again, we talked about the RFP before. I want to kind of circle back because this is something that people are trying to figure out. You seeing, you know, organic, you come in freemium models as cloud scale becomes the advantage in the lock-in frankly seems to be the value proposition. The more value you provide, the more lock-in you get. Which sounds like that's the way it should be versus proprietary, you know, protocols. The protocol is value. How should enterprises organize their teams? Is it end to end workflows? Is it, and how should they evaluate the criteria for these technologies that they want to buy? >> Yeah, that's a great question. So I, you know, it's very simple, try to future proof your decision-making. Make sure that whatever you're doing is not blocking your in. So whatever decision you're making, what if the world changes in five years, make sure that if you making a mistake now, that's not going to bite you in about five years later. So how do you do that? Well, open source is great. If you're leveraging open-source, you can try it out already. You don't even need to talk to any vendor. Your teams can already download it and try it out and get some value out of it. If you're in the cloud, this pay as you go models, you don't have to do a big RFP and commit big. You can try it, pay the vendor, pay as you go, $10, $15. It doesn't need to be a million dollar contract and slowly grow as you're providing value. And then make sure that you're not just locking yourself in to one cloud or, you know, one particular vendor. As much as possible preserve your optionality because then that's not a one-way door. If it turns out later you want to do something else, you can, you know, pick other things as well. You're not locked in. So that's what I would say. Keep that top of mind that you're not locking yourself into a particular decision that you made today, that you might regret in five years. >> I really appreciate you coming on and sharing your with our community and The Cube. And as always great to see you. I really enjoy your clubhouse talks, and I really appreciate how you give back to the community. And I want to thank you for coming on and taking the time with us today. >> Thanks John, always appreciate talking to you. >> Okay Ali Ghodsi, CEO of Data bricks, a success story that proves the validation of cloud scale, open and create value, values the new lock-in. So Natalie, back to you for continuing coverage. >> That was a terrific interview John, but I'd love to get Dave's insights first. What were your takeaways, Dave? >> Well, if we have more time I'll tell you how Data bricks got to where they are today, but I'll say this, the most important thing to me that Allie said was he conveyed a very clear understanding of what data companies are outright and are getting ready. Talked about four things. There's not one data team, there's many data teams. And he talked about data is decentralized, and data has to have context and that context lives in the business. He said, look, think about it. The way that the data companies would get it right, they get data in teams and sales and marketing and finance and engineering. They all have their own data and data teams. And he referred to that as a data mesh. That's a term that is your mock, the Gany coined and the warehouse of the data lake it's merely a node in that global message. It meshes discoverable, he talked about federated governance, and Data bricks, they're breaking the model of shoving everything into a single repository and trying to make that the so-called single version of the truth. Rather what they're doing, which is right on is putting data in the hands of the business owners. And that's how true data companies do. And the last thing you talked about with sky computing, which I loved, it's that future layer, we talked about multi-cloud a lot that abstracts the underlying complexity of the technical details of the cloud and creates additional value on top. I always say that the cloud players like Amazon have given the gift to the world of 100 billion dollars a year they spend in CapEx. Thank you. Now we're going to innovate on top of it. Yeah. And I think the refactoring... >> Hope by John. >> That was great insight and I totally agree. The refactoring piece too was key, he brought that home. But to me, I think Data bricks that Ali shared there and why he's been open and sharing a lot of his insights and the community. But what he's not saying, cause he's humble and polite is they cracked the code on the enterprise, Dave. And to Dave's points exactly reason why they did it, they saw an opportunity to make it easier, at that time had dupe was the rage, and they just made it easier. They was smart, they made good bets, they had a good formula and they cracked the code with the enterprise. They brought it in and they brought value. And see that's the key to the cloud as Dave pointed out. You get replatform with the cloud, then you refactor. And I think he pointed out the multi-cloud and that really kind of teases out the whole future and landscape, which is essentially distributed computing. And I think, you know, companies are starting to figure that out with hybrid and this on premises and now super edge I call it, with 5G coming. So it's just pretty incredible. >> Yeah. Data bricks, IPO is coming and people should know. I mean, what everybody, they created spark as you know John and everybody thought they were going to do is mimic red hat and sell subscriptions and support. They didn't, they developed a managed service and they embedded AI tools to simplify data science. So to your point, enterprises could buy instead of build, we know this. Enterprises will spend money to make things simpler. They don't have the resources, and so this was what they got right was really embedding that, making a building a managed service, not mimicking the kind of the red hat model, but actually creating a new value layer there. And that's big part of their success. >> If I could just add one thing Natalie to that Dave saying is really right on. And as an enterprise buyer, if we go the other side of the equation, it used to be that you had to be a known company, get PR, you fill out RFPs, you had to meet all the speeds. It's like going to the airport and get a swab test, and get a COVID test and all kinds of mechanisms to like block you and filter you. Most of the biggest success stories that have created the most value for enterprises have been the companies that nobody's understood. And Andy Jazz's famous quote of, you know, being misunderstood is actually a good thing. Data bricks was very misunderstood at the beginning and no one kind of knew who they were but they did it right. And so the enterprise buyers out there, don't be afraid to test the startups because you know the next Data bricks is out there. And I think that's where I see the psychology changing from the old IT buyers, Dave. It's like, okay, let's let's test this company. And there's plenty of ways to do that. He illuminated those premium, small pilots, you don't need to go on these big things. So I think that is going to be a shift in how companies going to evaluate startups. >> Yeah. Think about it this way. Why should the large banks and insurance companies and big manufacturers and pharma companies, governments, why should they burn resources managing containers and figuring out data science tools if they can just tap into solutions like Data bricks which is an AI platform in the cloud and let the experts manage all that stuff. Think about how much money in time that saves enterprises. >> Yeah, I mean, we've got 15 companies here we're showcasing this batch and this season if you call it. That episode we are going to call it? They're awesome. Right? And the next 15 will be the same. And these companies could be the next billion dollar revenue generator because the cloud enables that day. I think that's the exciting part. >> Well thank you both so much for these insights. Really appreciate it. AWS startup showcase highlights the innovation that helps startups succeed. And no one knows that better than our very next guest, Jeff Barr. Welcome to the show and I will send this interview now to Dave and John and see you just in the bit. >> Okay, hey Jeff, great to see you. Thanks for coming on again. >> Great to be back. >> So this is a regular community segment with Jeff Barr who's a legend in the industry. Everyone knows your name. Everyone knows that. Congratulations on your recent blog posts we have reading. Tons of news, I want to get your update because 5G has been all over the news, mobile world congress is right around the corner. I know Bill Vass was a keynote out there, virtual keynote. There's a lot of Amazon discussion around the edge with wavelength. Specifically, this is the outpost piece. And I know there is news I want to get to, but the top of mind is there's massive Amazon expansion and the cloud is going to the edge, it's here. What's up with wavelength. Take us through the, I call it the power edge, the super edge. >> Well, I'm really excited about this mostly because it gives a lot more choice and flexibility and options to our customers. This idea that with wavelength we announced quite some time ago, at least quite some time ago if we think in cloud years. We announced that we would be working with 5G providers all over the world to basically put AWS in the telecom providers data centers or telecom centers, so that as their customers build apps, that those apps would take advantage of the low latency, the high bandwidth, the reliability of 5G, be able to get to some compute and storage services that are incredibly close geographically and latency wise to the compute and storage that is just going to give customers this new power and say, well, what are the cool things we can build? >> Do you see any correlation between wavelength and some of the early Amazon services? Because to me, my gut feels like there's so much headroom there. I mean, I was just riffing on the notion of low latency packets. I mean, just think about the applications, gaming and VR, and metaverse kind of cool stuff like that where having the edge be that how much power there. It just feels like a new, it feels like a new AWS. I mean, what's your take? You've seen the evolutions and the growth of a lot of the key services. Like EC2 and SA3. >> So welcome to my life. And so to me, the way I always think about this is it's like when I go to a home improvement store and I wander through the aisles and I often wonder through with no particular thing that I actually need, but I just go there and say, wow, they've got this and they've got this, they've got this other interesting thing. And I just let my creativity run wild. And instead of trying to solve a problem, I'm saying, well, if I had these different parts, well, what could I actually build with them? And I really think that this breadth of different services and locations and options and communication technologies. I suspect a lot of our customers and customers to be and are in this the same mode where they're saying, I've got all this awesomeness at my fingertips, what might I be able to do with it? >> He reminds me when Fry's was around in Palo Alto, that store is no longer here but it used to be back in the day when it was good. It was you go in and just kind of spend hours and then next thing you know, you built a compute. Like what, I didn't come in here, whether it gets some cables. Now I got a motherboard. >> I clearly remember Fry's and before that there was the weird stuff warehouse was another really cool place to hang out if you remember that. >> Yeah I do. >> I wonder if I could jump in and you guys talking about the edge and Jeff I wanted to ask you about something that is, I think people are starting to really understand and appreciate what you did with the entrepreneur acquisition, what you do with nitro and graviton, and really driving costs down, driving performance up. I mean, there's like a compute Renaissance. And I wonder if you could talk about the importance of that at the edge, because it's got to be low power, it has to be low cost. You got to be doing processing at the edge. What's your take on how that's evolving? >> Certainly so you're totally right that we started working with and then ultimately acquired Annapurna labs in Israel a couple of years ago. I've worked directly with those folks and it's really awesome to see what they've been able to do. Just really saying, let's look at all of these different aspects of building the cloud that were once effectively kind of somewhat software intensive and say, where does it make sense to actually design build fabricate, deploy custom Silicon? So from putting up the system to doing all kinds of additional kinds of security checks, to running local IO devices, running the NBME as fast as possible to support the EBS. Each of those things has been a contributing factor to not just the power of the hardware itself, but what I'm seeing and have seen for the last probably two or three years at this point is the pace of innovation on instance types just continues to get faster and faster. And it's not just cranking out new instance types because we can, it's because our awesomely diverse base of customers keeps coming to us and saying, well, we're happy with what we have so far, but here's this really interesting new use case. And we needed a different ratio of memory to CPU, or we need more cores based on the amount of memory, or we needed a lot of IO bandwidth. And having that nitro as the base lets us really, I don't want to say plug and play, cause I haven't actually built this myself, but it seems like they can actually put the different elements together, very very quickly and then come up with new instance types that just our customers say, yeah, that's exactly what I asked for and be able to just do this entire range of from like micro and nano sized all the way up to incredibly large with incredible just to me like, when we talk about terabytes of memory that are just like actually just RAM memory. It's like, that's just an inconceivably large number by the standards of where I started out in my career. So it's all putting this power in customer hands. >> You used the term plug and play, but it does give you that nitro gives you that optionality. And then other thing that to me is really exciting is the way in which ISVs are writing to whatever's underneath. So you're making that, you know, transparent to the users so I can choose as a customer, the best price performance for my workload and that that's just going to grow that ISV portfolio. >> I think it's really important to be accurate and detailed and as thorough as possible as we launch each one of these new instance types with like what kind of processor is in there and what clock speed does it run at? What kind of, you know, how much memory do we have? What are the, just the ins and outs, and is it Intel or arm or AMD based? It's such an interesting to me contrast. I can still remember back in the very very early days of back, you know, going back almost 15 years at this point and effectively everybody said, well, not everybody. A few people looked and said, yeah, we kind of get the value here. Some people said, this just sounds like a bunch of generic hardware, just kind of generic hardware in Iraq. And even back then it was something that we were very careful with to design and optimize for use cases. But this idea that is generic is so, so, so incredibly inaccurate that I think people are now getting this. And it's okay. It's fine too, not just for the cloud, but for very specific kinds of workloads and use cases. >> And you guys have announced obviously the performance improvements on a lamb** does getting faster, you got the per billing, second billings on windows and SQL server on ECE too**. So I mean, obviously everyone kind of gets that, that's been your DNA, keep making it faster, cheaper, better, easier to use. But the other area I want to get your thoughts on because this is also more on the footprint side, is that the regions and local regions. So you've got more region news, take us through the update on the expansion on the footprint of AWS because you know, a startup can come in and these 15 companies that are here, they're global with AWS, right? So this is a major benefit for customers around the world. And you know, Ali from Data bricks mentioned privacy. Everyone's a privacy company now. So the huge issue, take us through the news on the region. >> Sure, so the two most recent regions that we announced are in the UAE and in Israel. And we generally like to pre-announce these anywhere from six months to two years at a time because we do know that the customers want to start making longer term plans to where they can start thinking about where they can do their computing, where they can store their data. I think at this point we now have seven regions under construction. And, again it's all about customer trice. Sometimes it's because they have very specific reasons where for based on local laws, based on national laws, that they must compute and restore within a particular geographic area. Other times I say, well, a lot of our customers are in this part of the world. Why don't we pick a region that is as close to that part of the world as possible. And one really important thing that I always like to remind our customers of in my audience is, anything that you choose to put in a region, stays in that region unless you very explicitly take an action that says I'd like to replicate it somewhere else. So if someone says, I want to store data in the US, or I want to store it in Frankfurt, or I want to store it in Sao Paulo, or I want to store it in Tokyo or Osaka. They get to make that very specific choice. We give them a lot of tools to help copy and replicate and do cross region operations of various sorts. But at the heart, the customer gets to choose those locations. And that in the early days I think there was this weird sense that you would, you'd put things in the cloud that would just mysteriously just kind of propagate all over the world. That's never been true, and we're very very clear on that. And I just always like to reinforce that point. >> That's great stuff, Jeff. Great to have you on again as a regular update here, just for the folks watching and don't know Jeff he'd been blogging and sharing. He'd been the one man media band for Amazon it's early days. Now he's got departments, he's got peoples on doing videos. It's an immediate franchise in and of itself, but without your rough days we wouldn't have gotten all the great news we subscribe to. We watch all the blog posts. It's essentially the flow coming out of AWS which is just a tsunami of a new announcements. Always great to read, must read. Jeff, thanks for coming on, really appreciate it. That's great. >> Thank you John, great to catch up as always. >> Jeff Barr with AWS again, and follow his stuff. He's got a great audience and community. They talk back, they collaborate and they're highly engaged. So check out Jeff's blog and his social presence. All right, Natalie, back to you for more coverage. >> Terrific. Well, did you guys know that Jeff took a three week AWS road trip across 15 cities in America to meet with cloud computing enthusiasts? 