(energetic music plays) >> Lisa: Hey everyone, we're so glad you're here with us. theCUBE is covering Cloud Native Security Con 23. Lisa Martin here with John Furrier. This is our second day of coverage of the event. We've had some great conversations with a lot of intellectual, exciting folks, as you know cuz you've been watching. John and I are very pleased to welcome back one of our alumni to theCUBE Taylor Dolezal joins us the head of ecosystem at CNCF. Taylor, welcome back to theCUBE. Great to see you. >> Taylor: Hey everybody, great to see you again. >> Lisa: So you are on the ground in Seattle. We're jealous. We've got fomo as John would say. Talk to us about, this is a inaugural event. We were watching Priyanka keynote yesterday. Seemed like a lot of folks there, 72 sessions a lot of content, a lot of discussions. What's the buzz, what's the reception of this inaugural event from your perspective? >> Taylor: So it's been really fantastic. I think the number one thing that has come out of this conference so far is that it's a wonderful chance to come together and for people to see one another. It's, it's been a long time that we've kind of had that opportunity to be able to interact with folks or you know, it's just a couple months since last Cube Con. But this is truly a different vibe and it's nice to have that focus on security. We're seeing a lot of folks within different organizations work through different problems and then finally have a vendor neutral space in which to talk about all of those contexts and really raise everybody up with all this new knowledge and new talking points, topics, and different facets of knowledge. >> John: Taylor, we were joking on our yesterday's summary of the keynotes, Dave Vellante and I, and the guests, Lisa and I, about the CNCF having an event operating system, you know, very decoupled highly cohesive events, strung together beautifully through the Linux Foundation, you know, kind of tongue in cheek but it was kind of fun to play on words because it's a very technical community. But the business model of, of hackers is booming. The reality of businesses booming and Cloud Native is the preferred developer environment for the future application. So the emphasis, it's very clear that this is a good move to do and targeting the community around security's a solid move. Amazon's done it with reinforce and reinvent. We see that Nice segmentation. What's the goal? Because this is really where it connects to Cube Con and Cloud Native Con as well because this shift left there too. But here it's very much about hardcore Cloud Native security. What's your positioning on this? Am I getting it right or is there is that how you guys see it? >> Taylor: Yeah, so, so that's what we've see that's what we were talking about as well as we were thinking on breaking this event out. So originally this event was a co-located event during the Cube Con windows in both Europe and North America. And then it just was so consistently popular clearly a topic that people wanted to talk, which is good that people want to talk of security. And so when we saw this massive continued kind of engagement, we wanted to break this off into its own conference. When we were going through that process internally, like you had mentioned the events team is just phenomenal to work with and they, I love how easy that they make it for us to be able to do these kinds of events too though we wanted to talk through how we differentiate this event from others and really what's changed for us and kind of how we see this space is that we didn't really see any developer-centric open source kinds of conferences. Ones that were really favoring of the developer and focus on APIs and ways in which to implement these things across all of your workloads within your organization. So that's truly what we're looking to go for here during these, all of these sessions. And that's how it's been playing out so far which has been really great to see. >> John: Taylor, I want to ask you on the ecosystem obviously the built-in ecosystem at CNCF.IO with Cube Cons Cloud Cons there, this is a new ecosystem opportunity to add more people that are security focused. Is their new entrance coming into the fold and what's been the reaction? >> Taylor: So short answer is yes we've seen a huge uptick across our vendor members and those are people that are creating Cloud offerings and selling those and working with others to implement them as well as our end users. So people consuming Cloud Native projects and using them to power core parts of their business. We have gotten a lot of data from groups like IBM and security, IBM security and put 'em on institute. They gave us a cost of data breach report that Priyanka mentioned and talked about 43% of those organizations haven't started or in the early stages of updating security practices of their cloud environments and then here on the ground, you know, talking through some best practices and really sharing those out as well. So it's, I've gotten to hear pieces and parts of different conversations and and I'm certain we'll hear more about those soon but it's just really been great to, to hear everybody with that main focus of, hey, there's more that we can do within the security space and you know, let's let's help one another out on that front just because it is such a vast landscape especially in the security space. >> Lisa: It's a huge landscape. And to your point earlier, Taylor it's everyone has the feeling that it's just so great to be back together again getting folks out of the silos that they've been operating in for such a long time. But I'd love to get some of your, whatever you can share in terms of some of the Cloud Native security projects that you've heard about over the last day or so. Anything exciting that you think is really demonstrating the value already and this inaugural event? >> Taylor: Yes, so I I've been really excited to hear a lot of, personally I've really liked the talks around EBPF. There are a whole bunch of projects utilizing that as far as runtime security goes and actually getting visibility into your workloads and being able to see things that you do expect and things that you don't expect and how to remediate those. And then I keep hearing a lot of talks about open policy agents and projects like Caverno around you know, how do we actually automate different policies or within regulated industries, how do we actually start to solve those problems? So I've heard even more around CNCF projects and other contexts that have come up but truly most of them have been around the telemetry space EBPF and, and quite a few others. So really great to, to see all those projects choosing something to bind to and making it that much more accessible for folks to implement or build on top of as well. >> John: I love the reference you guys had just the ChatGPT that was mentioned in the keynote yesterday and also the reference to Dan Kaminsky who was mentioned on the reference to DNS and Bind, lot of root level security going on. It seems like this is like a Tiger team event where all the top alpha security gurus come together, Priyanka said, experts bottoms up, developer first practitioners, that's the vibe. Is that kind of how you guys want it to be more practitioners hardcore? >> Taylor: Absolutely, absolutely. I think that when it comes to security, we really want to help. It's definitely a grassroots movement. It's great to have the people that have such a deep understanding of certain security, just bits of knowledge really when it comes to EBPF. You know, we have high surveillance here that we're talking things through. Falco is here with Sysdig and so it it's great to have all of these people here, though I have seen a good spread of folks that are, you know, most people have started their security journey but they're not where they want to be. And so people that are starting at a 2 0 1, 3 0 1, 4 0 1 level of understanding definitely seeing a good spread of knowledge on that front. But it's really, it's been great to have folks from all varying experiences, but then to have the expertise of the folks that are writing these specifications and pushing the boundaries of what's possible with security to to ensure that we're all okay and updated on that front too, I think was most notable yesterday. Like you had said >> Lisa: Sorry Taylor, when we think of security, again this is an issue that, that organizations in every industry face, nobody is immune to this. We can talk about the value in it for the hackers in terms of ransomware alone for example. But you mentioned a stat that there's a good amount of organizations that are really either early in their security journeys or haven't started yet which kind of sounds a bit scary given the landscape and how much has changed in the last couple of years. But it sounds like on the good news front it isn't too late for organizations. Talk a little bit about some of the recommendations and best practices for those organizations who are behind the curve knowing that the next attack is going to happen. >> Taylor: Absolutely. So fantastic question. I think that when it comes to understanding the fact that people need to implement security and abide by best practices, it's like I I'm sure that many of us can agree on that front, you know, hopefully all of us. But when it comes to actually implementing that, that's I agree with you completely. That's where it's really difficult to find where where do I start, where do I actually look at? And there are a couple of answers on that front. So within the CNTF ecosystem we have a technical action group security, so tag security and they have a whole bunch of working groups that cover different facets of the Cloud Native experience. So if you, for example, are concerned about runtime security or application delivery concerns within there, those are some really good places to find people knowledgeable about, that even when the conference isn't going on to get a sense of what's going on. And then TAG security has also published recently version two of their security report which is free accessible online. They can actually look through that, see what some of the recent topics are and points of focus and of interest are within our community. There are also other organizations like Open SSF which is taking a deeper dive into security. You know, initially kind of having a little bit more of an academic focus on that space and then now getting further into things around software bill materials or SBOMs supply chain security and other topics as well. >> John: Well we love you guys doing this. We think it's very big deal. We think it's important. We're starting to see events post COVID take a certain formation, you know joking aside about the event operating systems smaller events are happening, but they're tied together. And so this is key. And of course the critical need is our businesses are under siege with threats, ransomware, security challenges, that's IT moves to Cloud Native, not everyone's moved over yet. So that's in progress. So there's a huge business imperative and the hackers have a business model. So this isn't like pie in the sky, this is urgent. So, that being said, how do you see this developing from who should attend the next one or who are you looking for to be involved to get input from you guys are open arms and very diverse and great great culture there, but who are you looking for? What's the makeup persona that you hope to attract and nurture and grow? >> Taylor: Absolutely. I, think that when it comes to trying the folks that we're looking for the correct answer is it varies you know, from, you know, you're asking Priyanka or our executive director or Chris Aniszczyk our CTO, I work mostly with the end users, so for me personally I really want to see folks that are operating within our ecosystem and actually pulling these down, these projects down and using them and sharing those stories. Because there are people creating these projects and contributing to them might not always have an idea of how they're used or how they can be exploited too. A lot of these groups that I work with like Mercedes or Intuit for example, they're out there in the world using these, these projects and getting a sense for, you know, what can come up. And by sharing that knowledge I think that's what's most important across the board. So really looking for those stories to be told and novel ways in which people are trying to exploit security and attacking the supply chain, or building applications, or just things we haven't thought about. So truly that that developer archetype is really helpful to have the consumers, the end users, the folks that are actually using these. And then, yeah, and I'm truly anywhere knowledgeable about security or that wants to learn more >> John: Super important, we're here to help you scale those stories up whatever you need, send them our way. We're looking forward to getting those. This is a super important movement getting the end users who are on the front lines bringing it back into the open, building, more software, making it secure and verified, all super important. We really appreciate the mission you guys are on and again we're here to help. So send those stories our way. >> Taylor: Cool, cool. We couldn't do it without you. Yeah, just everyone contributing, everyone sharing the news. This is it's people, people is the is the true operating system of our ecosystem. So really great to, really great to share. >> Lisa: That's such a great point Taylor. It is all about people. You talked about this event having a different vibe. I wanted to learn a little bit more about that as we, as we wrap up because there's so much cultural change that's required for organizations to evolve their security practices. And so people of course are at the center of culture. Talk a little bit about why that vibe is different and do you think that yeah, it's finally time. Everyone's getting on the same page here we're understanding, we're learning from each other. >> Taylor: Yes. So, so to kind of answer that, I think it's really a focus on, there's this term shift left and shift right. And talking about where do we actually put security in the mix as it comes to people adopting this and and figuring out where things go. And if you keep shifting at left, that meaning that the developers should care more deeply about this and a deeper understanding of all of these, you know, even if it's, even if they don't understand how to put it together, maybe understand a little bit about it or how these topics and, and facets of knowledge work. But you know, like with anything, if you shift everything off to one side or the other that's also not going to be efficient. You know, you want a steady stream of knowledge flowing throughout your whole organization. So I think that that's been something that has been a really interesting topic and, and hearing people kind of navigate and try to get through, especially groups that have had, you know, deployed an app and it's going to be around for 40 years as well. So I think that those are some really interesting and unique areas of focus that I've come up on the floor and then in a couple of the sessions here >> Lisa: There's got to be that, that balance there. Last question as we wrap the last 30 seconds or so what are you excited about given the success and the momentum of day one? What excites you about what's ahead for us on day two? >> Taylor: So on day two, I'm really, it's, there's just so many sessions. I think that it was very difficult for me to, you know pick which one I was actually going to go see. There are a lot of favorites that I had kind of doubled up at each of the time so I'm honestly going to be in a lot of the sessions today. So really excited about that. Supply chain security is definitely one that's close to my heart as well but I'm really curious to see what new topics, concepts or novel ideas people have to kind of exploit things. Like one for example is a package is out there it's called Browser Test but somebody came up with one called Bowser Test. Just a very simple misname and then when you go and run that it does a fake kind of like, hey you've been exploited and just even these incorrect name attacks. That's something that is really close and dear to me as well. Kind of hearing about all these wild things people wouldn't think about in terms of exploitation. So really, really excited to hear more stories on that front and better protect myself both at home and within the Cloud Community as I stand these things up. >> Lisa: Absolutely you need to clone yourself so that you can, there's so many different sessions. There needs to be multiple versions of Taylor that you can attend and then you can all get together and talk about and learn. But that's actually a really good problem to have as we mentioned when we started 72 sessions yesterday and today. Lots of great content. Taylor, we thank you for your participation. We thank you for bringing the vibe and the buzz of the event to us and we look forward as well to hearing and seeing what day two brings us today. Thank you so much for your time Taylor. >> Taylor: Thank you for having me. >> John: All right >> Lisa: Right, for our guest and John Furrier, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCube's Day two coverage of Cloud Native Security Con 23. (energetic music plays)

(upbeat music) >> Welcome back to Supercloud 2. This is Dave Vellante. We're here exploring the intersection of data and analytics in the future of cloud and data. In this segment, we're going to look deeper into the life sciences business with Jesse Cugliotta, who leads the Healthcare and Life Sciences industry practice at Snowflake. And Nicholas Nick Taylor, who's the executive director of Informatics at Ionis Pharmaceuticals. Gentlemen, thanks for coming in theCUBE and participating in the program. Really appreciate it. >> Thank you for having us- >> Thanks for having me. >> You're very welcome, okay, we're go really try to look at data sharing as a use case and try to understand what's happening in the healthcare industry generally and specifically, how Nick thinks about sharing data in a governed fashion whether tapping the capabilities of multiple clouds is advantageous long term or presents more challenges than the effort is worth. And to start, Jesse, you lead this industry practice for Snowflake and it's a challenging and vibrant area. It's one that's hyper-focused on data privacy. So the first question is, you know there was a time when healthcare and other regulated industries wouldn't go near the cloud. What are you seeing today in the industry around cloud adoption and specifically multi-cloud adoption? >> Yeah, for years I've heard that healthcare and life sciences has been cloud diverse, but in spite of all of that if you look at a lot of aspects of this industry today, they've been running in the cloud for over 10 years now. Particularly when you look at CRM technologies or HR or HCM, even clinical technologies like EDC or ETMF. And it's interesting that you mentioned multi-cloud as well because this has always been an underlying reality especially within life sciences. This industry grows through acquisition where companies are looking to boost their future development pipeline either by buying up smaller biotechs, they may have like a late or a mid-stage promising candidate. And what typically happens is the larger pharma could then use their commercial muscle and their regulatory experience to move it to approvals and into the market. And I think the last few decades of cheap capital certainly accelerated that trend over the last couple of years. But this typically means that these new combined institutions may have technologies that are running on multiple clouds or multiple cloud strategies in various different regions to your point. And what we've often found is that they're not planning to standardize everything onto a single cloud provider. They're often looking for technologies that embrace this multi-cloud approach and work seamlessly across them. And I think this is a big reason why we, here at Snowflake, we've seen such strong momentum and growth across this industry because healthcare and life science has actually been one of our fastest growing sectors over the last couple of years. And a big part of that is in fact that we run on not only all three major cloud providers, but individual accounts within each and any one of them, they had the ability to communicate and interoperate with one another, like a globally interconnected database. >> Great, thank you for that setup. And so Nick, tell us more about your role and Ionis Pharma please. >> Sure. So I've been at Ionis for around five years now. You know, when when I joined it was, the IT department was pretty small. There wasn't a lot of warehousing, there wasn't a lot of kind of big data there. We saw an opportunity with Snowflake pretty early on as a provider that would be a lot of benefit for us, you know, 'cause we're small, wanted something that was fairly hands off. You know, I remember the days where you had to get a lot of DBAs in to fine tune your databases, make sure everything was running really, really well. The notion that there's, you know, no indexes to tune, right? There's very few knobs and dials, you can turn on Snowflake. That was appealing that, you know, it just kind of worked. So we found a use case to bring the platform in. We basically used it as a logging replacement as a Splunk kind of replacement with a platform called Elysium Analytics as a way to just get it in the door and give us the opportunity to solve a real world use case, but also to help us start to experiment using Snowflake as a platform. It took us a while to A, get the funding to bring it in, but B, build the momentum behind it. But, you know, as we experimented we added more data in there, we ran a few more experiments, we piloted in few more applications, we really saw the power of the platform and now, we are becoming a commercial organization. And with that comes a lot of major datasets. And so, you know, we really see Snowflake as being a very important part of our ecology going forward to help us build out our infrastructure. >> Okay, and you are running, your group runs on Azure, it's kind of mono cloud, single cloud, but others within Ionis are using other clouds, but you're not currently, you know, collaborating in terms of data sharing. And I wonder if you could talk about how your data needs have evolved over the past decade. I know you came from another highly regulated industry in financial services. So what's changed? You sort of touched on this before, you had these, you know, very specialized individuals who were, you know, DBAs, and, you know, could tune databases and the like, so that's evolved, but how has generally your needs evolved? Just kind of make an observation over the last, you know, five or seven years. What have you seen? >> Well, we, I wasn't in a group that did a lot of warehousing. It was more like online trade capture, but, you know, it was very much on-prem. You know, being in the cloud is very much a dirty word back then. I know that's changed since I've left. But in, you know, we had major, major teams of everyone who could do everything, right. As I mentioned in the pharma organization, there's a lot fewer of us. So the data needs there are very different, right? It's, we have a lot of SaaS applications. One of the difficulties with bringing a lot of SaaS applications on board is obviously data integration. So making sure the data is the same between them. But one of the big problems is joining the data across those SaaS applications. So one of the benefits, one of the things that we use Snowflake for is to basically take data out of these SaaS applications and load them into a warehouse so we can do those joins. So we use technologies like Boomi, we use technologies like Fivetran, like DBT to bring this data all into one place and start to kind of join that basically, allow us to do, run experiments, do analysis, basically take better, find better use for our data that was siloed in the past. You mentioned- >> Yeah. And just to add on to Nick's point there. >> Go ahead. >> That's actually something very common that we're seeing across the industry is because a lot of these SaaS applications that you mentioned, Nick, they're with from vendors that are trying to build their own ecosystem in walled garden. And by definition, many of them do not want to integrate with one another. So from a, you know, from a data platform vendor's perspective, we see this as a huge opportunity to help organizations like Ionis and others kind of deal with the challenges that Nick is speaking about because if the individual platform vendors are never going to make that part of their strategy, we see it as a great way to add additional value to these customers. >> Well, this data sharing thing is interesting. There's a lot of walled gardens out there. Oracle is a walled garden, AWS in many ways is a walled garden. You know, Microsoft has its walled garden. You could argue Snowflake is a walled garden. But the, what we're seeing and the whole reason behind the notion of super-cloud is we're creating an abstraction layer where you actually, in this case for this use case, can share data in a governed manner. Let's forget about the cross-cloud for a moment. I'll come back to that, but I wonder, Nick, if you could talk about how you are sharing data, again, Snowflake sort of, it's, I look at Snowflake like the app store, Apple, we're going to control everything, we're going to guarantee with data clean rooms and governance and the standards that we've created within that platform, we're going to make sure that it's safe for you to share data in this highly regulated industry. Are you doing that today? And take us through, you know, the considerations that you have in that regard. >> So it's kind of early days for us in Snowflake in general, but certainly in data sharing, we have a couple of examples. So data marketplace, you know, that's a great invention. It's, I've been a small IT shop again, right? The fact that we are able to just bring down terabyte size datasets straight into our Snowflake and run analytics directly on that is huge, right? The fact that we don't have to FTP these massive files around run jobs that may break, being able to just have that on tap is huge for us. We've recently been talking to one of our CRO feeds- CRO organizations about getting their data feeds in. Historically, this clinical trial data that comes in on an FTP file, we have to process it, take it through the platforms, put it into the warehouse. But one of the CROs that we talked to recently when we were reinvestigate in what data opportunities they have, they were a Snowflake customer and we are, I think, the first production customer they have, have taken that feed. So they're basically exposing their tables of data that historically came in these FTP files directly into our Snowflake instance now. We haven't taken advantage of that. It only actually flipped the switch about three or four weeks ago. But that's pretty big for us again, right? We don't have to worry about maintaining those jobs that take those files in. We don't have to worry about the jobs that take those and shove them on the warehouse. We now have a feed that's directly there that we can use a tool like DBT to push through directly into our model. And then the third avenue that's came up, actually fairly recently as well was genetics data. So genetics data that's highly, highly regulated. We had to be very careful with that. And we had a conversation with Snowflake about the data white rooms practice, and we see that as a pretty interesting opportunity. We are having one organization run genetic analysis being able to send us those genetic datasets, but then there's another organization that's actually has the in quotes "metadata" around that, so age, ethnicity, location, et cetera. And being able to join those two datasets through some kind of mechanism would be really beneficial to the organization. Being able to build a data white room so we can put that genetic data in a secure place, anonymize it, and then share the amalgamated data back out in a way that's able to be joined to the anonymized metadata, that could be pretty huge for us as well. >> Okay, so this is interesting. So you talk about FTP, which was the common way to share data. And so you basically, it's so, I got it now you take it and do whatever you want with it. Now we're talking, Jesse, about sharing the same copy of live data. How common is that use case in your industry? >> It's become very common over the last couple of years. And I think a big part of it is having the right technology to do it effectively. You know, as Nick mentioned, historically, this was done by people sending files around. And the challenge with that approach, of course, while there are multiple challenges, one, every time you send a file around your, by definition creating a copy of the data because you have to pull it out of your system of record, put it into a file, put it on some server where somebody else picks it up. And by definition at that point you've lost governance. So this creates challenges in general hesitation to doing so. It's not that it hasn't happened, but the other challenge with it is that the data's no longer real time. You know, you're working with a copy of data that was as fresh as at the time at that when that was actually extracted. And that creates limitations in terms of how effective this can be. What we're starting to see now with some of our customers is live sharing of information. And there's two aspects of that that are important. One is that you're not actually physically creating the copy and sending it to someone else, you're actually exposing it from where it exists and allowing another consumer to interact with it from their own account that could be in another region, some are running in another cloud. So this concept of super-cloud or cross-cloud could becoming realized here. But the other important aspect of it is that when that other- when that other entity is querying your data, they're seeing it in a real time state. And this is particularly important when you think about use cases like supply chain planning, where you're leveraging data across various different enterprises. If I'm a manufacturer or if I'm a contract manufacturer and I can see the actual inventory positions of my clients, of my distributors, of the levels of consumption at the pharmacy or the hospital that gives me a lot of indication as to how my demand profile is changing over time versus working with a static picture that may have been from three weeks ago. And this has become incredibly important as supply chains are becoming more constrained and the ability to plan accurately has never been more important. >> Yeah. So the race is on to solve these problems. So it start, we started with, hey, okay, cloud, Dave, we're going to simplify database, we're going to put it in the cloud, give virtually infinite resources, separate compute from storage. Okay, check, we got that. Now we've moved into sort of data clean rooms and governance and you've got an ecosystem that's forming around this to make it safer to share data. And then, you know, nirvana, at least near term nirvana is we're going to build data applications and we're going to be able to share live data and then you start to get into monetization. Do you see, Nick, in the near future where I know you've got relationships with, for instance, big pharma like AstraZeneca, do you see a situation where you start sharing data with them? Is that in the near term? Is that more long term? What are the considerations in that regard? >> I mean, it's something we've been thinking about. We haven't actually addressed that yet. Yeah, I could see situations where, you know, some of these big relationships where we do need to share a lot of data, it would be very nice to be able to just flick a switch and share our data assets across to those organizations. But, you know, that's a ways off for us now. We're mainly looking at bringing data in at the moment. >> One of the things that we've seen in financial services in particular, and Jesse, I'd love to get your thoughts on this, is companies like Goldman or Capital One or Nasdaq taking their stack, their software, their tooling actually putting it on the cloud and facing it to their customers and selling that as a new monetization vector as part of their digital or business transformation. Are you seeing that Jesse at all in healthcare or is it happening today or do you see a day when that happens or is healthier or just too scary to do that? >> No, we're seeing the early stages of this as well. And I think it's for some of the reasons we talked about earlier. You know, it's a much more secure way to work with a colleague if you don't have to copy your data and potentially expose it. And some of the reasons that people have historically copied that data is that they needed to leverage some sort of algorithm or application that a third party was providing. So maybe someone was predicting the ideal location and run a clinical trial for this particular rare disease category where there are only so many patients around the world that may actually be candidates for this disease. So you have to pick the ideal location. Well, sending the dataset to do so, you know, would involve a fairly complicated process similar to what Nick was mentioning earlier. If the company who was providing the logic or the algorithm to determine that location could bring that algorithm to you and you run it against your own data, that's a much more ideal and a much safer and more secure way for this industry to actually start to work with some of these partners and vendors. And that's one of the things that we're looking to enable going into this year is that, you know, the whole concept should be bring the logic to your data versus your data to the logic and the underlying sharing mechanisms that we've spoken about are actually what are powering that today. >> And so thank you for that, Jesse. >> Yes, Dave. >> And so Nick- Go ahead please. >> Yeah, if I could add, yeah, if I could add to that, that's something certainly we've been thinking about. In fact, we'd started talking to Snowflake about that a couple of years ago. We saw the power there again of the platform to be able to say, well, could we, we were thinking in more of a data share, but could we share our data out to say an AI/ML vendor, have them do the analytics and then share the data, the results back to us. Now, you know, there's more powerful mechanisms to do that within the Snowflake ecosystem now, but you know, we probably wouldn't need to have onsite AI/ML people, right? Some of that stuff's very sophisticated, expensive resources, hard to find, you know, it's much better for us to find a company that would be able to build those analytics, maintain those analytics for us. And you know, we saw an opportunity to do that a couple years ago and we're kind of excited about the opportunity there that we can just basically do it with a no op, right? We share the data route, we have the analytics done, we get the result back and it's just fairly seamless. >> I mean, I could have a whole another Cube session on this, guys, but I mean, I just did a a session with Andy Thurai, a Constellation research about how difficult it's been for organization to get ROI because they don't have the expertise in house so they want to either outsource it or rely on vendor R&D companies to inject that AI and machine intelligence directly into applications. My follow-up question to you Nick is, when you think about, 'cause Jesse was talking about, you know, let the data basically stay where it is and you know bring the compute to that data. If that data lives on different clouds, and maybe it's not your group, but maybe it's other parts of Ionis or maybe it's your partners like AstraZeneca, or you know, the AI/ML partners and they're potentially on other clouds or that data is on other clouds. Do you see that, again, coming back to super-cloud, do you see it as an advantage to be able to have a consistent experience across those clouds? Or is that just kind of get in the way and make things more complex? What's your take on that, Nick? >> Well, from the vendors, so from the client side, it's kind of seamless with Snowflake for us. So we know for a fact that one of the datasets we have at the moment, Compile, which is a, the large multi terabyte dataset I was talking about. They're on AWS on the East Coast and we are on Azure on the West Coast. And they had to do a few tweaks in the background to make sure the data was pushed over from, but from my point of view, the data just exists, right? So for me, I think it's hugely beneficial that Snowflake supports this kind of infrastructure, right? We don't have to jump through hoops to like, okay, well, we'll download it here and then re-upload it here. They already have the mechanism in the background to do these multi-cloud shares. So it's not important for us internally at the moment. I could see potentially at some point where we start linking across different groups in the organization that do have maybe Amazon or Google Cloud, but certainly within our providers. We know for a fact that they're on different services at the moment and it just works. >> Yeah, and we learned from Benoit Dageville, who came into the studio on August 9th with first Supercloud in 2022 that Snowflake uses a single global instance across regions and across clouds, yeah, whether or not you can query across you know, big regions, it just depends, right? It depends on latency. You might have to make a copy or maybe do some tweaks in the background. But guys, we got to jump, I really appreciate your time. Really thoughtful discussion on the future of data and cloud, specifically within healthcare and pharma. Thank you for your time. >> Thanks- >> Thanks for having us. >> All right, this is Dave Vellante for theCUBE team and my co-host, John Furrier. Keep it right there for more action at Supercloud 2. (upbeat music)

