(upbeat jingle) >> Cameraman: Just look, Mike. >> Good afternoon everyone, and welcome back to Supercomputing. We're live here with theCUBE in Dallas. I'm joined by my cohost, David. Wonderful to be sharing the afternoon with you. And we are going to be kicking things off with a very thrilling discussion from two important thought leaders at Dell. Bhavesh and Shreya, thank you so much for being on the show. Welcome. How you doing? How does it feel to be at Supercomputing? >> Pretty good. We really enjoying the show and enjoying a lot of customer conversations ongoing. >> Yeah. Are most of your customers here? >> Yes. Most of the customers are, mostly in the Hyatt over there and a lot of discussions ongoing. >> Yeah. Must be nice to see everybody show off. Are you enjoying the show so far, Shreya? >> Yeah, I missed this for two years and so it's nice to be back and meeting people in person. >> Yeah, definitely. We all missed it. So, it's been a very exciting week for Dell. Do you want to talk about what you're most excited about in the announcement portfolio that we saw yesterday? >> Absolutely. >> Go for it, Shreya. >> Yeah, so, you know, before we get into the portfolio side of the house, you know, we really wanted to, kind of, share our thoughts, in terms of, you know, what is it that's, kind of, moving HPC and supercomputing, you know, for a long time- >> Stock trends >> For a long time HPC and supercomputing has been driven by packing the racks, you know, maximizing the performance. And as the work that Bhavesh and I have been doing over the last, you know, couple of generations, we're seeing an emerging trend and that is the thermal dissipated power is actually exploding. And so the idea of packing the racks is now turning into, how do you maximize your performance, but are able to deliver the infrastructure in that limited kilowatts per rack that you have in your data center. >> So I, it's been interesting walking around the show seeing how many businesses associated with cooling- >> Savannah: So many. >> are here. And it's funny to see, they open up the cabinet, and it's almost 19th-century-looking technology. It's pipes and pumps and- >> Savannah: And very industrial-like. >> Yeah, very, very industrial-looking. Yeah, and I think, so that's where the, the trends are more in the power and cooling. That is what everybody is trying to solve from an industry perspective. And what we did when we looked at our portfolio, what we want to bring up in this timeframe for targeting more the HPC and AI space. There are a couple of vectors we had to look at. We had to look at cooling, we had to look at power where the trends are happening. We had to look at, what are the data center needs showing up, be it in the cooler space, be it in the HPC space, be it in the large install happening out there. So, looking at those trends and then factoring in, how do you build a node out? We said, okay, we need to diversify and build out an infrastructure. And that's what me and Shreya looked into, not only looking at the silicon diversity showing up, but more looking at, okay, there is this power, there is this cooling, there is silicon diversity. Now, how do you start packing it up and bringing it to the marketplace? So, kind of, those are some of the trends that we captured. And that's what you see, kind of, in the exhibit floor today, even. >> And Dell technology supports both, liquid cooling, air cooling. Do you have a preference? Is it more just a customer-based? >> It is going to be, and Shreya can allude to it, it's more workload and application-focused. That is what we want to be thinking about. And it's not going to be siloed into, okay, is we going to be just targeting air-cooling, we wanted to target a breadth between air to liquid. And that's how we built into our portfolio when we looked at our GPUs. >> To add to that, if we look at our customer landscape, we see that there's a peak between 35 to 45 kilowatts per rack. We see another peak at 60, we see another peak at 80, and we've got selects, you know, very specialized customers above hundred kilowatts per rack. And so, if we take that 35 to 45 kilowatts per rack, you know, you can pack maybe three or four of these chassis, right? And so, to what Bhavesh is saying, we're really trying to provide the flexibility for what our customers can deliver in their data centers. Whether it be at the 35 end where air cooling may make complete sense. As you get above 45 and above, maybe that's the time to pivot to a liquid-cool solution. >> So, you said that there, so there are situations where you could have 90 kilowatts being consumed by a rack of equipment. So, I live in California where we are very, very closely attuned to things like the price for a kilowatt hour of electricity. >> Seriously. >> And I'm kind of an electric car nerd, so, for the folks who really aren't as attuned, 90 kilowatts, that's like over a hundred horsepower. So, think about a hundred horsepower worth of energy being used for compute in one of these racks. It's insane. So, we, you can kind of imagine a layperson can kind of imagine the variables that go into this equation of, you know, how do we, how do we bring the power and get the maximum bang for, per kilowatt hour. But, are there any, are there any kind of interesting odd twists in your equations that you find when you're trying to figure out. Do you have a- >> Yeah, and we, a lot of these trends when we look at it, okay, it's not, we think about it more from a power density that we want to try to go and solve. We are mindful about all the, from an energy perspective where the energy prices are moving. So, what we do is we try to be optimizing right at the node level and how we going to do our liquid-cooling and air cooled infrastructure. So, it's trying to, how do you keep a balance with it? That's what we are thinking about. And thinking about it is not just delivering or consuming the power that is maybe not needed for that particular node itself. So, that's what we are thinking about. The other way we optimize when we built this infrastructure out is we are thinking about, okay, how are we go going to deliver it at the rack level and more keeping in mind as to how this liquid-cooling plumbing will happen. Where is it coming into the data center? Is it coming in the bottom of the floor? Are we going to do it on the left hand side of your rack or the right hand side? It's a big thing. It's like it becomes, okay, yeah, it doesn't matter which side you put it on, but there is a piece of it going into our decision as to how we are going to build that, no doubt. So, there are multiple factors coming in and besides the power and cooling, which we all touched upon, But, Shreya and me also look at is where this whole GPU and accelerators are moving into. So, we're not just looking at the current set of GPUs and where they're moving from a power perspective. We are looking at this whole silicon diversity that is happening out there. So, we've been looking at multiple accelerators. There are multiple companies out there and we can tell you there'll be over three 30 to 50 silicon companies out there that we are actively engaged and looking into. So, our decision in building this particular portfolio out was being mindful about what the maturity curve is from a software point of view. From a hardware point of view and what can we deliver, what the customer really needs in it, yeah. >> It's a balancing act, yeah. >> Bhavesh: It is a balancing act. >> Let's, let's stay in that zone a little bit. What other trends, Shreya, let's go to you on this one. What other trends are you seeing in the acceleration landscape? >> Yeah, I think you know, to your point, the balancing act is actually a very interesting paradigm. One of the things that Bhavesh and I constantly think about, and we call it the Goldilocks syndrome, which is, you know, at that 90 and and a hundred, right? Density matters. >> Savannah: A lot. >> But, what we've done is we have really figured out what that optimal point is, 'cause we don't want to be the thinnest most possible. You lose a lot of power redundancy, you lose a lot of I/O capability, you lose a lot of storage capability. And so, from our portfolio perspective, we've really tried to think about the Goldilocks syndrome and where that sweet spot is. >> I love that. I love the thought of you all just standing around server racks, having a little bit of porridge and determining >> the porridge. Exactly the thickness that you want in terms of the density trade off there. Yeah, that's, I love that, though. I mean it's very digestible. Are you seeing anything else? >> No, I think that's pretty much, Shreya summed it up and we think about what we are thinking about, where the technology features are moving and what we are thinking, in terms of our portfolio, so it is, yeah. >> So, just a lesson, you know, Shreya, a lesson for us, a rudimentary lesson. You put power into a CPU or a GPU and you're getting something out and a lot of what we get out is heat. Is there a measure, is there an objective measure of efficiency in these devices that we look at? Because you could think of a 100 watt light bulb, an incandescent light bulb is going to give out a certain amount of light and a certain amount of heat. A 100 watt equivalent led, in terms of the lumens that it's putting out, in terms of light, a lot more light for the power going in, a lot less heat. We have led lights around us, thankfully, instead of incandescent lights. >> Savannah: Otherwise we would be melting. >> But, what is, when you put power into a CPU or a GPU, how do you measure that efficiency? 'Cause it's sort of funny, 'cause it's like, it's not moving, so it's not like measuring, putting power into a vehicle and measuring forward motion and heat. You're measuring this, sort of, esoteric thing, this processing thing that you can't see or touch. But, I mean, how much per watt of power, how do you, how do you measure it I guess? Help us out, from the base up understanding, 'cause people generally, most people have never been in a data center before. Maybe they've put their hand behind the fan in a personal computer or they've had a laptop feel warm on their lap. But, we're talking about massive amounts of heat being generated. Can you, kind of, explain the fundamentals of that? >> So, the way we think about it is, you know, there's a performance per dollar metric. There's a performance per dollar per watt metric and that's where the power kind of comes in. But, on the flip side, we have something called PUE, power utilization efficiency from a data center aspect. And so, we try to marry up those concepts together and really try to find that sweet spot. >> Is there anything in the way of harvesting that heat to do other worthwhile work, I mean? >> Yes. >> You know, it's like, hey, everybody that works in the data center, you all have your own personal shower now, water heated. >> Recirculating, too. >> Courtesy of Intel AMD. >> Or a heated swimming pool. >> Right, a heated swimming pool. >> I like the pool. >> So, that's the circulation of, or recycling of that thermal heat that you're talking about, absolutely. And we see that our customers in the, you know, in the Europe region, actually a lot more advanced in terms of taking that power and doing something that's valuable with it, right? >> Cooking croissant and, and making lattes, probably right? >> (laughing) Or heating your home. >> Makes me want to go on >> vacation, a pool, croissants. >> That would be a good use. But, do