5,500 miles he drove, really incredible I didn't realize that. Let's unpack that interview though. What stood out to you John? >> I think Jeff, Barr's an example of what I call direct to audience a business model. He's been doing it from the beginning and I've been following his career. I remember back in the day when Amazon was started, he was always building stuff. He's a builder, he's classic. And he's been there from the beginning. At the beginning he was just the blog and it became a huge audience. It's now morphed into, he was power blogging so hard. He has now support and he still does it now. It's basically the conduit for information coming out of Amazon. I think Jeff has single-handedly made Amazon so successful at the community developer level, and that's the startup action happened and that got them going. And I think he deserves a lot of the success for AWS. >> And Dave, how about you? What is your reaction? >> Well I think you know, and everybody knows about the cloud and back stop X** and agility, and you know, eliminating the undifferentiated, heavy lifting and all that stuff. And one of the things that's often overlooked which is why I'm excited to be part of this program is the innovation. And the innovation comes from startups, and startups start in the cloud. And so I think that that's part of the flywheel effect. You just don't see a lot of startups these days saying, okay, I'm going to do something that's outside of the cloud. There are some, but for the most part, you know, if you saw in software, you're starting in the cloud, it's so capital efficient. I think that's one thing, I've throughout my career. I've been obsessed with every part of the stack from whether it's, you know, close to the business process with the applications. And right now I'm really obsessed with the plumbing, which is why I was excited to talk about, you know, the Annapurna acquisition. Amazon bought and a part of the $350 million, it's reported, you know, maybe a little bit more, but that isn't an amazing acquisition. And the reason why that's so important is because Amazon is continuing to drive costs down, drive performance up. And in my opinion, leaving a lot of the traditional players in their dust, especially when it comes to the power and cooling. You have often overlooked things. And the other piece of the interview was that Amazon is actually getting ISVs to write to these new platforms so that you don't have to worry about there's the software run on this chip or that chip, or x86 or arm or whatever it is. It runs. And so I can choose the best price performance. And that's where people don't, they misunderstand, you always say it John, just said that people are misunderstood. I think they misunderstand, they confused, you know, the price of the cloud with the cost of the cloud. They ignore all the labor costs that are associated with that. And so, you know, there's a lot of discussion now about the cloud tax. I just think the pace is accelerating. The gap is not closing, it's widening. >> If you look at the one question I asked them about wavelength and I had a follow up there when I said, you know, we riff on it and you see, he lit up like he beam was beaming because he said something interesting. It's not that there's a problem to solve at this opportunity. And he conveyed it to like I said, walking through Fry's. But like, you go into a store and he's a builder. So he sees opportunity. And this comes back down to the Martine Casada paradox posts he wrote about do you optimize for CapEx or future revenue? And I think the tell sign is at the wavelength edge piece is going to be so creative and that's going to open up massive opportunities. I think that's the place to watch. That's the place I'm watching. And I think startups going to come out of the woodwork because that's where the action will be. And that's just Amazon at the edge, I mean, that's just cloud at the edge. I think that is going to be very effective. And his that's a little TeleSign, he kind of revealed a little bit there, a lot there with that comment. >> Well that's a to be continued conversation. >> Indeed, I would love to introduce our next guest. We actually have Soma on the line. He's the managing director at Madrona venture group. Thank you Soma very much for coming for our keynote program. >> Thank you Natalie and I'm great to be here and will have the opportunity to spend some time with you all. >> Well, you have a long to nerd history in the enterprise. How would you define the modern enterprise also known as cloud scale? >> Yeah, so I would say I have, first of all, like, you know, we've all heard this now for the last, you know, say 10 years or so. Like, software is eating the world. Okay. Put it another way, we think about like, hey, every enterprise is a software company first and foremost. Okay. And companies that truly internalize that, that truly think about that, and truly act that way are going to start up, continue running well and things that don't internalize that, and don't do that are going to be left behind sooner than later. Right. And the last few years you start off thing and not take it to the next level and talk about like, not every enterprise is not going through a digital transformation. Okay. So when you sort of think about the world from that lens. Okay. Modern enterprise has to think about like, and I am first and foremost, a technology company. I may be in the business of making a car art, you know, manufacturing paper, or like you know, manufacturing some healthcare products or what have you got out there. But technology and software is what is going to give me a unique, differentiated advantage that's going to let me do what I need to do for my customers in the best possible way [Indistinct]. So that sort of level of focus, level of execution, has to be there in a modern enterprise. The other thing is like not every modern enterprise needs to think about regular. I'm competing for talent, not anymore with my peers in my industry. I'm competing for technology talent and software talent with the top five technology companies in the world. Whether it is Amazon or Facebook or Microsoft or Google, or what have you cannot think, right? So you really have to have that mindset, and then everything flows from that. >> So I got to ask you on the enterprise side again, you've seen many ways of innovation. You've got, you know, been in the industry for many, many years. The old way was enterprises want the best proven product and the startups want that lucrative contract. Right? Yeah. And get that beach in. And it used to be, and we addressed this in our earlier keynote with Ali and how it's changing, the buyers are changing because the cloud has enabled this new kind of execution. I call it agile, call it what you want. Developers are driving modern applications, so enterprises are still, there's no, the playbooks evolving. Right? So we see that with the pandemic, people had needs, urgent needs, and they tried new stuff and it worked. The parachute opened as they say. So how do you look at this as you look at stars, you're investing in and you're coaching them. What's the playbook? What's the secret sauce of how to crack the enterprise code today. And if you're an enterprise buyer, what do I need to do? I want to be more agile. Is there a clear path? Is there's a TSA to let stuff go through faster? I mean, what is the modern playbook for buying and being a supplier? >> That's a fantastic question, John, because I think that sort of playbook is changing, even as we speak here currently. A couple of key things to understand first of all is like, you know, decision-making inside an enterprise is getting more and more de-centralized. Particularly decisions around what technology to use and what solutions to use to be able to do what people need to do. That decision making is no longer sort of, you know, all done like the CEO's office or the CTO's office kind of thing. Developers are more and more like you rightly said, like sort of the central of the workflow and the decision making process. So it'll be who both the enterprises, as well as the startups to really understand that. So what does it mean now from a startup perspective, from a startup perspective, it means like, right. In addition to thinking about like hey, not do I go create an enterprise sales post, do I sell to the enterprise like what I might have done in the past? Is that the best way of moving forward, or should I be thinking about a product led growth go to market initiative? You know, build a product that is easy to use, that made self serve really works, you know, get the developers to start using to see the value to fall in love with the product and then you think about like hey, how do I go translate that into a contract with enterprise. Right? And more and more what I call particularly, you know, startups and technology companies that are focused on the developer audience are thinking about like, you know, how do I have a bottom up go to market motion? And sometime I may sort of, you know, overlap that with the top down enterprise sales motion that we know that has been going on for many, many years or decades kind of thing. But really this product led growth bottom up a go to market motion is something that we are seeing on the rise. I would say they're going to have more than half the startup that we come across today, have that in some way shape or form. And so the enterprise also needs to understand this, the CIO or the CTO needs to know that like hey, I'm not decision-making is getting de-centralized. I need to empower my engineers and my engineering managers and my engineering leaders to be able to make the right decision and trust them. I'm going to give them some guard rails so that I don't find myself in a soup, you know, sometime down the road. But once I give them the guard rails, I'm going to enable people to make the decisions. People who are closer to the problem, to make the right decision. >> Well Soma, what are some of the ways that startups can accelerate their enterprise penetration? >> I think that's another good question. First of all, you need to think about like, Hey, what are enterprises wanting to rec? Okay. If you start off take like two steps back and think about what the enterprise is really think about it going. I'm a software company, but I'm really manufacturing paper. What do I do? Right? The core thing that most enterprises care about is like, hey, how do I better engage with my customers? How do I better serve my customers? And how do I do it in the most optimal way? At the end of the day that's what like most enterprises really care about. So startups need to understand, what are the problems that the enterprise is trying to solve? What kind of tools and platform technologies and infrastructure support, and, you know, everything else that they need to be able to do what they need to do and what only they can do in the most optimal way. Right? So to the extent you are providing either a tool or platform or some technology that is going to enable your enterprise to make progress on what they want to do, you're going to get more traction within the enterprise. In other words, stop thinking about technology, and start thinking about the customer problem that they want to solve. And the more you anchor your company, and more you anchor your conversation with the customer around that, the more the enterprise is going to get excited about wanting to work with you. >> So I got to ask you on the enterprise and developer equation because CSOs and CXOs, depending who you talk to have that same answer. Oh yeah. In the 90's and 2000's, we kind of didn't, we throttled down, we were using the legacy developer tools and cloud came and then we had to rebuild and we didn't really know what to do. So you seeing a shift, and this is kind of been going on for at least the past five to eight years, a lot more developers being hired yet. I mean, at FinTech is clearly a vertical, they always had developers and everyone had developers, but there's a fast ramp up of developers now and the role of open source has changed. Just looking at the participation. They're not just consuming open source, open source is part of the business model for mainstream enterprises. How is this, first of all, do you agree? And if so, how has this changed the course of an enterprise human resource selection? How they're organized? What's your vision on that? >> Yeah. So as I mentioned earlier, John, in my mind the first thing is, and this sort of, you know, like you said financial services has always been sort of hiring people [Indistinct]. And this is like five-year old story. So bear with me I'll tell you the firewall story and then come to I was trying to, the cloud CIO or the Goldman Sachs. Okay. And this is five years ago when people were still like, hey, is this cloud thing real and now is cloud going to take over the world? You know, am I really ready to put my data in the cloud? So there are a lot of questions and conversations can affect. The CIO of Goldman Sachs told me two things that I remember to this day. One is, hey, we've got a internal edict. That we made a decision that in the next five years, everything in Goldman Sachs is going to be on the public law. And I literally jumped out of the chair and I said like now are you going to get there? And then he laughed and said like now it really doesn't matter whether we get there or not. We want to set the tone, set the direction for the organization that hey, public cloud is here. Public cloud is there. And we need to like, you know, move as fast as we realistically can and think about all the financial regulations and security and privacy. And all these things that we care about deeply. But given all of that, the world is going towards public load and we better be on the leading edge as opposed to the lagging edge. And the second thing he said, like we're talking about like hey, how are you hiring, you know, engineers at Goldman Sachs Canada? And he said like in hey, I sort of, my team goes out to the top 20 schools in the US. And the people we really compete with are, and he was saying this, Hey, we don't compete with JP Morgan or Morgan Stanley, or pick any of your favorite financial institutions. We really think about like, hey, we want to get the best talent into Goldman Sachs out of these schools. And we really compete head to head with Google. We compete head to head with Microsoft. We compete head to head with Facebook. And we know that the caliber of people that we want to get is no different than what these companies want. If you want to continue being a successful, leading it, you know, financial services player. That sort of tells you what's going on. You also talked a little bit about like hey, open source is here to stay. What does that really mean kind of thing. In my mind like now, you can tell me that I can have from given my pedigree at Microsoft, I can tell you that we were the first embraces of open source in this world. So I'll say that right off the bat. But having said that we did in our turn around and said like, hey, this open source is real, this open source is going to be great. How can we embrace and how can we participate? And you fast forward to today, like in a Microsoft is probably as good as open source as probably any other large company I would say. Right? Including like the work that the company has done in terms of acquiring GitHub and letting it stay true to its original promise of open source and community can I think, right? I think Microsoft has come a long way kind of thing. But the thing that like in all these enterprises need to think about is you want your developers to have access to the latest and greatest tools. To the latest and greatest that the software can provide. And you really don't want your engineers to be reinventing the wheel all the time. So there is something available in the open source world. Go ahead, please set up, think about whether that makes sense for you to use it. And likewise, if you think that is something you can contribute to the open source work, go ahead and do that. So it's really a two way somebody Arctic relationship that enterprises need to have, and they need to enable their developers to want to have that symbiotic relationship. >> Soma, fantastic insights. Thank you so much for joining our keynote program. >> Thank you Natalie and thank you John. It was always fun to chat with you guys. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> John we would love to get your quick insight on that. >> Well I think first of all, he's a prolific investor the great from Madrona venture partners, which is well known in the tech circles. They're in Seattle, which is in the hub of I call cloud city. You've got Amazon and Microsoft there. He'd been at Microsoft and he knows the developer ecosystem. And reason why I like his perspective is that he understands the value of having developers as a core competency in Microsoft. That's their DNA. You look at Microsoft, their number one thing from day one besides software was developers. That was their army, the thousand centurions that one won everything for them. That has shifted. And he brought up open source, and .net and how they've embraced Linux, but something that tele before he became CEO, we interviewed him in the cube at an Xcel partners event at Stanford. He was open before he was CEO. He was talking about opening up. They opened up a lot of their open source infrastructure projects to the open compute foundation early. So they had already had that going and at that price, since that time, the stock price of Microsoft has skyrocketed because as Ali said, open always wins. And I think that is what you see here, and as an investor now he's picking in startups and investing in them. He's got to read the tea leaves. He's got to be in the right side of history. So he brings a great perspective because he sees the old way and he understands the new way. That is the key for success we've seen in the enterprise and with the startups. The people who get the future, and can create the value are going to win. >> Yeah, really excellent point. And just really quickly. What do you think were some of our greatest hits on this hour of programming? >> Well first of all I'm really impressed that Ali took the time to come join us because I know he's super busy. I think they're at a $28 billion valuation now they're pushing a billion dollars in revenue, gap revenue. And again, just a few short years ago, they had zero software revenue. So of these 15 companies we're showcasing today, you know, there's a next Data bricks in there. They're all going to be successful. They already are successful. And they're all on this rocket ship trajectory. Ali is smart, he's also got the advantage of being part of that Berkeley community which they're early on a lot of things now. Being early means you're wrong a lot, but you're also right, and you're right big. So Berkeley and Stanford obviously big areas here in the bay area as research. He is smart, He's got a great team and he's really open. So having him share his best practices, I thought that was a great highlight. Of course, Jeff Barr highlighting some of the insights that he brings and honestly having a perspective of a VC. And we're going to have Peter Wagner from wing VC who's a classic enterprise investors, super smart. So he'll add some insight. Of course, one of the community session, whenever our influencers coming on, it's our beat coming on at the end, as well as Katie Drucker. Another Madrona person is going to talk about growth hacking, growth strategies, but yeah, sights Raleigh coming on. >> Terrific, well thank you so much for those insights and thank you to everyone who is watching the first hour of our live coverage of the AWS startup showcase for myself, Natalie Ehrlich, John, for your and Dave Vellante we want to thank you very much for watching and do stay tuned for more amazing content, as well as a special live segment that John Furrier is going to be hosting. It takes place at 12:30 PM Pacific time, and it's called cracking the code, lessons learned on how enterprise buyers evaluate new startups. Don't go anywhere.