>>Hey everyone. Lisa Martin here with you. I'm with HPE right now. Tony Taylor joins me the director global test and supply chain cybersecurity at HPE. Tony. It's great to have you on the cube. >>Hi, thank you. Lisa's please, please, to be here. >>Tell me a little bit about your role and your background. >>I've been in the computer industry for about 33 years. Done a variety of roles throughout operations, fulfillment, R and D doing different things. My current role here at HPE is to lead in the organization, responsible for developing test solutions and our PCA manufacturing process and our systems integration team. And then we implement a supply chain cybersecurity process. That's focused on internal aspects of development, activities, and strategies, and then how we will drive our supply chain, our suppliers, to make sure that they adhere to these guidelines. >>And your background is engineering. I saw LinkedIn a little bit of science in there. Tell me a little bit about your background and how you got to where you are now. >>Oh, that's a, that's a long story going through school and doing that type of work. I, I, I got a phone call too many years ago and got involved in the computer industry, going from a, a user and working on those processes and then changing that to building product, introducing new product, developing new solutions and ideas, working on innovation and design of new products, new, new hardware, working on new software processes did heuristics level customer testing. So it's just a wide variety of activities. I've spanned a lot of different things over the years, been very fortunate to travel the world live in different parts of the world to bring up these activities. >>I always love to hear people's back stories on how they got to where they were. If it was a zigzaggy path or kind a path >>Was get a phone call from buddy one day, Hey, we're doing this. You wanna do it. Then that's where I ended up. >>And the rest is history. So a lot of dynamics in the last couple of years, obviously we've been hearing so much about the supply chain in the news for various reasons, but what are you seeing in the marketplace where with regards to security and the trusted supply chain, obviously a big focus there. What are you seeing? >>A lot of changes that have been occurring over time and especially in the last couple years with the things that we're seeing geopolitically is changing our, our environments, the threat vectors that we're seeing in, in cybersecurity are changing. They're becoming more sophisticated. They're coming in in different areas. What we're seeing is greater penetration and our customers. We're seeing a greater number of incidences in the, in the field where that, that I told you I'd stumble. The we're seeing a greater number of instances in the field and it's becoming a bigger impact for our customers and, and the supply chain. So we we've seen a tax at the root of the cause where neon gas, we're no longer having those activities that are coming into the, into the space. You're seeing greater ransomware processes and additional challenges associated with the cost associated with these programs. The, the infiltration from a hardware perspective, we've looked at those types of processes going through the supply chain processes are getting hacked more with that increased sophistication, even at the user level with phishing and Sping, those kind of things. And then you're seeing the, the changes in the geopolitical market. That's beginning to drive, you know, governmental aspects and things like that are coming in. So we we've seen roughly about what 10 and a half trillion worth of cybersecurity estimated in 2025, our loss on an annual perspective across the globe is right around a hundred billion, 45% of organizations have experienced or will be experiencing an attack. And by, so it it's just on the rise and it's creating a lot of concern with, with our customers. >>Yeah, it's really not a matter of these days. If we get hit it's when, when, so organizations right across every industry have to be prepared, what is HPE? What is HPE C as opportunities, obviously the threat landscape changing dramatically, but there's opportunities there for your customers truly tighten security. What are some of those opportunities through the HPE lens? >>The, the opportunities as we're looking at it is from an internal perspective, we need to begin focusing on all the activities and work that we're doing. How do we at hard in our environments, how do we, how do we grow those things? And then begin to investigate the things that we need to do at, at the, in the supply base, as those customers are beginning to look at things, hardening their environments, looking at their it systems, where are the areas for penetration within their environments? When you look at the process, we, we think cyber security a lot of times is just about it. Attacks counterfeit is a big aspect associated with this, and that can impact many of the different types of organizations. So what we've done is we created a, a heat map, looking at the different places where we believe those penetrations can take place internal. And that's our, our communication back out to our customers, look at the areas where you can be penetrated. And then where do you think are the, the areas that you really need to focus on? And then look for that remediation plan? I think that's the opportunity for our, our customers is to harden, you know, have a zero trust, but verified type process, >>Right? That's critical these days, as we know that threat landscape has changed so much recently and is only going to continue to change. As we said, it's not a matter of if it's now a matter of when an organizations need to be ready for that. So then you talked about the heat map from a technology. What is to help organizations really achieve a 360 degree approach to security >>From an H focus starts with our chief technology office, right? So we're looking at all the strategies as are coming down. They, we look at designing our hardware solutions to be able to support those activities. We're designing our systems and, and the integration programs around like GreenLake as services that we're able to provide to our customers to support that. And, and then, you know, as we continue to do that, we, we will, you know, look at, look within the supply chain and what are the things that we can do there to help, you know, drive, you know, the, the improvements there to really ensure that the products that are being delivered will make those customers requirements. >>And I understand you might have a teaser for me in terms of what we can expect going forward with HPE, with respect to cybersecurity in the supply chain, >>Lots of really good things that are coming up. And from a supply chain perspective, look for an announcement coming up in October for cybersecurity month, about what our next steps are and how we're really going to attack this problem. >>Excellent. And we'll be waiting for cybersecurity month in October. And to hear that announced from, from HPE, Tony, thanks so much for joining me on the queue today. Talking a little bit about your background, how you got to where you are now, the trusted supply chain and what HPE is doing there to really help customers mitigate the risk. We appreciate your insights and your time. >>Thank you. I appreciate your time. >>All Tony Taylor. I'm Lisa Martin. Thank you so much for watching this conversation. We'll see you next time.

>> Announcer: "theCUBE" presents "Kubecon and Cloudnativecon Europe, 2022" brought to you by Red Hat, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome to Valencia, Spain and "Kubecon + Cloudnativecon Europe, 2022." I'm Keith Townsend, and we're continuing the conversations with amazing people doing amazing things. I think we've moved beyond a certain phase of the hype cycle when it comes to Kubernetes. And we're going to go a little bit in detail with that today, and on all the sessions, I have today with me, Taylor Dolezal. New head of CNCF Ecosystem. So, first off, what does that mean new head of? You're the head of CNCF Ecosystem? What is the CNCF Ecosystem? >> Yeah. Yeah. It's really the end user ecosystem. So, the CNCF is comprised of really three pillars. And there's the governing board, they oversee the budget and fun things, make sure everything's signed and proper. Then there's the Technical Oversight Committee, TOC. And they really help decide the technical direction of the organization through deliberation and talking about which projects get invited and accepted. Projects get donated, and the TOC votes on who's going to make it in, based on all this criteria. And then, lastly, is the end user ecosystem, that encompasses a whole bunch of different working groups, special interest groups. And that's been really interesting to kind of get a deeper sense into, as of late. So, there are groups like the developer experience group, and the user research group. And those have very specific focuses that kind of go across all industries. But what we've seen lately, is that there are really deep wants to create, whether it be financial services user group, and things like that, because end users are having trouble with going to all of the different meetings. If you're a company, a vendor member company that's selling authentication software, or something in networking, makes sense to have a SIG network, SIG off, and those kinds of things. But when it comes down to like Boeing that just joined, does that make sense for them to jump into all those meetings? Or does it make sense to have some other kind of thing that is representative of them, so that they can attend that one thing, it's specific to their industry? They can get that download and kind of come up to speed, or find the best practices as quickly as possible in a nice synthesized way. >> So, you're 10 weeks into this role. You're coming from a customer environment. So, talk to me a little bit about the customer side of it? When you're looking at something, it's odd to call CNCF massive. But it is, 7.1 million members, and the number of contributing projects, et cetera. Talk to me about the view from the outside versus the view now that you're inside? >> Yeah, so honestly, it's been fun to kind of... For me, it's really mirrored the open-source journey. I've gone to Kubecon before, gotten to enjoy all of the booths, and trying to understand what's going on, and then worked for HashiCorp before coming to the CNCF. And so, get that vendor member kind of experience working the booth itself. So, kind of getting deeper and deeper into the stack of the conference itself. And I keep saying, vendor member and end user members, the difference between those, is end users are not organizations that sell cloud native services. Those are the groups that are kind of more consuming, the Airbnbs, the Boeings, the Mercedes, these people that use these technologies and want to kind of give that feedback back to these projects. But yeah, very incredibly massive and just sprawling when it comes to working in all those contexts. >> So, I have so many questions around, like the differences between having you as an end user and in inter-operating with vendors and the CNCF itself. So, let's start from the end user lens. When you're an end user and you're out discovering open-source and cloud native products, what's that journey like? How do you go from saying, okay, I'm primarily focused on vendor solutions, to let me look at this cloud native stack? >> Yeah, so really with that, there's been, I think that a lot of people have started to work with me and ask for, "Can we have recommended architectures? Can we have blueprints for how to do these things?" When the CNCF doesn't want to take that position, we don't want to kind of be the king maker and be like, this is the only way forward. We want to be inclusive, we want to pull in these projects, and kind of give everyone the same boot strap and jump... I missing the word of it, just ability to kind of like springboard off of that. Create a nice base for everybody to get started with, and then, see what works out, learn from one another. I think that when it comes to Kubernetes, and Prometheus, and some other projects, being able to share best practices between those groups of what works best as well. So, within all of the separations of the CNCF, I think that's something I've found really fun, is kind of like seeing how the projects relate to those verticals and those groups as well. Is how you run a project, might actually have a really good play inside of an organization like, "I like that idea. Let's try that out with our team." >> So, like this idea of springboarding. You know, is when an entrepreneur says, "You know what? I'm going to quit my job and springboard off into doing something new." There's a lot of uncertainty, but for enterprise, that can be really scary. Like we're used to our big vendors, HashiCorp, VMware, Cisco kind of guiding us and telling us like, what's next? What is that experience like, springboarding off into something as massive as cloud native? >> So, I think it's really, it's a great question. So, I think that's why the CNCF works so well, is the fact that it's a safe place for all these companies to come together, even companies of competing products. you know, having that common vision of, we want to make production boring again, we don't want to have so much sprawl and have to take in so much knowledge at once. Can we kind of work together to create all these things to get rid of our adminis trivia or maintenance tasks? I think that when it comes to open-source in general, there's a fantastic book it's called "Working in Public," it's by Stripe Press. I recommend it all over the place. It's orange, so you'll recognize it. Yeah, it's easy to see. But it's really good 'cause it talks about the maintainer journey, and what things make it difficult. And so, I think that that's what the CNCF is really working hard to try to get rid of, is all this monotonous, all these monotonous things, filing issues, best practices. How do you adopt open-source within your organization? We have tips and tricks, and kind of playbooks in ways that you could accomplish that. So, that's what I find really useful for those kinds of situations. Then it becomes easier to adopt that within your organization. >> So, I asked Priyanka, CNCF executive director last night, a pretty tough question. And this is kind of in the meat of what you do. What happens when you? Let's pick on service mesh 'cause everyone likes to pick on service mesh. >> XXXX: Yeah. >> What happens when there's differences at that vendor level on the direction of a CIG or a project, or the ecosystem around service mesh? >> Yeah, so that's the fun part. Honestly, is 'cause people get to hash it out. And so, I think that's been the biggest thing for me finding out, was that there's more than one way to do thing. And so, I think it always comes down to use case. What are you trying to do? And then you get to solve after that. So, it really is, I know it depends, which is the worst answer. But I really do think that's the case, because if you have people that are using something within the automotive space, or in the financial services space, they're going to have completely different needs, wants, you know, some might need to run Coball or Fortran, others might not have to. So, even at that level, just down to what your tech stack looks like, audits, and those kinds of things, that can just really differ. So, I think it does come down to something more like that. >> So, the CNCF loosely has become kind of a standards body. And it's centered around the core project Kubernetes? >> Mm-hmm. >> So, what does it mean, when we're looking at larger segments such as service mesh or observability, et cetera, to be Kubernetes compliant? Where's the point, if any, that the CNCF steps in versus just letting everyone hash it out? Is it Kubernetes just need to be Kubernetes compliant and everything else is free for all? >> Honestly, in many cases, it's up to the communities themselves to decide that. So, the groups that are running OCI, the Open Container Interface, Open Storage Interface, all of those things that we've agreed on as ways to implement those technologies, I think that's where the CNCF, that's the line. That's where the CNCF gets up to. And then, it's like we help foster those communities and those conversations and asking, does this work for you? If not, let's talk about it, let's figure out why it might not. And then, really working closely with community to kind of help bring those things forward and create action items. >> So, it's all about putting the right people in the rooms and not necessarily playing referee, but to get people in the right room to have and facilitate the conversation? >> Absolutely. Absolutely. Like all of the booths behind us could have their own conferences, but we want to bring everybody together to have those conversations. And again, sprawling can be really wild at certain times, but it's good to have those cross understandings, or to hear from somebody that you're like, "Oh, my goodness, I didn't even think about that kind of context or use case." So, really inclusive conversation. >> So, organizations like Boeing, Adobe, Microsoft, from an end user perspective, it's sometimes difficult to get those organizations into these types of communities. How do you encourage them to participate in the conversation 'cause their voice is extremely important? >> Yeah, that I'd also say it really is the community. I really liked the Kubernetes documentary that was put out, working with some of the CNCF folks and core, and beginning Kubernetes contributors and maintainers. And it just kind of blew me away when they had said, you know, what we thought was success, was seeing Kubernetes in an Amazon Data Center. That's when we knew that this was going to take root. And you'd rarely hear that, is like, "When somebody that we typically compete with, its success is seeing it, seeing them use that." And so, I thought was really cool. >> You know, I like to use this technology for my community of skipping rope. You see the girls and boys jumping double Dutch rope. And you think, "I can do that. Like it's just jumping." But there's this hesitation to actually, how do you start? How do you get inside of it? The question is how do you become a member of the community? We've talked a lot about what happens when you're in the community. But how do you join the community? >> So, really, there's a whole bunch of ways that you can. Actually, the shirt that I'm wearing, I got from the 114 Release. So, this is just a fun example of that community. And just kind of how welcoming and inviting that they are. Really, I do think it's kind of like a job breaker. Almost you start at the outside, you start using these technologies, even more generally like, what is DevOps? What is production? How do I get to infrastructure, architecture, or software engineering? Once you start there, you start working your way in, you develop a stack, and then you start to see these tools, technologies, workflows. And then, after you've kind of gotten a good amount of time spent with it, you might really enjoy it like that, and then want to help contribute like, "I like this, but it would be great to have a function that did this. Or I want a feature that does that." At that point in time, you can either take a look at the source code on GitHub, or wherever it's hosted, and then start to kind of come up with that, some ideas to contribute back to that. And then, beyond that, you can actually say, "No, I kind of want to have these conversations with people." Join in those special interest groups, and those meetings to kind of talk about things. And then, after a while, you can kind of find yourself in a contributor role, and then a maintainer role. After that, if you really like the project, and want to kind of work with community on that front. So, I think you had asked before, like Microsoft, Adobe and these others. Really it's about steering the projects. It's these communities want these things, and then, these companies say, "Okay, this is great. Let's join in the conversation with the community." And together again, inclusivity, and bringing everybody to the table to have that discussion and push things forward. >> So, Taylor, closing message. What would you want people watching this show to get when they think about ecosystem and CNCF? >> So, ecosystem it's a big place, come on in. Yeah, (laughs) the water's just fine. I really want people to take away the fact that... I think really when it comes down to, it really is the community, it's you. We are the end user ecosystem. We're the people that build the tools, and we need help. No matter how big or small, when you come in and join the community, you don't have to rewrite the Kubernetes scheduler. You can help make documentation that much more easy to understand, and in doing so, helping thousands of people, If I'm going through the instructions or reading a paragraph, doesn't make sense, that has such a profound impact. And I think a lot of people miss that. It's like, even just changing punctuation can have such a giant difference. >> Yeah, I think people sometimes forget that community, especially community-run projects, they need product managers. They need people that will help with communications, people that will help with messaging, websites updating. Just reachability, anywhere from developing code to developing documentation, there's ways to jump in and help the community. From Valencia, Spain, I'm Keith Townsend, and you're watching "theCUBE," the leader in high tech coverage. (bright upbeat music)