you, it's more on the PUE aspect of it. It's more thinking about how are we more energy efficient in our design, even, so we are more thinking about what's the best efficiency we can get, but what's the amount of heat capture we can get? Are we just kind of wasting any heat out there? So, that's always the goal when designing these particular platforms, so that's something that we had kept in mind with a lot of our power and cooling experts within Dell. When thinking about, okay, is it, how much can we get, can we capture? If we are not capturing anything, then what are we, kind of, recirculating it back in order to get much better efficiency when we think about it at a rack level and for the other equipment which is going to be purely air-cooled out there and what can we do about it, so. >> Do you think both of these technologies are going to continue to work in tandem, air cooling and liquid cooling? Yeah, so we're not going to see- >> Yeah, we don't, kind of, when we think about our portfolio and what we see the trends moving in the future, I think so, air-cooling is definitely going to be there. There'll be a huge amount of usage for customers looking into air-cooling. Air-cooling is not going to go away. Liquid-cooling is definitely something that a lot of customers are looking into adopting. PUE become the bigger factor for it. How much can I heat capture with it? That's a bigger equation that is coming into the picture. And that's where we said, okay, we have a transition happening. And that's what you see in our portfolio now. >> Yeah, Intel is, Intel, excuse me, Dell is agnostic when it comes to things like Intel, AMD, Broadcom, Nvidia. So, you can look at this landscape and I think make a, you know, make a fair judgment. When we talk about GPU versus CPU, in terms of efficiency, do you see that as something that will live on into the future for some applications? Meaning look, GPU is the answer or is it simply a question of leveraging what we think of as CPU cores differently? Is this going to be, is this going to ebb and flow back and forth? Shreya, are things going to change? 'Cause right now, a lot of what's announced recently, in the high performance computer area, leverages GPUs. But, we're right in the season of AMD and Intel coming out with NextGen processor architectures. >> Savannah: Great point. >> Shreya: Yeah >> Any thoughts? >> Yeah, so what I'll tell you is that it is all application dependent. If you rewind, you know, a couple of generations you'll see that the journey for GPU just started, right? And so there is an ROI, a minimum threshold ROI that customers have to realize in order to move their workloads from CPU-based to GPU-based. As the technology evolves and matures, you'll have more and more applications that will fit within that bucket. Does that mean that everything will fit in that bucket? I don't believe so, but as, you know, the technology will continue to mature on the CPU side, but also on the GPU side. And so, depending on where the customer is in their journey, it's the same for air versus liquid. Liquid is not an if, but it's a when. And when the environment, the data center environment is ready to support that, and when you have that ROI that goes with it is when it makes sense to transition to one way or the other. >> That's awesome. All right, last question for you both in a succinct phrase, if possible, I won't character count. What do you hope that we get to talk about next year when we have you back on theCUBE? Shreya, we'll start with you. >> Ooh, that's a good one. I'm going to let Bhavesh go first. >> Savannah: Go for it. >> (laughs) >> What do you think, Bhavesh? Next year, I think so, what you'll see more, because I'm in the CTI group, more talking about where cache coherency is moving. So, that's what, I'll just leave it at that and we'll talk about it more. >> Savannah: All right. >> Dave: Tantalizing. >> I was going to say, a little window in there, yeah. And I think, to kind of add to that, I'm excited to see what the future holds with CPUs, GPUs, smart NICs and the integration of these technologies and where that all is headed and how that helps ultimately, you know, our customers being able to solve these really, really large and complex problems. >> The problems our globe faces. Wow, well it was absolutely fantastic to have you both on the show. Time just flew. David, wonderful questions, as always. Thank you all for tuning in to theCUBE. Here live from Dallas where we are broadcasting all about supercomputing, high-performance computing, and everything that a hardware nerd, like I, loves. My name is Savannah Peterson. We'll see you again soon. (upbeat jingle)

(upbeat music) >> On August 9th at 9:00 am Pacific, we'll be broadcasting live from theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto, California. Supercloud22, an open industry event made possible by VMware. Supercloud22 will lay out the future of multi-cloud services in the 2020s. John Furrier and I will be hosting a star lineup, including Kit Colbert, VMware CTO, Benoit Dageville, co-founder of Snowflake, Marianna Tessel, CTO of Intuit, Ali Ghodsi, CEO of Databricks, Adrian Cockcroft, former CTO of Netflix, Jerry Chen of Greylock, Chris Hoff aka Beaker, Maribel Lopez, Keith Townsend, Sanjiv Mohan, and dozens of thought leaders. A full day track with 17 sessions. You won't want to miss Supercloud22. Go to thecube.net to mark your calendar and learn more about this free hybrid event. We'll see you there. (upbeat music)

(speaks in foreign language) >> Narrator: Data is at the heart of transformation and the change every company needs to succeed, but it takes more than new technology. It's about teams, talent, and cultural change. Empowering everyone on the front lines to make decisions, all at the speed of digital. The transformation starts with you. It's time to lead the way, it's time for thought leaders. >> Welcome to Thought Leaders, a digital event brought to you by ThoughtSpot. My name is Dave Vellante. The purpose of this day is to bring industry leaders and experts together to really try and understand the important issues around digital transformation. We have an amazing lineup of speakers and our goal is to provide you with some best practices that you can bring back and apply to your organization. Look, data is plentiful, but insights are not. ThoughtSpot is disrupting analytics by using search and machine intelligence to simplify data analysis, and really empower anyone with fast access to relevant data. But in the last 150 days, we've had more questions than answers. Creating an organization that puts data and insights at their core, requires not only modern technology, but leadership, a mindset and a culture that people often refer to as data-driven. What does that mean? How can we equip our teams with data and fast access to quality information that can turn insights into action. And today, we're going to hear from experienced leaders, who are transforming their organizations with data, insights and creating digital-first cultures. But before we introduce our speakers, I'm joined today by two of my co-hosts from ThoughtSpot. First, Chief Data Strategy Officer for ThoughtSpot is Cindi Hausen. Cindi is an analytics and BI expert with 20 plus years experience and the author of Successful Business Intelligence Unlock The Value of BI and Big Data. Cindi was previously the lead analyst at Gartner for the data and analytics magic quadrant. And early last year, she joined ThoughtSpot to help CDOs and their teams understand how best to leverage analytics and AI for digital transformation. Cindi, great to see you, welcome to the show. >> Thank you, Dave. Nice to join you virtually. >> Now our second cohost and friend of theCUBE is ThoughtSpot CEO Sudheesh Nair. Hello Sudheesh, how are you doing today? >> I am well Dave, it's good to talk to you again. >> It's great to see you. Thanks so much for being here. Now Sudheesh, please share with us why this discussion is so important to your customers and of course, to our audience and what they're going to learn today? (gentle music) >> Thanks, Dave, I wish you were there to introduce me into every room that I walk into because you have such an amazing way of doing it. It makes me feel also good. Look, since we have all been cooped up in our homes, I know that the vendors like us, we have amped up our, you know, sort of effort to reach out to you with invites for events like this. So we are getting way more invites for events like this than ever before. So when we started planning for this, we had three clear goals that we wanted to accomplish. And our first one that when you finish this and walk away, we want to make sure that you don't feel like it was a waste of time. We want to make sure that we value your time, and this is going to be useful. Number two, we want to put you in touch with industry leaders and thought leaders, and generally good people that you want to hang around with long after this event is over. And number three, as we plan through this, you know, we are living through these difficult times, we want an event to be, this event to be more of an uplifting and inspiring event too. Now, the challenge is, how do you do that with the team being change agents? Because change and as much as we romanticize it, it is not one of those uplifting things that everyone wants to do or likes to do. The way I think of it, change is sort of like, if you've ever done bungee jumping. You know, it's like standing on the edges, waiting to make that one more step. You know, all you have to do is take that one step and gravity will do the rest, but that is the hardest step to take. Change requires a lot of courage and when we are talking about data and analytics, which is already like such a hard topic, not necessarily an uplifting and positive conversation, in most businesses it is somewhat scary. Change becomes all the more difficult. Ultimately change requires courage. Courage to to, first of all, challenge the status quo. People sometimes are afraid to challenge the status quo because they are thinking that, "You know, maybe I don't have the power to make the change that the company needs. Sometimes I feel like I don't have the skills." Sometimes they may feel that, I'm probably not the right person to do it. Or sometimes the lack of courage manifest itself as the inability to sort of break the silos that are formed within the organizations, when it comes to data and insights that you talked about. You know, there are people in the company, who are going to hog the data because they know how to manage the data, how to inquire and extract. They know how to speak data, they have the skills to do that, but they are not the group of people who have sort of the knowledge, the experience of the business to ask the right questions off the data. So there is this silo of people with the answers and there is a silo of people with the questions, and there is gap. These sort of silos are standing in the way of making that necessary change that we all I know the business needs, and the last change to sort of bring an external force sometimes. It could be a tool, it could be a platform, it could be a person, it could be a process, but sometimes no matter how big the company is or how small the company is. You may need to bring some external stimuli to start that domino of the positive changes that are necessary. The group of people that we have brought in, the four people, including Cindi, that you will hear from today are really good at