SUMMARY :
on the latest innovations and solutions How are you doing. are you looking forward to. and of course the keynotes Ali Ghodsi, of the quality of healthcare and you know, to go from, you know, a you on the other side. Congratulations and great to see you. Thank you so much, good to see you again. And you were all in on cloud. is the success of how you guys align it becomes a force that you moments that you can point to, So that's the second one that we bet on. And one of the things that Back in the day, you had to of say that the data problems And you know, there's this and that's why we have you on here. And if you say you're a data company, and growing companies to choose In the past, you know, So I got to ask you from a for the gigs, you know, to eat out signal out of the, you know, I got to ask you a final question. But the goal is to eventually be able the more lock-in you get. to one cloud or, you know, and taking the time with us today. appreciate talking to you. So Natalie, back to you but I'd love to get Dave's insights first. And the last thing you talked And see that's the key to the of the red hat model, to like block you and filter you. and let the experts manage all that stuff. And the next 15 will be the same. see you just in the bit. Okay, hey Jeff, great to see you. and the cloud is going and options to our customers. and some of the early Amazon services? And so to me, and then next thing you Fry's and before that and appreciate what you did And having that nitro as the base is the way in which ISVs of back, you know, going back is that the regions and local regions. And that in the early days Great to have you on again Thank you John, great to you for more coverage. What stood out to you John? and that's the startup action happened the most part, you know, And that's just Amazon at the edge, Well that's a to be We actually have Soma on the line. and I'm great to be here How would you define the modern enterprise And the last few years you start off thing So I got to ask you on and then you think about like hey, And the more you anchor your company, So I got to ask you on the enterprise and this sort of, you know, Thank you so much for It was always fun to chat with you guys. John we would love to get And I think that is what you see here, What do you think were it's our beat coming on at the end, and it's called cracking the code,
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Danny Allan & Niraj Tolia | VeeamON 2021
>>Welcome back to Vienna on 2021 you're watching the Cube and my name is Dave Volonte. You know, the last 10 years of cloud, they were largely about spinning up virtualized compute infrastructure and accessing cheap and simple object storage and some other things like networking. The cloud was largely though a set of remote resources that simplify deployment and supported the whole spate of native applications that have emerged to power the activity of individuals and businesses the next decade, however, promises to build on the troves of data that live in the cloud, make connections to on premises applications and support new application innovations that are agile, iterative, portable and span resources in all in all the clouds, public clouds, private clouds, cross cloud connections all the way out to the near and far edge. In a linchpin of this new application development model is container platforms and container orchestration, which brings immense scale and capability to technology driven organizations, especially as they have evolved from supporting stateless applications to underpinning mission critical workloads as such containers bring complexities and risks that need to be addressed, not the least of which is protecting the massive amounts of data that are flowing through these systems. And with me to discuss these exciting and challenging trends or Danny Allen, who's the ceo of in and Niraj Tolia, the president at Kasten Bivins gentlemen welcome to the cube. >>Thank you delighted to be here with you Dave. >>Likewise, very excited to be a Dave. >>Okay, so Danny big M and a move. Great little acquisition. You're now seeing others try to make similar moves. Why what did you see in cast in? What was the fit? Why'd you make that move? >>Well, I think you nailed it. Dave's. We've seen an evolution in the infrastructure that's being used over the last two decades. So if you go back 20 years, there was a massive digital transformation to enable users to be self service with digital applications. About 2000 or so, 2010, everything started being virtualized. I know virtualization came along before that but virtualization really started to take off because it gave return on investment and gave flexibility all kinds of benefits. But now we're in a third wave which is built on containers. And the amazing thing about containers is that as you said, it allows you to connect multi cloud, hybrid cloud the edge to the core. And they're designed for the consumption world. If you think about the cloud, you can provision things deep provisions things. That's the way that containers are designed the applications and so because they're designed for a consumption based world because they are designed for portability across all of these different infrastructures, it only made sense for us to invest in the industry's leading provider of data protection for kubernetes. And that of course is costume, >>there's some garage, I mean take us back. I mean, you know, container has been around forever. But then, you know, they started to, you know, hit go mainstream and and and and at first, you know, they were obviously ephemeral, stateless apps, kind of lightweight stuff. But but you at the time you and the team said, okay, these are gonna become more complex microservices. Maybe so micro, but you had to have the vision and you made a bet uh maybe take us back to sort of how you saw that and where where's containers have have come from? >>Sure. So let's rewind the clock right. As you said, containers, old technology in the same way virtualization started with IBM mainframes, right, containers in different forms have been around for a while. But I think when the light bulb went off for me was very early days in 2015 when my engineering team, a previous company started complaining. And the reason they were complaining about different other engineering groups and the reason they were complaining was because the right things, things were coming together sooner. We're identifying things sooner. And that's when I said, this is going to be the next wave of infrastructure. The same way watch a light virtualization revolutionized how people built deployed apps. We saw that with containers and in particular in those days we made that bet on commodities. Right? So we said from first Principles and that's where you know, you had other things like Docker, swarm esos, etcetera and we said community, that's going to be the way to go because it is just so powerful and it is, you know, at the end of the day, what we all do is infrastructure. But what we saw was that containers optimizing for the developer, they were optimizing for the people that really build applications, deliver value to all of their and customers. And that is what made us see that even though the initially we only saw stateless applications state will was going to happen because there's just so much momentum behind it And the writing for us at least was on the wall. And that's how we started off on this journey in 2017. >>What are the unique nuances and differences really in terms of protecting containers from a, from a technical standpoint, what what's different? >>So there are a couple of subtle things. Right again, the jokers, you know, I say, is that I'm a recovering infrastructure person have always worked in infrastructure systems in the past and recovering them. But in this case we really had to flip things around right. I've come at it from the cloud disks volumes. VMS perspective, in this case to do the right thing by the customer needed a clean slate approach of coming out from the application down. So what we look at is what does the application look like? And that means protecting, not just the stuff that sits on disk, what your secrets in networking information, all those hundreds of pieces that make up a cloud native application and that involves scale challenges, work, visualisation challenges for admins, KPI So all of that shifts in a very dramatic way. >>So Danny, I mean typically VM you guys haven't done a ton of acquisitions, uh, you've grown organically. So now you, you, you poppin cast in, what does that mean for you from a platform perspective? You know, IBM has this term blue washing when they buy a company did you green wash cast and how did that all work? And again, what does what does it mean from the, from the platform perspective? >>Well, so our platform is designed for this type of integration and the first type of integration we do with any of our technologies because we do have native technologies, if you think about what we do being back up for AWS for Azure, for G C p, we have backup for Acropolis Hyper Visor. These are all native purpose built solutions for those environments and we integrate with what we call being platform services. And one of the first steps that we do of course is we take the data from those native solutions and send it into the repository and the benefit that you get from that is that you have this portable, self describing format that you can move around the vein platform. And so the platform was already designed for this Now. We already showed this at demon. You saw this on the main stage where we have this integration at a data level but it goes beyond that beam platform services allows us to do not just day one operations, but day two operations. Think about um updating the components of those infrastructures or those software components that also allows reporting. So for example you can report on what is protected, what's not protected. So the platform was already designed for this integration model. But the one thing I want to stress is we will always have that stand alone product for kubernetes for uh you know, for the container world. And the reason for that is the administrator for Kubernetes wants their own purpose build solution. They want it running on kubernetes. They want to protect the uniqueness of their infrastructure. If you think about a lot of the container based systems there, They're using structured data. Non structured data. Sure. But they're also using object based storage. They're using message queues. And so they have their nuances. And we want to maintain that in a stand alone product but integrated back into the Corvin platform. >>So we do these we have a data partner called GTR Enterprise Technology Research. They do these quarterly surveys and and they have this metric called net score is a measure of spending momentum and for the last, I don't know, 8, 10, 12 quarters the big four have been robotic process automation. That's hot space. Cloud obviously is hot and then A I of course. And but containers and container orchestration right up there. Those are the Big four that outshine everything else, even things like security and other infrastructure etcetera. So that's good. I mean you guys skating to the puck back in 2015 rush, you've made some announcements and I'm and I'm wondering sort of how they fit into the trends in the industry. Uh, what what's, what's significant about those announcements and you know, what's new that we need to know about. >>Sure. So let me take that one day. So we've made a couple of big interesting announcement. The most recent one of those was four dot release after casting by women platform, right? We call it kitten and right. We've known rate since a couple of weeks colonial pipeline ransom. Where has been in the news in the US gas prices are being driven up because of that. And that's really what we're seeing from customers where we are >>seeing this >>increase in communities adoption today. We have customers from the world's largest banks all the way to weakly connected cruise ships that one could burn. It is on them. People's data is precious. People are running a large fleet of notes for communities, large number of clusters. So what we said is how do you protect against these malicious attacks that want to lock people out? How do you bring in mutability so that even someone with keys to the kingdom can't go compromise your backups and restores, right? So this echoes a lot of what we hear from customers and what we hear about in the news so well protected that. But we still help through to some of the original vision behind cast. And that is, it's not just saying, hey, I give you ransomware protection. We'll do it in such an easy way. The admin barely notices. This new feature has been turned on if they wanted Do it in a way that gives them choice right. If you're running in a public cloud, if you're running at the edge you have choice of infrastructure available to you and do it in a way that you have 100% automation when you have 100 clusters when you deploy on ships, right, you're not going to be able to have we spoke things. So how do you hook into CHED pipelines and make the job of the admin easier? Is what we focused on in that last >>night. And and that's because you're basically doing this at the point of writing code and it's essentially infrastructure as code. We always talk about, you know, you want to you don't want to bolt on data protection as an afterthought, but that's what we've done forever. Uh This you can't >>so in fact I would say step before that day, right are the most leading customers we work with. Right to light up one of the U. S. Government's largest contractors. Um Hey do this before the first line of code is written right there on the scalp cloud as an example. But with the whole shift left that we all hear the cube talks a lot about. We see at this point where as you bring up infrastructure, you bring up a complete development environment, a complete test environment. And within that you want to deploy security, you want to deploy backup your to deploy protection at day zero before the developer in so it's the first line of cordon. So you protected every step of the journey while trying to bolt it on the sound. Seemingly yes, I stitched together a few pieces of technology but it fundamentally impacts how we're going to build the next generation of secure applications >>Danny, I think I heard you say or announced that this is going to be integrated into Wien backup and replication. Um can you explain what that took? Why? That's important. >>Yeah. So the the timeline on this and when we do integrations from these native solutions into the core platform, typically it begins with the data integration, in other words, the data being collected by the backup tool is sent to a repository and that gives us all the benefits of course of things like instant recovery and leveraging, de doop storage appliances and all of that step to typically is around day to operations, things like pushing out updates to that native solutions. So if you look at what we're doing with the backup for AWS and Azure, we can deploy the components, we can deploy the data proxies and data movers. And then lastly there's also a reporting aspect to this because we want to centralize the visibility for the organization across everywhere. So if your policy says hey I need two weeks of backups and after two weeks and I need weekly backups for X amount of time. This gives you the ability to see and manage across the organization. So what we've demonstrated already is this data level integration between the two platforms and we expect this to continue to go deeper and deeper as we move forward. The interesting thing right now is that the containers team often is different than the standard data center I. T. Team but we are quickly seeing the merge and I think the speed of that merging will also impact how quickly we integrate them within our platform. >>Well I mean obviously you see this for cloud developers and now you're bringing this to any developers and you know, if I'm a developer and I'm living in an insurance company, I've been, you know, writing COBOL code for a while, I want to be signed me up. I want to get trained on this, right? Because it's gonna I'm gonna become more valuable. So this is this is where the industry is headed. You guys talk about modern data protection. I wondered if you could you could paint a picture for us of sort of what what this new world of application development and deployment and and data protection looks like and how it's different from the old world. >>Mhm. So I think that if you mentioned the most important word, which is developer, they come first, they are the decision makers in this environment, the other people that have the most bull and rightly so. Oh, so I think that's the biggest thing at the cultural level that is, developers are saying this is what we want and this is what we need to get the job done, we want to move quickly. So some of the things are let's not slow them down. Let's enable them, let's give them any P I to work with. Right? No. Where in bulk of production, use will be api based versus EY base. Let's transparently integrate into the environment. So therefore protection for security, they need zero lines have changed code. Mm So those are some of the ways we approach things. Now when you go look at the requirements of the developers, they said I have a Ci cd pipeline to integrate into that. I have a development pipeline to integrate into that. I deploy across multiple clouds sometimes. Can you integrate into that and work seamlessly across all those environments? And we see those category of us coming up over and over again from people. >>So the developer rights once and it doesn't have to worry about where it's running. Uh it's got the right security, there are a protection and those policies go with it, so that's that's definitely a different world. Um Okay, last question. Uh maybe you guys could each give your opinion on sort of where we're headed, uh what we can expect from the the acquisition, the the integration, what should we look forward to and what should we pay attention to? >>Well, the one obvious thing that you're going to see is tremendous growth on the company's side and that's because Kubernetes is taking off cloud is taking off um SaAS is taking off and so there's obvious growth there. And one of the things that were clearly doing is um we're leveraging the power of of, you know, a few 1000 sales people to bring this out to market. Um, and so there is emerging of of sales and marketing activities and leveraging that scale. But what you shouldn't expect to see anything different on is this obsessive focus on the product, on quality, on making sure that we're highly differentiated that we have a product that the company that our customers and companies actually need no garage. >>Yeah. So I'll agree with everything down, he said. But a couple of things. Excite me a lot. Dave we've been roughly eight months or so since acquisition and I particularly love how last what in this quarter have gone in terms of how we focuses on solving customer problems. All right. So we'll always have that independent support for a cloud date of customers, but I'm excited about not just working with the broadest side of customers and as we scale the team that's going to happen, but providing a bridge to all the folks that grew up in the virtualization world, right? Grew up in the physical wall of physical service, etcetera and saying, how do we make it easy for you to come over to this new container Ization world? What is the on ramps bridging that gap serving as the on ramp? And we're doing a lot of work there from the product integration and independent product features that just make it easy. Right? And we're already seeing feel very good feedback for that from the field right now. >>I really like your position. I just dropped my quarterly cloud update. I focused, I look at the Big Four, the Big Four last year, spent $100 billion on Capex. And I always say that is a gift to companies like yours because you can be that connection point between the virtualization crowd, the on prem cloud, any cloud. Eventually we'll be, we'll be more than just talking about the Edge will actually be out there, you know, doing real work. Uh, and I just see great times ahead for you guys. So thanks so much for coming on the cube explaining this really exciting new area. Really appreciate it. >>Thank you so much. >>Thank you everybody for watching this day. Volonte for the Cube and our continuous coverage of the mon 2021, the virtual edition. Keep it right there. >>Mm mm mm
SUMMARY :
the next decade, however, promises to build on the troves of data that live in the cloud, Why what did you see in cast And the amazing thing about containers is that as you said, But then, you know, they started to, you know, hit go mainstream and and and So we said from first Principles and that's where you know, you had other things like Docker, And that means protecting, not just the stuff that sits on disk, So Danny, I mean typically VM you guys haven't done a ton of acquisitions, And one of the first steps that we do of course is we take the data from I mean you guys skating to the puck Where has been in the news in the US So what we said is how do you protect against these malicious attacks you know, you want to you don't want to bolt on data protection as an afterthought, but that's what we've done forever. And within that you want to deploy security, you want to deploy backup your to deploy protection at Danny, I think I heard you say or announced that this is going to be integrated into Wien backup and replication. So if you look at what we're doing with the backup for AWS and Azure, we can deploy the components, I wondered if you could you could paint a picture for us of sort of what what this new world So some of the things are So the developer rights once and it doesn't have to worry about where it's running. But what you shouldn't expect to see anything different on is this obsessive focus on etcetera and saying, how do we make it easy for you to come over to this new container Ization So thanks so much for coming on the cube explaining this really exciting new area. Volonte for the Cube and our continuous coverage of the mon
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Renen Hallak & David Floyer | CUBE Conversation 2021