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

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube covering HP. Discover Virtual Experience Brought to you by HP >>Hello and welcome back to the Cube's coverage of HP Discover Virtual experience. This is the Cube. I'm John Furrier, your host. We're here in the Palo Alto studio with remote interviews. We have a great innovation story here with Disney and HBO. ET Al is tailor vice president of content innovation with studio lab Disney. And so men do suck. Sarkar, distinguished technologist, director of AI at HP. Thanks for coming on, Alice. Someone do. Thank you for taking the time. >>It's great to be here. Hi, >>I love this story. I think it's the innovation story, and I think it's going to be one that will experience in our life going forward. That is media, video and experiences and this innovation in AI. It's a lot to do with the collaboration between Disney Studio Labs Alice that you're running and it's super super important and fun as well. Very relevant. Cool. So first, before we get started, Alice, >>take a minute >>to explain a little about yourself and how Studio Lab came about. Yeah, >>McGuinness Studio lab is just over in its second year of operation. It was an idea that was had by our CTO. I'm going to say, three years ago and at the time, just previously before that I had a start up company that came through the Disney accelerators. So I was already inside the building and, um, the team there said Felicity on the said, You know, we need to start up an innovation lab that will investigate storytelling through emerging technology, and that's basically being the majority of my background. So I said Yes on then. Since then, we'll be going a team. We opened the lab in May of 2018 and here we are in the middle of Pandemic. But it has grown like crazy. Its just a wonderful place to be and to operate. And we've been doing some amazing projects with some amazing partners, >>and it's not unusual that an entrepreneur has this kind of role to think outside the box. We'll get some of that talk about your experiences, and I wonder how you got into this position because you came in as an entrepreneur. You're doing some creative things. Tell us that story real quick. >>Yeah, Okay, well, so as you could sell on British. My actual background started. My whole career started in technology in the mid nineties. A Xai started as a training video editor but then switched very quickly and 95 building websites. And from there on, it was Internet all the way. But I've always focused on storytelling. And, you know, much of my background is working for broadcasters and media and content creators. So those five years of the BBC in there already department and, um actually out here is VP of digital media for them and then Channel four as well. And throughout the whole process, I was always interested in how to tell stories with new technology and the new mediums as they emerged. So yep, flights side story and doing a startup which was actually in toys and video games, but again, big digital storytelling environments for Children. And then I came round. Robin, if you like into Disney and here we are still looking at how to you make films and episodic content. Even Mawr. You name it faster, better, more exciting. Using the best and greatest in emerging tech as we find it, >>and the lab that you're doing is it's an accelerant, almost four new technologies. Your job is to what? Look out over the horizon next 10 years or so to figure out what's next. It's >>not a structure. I think you have >>some rain to be creative and experiment >>Well, yeah, I mean, in fact. So it's a studio live at the studios. We'll Disney has eight studios at the moment, and what we do is we look at actually the whole breath of storytelling. So right from the moment when a creative has an idea through to how our guests and fans might be receiving the end product out in the world and we segregate those that that whole breadth from into three categories i d. Eight. When you know the process of generating the idea and building it, make how we make it where we make it, what we make it with on that experience, how we experience it out in the world. So we have a whole SNU of projects. The studio level so works with some of the best technology companies in the world, and we call those are innovation partners on. We sign these partnerships really to bring what we like to call superpowers to the system we like to think. But the combination of those companies and what comes out of these projects is going to give our filmmakers superpowers, but also that combinatorial effect of Disney. You know, in this case, for instance, working with HP like produces something that Disney couldn't necessarily do on its own or the HP. He couldn't necessarily do it on his own, either. So, yeah, it's a huge remit, and we tend to look, we don't look quite so far out. Generally speaking as 10 years, it's more like three to now. We don't do day to day operational work, but we try to pick something up a couple of years before it's going to be operationally ready and really investigated then and get a bit of a head start. >>Well, it's great. Have HBs partner and And having that bench of technology software people is just a nice power source for you as well. Someone to talk about the relation HP relationship with Disney because, um, you got a lot of deep technical from the lab standpoint to resilient technology. How are you involved? What's your role? You guys sitting around you riff and put a white board together and say, Hey, we're gonna solve these big problems. Here is the future of consumption. That is the future of video. What goes on? Tell us your the relationship between you guys. >>Yeah, it's a good question at HP. We don't really make the service, but what we also do is we work quite a lot on optimizing some of the artificial intelligence solutions and algorithms on the DP use and scale it across servers. So So you don't have this opportunity came up from Disney, where this thing came up with a very innovative solution where they were solving the video quality problem. As as, you know, there are a lot of blemishes and in the video that can come up and didn't want to fix all of them. And they have great algorithm. But what happens is, but with better guards comes a huge amount of computational complexity, which needs a little bit of heterogeneous compute input in parallel processing and in sequential processing. So we thought that it's a perfect on, and it's a combination off the skill sets to make this video quality software execute at speed switch needed for production. Disney. >>So it's good to have a data center whenever you need it to. You guys have a great technology. We hear a lot more from the execs at HB on our reporting else. Want to get your thoughts? We're covering some of this new edge technologies. We're talking about new experiences. I gave a talk at Sundance a few years ago, called The New Creative Class, and it's really about this next wave of art and filmmakers who are using the tools of the trade, which is a cell phone and and really set of Asti studios and use the technology. Can you give us some examples of how Studio Lab collaborates with filmmakers and execs to push the push, the art and technology of storytelling to be fresh? Because the sign of the times, our instagram, tic tac, this is just very elementary. The quality and the storytelling is pretty basic dopamine in, but you can almost imagine the range of quality that's going to come so access to more people, certainly more equipment, cameras, etcetera. What's next? How do you guys see? What's some examples can you share? >>It's an amazing question. I mean, we're working on films and episodic. It's rather than very short form content, obviously, but you're absolutely right. There's a lot of consumer grade technology that is entering the production pipeline in many ways and in many areas, whether it's phones or iPads first using certain bits of software. One of the things that we're building at the moment is the ability Teoh generate vertical metric models, capturing with consumer drones or even iPhones, and then use it getting that data into a three D model as soon as possible. There's a really big theme. What we want to do is like make the process more efficient so that our creatives and the folks working on productions aren't having to slog through something that's slow and tedious. They want to get to the story, telling the art in the act of storytelling as much as possible. And so waiting for a model to render or waiting for their QC process toe finished is what we want to kind of get rid of so they can really get to the meat of the problem much, much faster and just going back to what Mandy was saying about the AI project here I mean, it was about finding the dead pixels on screen when we do our finished prints, which would you believe we do with humans? Humans at their best historically have been the best of finding dead pixels. But what a job I have to do at the end of the process to go through quality control and then have to go and manually find the little dead pixels in each frame of our print. Right? Nobody actually wants to be doing that job. So the algorithm goes and looks follows automatically. And then HP came in and spread that whole process up by nine X. So now it actually runs fast enough to be used on our final prince. >>You know, it's interesting in the tech trend for the past 10 15 years that I've been covering cloud technology. Even in the early days, it was kind of on the fringe them because mainstream. But all the trends were more agility, faster taking with ah, heavy lifting so that the focus on the job at hand when it's creative writing software. This is kind of a success formula, and you're kind of applying it to film and creation, which is still like software is kind of same thing, almost so you know, when you see these new technologies that love to get both your reactions of this. One of the big misses that people kind of miss is the best stuff is often misunderstood until it's understood. And we're kind of seeing that now. A covert our ones. From a way, I could have seen this. No, no one predicted. So what's >>an >>example of something that people might be misunderstanding that super relevant, that that might become super important very quickly? Any thoughts? >>That's great. Well, I can give an example of something that has come and gone and then coming, potentially gone. Except it hasn't it's VR. So it came, you know, whenever it was 20 years ago, and then 10 years ago, and everybody was saying VR is going to change the world And then it reappeared again six years ago again, everybody said it's going to change the world, and in terms of film production, it really has. But that's slightly gone unnoticed, I think, because out in the market everyone is expecting VR to have being a huge consumer success, and I suspect it still will be one day a huge consumer success. But meanwhile, in the background, we're using VR on a daily basis in film production. Virtual production is one of the biggest, um, emerging processes that is happening If you've seen anything to do with, um Jungle Book Line King Man DeLorean. Anything the industrial like magic work on. You're really looking at a lot of virtual production techniques that have ended up on screen, and it is now a technology that we can't do without. I'm gonna have to think two seconds for something that's emerging. Ai and Ml is a huge area, obviously were scratching it. I don't think anyone is going to say that it's going to come and go in this one. This is huge, but we're only just beginning to see where and how we can apply Ai and Ml and you did you wanna jump in on that one? So >>let me take it from the technology standpoint, I think it was also very cool trends. Now what happens is that your ML spaces people have come up with creative ideas. But one of the biggest challenge is how do you take those ideas for commercial, use it on and make and make it work at the speed, as Alice was mentioning, It makes it feasible in production. So accelerating your ML on making it in a form which is visible is super important. And the other aspect of it is just the first video quality that it was mentioning. That picture is one types, and I know the business is working on certain other video qualities to fix the blemishes. But there's a whole variety of these vanishes on with human operators. It's kind of impossible to scale up the production on to find all these different artifacts like, you know, especially now. As you can see, the video is disseminated in your forms in your ipads from like, you know, in that streaming. So this is a problem of scale on do stuff. This is also like, you know, a lot of compute on a very like I said, a lot of collaboration with complimentary skill sets that make it real. >>I was talking with a friend who was an early Apple employees, now retired good friend, and we're talking about all the Dev ops agile go fast scale up, and he made a comment I want to get your reaction to, he said. You know what we're missing is craft and software. You speak crafts game. So when you have speed, you lose craft, and we see that certainly with cloud and agility and then iterating. Then you get to a good product over time. But I think one of the things that's interesting and you guys are kind of teasing out is you can kind of get craft with the help from some of these technologies where you can kind of build crafting into it. Alice, what's your reaction to that? >>One of our favorite anecdotes from The Lion King is so Jon Favreau, the director, built out the virtual production system himself, Teoh with his team to make the film, and it allowed for a smaller production team acting on a smaller footprint. What they didn't do was shortened the time to make the film. What the whole system enabled was more content created within that same amount of time, so effectively John had more takes and more material to make his final film with, and that that's what we want people to have. We want them to have to know ever to have to say I missed my perfect shot because of I don't know what you know. We run out of time so we couldn't get the perfect shot. That's it. That's a terrible thing. We never want that to happen. So where technology can help gather as much material is possible in the most efficient way. Basically, at the end of the day, for our for our creatives, that means more ability to tell a story. >>So someone do. This is an example of the pixel innovation. The Video QC. It's really a burden if you have to go get it and chase it. You can automate that respect from the tech trends. Will automation action in there? >>Yeah, absolutely. And as Chris was mentioning, If you can bridge the gap between imagination and realization, then you have solved the problem that the people who are creative can think on implement something in a very short time, gone back for like, you know, some of these I'm just coming. >>Well, it's a very impressed that I'm looking forward to coming down and visiting studio labs when the world gets back to work. You guys are in the heart of Burbank and all the action and the Euro little incubates really kind of R and D meets commercial commercially. Really cool. But I have to ask you, with covert 19 going on, how are you guys handling? The situation certainly impacted people coming to work. How is your team? Have been impacted. And how are you guys continuing the mission? >>Well, yeah, The lab itself is obviously a physical place on the lot. It's in the old animation building, but it's also this program of innovation that we have with our partners. To be honest, we didn't slow down at all. The team carried on the next day from home, and in fact, we have expanded even because new projects came rolling in as folks who were stuck at home suddenly had needs. So we had editors needing to work work remotely. You know, you name it folks with that home connections, wondering if we had some five G phones hanging around that kind of thing. And so everything really expanded a bit. We are hoping to get back into physical co location as soon as possible, not least to be able to shoot movies again. But I think that there will be an element of this remote working that's baked in forever from here on in not least, cause it was just around. This kind of what this has done has accelerated things like the beginning of cloud adoption properly in the beginning of remote teller work and remote telepresence and then also ideas coming out of that. So ah, you know, again, the other day I heard holograms coming up. Like, Can we have holograms yet? So we don't do it That's going to cover out again. Yeah, but you know what? The team have all been amazing, would. But we'll miss each other. You know, there's something about real life that can't be replaced by technology >>has been a great leader in in accumulating. All HP employees work from removed and in the process. But we're also discovered is we have also, you know, maybe so. We discovered innovative ways where we can still work together. Like so we increase the volume of our virtual collaborations on. I worked with Erica from Disney is a tremendous facilitator and the technologists of mining one. You have this close collaboration going. Andi almost missed nothing, but yes, if you would like to, you know, on the field each other on to be in close proximity. Look at each app in each other's eyes are probably that's only missing thing, but rest off it, You know, we created an environment perfect, clever and work pretty well. And actually, at this point in the process, we also discovered a lot of things which can be done in remote, considering the community of Silicon Valley. >>You know, the final question I want to get your thoughts on is your favorite technology that you're excited about. But someone doing you know, we're talking amongst us nerds and geeks here in Silicon Valley around you know what virtualization server virtualization has done? An HP knows a lot about server virtualization. You're in the server business that created cloud because with virtualization, you could create one server and great many servers. But I think this covert 19 and future beyond it virtualization of life, Immersion of digital is going to bring and change a lot of things. You guys highlight a few of them. Um, this virtualization of life society experiences playing work. It's not just work. It's experiences so Internet of things devices how I'm consuming how I'm producing. It's really going to have an impact. I'd love to get your both of your thoughts on this kind of virtualization of life because certainly impact studio lab, because you think about these things. Alice and HP has to invent that the tech to get scaling up. So final question. What do think about virtualization of life and what technologies do you see that you're excited about to help make our lives better? >>Well, goodness, may, I think we're only beginning to understand the impact that things like video conferencing has on folks. You know, I don't know whether you've seen all of the articles flying around about how it's a lot more work to do video conferencing that you don't have the same subtle cues as you have in real life. And again, you know, virtual technologies like we are on day similar and not going to solve that immediately. So what we'll have to happen is that humans themselves will adapt to the systems. I think, though fundamentally we're about to enter a radical period. We basically have already a radical period of innovation because as folks understand what's at their fingertips. And then what's missing? We're going to see all sorts of startups and new ideas come rushing out as people understand this new paradigm and what they could do to solve for the new pains that come out of it. I mean, just from my perspective, I have back to back nine hours of BTC a day. And by the end of the day, I could barely walk Way gonna do about that. I think we're gonna see holograms like that. We're gonna see home exercise equipment combined. You know, really good ones. Like you've seen politicians shares going crazy. There's tons of that. So I'm just really excited at the kind of three years or so. I think that we're going to see of radical innovation, the likes of which we have always usually being held back by, um other reasons, maybe not enough money or not enough permission. Whereas now people are like we have to fix this problem. >>Well, you've got a great job. I want to come to quit. My job income joined studio left. Sounds like it's a playground of fun. There great stuff. Someone do close us out here. What? Are you excited about as we virtualized you're in the in the labs, creating new technology. You're distinct, technologist and director of AI. When you're on the cutting edge, you're riding the wave two. What's your take on this? >>Virtually? Yeah, you know the experience. What it has done is it has pushed the age to the home. So now if you really see home is one of the principal connectivity to the outside world restaurants. Professional goes on and on with that, What I also offers is like a better experience. Right now. We're all gather about Zoom being able to do a video conferencing. But as this was pointing out there is that here in that we are now consider combining the augmented reality and and the way that we do your conference and all the other innovations that we could begin in the East so that the interactions becomes much more really. And that is like, you know, I'd say that the world is moving to >>l Cool. Thank you very much for that comment and insight really enjoyed. Congratulations on studio lab. You've got a great mission and very cool and very relevant. And someone do. Thank you very much for sharing the insights on HP's role in that. Appreciate it. Thank you very much. Okay, this is the Cube. Virtual covering HP Discover virtual experience. I'm John Furrow, your host of the Cube. Stay tuned for more coverage from HP Discover experience after this break. >>Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