practically telling you how to make that step, how to step off that edge, how to trust the rope that you will be safe and you're going to have fun. You will have that exhilarating feeling of jumping for a bungee jump. All four of them are exceptional, but my honor is to introduce Michelle and she's our first speaker. Michelle, I am very happy after watching her presentation and reading her bio, that there are no country vital worldwide competition for cool patents, because she will beat all of us because when her children were small, you know, they were probably into Harry Potter and Disney and she was managing a business and leading change there. And then as her kids grew up and got to that age, where they like football and NFL, guess what? She's the CIO of NFL. What a cool mom. I am extremely excited to see what she's going to talk about. I've seen the slides with a bunch of amazing pictures, I'm looking to see the context behind it. I'm very thrilled to make the acquaintance of Michelle. I'm looking forward to her talk next. Welcome Michelle. It's over to you. (gentle music) >> I'm delighted to be with you all today to talk about thought leadership. And I'm so excited that you asked me to join you because today I get to be a quarterback. I always wanted to be one. This is about as close as I'm ever going to get. So, I want to talk to you about quarterbacking our digital revolution using insights, data and of course, as you said, leadership. First, a little bit about myself, a little background. As I said, I always wanted to play football and this is something that I wanted to do since I was a child but when I grew up, girls didn't get to play football. I'm so happy that that's changing and girls are now doing all kinds of things that they didn't get to do before. Just this past weekend on an NFL field, we had a female coach on two sidelines and a female official on the field. I'm a lifelong fan and student of the game of football. I grew up in the South. You can tell from the accent and in the South football is like a religion and you pick sides. I chose Auburn University working in the athletic department, so I'm testament. Till you can start, a journey can be long. It took me many, many years to make it into professional sports. I graduated in 1987 and my little brother, well not actually not so little, he played offensive line for the Alabama Crimson Tide. And for those of you who know SEC football, you know this is a really big rivalry, and when you choose sides your family is divided. So it's kind of fun for me to always tell the story that my dad knew his kid would make it to the NFL, he just bet on the wrong one. My career has been about bringing people together for memorable moments at some of America's most iconic brands, delivering memories and amazing experiences that delight. From Universal Studios, Disney, to my current position as CIO of the NFL. In this job, I'm very privileged to have the opportunity to work with a team that gets to bring America's game to millions of people around the world. Often, I'm asked to talk about how to create amazing experiences for fans, guests or customers. But today, I really wanted to focus on something different and talk to you about being behind the scenes and backstage. Because behind every event, every game, every awesome moment, is execution. Precise, repeatable execution and most of my career has been behind the scenes doing just that. Assembling teams to execute these plans and the key way that companies operate at these exceptional levels is making good decisions, the right decisions, at the right time and based upon data. So that you can translate the data into intelligence and be a data-driven culture. Using data and intelligence is an important way that world-class companies do differentiate themselves, and it's the lifeblood of collaboration and innovation. Teams that are working on delivering these kind of world class experiences are often seeking out and leveraging next generation technologies and finding new ways to work. I've been fortunate to work across three decades of emerging experiences, which each required emerging technologies to execute. A little bit first about Disney. In '90s I was at Disney leading a project called Destination Disney, which it's a data project. It was a data project, but it was CRM before CRM was even cool and then certainly before anything like a data-driven culture was ever brought up. But way back then we were creating a digital backbone that enabled many technologies for the things that you see today. Like the MagicBand, Disney's Magical Express. My career at Disney began in finance, but Disney was very good about rotating you around. And it was during one of these rotations that I became very passionate about data. I kind of became a pain in the butt to the IT team asking for data, more and more data. And I learned that all of that valuable data was locked up in our systems. All of our point of sales systems, our reservation systems, our operation systems. And so I became a shadow IT person in marketing, ultimately, leading to moving into IT and I haven't looked back since. In the early 2000s, I was at Universal Studio's theme park as their CIO preparing for and launching the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Bringing one of history's most memorable characters to life required many new technologies and a lot of data. Our data and technologies were embedded into the rides and attractions. I mean, how do you really think a wand selects you at a wand shop. As today at the NFL, I am constantly challenged to do leading edge technologies, using things like sensors, AI, machine learning and all new communication strategies, and using data to drive everything, from player performance, contracts, to where we build new stadiums and hold events. With this year being the most challenging, yet rewarding year in my career at the NFL. In the middle of a global pandemic, the way we are executing on our season is leveraging data from contact tracing devices joined with testing data. Talk about data actually enabling your business. Without it we wouldn't be having a season right now. I'm also on the board of directors of two public companies, where data and collaboration are paramount. First, RingCentral, it's a cloud based unified communications platform and collaboration with video message and phone, all-in-one solution in the cloud and Quotient Technologies, whose product is actually data. The tagline at Quotient is The Result in Knowing. I think that's really important because not all of us are data companies, where your product is actually data, but we should operate more like your product is data. I'd also like to talk to you about four areas of things to think about as thought leaders in your companies. First, just hit on it, is change. how to be a champion and a driver of change. Second, how to use data to drive performance for your company and measure performance of your company. Third, how companies now require intense collaboration to operate and finally, how much of this is accomplished through solid data-driven decisions. First, let's hit on change. I mean, it's evident today more than ever, that we are in an environment of extreme change. I mean, we've all been at this for years and as technologists we've known it, believed it, lived it. And thankfully, for the most part, knock on wood, we were prepared for it. But this year everyone's cheese was moved. All the people in the back rooms, IT, data architects and others were suddenly called to the forefront because a global pandemic has turned out to be the thing that is driving intense change in how people work and analyze their business. On March 13th, we closed our office at the NFL in the middle of preparing for one of our biggest events, our kickoff event, The 2020 Draft. We went from planning a large event in Las Vegas under the bright lights, red carpet stage, to smaller events in club facilities. And then ultimately, to one where everyone coaches, GMs, prospects and even our commissioner were at home in their basements and we only had a few weeks to figure it out. I found myself for the first time, being in the live broadcast event space. Talking about bungee jumping, this is really what it felt like. It was one in which no one felt comfortable because it had not been done before. But leading through this, I stepped up, but it was very scary, it was certainly very risky, but it ended up being also rewarding when we did it. And as a result of this, some things will change forever. Second, managing performance. I mean, data should inform how you're doing and how to get your company to perform at its level, highest level. As an example, the NFL has always measured performance, obviously, and it is one of the purest examples of how performance directly impacts outcome. I mean, you can see performance on the field, you can see points being scored and stats, and you immediately know that impact. Those with the best stats usually win the games. The NFL has always recorded stats. Since the beginning of time here at the NFL a little... This year is our 101st year and athlete's ultimate success as a player has also always been greatly impacted by his stats. But what has changed for us is both how much more we can measure and the immediacy with which it can be measured and I'm sure in your business it's the same. The amount of data you must have has got to have quadrupled recently. And how fast do you need it and how quickly you need to analyze it is so important. And it's very important to break the silos between the keys to the data and the use of the data. Our next generation stats platform is taking data to the next level. It's powered by Amazon Web Services and we gather this data, real-time from sensors that are on players' bodies. We gather it in real time, analyze it, display it online and on broadcast. And of course, it's used to prepare week to week in addition to what is a normal coaching plan would be. We can now analyze, visualize, route patterns, speed, match-ups, et cetera, so much faster than ever before. We're continuing to roll out sensors too, that will gather more and more information about a player's performance as it relates to their health and safety. The third trend is really, I think it's a big part of what we're feeling today and that is intense collaboration. And just for sort of historical purposes, it's important to think about, for those of you that are IT professionals and developers, you know, more than 10 years ago agile practices began sweeping companies. Where small teams would work together rapidly in a very flexible, adaptive and innovative way and it proved to be transformational. However today, of course that is no longer just small teams, the next big wave of change and we've seen it through this pandemic, is that it's the whole enterprise that must collaborate and be agile. If I look back on my career, when I was at Disney, we owned everything 100%. We made a decision, we implemented it. We were a collaborative culture but it was much easier to push change because you own the whole decision. If there was buy-in from the top down, you got the people from the bottom up to do it and you executed. At Universal, we were a joint venture. Our attractions and entertainment was licensed. Our hotels were owned and managed by other third parties, so influence and collaboration, and how to share across companies became very important. And now here I am at the NFL an even the bigger ecosystem. We have 32 clubs that are all