(upbeat music) >> In 2010 Wikibon predicted that the all flash data center was coming. The forecast at the time was that flash memory consumer volumes, would drive prices of enterprise flash down faster than those of high spin speed, hard disks. And by mid decade, buyers would opt for flash over 15K HDD for virtually all active data. That call was pretty much dead on and the percentage of flash in the data center continues to accelerate faster than that, of spinning disk. Now, the analyst that made this forecast was David FLoyer and he's with me today, along with Renen Hallak who is the founder and CEO of Vast Data. And they're going to discuss these trends and what it means for the future of data and the data center. Gentlemen, welcome to the program. Thanks for coming on. >> Great to be here. >> Thank you for having me. >> You're very welcome. Now David, let's start with you. You've been looking at this for over a decade and you know, frankly, your predictions have caused some friction, in the marketplace but where do you see things today? >> Well, what I was forecasting was based on the fact that the key driver in any technology is volume, volume reduces the cost over time and the volume comes from the consumers. So flash has been driven over the years by initially by the iPod in 2006 the Nano where Steve Jobs did a great job with Samsung and introducing large volumes of flash. And then the iPhone in 2008. And since then, all of mobile has been flash and mobile has been taking in a greater and greater percentage share. To begin with the PC dropped. But now the PCs are over 90% are using flash when there delivered. So flash has taken over the consumer market, very aggressively and that has driven down the cost of flash much much faster than the declining market of HDD. >> Okay and now, so Renen I wonder if we could come to you, we've got I want you to talk about the innovations that you're doing, but before we get there, talk about why you started Vast. >> Sure, so it was five years ago and it was basically the kill of the hard drive. I think what David is saying resonates very, very well. In fact, if you look at our original presentation for Vast Data. It showed flash and tape. There was no hard drive in the middle. And we said 10 years from now, and this was five years ago. So even the dates match up pretty well. We're not going to have hard drives anymore. Any piece of information that needs to be accessible at all will be on flash and anything that is dormant and never gets read will be on tape. >> So, okay. So we're entering this kind of new phase now, with which is being driven by QLC. David maybe you could give us a quick what is QLC? Just give us a bumper sticker there. >> There's 3D NAND, which is the thing that's growing, very very fast and it's growing on several dimensions. One dimension is the number of layers. Another dimension is the size of each of those pieces. And the third dimension is the number of bits which a QLC is five bits per cell. So those three dimensions have all been improving. And the result of that is that on a wafer of, that you create, more and more data can be stored on the whole wafer on the chip that comes from that wafer. And so QLC is the latest, set of 3D NAND flash NAND flash. That's coming off the lines at the moment. >> Okay, so my understanding is that there's new architectures that are entering the data center space, that could take advantage of QLC enter Vast. Someone said they've rented this, a nice set up for you and maybe before we get into the architecture, can you talk a little bit more about the company? I mean, maybe not everybody's familiar with with Vast, you share why you started it but what can you tell us about the business performance and any metrics you can share would be great? >> Sure, so the company as I said is five years old, about 170, 180 people today. We started selling product just around two years ago and have just hit $150 million in run rate. That's with eight sales people. And so, as you can imagine, there's a lot of demand for flash all the way down the stack in the way that David predicted. >> Wow, okay. So you got pretty comfortable. I think you've got product market fit, right? And now you're going to scale. I would imagine you're going to go after escape velocity and you're going to build your moat. Now part of that, I mean a lot of that is product, right? Product is sales. Those are the cool two golden pillars, but, and David when you think back to your early forecast last decade it was really about block storage. That was really what was under attack. You know, kind of fusion IO got it started with Facebook. They were trying to solve their SQL database performance problems. And then we saw pure storage. They hit escape velocity. They drove a truck through EMC sym metrics HDD based install base which precipitated the acquisition of XtremeIO by EMC. Something Renan knows a little bit about having led development, of the product but flash was late to the NAS party guys, Renan let me start with you. Why is that? And what is the relevance of QLC in that regard? >> The way storage has been always, it looks like a pyramid and you have your block devices up at the top and then your NAS underneath. And today you have object down at the bottom of that pyramid. And the pyramid basically represents capacity and the Y axis is price performance. And so if you could only serve a small subset of the capacity, you would go for block. And that is the subset that needed high performance. But as you go to QLC and PLC will soon follow the price of all flash systems goes down to a point where it can compete on the lower ends of that pyramid. And the capacity grows to a point where there's enough flash to support those workloads. And so now with QLC and a lot of innovation that goes with it it makes sense to build an all flash, NAS and object store. >> Yeah, okay. And David, you and I have talked about the volumes and Renan sort of just alluded to that, the higher volumes of NAS, not to mention the fact that NAS is hard, you know files difficult, but that's another piece of the equation here, isn't it? >> Absolutely, NAS is difficult. It's a large, very large scale. We're talking about petabytes of data. You're talking about very important data. And you're talking about data, which is at the moment very difficult to manage. It takes a lot of people to manage it, takes a lot of resources and it takes up a lot, a lot of space as well. So all of those issues with NAS and complexity is probably the biggest single problem. >> So maybe we could geek out a little bit here. You guys go at it, but Renan talk about the Vast architecture. I presume it was built from the ground up for flash since you were trying to kill HTD. What else do we need to know? >> It was built for flash. It was also built for Crosspoint which is a new technology that came out from Intel and micron about three years ago. Cross point is basically another level of persistent media above flash and below Ram. But what we really set out to do is, as I said to kill the hard drive, and for that what you need is to get the price parity. And of course, flash and hard drives are not at price parity today. As David said, they probably will be in a few years from now. And so we wanted to, jumpstart that, to accelerate that. And so we spent a lot of time in building a new type of architecture with a lot of new metadata structures and algorithms on top to bring that effective price down to a point where it's competitive today. And in fact, two years ago the way we did it was by going out to talk to these vendors Intel with 3D Crosspoint and QLC flash Mellanox with NVMe over fabrics, and very fast ethernet networks. And we took those building blocks and we thought how can we use this to build a completely different type of architecture, that doesn't just take flash one level down the stack but actually allows us to break that pyramid, to collapse it down and to build a single system that is as fast as your fastest all flash block device or faster but as affordable as your hard drive based archives. And once that happens you don't need to think about storage anymore. You have a single system that's big enough and cheap enough to throw everything at it. And it's fast enough such that everything is accessible as sub-millisecond latencies. The way the architecture is built is pretty much the opposite of the way scale-out storage has been done. It's not based on shared nothing. The way XtremIO was the way Isilon is the way Hadoop and the Google file system are. We're basing it on a concept called Dis-aggregated Shared Everything. And what that means is that we have the media on one set of devices, the logic running in containers, just software and you can scale each of those independently. So you can scale capacity independently from performance and you have this shared metadata space, that all of the containers can see. So the containers don't actually have to talk to each other in the synchronous path. That means that it's much more scalable. You can go up to hundreds of thousands of nodes rather than just a few dozen. It's much more resilient. You can have all of them fail and you still didn't lose any data. And it's much more easy to use to David's point about complexity. >> Thank you for that. And then you, you mentioned up front that you not only built for flash, but built for Crosspoint. So you're using Crosspoint today. It's interesting. There was always been this sort of debate about Crosspoint It's less expensive than Ram, or maybe I got that wrong but it's persistent, >> It is. >> Okay, but it's more expensive than flash. And it was sort of thought it was a fence sitter cause it didn't have the volume but you're using it today successfully. That's interesting. >> We're using it both to offset the deficiencies of the low cost flash. And the nice thing about QLC and PLC is that you get the same levels of read performance as you would from high-end flash. The only difference between high cost and low cost flash today is in right cycles and in right performance. And so Crosspoint helps us offset both of those. We use it as a large right buffer and we use it as a large metadata store. And that allows us not just to arrange the information in a very large persistent right buffer before we need to place it on the low cost flash. But it also allows us to develop new types of metadata structures and algorithms that allow us to make better use of the low cost flash and reduce the effective price down even lower than the rock capacity. >> Very cool. David, what are your thoughts on the architecture? give us kind of the independent perspective >> I think it's brilliant architecture. I'd like to just go one step down on the network side of things. The whole use of NBME over fabric allows the users all of the servers to get any data across this whole network directly to it. So you've got great performance right away across the stack. And then the other thing is that by using RDMA for NASS, you're able, if you need to, to get down in microseconds to the data. So overall that's a thousand times faster than any HDD system could manage. So this architecture really allows an any to any simple, single level of storage which is so much easier to think about, architect use or manage is just so much simpler. >> If you had I mean, I said I don't know if there's an answer to this question but if you had to pick one thing Renan that you really were dogmatic about and you bet on from an architectural standpoint, what would that be? >> I think what we bet on in the early days is the fact that the pyramid doesn't work anymore and that tiering doesn't work anymore. In fact, we stole Johnson and Johnson's tagline No More Tears. Only, It's not spelled the same way. The reason for that is not because of storage. It's because of the applications as we move to applications more and more that are machine-based and machines are now not just generating the data. They're also reading the data and analyzing it and providing insights for humans to consume. Then the workloads changed dramatically. And the one thing that we saw is that you can't choose which pieces of information need to be accessible anymore. These new algorithms, especially around AI and machine learning and deep learning they need fast access to the entirety of the dataset and they want to read it over and over and over again in order to generate those insights. And so that was the driving force behind us building this new type of architecture. And we're seeing every single day when we talk to customers how the old architecture is simply break down in the face of these new applications. >> Very cool speaking of customers. I wonder if you could talk about use cases, customers you know, and this NASS arena maybe you could add some color there. >> Sure, our customers are large in data. We started half a petabyte and we grow into the exabyte range. The system likes to be big as, as it grows it grows super linearly. If you have a 100 nodes or a 1000 nodes you get more than 10X in performance, in capacity efficiency and resilience, et cetera. And so that's where we thrive. And those workloads are today. Mainly analytics workloads, although not entirely. If you look at it geographically we have a lot of life science in Boston research institutes medical imaging, genomics universities pharmaceutical companies here in New York. We have a lot of financials, hedge funds, Analyzing everything from satellite imagery to trade data to Twitter feeds out in California. A lot of AI, autonomous driving vehicles as well as media and entertainment both generation of films like animation, as well as content distribution are being done on top of best. >> Great thank you and David, when you look at the forecast that you've made over the years and when I imagine that they match nicely with your assumptions. And so, okay, I get that, but that doesn't, not everybody agrees, David. I mean, certainly the HDD guys don't agree but they, they're obviously fighting to hang on to their awesome run for 50 years, but as well there's others to do in hybrids and the like, and they kind of challenge your assumptions and you don't have a dog in this fight. We just want the truth and try to do our best to report it. But let me start with this. One of the things I've seen is that you're comparing deduped and compressed flash with raw HDD. Is that true or false? >> It's in terms of the fundamentals of the forecast, et cetera, it's false. What I'm taking is the new egg price. And I did it this morning and I looked up a two terabyte disc drive, NAS disc drive. I think it was $54. And if you look at the cost of a a NAND for two terabytes, it's about $200. So it's a four to one ratio. >> So, >> So and that's coming down from what people saw last year, which was five or six and every year has been, that ratio has been coming down. >> The ratio between the cost Delta, between HDD is still cheaper. So Renan I wonder one of the other things that Floyer has said is that because of the advantages of flash, not only performance but also data sharing, et cetera, which really drives other factors like TCO. That it doesn't have to be at parody in order for customers to consume that. I certainly saw that on my laptop, I could have got more storage and it could have been cheaper for per bit for my laptop. I took the flash. I mean, no problem. That that was an intelligence test but what are you seeing from customers? And by the way Floyer I think is forecasting by what, 2026 there will be actually a raw to raw crossover. So then it's game over. But what are you seeing in terms of what customers are telling you or any evidence you have that it doesn't have to be, even that customers actually get more value even if it's more expensive from flash, what are you seeing? >> Yeah in the enterprise space customers aren't buying raw flash they're buying storage systems. And so even if the raw numbers flash versus hard drive are still not there there is a lot of things that can be done at the system level to equalize those two. In fact, a lot of our IP is based on that we are taking flash today is, as David said more expensive than hard drives, but at the system level it doesn't remain more expensive. And the reason for that is storage systems waste space. They waste it on metadata, they waste it on redundancy. We built our new metadata structures, such that they everything lives in Crosspoint and is so much smaller because of the way Crosspoint is accessible at byte level granularity, we built our erasure codes in a way where you can sustain 10, 20, 30 drive failures but you only pay two or 1% in overhead. We built our data reduction mechanisms such that they can reduce down data even if the application has already compressed it and already de-duplicated it. And so there's a lot of innovation that can happen at the software level as part of this new direct dis-aggregated shared everything architecture that allows us to bridge that cost gap today without having customers do fancy TCO calculations. And of course, as prices of flash over the next few years continue declining, all of those advantages remain and it will just widen the gap between hard drives and flash. And there really is no advantage to hard drives once the price thing is solved. >> So thank you. So David, the other thing I've seen around these forecasts is that the comments that you can't really data reduce effectively hard disk. And I understand why the overhead and of course you can in flash you can use all kinds of data reduction techniques and not affect performance, or it's not even noticeable like put the cloud guys, do it upstream. Others do it upstream. What's your comment on that? >> Yes, if you take sequential data and you do a lot of work upfront you can write out in very lot big blocks and that's a perfect sequentially, good way of doing it. The challenge for the HDD people is if they go for that for that sort of sequential type of application that the cheapest way of doing that is to use tape which comes back to the discussion that the two things that are going to remain are tape and flash. So that part of the HDD market in my assertion will go towards tape and tape libraries. And those are serving very well at the moment. >> Yeah I mean, It's just the economics of tape are really attractive. I just feel like I've said this many times that the marketing of tape is lacking. Like I'd like to see, better thinking around how it could play. Cause I think customers have this perception tape, but there's actually a lot of value there. I want to carry on, >> Small point there. Yeah, I mean, there's an opportunity in the same way that Vast have created an architecture for flash. There's an opportunity out there for the tech people with flash to make an architecture that allows you to take that workload and really lower the price, enormously. >> You've called it Flape >> Flape yes. >> There's some interesting metadata opportunities there but we won't go into that. And then David, I want to ask you about NAND shortages. We saw this in 2016 and 2017. A lot of people saying there's an NAND shortage again. So that's a flaw in your forecast prices of you're assuming prices of flash continue to come down faster than those of HDD but the shortages of NAND could be problematic. What do you say to that? >> Well, I've looked at that in some detail and one of the big, important things is what's happening in the flash market and the Chinese, YMTC Chinese company has introduced a lot more volume into the market. They're making 100,000 wafers a month for this year. That's around six to 8% of market of NAND at this year, as a result, Samsung, micron, Intel, Hynix they're all increasing their volumes of NAND so that they're all investing. So I don't see that NAND itself is going to be a problem. There is certainly a shortage of processor chips which drive the intelligence in the NAND itself. But that's a problem for everybody. That's a problem for cars. It's a problem for disk drives. >> You could argue that's going to create an oversupply, potentially. Let's not go there, but you know what at the end of the day it comes back to the customer and all this stuff. It's interesting. I love talking about the architecture but it's really all about customer value. And so, so Renan, I want you to sort of close there. What should customers be paying attention to? And what should observers of Vast Data really watch as indicators for progress for you guys milestones and things in the market that we should be paying attention to but start with the customers. What's your advice to them? >> Sure, for any customer that I talked to I always ask the same thing. Imagine where you'll be five years from now because you're making an investment now that is at least five years long. In our case, we guaranteed the lifespan of the devices for a decade, such that you know that it's going to be there for you and imagine what is going to happen over those next five years. What we're seeing in most customers is that they have a lot of doormen data and with the advances in analytics and AI they want to make use of that data. They want to turn it from a cost center to a profit center and to gain insight from that data and to improve their business based on that information that they have the same way the hyperscalers are doing in order to do that, you need one thing you need fast access to all of that information. Once you have that, you have the foundation to step into this next generation type world where you can actually make money off of your information. And the best way to get very, very fast access to all of your information is to put it on Vast media like flash and Crosspoint. If I can give one example, Hedge Funds. Hedge funds do a lot of back-testing on Vast. And what makes sense for them is to test as much information back as they possibly can but because of storage limitations, they can't do that. And the other thing that's important to them is to have a real-time experience to be able to run those simulations in a few minutes and not as a batch process overnight, but because of storage limitations, they can't do that either. The third thing is if you have many different applications and many different users on the same system they usually step on each other's toes. And so the Vast architecture is solves those three problems. It allows you a lot of information very fast access and fast processing an amazing quality of service where different users of the system don't even notice that somebody else is accessing the same piece of information. And so Hedge Funds is one example. Any one of these verticals that make use of a lot of information will benefit from this architecture in this system. And if it doesn't cost any more, there's really no real reason delay this transition into all flash. >> Excellent very clear thinking. Thanks for laying that out. And what about, you know, things that we should how should we judge you? What are the things that we should watch? >> I think the most important way to judge us is to look at customer adoption and what we're seeing and what we're showing investors is a very high net dollar retention number. What that means is basically a customer buys a piece of kit today, how much more will they buy over the next year, over the next two years? And we're seeing them buy more than three times more, within a year of the initial purchase. And we see more than 90% of them buying more within that first year. And that to me indicates that we're solving a real problem and that they're making strategic decisions to stop buying any other type of storage system. And to just put everything on Vast over the next few years we're going to expand beyond just storage services and provide a full stack for these AI applications. We'll expand into other areas of infrastructure and develop the best possible vertically integrated system to allow those new applications to thrive. >> Nice, yeah. Think investors love that lifetime value story. If you can get above 3X of the customer acquisition cost is to IPO in the way. Guys hey, thanks so much for coming to the Cube. We had a great conversation and really appreciate your time. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> All right, Thanks for watching everybody. This is Dave Volante for the Cube. We'll see you next time. (gentle music)
SUMMARY :
that the all flash data center was coming. in the marketplace but where and the volume comes from the consumers. the innovations that you're doing, kill of the hard drive. David maybe you could give And so QLC is the latest, and any metrics you can in the way that David predicted. having led development, of the product And the capacity grows to a point where And David, you and I have talked about the biggest single problem. the ground up for flash that all of the containers can see. that you not only built for cause it didn't have the volume and PLC is that you get the same levels David, what are your all of the servers to get any data And the one thing that we saw I wonder if you could talk And so that's where we thrive. One of the things I've seen is that of the forecast, et cetera, it's false. So and that's coming down And by the way Floyer I at the system level to equalize those two. the comments that you can't really So that part of the HDD market that the marketing of tape is lacking. and really lower the price, enormously. but the shortages of NAND and one of the big, important I love talking about the architecture that it's going to be there for you What are the things that we should watch? And that to me indicates that of the customer acquisition This is Dave Volante for the Cube.