From around the globe. It's theCUBE covering HPE's Discover Virtual Experience. Brought to you by HPE. >> Hello and welcome back to the CUBE's coverage of HPE discover Virtual Experience. This is theCUBE, I'm John Furrier, your host, we're here in the Palo Alto Studio for the remote interviews. We have a great innovation story here with Disney and HPE, Alice Taylor, Vice President of Content Innovation with studioLAB at Disney. And Soumyendu Sarkar, distinguished technologist director of AI at HPE. Thanks for coming on Alice. Samandiyu thank you for taking the time. >> No worries. Great to be here. Hi. >> Hi >> I love this story. I think it's an innovation story and I think it's going to be one that we'll experience in our life going forward, and that is media, video, and its experiences and these innovation about AI, It's a lot to do with the collaboration between Disney studioLAB, Alice, that you're running, and it's super, super important and fun as well and very relevant and Cool. So first before we get started, Alice, take a minute to explain a little about yourself and how StudioLAB came about. >> Oh my goodness. StudioLAB is just in its second year of operation. It was an idea that was had by our CTO. I'm going to say three years ago, And at the time, just previously before that, I had a startup company that came through the Disney accelerator. So I was already inside the building and the team there said well, the CTO there, and the boss said, you know, we need to start up an innovation lab that will investigate storytelling through emerging technology. And that's basically being the majority of my background. So I said, yes. And then since then we've been growing a team. We opened the lab in may of 2018 and here we are, in the middle of a pandemic, but it has grown like crazy. It's just a wonderful place to be and to operate. And we've been doing some amazing projects with some amazing partners, >> And it's not unusual that an entrepreneur has this kind of role to think outside the box. We'll get at some of that. Talk about your experience as an entrepreneur, how you got into this position, because you came in as an entrepreneur, you're doing some creative things. Tell us that story real quick. >> Yeah. Okay. Well, so as you can tell, I'm British. My actual background started, my whole career started in technology in the mid 90s. As I started as a trainee video editor, but then switched very quickly in 95 to building websites and from there on, and it was internet all the way. But I've always focused on storytelling and I, you know, much of my background is working for broadcasters and media and content creators. So I was five years at the BBC in their R and D department. And I'm actually out here as VP of digital media for them, and then Channel 4 as well. And throughout the whole process, I was always interested in how to tell stories with new technology and the new mediums as they emerged. So yeah, slight side story and doing a startup, which was actually in toys and video games, but again, big digital storytelling environments for children. And then I came round Robin, if you like into Disney and here we are still looking at how to make films and episodic content, even more, you name it faster, better, more exciting, using the best and greatest in emerging tech as we find it. >> The lab that you're doing, it's an accelerant almost for new technologies. Your job is to what? look out over the horizon next 10 years or so to figure out? >> Yeah >> what's next. It's not a structured thing. You have some reign to be creative and experiment? >> Well, yeah, I mean, the studioLAB, at the studios, well, Disney has eight studios at the moment, And what we do is we look at actually the whole breadth of storytelling. So right from the moment when a creative has an idea through to how our guests and fans might be receiving the end product out in the world, and we segregate that whole breadth into three categories; Ideate, when, you know, the process of generating the idea and building it, Make, how we make it, where we make it, what we make it with and then Experience. How we experience it out in the world. So we have a whole slew of projects, the studio level works with some of the best technology companies in the world. And we call those our innovation partners and we sign these partnerships really to bring what we like to call Superpowers to the system. We like to think that the combination of those companies and what comes out of these projects is going to give our filmmakers superpowers, but also that combinatorial effect of Disney, you know, in this case, for instance, working with HPE, like producing something that Disney couldn't necessarily do on its own or the HBE couldn't necessarily do on his own either. So yeah, it's a huge remit and we don't look quite so far out, generally speaking as 10 years, it's more like three to now. We don't do day to day operational work, but we try to pick something up a couple of years before it's going to be operationally ready and really investigate it then and get a bit of a headstart. >> Well, it's great to have HPE as partner and having that bench of technology, software, and people, and it's just a nice power source for you as well. >> Exactly So Soumyendu talk about HPE relationship with Disney, because you got a lot of deep technical from the lab standpoint to resilient technology. How are you involved? What's your role, you guys sitting around you riffing and put a whiteboard together and say, Hey, we're going to solve these big problems? ... Here's the future of consumption, here's the future of video... What goes on? Tell us the relationship between you guys. >> Yeah, it's a good question. At HPE We can not only make the servers, but what we also do is we work quite a lot on optimizing some of the Artificial Intelligence solutions and algorithms on the GPUs and scale it across Servers. So this opportunity came up from Disney where Disney came up with a very innovative solution where they were solving the video quality problem. As you know, there are a lot of blemishes in the Video that can come up and Disney wanted to fix all of them. And they came up with great algorithm, but what happens is, like with great algorithm comes a huge amount of computational complexity which needs quite a bit of heterogeneous input in both in Parallel Processing and in Sequential Processing. So we thought that it's a perfect, I'd say combination of two skillsets to make this video quality software execute at speeds which are needed for production in Disney. >> So it's good to have a data center whenever you need it to, you guys have some great technology. We'll hear a lot more from the Execs at HPE. On our reporting Alice, we want to to get your thoughts. We're covering some of those new edge technologies, we're talking about new experiences. I gave a talk at Sundance a few years ago called the new creative class, and it's really about this next wave of art and filmmakers who are using the tools of the trade, which is a cellphone, you know, really easy to set up a studios and use the technology. Can you give us some examples of how the studioLAB collaborates with filmmakers and the Execs to push the art and technology of storytelling to be fresh, Because the sign of the times, are Instagram and Tik Tok, this is just very elementary, the quality and the storytelling is pretty basic dopamine driven, but you can almost imagine that the range of quality that's going to come, so access to more people, certainly more equipment and cameras, et cetera. What's next? How do you guys see And what some examples can you share? >> Oh, that's an amazing question. I mean, where working on Films and Episodics rather than very short form content , Obviously. But you're absolutely right. There's a lot of consumer grade technology that is entering the production pipeline in many ways and in many areas, whether it's phones or iPads, using certain bits of software. One of the things that we're building at the moment is the ability to generate photometrical models, capturing with consumer drones or even iPhones, and then getting that data into a 3-D model as soon as possible. There's a really big theme of what we want to do. It's like make the process more efficient so that our creatives and the folks working on productions, aren't having to slog through something that's and tedious. They want to get to the storytelling and the art and the act of storytelling as much as possible. And so waiting for a model to render or waiting for the QC process to finish is what we want to kind of get rid of. So they can really get to the meat of the problem much, much faster. And just going back to what Soumyendu was saying about the AI project here, I mean, it was about finding the dead pixels on the screen when we do all finished prints, which would you believe we do with humans? Humans are the best, or historically have been the best at finding dead pixels, but what a job to have to do at the end of the process. To go through quality control and then have to go and manually find the little dead pixels in each frame of our print, right? Nobody actually wants to be doing that job. So the algorithm goes and looks for those automatically. And then HPE came in and sped that whole process up by 9X. So now it actually runs fast enough to be used on our final prints. >> You know, it's interesting in the tech trend for the past 10, 15 years that I've been covering cloud technology even in the early days, it was kind of on the fringe and then become mainstream. But all the trends were more agility, faster, take away that heavy lifting so that the focus on the job at hand, whether its creative or writing software. This is kind of a a success formula, and you're kind of applying it to film and creation, which is still, like software, it's kind of the same thing almost. >> Yeah >> So you know, when you see these new technologies, I'd love to get both of your reactions to this. One of the big misses, that people kind of miss is the best stuff is often misunderstood until it's understood. >> Yes >> And we're kind of seeing that now with Covid and everyone's like no way I could've seen this. No, no one predicted it. So what's an example of something that people might be misunderstanding. That's super relevant, that might become super important very quickly. Any thoughts? >> Gosh, that's a great one. Well, I can give an example of something that has come and gone and then come and potentially gone, except it hasn't. You'll see. It's VR. So it came whenever it was, 20 years ago and then 10 years ago, and everybody was saying VR is going to change the world. And then it reappeared again, six years ago. And again, everybody said it was going to change the world. And in terms of film production, it really has. But that's slightly gone unnoticed. I think, because out in the market, everyone is expecting VR to have been a huge consumer success. And I suspect it still will be one day a huge consumer success. But meanwhile, in the background, We are using VR on a daily basis in film production, Virtual production is one of the biggest emerging processes that is happening. If you've seen anything to do with Jungle Book, Lion King , the Mandalorian, anything that industrial light and magic work on, you're really looking at a lot of virtual production techniques that have ended up on the screen. And it is now a technology that we can't do without. I'm going to have to think two seconds for something that's emerging. AI and ML is a huge area. Obviously, we're scratching it. I don't think anyone is going to to say that it's going to come and go this one. This is huge, but we're already just beginning to see where and how we can apply AI and ML. >> Yeah. >> So Soumyendu, did you want to jump in on that one? >> Yeah, Let me take it from the technology standpoint. I think Alice sort of puts out some very cool trends. Now what happens in tHE AI and ML spaces, people can come up with creative ideas, but one of the biggest challenges is how do you take those ideas for commercial usage and make it work at a speed, as Alice was mentioning, makes it feasible in production. So accelerating AI/ML and making it in a form, which is usable is super important. And the other aspect of it is, just see, for instance, video quality, that Alice was mentioning. Dead pixel is one type, And I know that Disney is working on certain other video qualities to fix the blemishes, but there is a whole variety of these blemishes and with human operators, Its kind of impossible to scale up the production and to find all these different artifacts, and especially now, as you can see, the video is disseminated in your phones, in your iPads. Like, you know, in just streaming. So this is a problem of scale and to solve this is also like, you know, a lot of computers, and I'd say a lot of collaboration with complementary skillsets that make AI real. >> I was talking with a friend who was an early Apple employee. He's now retired, good friend. And we were talking about, you know, all the dev apps, agile, go fast, scale up. And he made a comment. I want to get your reaction to it. He said, "you know, what we're missing is craft." And software used to be a craft game. So when you have speed, you lose craft. And we see that certainly with cloud and agility and then iterate, and then you get to a good product over time. But I think one of the things that's interesting and you guys are kind of teasing out is you can kind of get craft with the help from some of these technologies, where, you can kind of build crafting into it. >> Yap Alice, what's your reaction to that? >> One of our favorite anecdotes from the lion King is, so Jon Favreau the director, built out the virtual production system with his team to make the film. And it allowed for a smaller production team acting on a smaller footprint. What they didn't do was shorten the time to make the film, what the whole system enabled was more content created within that same amount of time. So effectively Jon had more tapes and more material to make his final film with. And that's what we want people to have. We want them to not ever to have to say, Oh, I missed my perfect shot because of, I don't know what, you know, we ran out of time, so we couldn't get the perfect shot. That's it, that's a terrible thing. We never want that to happen. So where technology can help gather as much material as possible in the most efficient way, basically at the end of the day for our our creatives, that means more ability to tell a story. >> So Soumyendu, this is an example of the pixel innovation, the video QC, it's really a burden if you have to go get it and chase it, you can automate that. That's back to some of the tech trends. A lot of automation action in there. >> Yeah, absolutely. And as Alice was mentioning, if you can bridge the gap between imagination and realization then you have solved the problem. That way, the people who are creative can think and implement something in a very short time. And that's fair, like, you know, some of these scientists come in >> Well, I also very impressed and I'm looking forward to coming down and visiting studio labs when the world gets back to work, >> Alright. >> You guys are in the part of Burbank and all the action. I know you're a little sort of incubate. It's really kind of R and D meet commercially. Commercial is really cool. But I have to ask you what the COVID-19 going on, how are you guys handling the situation? Certainly impacted people coming to work. >> Yeah >> How has your team in been impacted and how are you guys continuing the mission? >> Well, the lab itself is obviously a physical place on the lot. It's in the old animation building. But there's also this program of innovation that we have with our partners. To be honest, we didn't slow down at all the team carried on the next day from home. And in fact, we have expanded even, because new projects came rolling in as folks who were stuck at home suddenly had needs. So we had editors needing to work remotely, you name it, folks with bad home connections, wondering if we had some 5G phones hanging around, that kind of thing. And so everything really expanded a bit. We are hoping to get back into physical co-location as soon as possible, not least to be able to shoot movies again. But I think that there will be an element of this remote working that's baked in forever from here on then. Not least, coz it was just a round, this kind of, what this has done is accelerated things like the beginning of cloud adoption properly, in the beginning of remote teleworking and remote telepresence, and then also ideas coming out of that. So you know, again, the other day I heard Holograms coming up, like, can we have holograms yet? >> Yeah, we can do that, we've done that, Lets do it. Bring that back. >> And so it's that kind of thing. Exactly, that's going to come around again. Yeah. But you know what? The team have all been amazing. But we'll miss each other, you know, there's something about real life that can't be replaced by technology. >> Well, You know, we were talking earlier on theCUBE last week about, the future got pulled to the present, not the present accelerated the future. Which exposes some of these things that are really important and you mentioned it. So I have to ask you Alice, as you guys got more work, obviously it makes sense. What have you learnt as adapting and leading your team through this change? Any learnings you can share with folks? >> Well, yes, that's a good one. But mainly resilience. It's been a nonstop and quite relentless and the news out there is extraordinary. So we're also trying to balance a very full pipeline of work with understanding that people are struggling to balance their lives as well at home, You know, kids, pets, BLM, like you name it, everything is affecting everybody. So resilience and empathy is really top of my mind at the moment as we try to continue to succeed, but making sure that everybody stays healthy and sane. >> Yeah. And in great news, you got a partner here with HPE, the innovation doesn't stop there. You still have to partner. How do you keep up with these technologies and the importance of partners, comments, and Soumyendu your comment as well. >> Yeah. So HPE has been a great leader in accommodating all HPE employees to work from remote and in the process, what we also discovered is, we humans are innovative. So we discover the innovative ways where we can still work together. So we increased the volume of our virtual collaborations, and I have worked with Erica from Disney, who is a tremendous facilitator and a technologist of mine, to have this close collaboration going, and we almost missed nothing. But yes, we would like to, you know the feel each other to be in close proximity, look at each other's eyes. Probably that's the only missing thing, a crest of it, You know, we created an environment where we can collaborate and work pretty well. And to Alice's point in the process, we also discovered a lot of things which can be done in remote considering the community of Silicon Valley. >> You know, I'd love. The final question I want to get your thoughts on is your favorite technologies that you're excited about. But some Soumyendu, you know, we were talking amongst us nerds and geeks here in Silicon Valley around, you know, what Virtualization... Server Virtualization has done. And HPE knows a lot about server virtualization. You're in the server business, that created cloud, because with virtualization, you could create one server and great many servers, but I think this COVID-19 and the future beyond it, virtualization of life, an immersion of digital is going to bring and change a lot of things. You guys highlighted a few of them. This virtualization of life, society, experiences, play, work. It's not just work it's experiences. So Internet of Things, devices, how I'm consuming, how I'm producing, it's really going to have an impact. I'd love to get your, both of your thoughts on this kind of "virtualization of life" because it certainly impacts studioLAB, because you think about these things, Alice, and HP has to invent the tech to get scaling up. So final question. What do you think about virtualization of life and what technologies do you see that you're excited about to help make our lives better? >> Wow. Goodness, me. I think we're only beginning to understand the impact that things like video conferencing has on folks. You know, I don't know whether you've seen all of the articles flying around about how it's a lot more work to do, video conferencing, that you don't have the same subtle cue as you have in real life. And again, you know, virtual technologies like VR and similar, are not going to solve that immediately. So what will have to happen is that humans themselves will adapt to the systems. I think though, fundamentally we're about to enter a radical period. We basically have already a radical period of innovation because as folks understand what's at their fingertips and then what's missing, we're going to see all sorts of startups and new ideas come rushing out. As people understand this new paradigm and what they can do to solve, for the new pains that come out of it. I mean, just from my perspective, I have back-to-back nine hours of etc a day. And by the end of the day, I can barely walk. What are we going to do about that? I think we're going to see, >> Holograms, I like that Idea. >> right, we're going to see home exercise equipment combined with like, you know, really good ones. Like you've seen pellets on the shares going crazy. There's going to be tons of that. So I'm just really excited at the kind of three years or so. I think that we're going to see of radical innovation, the likes of which we have always usually been held back by other reasons, maybe not enough money or not enough permission. Whereas now people are like, we have to fix this problem. >> Well, you got a great job. I want to come, just quit my job and come join studio lab, sounds like that's a playground of fun. They have great stuff. >> Ton of fun. >> Soumyendu, close this out here. What are you excited about as we virtualize. You're in the labs, creating new technology, you're a distinguished technologist and director of AI. I Wean, you're on the cutting edge. You're riding the wave too. What's your take on this virtual center? >> I think, you know the COVID experience, what it has done is it has pushed the edge to the home. So now, if you really see a home is one of the principle connectivity to the outside world, as far as professionalism goes. And with that, what AI also offers is like a better experience. Right now we are all Gaga about zoom being able to do a video conferencing, but as Alice was pointing out, there is that ER, and the VR. Now consider combining the augmented reality. And the way that we do review a conference and all the other AI innovations that we can bring in so that the interactions becomes much more real. And that is like, you know, I'd say, where the world is moving. >> I can't let this go. I have to go one more step in because you guys brought that up. Alice, you mentioned the fatigue and all these things. And if you think about just the younger generations, we have to invest in our communities and our young people. I mean, think about all the kids who have to go back to school in September, in the fall, what their world's like. And you talk about, you know, we can handle video, but learners? So the transformation that's going to come down the path really fast is how do you create an experience for education and for learning and connecting. This is huge. Thoughts and reactions to that. So it's something that I've been thinking a lot about, but I'm sure a lot of other parents have as well. >> My take on that, kids, I've worked a lot with kids and kids media. And over the years, you often find that when a new media does come in, there's a lot of fear around it, but kids are plastic and incredibly good at adapting to new media and new technology and new ways of working. The other thing is, I think this generation of kids have really had to live through something, you know, and it's going to have, with luck, taught them some resilience. I think, if there's one thing that teachers can be focusing on, it is things like resilience and how to cope under very unusual and very unpredictable circumstances, which is never good for things like anxiety. But it's also the reality of the world, you know, be adaptive and learn, keep learning. These are great messages to give to kids. I think if anything, they are the ones who'll figure out how to socialize online successfully and healthily. So we're going to have to learn from them. >> Yeah. They're going to want to make it to be fun too. I mean, you have to make it entertaining. I mean, I find my personal experience, if it's boring, it ain't going to work. Thank you so much, Alice. Well, thank you very much for that comment and insight really enjoy. Congratulations on studioLAB, you got a great mission and very cool and very relevant. Soumyendu thank you very much for sharing the insights on HPE's role in that. I appreciate it. Thank you very much. >> Thanks. It's nice. >> Okay. >> Thanks John. >> This is theCUBE virtual covering HPE Discover Virtual Experience. I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE. Stay tuned for more coverage from HPE Discover Virtual Experience after this break.

>> Announcer: From theCUBE Studios (upbeat music) in Palo Alto and Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a CUBE Conversation. >> Hi, and welcome to a special CUBE Conversation. I'm Stu Miniman, coming to you from our Boston Area studio, and today, March 31st, 2020, is World Backup Day. Joining me is one of our CUBE alumni, Simon Taylor, who's the CEO of HYCU. Simon, we had you a couple weeks ago in our studio, of course. Today we have you joining us remotely. Thank you so much for joining us, and great to see you. >> Great to see you, as well Stu, as always. >> So, there's certain dates that everybody circles on the calendar and gets ready. In your industry, I have to imagine, normally World Backup Day would be a huge party, cake, and everything like that. Just, in all jest, it's my understanding, HYCU did not create World Backup Day, but it is gratuitous to talk about that, and it's something that's been around for a few years. Let's start there, thank you for joining. >> Yeah, absolutely Stu, and again, thanks for having me back on. You're going to get sick of having me on your wonderful program if we keep visiting too much, but I do appreciate it. I'm actually calling in today, as you can imagine, from Vermont, as we sort of escape the city here and get out in the countryside away from all the hectic and the crisis. You know, it's speaking of the crisis, I think that World Backup Day really could not have come at a better time, in some senses. It's so important, and I think it was created to help the world remember that their data loss is such a major issue, and that if we don't watch out for our data, if we don't backup our data, if we don't put proper data protection practices into place, we really can have a problem. And I think when we are moving to work-from-home environments, when we are moving out of the office, when the world is in such a state of flux, as it is today with Coronavirus, these are the moments when you want to really know that your data is protected, that you're safe. You know, we're seeing a rise in ransomware attacks. We're seeing all sorts of things that are tangential to the crisis with COVID-19, and I think, you know, us all taking a moment to kind of realize what an issue data loss is in the world, there just couldn't be a more important time to do that than during a crisis like this one. >> Yeah, Simon, unfortunately, it's scary times also for the IT department because bad actors are definitely making even more attacks right now, in the midst of the global pandemic, something that people are concerned about. When I've been looking out at the community, there's been conversations about, you know, "What does this mean for digital transformation, "and cloud adoption?" And some of the things I'm hearing, especially over in Europe, is there were certain companies, and if you look at certain countries, take Germany for one example, where they might have been a little bit slow to say, "Uh, I'm not sure "if I want to do the cloud." Well, if everybody's working from home for a little bit, and IT needs to keep the business running, there's been a push even faster to the cloud, and one of the main things we're going to talk about today is your partnership with Microsoft Azure. So love to hear what you're hearing from your customers out there, especially ones that normally it's, "Oh, I'm going to make my plan," and we know how fast, or slow, the enterprise normally moves, and now there's a little bit of an acceleration to say, "Hey, we need to get involved in the cloud, and my backup, my data protection is absolutely even more critical when I go to the public cloud." >> Oh my gosh, Stu, absolutely. You're right on all counts. I mean, one of the most horrific issues that we're seeing over, and over, and over again with our customers, and it's such a shame, is that there are bad actors out there. There are bad individuals out there who are trying to take advantage of this crisis, and what they're doing is they're understanding that they can now exploit the fact there's so much work from home. We're seeing more man-in-the-middle attacks. We're seeing more customers who are calling us up and saying, "I've just been hit with a ransomware, "all my data's locked down. "Somebody didn't follow protocol when they were working "from home, and boom, all of the sudden we're being asked "to pay a million dollars in bitcoin, "and what do I do?" I'm really, really proud of my team for stepping up during the crisis. We've actually seen more than 10 different customers, just in the last month, who've called us up and have said, "You know, I'm supposed to pay this bitcoin ransom. "Can you get my data back?" In all 10 out of 10 cases, because of how natively integrated HYCU is into the platforms we support, we were actually able to recover that data within the next few hours to days, get it back for them before they had to pay out those ransoms. So again, not just a plug for HYCU, a plug for backup and recovery in general. A plug for everybody who's thinking about, "How do I keep myself safe when I'm moving to the cloud?" Absolutely, this is the time to keep yourself safe with proper data protection strategies. You know, I think the second thing that you bring up, very rightly so, is that there were a lot of countries, Germany's one of them but there's many, who had sort of been on the back foot during this crisis, and had always expected that on-prem was going to be a majority of their infrastructure for the foreseeable future. They were all dipping their toe in the cloud water, the cloud pond, as it were, but you didn't see a lot of folks in Europe who were 100% committing to cloud. Well, wow, has that changed. You know, as we moved to work from home, you need a lot of that dynamic scaling that only true cloud environments, public cloud, can provide. But I think the second thing, and maybe more importantly, is we don't want to see our IT departments having to go into the office. We don't want to see them having to put themselves, and potentially their families at risk, simply to go in and manage data. So being able to work off of infrastructure-as-a-service, hugely critical during the crisis, and to the fact that HYCU is a natively integrated service into those different enterprise and public clouds means that you can do all of it remotely. And I think this is where the whole HYCU simplicity is a pillar, and a guiding principle for the company has become so important. I can't tell you how many customers have called us up and said, "I wanted to be at home with my family. "The other backup companies, the legacy deployments we had, "just simply wouldn't have allowed me to stay at home. "I would have needed to go back to the office. "Do you have something that's as-a-service?" That certainly brings me to, I think, your third point, which is we are absolutely thrilled here today, on World Backup Day, in the midst of this crisis, to be announcing the launch of HYCU for Azure. And again, this is a natively integrated service that customers can literally just VPN to their set data center, go directly to their cloud, go directly to Azure, in the marketplace turn on HYCU for Azure, and boom, you're going to have all of that wonderful, natively integrated, purpose filled backup recovery as a service. You're going to have all of that application support. You're going to have all of the things you've become, sort of used to, Stu, when we talk about HYCU, natively integrated into Azure as well. And again, I think because of this crisis, because we want people to stay at home, we want to flatten that curve, the fact that we've got this new service for Azure, which is so important for everybody, I think is just critical at this particular time. >> Yeah, definitely hugely important. We've been talking to you and HYCU for a number of years, Simon. Of course, started out very focused on, really, a Nutanix environment, broadened out to really the virtualization environment, and you're really going with your customers heavily into a cloud environment. So, Azure, really important. When I was at Microsoft Ignite last year, CEO Satya Nadella, I could sum up his main them in one word, and that was trust. So, number one, it was a knock against a certain company in the cloud that mainly drive their revenue from ads, but when he talked about customers and partners, he wanted Microsoft to really be the company that people trust in that environment. We've seen Microsoft, one of the biggest movers from an application standpoint, the real push to Office 365, got people to really embrace and trust SaaS. Would love to hear your early customers who you've been working through for this announcement, why this is so important that HYCU, not only supporting and integrating with Azure, but in the Azure marketplace, and what your customers are telling you. >> Gosh, that's such a great question, Stu. You know, first, just talking about Satya Nadella, I really think the world of him. I think he does truly believe it, when he, you know, if you've read his book, "Hit Refresh", you do start to see a man who truly cares, not just about the bottom line, or even the top line, for that matter, but really strives to drive real customer value. And I think one of the things he really did at Microsoft is he talks a lot about how the solutions that they're selling have real world effects across so many different industries. It's the net result of the technology that I think he cares about, as opposed to just the sum of its parts. So it's really, really interesting, I think, when we think about him and his leadership style, to think about how HYCU kind of fits into that. And you know, one of the things I'm really proud to announce is that here, on World Backup Day, in the midst of this horrible pandemic, what we're doing, as we launch HYCU for Azure is we're actually going to give it entirely free, no cost, no strings attached, to the entire world for the next three months. And the reason we're choosing to do that is we believe that data protection is so important, that in a situation like this, it's incredibly important that people don't take life threatening risks, things that could threaten not only them, but their families, going in to the office to do this. You know, and I think one of the great things about HYCU and also HYCU with Protege, our multi-cloud data management platform, is that you can now migrate your data from on-prem to the cloud with the touch of a button from home. You can literally go sign up, it's free of charge for all the HYCU backup you want for the next three months. You know, get on there and protect your data, that's number one. You know, that adds real value to customers in the midst of this crisis. Number two is you can use HYCU Protege to then migrate entire workloads, keep them safe, whether it's applications, whether it's databases. You know, we want customers to know that they can trust a third party, like HYCU, to be able to automate the process of migration to the cloud, and then you know, in the midst of a crisis like this everybody's thinking about disaster recovery. Well, guess what? We can even more data back on-prem, using a runbook, and we can actually drive true disaster recovery preparedness, as well, all for Azure customers. You know, Stu, you and I were talking about this offline a few minutes ago, but the reality is, we've interviewed our customers, and 72% of them, and that's in 71 countries now around the world, funny enough, but 72% of those customers are Azure customers, as well. So when we talk about our on-prem business, 72% of our on-prem business is also using Azure. So the ability to dynamically move these workloads to the cloud, move it back again for DR, as well as protect that data wherever it's sitting, and do all of that from home, with simplicity, and for the next three months no cost, I think that's how we're trying to drive value and trust into the Azure marketplace. >> Yeah, first of all, Simon, that's really a lot of good pieces here. It almost becomes a little bit trite when we talk about, "Oh, well, I want to build optionality "into my product, I want to be ready to change "and adjust things." But the environment and landscape that we're living with today is we understand, companies need to be able to react really fast, and they need to be able to adjust with this changing landscape. So what they're doing last month, versus what they're doing today, versus what they might doing in a couple of months, you know, I don't want to get locked in. I don't want to make any big decision. So therefore, it's great to see you're giving customers flexibility there. They've got both the free usage of the software, but also that migration built in to HYCU Protege. You know, how do I move my data around? How do I make sure it's still protected? So important that, you know, we've been talking for years about the ability to make changes fast and to move with speed, but you know, I think today's landscape really just put the point on (laughs), you know, we've been planning for this, in some ways, and this might have been the exact thing we're planning for, but this is the reason that this technology's so important. >> It's so well said, Stu. I mean, honestly, just like you said, we started out with the purpose-built back up recovery for Nutanix, and then we added GCP, we added VMware, now of course, we're launching Azure, but in each case, we said it's got to be natively integrated, it's got to be super simple, we've got to automate every process we can. We want to make sure that customers can wake up in the morning, log in to their cloud infrastructure, whether it's GCP, now Azure, you know, turn this on as a service. We always say, "There's nothing to download "when it's a true service," right? And I think that's so important now. It used to be kind of a talking point, but I think now people are really seeing the true value, which is when you don't need to go in to your data center, when you don't need to VPN in, when you don't need to figure out all the rest of this architecture. Well, when people are moving enormous amounts of data, and buying so much VDI, and deploying all these work-from-home modules to, sort of, protect their infrastructure, and create and environment that works for the current conditions, the last thing they have to do is put themselves at risk for the backup. I think because this is purpose-built, because it's a true service, because it's a natural extension, really, of the cloud provider they've chosen, or multiple, I think we make that really, really easy for customers, and we're very proud of the work we've done on that front. >> All right, Simon, just want to give you the opportunity. You know, what kind of feedback have you had from customers over the last couple of weeks, specifically? You talked about how important Azure was for them, of course, prior to this announcement, but just anecdotally, we'd love to hear just viewpoints as to customers you're talking and working with in these challenging times. >> Sure, sure, so first of all, everybody's hard pressed. I mean, there's a crunch everywhere. You know, people are feeling this sort of potential for a really, really systemic downturn into the economy, but at the same time, there were really urgent needs in terms of acquiring mission-critical infrastructure to support the move to work from home. And I think that's caused massive shifts in the way people are thinking about purchasing technology, and specifically infrastructure technology in the marketplace. People truly want services now. You know, before it was something that maybe drove the valuation of a company, et cetera, et cetera, but now people are saying, "Hey, it's nothing to do with that at all. "I just want a service that I can scale up, "and I can scale down. "I want it now, I want it fast, and I want it simple." So I think anything that's natively integrated, and is acting as a SaaS, true SaaS offering, has a real advantage in today's marketplace. I think the second thing is, that as customers are moving in droves to VDI, you know, I think there's a lot of talk right now about whether it's ever going to move 100% back. I think as people are discovering how effective and powerful we can be as we work from home, I mean, Stu, look at us right now having this very conversation, I think it's amazing what we're able to achieve with the technology that's out there, and I think that's really reduced the panic, and I think it's something that people aren't talking about. That there's such, imagine what the panic would have been if we didn't have Zoom, if we weren't able to do a GoToMeeting, if we weren't able to log in with a VPN and access our infrastructure. I mean, the entire world would have shut down like this. Now there's arguments being made that it may still shut down, et cetera, but you know we have at least delayed that process. I think we've created a lot of support for the economy and the environment through all of the technology that the marketplace is presenting to customers. And I think the next step in that is making sure that we recognize a couple of things. You know, we're seeing, again, a huge rise in ransomware attacks. There are many, many bad actors out there looking to exploit and take advantage of this situation, which is why I say you don't need to buy our product, but please, if you've got Azure, go and turn on the backup. Well, why wouldn't you? Protect your data, make sure it's recoverable. God forbid anything bad happens, or you do get attacked, make sure you can get that data back from a third party. Make sure it's really easy to recover. Make sure all your mission-critical applications and databases are supported. And I think if we do those things, and we work together to protect our customers, and for just a very short period of time, really don't worry so much about how much money we're going to make off of them, but think about how to protect them, truly, I think that's where the value is, and I think that's how we as human beings, can sort of do a better job of protecting each other. >> All right, well, Simon, thank you so much for all the updates. Happy World Backup Day. You know, I definitely look forward to chatting with you soon, and thanks for joining, and please be safe. >> Stu, always a pleasure. Please stay healthy, as well, take care. >> All right, I'm Stu Miniman, and you've been watching theCUBE here with some of our remote interviews. Check out thecube.net for everything online, and thank you for watching theCUBE. (upbeat digital music)