separate businesses, 31 different stadiums that are owned by a variety of people. We have licensees, we have sponsors, we have broadcast partners. So it seems that as my career has evolved, centralized control has gotten less and less and has been replaced by intense collaboration, not only within your own company but across companies. The ability to work in a collaborative way across businesses and even other companies, that has been a big key to my success in my career. I believe this whole vertical integration and big top-down decision-making is going by the wayside in favor of ecosystems that require cooperation, yet competition to co-exist. I mean, the NFL is a great example of what we call co-oppetition, which is cooperation and competition. We're in competition with each other, but we cooperate to make the company the best it can be. And at the heart of these items really are data-driven decisions and culture. Data on its own isn't good enough. You must be able to turn it to insights. Partnerships between technology teams who usually hold the keys to the raw data and business units, who have the knowledge to build the right decision models is key. If you're not already involved in this linkage, you should be, data mining isn't new for sure. The availability of data is quadrupling and it's everywhere. How do you know what to even look at? How do you know where to begin? How do you know what questions to ask? It's by using the tools that are available for visualization and analytics and knitting together strategies of the company. So it begins with, first of all, making sure you do understand the strategy of the company. So in closing, just to wrap up a bit, many of you joined today, looking for thought leadership on how to be a change agent, a change champion, and how to lead through transformation. Some final thoughts are be brave and drive. Don't do the ride along program, it's very important to drive. Driving can be high risk, but it's also high reward. Embracing the uncertainty of what will happen is how you become brave. Get more and more comfortable with uncertainty, be calm and let data be your map on your journey. Thanks. >> Michelle, thank you so much. So you and I share a love of data and a love of football. You said you want to be the quarterback. I'm more an a line person. >> Well, then I can't do my job without you. >> Great and I'm getting the feeling now, you know, Sudheesh is talking about bungee jumping. My vote is when we're past this pandemic, we both take him to the Delaware Water Gap and we do the cliff jumping. >> Oh that sounds good, I'll watch your watch. >> Yeah, you'll watch, okay. So Michelle, you have so many stakeholders, when you're trying to prioritize the different voices you have the players, you have the owners, you have the league, as you mentioned, the broadcasters, your partners here and football mamas like myself. How do you prioritize when there are so many different stakeholders that you need to satisfy? >> I think balancing across stakeholders starts with aligning on a mission and if you spend a lot of time understanding where everyone's coming from, and you can find the common thread that ties them all together. You sort of do get them to naturally prioritize their work and I think that's very important. So for us at the NFL and even at Disney, it was our core values and our core purpose is so well known and when anything challenges that, we're able to sort of lay that out. But as a change agent, you have to be very empathetic, and I would say empathy is probably your strongest skill if you're a change agent and that means listening to every single stakeholder. Even when they're yelling at you, even when they're telling you your technology doesn't work and you know that it's user error, or even when someone is just emotional about what's happening to them and that they're not comfortable with it. So I think being empathetic, and having a mission, and understanding it is sort of how I prioritize and balance. >> Yeah, empathy, a very popular word this year. I can imagine those coaches and owners yelling, so thank you for your leadership here. So Michelle, I look forward to discussing this more with our other customers and disruptors joining us in a little bit. >> (gentle music) So we're going to take a hard pivot now and go from football to Chernobyl. Chernobyl, what went wrong? 1986, as the reactors were melting down, they had the data to say, "This is going to be catastrophic," and yet the culture said, "No, we're perfect, hide it. Don't dare tell anyone." Which meant they went ahead and had celebrations in Kiev. Even though that increased the exposure, additional thousands getting cancer and 20,000 years before the ground around there can even be inhabited again. This is how powerful and detrimental a negative culture, a culture that is unable to confront the brutal facts that hides data. This is what we have to contend with and this is why I want you to focus on having, fostering a data-driven culture. I don't want you to be a laggard. I want you to be a leader in using data to drive your digital transformation. So I'll talk about culture and technology, is it really two sides of the same coin? Real-world impacts and then some best practices you can use to disrupt and innovate your culture. Now, oftentimes I would talk about culture and I talk about technology. And recently a CDO said to me, "You know, Cindi, I actually think this is two sides of the same coin, one reflects the other." What do you think? Let me walk you through this. So let's take a laggard. What does the technology look like? Is it based on 1990s BI and reporting, largely parametrized reports, on-premises data warehouses, or not even that operational reports. At best one enterprise data warehouse, very slow moving and collaboration is only email. What does that culture tell you? Maybe there's a lack of leadership to change, to do the hard work that Sudheesh referred to, or is there also a culture of fear, afraid of failure, resistance to change, complacency. And sometimes that complacency, it's not because people are lazy. It's because they've been so beaten down every time a new idea is presented. It's like, "No, we're measured on least to serve." So politics and distrust, whether it's between business and IT or individual stakeholders is the norm, so data is hoarded. Let's contrast that with the leader, a data and analytics leader, what does their technology look like? Augmented analytics, search and AI driven insights, not on-premises but in the cloud and maybe multiple clouds. And the data is not in one place but it's in a data lake and in a data warehouse, a logical data warehouse. The collaboration is via newer methods, whether it's Slack or Teams, allowing for that real-time decisioning or investigating a particular data point. So what is the culture in the leaders? It's transparent and trust. There is a trust that data will not be used to punish, that there is an ability to confront the bad news. It's innovation, valuing innovation in pursuit of the company goals. Whether it's the best fan experience and player safety in the NFL or best serving your customers, it's innovative and collaborative. There's none of this, "Oh, well, I didn't invent that. I'm not going to look at that." There's still pride of ownership, but it's collaborating to get to a better place faster. And people feel empowered to present new ideas, to fail fast and they're energized knowing that they're using the best technology and innovating at the pace that business requires. So data is democratized and democratized, not just for power users or analysts, but really at the point of impact, what we like to call the new decision-makers or really the frontline workers. So Harvard Business Review partnered with us to develop this study to say, "Just how important is this? We've been working at BI and analytics as an industry for more than 20 years, why is it not at the front lines? Whether it's a doctor, a nurse, a coach, a supply chain manager, a warehouse manager, a financial services advisor." 87% said they would be more successful if frontline workers were empowered with data-driven insights, but they recognize they need new technology to be able to do that. It's not about learning hard tools. The sad reality only 20% of organizations are actually doing this. These are the data-driven leaders. So this is the culture and technology, how did we get here? It's because state-of-the-art keeps changing. So the first generation BI and analytics platforms were deployed on-premises, on small datasets, really just taking data out of ERP systems that were also on-premises and state-of-the-art was maybe getting a management report, an operational report. Over time, visual based data discovery vendors disrupted these traditional BI vendors, empowering now analysts to create visualizations with the flexibility on a desktop, sometimes larger data, sometimes coming from a data warehouse. The current state-of-the-art though, Gartner calls it augmented analytics. At ThoughtSpot, we call it search and AI driven analytics, and this was pioneered for large scale data sets, whether it's on-premises or leveraging the cloud data warehouses. And I think this is an important point, oftentimes you, the data and analytics leaders, will look at these two components separately. But you have to look at the BI and analytics tier in lock-step with your data architectures to really get to the granular insights and to leverage the capabilities of AI. Now, if you've never seen ThoughtSpot, I'll just show you what this looks like. Instead of somebody hard coding a report, it's typing in search keywords and very robust keywords contains rank, top, bottom, getting to a visual visualization that then can be pinned to an existing pin board that might also contain insights generated by an AI engine. So it's easy enough for that new decision maker, the business user, the non-analyst to create themselves. Modernizing the data and analytics portfolio is hard because the pace of change has accelerated. You used to be able to create an investment, place a bet for maybe 10 years. A few years ago, that time horizon was five years. Now, it's maybe three years and the time to maturity has also accelerated. So you have these different components, the search and AI tier, the data science tier, data preparation and virtualization but I would also say, equally important is the cloud data warehouse. And pay attention to how well these analytics tools can unlock the value in these cloud data warehouses. So ThoughtSpot was the first to market with search and AI driven insights. Competitors have followed suit, but be careful, if you look at products like Power BI or SAP analytics cloud, they might demo well, but do they let you get to all the data without moving it in products like Snowflake, Amazon Redshift, or Azure Synapse, or Google BigQuery, they do not. They require you to move it into a smaller in-memory engine. So it's important how well these new products inter-operate. The pace of change, its acceleration, Gartner recently predicted that by 2022, 65% of analytical queries will be generated using search or NLP or even AI and that is roughly three times the prediction they had just a couple of years ago. So let's talk about the real world impact of culture and if you've read any of my books or used any of the maturity models out there, whether the Gartner IT Score that I worked on or the Data Warehousing Institute also has a maturity model. We talk about these five