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Yusef Khan & Suresh Kanniappan | Io Tahoe Enterprise Digital Resilience on Hybrid & Multicloud
>>from around the globe. It's the Cube presenting enterprise, Digital resilience on hybrid and multi cloud Brought to You by Iota Ho. Okay, let's now get into the next segment where we'll explore data automation. But from the angle of digital resilience within and as a service consumption model, we're now joined by Yusuf Khan, who heads data services for Iota Ho and Shirish County. Up in Who's the vice president and head of U. S. Sales at happiest Minds. Gents, welcome to the program. Great to have you in the Cube. >>Thank you, David. >>Stretch. You guys talk about happiest minds. This notion of born digital, foreign agile. I like that. But talk about your mission at the company. >>Sure. A former in 2011 Happiest minds Up Born digital born a child company. >>The >>reason is that we are focused on customers. Our customer centric approach on delivering digitals and seamless solutions have helped us be in the race. Along with the Tier one providers, our mission, happiest people, happiest customers is focused to enable customer happiness through people happiness. We have Bean ranked among the top 25 I t services company in the great places to work serving hour glass to ratings off 4.1 against the rating off five is among the job in the Indian nineties services company that >>shows the >>mission on the culture. What we have built on the values, right sharing, mindful, integrity, learning and social on social responsibilities are the core values off our company on. That's where the entire culture of the company has been built. >>That's great. That sounds like a happy place to be. Now you have you head up data services for Iot Tahoe. We've talked in the past. Of course you're out of London. What do you what's your day to day focus with customers and partners? What you focused on? >>Well, David, my team work daily with customers and partners to help them better understand their data, improve their data quality, their data governance on help them make that data more accessible in a self service kind of way. To the stakeholders within those businesses on dis is all a key part of digital resilience that will will come on to talk about but later. You're >>right, e mean, that self service theme is something that we're gonna we're gonna really accelerate this decade, Yussef and so. But I wonder before we get into that, maybe you could talk about the nature of the partnership with happiest minds. You know, why do you guys choose toe work closely together? >>Very good question. Um, we see Io Tahoe on Happiest minds as a great mutual fit. A Suresh has said happiest minds are very agile organization. Um, I think that's one of the key things that attracts their customers on Io. Tahoe is all about automation. We're using machine learning algorithms to make data discovery data cataloging, understanding, data, redundancy, uh, much easier on. We're enabling customers and partners to do it much more quickly. So when you combine our emphasis on automation with the emphasis on agility, the happiest minds have that. That's a really nice combination. Work works very well together, very powerful. I think the other things that a key are both businesses, a serious have said are really innovative digital native type type companies. Um, very focused on newer technologies, the cloud etcetera, uh, on. Then finally, I think that both challenger brands Andi happiest minds have a really positive, fresh ethical approach to people and customers that really resonates with us that I have tied to its >>great thank you for that. So Russia, Let's get into the whole notion of digital resilience. I wanna I wanna sort of set it up with what I see. And maybe you can comment be prior to the pandemic. A lot of customers that kind of equated disaster recovery with their business continuance or business resilient strategy, and that's changed almost overnight. How have you seen your clients respond to that? What? I sometimes called the forced march to become a digital business. And maybe you could talk about some of the challenges that they faced along the way. >>Absolutely. So, uh, especially during this pandemic times when you see Dave customers have been having tough times managing their business. So happiest minds. Being a digital Brazilian company, we were able to react much faster in the industry, apart from the other services company. So one of the key things is the organizations trying to adopt onto the digital technologies right there has bean lot off data which has been to managed by these customers on. There have been lot off threats and risk, which has been to manage by the CEO Seo's so happiest minds digital resilient technology fight the where we're bringing the data complaints as a service, we were ableto manage the resilience much ahead off other competitors in the market. We were ableto bring in our business community processes from day one, where we were ableto deliver our services without any interruption to the services what we were delivering to our customers. >>So >>that is where the digital resilience with business community process enabled was very helpful for us who enable our customers continue there business without any interruptions during pandemics. >>So, I mean, some of the challenges that that customers tell me they obviously had to figure out how to get laptops to remote workers and that that whole remote, you know, work from home pivot figure out how to secure the end points. And, you know, those were kind of looking back there kind of table stakes, but it sounds like you've got a digital business means a data business putting data at the core, I like to say, but so I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about maybe the philosophy you have toward digital resilience in the specific approach you take with clients? >>Absolutely. They seen any organization data becomes. The key on this for the first step is to identify the critical data. Right. So we this is 1/6 process. What we following happiest minds. First of all, we take stock off the current state, though the customers think that they have a clear visibility off their data. How are we do more often assessment from an external point off view on See how critical their data is? Then we help the customers to strategies that right the most important thing is to identify the most important critical herself. Data being the most critical assault for any organization. Identification off the data's key for the customers. Then we help in building a viable operating model to ensure these identified critical assets are secure on monitor dearly so that they are consumed well as well as protected from external threats. Then, as 1/4 step, we try to bring in awareness, toe the people we train them at all levels in the organization. That is a P for people to understand the importance off the residual our cells. And then as 1/5 step, we work as a back up plan in terms of bringing in a very comprehensive and the holistic testing approach on people process as well as in technology. We'll see how the organization can withstand during a crisis time. And finally we do a continuous governance off this data, which is a key right. It is not just a one step process. We set up the environment. We do the initial analysis and set up the strategy on continuously govern this data to ensure that they are not only know managed will secure as well as they also have to meet the compliance requirements off the organization's right. That is where we help organizations toe secure on Meet the regulations off the organizations. As for the privacy laws, >>so >>this is a constant process. It's not on one time effort. We do a constant process because every organization goes towards the digital journey on. They have to face all these as part off the evolving environment on digital journey, and that's where they should be kept ready in terms off. No recovering, rebounding on moving forward if things goes wrong. >>So let's stick on that for a minute, and then I wanna bring yourself into the conversation. So you mentioned compliance and governance. When? When your digital business. Here, as you say, you're a data business. So that brings up issues. Data sovereignty. Uh, there's governance, this compliance. There's things like right to be forgotten. There's data privacy, so many things. These were often kind of afterthoughts for businesses that bolted on, if you will. I know a lot of executives are very much concerned that these air built in on, and it's not a one shot deal. So do you have solutions around compliance and governance? Can you deliver that as a service? Maybe you could talk about some of the specifics there, >>so some of way have offered multiple services. Tow our customers on digital race against. On one of the key service is the data complaints. As a service here we help organizations toe map the key data against the data compliance requirements. Some of the features includes in terms off the continuous discovery off data right, because organizations keep adding on data when they move more digital on helping the helping and understanding the actual data in terms off the residents of data, it could be a heterogeneous data sources. It could be on data basis or it could be even on the data lakes. Or it could be or no even on compromise, all the cloud environment. So identifying the data across the various no heterogeneous environment is very key. Feature off our solution. Once we identify, classify this sensitive data, the data privacy regulations on the traveling laws have to be map based on the business rules. So we define those rules on help map those data so that organizations know how critical their digital assets are. Then we work on a continuous marching off data for anomalies because that's one of the key teachers off the solution, which needs to be implemented on the day to day operational basis. So we're helping monitoring those anomalies off data for data quality management on an ongoing basis. And finally we also bringing the automatic data governance where we can manage the sensory data policies on their data relationships in terms off, mapping on manage their business rules on we drive reputations toe also suggest appropriate actions to the customers. Take on those specific data sets. >>Great. Thank you, Yousef. Thanks for being patient. I want to bring in Iota ho thio discussion and understand where your customers and happiest minds can leverage your data automation capability that you and I have talked about in the past. And I'm gonna be great if you had an example is well, but maybe you could pick it up from there. >>Sure. I mean, at a high level, assertions are clearly articulated. Really? Um, Iota, who delivers business agility. So that's by, um, accelerating the time to operationalize data, automating, putting in place controls and ultimately putting, helping put in place digital resilience. I mean, way if we step back a little bit in time, um, traditional resilience in relation to data are often met manually, making multiple copies of the same data. So you have a DB A. They would copy the data to various different places on business. Users would access it in those functional style owes. And of course, what happened was you ended up with lots of different copies off the same data around the enterprise. Very inefficient. Onda course ultimately, uh, increases your risk profile. Your risk of a data breach. Um, it's very hard to know where everything is, and I realized that expression they used David, the idea of the forced march to digital. So with enterprises that are going on this forced march, what they're finding is they don't have a single version of the truth, and almost nobody has an accurate view of where their critical data is. Then you have containers bond with containers that enables a big leap forward so you could break applications down into micro services. Updates are available via a P I s. And so you don't have the same need to build and to manage multiple copies of the data. So you have an opportunity to just have a single version of the truth. Then your challenge is, how do you deal with these large legacy data states that the service has been referring Thio, where you you have toe consolidate, and that's really where I Tahoe comes in. Um, we massively accelerate that process of putting in a single version of the truth into place. So by automatically discovering the data, um, discovering what's duplicate what's redundant, that means you can consolidate it down to a single trusted version much more quickly. We've seen many customers have tried to do this manually, and it's literally taken years using manual methods to cover even a small percentage of their I T estates with a tire. You could do it really very quickly on you can have tangible results within weeks and months. Um, and then you can apply controls to the data based on context. So who's the user? What's the content? What's the use case? Things like data quality validations or access permissions on. Then once you've done there, your applications and your enterprise are much more secure, much more resilient. As a result, you've got to do these things whilst retaining agility, though. So coming full circle. This is where the partnership with happiest minds really comes in as well. You've got to be agile. You've gotta have controls, um, on you've got a drug towards the business outcomes and it's doing those three things together that really deliver for the customer. Thank >>you. Use f. I mean you and I. In previous episodes, we've looked in detail at the business case. You were just talking about the manual labor involved. We know that you can't scale, but also there's that compression of time. Thio get to the next step in terms of ultimately getting to the outcome and we talked to a number of customers in the Cube. And the conclusion is really consistent that if you could accelerate the time to value, that's the key driver reducing complexity, automating and getting to insights faster. That's where you see telephone numbers in terms of business impact. So my question is, where should customers start? I mean, how can they take advantage of some of these opportunities that we've discussed >>today? Well, we've tried to make that easy for customers. So with our Tahoe and happiest minds, you can very quickly do what we call a data health check on. Dis is a is a 2 to 3 weeks process are two Really quickly start to understand and deliver value from your data. Um, so, iota, who deploys into the customer environment? Data doesn't go anywhere. Um, we would look at a few data sources on a sample of data Onda. We can very rapidly demonstrate how date discovery those catalog e understanding Jupiter data and redundant data can be done. Um, using machine learning, um, on how those problems can be solved. Um, and so what we tend to find is that we can very quickly as I say in a matter of a few weeks, show a customer how they could get toe, um, or Brazilian outcome on. Then how they can scale that up, take it into production on, then really understand their data state Better on build resilience into the enterprise. >>Excellent. There you have it. We'll leave it right there. Guys. Great conversation. Thanks so much for coming on the program. Best of luck to you in the partnership. Be well. >>Thank you, David. Sorry. Thank you. Thank >>you for watching everybody, This is Dave Volonte for the Cuban Are ongoing Siris on data Automation without Tahoe.
SUMMARY :
Great to have you in the Cube. But talk about your mission at the company. digital born a child company. I t services company in the great places to work serving hour glass to ratings mission on the culture. What do you what's your day to day focus To the stakeholders within those businesses on dis is all a key part of digital of the partnership with happiest minds. So when you combine our emphasis I sometimes called the forced march to become a digital business. So one of the key things that is where the digital resilience with business community process enabled was very putting data at the core, I like to say, but so I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about maybe for the first step is to identify the critical data. They have to face all these as part off the evolving environment So do you have solutions around compliance and governance? So identifying the data across the various no heterogeneous is well, but maybe you could pick it up from there. So by automatically discovering the data, um, And the conclusion is really consistent that if you could accelerate the time to value, So with our Tahoe and happiest minds, you can very quickly do what we call Best of luck to you in the partnership. Thank you. you for watching everybody, This is Dave Volonte for the Cuban Are ongoing Siris on data Automation without
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Dan Sheehan, COO | theCUBE on Cloud 2021
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the special presentation from theCUBE, where we're exploring the future of cloud and its business impact in the coming decade, kind of where we've come from and where we're going. My name is Dave Vellante, and with me is a CIO/CTO/COO, and longtime colleague, Dan Sheehan. Hello, Dan, how're you doing? >> Hey, Dave, how are you doing? Thank you for having me. >> Yeah, you're very welcome. So folks, Dan has been in the technology industry for a number of years. He's overseen, you know, large-multi, tens of millions of dollar ERP application development efforts, He was a CIO of a marketing, you know, direct mail company. Dan, we met at ADVO, it seems like such a (snickers) long time ago. >> Yeah, that was a long time ago, back in Connecticut. Back in the early 2000s. >> Yeah, ancient days. But pretty serious data for back then, you know, the early 2000s, and then you did a six-year stint as a EVP and CIO at Dunkin' Brands. I remember I came out to see you when I was starting Wikibon and trying to understand. >> Oh yeah. >> You know, what the CIOs cared about. You were so helpful and thanks for that. And that was a big deal. I mean, Dunkin', 17,000 points of distribution. I mean, that was sort of a complicated situation, right? >> Oh yeah. >> So, great experience. >> I mean, when you get involved with franchisees and trying to make everybody happy, yes, that was a lot of fun. >> And then you had a number of other roles, one was as COO at Modell's, and then to fast-forward, Beacon Health. You were EVP and CIO there. And you also, it looked like you had a kind of a business and operational role. You helped the company get acquired by Anthem Blue Cross. So awesome, congrats on that. That must've been a great experience. >> It was. A year of my life, yes. (both laugh) >> You're still standing. So anyway, you can see Dan, he's like this multi-tool star, he's seen a lot of changes in the technology business. So Dan, again, welcome back. Dan Sheehan. >> Oh, thank you. >> So when you started in your career, you know, there was no cloud, right? I mean, you had to do everything. It's funny, I remember I was... You probably know Bill Rucci, CIO of Hartford Steam Boiler. I remember we were talking one day, and this again was pre-cloud and he said, you know, I'm thinking, do I really need to manage my own email? I mean, back then, we did everything. So you had to provision infrastructure so you could write apps, and that was important. That frustrated CFOs, but it was a necessary piece of the value chain. So how have you seen that sort of IT value contribution shift over the years? Let's start there. >> Ah, well, I think it comes down to demand versus capacity. If you look at where companies want to go, they want to do a lot with technology. Technology has taken on a larger role. It's no longer and has not been a, so to speak, cost center. So I think the demand for making change and driving a company forward or reducing costs, there are other executives, peers to the CIO, to the CTO that are looking to do more, and when it comes to doing more, that means more demand, and you step back and you look at what the CIO has for capacity. Looking at Quick Solution's data, solutions in the cloud is appealing, and there are, you know, times where other functions talk to a vendor and see that they can get a vertical solution done pretty quickly. They go off and take that on, or it could be, you know, a ServiceNow capability that you want to implement across the company, and you do that just like an ERP type of roll up. But the bottom line is there are solutions out there that have pushed, I would say the IT organization to look at their capacity versus demand, and sometimes you can get things done quicker with a cloud type of solution. >> So how did you look at that shadow IT as a CIO? Was it something that kind of ticked you off or like you're sort of implying that it made you better? >> Well, I think it does ultimately make you better, but I think you have to partner with the functions because if you don't, you get these types of scenarios, and I've been involved in these just as well. You are busy with, you know, fulfilling your objectives as the leader of IT, and then you get a knock on the door from, let's say marketing or operations, and they say, hey, we just purchased this X solution and we want to integrate it with A, B and C. Well, that was not on the budget or on the IT roadmap or the IT strategy that was linked to the IT, I'm sorry, to the business strategy, and all of a sudden now you have more demand versus the capacity, and then you have to go start reprioritizing. So it's more of, yeah, kind of disrupted, but at the same time, it pushed, you know, the needle of the company forward. But it's all about just working together to make it happen. And that's a lot of, you know, hard conversations when you have to start reprioritizing capacity. >> Well, so let's talk