>> From the SiliconANGLE Media office in Boston massachusetts, it's theCUBE. (techno music) Now, here's your host Stu Miniman. >> Hi, and welcome to a special CUBE conversation here in our Boston area studio. One of the biggest topics we've been digging into as we head through 2020, has really been multi-cloud and as the customers as they're really going through their own transformations understanding what they're doing in their data center to modernize what's happening between all of the public clouds they use, and all the services that fit amongst them. Happy to bring back one of our CUBE alumni to dig into a specific topic. Simon Taylor, who's the CEO of HYCU. Of course data protection, a big piece. A big buzz in the industry for a number of years, in one of those areas, in multi-cloud, that's definitely of big importance. Simon, great to see you, thanks so much for joining us. >> Thank you so much for having me back on, it's exciting to be here. >> All right, so, Simon, first, give us the update. >> Sure. >> It's 2020. We've seen you at many of the conferences we go to. You're based in Boston, so not to far for you to come out to our Boston area studio here. You know a 40 minute drive without traffic so, >> Not bad at all. >> give us the latest on HYCU. >> Certainly well and Stu, thanks again for having me into your studio, it's gorgeous, everything looks great. It's a lot easier than traveling over to Europe to see you. So this is very very convenient actually. But since we last spoke, which I think was about six months ago now, HYCU has been growing fast and furiously, you know we started out with the world's first purpose built backup and recovery product for Nutanix Of course, we added VMware we added Google Cloud, we wrapped all the data together into multi-cloud data protection as a service, and we called that HYCU Protege. Well I am so thrilled to announce that in just the three months since we've launched Protege, we have seen hundreds of customers flocking to it. And what we're finding is that customers are calling us and they're saying things like, "let me get this straight, "I'm already backing up my data on-prem with you, "I can now migrate to the cloud, "bring it back again for disaster recovery as a service, "and it's all part of HYCU?" and we say yes, you know, and they say, "and this is all offered as a service?" Yes, "and it's natively integrated "into all the platforms that I'm using?" Yes. And I think so customers today, are more and more in need of the kind of expertise that HYCUs providing because they're looking now much more strategically than ever before, at what workloads to leave on-prem and which workloads to migrate to the cloud, and they want to make sure that, that entire data pathway is protected from beginning to end. >> Yeah, it's really interesting stuff, I think back to early in my career that you know that data protection layer was like, "well, this is what I'm running "and don't change it." Think about like when you've rolled out like virtual tape as a technology it was, you know, "I don't want to have to change my backup "because that is just something that runs "and I don't do it." For last five years or so it feels like customers. There's so much change in their environment that they are looking for things that are more flexible, you talked about some of the flexible adoption models for payment and the like that they're looking for. So, you know, what do you think customers are just more embracing of that change, is it just that changes their daily business and therefore data protection needs to come along with that. Well it's funny you asked because just a few years ago I was on theCUBE with you and you said to me, "you guys have a perpetual license model, "what are you doing about that?" and I said, "don't worry, it is shifting to as a service it's going subscription," which was super important for the market is, I've had conversations with folks who are selling cooking gear and they're trying to sell that as a service, I saw yesterday, somebody, I think Panera Bread, is offering a coffee as a service. You know, I think what we've started to realize is that the convenience of the as a service model, the flexibility, which I would argue was probably driven by cloud technology and cloud technology adoption, is something the market has truly embraced and I think anybody who's not moved in that direction at this point is probably very much being left behind. >> Okay, another technology that often goes hand in hand in discussion with data protection is security. Of course ransomware is a hot topic conversation the last few years, how does that fit into your conversations with customers, what are you saying? >> That's a great question. So you know one of our advisory board members, his name is Kevin Powers, and he runs the Boston College cyber security program. I had the privilege and the honor of attending the FBI Boston College cyber program recently at a large scale event at Boston College, and FBI Director Ray was actually on hand to talk about this problem, and it was incredible you know he said, "cyber crime as a service "is becoming a major issue," you're talking about the commoditization of hard to build malware, that's now just skyrocketing off the charts, the amount of cyber exploitation that's going on across the world. This is creating massive massive issues for the FBI because they've got so many thousands of cases, they've got to deal with. And while they're doing a fantastic job. We believe prevention is certainly the key. So one of the things that has been really really wonderful as a CEO to watch has been the way that some of our customers have actually been able to crack the code in terms of not having to give in to these bad actors. We've had actual customers who have had ransomware attacks had millions of dollars in data, literally stolen from them, and they've been told, "you've got to deposit, "$5 million on this Bitcoin account by midnight, "or we're deleting the data." Right? Because HYCU is Linux based because HYCU is not Windows Server based because HYCU is natively integrated into all the platforms that we support. We were able to help those customers get their data back without paying a penny. So I think that that's one of those moments where you really sort of say to yourself, "God I'm glad I'm in this business here," we've built a product that doesn't just do what we say it's going to do, it does a heck of a lot more. And I think it's it's absolutely a massive problem and data protection is really a key part of the answer, >> You know it's great to hear their success stories there, you know I think back to earlier days where it'd be like well you know what if I set up for disasters and data protection and things like that, well maybe I haven't thought about it or maybe I kind of implemented it but I've never really tested it, but there's more and more reasons why I might actually need to leverage these technologies that I've deployed, and it's nice to know that they're there. You know it's not just an insurance thing that I've never used. >> Oh absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. >> All right. So I started off our discussion time in talking about multi-cloud So you talked about earlier we first first met it was at the Nutanix shows in their environments, and some of that you've gone along with Nutanix as they've gone through hybrid and multi-cloud what they call enterprise Cloud Messaging. >> Sure. >> And play with those environments so bring us up to speed. What have your big customers doing with cloud where does HYCU fit in and what are the updates on your product. >> Yeah, sure. And I'll start off by saying that at this point about a third of all AHV customers are using a HYCU for backup AND recovery. >> And just for our audience that doesn't know, AHV of course is Nutanix's >> Yes. >> Acropolis Hypervisor >> Absolutely. >> That comes baked into their solution as an alternative to people like VMware. >> Perfectly said as always sir, yes very much, and you know we've been thrilled as the rise of AHV and Nutanix has sort of taken the market by storm. And when we started out, you know we use to came on the show with zero customers and a new product and said, "we believe in AHV and we think it's going to be great "and we're going to back it up." And that's really paid off in spades for us, which was wonderful, but we also recognize that customers needed that VMware backups. We built a VADP integration and then we started going after the public cloud. So we started with Google Cloud, and we said we're going to build the world's first purpose built backup and recovery as a service for GCP. We launched that last year and it was tremendous you know some of the world's largest companies and organizations and governments are actually now running HYCU specifically for Google Cloud. So we've been thrilled about that. I think the management team at GCP has done a terrific job of making sure that Google can be really competitive in the cloud wars, and we're thrilled to support them. >> Yeah, and I'm glad you've got some customer stories on Google because you know the industry watchers out there it's like, "well you know Google they're number three," and you know we know that Google has some really strong data products Where they're very well known but I'm curious when you're talking to your customers. Is there anything that's kind of commonalities to why customers are using Google and you know what feedback you're hearing from your customers out there. >> Sure I mean I'll start off by saying this, we've polled our customers and we've now got over 1,300 customers in 56 countries. So we polled all of them and we just said, "how many data silos do you have, "how many platforms, how many clouds?" The average was five. Right, so the first thing to say is that I think almost all of these large enterprise customers in public sector and private sector are really using all of them, the extent to which they may be using AWS versus Azure versus GCP, versus Nutanix versus VMware on-prem. we can argue and debate but I think all customers at this point of any size and scale are trying them all out. I think what Google's done really well is they've started to build a really strong partner program. I think where they were a little bit sort of late to the party in terms of AWS and Azure being there sort of first. But I think what Thomas Kurian did when he came in is he sort of tripled down on sort of building out that ecosystem and saying, "what's really important "to make cloud customers comfortable "that their data is going to be as safe on Google Cloud, "as it was on-prem," and I'm thrilled that they've elected to make data protection sort of one of the key pillars of that strategy, not just because we're a data protection company, but because I do think that that was one of the encumbrances in terms of that evolution to cloud. >> Yeah, absolutely, seen a huge growth in the ecosystem around Google. The other big cloud provider that has a very strong partner ecosystem is the one when I went to the show last year, their CEO Satya Nadella talked about trust, so of course talking about Microsoft and Azure, very large ecosystem there, trying to emphasize, maybe against others and by the way you saw this as much of a shot against Google >> Sure. >> you know, how do I trust Google with my data and information from the consumer side as AWS is I might be concerned that they might be competing against them. So, how about the Microsoft relationship? >> It's a great question. So again, so when we started on-prem, with our initial purpose built backup recovery products. We added Google Cloud. You know I'm now thrilled to announce that we're also going to be launching Azure backup and recovery. It's also native, it is purpose built into the Azure Marketplace. All the things you've come to expect from HYCU backup. The simplicity, the fact that it's SLO based. The fact that you can actually go in and decide how many times a day you want a different recovery point et cetera. All of those levels of configuration are now baked in to HYCUs own purpose built backup and recovery as a service for Azure. But I think the important thing to remember about this wonderful wonderful new addition to our portfolio. Is that, it is a critical component of HYCU Protege. So getting back to your question from before about multi-cloud data protection and what we're seeing, we call this the year of migration, because for all of these cloud platforms, what are they really trying to do they need to move massive amounts of data in a safe and resilient manner, to the cloud. So remember after we built out these purpose built backup recovery services, Azure is now one of those. We then pulled all that data together under a single pane of glass we called it HYCU Protege. We then said to customers, we're going to enable you to automatically migrate with the touch of a button an entire workload to the cloud, and then bring it back again for disaster recovery, and we will protect the data on-prem in the cloud and back again. >> Yeah, it's interesting 'cause when we kind of look at what's happening in the marketplace, for many years it was a discussion of what's moving from the data center to the public cloud, some things are moving back from the environment edge, of course, pulls things even further. Often it's, I say it's not even migration anymore it's just mobility, because we are going to be moving things and spinning things up and building things in many more places, and it's going to change. As we started out that conversation, there's so much change going on that so you're giving customers some optionality there, so that this isn't just a one way, you know, let's stick it on a truck put it on this thing and get it to that environment but I need to be able to enable some of that optionality and know what I'm doing today but also knowing that you know six months a year from now, we know things are going to be different >> Yes, yes! >> And in each of these some of those environments. >> Absolutely. We call it the three Ds data assurance, data mobility, and disaster recovery. So I think the ability to not only protect your data, whether it's on-prem as it journeys to the cloud or whether it's in the cloud, the ability to actually assist the customer in the migration. And what I hear time and time again is, "oh but Azure has a tool," or "Google has a tool for migration." Of course they have tools for migration, but I think the challenge for customers is, how do I affect that data resiliency, how do I ensure that I can move the data as a complete workload. Moving an entire SAP HANA instance, for example, to the cloud. And it protected the entire time as it journeys up there, and then bring it back for the disaster recovery without professional services. Because again, you know HYCU it's about simplicity, we want to make sure that these customers can get the same level of readiness, the same ease of deployment that they get from their cloud vendor, when they're thinking about the data protection and the migration. >> All right, I want to click down one layer >> Please. >> in here. We're talking about multi-cloud, you talk about simplicity. >> Sure. >> Well, Kubernetes might not be the simplest thing out there but it absolutely is a fundamental piece of the infrastructure in a multi-cloud environment so you know your partners, Google with GKE, Azure with AKS and >> And Carbon. >> Carbon with a K from Nutanix everyone now, I say it's not about distributions it's really every platform that you're going to use is going to have Kubernetes built into it so what does that mean from a data protection standpoint? Do you just plug into all of these environments you've tested it got customers using it? >> It's a great question it comes up, as you can imagine, all the time. I think it's something that is becoming more and more ready for prime time. A lot of the major vendors are moving to it, making heavy investments in Kubernetes, we ourselves have over 100 customers that are actively using Kubernetes in one form or another and backing the data up using HYCU so there's no question in my mind that HYCU is Kubernetes ready. I think what's really exciting for us is some of the native integrations we're working on with Google and with Nutanix so whether it's Carbon whether it's GKE, we want to make sure that when we work with these platforms that we mimic, how the platform is supporting Kubernetes, so that our customers can get the same experience from HYCU that they're getting from the platform provider itself. >> All right, Simon want to give you the final word. Bring us inside your customers what they're doing with multi-cloud and where HYCU fits there, here in 2020. Sure, we talked about prime time. Cloud for many years has been something that I think large enterprises have talked a big game about, but have been really dipping their toe in the water with. What we've seen the last two years, is a massive massive at scale migration to the largest three public clouds, whether that's GCP, whether that's Azure or the other one. (laughing) We're thrilled to support GCP and Azure because GCP and Azure, we believe do provide the most value to our customers. But I think the name of the game here is not just supporting a customer in the cloud, it's understanding that every customer today is to is on a journey, whether they're on-prem, whether their journeying to cloud or they're in cloud those three Ds, data assurance, which is our backup, data mobility, which is the automated migration, or disaster recovery readiness. That's the name of the game and that's how HYCU wants to help. >> All right, Simon Taylor. Always a pleasure to catch up with you thank you so much for the HYCU updates, >> Stu thanks so much for having us on. >> All right, be sure to check out www.thecube.net for all of our inventory of the shows that we've been at the videos we've done, you can even search on keywords in companies, I'm Stu Miniman and thank you for watching theCUBE. (Techno Music)

>>Live from Copenhagen, Denmark. It's the cube covering Nutanix dot. Next 2019 brought to you by Nutanix. >>Welcome back everyone to the cubes live coverage of next here in Copenhagen. We are of course here at the Nutanix show. We are wrapping up a fantastic today show. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. Been Cosa hosting alongside of Stu Miniman. We are joined by Simon Taylor. He is the CEO of haiku, a good friend of the cube. Thank you so much for coming back on the show. It's a pleasure to be here. It's great to see you guys again. Final guest. Oh my gosh. It's a, it's a fare to stay interested in your energy. Yes. So for our viewers who are not as familiar with haiku, tell us a little bit about your business and how you are a strategic partner of Nutanix. >> Sure, sure. So haiku actually is a software company that focuses on data protection as a service. We actually started by spinning out of a much larger company called calm train that had about a thousand engineers and was doing all sorts of things, but they had an amazing talent for building backup and recovery software. >>Um, my vision was really that we can move up the value chain and we can establish ourselves as our own brand, as long as we could find a place in the market that was fast growing, building like a rocket ship and was really requiring a new kind of data protection and backup. And honestly, as soon as we fell, we saw Nutanix, we sort of fell in love. We realized that, you know, they had developed an entirely new category of business with hyperconverged and they were really a pioneer in that space. So we said is why don't we build the world's first purpose-built backup and recovery for Nutanix? And that's exactly what we did. And I think, you know, Stu was actually one of the first people to ever hear about it. Uh, we came on the cube and we talked about that. We've GA that in 2017 in July. I think@that.next, um, so just two and a half years later, we now have 1200 customers and we're in 62 countries around the world. So it's been absolutely astonishing. It's been wonderful growth. We're seeing 300% year over year growth. Uh, and really a lot of that is just based on our ability to protect the data of Nutanix customers around the world. >>Well and and Simon, right? That early question was, is new CanOx is going to be big enough to support ISV is that, you know, can run the, you know, grow their business underneath them before we get further and talk about mine and everything. Give us a little bit, you know, the state of the state for haiku because started with Nutanix, but that's not the only solution they are offering Dave. So just give us kind of the snapshot of the whole business. >>What we realized as we were building out high Q in this purpose build backup recovery for new TEDx. We said that's the on-prem, you know, but there's a lot of on prem that is still legacy three tier architecture. So we added a VMware product. But really the goal was to offer true multi-cloud data protection as a service. So what we did is we built the independent purpose-built backup and recovery service from Nutanix, one for VMware. Then we built the world's first purpose build backup as a service for Google cloud. And I'm really thrilled to announce the next month we're launching Azure backup as well. And the brilliant thing about our system and our solution is that we actually enabled customers to not only back up their data independently for that cloud, but that then migrate their data to whatever other cloud they want to use. So we actually becomes data protection as a service, data migration, and dr. >>So for, for customers, this is wonderful, but how is it to be strategic partners with all of these big players? >> Oh yeah, absolutely. I think you have to place your bets, right? So if you notice, I didn't say AWS and almost every company that I talked to says, why wouldn't you start with AWS? They're the biggest, you know, that's never been our philosophy. You know, I think the fact that we attach ourselves to Nutanix so early, not just because they were a rocket ship on fire, but also because we truly believed in their vision. We believe in the Nutanix products, we love Daraja entire philosophy around simplicity and customer delight and we felt like we could be students of Nutanix, we could actually build out our product with those same philosophies and principles in mind. You know? So I think really going deep with Nutanix is number one for us remains number one. I would also say though that you know, Google has been an excellent partner and Microsoft been an excellent partner. So with the large cloud providers you have to take a different approach. You cannot offer a downloadable product, right? All of our public cloud backup and recovery is a true managed service. You go into their app store, you turn it on rather than download it, you configure and you're able to perform all your backup and do all your recovery right from the console. >>All right, so Simon let, let's get into the kind of the, the, the guts of what's happening at Nutanix. Mine, of course is a partnership to extend for data protection, partnering with Veeam and haikus as a, as the first two partners. Uh, the other thing that everybody's pretty excited about is XY clusters. And that sounds like, and we've talked to Newtanics people, you know, as Nutanix brings their stack into the clouds, not just on the clouds, will that pull things like mine along with them. And so, so give us what you're seeing with mine first and maybe he's, I clusters along. >>Yeah. So maybe we start with mine, right? This whole concept that I think that these guys have pioneered and they've done a really terrific job of it. I think, you know, the, the vision there, and you know, I count marketing or Meyer in this group and Tim Isaacs and some wonderful folks on the product team in Nutanix. Their vision was, you know, there's rubric and there's Cohesity, there's these sort of large secondary storage platforms. Personally, when I look at them, what I see as Newtanics with a backup workload, right? And I think that, you know, Nutanix being the original is the best. It's the most complete solution. And it's very, very comprehensive. So I think the, the tannics folks understood this intuitively and their idea was instead of us building our own backup and going after that space, we've got amazing partners like haiku. Why don't we just natively integrate them into the mind platform and offer that sort of secondary storage workload, uh, as a key part of Nutanix is product proposition. >>So the really exciting thing for us is that we are skewed up with Nutanix. Nutanix, we'll be able to resell haiku as a part of mine. Uh, and I think that's gonna really complete their end tour tire story when it comes to being able to own the data center, uh, and really own the sort of cloud in general. You know. So I think your second question still was about clusters. And I think that the answer there is very simple. You know, multi Gloucester is, has become extremely important for Nutanix customers. They've done a great job of going after that. The simple fact is if you don't support XY clusters as a backup vendor, you really can't compete in this market. So I'm really thrilled to announce, of course, that haiku is the first backup recovery vendor that does support. Gluster. >>Okay. So interesting. We talked about how you hadn't done a solution for AWS. Sounds like this might be a path for you to get with Nutanix onto AWS. >>Absolutely, absolutely. And again, for us it's not about looking for some Trojan horse or backdoor into a go to market strategy. It's about making sure that the customers are truly delighted by the value that we provide. And I think that when we go after a specific market, we want to do it the best, you know, so we don't go shallow and just sort of check the box. We want to make sure, for example, when we build out Azure that we're not just dealing with, you know, the, the general principle of backing up and keeping things consistent. We want to make sure the applications people are running on Azure or supported by haiku. That's what we do with Nutanix. That's what we do with GCP. We want to always go as deep as possible so we can really compliment the platform in a really, really comprehensive way. >>One of the things you said earlier was that your philosophy is very much aligned with Nutanix, your your end goal to simplify and delight the customer, uh, this, this much more intuitive, uh, youth and user interface. So talk a little bit about how you, you said you wanted to become a student of Nutanix, yo, this, this cross company learning is very interesting to me. How, how, what have you learned? Yeah. What have you learned and how do you go about being tutored by your customers? >>No, I'm a very visual guy, right? And whenever I think about Nutanix, I always had this image in my head. All right. Whenever I thought about legacy, three-tier architecture and the move to hyperconverged, rather, I always pictured an 80 stereo system. Remember those big eighties boxes? And they have all the graphic equalizers and all the way down. And some kid would come and push them all down. You could never reset the darn things, you know? And then along comes, you know, automation and suddenly, you know, you press a button and you listen to jazz and it sounds like good jazz and the treble and the bass all fixed themselves. You know, I effectively think that Nutanix brought that same concept, funnily enough into the data center. They simplified so much that was impossible to handle for admins across the world. They made it so simple to use their product that actually the customers could start to enjoy their work more. >>And I really love that. That's a true, that's a really an intangible sort of value proposition that I think people don't talk about it enough. Yes, you want to save time. Yes, you want to save money, but if you could enjoy your job more as a result of getting a product, what's better than that? Um, so I think that philosophy is something we baked into haiku in the following ways. You know, the first is when we were designing the UI, we wanted it to look and feel like the platform it supports. So when you use haiku for Nutanix, it looks like prism, when you are using our console for GCP, you're gonna feel like you're using GCP. The idea is that backup and recovery should be an extension of that cloud expression, that platform, so that the customer who is an expert with that platform can easily manage this with no training at all. So again, driving that simplicity right there and in the platform. >>Yeah. So Simon, you know, one of the things we love to do is get hear from customers and what they're doing. Of course you've got 1200 customers that are Nutanix customers. So we'd love to hear, you know, any insights you have in a lot of discussion about AHV in the last 12 months has been about half of the deployment. Is there anything around HV or any of the, you know, new software features and products and experiences that Nutanix has been launching that you hear customers buzzing and talking to you about? >>I mean, I, I, the first thing I would say is it is truly a multicloud world now. Um, I think that legacy vendors are having a harder and harder time coping with the fact that cloud washing no longer works. You know, if you show up to the market and you say, Oh, this, now I can deploy an agent into this cloud, it's sort of stop, stop, don't say agent around me. You know? So I think, I think the ability to really natively integrate into any of these clouds and support all of these clouds equally is key. You know? So in the past a vendor would start with one thing and it would be great, right? And I won't use names here, but then they would do something else. They might move to another hypervisor and it was a little bit less great. Right. And I think that that notion has to change in a multicloud world, which brings me to the concept of HV. >>I think that HV has really grown. I mean, I would say that right now, you know, over half of our customers are HV customers. And I would say that that grows every single quarter and it not only grows in terms of net new logos, it also grows in terms of existing customers that we're finding SWAT to switch to HV and they want to switch fast. You know, they don't want to pay the V tax anymore, but more than that, I think they're seeing HV as a really robust enterprise hypervisor that really meets the complete need for the customer. And I think that's, that's been terrific to watch. So when you hear at.next, and this is not your first hot next, but what kinds of conversations are you having? What's been interesting to you? What are you going to take back to haiku? Yeah, head back to Brookline. Yeah. >>I mean obviously there's all the new stuff. I mean, Kubernetes, you know, containers. Um, I think these are all things we've been working on for some time. We'll have some surprises for you guys in Q4 at the end of Q four around that. Um, but you know, I think the big takeaway for me is we spent the first two years building our brand, getting the word out there, proving to companies and customers around the world that we were truly enterprise ready cause we were the new kid on the block. And you have to sort of start somewhere and show that. I think now we, you know, we added physical last year, we added tape support, we've really got all of the major applications covered at this point. I think that conversation, we've checked the box, right? So today's conversations are about what's next, how much more deeply will you integrate with Nutanix? >>How can I use Nutanix to then manage my data in the cloud and bring it back again? And can haikus support that or will it distract me? And you know, the simple answer is it will support that completely because it's so natively integrated. You know. And again, I think when you choose a platform at this stage, and this is something we've seen again and again and again, people do not want a second silo, right? In order to, you know, run their backup and recovery. You know, customers who are choosing Nutanix or choosing any platform want to run that platform and they want to make that one holistic experience. You know, they want to reduce the training required and they want to make sure they get the most out of their investment. So we're where I think two or three years ago, Stu, when we first met, everybody was trying new things, right? It was sort of, there were all these new platforms and it was all very exciting. I think now people are doubling, tripling, quadrupling down on the platforms they fundamentally believe in. And we're thrilled about that because we support those platforms and we'll continue to do so. >>Great. Excellent little. Simon, thank you so much for coming on the cube. It was a real pleasure talking to you and it's been great. Yes, no, absolutely. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. That wraps up two brilliant days in Copenhagen at the Bella center at Nutanix dot. Next. Thank you so much for joining us and we hope to see you next time.