pillars to really become data-driven. As Michelle spoke about, it's focusing on the business outcomes, leveraging all the data, including new data sources, it's the talent, the people, the technology and also the processes. And often when I would talk about the people in the talent, I would lump the culture as part of that. But in the last year, as I've traveled the world and done these digital events for thought leaders. You have told me now culture is absolutely so important, and so we've pulled it out as a separate pillar. And in fact, in polls that we've done in these events, look at how much more important culture is as a barrier to becoming data-driven. It's three times as important as any of these other pillars. That's how critical it is. And let's take an example of where you can have great data, but if you don't have the right culture, there's devastating impacts. And I will say I have been a loyal customer of Wells Fargo for more than 20 years, but look at what happened in the face of negative news with data. It said, "Hey, we're not doing good cross-selling, customers do not have both a checking account and a credit card and a savings account and a mortgage." They opened fake accounts facing billions in fines, change in leadership that even the CEO attributed to a toxic sales culture and they're trying to fix this, but even recently there's been additional employee backlash saying the culture has not changed. Let's contrast that with some positive examples. Medtronic, a worldwide company in 150 countries around the world. They may not be a household name to you, but if you have a loved one or yourself, you have a pacemaker, spinal implant, diabetes, you know this brand. And at the start of COVID when they knew their business would be slowing down, because hospitals would only be able to take care of COVID patients. They took the bold move of making their IP for ventilators publicly available. That is the power of a positive culture. Or Verizon, a major telecom organization looking at late payments of their customers and even though the U.S. Federal Government said, "Well, you can't turn them off." They said, "We'll extend that even beyond the mandated guidelines," and facing a slow down in the business because of the tough economy, They said, "You know what? We will spend the time upskilling our people, giving them the time to learn more about the future of work, the skills and data and analytics for 20,000 of their employees rather than furloughing them. That is the power of a positive culture. So how can you transform your culture to the best in class? I'll give you three suggestions. Bring in a change agent, identify the relevance or I like to call it WIIFM and organize for collaboration. So the CDO, whatever your title is, Chief Analytics Officer, Chief Digital Officer, you are the most important change agent. And this is where you will hear that oftentimes a change agent has to come from outside the organization. So this is where, for example, in Europe you have the CDO of Just Eat, a takeout food delivery organization coming from the airline industry or in Australia, National Australian Bank taking a CDO within the same sector from TD Bank going to NAB. So these change agents come in, disrupt. It's a hard job. As one of you said to me, it often feels like. I make one step forward and I get knocked down again, I get pushed back. It is not for the faint of heart, but it's the most important part of your job. The other thing I'll talk about is WIIFM What's In It For Me? And this is really about understanding the motivation, the relevance that data has for everyone on the frontline, as well as those analysts, as well as the executives. So, if we're talking about players in the NFL, they want to perform better and they want to stay safe. That is why data matters to them. If we're talking about financial services, this may be a wealth management advisor. Okay, we could say commissions, but it's really helping people have their dreams come true, whether it's putting their children through college or being able to retire without having to work multiple jobs still into your 70s or 80s. For the teachers, teachers you ask them about data. They'll say, "We don't need that, I care about the student." So if you can use data to help a student perform better, that is WIIFM and sometimes we spend so much time talking the technology, we forget, what is the value we're trying to deliver with this? And we forget the impact on the people that it does require change. In fact, the Harvard Business Review study found that 44% said lack of change management is the biggest barrier to leveraging both new technology, but also being empowered to act on those data-driven insights. The third point, organize for collaboration. This does require diversity of thought, but also bringing the technology, the data and the business people together. Now there's not a single one size fits all model for data and analytics. At one point in time, even having a BICC, a BI competency center was considered state of the art. Now for the biggest impact, what I recommend is that you have a federated model centralized for economies of scale. That could be the common data, but then embed these evangelists, these analysts of the future within every business unit, every functional domain. And as you see this top bar, all models are possible, but the hybrid model has the most impact, the most leaders. So as we look ahead to the months ahead, to the year ahead, an exciting time because data is helping organizations better navigate a tough economy, lock in the customer loyalty and I look forward to seeing how you foster that culture that's collaborative with empathy and bring the best of technology, leveraging the cloud, all your data. So thank you for joining us at Thought Leaders. And next, I'm pleased to introduce our first change agent, Tom Mazzaferro Chief Data Officer of Western Union and before joining Western Union, Tom made his Mark at HSBC and JP Morgan Chase spearheading digital innovation in technology, operations, risk compliance and retail banking. Tom, thank you so much for joining us today. (gentle music) >> Very happy to be here and looking forward to talking to all of you today. So as we look to move organizations to a data-driven capability into the future, there is a lot that needs to be done on the data side, but also how does data connect and enable different business teams and the technology teams into the future? As we look across our data ecosystems and our platforms, and how we modernize that to the cloud in the future, it all needs to basically work together, right? To really be able to drive an organization from a data standpoint, into the future. That includes being able to have the right information with the right quality of data, at the right time to drive informed business decisions, to drive the business forward. As part of that, we actually have partnered with ThoughtSpot to actually bring in the technology to help us drive that. As part of that partnership and it's how we've looked to integrate it into our overall business as a whole. We've looked at, how do we make sure that our business and our professional lives, right? Are enabled in the same ways as our personal lives. So for example, in your personal lives, when you want to go and find something out, what do you do? You go onto google.com or you go onto Bing or you go onto Yahoo and you search for what you want, search to find an answer. ThoughtSpot for us is the same thing, but in the business world. So using ThoughtSpot and other AI capability is it's allowed us to actually enable our overall business teams in our company to actually have our information at our fingertips. So rather than having to go and talk to someone, or an engineer to go pull information or pull data. We actually can have the end users or the business executives, right. Search for what they need, what they want, at the exact time that they actually need it, to go and drive the business forward. This is truly one of those transformational things that we've put in place. On top of that, we are on a journey to modernize our larger ecosystem as a whole. That includes modernizing our underlying data warehouses, our technology, our... The local environments and as we move that, we've actually picked two of our cloud providers going to AWS and to GCP. We've also adopted Snowflake to really drive and to organize our information and our data, then drive these new solutions and capabilities forward. So a big portion of it though is culture. So how do we engage with the business teams and bring the IT teams together, to really help to drive these holistic end-to-end solutions and capabilities, to really support the actual business into the future. That's one of the keys here, as we look to modernize and to really enhance our organizations to become data-driven. This is the key. If you can really start to provide answers to business questions before they're even being asked and to predict based upon different economic trends or different trends in your business, what decisions need to be made and actually provide those answers to the business teams before they're even asking for it. That is really becoming a data-driven organization and as part of that, it really then enables the business to act quickly and take advantage of opportunities as they come in based upon industries, based upon markets, based upon products, solutions or partnerships into the future. These are really some of the keys that become crucial as you move forward, right, into this new age, Especially with COVID. With COVID now taking place across the world, right? Many of these markets, many of these digital transformations are celebrating and are changing rapidly to accommodate and to support customers in these very difficult times. As part of that, you need to make sure you have the right underlying foundation, ecosystems and solutions to really drive those capabilities and those solutions forward. As we go through this journey, both in my career but also each of your careers into the future, right? It also needs to evolve, right? Technology has changed so drastically in the last 10 years, and that change is only accelerating. So as part of that, you have to make sure that you stay up to speed, up to date with new technology changes, both on the platform standpoint, tools, but also what do our customers want, what do our customers need and how do we then service them with our information, with our data, with our platform, and with our products and our services to meet those needs and to really support and service those customers into the future. This is all around becoming a more data-driven organization, such as how do you use your data to support your current business lines, but how do you actually use your information and your data to actually better support your customers, better support your business, better support your employees, your operations teams and so forth. And really creating that full integration in that ecosystem is really when you start to get large dividends from these investments into the future. With that being said, I hope you enjoyed the segment on how to become and how to drive a data-driven organization, and looking forward to talking to you again soon. Thank you. >> Tom, that was great. Thanks so much and now going to have to drag on you for a second. As a change agent you've come in, disrupted and how long have you been at Western Union? >> Only nine months, so just started this year, but there