about that alignment. I mean, there's always been a sort of a schism between IT and its ability to deliver, manage demand, and the business will always want you to go faster. They want IT to develop the systems, you know, of course, for less and then they want you to eat the cost of maintaining them, so (chuckles) there's been that tension. But in many ways, that CIO's job is alignment. I mean, it seems to me anyway that schism has certainly narrowed and the cloud's been been part of that, but what do you see as that trajectory over the years and where do you see it going? >> Well, I think it's going to continue to move forward, and depending upon the service, you know, companies are going to take advantage of those services. So yes, some of the non-mission critical capabilities that you would want to move out to the cloud or have somebody else do it, so to speak, that's going to continue to happen because they should be able to do it a lot cheaper than you can, just like use you mentioned a few moments ago about email. I did not want to maintain, you know, exchange service and keeping that all up and running. I moved quickly to Microsoft 365 and that's been a world of difference, but that's just one example. But when you have mission critical apps, you're going to have to make a decision if you want to continue to house them in-house or push them out to an AWS and house them there. So maybe you don't need a large data center and you can utilize some of the best and brightest around security, around managing size of the infrastructure and getting some of their engineering help, which can help. So it just depends upon the application, so to speak, or a function that you're trying to support. And you got to really look at your enterprise architecture and see where that makes sense. So you got to have a hybrid. I see and I have, you know, managed towards a hybrid way of looking at your architecture. >> Okay, so obviously the cloud played a role in that change, and of course, you were in healthcare too so you had to be somewhat careful, >> Yep. >> With the cloud. But you mentioned this hybrid architecture. I mean, from a technologist standpoint and a business standpoint, what do you want out of, you know, you hear a hybrid, multi, all the buzz words. What are you looking for then? Is it a consistent experience? Is it a consistent security? Or is it sort of more horses for courses, where you're trying to run a workload in the right place? What's your philosophy on that? >> Well, I mean, all those things matter, but you're looking at obviously, cost, you're looking at engagement. How does these services engage? Whether it's internal employees or external clients who you're servicing, and you want to get to a cost structure that makes sense in terms of managing those services as well as those mission critical apps. So it comes down to looking at the dollars and cents, as well as what type of services you can provide. In many cases, if you can provide a cheaper and increase the overall services, you're going to go down that path. And just like we did with ServiceNow, I did that at Beacon and also at DentaQuest two healthcare companies. We were able to, you know, remove duplicated, so to speak, ticketing systems and move to one and allow a better experience for the internal employee. They can do self-service, they can look at metrics, they can see status, real-time status on where their request was. So that made a bigger difference. So you engaged the employee differently, better, and then you also reduce your costs. >> Well, how about the economics? I mean, your experience that cloud is cheaper. You hear a lot of the, you know, a lot of the legacy players are saying, oh, no cloud's super expensive. Wait till you get that Amazon bill. (laughs) What's the truth? >> Well, I think there's still a lot of maturing that needs to go on, because unfortunately, depending upon the company, so let's use a couple of examples. So let's look at a startup. You look at a startup, they're probably going to look at all their services being in the cloud and being delivered through a SaaS model, and that's going to be an expense, that's going to be most likely a per user expense per month or per year, however, they structure the contract. And right out of the gate, that's going to be a top line expense that has to be managed going forward. Now you look at companies that have been around for a while, and two of the last companies I worked with, had a lot of technical debt, had on-prem applications. And when you started to look at how to move forward, you know, you had CFOs that were used to going to buy software, capitalize in that software over, you know, five years, sometimes three years, and using that investment to be capitalized, and that would sit below the line, so to speak. Now, don't get me wrong, you still have to pay for it, it's just a matter of where it sits. And when you're running a company and you're looking at the financials, not having that cost on your operational expenses, so to speak, if you're not looking at the depreciation through those numbers, that was advantageous to a CFO many years ago. Now you come to them and say, hey, we're going to move forward with a new HR system, and it's all increasing the expense because there's nothing else to capitalize. Those are different conversations, and all of a sudden your expenses have increased, and yes, you have to make sure that the businesses behind you, with respects to an ROI and supporting it. >> Yeah, so as long as the value is there, and that's a part of the alignment. I want to ask you about cloud pricing strategies because you mentioned ServiceNow, you know, Salesforce is in there, Workday. If you look at the way these guys price, it's really not true cloud pricing in a way, cause they're going to have you sign up for an annual license, you know, a lot of times you got pay up front, or if you want a discount, you're going to have to sign up for two years or three years. But now you see guys like Snowflake coming in, you know, big high-profile IPO. They actually charge you on a consumption-based model. What are your thoughts on that? Do you see that as sort of a trend in the coming decade? >> No, I absolutely think it's going to be on a trend, because consumption means more transactions and more transactions means more computing, and they're going to look at charging it just like any other utility charges. So yes, I see that trend continuing. Did a big deal with UltiPro HR, and yeah, that was all based upon user head count, but they were talking about looking at their payroll and changing their costing on payroll down the road. With their merger, or they went from being a public company to a private company, and now looking to merge with Kronos. I can see where time and attendance and payroll will stop being looked at as a transaction, right? It's a weekly or bi-weekly or monthly, however the company pays, and yes, there is dollars to be made there. >> Well, so let me ask you as a CIO and a business, you know, COO. One of the challenges that you hear with the cloud is okay, if I get my Amazon bill, it's something that Snowflake has talked about, where you know, to me, it's the ideal model, but on the other hand, the transparency is not necessarily there. You don't know what it's going to be at the end of (mumbles) Would you rather have more certainty as to what that bill's going to look like? Or would you rather have it aligned with consumption and the value to the business? >> Well, you know, that's a great question, because yes, I mean, budgets are usually built upon a number that's fixed. Now, no, don't get me wrong. I mean, when I look at the wide area network, the cost for internet services, yes, sometimes we need to increase and that means an increase in the overall cost, but that consumption, that transactional, that's going to be a different way of having to go ahead and budget. You have to budget now for the maximum transactions you anticipate with a growth of a company, and then you need to take a look at that you know, if you're budgeting. I know we were on a calendar fiscal year, so we started up budgeting process in August and we finalized at sometime in the end of October, November for the proceeding year, and if that's the case, you need to get a little bit better on what your consumptions are going to be, because especially if you're a public company, going out on the street with some numbers, those numbers could vary based upon a high transaction volume and the cost, and maybe you're not getting the results on the top end, on the revenue side. So I think, yeah, it's going to be an interesting dilemma as we move forward. >> Yeah. So, I mean, it comes back to alignment, doesn't it? I mean, I know in our small example, you know, we're doing now, we were used to be physical events with theCUBE, now it's all virtual events and our Amazon bill is going through the roof because we're supporting all these users on these virtual events, and our CFO's like, well, look at this Amazon bill, and you say, yeah, but look at the revenue, it's supporting. And so to your point, if the revenue is there, if the ROI is there, then it makes sense. You can kind of live with it because you're growing with it, but if not, then you really got to question it. >> Yeah. So you got to need to partner with your financial folks and come up with better modeling around some of these transactional services and build that into your modeling for your budget and for your, you know, your top line and your expenses. >> So what do you think of some of these SaaS companies? I mean, you've had a lot of experience. They're really coming at it from largely an application perspective, although you've managed a lot of infrastructure too. But we've talked about ServiceNow. They've kind of mopped up in the ITSM. I mean, there's nobody left. I mean, ServiceNow has sort of taken over the whole (mumbles) You know, Salesforce, >> Yeah. >> I guess, sort of similarly, sort of dominating the CRM space. You hear a lot of complaints now about, you know, ServiceNow pricing. There is somebody the other day called them the Oracle of ITSM. Do you see that potentially getting disrupted by maybe some cloud native developers who are developing tools on top? You see in, like, for instance, Datadog going after Splunk and LogRhythm. And there seem to be examples popping up. Well, what's your take on all this? >> No, absolutely. I think cause, you know, when we were talking about back when I first met you, when I was at the ADVO, I mean, Oracle was on it's, you know, rise with their suite of capabilities, and then before you know it, other companies were popping up and took over, whether it was Firstbeat, PeopleSoft, Workday, and then other companies that just came into play, cause it's going to happen because people are going to get, you know, frustrated. And yes, I did get a little frustrated with ServiceNow when I was looking at a couple of new modules because the pricing was a little bit higher than it was when I first started out. So yes, when you're good and you're able to provide the right services, they're going to start pricing it that way. But yes, I think you're going to get smaller players, and then those smaller players will start grabbing up, so to speak, market share and get into it. I mean, look at Salesforce. I mean, there are some pretty good CRMs. I mean, even, ServiceNow is getting into the CRM space big time, as well as a company like Sugar and a few others that will continue to push Salesforce to look at their pricing as well as their services. I mean, they're out there buying up companies, but you just can't automatically assume that they're going to, you know, integrate day one, and it's going to take time for some of their services to come and become reality, so to speak. So yes, I agree that there will be players out there that will push these lager SaaS companies, and hopefully get the right behaviors and right pricing. >> I've said for years, Dan, that I've predicted that ServiceNow and Salesforce are on a collision course. It didn't really happen, but it's starting to, because ServiceNow, the valuation is so huge. They have to grow into other markets much in the same way that Salesforce has. So maybe we'll see McDermott start doing some acquisitions. It's maybe a little tougher for ServiceNow given their whole multi-instance architecture and sort of their own cloud. That's going to be interesting to see how that plays out. >> Yeah. Yeah. You got to play in that type of architecture, let's put it that way. Yes, it'll be interesting to see how that does play out. >> What are your thoughts on the big hyperscalers; Amazon, Microsoft, Google? What's the right strategy there? Do you go all in on one cloud like AWS or are you more worried about lock-in? Do you want to spread your bets across clouds? How real is multi-cloud? Is it a strategy or more sort of a reality that you get M and A and you got shadow IT? What's your take on all that? >> Yeah, that's a great question because it does make you think a little differently around you know, where to put all your eggs. And it's getting tougher because you do want to distribute those eggs out to multiple vendors, if you would, service providers. But, you know, for instance we had a situation where we were building a brand new business intelligence data warehouse, and we decided to go with Microsoft as its core database. And we did a bake-off on business analytic tools. We had like seven of them at Beacon and we ended up choosing Microsoft's Power BI, and a good part of that reason, not all of it, but a good part of it was because we felt they did everything else that the Tableau's and others did, but, you know, Microsoft would work to give, you know, additional capabilities to Power BI if it's sitting on their database. So we had to take that into consideration, and we did and we ended up going with Power BI. With Amazon, I think Amazon's a little bit more, I'll put it horizontal, whereby they can help you out because of the database and just kind of be in that data center, if you would, and be able to move some of your homegrown applications, some of your technical debt over to that, I'll say cloud. But it'll get interesting because when you talk about integration, when you talk about moving forward with a new functionality, yeah, you have to put your architecture in a somewhat of a center point, and then look to see what is easier, cheaper, cost-effective, but, you know, what's happening to my functionality over the next three to five years. >> But it sounds like you'd subscribe to a horses for courses approach, where you put the right workload in the right cloud, as opposed to saying, I'm going to go all in on one cloud and it's going to be, you know, same skillset, same security, et cetera. It sounds like you'd lean toward the former versus going all in with, you know, MANO cloud. >> Yeah, I guess again, when I look at the architecture. There will be major, you know, breaks if you would. So yes, there is somewhat of a, you know, movement to you know, go with one horse. But, you know, I could see looking back at the Beacon architecture that we could, you know, lift and put the claims adjudication capabilities up in Amazon and then have that conduct, you know, the left to right claims processing, and then those transactions could then be moved into Microsoft's data warehouse. So, you know, there is ways to go about spreading it out so that you don't have all those eggs in one basket and that you reduce the amount of risk, but that weighed heavily on my mind. >> So I was going to ask you, how much of a factor lock-in is it? It sounds like it's more, you know, spreading your eggs around, as you say and reducing your risk as opposed to, you know, worried about lock-in, but as a CIO, how worried are you about lock-in? Where is that fit in the sort of decision tree? >> Ah, I mean, I would say it's up there, but unfortunately, there's no number one, there's like five number ones, if you would. So it's definitely up there and it's something to consider when you're looking at, like you said, the cost, risk integration, and then time. You know, sometimes you're up against the time. And again, security, like I said. Security is a big key in healthcare. And actually security overall, whether you're retail, you're going to always have situations no matter what industry, you got to protect the business. >> Yeah, so I want to ask you about security. That's the other number one. Well, you might've been a defacto CSO, but kind of when we started in this business security was the problem of the security teams, and you know, it's now a team sport. But in thinking about the cloud and security, how big of a concern is the cloud? Is it just more, you're looking for consistency and be able to apply the corporate edicts? Are there other concerns like the shared responsibility model? What are your thoughts on security in the cloud? >> Well, it probably goes back to again, the industry, but when I looked at the past five years in healthcare, doing a lot of work with the CMS and Medicaid, Medicare, they had certain requirements and certain restrictions. So we had to make sure that we follow those requirements. And when you got audited, you needed to make sure that you can show that you are adhering to their requirements. So over the past, probably two years with Amazon's government capabilities that those restrictions have changed, but we were always looking to make sure that we owned and managed how we manage the provider and member data, because yes, we did not want to have obviously a breach, but we wanted to make sure we were following the guidelines, whether it's state or federal, and then and even some cases healthcare guidelines around managing that data. So yes, top of mind, making sure that we're protecting, you know, in my case so we had 37 million members, patients, and we needed to make sure that if we did put it in the cloud or if it was on-prem, that it was being protected. And as you mentioned, recently come off of, I was going to say Amazon, but it was an acquisition. That company that was looking at us doing the due diligence, they gave us thumbs up because of how we were managing the data at the lowest point and all the different levels within the architecture. So Anthem who did the acquisition, had a breach back in, I think it was 2015. That was top of mind for them. We had more questions during the due diligence around security than any other functional area. So it is critical, and I think slowly, some of that type of data will get up into the cloud, but again, it's going to go through some massive risk management and security measures, and audits, because how fragile that is. >> Yeah, I mean, that could be a deal breaker in an acquisition. I got two other questions for you. One is, you know, I know you follow the technologies very closely, but there's all the buzz words, the digital transformation, the AI, these new SaaS models that we talked about. You know, a lot of CIOs tell me, look, Dave, get the business right and the technology is the easy part. It's people, it's process. But what are you seeing in terms of some of this new stuff coming out, there's machine learning, you know, obviously massive scale, new cloud workloads. Anything out there that really excites you and that you could see on the horizon that could be, you know, really change agents for the next decade? >> Yeah, I think we did some RPA, robotics on some of the tasks that, you know, where, you know, if the analysis types of situations. So I think RPA is going to be a game changer as it continues to evolve. But I agree with what you just said. Doing this for quite a while now, it still comes down to the people. I can get the technology to do what it needs to do as long as I have the right requirements, so that goes back to people. Making sure we have the partnership that goes back to leadership and the people. And then the change management aspects. Right out of the gate, you should be worrying about how is it going to affect and then the adoption and engagement. Because adoption is critical, because you can go create the best thing you think from a technology perspective, but if it doesn't get used correctly, it's not worth the investment. So I agree, whether it's digital transformation or innovation, it still comes down to understanding the business model and injecting and utilizing technology to grow or reduce costs, grow the business or reduce costs. >> Yeah, usage really means value. Sorry, my last question. What's the one thing that vendors shouldn't do? What's the vendor no-no that'll alienate CIO's? >> To this day, I still don't like, there's a company out there that starts with an O. I still don't like it to that, every single technology module, if you would, has a separate sales rep. I want to work with my strategic partners and have one relationship and that single point of contact that spark and go back into their company and bring me whatever it is that we're looking at so that I don't get, you know, for instance from that company that starts with an O, you know, 17 calls from 17 different sales reps trying to sell me 17 different things. So what irritates me is, you know, you have a company that has a lot of breadth, a lot of, you know, capability and functional, you know that I may want. Give me one person that I can deal with. So a single point of contact, then that makes my life a lot easier. >> Well, Dan Sheehan, I really appreciate you spending some time on theCUBE, it's always a pleasure catching up with you and really appreciate you sharing your insights with our audience. Thank you. >> Oh, thank you, David. I appreciate the opportunity. You have a great day. >> All right. You too. And thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE on Cloud. Keep it right there. We'll be back with our next guest right after the short break. Awesome, Dan.