>> Announcer: Live from San Diego, California, it's theCUBE, covering Cisco Live US 2019. Brought to you by Cisco and its ecosystem partners. >> Hey, welcome back to theCUBE's coverage. Day two of Cisco Live from San Diego. I'm Lisa Martin. Dave Vellante is my esteemed cohost. And we're pleased to welcome one of Cisco and Cohesity's customers from Quantium, Craig Tayler, Executive Manager at Business Technology and Platforms. Craig, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you. It's great to be here. >> Great seeing you. >> So, we love talking with customers. We love talking about data. Tell our audience a little bit about Quantium. I know you guys have expertise in two core domains, data science, AI, two really sexy topics that we talk about on theCUBE at every event. But give our audience a little bit of the flavor of who you guys are. >> Yeah, so Quantium's been around for 16 years, founded and headquartered in Sydney, Australia. And really, they are like you mentioned, the two main aspects of our business. So when you think of data science more as human intelligence, and then the AI side is how we can augment that with computers as much as possible. So, on the human intelligence side, we're looking at things like data curation, how can we work with a company to understand their data, perhaps monetize their data. And then on the AI side, we're more looking at things like, how do we do predictive modeling or predictive analytics, and how can we get that in front of maybe say a supply chain solution, or working with grocery stores around actually predicting how much fresh food they need. So we think of these things like, wouldn't it be great if we had a better idea of how much we needed? Less waste, less cost, everything else. So that's really how we kind of split the two sides of the company. >> You guys provide this as a service, is that right? >> Yeah, that's correct. So, with those two arms we focus on, whether it be a consulting engagement with a company, where that's a one-off, or an ongoing thing, and we have a range of products that we sell as well, with the idea that any of these companies, whether it be a bank or a retailer, can plug these tools into their existing solutions to give them some real data, some real impact, as opposed to the thoughts, or the feels, or the gut instincts, that we've been working on for so long, all right. >> So paint a picture of your environment. I mean, what does it look like? Cloud, not cloud, apps. >> Yeah. It's certainly a variety. So, if we think, on-premise is really where we do a lot of our work. And this is around, a lot of companies still feel a little bit sensitive around where their data is going, and they like that security of knowing physically where it's located. So on-premise stack we have a bit over 300 servers running a Hadoop cluster, that's where we do the majority of our AI work. And then what we augment that with is, and what we use the cloud a lot for, as we're doing work globally, we're doing a lot of work in North America, it's not feasible to bring all that data back to Sydney, process it, and send it all back, so then really, what we use the cloud for is to take our technology, take our analytics, to the data. So if we're working with a customer, West Coast, East Coast, and they're in Azure we'll deploy in Azure. If they're in GCP, we can deploy in GCP. And that's really how we use cloud is to offer our service, as much as we can, around the world. >> So you said, you got 300 servers, did I hear you right, in a Hadoop cluster, right? >> Yeah, correct. >> What's your distribution? >> We use MapR at the moment. I know there's certainly been a bit of news about them. >> I was going to ask you, well, all three of them. (Craig laughs) Well I guess Hortonworks now folded in, but-- >> Yeah, correct. Cloud has certainly shaken up that marketplace quite a bit. >> Dave: I'm sure, yeah. >> It's been something that we've been keeping a close eye on for quite a while. What's the future there? Is it another distribution? Will someone pick up MapR? Will they get through it? So it is interesting, it's certainly a challenge, but when you're playing in a more emerging space, these are some of the risks you take, but we've always felt that they're worth it. We've had many great years of that and we don't really see any reason that we're not going to get more great years out of that Hadoop environment. >> Yeah, I mean, the IP's going to survive, and it sounds like you guys were early on into it, you got a lot of value out of it. If you had to do it again, you'd probably do the same thing. >> Yeah, that's certainly true. I think, what we've built, there are cloud options on the hyperscale providers that you can use, but look, out of the box, they're not really capable of what we were trying to do. So if we had our time again, we probably would still build the same solution. We'd build it a little bit quicker, obviously, because it's a little bit more in the marketplace, it's not such an emerging technology, but I think we would do the same thing again. >> Dave: Right, and MapR was always ahead of the game with their approach. >> Correct. >> So, obvious question is, how do you protect that data? You're a Cohesity customer, but talk about the data protection aspect of that. >> Yeah, so this is where Cohesity really had a lot of synergies with us, was centralizing a whole raft of datasets into one location. And that's what we do with Hadoop. We take a lot of different datasets and we put it all there. We aggregate it there. So on the secondary data side we had the same problem. Silo datasets all over the environment. Things like, the protection aspect, the compliance aspect, it's not impossible, but it's very hard to manage. So what we really wanted to do was, what do we do with the data when we're not using it anymore? So we might still want to use it in the future, we have to hold onto it. And we needed a better solution for how we manage that. So, having Cohesity, which, to us, being a hyper-converged solution, it's very similar to how Hadoop works. It's a lot of data, a lot of compute, and that's how you deploy it. So we found that actually having all of that, the secondary kind of data that we still needed to keep, combined into one location, for us, it matched on a technology level. And then being able to have all that data in one space, you can do some analytics on it. How often are we using it? What is the data? How many copies of it do we have? So there are a lot of synergies from the data science aspect, and also the technology aspect, which has worked really well for us. >> So what was profound about Hadoop was the idea of bringing five megabytes of code to a petabyte of data, leaving the data where it is, highly distributed environment, obviously challenge protecting that. Help us understand. You're saying that Cohesity architecture is well-suited for that type of environment? >> Yeah, it certainly is. I mean, it augments it quite well, is how I'd say. So at the moment we keep the environments quite separate, but the way we manage them is very similar. So there's great audit login, great security controls that you can place on both environments. So the way that we structure Hadoop with role-based access, who can perform what action, the same thing applies in Cohesity. So now we sort of see that the way that we manage primary is the same way that we can manage secondary. So, it's easier for the staff, when we come to things like compliance or legislation, or, we value data, it's our lifeblood, so we have to be very careful with it. So if we want to do any audit reports or anything like this, we can do 'em the same way. Who has access, what they've done. >> So, Hadoop's been around a lot longer than Cohesity. So, what were you doing before Cohesity, and what were some of those challenges? >> Yeah, what we were doing was a lot. And that was really the only option we had. So we had four or five different solutions that had kind of organically grown over time, whether that was some secondary storage, multiple different backup products, throw a couple of NASes in there, just for good measure. >> Just in case. >> Yeah, just in case. And then really, what we were doing, and how we managed that, is we had close to one FTE dedicated to that environment. It's not great for that person, it's not really the funnest of jobs. And then obviously, the management of it becomes quite difficult. And so that was how we did it. We got by. But it certainly could have been a lot better. >> So that was one FTE dedicated to the backup? >> Just dedicated to the backup. >> Dedicated to data protection? >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. >> Okay. So then you bring in Cohesity, you do the business case, say oh wow, and part of that was we can free up this person to do other things, I presume, right? >> Yeah, yeah, definitely. That was actually certainly one of the key business cases. So, IT is a cost center. We certainly, we work for the business, we support the business, there's no doubt about that. But we are, at the end of the day, a cost center. So getting extra headcount or getting equipment, there has to be a really good business case behind this. And so we found that, so we freed up about 80% of time that we're spending on this, and so actually the two biggest things that we've seen as a benefit of that, staff engagement is actually a lot higher, right, because we don't have someone just dedicated to turning the screws on this old solution all the time. So they get to spend more time on newer tech, which is great, and obviously, if their time's freed-up, value-added activities. What can they be focusing on. >> So how's it work? Is it a self-service platform now? Or somebody, this individual, sets the overall policy, and then people apply it as they see fit, the application guys? >> Yeah, so we have a range. So our infrastructure team holds the overall management of it, and we have that one person who kind of, say rules it, so to speak, but the way we've done with this role-based access, we can give the service desk permission to search backups, so if someone needs a restore, or maybe legal and the compliance team want to know who was accessing what, we can give a lot more self-service to these teams. So the service desk, if they're dealing with an end-user that wants a restore, within 30 seconds, we can tell them, okay, here is the backup we have. Here are the dates that we have it. Which one do you want? Previously, that's a week-and-a-half turnaround. Escalate a ticket, spend three days doing restores and searching through it-- >> Dave: Working weekends. >> Right. Working weekends, and if you even do have the data. Typically what happens, by the time you've restored it, the customer has said, "Look, well I don't need it anymore." It's too late. >> So let's talk about some of the customer benefits. You've only deployed this about six months ago. >> Yeah, correct. >> You talked about a number of the benefits from a time perspective, allowing valuable FTEs to not only be reallocated for other projects, but also from a job satisfaction perspective-- >> Yeah definitely. >> Which is all the way up to the top end of the business. But in terms of helping customers extract more value from their data, monetizing their data, that example that you just gave of where it took too long to recover data before and the customer, the time has passed, what are some of the impacts that your customers are achieving so far? >> Yeah, so I think the biggest area of this that I think we actually look at the most, is that, like I mentioned earlier, we will do, say a piece of work with a customer, and then we'll keep that data. We might need it in the future, but there's not an ongoing engagement. What are we going to do with that? And so we tend to sort of put it aside. If a customer wants any further work done, or perhaps they want to come back with clarification, or anything like this, it then takes us quite a bit of time to find that data, get it back into production, get it back to the state that we were previously using it in. So, one of the biggest things that we've seen is actually now having all of that data always available on Cohesity, and being a hyper-converged platform, it has a lot of compute on it as well, so we can actually run some simple analytics on that data. So if a customer comes back and wants to query just a couple of small items, or perhaps we want to recheck a couple of things, super easy now for us to do that. And so we talk about time to market, or anything like this, is really big for us, and customer responsiveness. So if a customer is asking us a question and the answer is a five-minute answer, they don't want it in four days. So if we can turn that answer around a lot quicker, then obviously everyone's happier. >> And you've already been able to start achieving that? >> Yeah, we have been able to start achieving that already. Whether that be from a customer perspective, and certainly from a compliance perspective, if we have a customer that actually wants to know, where is our data, who has accessed it, everything else, we can turn that around straightaway. So obviously, when we talk about customer satisfaction, or that relationship, they feel a lot more comfortable that we're doing the right thing with their data, and that is obviously hugely invaluable for us as a business. >> And just another infrastructure question. These 300 servers, it's mostly UCS, is that right? Or a lot of UCS? >> Yeah, so we use Cisco for pretty much everything. We certainly are heavy, heavy users of UCS, and so, when we are looking at, I mean, implementing anything to the environment, you don't want it to be a lengthy process, because your return on investment is going to be hit. If you're spending three months installing something, you've already paid, you're getting no benefit out if it, it's now three months old before it's even implemented. So having this kit on Cisco UCS has been great for us, and we were having issues with our previous backup solution and we actually managed to implement the Cohesity solution on UCS and start using it before repairing our existing solution. So it's phenomenal how quickly, through UCS, we were able to bring it in. >> Dave: What kind of issues were you having? Just integration issues, or? >> Yeah, so with our previous backup solution, being a fragmented solution that we had stitched together, we had something as simple as a RAID controller failure caused a whole bunch of data corruption across multiple areas, and so, how the NAS saw the data corruption was different to how the SANDS saw it, and trying to re-index everything, we were struggling to understand what was going on. And whilst we were working through that, we actually had some other members of the team implement Cohesity and get it into the environment quicker than we could repair our existing solution. That's the power of Cisco UCS, really. >> Looking at this massive transformation that Cisco has been undergoing for a while, from a traditional network appliance vendor to now hardware, software, what are your thoughts on how that transformation, which is, in part, you could say, accelerated by DevNet, how is it going to enable businesses like yours to be able to start getting value even faster from the technology? >> Yeah, that's a very good question, and that's something, I think, a few of us in the industry, if we go back two, three, four, five years, was Cisco going to reinvent itself? What was that place? With hyperscale cloud, all these kind of things. I think quite a few people had some questions around what was going to happen in that space. They weren't always the quickest to market. They had great products, but there was a bit of speed issues there. And what we've seen as they've reinvented themselves is, Cisco has this great name for really being ahead of the curve, or leading industry, and this is, I think, what they were built on, really. And so it's been great from our perspective to see them, say, almost getting back to their roots a little bit, in this regard, and so for us, we are a technology business, we are fast-moving, our customers want things to be fast-moving, and so being able to rely on a technology partner like Cisco, and knowing that they're looking for the latest and greatest even quicker than ourselves, I think that's probably where we start to see the biggest impact. In the past, we might have a challenge that we need to solve, you talk to some vendors, and you might hear something like, oh, we're working on that. Maybe in 12 to 18 months we'll have it in the marketplace. Well we need it now. We don't need it in 18 months, it's a today problem. And that's not what we're seeing anymore with Cisco. Typically, any conversation we have with our account reps around here are some of the challenges, here are what our customers want to do, more frequently than not, our Cisco account reps will say, I think we have a solution for that. And that really, being able to partner with players like that in the industry, that makes some of the biggest differences for us as a company, because we need to partner with all these people to do what we do. >> Exactly. So, with all the momentum that you guys have achieved in just six short months, what's next? >> Yeah, Quantium is certainly a fast-moving company, like I mentioned, and what we wanted, we always like to run close to the leading edge, we're similar with Hadoop, we like to be early adopters. We like technology to grow with us. And this is what we saw in Cohesity. So, they haven't been around for long, and they're already doing everything we need. So we think, well this is a great mix. If we've got someone who's already solving everything that we need, this question of what next is great. And so as we move more towards your hyperscale cloud, being able to run Cohesity across all those environments to manage all of that data across all of it, that's certainly a big one that we're investigating. Like I mentioned, we keep pretty much all of our data, and so actually being able to use cloud as an archive solution, it sounds great, but then it's another silo to manage, it's another solution that you need to implement, but Cohesity will manage all that for us. So, the what next, I think, is we'll see the scale out of the solution as our data requirement grows, we will see it expand into the cloud environments that we're going to start building, so we really see it growing with us from that aspect. And then we see a great idea of being able to repurpose a lot of our on-premise hardware by archiving out to the cloud as well. >> What about SaaS? Do you see a need to use a Cohesity to protect your SaaS data, or are you kind of not there yet? >> Yeah, I think it certainly has a play there, it's still something that I think we're exploring a little bit more to make sure that it's a right fit. But certainly, there is an opportunity there to be explored, yeah. >> Always opportunities. Well Craig, we appreciate you stopping by theCUBE-- >> Thank you for having me. >> And sharing how Quantium is leveraging your partnerships with Cisco, with Cohesity, to drive those core business drivers of data science and AI. >> Thank you. >> Our pleasure. For Dave Vellante, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE Live from Cisco Live, in San Diego. (light music)