have been some great opportunities to integrate changes and we have a lot more to go, but we're really driving things forward in partnership with our business teams and our colleagues to support those customers going forward. >> Tom, thank you so much. That was wonderful. And now, I'm excited to introduce you to Gustavo Canton, a change agent that I've had the pleasure of working with meeting in Europe and he is a serial change agent. Most recently with Schneider Electric but even going back to Sam's Clubs. Gustavo, welcome. (gentle music) >> So, hey everyone, my name is Gustavo Canton and thank you so much, Cindi, for the intro. As you mentioned, doing transformations is, you know, a high reward situation. I have been part of many transformations and I have led many transformations. And, what I can tell you is that it's really hard to predict the future, but if you have a North Star and you know where you're going, the one thing that I want you to take away from this discussion today is that you need to be bold to evolve. And so, in today, I'm going to be talking about culture and data, and I'm going to break this down in four areas. How do we get started, barriers or opportunities as I see it, the value of AI and also, how you communicate. Especially now in the workforce of today with so many different generations, you need to make sure that you are communicating in ways that are non-traditional sometimes. And so, how do we get started? So, I think the answer to that is you have to start for you yourself as a leader and stay tuned. And by that, I mean, you need to understand, not only what is happening in your function or your field, but you have to be very in tune what is happening in society socioeconomically speaking, wellbeing. You know, the common example is a great example and for me personally, it's an opportunity because the number one core value that I have is wellbeing. I believe that for human potential for customers and communities to grow, wellbeing should be at the center of every decision. And as somebody mentioned, it's great to be, you know, stay in tune and have the skillset and the courage. But for me personally, to be honest, to have this courage is not about not being afraid. You're always afraid when you're making big changes and you're swimming upstream, but what gives me the courage is the empathy part. Like I think empathy is a huge component because every time I go into an organization or a function, I try to listen very attentively to the needs of the business and what the leaders are trying to do. But I do it thinking about the mission of, how do I make change for the bigger workforce or the bigger good despite the fact that this might have perhaps implication for my own self interest in my career. Right? Because you have to have that courage sometimes to make choices that are not well seen, politically speaking, but are the right thing to do and you have to push through it. So the bottom line for me is that, I don't think we're they're transforming fast enough. And the reality is, I speak with a lot of leaders and we have seen stories in the past and what they show is that, if you look at the four main barriers that are basically keeping us behind budget, inability to act, cultural issues, politics and lack of alignment, those are the top four. But the interesting thing is that as Cindi has mentioned, these topic about culture is actually gaining more and more traction. And in 2018, there was a story from HBR and it was about 45%. I believe today, it's about 55%, 60% of respondents say that this is the main area that we need to focus on. So again, for all those leaders and all the executives who understand and are aware that we need to transform, commit to the transformation and set a deadline to say, "Hey, in two years we're going to make this happen. What do we need to do, to empower and enable these change agents to make it happen? You need to make the tough choices. And so to me, when I speak about being bold is about making the right choices now. So, I'll give you examples of some of the roadblocks that I went through as I've been doing transformations, most recently, as Cindi mentioned in Schneider. There are three main areas, legacy mindset and what that means is that, we've been doing this in a specific way for a long time and here is how we have been successful. What worked in the past is not going to work now. The opportunity there is that there is a lot of leaders, who have a digital mindset and they're up and coming leaders that are perhaps not yet fully developed. We need to mentor those leaders and take bets on some of these talents, including young talent. We cannot be thinking in the past and just wait for people, you know, three to five years for them to develop because the world is going in a way that is super-fast. The second area and this is specifically to implementation of AI. It's very interesting to me because just the example that I have with ThoughtSpot, right? We went on implementation and a lot of the way the IT team functions or the leaders look at technology, they look at it from the prism of the prior or success criteria for the traditional BIs, and that's not going to work. Again, the opportunity here is that you need to redefine what success look like. In my case, I want the user experience of our workforce to be the same user experience you have at home. It's a very simple concept and so we need to think about, how do we gain that user experience with these augmented analytics tools and then work backwards to have the right talent, processes, and technology to enable that. And finally and obviously with COVID, a lot of pressure in organizations and companies to do more with less. And the solution that most leaders I see are taking is to just minimize costs sometimes and cut budget. We have to do the opposite. We have to actually invest on growth areas, but do it by business question. Don't do it by function. If you actually invest in these kind of solutions, if you actually invest on developing your talent and your leadership to see more digitally, if you actually invest on fixing your data platform, it's not just an incremental cost. It's actually this investment is going to offset all those hidden costs and inefficiencies that you have on your system, because people are doing a lot of work and working very hard but it's not efficient and it's not working in the way that you might want to work. So there is a lot of opportunity there and just to put in terms of perspective, there have been some studies in the past about, you know, how do we kind of measure the impact of data? And obviously, this is going to vary by organization maturity, there's going to be a lot of factors. I've been in companies who have very clean, good data to work with and I've been with companies that we have to start basically from scratch. So it all depends on your maturity level. But in this study, what I think is interesting is they try to put a tagline or a tag price to what is the cost of incomplete data. So in this case, it's about 10 times as much to complete a unit of work when you have data that is flawed as opposed to having perfect data. So let me put that just in perspective, just as an example, right? Imagine you are trying to do something and you have to do 100 things in a project, and each time you do something, it's going to cost you a dollar. So if you have perfect data, the total cost of that project might be $100. But now let's say you have 80% perfect data and 20% flawed data. By using this assumption that flawed data is 10 times as costly as perfect data, your total costs now becomes $280 as opposed to $100. This just for you to really think about as a CIO, CTO, you know CHRO, CEO, "Are we really paying attention and really closing the gaps that we have on our data infrastructure?" If we don't do that, it's hard sometimes to see the snowball effect or to measure the overall impact, but as you can tell, the price tag goes up very, very quickly. So now, if I were to say, how do I communicate this or how do I break through some of these challenges or some of these barriers, right? I think the key is, I am in analytics, I know statistics obviously and love modeling, and, you know, data and optimization theory, and all that stuff. That's what I came to analytics, but now as a leader and as a change agent, I need to speak about value and in this case, for example, for Schneider. There was this tagline, make the most of your energy. So the number one thing that they were asking from the analytics team was actually efficiency, which to me was very interesting. But once I understood that, I understood what kind of language to use, how to connect it to the overall strategy and basically, how to bring in the right leaders because you need to, you know, focus on the leaders that you're going to make the most progress, you know. Again, low effort, high value. You need to make sure you centralize all the data as you can, you need to bring in some kind of augmented analytics, you know, solution. And finally, you need to make it super-simple for the, you know, in this case, I was working with the HR teams and other areas, so they can have access to one portal. They don't have to be confused and looking for 10 different places to find information. I think if you can actually have those four foundational pillars, obviously under the guise of having a data-driven culture, that's when you can actually make the impact. So in our case, it was about three years total transformation, but it was two years for this component of augmented analytics. It took about two years to talk to, you know, IT, get leadership support, find the budgeting, you know, get everybody on board, make sure the success criteria was correct. And we call this initiative, the people analytics portal. It was actually launched in July of this year and we were very excited and the audience was very excited to do this. In this case, we did our pilot in North America for many, many, many factors but one thing that is really important is as you bring along your audience on this, you know. You're going from Excel, you know, in some cases or Tableu to other tools like, you know, ThoughtSpot. You need to really explain them what is the difference and how this tool can truly replace some of the spreadsheets or some of the views that you might have on these other kinds of tools. Again, Tableau, I think it's a really good tool. There are other many tools that you might have in your toolkit but in my case, personally, I feel that you need to have one portal. Going back to Cindi's points, that really truly enable the end user. And I feel that this is the right solution for us, right? And I will show you some of the findings that we had in the pilot in the last two months. So this was a huge victory and I will tell you why, because it took a lot of effort for us to get to this stage and like I said, it's been years for us to kind of lay the foundation, get the leadership, initiating culture so people can understand, why you truly need to invest on augmented analytics. And so, what I'm showing here is an example of how do we use basically, you know, a tool to capturing video, the qualitative findings that we had, plus the quantitative insights that we have. So in this case, our preliminary results based on our ambition for three main metrics. Hours saved, user experience and adoption. So for hours saved, our ambition was to have 10 hours per week for employee to save on average. User experience, our ambition was 4.5 