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Dan Sheehan, CIO/DTO/COO | CUBE On Cloud
>> Go on my lead. >> Dan: All right, very good. >> Five, four. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the special presentation from theCUBE, where we're exploring the future of cloud and its business impact in the coming decade, kind of where we've come from and where we're going. My name is Dave Vellante, and with me is a CIO/CTO/COO, and longtime colleague, Dan Sheehan. Hello, Dan, how're you doing? >> Hey, Dave, how are you doing? Thank you for having me. >> Yeah, you're very welcome. So folks, Dan has been in the technology industry for a number of years. He's overseen, you know, large-multi, tens of millions of dollar ERP application development efforts, He was a CIO of a marketing, you know, direct mail company. Dan, we met at ADVO, it seems like such a (snickers) long time ago. >> Yeah, that was a long time ago, back in Connecticut. Back in the early 2000s. >> Yeah, ancient days. But pretty serious data for back then, you know, the early 2000s, and then you did a six-year stint as a EVP and CIO at Dunkin' Brands. I remember I came out to see you when I was starting Wikibon and trying to understand. >> Oh yeah. >> You know, what the CIOs cared about. You were so helpful and thanks for that. And that was a big deal. I mean, Dunkin', 17,000 points of distribution. I mean, that was sort of a complicated situation, right? >> Oh yeah. >> So, great experience. >> I mean, when you get involved with franchisees and trying to make everybody happy, yes, that was a lot of fun. >> And then you had a number of other roles, one was as COO at Modell's, and then to fast-forward, Beacon Health. You were EVP and CIO there. And you also, it looked like you had a kind of a business and operational role. You helped the company get acquired by Anthem Blue Cross. So awesome, congrats on that. That must've been a great experience. >> It was. A year of my life, yes. (both laugh) >> You're still standing. So anyway, you can see Dan, he's like this multi-tool star, he's seen a lot of changes in the technology business. So Dan, again, welcome back. Dan Sheehan. >> Oh, thank you. >> So when you started in your career, you know, there was no cloud, right? I mean, you had to do everything. It's funny, I remember I was... You probably know Bill Rucci, CIO of Hartford Steam Boiler. I remember we were talking one day, and this again was pre-cloud and he said, you know, I'm thinking, do I really need to manage my own email? I mean, back then, we did everything. So you had to provision infrastructure so you could write apps, and that was important. That frustrated CFOs, but it was a necessary piece of the value chain. So how have you seen that sort of IT value contribution shift over the years? Let's start there. >> Ah, well, I think it comes down to demand versus capacity. If you look at where companies want to go, they want to do a lot with technology. Technology has taken on a larger role. It's no longer and has not been a, so to speak, cost center. So I think the demand for making change and driving a company forward or reducing costs, there are other executives, peers to the CIO, to the CTO that are looking to do more, and when it comes to doing more, that means more demand, and you step back and you look at what the CIO has for capacity. Looking at Quick Solution's data, solutions in the cloud is appealing, and there are, you know, times where other functions talk to a vendor and see that they can get a vertical solution done pretty quickly. They go off and take that on, or it could be, you know, a ServiceNow capability that you want to implement across the company, and you do that just like an ERP type of roll up. But the bottom line is there are solutions out there that have pushed, I would say the IT organization to look at their capacity versus demand, and sometimes you can get things done quicker with a cloud type of solution. >> So how did you look at that shadow IT as a CIO? Was it something that kind of ticked you off or like you're sort of implying that it made you better? >> Well, I think it does ultimately make you better, but I think you have to partner with the functions because if you don't, you get these types of scenarios, and I've been involved in these just as well. You are busy with, you know, fulfilling your objectives as the leader of IT, and then you get a knock on the door from, let's say marketing or operations, and they say, hey, we just purchased this X solution and we want to integrate it with A, B and C. Well, that was not on the budget or on the IT roadmap or the IT strategy that was linked to the IT, I'm sorry, to the business strategy, and all of a sudden now you have more demand versus the capacity, and then you have to go start reprioritizing. So it's more of, yeah, kind of disrupted, but at the same time, it pushed, you know, the needle of the company forward. But it's all about just working together to make it happen. And that's a lot of, you know, hard conversations when you have to start reprioritizing capacity. >> Well, so let's talk about that alignment. I mean, there's always been a sort of a schism between IT and its ability to deliver, manage demand, and the business will always want you to go faster. They want IT to develop the systems, you know, of course, for less and then they want you to eat the cost of maintaining them, so (chuckles) there's been that tension. But in many ways, that CIO's job is alignment. I mean, it seems to me anyway that schism has certainly narrowed and the cloud's been been part of that, but what do you see as that trajectory over the years and where do you see it going? >> Well, I think it's going to continue to move forward, and depending upon the service, you know, companies are going to take advantage of those services. So yes, some of the non-mission critical capabilities that you would want to move out to the cloud or have somebody else do it, so to speak, that's going to continue to happen because they should be able to do it a lot cheaper than you can, just like use you mentioned a few moments ago about email. I did not want to maintain, you know, exchange service and keeping that all up and running. I moved quickly to Microsoft 365 and that's been a world of difference, but that's just one example. But when you have mission critical apps, you're going to have to make a decision if you want to continue to house them in-house or push them out to an AWS and house them there. So maybe you don't need a large data center and you can utilize some of the best and brightest around security, around managing size of the infrastructure and getting some of their engineering help, which can help. So it just depends upon the application, so to speak, or a function that you're trying to support. And you got to really look at your enterprise architecture and see where that makes sense. So you got to have a hybrid. I see and I have, you know, managed towards a hybrid way of looking at your architecture. >> Okay, so obviously the cloud played a role in that change, and of course, you were in healthcare too so you had to be somewhat careful, >> Yep. >> With the cloud. But you mentioned this hybrid architecture. I mean, from a technologist standpoint and a business standpoint, what do you want out of, you know, you hear a hybrid, multi, all the buzz words. What are you looking for then? Is it a consistent experience? Is it a consistent security? Or is it sort of more horses for courses, where you're trying to run a workload in the right place? What's your philosophy on that? >> Well, I mean, all those things matter, but you're looking at obviously, cost, you're looking at engagement. How does these services engage? Whether it's internal employees or external clients who you're servicing, and you want to get to a cost structure that makes sense in terms of managing those services as well as those mission critical apps. So it comes down to looking at the dollars and cents, as well as what type of services you can provide. In many cases, if you can provide a cheaper and increase the overall services, you're going to go down that path. And just like we did with ServiceNow, I did that at Beacon and also at DentaQuest two healthcare companies. We were able to, you know, remove duplicated, so to speak, ticketing systems and move to one and allow a better experience for the internal employee. They can do self-service, they can look at metrics, they can see status, real-time status on where their request was. So that made a bigger difference. So you engaged the employee differently, better, and then you also reduce your costs. >> Well, how about the economics? I mean, your experience that cloud is cheaper. You hear a lot of the, you know, a lot of the legacy players are saying, oh, no cloud's super expensive. Wait till you get that Amazon bill. (laughs) What's the truth? >> Well, I think there's still a lot of maturing that needs to go on, because unfortunately, depending upon the company, so let's use a couple of examples. So let's look at a startup. You look at a startup, they're probably going to look at all their services being in the cloud and being delivered through a SaaS model, and that's going to be an expense, that's going to be most likely a per user expense per month or per year, however, they structure the contract. And right out of the gate, that's going to be a top line expense that has to be managed going forward. Now you look at companies that have been around for a while, and two of the last companies I worked with, had a lot of technical debt, had on-prem applications. And when you started to look at how to move forward, you know, you had CFOs that were used to going to buy software, capitalize in that software over, you know, five years, sometimes three years, and using that investment to be capitalized, and that would sit below the line, so to speak. Now, don't get me wrong, you still have to pay for it, it's just a matter of where it sits. And when you're running a company and you're looking at the financials, not having that cost on your operational expenses, so to speak, if you're not looking at the depreciation through those numbers, that was advantageous to a CFO many years ago. Now you come to them and say, hey, we're going to move forward with a new HR system, and it's all increasing the expense because there's nothing else to capitalize. Those are different conversations, and all of a sudden your expenses have increased, and yes, you have to make sure that the businesses behind you, with respects to an ROI and supporting it. >> Yeah, so as long as the value is there, and that's a part of the alignment. I want to ask you about cloud pricing strategies because you mentioned ServiceNow, you know, Salesforce is in there, Workday. If you look at the way these guys price, it's really not true cloud pricing in a way, cause they're going to have you sign up for an annual license, you know, a lot of times you got pay up front, or if you want a discount, you're going to have to sign up for two years or three years. But now you see guys like Snowflake coming in, you know, big high-profile IPO. They actually charge you on a consumption-based model. What are your thoughts on that? Do you see that as sort of a trend in the coming decade? >> No, I absolutely think it's going to be on a trend, because consumption means more transactions and more transactions means more computing, and they're going to look at charging it just like any other utility charges. So yes, I see that trend continuing. Did a big deal with UltiPro HR, and yeah, that was all based upon user head count, but they were talking about looking at their payroll and changing their costing on payroll down the road. With their merger, or they went from being a public company to a private company, and now looking to merge with Kronos. I can see where time and attendance and payroll will stop being looked at as a transaction, right? It's a weekly or bi-weekly or monthly, however the company pays, and yes, there is dollars to be made there. >> Well, so let me ask you as a CIO and a business, you know, COO. One of the challenges that you hear with the cloud is okay, if I get my Amazon bill, it's something that Snowflake has talked about, where you know, to me, it's the ideal model, but on the other hand, the transparency is not necessarily there. You don't know what it's going to be at the end of (mumbles) Would you rather have more certainty as to what that bill's going to look like? Or would you rather have it aligned with consumption and the value to the business? >> Well, you know, that's a great question, because yes, I mean, budgets are usually built upon a number that's fixed. Now, no, don't get me wrong. I mean, when I look at the wide area network, the cost for internet services, yes, sometimes we need to increase and that means an increase in the overall cost, but that consumption, that transactional, that's going to be a different way of having to go ahead and budget. You have to budget now for the maximum transactions you anticipate with a growth of a company, and then you need to take a look at that you know, if you're budgeting. I know we were on a calendar fiscal year, so we started up budgeting process in August and we finalized at sometime in the end of October, November for the proceeding year, and if that's the case, you need to get a little bit better on what your consumptions are going to be, because especially if you're a public company, going out on the street with some numbers, those numbers could vary based upon a high transaction volume and the cost, and maybe you're not getting the results on the top end, on the revenue side. So I think, yeah, it's going to be an interesting dilemma as we move forward. >> Yeah. So, I mean, it comes back to alignment, doesn't it? I mean, I know in our small example, you know, we're doing now, we were used to be physical events with theCUBE, now it's all virtual events and our Amazon bill is going through the roof because we're supporting all these users on these virtual events, and our CFO's like, well, look at this Amazon bill, and you say, yeah, but look at the revenue, it's supporting. And so to your point, if the revenue is there, if the ROI is there, then it makes sense. You can kind of live with it because you're growing with it, but if not, then you really got to question it. >> Yeah. So you got to need to partner with your financial folks and come up with better modeling around some of these transactional services and build that into your modeling for your budget and for your, you know, your top line and your expenses. >> So what do you think of some of these SaaS companies? I mean, you've had a lot of experience. They're really coming at it from largely an application perspective, although you've managed a lot of infrastructure too. But we've talked about ServiceNow. They've kind of mopped up in the ITSM. I mean, there's nobody left. I mean, ServiceNow has sort of taken over the whole (mumbles) You know, Salesforce, >> Yeah. >> I guess, sort of similarly, sort of dominating the CRM space. You hear a lot of complaints now about, you know, ServiceNow pricing. There is somebody the other day called them the Oracle of ITSM. Do you see that potentially getting disrupted by maybe some cloud native developers who are developing tools on top? You see in, like, for instance, Datadog going after Splunk and LogRhythm. And there seem to be examples popping up. Well, what's your take on all this? >> No, absolutely. I think cause, you know, when we were talking about back when I first met you, when I was at the ADVO, I mean, Oracle was on it's, you know, rise with their suite of capabilities, and then before you know it, other companies were popping up and took over, whether it was Firstbeat, PeopleSoft, Workday, and then other companies that just came into play, cause it's going to happen because people are going to get, you know, frustrated. And yes, I did get a little frustrated with ServiceNow when I was looking at a couple of new modules because the pricing was a little bit higher than it was when I first started out. So yes, when you're good and you're able to provide the right services, they're going to start pricing it that way. But yes, I think you're going to get smaller players, and then those smaller players will start grabbing up, so to speak, market share and get into it. I mean, look at Salesforce. I mean, there are some pretty good CRMs. I mean, even, ServiceNow is getting into the CRM space big time, as well as a company like Sugar and a few others that will continue to push Salesforce to look at their pricing as well as their services. I mean, they're out there buying up companies, but you just can't automatically assume that they're going to, you know, integrate day one, and it's going to take time for some of their services to come and become reality, so to speak. So yes, I agree that there will be players out there that will push these lager SaaS companies, and hopefully get the right behaviors and right pricing. >> I've said for years, Dan, that I've predicted that ServiceNow and Salesforce are on a collision course. It didn't really happen, but it's starting to, because ServiceNow, the valuation is so huge. They have to grow into other markets much in the same way that Salesforce has. So maybe we'll see McDermott start doing some acquisitions. It's maybe a little tougher for ServiceNow given their whole multi-instance architecture and sort of their own cloud. That's going to be interesting to see how that plays out. >> Yeah. Yeah. You got to play in that type of architecture, let's put it that way. Yes, it'll be interesting to see how that does play out. >> What are your thoughts on the big hyperscalers; Amazon, Microsoft, Google? What's the right strategy there? Do you go all in on one cloud like AWS or are you more worried about lock-in? Do you want to spread your bets across clouds? How real is multi-cloud? Is it a strategy or more sort of a reality that you get M and A and you got shadow IT? What's your take on all that? >> Yeah, that's a great question because it does make you think a little differently around you know, where to put all your eggs. And it's getting tougher because you do want to distribute those eggs out to multiple vendors, if you would, service providers. But, you know, for instance we had a situation where we were building a brand new business intelligence data warehouse, and we decided to go with Microsoft as its core database. And we did a bake-off on business analytic tools. We had like seven of them at Beacon and we ended up choosing Microsoft's Power BI, and a good part of that reason, not all of it, but a good part of it was because we felt they did everything else that the Tableau's and others did, but, you know, Microsoft would work to give, you know, additional capabilities to Power BI if it's sitting on their database. So we had to take that into consideration, and we did and we ended up going with Power BI. With Amazon, I think Amazon's a little bit more, I'll put it horizontal, whereby they can help you out because of the database and just kind of be in that data center, if you would, and be able to move some of your homegrown applications, some of your technical debt over to that, I'll say cloud. But it'll get interesting because when you talk about integration, when you talk about moving forward with a new functionality, yeah, you have to put your architecture in a somewhat of a center point, and then look to see what is easier, cheaper, cost-effective, but, you know, what's happening to my functionality over the next three to five years. >> But it sounds like you'd subscribe to a horses for courses approach, where you put the right workload in the right cloud, as opposed to saying, I'm going to go all in on one cloud and it's going to be, you know, same skillset, same security, et cetera. It sounds like you'd lean toward the former versus going all in with, you know, MANO cloud. >> Yeah, I guess again, when I look at the architecture. There will be major, you know, breaks if you would. So yes, there is somewhat of a, you know, movement to you know, go with one horse. But, you know, I could see looking back at the Beacon architecture that we could, you know, lift and put the claims adjudication capabilities up in Amazon and then have that conduct, you know, the left to right claims processing, and then those transactions could then be moved into Microsoft's data warehouse. So, you know, there is ways to go about spreading it out so that you don't have all those eggs in one basket and that you reduce the amount of risk, but that weighed heavily on my mind. >> So I was going to ask you, how much of a factor lock-in is it? It sounds like it's more, you know, spreading your eggs around, as you say and reducing your risk as opposed to, you know, worried about lock-in, but as a CIO, how worried are you about lock-in? Where is that fit in the sort of decision tree? >> Ah, I mean, I would say it's up there, but unfortunately, there's no number one, there's like five number ones, if you would. So it's definitely up there and it's something to consider when you're looking at, like you said, the cost, risk integration, and then time. You know, sometimes you're up against the time. And again, security, like I said. Security is a big key in healthcare. And actually security overall, whether you're retail, you're going to always have situations no matter what industry, you got to protect the business. >> Yeah, so I want to ask you about security. That's the other number one. Well, you might've been a defacto CSO, but kind of when we started in this business security was the problem of the security teams, and you know, it's now a team sport. But in thinking about the cloud and security, how big of a concern is the cloud? Is it just more, you're looking for consistency and be able to apply the corporate edicts? Are there other concerns like the shared responsibility model? What are your thoughts on security in the cloud? >> Well, it probably goes back to again, the industry, but when I looked at the past five years in healthcare, doing a lot of work with the CMS and Medicaid, Medicare, they had certain requirements and certain restrictions. So we had to make sure that we follow those requirements. And when you got audited, you needed to make sure that you can show that you are adhering to their requirements. So over the past, probably two years with Amazon's government capabilities that those restrictions have changed, but we were always looking to make sure that we owned and managed how we manage the provider and member data, because yes, we did not want to have obviously a breach, but we wanted to make sure we were following the guidelines, whether it's state or federal, and then and even some cases healthcare guidelines around managing that data. So yes, top of mind, making sure that we're protecting, you know, in my case so we had 37 million members, patients, and we needed to make sure that if we did put it in the cloud or if it was on-prem, that it was being protected. And as you mentioned, recently come off of, I was going to say Amazon, but it was an acquisition. That company that was looking at us doing the due diligence, they gave us thumbs up because of how we were managing the data at the lowest point and all the different levels within the architecture. So Anthem who did the acquisition, had a breach back in, I think it was 2015. That was top of mind for them. We had more questions during the due diligence around security than any other functional area. So it is critical, and I think slowly, some of that type of data will get up into the cloud, but again, it's going to go through some massive risk management and security measures, and audits, because how fragile that is. >> Yeah, I mean, that could be a deal breaker in an acquisition. I got two other questions for you. One is, you know, I know you follow the technologies very closely, but there's all the buzz words, the digital transformation, the AI, these new SaaS models that we talked about. You know, a lot of CIOs tell me, look, Dave, get the business right and the technology is the easy part. It's people, it's process. But what are you seeing in terms of some of this new stuff coming out, there's machine learning, you know, obviously massive scale, new cloud workloads. Anything out there that really excites you and that you could see on the horizon that could be, you know, really change agents for the next decade? >> Yeah, I think we did some RPA, robotics on some of the tasks that, you know, where, you know, if the analysis types of situations. So I think RPA is going to be a game changer as it continues to evolve. But I agree with what you just said. Doing this for quite a while now, it still comes down to the people. I can get the technology to do what it needs to do as long as I have the right requirements, so that goes back to people. Making sure we have the partnership that goes back to leadership and the people. And then the change management aspects. Right out of the gate, you should be worrying about how is it going to affect and then the adoption and engagement. Because adoption is critical, because you can go create the best thing you think from a technology perspective, but if it doesn't get used correctly, it's not worth the investment. So I agree, whether it's digital transformation or innovation, it still comes down to understanding the business model and injecting and utilizing technology to grow or reduce costs, grow the business or reduce costs. >> Yeah, usage really means value. Sorry, my last question. What's the one thing that vendors shouldn't do? What's the vendor no-no that'll alienate CIO's? >> To this day, I still don't like, there's a company out there that starts with an O. I still don't like it to that, every single technology module, if you would, has a separate sales rep. I want to work with my strategic partners and have one relationship and that single point of contact that spark and go back into their company and bring me whatever it is that we're looking at so that I don't get, you know, for instance from that company that starts with an O, you know, 17 calls from 17 different sales reps trying to sell me 17 different things. So what irritates me is, you know, you have a company that has a lot of breadth, a lot of, you know, capability and functional, you know that I may want. Give me one person that I can deal with. So a single point of contact, then that makes my life a lot easier. >> Well, Dan Sheehan, I really appreciate you spending some time on theCUBE, it's always a pleasure catching up with you and really appreciate you sharing your insights with our audience. Thank you. >> Oh, thank you, David. I appreciate the opportunity. You have a great day. >> All right. You too. And thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE on Cloud. Keep it right there. We'll be back with our next guest right after the short break. Awesome, Dan.