>> live from Anaheim, California. It's the queue covering nutanix dot next twenty nineteen. Brought to you by Nutanix. >> Welcome back, everyone to the cubes. Live coverage of new tannic dot Next. I'm your host. Rebecca Night, along with my co host, John Furrier, were joined by two guests for the segment. We have Julie O'Brien. She is the senior vice president of corporate marketing. Welcome, Julie. Thank you. And we have Michelle Taylor Smith, the senior director of corporate social responsibility, here in Nutanix. Thank you so much for coming on the Cube. >> Thanks for having us >> sown over sixty five hundred attendees. There were twenty thousand people who were live streaming. The key note. You have a huge audience. Congratulations on the show. What are you hoping? Attendees cut. Come away with an customers and partners who are here. What are you What is sort of the big message that you want people to come away with? >> Yeah, so I mean, this year for us, it's our tenth anniversary as a company, and we are so humbled and honored to have all of these customers and partners on the journey with us. So a big part of the show is just to say thank you for being an early builder, believer and dreamer with us, and the best is yet to come. So lots of innovation happen ng and H. C I. And really trying to show people how we convey the right partner for them as they're moving to the hybrid cloud >> D. Rogers on earlier talking about this his journey as well. And it's interesting. Just a few years ago, you were still raising money. You won't even public now your public ten years old, but there's still the entrepreneurial energy s you know, he calls it the billion dollar start up, and there's now competition. So game is on scene successes out. There's not, like, hidden in plain sight like it was just just a few years ago. You guys have doing great. Congratulations. >> Thank you. And >> now you have competition. You had loyal customers. What's next? What's the What's the big strategy and how you guys build on that momentum? What do you guys thinking about? >> Oh boy, I would say, you know, as we look at the customer journey, right state, Step one is really about modernizing your data center, and that is our sweet spot. That's where Nutanix started as a company. H c I Ray. Step two is really about How do we help customers take all that goodness what they see with the public cloud and bring that into their own private cloud. We call that an enterprise cloud and then really the next step of the journey. But a customer may already be there. Today is how to Weybridge. Multiple clouds, right and multiple clouds to customers. Could be it could be the edge, which might be an eye ot application. It could be a remote office brand shop is. So what that cloud strategy looks like for people could be very different, depending what vertical there in what industry there in. So I would say what to watch for us. And what's next is we're all headed with this next generation of many clouds, not just one. >> And you guys have a monster net promoter score, which is a score that measures loyalty. And if your customs would promote it to their peers, it's like ninety. It's like a monster's. >> It's been over ninety on average for the last five years now, which is no easy feat, and you know, we tell customers all the time. Keep us hungry. Keep us honest, right? Tell us how we're doing. And we want to keep that score high too. Because that's a great reflection of you know, how they're valuing the relationship. Not just the product, but what happens after you buy the product. So, yeah, we know, as we evolve the portfolio going from just HC ay, tio multiple products that will get harder. So we've got to start to figure out How do we bring in Sameh I Some, uh, maybe machine learning so that when you call in and you might be a flow customer and Rebecca might be in a static customer And we know how to row you to the right person the right time, which is really nice. As you know, when you call support, you want to get somebody right there who's not saying Hold on. They passed you too, Michelle. Michelle saying Hold on. Let me pass. You too, John. Right? You want an expert? I'm gonna carry you all the way through. And hopefully you heard some great stories this morning. Some of our early customers who have shared that what it's meant for them. >> So delighting customers is obviously your top priority. But but Nutanix is doing a lot of other kind of good, good in the world. I want to bring you into the conversation a little. Michelle, tell us about the heart initiative. >> Absolutely. So I've been with Nutanix for a little over six and a half years now, and this spirit of giving and caring has been with the company, actually still run channel marketing. Um, but it's been with that, though the whole time that I've been there. But about three years ago, Julie actually asked if I wanted to start dot heart or sexually start RCS o R program, which became dot heart. And it's an amazing way of giving back. In fact, last year it got incorporated officially into our values of hungry, humble and honest, done with heart. And so it absolutely is part just intrinsic in the company s. So what we do is, uh we're very conscious and aware of diversity. And so we put a lot of effort towards helping women and underrepresented groups for sue their love of technology. >> And this is also sort of ah, maybe a sub theme of the show is is that inclusion and that element to it. So talk about some of theseventies that you're having particularly to help bring up women in tech and also under upper underrepresented minorities. >> Absolutely doing it well, what he talking about, what we're doing in the booth and I could talk about the women's lunch. Yeah, absolutely. Eso one of things we are doing. So women, Onda, underrepresented groups and actually people just starting their careers don't have the same network that people with established careers have. And so what we were doing in our booth this time is for collecting career advice. And so, in effect, what we're doing is we're bringing the advice to people because they don't necessarily have the same networks to go out and ask for every piece of advice that we get. We're going to donate five dollars to an organization called Ignite, which helps high school girls become aware of and pursue careers in stem. So it's it's been great so far. I love when people come up there and there, you know, what are you doing? And all of sudden you start telling them they're like a well, they should do this and write it down. And so we're actually we have a wall. People write down their advice and we put it up on the wall. And then after the event, we're going to collect it and start putting it into a blogged. And then we also have, Ah, Twitter program that we're doing or Twitter initiative that we're doing right now that once a week, we send out some of the advice and get people tio chime in and add more advice. So it's It's been a lot of fun, >> yes, and then every dot Next for the past few, we've been doing a women in tech lunch. And so I know one of your guest speakers later today is going to be Doctor Ayana Harward, uh, from Georgia Tech on Robotics. So she's actually going to be sharing some of her thoughts on mentorship at the women's lunch. We also have a longtime Nutanix friend and adviser, Harvard Business School professor Deepak Mk Ultra, who, uh is very much focused on the art of negotiation to solve conflicts, and he's going to be talking about how to do things like how do you negotiate a salary increase some of those sweaty palm conversations that you need to have a CZ. You're moving through your career, so those are two of our speakers, and then we also have two sponsors that are also gonna be spending some time, too, from Veritas >> gas and W W t. So >> So I want to I want to put you two both on the spot. You're both women in technology, and we know about from the unfortunate headlines about just the bro culture that exists in technology. And we also know about the dearth of women leaders in this industry in this industry that is shaping our social, political, economic lives in such important ways today. So what? What is some career advice that you're going to put up there on the high? Would you what would What would you say to a young woman who is entering this field? I have got so much to say. How much time >> do we have? I think one thing that I've learned along the way sometimes, you know, women tend to be very heads down. If I do a great job, someone will notice, and I will move forward and and sometimes we're not comfortable with popping our heads up on DH, helping to market a little bit about what we have done and making sure that people see the goodness right and that might not feel right. Or it might feel like you're overly marketing yourself. But I think being able to articulate what you want and why you deserve it, er is so important. And don't view it is shooting your own horn. View it as an opportunity to share how you're contributing and where you want to see that path forward. And just don't be afraid to ask which what you want, what your ultimate >> goals are. Um, Mind falls into a principle of nutanix, which is get comfortable being uncomfortable and basically, if if you get an opportunity, go for it on day. I'll be very candid when Julie offered me this role and she said, Do you want to do CSR? I thought it meant customer service rep, and I'm like, I don't want to do it at all And, uh and then she said, Oh, no, it's it's social responsibility and I still thought I had no idea what it wass and the fact that you know Julian team. We're willing to take a chance on me doing it. But the fact of just going absolutely out of my comfort zone learning something new, trying something new on DH, just just going for it was great. And I would tell people to do that all the time and it'LL just it'LL teach you so much more even about the roles that you know about just going and doing something different will teach you so much more about yourself and about other roles so great of us way >> also hear about mentoring and paying it forward. Yes. What do you guys do there? Because a lot of younger generations coming into the workforce who don't have the scar, tissue or experience the networks are now starting to establish. This is an opportunity. >> It is a big opportunity. So Wendy Pfeiffer, who's our CIA, sits on the board of Girls in Tech, so we're very involved there. She is so warm and so uh, open about helping to keep pass on what she's learned a lot on the way to. I think anyone that you run into Nutanix is very honored and humbled to be approached as a mentor. Their number women that I mentor inside of Nutanix as well as outside of nutanix lining. It's so important to help people understand what you've learned, whether good or bad along the way, Right, because just like we're learning here dot Next with your conversations, what have you done? What have you tried? Um, you need that in in your progression and your career to know if there's anything that >> you know, I would Two things I would add is one is nobody got to where they are in their career without somebody helping them along the way. And so there's a big discussion now, which is actually what Dr Howard is going to talk about that goes beyond mentorship to sponsorship. And so how do you how do you actually help push people forward, um, and and help them in their careers? And then the other thing, too, is I was listening to something the other day. It was a really interesting conversation that before, um, there were ways that people could oppress other people in in society. And what they're saying now today, people are, is helping to oppress different groups is the fact of who you help and So when you think about who you can help think about outside of your friend's kids or you know someone, who else can you help there that wouldn't normally have access to somebody like you or somebody like, you know, in your circle or whatever, and And that's hugely helpful and without just helping the same group continue to progress generation after generation, >> paying it forward to different on >> expanding the next athletics. Exactly. So this is a hugely competitive industry, and I know that Nutanix cannot hire sales and marketing people fast enough to What are you doing? I was going to ask you, though, how do you market nutanix to prospective applicants? What is? I mean? You just talked about the ability to reinvent yourself as an employee, which is something that so many people are looking for in a long career, doing different things, being in different fields and really getting to experience other things. But what are the other? What sort of the unique selling points for for nutanix that you try to take on new people >> s o. The culture, I think, is so differentiating overall. So Michelle mentioned, you know, hungry, humble, honest with heart on. So it's our job in marketing. Teo also help our recruiting teams get that message out and not just show people. These are the words, but actually give them great stories. Michelle just put together a Superfund campaign. I don't know if it's in the >> wild yet. It's it's hitting, probably next week. This one is sitting. It >> was actually it's featuring real NUTANIX employees sharing their feelings about being at nutanix thie initial passes, all still shots. But you can actually see the fun that people are having from all ages. You know, genders. It's a really diverse fund set of actual employees. So it's really you know, in this day and age, you could get a job anywhere, right? But where is that job going to make you feel excited to get out of bed every morning? Right? And I firmly believe that's the culture that we haven't nutanix and >> way gotta. Yeah, another, I would add to that is, um, it's it's dubbed internally Is the You campaign, and it's about you matter. So how you can get, go get a job anywhere, but are you oftentimes gonna go get stuck in a corner and you're going to sit there in code, you're gonna go sit there and do that or you're working on one piece of one feature of this at Nutanix. You actually have opportunities to work on big, bold projects experience, uh, contributing and honestly mattering as as an individual, which I think is huge. And you're not just a number. >> Well, Julian Michelle, thank you both. So much for coming on the Cube. That was really, really fun. Time talking, Teo. >> Yeah. Thanks for having us. >> Thank you very much. >> I'm Rebecca Knight. For John. For her. We will have so much more from nutanix dot Next coming up in just a little bit.

>> live from Mountain View, California It's the queue covering definite create twenty nineteen. Brought to you by Cisco. >> Hi. Lisa Martin for the Cube, Live at Cisco Definite. Create twenty nineteen. This is Day two of our coverage here. We're excited to welcome Taylor Barnett, a speaker tech talk speaker for this event. Lead community engineer at Stoplight Taylor. It's great to have you on the Cube. I'm glad to be here. So first, inform us before we talk about your tech talk that you can yesterday here, adept that create tell us a little bit about Stop like, >> yeah, So stoplight is a platform. Teo, build test and design web ap eyes specifically, we focus right now on recipe eyes, but we're really encouraging design first principles when people are building out there a prize for very much preproduction And what we have found was so many guys out there are not documented. They're not tested, they're not designed well And so we wanted to build tooling the help users be able to do that. >> So that documentation we've heard yeah, yesterday and today is absolutely >> essential. Yeah, And so a lot of what we're doing is we're actually using the Open A P I specifications, which a lot of teams at Cisco are now using. And so we can auto generate documentation from that. But also, we can auto generate instant mock >> servers. >> Um, do different types of testing all from that, because it's both human and machine readable. You're taking advantage of that. >> So you gave a tech talk yesterday, so I like the title going to Infinity and beyond Documentation with open FBI. Tell us our audience, like basically kind of an overview of what you presented in the three takeaways that your audience left with. >> Yeah, so historically open a P I specification has been known to be an auto generating reference documentation. So what people are like, Yeah, I know it for documentation, but they don't know it for all the other things. So the things that helped them do design first principles, the things that helped them mock and get feedback about their AP eyes and also how to test. And so I say, the three takeaways, that's what I focus on, was, how does this design first really benefit us? And why is it worth spending that time? Because a lot of engineers. It kind of feels like a friction point. Like you're making me do something else before I can start coding on DSO helping them see those benefits and then also being ableto use the feedback through They get through mach ap eyes so that they don't have tio code all the p I and then get the feedback. They could do it before that process. So much, master. Yeah, totally. And just better testing to actually make sure that we once we designed the A that we actually implementing it to what the design says. Uh, >> so I'm not design front. You mentioned design first telling you before we met. Lied that we've heard that. Yeah, I did what I had yesterday and today. This's design first approach and it sounds like from what you're saying for developers, it's not necessarily the first thing they want to do. They want to get their hands on start coding. So yeah, tell may tell us what design first means and actually how it can really make the developers job better. >> Yeah, Yes. Oh, Design First is really just being able to take a step back before that code and like describe what the is on a lower like endpoint level for us that's doing it in a visual editor at Stoplight. We actually have a visual editor to help people do that so that it's not like writing things from scratch. So even then, that makes it faster than having to write on a blank document that nobody wants to like right in. And it might be a mess. And decisions are hard to make around that document because it's a mess and all this stuff and then being able to take that and then start doing the mocking and all the other things. So for developers, it's a lot about getting to see what those other benefits are to convince them that it's worth it. And that's going to save some time overall versus like having toe wait. One great example of that is actually with being ableto Ma K P IIs friend and engineers could go ahead and start implementing the guy before the development process of actually implement thing is even done so that traditional, like waterfall development process. You just cut that out because they can start doing in a parallel on DH so it can really make teams a lot more efficient. >> Did you Were you happy with the reaction yesterday? This is a This is the definite communities. God. Five hundred eighty five thousand plus people. There's been about four hundred here in person. What was the reaction? Especially from developers who may have been around a while and are very used to the waterfall upload where they like. Taylor. This is amazing. Or girl, this is like a whole cultural change. Yeah, you know, I mean, we we work well, >> actually, a lot of enterprise companies that stoplight. And it is it is a little bit of a cultural change. You talk, there's this whole bigger idea of, like, a P I transformation. Even just moving to having a pee ice first is a bigger change. And then, you know, then the design part. But I have found that once, if you're introducing somebody to a prize first, it's easy to sneak in design. So then you don't have to Then teach Oh, let's design the first and do decide. It's all part of the same package s o. A lot of enterprises what They're like transformations to moving toe, like in a very FBI focused infrastructures. They then are just more receptacle to design >> first. That's good. Especially if you're able to show them that the obvious benefits. Yeah, there getting things done faster like this is actually taking this new approach. Is that going to be better for you? And do you find that that developers are adjusting quickly to this new? Yeah. I mean, there's definitely >> pain points. The tooling is still catching up. Uh, so the industry is for recipe eyes has kind of centered around open FBI specifications. But there were others before that Ramel for a specifically and I'd use it for anybody. Also open a p. I used to be called swagger specification. Some people might know it by that, but a lot of it is like, Yeah, the tooling is still maturing, but it's in a lot better place than it used to be. So when I was a back end FBI engineer about four five years ago, I was introduced through a P I blueprint, which is another justification, and it was very painful tohave to document in a p I with it. And now it's just gotten so much better with the tooling mature >> you can see massive differences alone just by asking. >> Totally. Yeah, just like the last four years, actually. >> So this is your first definite create and your speaker at your very first one. That's pretty cool, Taylor. Yeah? Yeah. How long have you been involved in the definite community? And how is it impacted what you do for stuff like, >> Yeah. So I was kind of introduced through it. I knew people that worked on definite and like Mandy. And And so then I kind of got introduced that that, you know, it's been really interesting to see how they built up this community of people sharing code. And it's different then, like, get hub type community. And so it's kind of interesting. It was just like it's ah, you know, you don't see a lot of communities that are run by companies that necessarily >> there they're >> not in the code repository business, but they see the value in people sharing things and collaborating and stuff like that. And so it's kind of different of a community, but also very interesting tow. Have watching grab >> the sharing in the collaboration you walk in yesterday. People are eager to do that Yeah, and other types of conferences that we covered the Cube, especially if there's cooperative Shin Partners there. It's a different vibe has been very, very much one that's been refreshing on and to your point. The difference between what Cisco's built here in the lost, very organically bio away in the last five years with Suzie and Mandy have done that opened nous and that excitability to share things and learn from each other, even though there's got to be developers here from competing companies. Yeah, that's a very cool spirit. Yeah, and something that I think they've done a very good job fostering that they also I kind of wonder if it's chicken and egg. How much has definite. And this, you know, over half a million strong community been sort of forcing function or an accelerator of Cisco's evolution? If you look at Cisco's been around for such a long time, not on a P I first company Yeah, big enterprise. This is a big all of their products and with GPS ***, been really >> awesome to see all the talks that are focused on Cisco's a prize being designed first like I don't see a lot of enterprises that feel like they've really taken it toe heart as much. I've talked to some people and they say, Yeah, I mean, you know, there's been some pain points, but I'm like, Yeah, but there's companies that are envious of the Y .'All done this. Yes, and they've really, like, probably improved the developer experience that they're a piece so much because of having that design first >> approach. So one other thing that I think it's very cool about definite and create is that yesterday morning it was kicked off by two really strong technologists. You don't mention we had Mandy really on yesterday is a senior director of developer experience. Right after you. I've got Susie Leon, the SPP in CTO, and I go to a lot of events. The Cube covers a lot of events every year, and it's very important to us to be able to highlight women and technology because it's still an unresolved, you know, gap there. But it's also really unusual to see an event kicked off both days. No females. You've been a stem since you were a kid. How does that impact you? Do you see that is inspiring. You that is. I wish it wasn't an issue. >> Yeah, no. Yeah. I wish it was an issue, but no, but it's really awesome. So, like, when I was trying to decide if I accept my when they asked me to come speak, I totally looked at that. That was something when I saw their faces on them that they were going to be key notes and stuff, you know, it gave me already, like, a whole different feeling of how the conference >> was going to be >> so it was really exciting to see that. Yeah, >> that's good. And when I first got into tech a long time ago, I was just not aware of what was not monitor in a technical role. But I didn't notice. I mean, they noticed the difference and the disparity, but I didn't feel it. Yeah, And so it wasn't until I started going to more and more events where I sell >> theirs. So, yeah, sometimes you're at events where it's just the sea of people that don't look like you. And it's a lot different here. >> Yeah, until I imagine I appreciated it this morning. I'm sure. Well, when Susie called onto stage the young girls from Verizon and those from Presidio that are Cisco's clearly making a concerted effort to recognize and help this diversity in thought. I mean, imagine designing AP eyes with, you know, many different perspective is better products and services and company, and will be we just have more thought divers in and of itself. >> Oh, yeah, I think about it a lot with developer experience. So one of the things is there's this idea of beginner's mind failure that sometimes if if you think you're a p, I is like, great. But you don't approach it with the beginner's mind, you might actually be failing a lot of your users. So, you know, your, uh, your veteran developer, you're, you know, super skilled and you you don't fail in the somewhere areas that someone who's newer to development might fail. And so then you just lost a bunch of customers and right up front without even them getting deeper into the FBI. And so being ableto have, like more diverse perspectives around, designing a prize could definitely help prevent that. That's a >> really important point so that you make there because it's like if this is really everything that's designed these days. Whatever it is a on iPad. But sticker a piece of clothing. It's all designed for a consumer. Yeah, to consume whatever the product of services. And, you know, in technology, so much conversation goes around delivering an outstanding customer experience. And you're saying, you know, we have to think about that. Probably worked design, thinking, coming play right about designing with that sort of a day bers perspective of approach. That paper you gonna lose customers here were >> actually gets to the bottom line. Yeah, versus just being like a nice benefit kinds. >> Yeah, well, Taylor has been so fun having you on the Cube. Thank you so much. Now you have a flight to catch back in Austin. So thank you so much for doing this afternoon and rats on being a speaker at first. And it will seem Thanks for having me. My pleasure. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching to keep live from Cisco. Definite. Create twenty nineteen. Thanks for watching

>> Live, from Orlando, Florida. It's theCube covering Microsoft Ignite, brought to you by Cohesity, and theCube's ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back everyone, to theCube's live coverage of Microsoft Ignite. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my cohost, Stu Miniman. We have two guests for this segment, we have Ross Smith, the Principle Program Manager at Microsoft, and Greg Taylor, who is the Director of Product Marketing at Microsoft. Thank you so much for joining us! >> Thanks for having us. >> So, I want to start off by talking about messaging. You are both legends in the Microsoft messaging world, sorry to be obsequious here. >> That just means we're old. >> You've been around a while, it's not your first rodeo. >> No, no. >> So, talk a little bit about what's new, what the enhancements you're doing for Enterprise, it is the most used app. >> Yeah. >> So we're launching Exchange Server 2019 this year. It's another version of on-premises exchange, it's incredible. We had 2000 people registered for the session, we had 1000 in the room. There's still some love for on-prem exchange, no doubt, so that's been a big thing we're talking about at Ignite this year. For those customers, and I'll be honest it's very much a release aimed at large Enterprise customers who want to keep some exchange on-prem. We strongly believe that small-medium business should be in the cloud, so we've focused on the kind of features that really large Enterprises really want to get from Exchange. >> Yeah, and then from a app perspective, we've been heavily invested with ALUP, Fry, WES and Android to bring a unique and valuable experience for both consumers and commercial users using both Office 365 and Exchange on-premises. So we now have a hundred million users using Outlook Mobile today, and it's been a great experience and we continue to evolve the app on a weekly basis, now. >> Can you talk a little bit about the evolution of the app and what kinds of features and enhancements you're using for both the consumers and Enterprise? >> Right, yeah. So the app originally began as a consumer acquisition, which we've now targeted and rebranded it as Outlook, and we've been heavily focused on bringing Enterprise features that our users know and love. Office 365 Groups is a great example of an experience that we built into the app that no other native mail client or third-party mail client can deliver today. We've delivered other Enterprise security-specific features like Azure Active Directory conditional access so customers can lock down what mobile apps can access the service and prevent any other client from doing so. And then, of course, there's in-tune app protection policies which allow us to, and customers to, ensure only the corporate data is protected and exclude the personal data, so that we can ensure there's no data leakage scenarios going. >> I wonder if we can step back for a second. I think about messaging, it's very diverse. I remember back in the '90s, I was helping companies get access to this whole "internet thing" and LANs and setting up and oh, we're going to go from faxes and memos to emails, show how old I am in this business, too. But today, our mobile devices, a lot of what we're doing companies, whether they have their own data-centers or doing their cloud, there's usually lots of different ways we communicate. My joke is, the best way to communicate with someone is probably the one they prefer to and hopefully aren't buried in. >> Yes. Because we all have the Slacks and all those other things out there. How do you view the word's game, how does the Exchange and Outlook and those fit into the overall portfolio and interact with everything else. >> From the Exchange side, email is dead. I've heard email is dead for I don't know how many years and well, email is still one of the primary communication methods we all use and rely upon. And so Exchange was one of the applications that kind of coined the mission-critical application moniker, right? 22 years ago, 20 years ago, Exchange was one of the mission-critical apps. But we actually kind of think of Exchange now as almost a service, a commodity, like the power. And most people, it's kind of interesting, we have the front and the back end of things, right? I'm thinking about the messaging infrastructure of the back, and Ross is now working on the client side. Most people see the client features and think of them as Outlook and client features, but a lot of them are Exchange features which are servicing the client. It's been a real kind of evolution. We've got to a point where nobody really cares about the back end, unless it's not there, then that's a problem, but most of the things servicing the client. >> And so what we see is that the transition from typical on-premises infrastructure to the cloud service usually, generally begins with email into the Office 365 stack, and that starts lighting up additional features. And then from a mobility perspective, we're seeing that that begins the on-ramp into mobile. Because, like Greg mentioned, we've had email capability on mobile devices integrated into Exchange for 17 years now, so it's a very ubiquitous thing to have on a mobile device, so it's just a natural progression just to use email on a mobile device. And then that begins lighting up as customers begin to move to Office 365, they start lighting up additional features like teams integration or Skype for business or any of the other Office apps. And then they just light up naturally. And then through all of our protection mechanisms we're able to ensure that that entire experience is secure from a IT business, and protecting it. >> Just speaking of the evolution of messaging in and of itself, what do you see, people who've been in the industry a long time, what do you see as next, I mean, where do we go from here? Email, they say, is dead, we know it's not dead, but what are the next kinds of generation of features and enhancements that you see customers really needing, and that you're working on at Microsoft? >> Alright, I think that Exchange was really interesting from an Office 365 perspective, as Exchange isn't really just a messaging engine anymore, it's a data store that we are, through things like Graph and all the other applications, is giving businesses a whole new way of looking at the data, and so we're pulling data from all the different places. Exchange is becoming almost a plumbing kind of infrastructure piece, but it's a key data source and I think the data is still there, the communication is still there, but I think much of the future development is in the client-side apps and how people interact with the data, and the back-end just becomes the infrastructure, right? >> Actually you bring up a great point. A premise that my Head of Research at Wikibon had is talking about Microsoft's position in AI today, and Office 365 and the messaging that you have, there's so much data there if you wanted it. What are people worrying about? How can a company understand that? How can Microsoft help businesses in general? There's a touchpoint that even an infrastructure as a service-provider wouldn't have, but you really get to the end-point and the end users in productivity, and that's a huge opportunity for Microsoft in the future as long as you're not messing with our data, you're not as heavy into, you know some of the other messaging people out there, that you're like, wait, why am I getting ads for that stuff, or, I think I talked about that stuff. >> And that's a great point, Stu, because going back to Outlook Mobile as an example, right? We're heavily invested in AI-driven capabilities into that app, zero-touch search, as an instance. You can go right in the app, tap one button and you see your favorite contacts, you get your Discover information from the Office Graph your next itinerary and travel information, and we're lighting up that functionality across the board throughout the app. Location-rich data, using Cortana time-to-leave services, so that you can get to a meeting at the right time, as opposed to a typical oh, it reminded me at 15 minutes and I got to hop 45 minutes down the other end of, where are we, West? In the West building, right? So we're building all that functionality into clients like Outlook Mobile and the rest of the stack to help drive that type of capabilities. >> And all of that data's in the back end, right? You said email is this repository of incredible business information, and so the question is how you leverage that, how do you take what's in there and surface it in a way that makes sense to the users? It's a fascinating time at the moment, where the data's there, we just got to know how to use it in the right way. And I agree, using it in the right way and not using it to sell stuff, that's absolutely our approach to it, so, super important. >> And do you work closely with clients to come up with this new kind of functionality? One of the biggest challenges that so many technology companies face is staying on the cutting edge of these ideas and innovation, so how closely are you working with customers to dream up new functionality? >> Yeah, we're working with customers all the time. We do it through a variety of different channels. We have UserVoice, which allows customers and end users to directly interface and provide their ideas. We have private preview programs, where we target customers about specific new feature sets. TAP programs, like we're doing with Exchange 2019, as well as future releases within Office 365 that enable that type of experience. >> Exchange, I think, historically, has always been very customer focused, very community focused. We have a great bunch of MVPs, the TAP program, the Technology Adoption Program, is a bunch of customers that deploy our pre-production code in production for us, so we've got some real big customers who, they're running versions of Exchange that the world hasn't seen. >> One of the themes we heard in Satya's keynote yesterday is business productivity, and we know one of the biggest challenges out there is, you get this new stuff, and you're like, well, I'm going to pretty much just try to use it the way I always have been doing it, and some of us have been using emails for decades and decades and I look at my own usage and wow, I'm probably a bit out of date. If I could just wipe my brain and say 'okay, here's this cool new tool' that could do all this stuff, we wouldn't even call it email, we'd call it something different. I know you guys do things like the Channel 9 broadcast, I'm sure there's lots of things on the website, how do you help customers learn to use the new stuff and get rid of some of the things, the old habits that they had in using these technologies. And can you get everybody to stop 'reply to all' in the big group, that would be super helpful. >> Work on that please. >> That's interesting, we're building it into the apps, to be honest. We're doing a lot of work whenever we release new features to light up an experience within the app that guide the user on how to use that new functionality to help them understand what they can do with the app, as well as simplifying the overall app structure. You look at some of our apps, they become very bloated in terms of all the widgets you have available and knobs to control it and we're trying to simplify that stack. We're refreshing with Outlook 2019 and Office Pro Plus. We're refreshing the user interface on desktop, we're doing the same in Mac. We've done it in Outlook for iOS, we're redoing OA, as well, and Office 365, all to enhance and simplify the experience, and, as well, provide a consistent experience across all the endpoints, which will help. >> If the question is here, how do we wean people off email, how do we get them off email. >> Just their old habits and patterns. >> And you know, it's kind of funny, but it still works. I remember having a conversation with somebody once who, it was a presentation we did once, and it was a team who did more of a social kind of thing, and their view was, they put a picture of the Queen of England up on a slide and said 'Email is old, like the Queen of England.' And my response was, well so are fire and the wheel, but they seem to be hanging around pretty well, so far. So I think there are certain things for which email is still king, but it's evolving and changing. I think we're still waiting for the real killer app that replaces email. >> It's not Yammer. >> It's not what? (laughter) >> It's not Yammer. >> I'm not going on camera saying that. The way I prefer to think of it is, I don't really matter what the client is or how you all interact with it, if we can all use an app that suits our own style of working, right? My inbox is zero inbox. I'm a zero inbox kind of guy, right? If I can work like that and interact with people who want to work on a different client, I'm happy. >> Not to go on the Yammer piece, but you made me think a little bit about acquisitions. Big acquisitions, like LinkedIn and Github, messaging ties into both of those quite a bit. Any visibility you can give? I know there's some integrations there, but how does that look? >> So we're launching LinkedIn integration with Outlook for iOS and Android as we speak. That's something we'll be rolling out shortly, and it enables, within the people or contact card, you can quickly see information from their LinkedIn data set, as well as the ability for us to push data from Office 365 into LinkedIn, so that LinkedIn users can also see relevant information about who that person's interacting with from a calendar type of perspective. So we're definitely taking that availability and providing that through our mutual customers. >> Great. Well, Ross and Greg, thank you so much for coming on the show, it was >> Thanks for having us. really a pleasure having you. >> Yeah, it was great. >> I'm Rebecca Knight for Stu Miniman, we will have more of theCube's live coverage from the Orange County Civic Center Microsoft Ignite in just a little bit. (electronic music)