and adoption 80%. In just two months, two months and a half of the pilot, we were able to achieve five hours per week per employee savings, a user experience for 4.3 out of five and adoption of 60%. Really, really amazing work. But again, it takes a lot of collaboration for us to get to the stage from IT, legal, communications, obviously the operations things and the users. In HR safety and other areas that might be basically stakeholders in this whole process. So just to summarize, this kind of effort takes a lot of energy. You are a change agent, you need to have courage to make this decision and understand that, I feel that in this day and age with all this disruption happening, we don't have a choice. We have to take the risk, right? And in this case, I feel a lot of satisfaction in how we were able to gain all these great resource for this organization and that give me the confident to know that the work has been done and we are now in a different stage for the organization. And so for me, it's just to say, thank you for everybody who has belief, obviously in our vision, everybody who has belief in, you know, the work that we were trying to do and to make the life of our, you know, workforce or customers and community better. As you can tell, there is a lot of effort, there is a lot of collaboration that is needed to do something like this. In the end, I feel very satisfied with the accomplishments of this transformation and I just want to tell for you, if you are going right now in a moment that you feel that you have to swim upstream, you know, work with mentors, work with people in the industry that can help you out and guide you on this kind of transformation. It's not easy to do, it's high effort, but it's well worth it. And with that said, I hope you are well and it's been a pleasure talking to you. Talk to you soon. Take care. >> Thank you, Gustavo. That was amazing. All right, let's go to the panel. (light music) Now I think we can all agree how valuable it is to hear from practitioners and I want to thank the panel for sharing their knowledge with the community. Now one common challenge that I heard you all talk about was bringing your leadership and your teams along on the journey with you. We talk about this all the time and it is critical to have support from the top. Why? Because it directs the middle and then it enables bottoms up innovation effects from the cultural transformation that you guys all talked about. It seems like another common theme we heard is that you all prioritize database decision making in your organizations. And you combine two of your most valuable assets to do that and create leverage, employees on the front lines, and of course the data. Now as as you rightly pointed out, Tom, the pandemic has accelerated the need for really leaning into this. You know, the old saying, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, well COVID has broken everything and it's great to hear from our experts, you know, how to move forward, so let's get right into it. So Gustavo, let's start with you. If I'm an aspiring change agent and let's say I'm a budding data leader, what do I need to start doing? What habits do I need to create for long-lasting success? >> I think curiosity is very important. You need to be, like I said, in tune to what is happening, not only in your specific field, like I have a passion for analytics, I've been doing it for 50 years plus, but I think you need to understand wellbeing of the areas across not only a specific business. As you know, I come from, you know, Sam's Club, Walmart retail. I've been in energy management, technology. So you have to try to push yourself and basically go out of your comfort zone. I mean, if you are staying in your comfort zone and you want to just continuous improvement, that's just going to take you so far. What you have to do is, and that's what I try to do, is I try to go into areas, businesses and transformations, that make me, you know, stretch and develop as a leader. That's what I'm looking to do, so I can help transform the functions, organizations, and do the change management, the essential mindset that's required for this kind of effort. >> Well, thank you for that. That is inspiring and Cindi you love data and the data is pretty clear that diversity is a good business, but I wonder if you can, you know, add your perspectives to this conversation? >> Yeah, so Michelle has a new fan here because she has found her voice. I'm still working on finding mine and it's interesting because I was raised by my dad, a single dad, so he did teach me how to work in a predominantly male environment, but why I think diversity matters more now than ever before and this is by gender, by race, by age, by just different ways of working and thinking, is because as we automate things with AI, if we do not have diverse teams looking at the data, and the models, and how they're applied, we risk having bias at scale. So this is why I think I don't care what type of minority you are, finding your voice, having a seat at the table and just believing in the impact of your work has never been more important and as Michelle said, more possible. >> Great perspectives, thank you. Tom, I want to go to you. So, I mean, I feel like everybody in our businesses is in some way, shape, or form become a COVID expert, but what's been the impact of the pandemic on your organization's digital transformation plans? >> We've seen a massive growth, actually, in our digital business over the last 12 months really, even acceleration, right, once COVID hit. We really saw that in the 200 countries and territories that we operate in today and service our customers in today, that there's been a huge need, right, to send money to support family, to support friends, and to support loved ones across the world. And as part of that we are very honored to be able to support those customers that, across all the centers today, but as part of the acceleration, we need to make sure that we have the right architecture and the right platforms to basically scale, right? To basically support and provide the right kind of security for our customers going forward. So as part of that, we did do some pivots and we did accelerate some of our plans on digital to help support that overall growth coming in and to support our customers going forward, because during these times, during this pandemic, right, this is the most important time and we need to support those that we love and those that we care about. And doing that some of those ways is actually by sending money to them, support them financially. And that's where really our products and our services come into play that, you know, and really support those families. So, it was really a great opportunity for us to really support and really bring some of our products to the next level and supporting our business going forward. >> Awesome, thank you. Now, I want to come back to Gustavo. Tom, I'd love for you to chime in too. Did you guys ever think like you were pushing the envelope too much in doing things with data or the technology that it was just maybe too bold, maybe you felt like at some point it was failing, or you're pushing your people too hard? Can you share that experience and how you got through it? >> Yeah, the way I look at it is, you know, again, whenever I go to an organization, I ask the question, "Hey, how fast you would like to conform?" And, you know, based on the agreements on the leadership and the vision that we want to take place, I take decisions and I collaborate in a specific way. Now, in the case of COVID, for example, right, it forces us to remove silos and collaborate in a faster way. So to me, it was an opportunity to actually integrate with other areas and drive decisions faster, but make no mistake about it, when you are doing a transformation, you are obviously trying to do things faster than sometimes people are comfortable doing, and you need to be okay with that. Sometimes you need to be okay with tension or you need to be okay, you know, debating points or making repetitive business cases until people connect with the decision because you understand and you are seeing that, "Hey, the CEO is making a one, two year, you know, efficiency goal. The only way for us to really do more with less is for us to continue this path. We can not just stay with the status quo, we need to find a way to accelerate the transformation." That's the way I see it. >> How about Utah, we were talking earlier with Sudheesh and Cindi about that bungee jumping moment. What can you share? >> Yeah, you know, I think you hit upon it. Right now, the pace of change will be the slowest pace that you see for the rest of your career. So as part of that, right, this is what I tell my team, is that you need to be, you need to feel comfortable being uncomfortable. Meaning that we have to be able to basically scale, right? Expand and support the ever changing needs in the marketplace and industry and our customers today, and that pace of change that's happening, right? And what customers are asking for and the competition in the marketplace, it's only going to accelerate. So as part of that, you know, as you look at how you're operating today in your current business model, right? Things are only going to get faster. So you have to plan and to align and to drive the actual transformation, so that you can scale even faster into the future. So it's part of that, that's what we're putting in place here, right? It's how do we create that underlying framework and foundation that allows the organization to basically continue to scale and evolve into the future? >> Yeah, we're definitely out of our comfort zones, but we're getting comfortable with it. So Cindi, last question, you've worked with hundreds of organizations and I got to believe that, you know, some of the advice you gave when you were at Gartner, which was pre-COVID, maybe sometimes clients didn't always act on it. You know, not my watch or for whatever, variety of reasons, but it's being forced on them now. But knowing what you know now that, you know, we're all in this isolation economy, how would you say that advice has changed? Has it changed? What's your number one action and recommendation today? >> Yeah, well first off, Tom, just freaked me out. What do you mean, this is the slowest ever? Even six months ago I was saying the pace of change in data and analytics is frenetic. So, but I think you're right, Tom, the business and the technology together is forcing this change. Now, Dave, to answer your question, I would say the one bit of advice, maybe I was a little more very aware of the power in politics and how to bring people along in a way that they are comfortable and now I think it's, you know what, you can't get comfortable. In fact, we know that the organizations that were already in the cloud have been able to respond and pivot faster. So, if you really want to survive, as Tom and Gustavo said, get used to being uncomfortable. The power and politics are going to happen, break the rules, get used to that and be bold. Do not be afraid to tell somebody they're wrong and they're not moving fast enough. I do think you have to do that with empathy, as Michelle said and Gustavo, I think that's one of the key words today besides the bungee jumping. So I want to know where Sudheesh is going to go bungee jumping. (all chuckling) >> Guys, fantastic discussion, really. Thanks again to all the panelists and the guests, it was really a pleasure speaking with you today. Really, virtually