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Become the Analyst of the Future | Beyond.2020 Digital
>>Yeah, yeah. >>Hello and welcome back. I hope you're ready for our next session. Become the analyst of the future. We'll hear the customer's perspective about their increasingly strategic role and the potential career growth that comes with it. Joining us today are Nate Weaver, director of product marketing at Thought Spot. Yasmin Natasa, senior director of national sales strategy and insights over at Comcast and Steve Would Ledge VP of customer and partner initiatives. Oughta Terex. We're so happy to have you all here today. I'll hand things over to meet to kick things off. >>Yeah, thanks, Paula. I'd like to start with a personal story that might resonate with our audience, says an analyst. Early in my career, I was the intermediary between the business and what we called I t right. Basically database administrators. I was responsible for understanding business logic gathering requirements, Ringling data building dashboards for executives and, in my case, 100 plus sales reps. Every request that came through the business intelligence team. We owned everything, right? Indexing databases for speed, S s. I s packages for data transfer maintaining Department of Data Lakes all out cubes, etcetera. We were busy. Now we were constantly building or updating something. The worst part is an analyst, If you ask the business, every request took too long. It was slow. Well, from an analyst perspective, it was slow because it's a complex process with many moving parts. So as an analyst fresh out of grad school often felt overeducated, sometimes underappreciated, like a report writer, we were constantly overwhelmed by never ending ad hoc request, even though we had hundreds of reports and robust dashboards that would answer 90% of the questions. If the end user had an analytical foundation like I did right, if they knew where to look and how to navigate dimensions and hierarchies, etcetera. So anyway, point is, we had to build everything through this complex and slow, um, process. So for the first decade of my career, I had this gut feeling there had to be a better way, and today we're going to talk about how thought SWAT and all tricks are empowering the analysts of the future by reimagining the entire data pipeline. This paradigm shift allows businesses and data teams thio, connect, transform, model and, most importantly, automate what used to be this terribly complex data analysis process. With that, I'd like to hand it over to Steve to describe the all tricks analytic process automation platform and how they help analysts create more robust data sets that enable non technical end users toe ask and answer their own questions, but also more sophisticated business questions. Using Search and AI Analytics in Thoughts Fire Steve over to you. >>Thanks for that really relevant example. Nate and Hi, everyone. I'm Steve. Will it have been in the market for about 20 years, and then Data Analytics and I can completely I can completely appreciate what they was talking about. And what I think is unique about all tricks is how we not only bring people to the data for a self service environment, but I think what's often missed in analytics is the automation and figure out. What is the business process that needs to be repeated and connecting the dots between the date of the process and the people To speed up those insights, uh, to not only give people to self service, access to information, to do data prep and blending, but more advanced analytics, and then driving that into the business in terms of outcomes. And I'll show you what that looks like when you talk about the analytic process automation platform on the next slide. What we've done is we've created this end to end workflow where data is on the left, outcomes around the right and within the ultras environment, we unify data prep and blend analytics, data science and process automation. In this continuous process, so is analysis or an end user. I can go ahead and grab whatever data is made available to me by i t. You have got 80 plus different inputs and a p i s that we connect to. You have this drag and drop environment where you conjoined the data together, apply filters, do some descriptive analytics, even do things like grab text documents and do sentiments analysis through that with text, mining and natural language processing. As people get more used to the platform and want to do more advanced analytics and process automation, we also have things like assisted machine learning and predictive analytics out of the box directly within it as well and typically within organizations. These would be different departments and different tools doing this and we try to bring all this together in one system. So there's 260 different automation building blocks again and drag a drop environment. And then those outcomes could be published into a place where thoughts about visualizes that makes it accessible to the business users to do additional search based B I and analytics directly from their browser. And it's not just the insights that you would get from thought spot, but a lot of automation is also driving unattended, unattended or automated actions within operational systems. If you take an example of one of our customers that's in the telecommunications world, they drive customer insights around likeliness to turn or next best offers, and they deliver that within a salesforce applications. So when you walk into a retail store for your cell phone provider, they will know more about you in terms of what services you might be interested in. And if you're not happy at the time and things like that. So it's about how do we connect all those components within the business process? And what this looks like is on this screen and I won't go through in detail, but it's ah, dragon drop environment, where everything from the input data, whether it's cloud on Prem or even a local file that you might have for a spreadsheet. Uh, I t wants to have this environment where it's governed, and there's sort of components that you're allowed to have access to so that you could do that data crept and blending and not just data within your organization, but also then being able to blend in third party demographic data or firm a graphic information from different third party data providers that we have joined that data together and then do more advanced analytics on it. So you could have a predictive score or something like that being applied and blending that with other information about your customer and then sharing those insights through thought spots and more and more users throughout the organization. And bring that to life. In addition to you, as we know, is gonna talk about her experience of Comcast. Given the world that we're in right now, uh, hospital care and the ability to have enough staff and and take care of all of our people is a really important thing. So one of our customers, a large healthcare network in the South was using all tricks to give not only analyst with the organization, but even nurses were being trained on how to use all tricks and do things like improve observation. Wait time eso that when you come in, the nurse was actually using all tricks to look at the different time stamps out of ethic and create a process for the understands. What are all the causes for weight in three observation room and identify outliers of people that are trying to come in for a certain type of care that may wait much longer than on average. And they're actually able to reduce their wait time by 22%. And the outliers were reduced by about 50% because they did a better job of staffing. And overall staffing is a big issue if you can imagine trying to have a predictive idea of how many staff you need in the different medical facilities around the network, they were bringing in data around the attrition of healthcare workers, the volume of patient load, the scheduled holidays that people have and being able to predict 4 to 6 months out. What are the staff that they need to prepare toe have on on site and ready so they could take care of the patients as they're coming in. In this case, they used in our module within all tricks to do that, planning to give HR and finance a view of what's required, and they could do a drop, a drop down by department and understand between physicians, nurses and different facilities. What is the predicted need in terms of staffing within that organization? So you go to the next slide done, you know, aside from technology, the number one thing for the analysts of the future is being able to focus on higher value business initiatives. So it's not just giving those analysts the ability to do this self service dragon drop data prep and blend and analytics, but also what are the the common problems that we've solved as a community? We have 150,000 people in the alter its community. We've been in business for over 23 years, so you could go toe this gallery and not only get things like the thought spot tools that we have to connect so you can do direct query through T Q l and pushed it into thought spot in Falcon memory and other things. But look at things like the example here is the healthcare District, where we have some of our third party partners that have built out templates and solutions around predictive staffing and tracking the complicating conditions around Cove. It as an example on different KPs that you might have in healthcare, environment and retail, you know, over 150 different solution templates, tens of thousands of different posts across different industries, custom return and other problems that we can solve, and bringing that to the community that help up level, that collective knowledge, that we have this business analyst to solve business problems and not just move data, and then finally, you know, as part of that community, part of my role in all tricks is not only working with partners like thought spot, but I also share our C suite advisory board, which we just happen to have this morning, as a matter of fact, and the number one thing we heard and discussed at that customer advisory board is a round up Skilling, particularly in this virtual world where you can't do in classroom learning how do we game if I and give additional skills to our staff so that they can digitize and automate more and more analytic processes in their organization? I won't go through all this, but we do have learning paths for both beginners. A swell as advanced people that want to get more into the data science world. And we've also given back to our community. There's an initiative called Adapt where we've essentially donated 125 hours of free training free access to our products. Within the first two weeks, we've had over 9000 people participate in that get certified across 100 different companies and then get jobs in this new world where they've got additional skills now around analytics. So I encourage you to check that out, learn what all tricks could do for you in up Skilling your journey becoming that analysts of the future And thanks for having me today thoughts fun looking forward to the rest of conversation with the Azmin. >>Yeah, thanks. I'm gonna jump in real quick here because you just mentioned something that again as an analyst, is incredibly important. That's, you know, empowering Mia's an analyst to answer those more sophisticated business questions. There's a few things that you touched on that would be my personal top three. Right? Is an analyst. You talked about data cleansing because everyone has data quality problems enhancing the data sets. I came from a supply chain analytics background. So things like using Dun and Bradstreet in your examples at risk profiles to my supplier data and, of course, predictive analytics, like creating a forecast to estimate future demand. These are things that I think is an analyst. I could truly provide additional value. I'd like to show you a quick example, if I may, of the type of ad hoc request that I would often get from the business. And it's fairly complex, but with a combination of all tricks and thought spots very easy to answer. Crest. The request would look something like this. I'd like to see my spend this year versus last year to date. Uh, maybe look at that monthly for Onley, my area of responsibility. But I only want to focus on my top five suppliers from this year, right? And that's like an end statement. I saw that in one of your slides and so in thoughts about that's answering or asking a simple question, you're getting the answer in maybe 30 seconds. And that's because behind the scenes, the last part is answering those complexities for you. And if I were to have to write this out in sequel is an analyst, it could take me upwards, maybe oven our because I've got to get into the right environment in the database and think about the filters and the time stamps, and there's a lot going on. So again, thoughts about removes that curiosity tax, which when becoming the analysts of the future again, if I don't have to focus on the small details that allows me to focus on higher value business initiatives, right. And I want to empower the business users to ask and answer their own questions. That does come with up Skilling, the business users as well, by improving data fluency through education and to expand on this idea. I wanna invite Yasmin from Comcast to kind of tell her personal story. A zit relates to analysts of the future inside Comcast. >>Well, thank you for having me. It's such a pleasure. And Steve, thank you so much for starting and setting the groundwork for this amazing conversation. You hit the nail on the head. I mean, data is a Trojan horse off analytics, and our ability to generate that inside is eyes busy is anchored on how well we can understand the data on get the data clean It and tools, like all tricks, are definitely at the forefront off ability to accelerate the I'll speak to incite, which is what hot spot brings to the table. Eso My story with Thought spot started about a year and a half ago as I'm part of the Sales Analytics team that Comcast all group is officially named, uh, compensation strategy and insight. We are part of the Consumer Service, uh, Consumer Service expected Consumer Service group in the cell of Residential Sales Organization, and we were created to provide insight to the Comcast sells channel leaders Thio make sure that they have database insight to drive sales performance, increased revenue. We When we started the function, we were really doing a lot of data wrangling, right? It wasn't just a self performance. It waas understanding who are customers were pulling a data on productivity. Uh, so we were going into HR systems are really going doing the E T l process, but manually sometimes. And we took a pause at one point because we realized that we're spending a good 70% of our time just doing that and maybe 5% of our time storytelling. Now our strength was the storytelling. And so you see how that balance wasn't really there. And eso Jim, my leader pause. It pulls the challenge of Is there a better way of doing this on DSO? We scan the industry, and that's how we came across that spot. And the first time I saw the tool, I fell in love. There's not a way for me to describe it. I fell in love because I love the I love the the innovation that it brought in terms of removing the middleman off, having to create all these layers between the data and me. I want to touch the data. I want to feel it, and I want to ask questions directly to it, and that's what that's what does for us. So when we launched when we launch thoughts about for our team, we immediately saw the difference in our ability to provide our stakeholders with better answers faster. And the combination of the two makes us actually quite dangerous right on. But it has been It has been a great great journey altogether are inter plantation was done on the cloud because at the time, uh, the the we had access to AWS account and I love to be at the edge of technology, So I figured it would be a good excuse for me to learn more about cloud technology on its been things. Video has been a great journey. Um, my, my background, uh, into analytics comes from science. And so, for me, uh, you know, we are really just stretching the surface off. What is possible in terms off the how well remind data to answer business questions on Do you know, tools like thought spot in combination with technologies. Like all trades, eyes really are really the way to go about it. And the up skilling, um the up skilling off the analysts that comes with it is really, really, really exciting because people who love data want to be able to, um want to be efficient about how they spend time with data. Andi and that's what? That's what I spend a lot of my Korea I'd Comcast and before Comcast doing so It gives me a lot of ah, a lot of pleasure to, um to bring that to my organization and to walk with colleagues outside off. We didn't Comcast to do so The way we the way we use stops, that's what we did not seem is varies. One of the things that I'm really excited about is integrating it with all the tools that we have in our analytics portfolio, and and I think about it as the over the top strategy. Right. Uh, group, like many other groups, wouldn't Comcast and with our organizations also used to be I tools. And it is not, um, you choose on a mutually exclusive strategies, right? Eso In our world, we build decision making, uh, decision making tools from the analysis that we generate. When we have the read out with the cells channel leaders, we we talk about the insight, and invariably there's some components off those insight that they want to see on a regular basis. That becomes a reporting activity. We're not in a reporting team. We partner with reporting team for them to think that input and and and put it on and create a regular cadence for it. Uh, the over the top strategy for me is, um, are working with the reporting team to then embed the link to talk spot within the report so that the questions that can be answered by the reports left dashboard are answered within the dashboard. But we make sure that we replicate the data source that feeds that report into thought spot so that the additional questions can then be insert in that spot. It and it works really well because it creates a great collaboration with our partners on the on the reporting side of the house on it also helps of our end the end users do the cell service in along the analytic spectrum, right? You go to the report when you can, when all you need is dropped down the filters and when the questions become more sophisticated, you still have a platform in the place to go to ask the questions directly and do things that are a bit funk here, like, you know, use for like you because you don't know what you're looking for. But you know that there's there's something there to find. >>Yeah, so yeah, I mean, a quick question. Our think would be on this year's analytics meet Cloud open for everyone and your experience. What does that mean to you? Including in the context of the thought spot community inside Comcast? >>Oh yes, it's the Comcast community. The passport commedia Comcast is very vibrant. My peers are actually our colleagues, who I have in my analytics village prior to us getting on board with hot spot and has been a great experience for us. So have thoughts, but as an additional kind of topic Thio to connect on. So my team was the second at Comcast to implement that spot. The first waas, the product team led by Skylar, and he did his instance on Prem. Um, he the way that he brings his data is, is through a sequel server. When I came what, as I mentioned earlier, I went on the cloud because, as I mentioned earlier, I like to be on the edge of technology and at the time thought spot was moving towards towards the cloud. So I wanted to be part of that wave. There's Ah, mobile team has a new instance that is on the cloud thing. The of the compliance team uses all tricks, right? And the S O that that community to me is really how the intellectual capital that we're building, uh, using thought spot is really, really growing on by what happens to me. And the power of being on the cloud is that if we are all using the same tool, right and we are all kind of bringing our data together, um, we are collaborating in ways that make the answer to the business questions that the C suite is asking much better, much richer. They don't always come to us at the same time, right? Each function has his own analytics group, Andi. Sometimes if we are not careful, we're working silo. But the community allows us to know about what each other are working on. And the fact that we're using the same tool creates a common language that translates into opportunities for collaboration, which will translate into, as I mentioned earlier, richer better on what comprehensive answers to the business. So analyst Nick the cloud means better, better business and better business answers and and better experiences for customers at the end of the day, so I'm all for it. >>That's great. Yeah. Comcast is obviously a very large enterprise. Lots of data sources, lots of data movement. It's cool to hear that you have a bit of a hybrid architecture, er thought spot both on premise. Stand in the cloud and you did bring up one other thing that I think is an important question for Steve. Most people may just think of all tricks as an E T l tool, but I know customers like Comcast use it for way more than just that. Can you expand upon the differences between what people think of a detail tool and what all tricks is today? >>Yeah, I think of E. T L tools as sort of production class source to target mapping with transformations and data pipelines that air typically built by I t. To service, you know, major areas within the business, and that's super valuable. One doesn't go away, and in all tricks can provide some of that. But really, it's about the end user empowerment. So going back to some of guys means examples where you know there may be some new information that you receive from a third party or even a spreadsheet that you develop something on. You wanna start to play around that information so you can think of all the tricks as a data lab or data science workbench, in fact, that you know, we're in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for data science and machine learning platforms. Because a lot of that innovation is gonna happen at the individual level we're trying to solve. And over time, you might want to take that learning and then have I t production eyes it within another system. But you know, there's this trade off between the agility that end users need and sort of the governance that I t needs to bring. So we work best in a environment where you have that in user autonomy. You could do E tail workloads, data prep and Glenn bringing your own information on then work with i t. To get that into the right server based environment to scale out in the thought spot and other applications that you develop new insights for the business. So I see it is ah, two sides of the same coin. In many ways, a home. And >>with that we're gonna hand it back over to a Paula. >>Thank you, Nate, Yasmin and Steve for the insights into the journey of the analyst of the future. Next up in a couple minutes, is our third session of today with Ruhollah Benjamin, professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, and our chief data strategy officer, Cindy House, in do a couple of jumping jacks or grab a glass of water and don't miss out on the next important discussion about diversity and data.
SUMMARY :
and the potential career growth that comes with it. So for the first decade of my career, And it's not just the insights that you would get from thought spot, the analysts of the future again, if I don't have to focus on the small details that allows me to focus saw the difference in our ability to provide our stakeholders with better answers Including in the context of the thought spot community inside And the S O that that community to me is Stand in the cloud and you did bring up the thought spot and other applications that you develop new insights for the business. and our chief data strategy officer, Cindy House, in do a couple
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