>> (upbeat electronic music) >> Live, from Washington D.C., it's theCUBE. Covering AWS Public Sector Summit 2018. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services and it's ecosystem partners. (upbeat techno music) >> Welcome back to the nation's capital, everybody. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. My name is Dave Vellante and I'm here with Stu Miniman. This is day two of the AWS Public Sector Summit. Taylor Carol is here. He's the co-founder of the GameChanger charity and ZOTT. Taylor, welcome to theCUBE. Thanks for coming on. >> Thank you, glad to be here. >> Keynote yesterday got rave reviews. Let me just set this up. So, ZOTT is a content platform that creates virtual experiences for children, giving them an outlet for creativity, intellectual engagement, a lot more. We're going to talk about that. And then GameChanger is the non-profit and it's a majority share holder of the for-profit organization. So, that's an interesting business model. >> Thank you. >> Explain, please. >> Absolutely, we started GameChanger roughly twelve years ago, when I, at 11, was diagnosed terminal, with a rare form of cancer, given roughly two weeks left to live, thankfully a long two weeks, totally healthy now. But-- >> Congratulations, that's awesome. >> Hey, thank you so much. >> Good to have you with us. >> Glad to be here. But, from those five years I spent in hospital, combined with the 20,000 hospital rooms my dad and I have visited on behalf of GameChanger charity we saw how much need there was in the patient care space and the patient engagement space. And those insights led to first found GameChanger charity, now a nearly 12 year old 501(c)(3), an international non-profit. Started an endeavor in our garage. This year, we've taken in over 20 million dollars in donations, 93 cents on every dollar going to the cause. And GameChanger really focuses in on leveraging gaming, technology, and innovation to support patient's rights to play, learn and socialize. And we do that through virtual reality, through augmented reality, through custom gaming solutions, through character based scholarships, to support post-hospital dreams. And then with GameChanger days, where we go in and we bring in bundles of toys for the patients and a catered meal for staff, to sit down to talk with them and to learn about the bespoke gaming and tech solutions we can make to support each individual hospital's needs. So that's GameChanger. And then from that insight, from all that time in the hospital, something we really saw was that the strict patient engagement. How patients watch TV or get clinical health content was so broken. It's one TV mounted on the wall with 20 channels of basic cable. We saw it could be so much better. So, we made ZOTT, which is a device agnostic, cloud-based content distribution system. So, now, through ZOTT, from participating hospitals, any patient, any family member can get their own content, their own experiences, from any device, a laptop, a tablet, a phone, everywhere in the hospital. So, linear TV, gaming, clinical health content, even custom live-streams exclusively for the patients. And ZOTT is owned in entirety by GameChanger charity. >> That's awesome. >> So anything good that happens to ZOTT, goes back to support the GameChanger cause. >> So, completely changing the experience for the patient, from first-hand. What's been some of the outcomes, just in, either anecdotally, or I don't know if you have any kind of measurements. You're changing the world, but if you could share with us how, and any examples, would be great. >> Thank you for saying that. One of the most profound things we've seen at GameChanger charity and at ZOTT is how deleterious boredom is for the patient experience. Understandably, individuals are locked in a boring, white room for a day, a week, a month, years at times. >> Craving visitors, anything. >> Any form of interaction or social engagement. And you know something we've seen, is that boredom often magnifies pain and anxiety, isolation, over use of pain medication. And understanding that issue, that pain, something we've been able to do is incorporate custom VR rigs, custom VR experiences, for distraction therapy. So that's where we'll go in, meet with patients, and bring the care providers VR sets so when a patient is getting ready for a surgery, they can put on a VR rig, try a tranquil experience, and we've seen pain scores go down by as much as six points on a 10 point pain scale, as a result of such distraction therapy. >> That's fantastic. >> Yeah. >> Thank you. >> It's fascinating, we're really powerful the discussion we had in the keynote. So, making this happen, there's some technology behind this. Maybe walk us through a little bit, what's the connection with the cloud discussion. >> Absolutely, absolutely. Something we've seen in growing from a garage endeavor, to now an international organization that supports 11 countries, 20 million dollars in revenue this year, is the importance of scalability and being able to, one, help as many patients as possible, while still focusing on the individual and never losing sight of the fact that each patient we work with is an individual life and truly a family, impacted by acute or prolonged illnesses. So, what the cloud has really allowed us to do is to magnify our efforts and to take it from, say, five hospitals to now over 100. And, one example of that would be in how we use AWS's Sumerian. So, that is a cloud-based VR experience. And rather than needing to download really content-heavy VR experiences on say a gaming computer, in order to facilitate these experiences, now care providers can interact with them through the cloud. And go beyond that, they can actually customize a VR experiences for the needs of each patient. So, let's say there's a patient who needs to get a tour through their new hospital ward. Thanks to creating templates on Amazon Sumerian, GameChanger creating them, these care specialists now can go in and customize the script that that AR or VR host will speak to include the patient's name or to say I know this is a big change from California, or from Colorado or wherever they hail from. Really making that otherwise generic hospital integration experience feels so bespoke, so personalized to the individual. >> And if I remember right, one of the things you can do is actually, get them engaged with their care. Like, here's the surgery, going to take you inside what's going to be, and I've heard studies of this, you understand, what's going to be doing and can focus on it, kind of the power of understanding and thinking on it can actually improve the results that you get out of it. >> You are so right. That has been one of the most profound things for me personally. When I was sick, I was in the hospital for five years, and for roughly six months of those five years, I was in an isolation unit, where the only person that could come in was my doctor, my nurse in a hazmat suit. And, during that time, I was scared. I was an 11 year old boy, didn't understand what was happening. And I felt an utter loss of agency. An utter loss of empowerment regarding my illness and more importantly my healing. So, what we're able to do now with Sumerian, is we created a collaborative learning experience between CS Mott Children's Hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Children's Hospital, Colorado in Denver. So, experts 1200 miles apart, were able to collaborate in real time, through the cloud, through Amazon Sumerian, to make a VR experience where patients about to receive aortic valve replacements could actually go through human hearts in virtual reality and simulate the surgery they would soon be receiving leading to this huge spike in empowerment and identity and ownership over their healing. >> That's amazing. I mean, I remember, I've only had surgery once, I've been really lucky, >> Yeah. >> But when the surgeon explained to me how it worked and just opened up my mind, and made me so much more comfortable when I understood that, being able to visualize that has to be a complete game changer. Taylor, what does the hospital have to do? Take us through their infrastructure needs, or how do hospitals get on-boarded? >> That's a fantastic question. An anecdote or a saying that we always hold on to near and dear to our heart, at GameChanger and at ZOTT, is that when you know one hospital you know one hospital. (laughter) And we mean that in the sense that every hospital is it's own behemoth, it's own ecosystem that has spent the past one, five, ten, 50 years building what is now an incredibly outdated technology stack. So, purely from the patient engagement side, let's say looking at ZOTT, traditional engagement, just to get that TV on the wall, and to get the cable going and the basic clinical health information there's a satellite on the roof, there are server racks in the basement, there's a TV with a computer mounted on the back, there's a laptop in the waiting room. It's just everything is so cumbersome, so outdated. And what we've been able to do is take this really thin client-based cloud approach where we're able to create a bespoke cloud solution that totally bypasses all of that heavy technology stack. Equally, because Amazon and AWS services are so modifiable and you can really pick and choose what you need from the suite, we've been able to go in and instead of have the hospital change to us, we've been able to modify to the hospital, to fit into their ecosystem rather than bring in a bull dozer and try and change everything that they have. >> Awesome. So you can utilizing their existing infrastructure, and bring in a light-weight both cloud and thin-client infrastructure and be up and running. >> Absolutely. A metric that we have to speak to the groundbreaking nature of what we're able to do now is typical patient engagement systems can take up to 18 months to install. Cost millions of dollars, be incredibly cumbersome, and expensive in terms of hours it takes to maintain the hardware. ZOTT, our technology, when we bring it in, goes live in hospitals in as little as 15 minutes. >> And not millions and millions of dollars? >> (laughs) Exponentially less. >> Okay, so the hospital has to buy into it, they really don't have to bring in any new infrastructure. You guys kind of turn-key that for them. So really need a champion inside the hospital. And a go. >> Absolutely, absolutely. A mindfulness we really maintain is where in the hospital is that each hospital decision maker's priority is to safeguard the individual patient and their families. We understand that there's sensitivity, there's a lot of security requirements. And one of the beauties of working with AWS, as you all know is, is AWS is HIPAA compliant. And, in working with AWS, we've been able to add an extra degree of security and safeguarding for any information we collect, any experience we work with the hospitals, so that everyone is safe. That all decision makers feel like their needs and requirements are being satisfied and safeguarded. >> So does that mean the kids can't play Fortnite? >> Fortnite (laughs). Neither Fortnite nor PUBG's (laughs). >> Well, because if they're playing Fortnite, you'd never get 'em home. >> (laughs) >> Same with PUBG. >> One thing that is pretty fun is through ZOTT and through GameChanger, all of our relationships with all of the big game developers around the world, is we may not have PUBG, but we do have Steam integration, and through our game developers, we have over a million dollars worth of Steam codes continually replenished, so patients and their siblings can download a 20, 30, 40, 50 dollar game, keep it on their laptop, on their tablet, take it with them when they leave. As a gift for their strength while they were in the hospital. >> Amazing. Taylor, thanks so much for the contribution you're making to the children and to the world. Really a phenomenal story. Appreciate you coming on theCUBE. >> Thank you both so much for letting us be here and sharing our story. >> You're very welcome. All right, keep it right there, buddy. We'll be back with our next guest. You're watching theCUBE from AWS Public Sector Summit. Stay right there. (upbeat electronic music)

(big band music) >> Announcer: Live from New Orleans, Louisiana, it's theCUBE covering .NEXT Conference 2018. Brought to you by Nutanix. >> Your file was so big, it might be very useful, but now it is gone. Oh wait, we're not talking about those type of haikus. Happy to welcome to the program the new CEO of HYCU. That's H-Y-C-U. Simon Taylor, the rebranded company, formerly Comtrade, I'm Stu Miniman with Keith Townsend. Simon, great to see you. >> Great to see you as always. >> Yeah so I've corked a quick Google search. Give me some technology things. I believe it's actually like a former V expert, that friend of mine had it in his deep archive, he's got all these things about Windows and the like. So let's start there. We've had you on the program, when it was Comtrade, explain the HYKU, the name and how it fits with the other company, everything like that. >> Absolutely, so a huge shift since the last time we all spoke. As you might remember, Comtrade Software was a data protection, a mondering company, but it was part of a larger organization. We spun it out of Comtrade Group and rebranded as a new company, HYKU. HYKU stands for Hyper Converge Uptime and, really, the way we came up with the name is we were thinking about the fact that we sell data protection for the hyper-converger Enterprise Cloud. More specifically, purposed-filled backup recovery for Nutanix. And when we think about hyper-converger, what are we really doing? We're taking enormous amounts of data and we're simplifying it down to a nice, small elegant package, much like the Japanese poem, haiku. So we leveraged that name, haiku, and then create HYCU, Hyper-converged Up-time. >> Yeah and if you kept the Enterprise Cloud and everything like that, it would've been a much longer word. (laughing) >> Absolutely right. >> Alright, but let's speak to, Comtrade and now HYCU's been working with Nutanix for a lot, tell us what you're hearing from your customers, what's shaping the market, what's it like being in this ecosystem? >> Yeah, absolutely. So we found it to be absolutely wonderful. HYCU, Inc. now, is really the world's only purpose-built backup recovery product for Nutanix. We've got about 350 employees in five different countries. And we launched about eight months ago, our very own backup and recovery product for Nutanix. When we thought about what kind of product we wanted to build as our own stand-alone company, we knew it had to be in hyper-converged, we knew that Nutanix was the industry leader and we'd had so much respect for Nutanix and for their leadership for so many years, as you remember. We had brought the monitoring scompact for Nutanix to market about three years ago, and we thought our real legacy has been in the data protection space. We've been working with companies all across the world for 25 years, from an engineering perspective, supporting the development of blue-chip data protection products, and we thought what better than to build our own back-up recovery product? And if we're going to do that, we should do it for the industry leader in hyperconvergion Enterprise Cloud which is Nutanix. So when we thought about what it would take to build an HCI backup and recovery product, we said, you know what, we don't want to be the platform. Nutanix, in our opinion, is the platform. And they've got snapshots and cloning and replication built in to their product. So we said, rather than creating another beast, another platform, another silo, let's leverage the elegance of Nutanix and let's add to it application awareness, let's add to it all of the various different cataloging, and application support that would be required to actually provide a complete data protection solution to Nutanix customers. It's been wonderful, and in just eight months, we're now in 22 countries around the world. >> So, 350 people, this is a crowded space. There's a lot of start-ups, there's a lot of established companies, why Nutanix? The focus is for such a large company, what's the total addressable market for the product, and what's the attraction amongst Nutanix customers? >> Those are great questions, Keith. And absolutely, I think this is the question on everybody's mind, how big can Nutanix really get? In our eyes, you can guess the correlarity for us. We believe where Nutanix are where VMware were a decade ago, and that they're going to keep going. I think we've heard it from the Nutanix Executive Team, you know, they want to be a three billion dollar company, et cetera, and I think they're going to hit it. I think they're going to absolutely just grow and grow and grow and really be the platform of the future. So from our perspective, this is the most crowded space in technology and a very difficult place to penetrate. I would certainly not recommend anyone building a sort of plain vanilla backup solution and saying, "Hey, here we are." I just don't think it will work. But when you look at Nutanix, and you look at the evolution of data protection, starting with Unex, there was a solution for that, Windows, there was a very relevant solution for that, virtualization, another backup and recovery product. Now we're in Cloud and Enterprise Cloud, and there's a couple of new vendors that have appeared on the market, and they're all sort of saying the same thing, which is it's all about the application, it's all about integration, and gosh, it's got to be very usable. It's got to be Next-Gen and it's got to be focused on the consumer. It's got to be something that people want to use, that really has that simplicity and that elegance. The core difference is that, unlike some of the other HCI backup vendors, we've focused almost entirely on building it for Nutanix, which means that we can leverage the power of their platform and make our customers more successful. In terms of total adjustable market, what we wanted to do was say to customers, "You only should have one data protection solution "for your environment." So what we did is we added a V80P integration, so you can actually backup and recover not only Nutanix data but all of your Legacy VMware data as well through HYCU, okay? But we only market it to Nutanix customers, so what that enables us to do is to provide unified data protection solutions for Nutanix customers which helps them to more quickly migrate customers and workloads to new Nutanix bosses. >> So as far as that support for Legacy workloads, we talked to quite a few Nutanix customers and they're in a mixed environment where a percentage of the workload's on Nutanix, a percentage of the workload's are outside of Nutanix, so does that support, extend not only-- >> Both. >> From the virtual machines, but physical machines outside of the Nutanix scope? >> Sure, so we're at V3.0 right now. We've been out for about eight months. In our latest release we've added VSX supports, you can backup all of your Legacy infrastructure. We are adding physical and Q4 this year as well. So you're really looking at a comprehensive Enterprise-ready HCI Enterprise Cloud solution that leverages the power of Nutanix to make their customers more successful than ever before. >> Okay, great, so VMware and HV today, Bare Metal coming to the future. Let's talk about that Cloud piece bit. Nutanix partnerships in putting their environment into AWS, Microsoft, of course, Google, really, so all the backup players are talking about how they fit in this multi-Cloud world, so how does HYCU fit? >> Yeah. You know what we did, we actually repurposed HYCU, and we launched our own Google Cloud services backup product. It's in the Google Cloud Services Store, you can download it and you can actually leverage that as well. But I see that as the precursor. I think we, on the HYCU team, all see that as the precursor to Zy. We love what Nutanix is doing with Google on Zy. We think that's going to be a real game changer for them. And what we wanted to make sure is that we really understood the concepts behind it so that when they start launching workloads on Zy, we're right there, ready with Zy integration. >> So give us some hero numbers. What are some of the big features that you guys offer Nutanix customers that other data protection companies can't do? >> Sure. So one of the key things, Keith, is that from a Nutanix perspective, we actually integrate right at the storage level, so we're not going at the hypervisor level, and what that means is that we avoid something called VM-stung. So when we think about customers who are trying to recover their data, in a traditional hypervisor environment where you're backing up at the hypervisor level, you're going to see that VM-stung, you're going to see things freeze up a little bit when you're doing the recovery. By backing up and recovering directly from the storage level, we avoid that entire process. The second thing that we've done is we've actually patented application awareness. Now this is great thing, we leveraged it in the monitoring tools, Stu's going to remember that, and we brought that back in a totally new form for the data protection. What we do is we actually look inside the virtual machines, we can see what applications are there, we reconstruct them ourselves, and that enables self-service recovery on the part of the Nutanix Abna. So now when Nutanix Abna can say I want to restore a sequel, I want to restore exchange, I want to get an email back, they can do all of that themselves right from the solution. >> Alright, Simon, last thing I want to cover is what feedback are you hearing from the show here? What are the customers excited about? You've been to quite a few of these also, what's your wrap-up of the show? >> I think this is by far the most successful Nutanix event ever, and I think it's been a wonderful scale-up approach for everyone here. I think we're starting to see a lot more in the Federal space, certainly, we're starting to see a lot more, for both Nutanix and HYCU, kind of across the larger enterprises, and I think what people are starting to see is that they can actually move entire environments to Nutanix. And I think more and more workloads are shifting faster than ever before and these guys have just really found scale. That's been a terrific thing to see and obviously fantastic for our business as well. >> Alright. Simon Taylor, CEO of HYCU, pleasure to catch up with you as always. We'll be back with lots more programming here from Nutanix .NEXT 2018 for Keith Townsend, Stu Miniman. Thanks for watching theCUBE. (light electronic music)