all of the leaders that I've spoken to in theCUBE program recently, they tell me that the pandemic is accelerating so many things. Whether it's new ways to work, we heard about new security models and obviously the need for cloud. I mean, all of these things are driving true enterprise-wide digital transformation, not just as I said before, lip service. You know, sometimes we minimize the importance and the challenge of building culture and in making this transformation possible. But when it's done right, the right culture is going to deliver tournament results. You know, what does that mean? Getting it right. Everybody's trying to get it right. My biggest takeaway today is it means making data part of the DNA of your organization. And that means making it accessible to the people in your organization that are empowered to make decisions, decisions that can drive new revenue, cut costs, speed access to critical care, whatever the mission is of your organization, data can create insights and informed decisions that drive value. Okay, let's bring back Sudheesh and wrap things up. Sudheesh, please bring us home. >> Thank you, thank you, Dave. Thank you, theCUBE team, and thanks goes to all of our customers and partners who joined us, and thanks to all of you for spending the time with us. I want to do three quick things and then close it off. The first thing is I want to summarize the key takeaways that I heard from all four of our distinguished speakers. First, Michelle, I will simply put it, she said it really well. That is be brave and drive, don't go for a drive alone. That is such an important point. Often times, you know the right thing that you have to do to make the positive change that you want to see happen, but you wait for someone else to do it, not just, why not you? Why don't you be the one making that change happen? That's the thing that I picked up from Michelle's talk. Cindi talked about finding, the importance of finding your voice. Taking that chair, whether it's available or not, and making sure that your ideas, your voice is heard and if it requires some force, then apply that force. Make sure your ideas are heard. Gustavo talked about the importance of building consensus, not going at things all alone sometimes. The importance of building the quorum, and that is critical because if you want the changes to last, you want to make sure that the organization is fully behind it. Tom, instead of a single takeaway, what I was inspired by is the fact that a company that is 170 years old, 170 years old, 200 companies and 200 countries they're operating in and they were able to make the change that is necessary through this difficult time in a matter of months. If they could do it, anyone could. The second thing I want to do is to leave you with a takeaway, that is I would like you to go to ThoughtSpot.com/nfl because our team has made an app for NFL on Snowflake. I think you will find this interesting now that you are inspired and excited because of Michelle's talk. And the last thing is, please go to ThoughtSpot.com/beyond. Our global user conference is happening in this December. We would love to have you join us, it's, again, virtual, you can join from anywhere. We are expecting anywhere from five to 10,000 people and we would love to have you join and see what we've been up to since last year. We have a lot of amazing things in store for you, our customers, our partners, our collaborators, they will be coming and sharing. We'll be sharing things that we have been working to release, something that will come out next year. And also some of the crazy ideas our engineers have been cooking up. All of those things will be available for you at ThoughtSpot Beyond. Thank you, thank you so much.

>> Data is at the heart of transformation and the change every company needs to succeed, but it takes more than new technology. It's about teams, talent and cultural change. Empowering everyone on the front lines to make decisions all at the speed of digital. The transformation starts with you. It's time to lead the way it's time for Thought leaders. >> Welcome to "Thought Leaders" a digital event brought to you by ThoughtSpot. My name is Dave Vellante. The purpose of this day is to bring industry leaders and experts together to really try and understand the important issues around digital transformation. We have an amazing lineup of speakers and our goal is to provide you with some best practices that you can bring back and apply to your organization. Look, data is plentiful, but insights are not. ThoughtSpot is disrupting analytics by using search and machine intelligence to simplify data analysis and really empower anyone with fast access to relevant data. But in the last 150 days, we've had more questions than answers. Creating an organization that puts data and insights at their core requires not only modern technology, but leadership, a mindset and a culture that people often refer to as data-driven. What does that mean? How can we equip our teams with data and fast access to quality information that can turn insights into action. And today we're going to hear from experienced leaders who are transforming their organizations with data, insights and creating digital first cultures. But before we introduce our speakers, I'm joined today by two of my co-hosts from ThoughtSpot first chief data strategy officer at the ThoughtSpot is Cindi Howson. Cindi is an analytics and BI expert with 20 plus years experience and the author of "Successful Business Intelligence "Unlock the Value of BI & Big Data." Cindi was previously the lead analyst at Gartner for the data and analytics magic quadrant. And early last year, she joined ThoughtSpot to help CDOs and their teams understand how best to leverage analytics and AI for digital transformation. Cindi, great to see you welcome to the show. >> Thank you, Dave. Nice to join you virtually. >> Now our second cohost and friend of the cube is ThoughtSpot CEO Sudheesh Nair Hello, Sudheesh how are you doing today? >> I'm well Dave, it's good to talk to you again. >> It's great to see you thanks so much for being here. Now Sudheesh please share with us why this discussion is so important to your customers and of course, to our audience and what they're going to learn today. (upbeat music) >> Thanks, Dave. I wish you were there to introduce me into every room and that I walk into because you have such an amazing way of doing it. Makes me feel all so good. Look, since we have all been cooped up in our homes, I know that the vendors like us, we have amped up our sort of effort to reach out to you with invites for events like this. So we are getting very more invites for events like this than ever before. So when we started planning for this, we had three clear goals that we wanted to accomplish. And our first one that when you finish this and walk away, we want to make sure that you don't feel like it was a waste of time. We want to make sure that we value your time and this is going to be useful. Number two, we want to put you in touch with industry leaders and thought leaders, generally good people that you want to hang around with long after this event is over. And number three, as we plan through this, we are living through these difficult times. We want an event to be this event, to be more of an uplifting and inspiring event too. Now, the challenge is how do you do that with the team being change agents because change and as much as we romanticize it, it is not one of those uplifting things that everyone wants to do, or like to do. The way I think of it sort of like a, if you've ever done bungee jumping and it's like standing on the edges waiting to make that one more step, all you have to do is take that one step and gravity will do the rest, but that is the hardest step to take. Change requires a lot of courage. And when we are talking about data and analytics, which is already like such a hard topic, not necessarily an uplifting and positive conversation in most businesses, it is somewhat scary. Change becomes all the more difficult. Ultimately change requires courage. Courage to first of all challenge the status quo. People sometimes are afraid to challenge the status quo because they are thinking that maybe I don't have the power to make the change that the company needs. Sometimes they feel like I don't have the skills. Sometimes they may feel that I'm probably not the right person do it. Or sometimes the lack of courage manifest itself as the inability to sort of break the silos that are formed within the organizations, when it comes to data and insights that you talked about. There are people in the company who are going to hog the data because they know how to manage the data, how to inquire and extract. They know how to speak data. They have the skills to do that. But they are not the group of people who have sort of the knowledge, the experience of the business to ask the right questions off the data. So there is the silo of people with the answers, and there is a silo of people with the questions. And there is gap. This sort of silos are standing in the way of making that necessary change that we all know the business needs. And the last change to sort of bring an external force sometimes. It could be a tool. It could be a platform, it could be a person, it could be a process, but sometimes no matter how big the company is or how small the company is, you may need to bring some external stimuli to start the domino of the positive changes that are necessary. The group of people that we are brought in, the four people, including Cindi, that you will hear from today are really good at practically telling you how to make that step, how to step off that edge, how to dress the rope, that you will be safe and you're going to have fun. You will have that exhilarating feeling of jumping, for a bungee jump. All four of them are exceptional, but my honor is to introduce Michelle and she's our first speaker. Michelle, I am very happy after watching her presentation and reading our bio, that there are no country vital worldwide competition for cool patterns, because she will beat all of us because when her children were small, they were probably into Harry Potter and Disney. She was managing a business and leading change there. And then as her kids grew up and got to that age where they like football and NFL, guess what? She's the CIO of NFL. What a cool mom? I am extremely excited to see what she's going to talk about. I've seen the slides, tons of amazing pictures. I'm looking to see the context behind it. I'm very thrilled to make the acquaintance of Michelle and looking forward to her talk next. Welcome Michelle, it's over to you. (upbeat music) >> I'm delighted to be with you all today to talk about thought leadership. And I'm so excited that you asked me to join you because today I get to be a quarterback. I always wanted to be one. And I thought this is about as close as I'm ever going to get. So I want to talk to you about quarterbacking, our digital revolution using insights data. And of course, as you said, leadership, first a little bit about myself, a little background, as I said, I always wanted to play football. And this is something that I wanted to do since I was a child. But when I grew up, girls didn't get to play football. I'm so happy that that's changing and girls are now doing all kinds of things that they didn't get to do before. Just this past weekend on an NFL field, we had a female coach on two sidelines and a female official on the field. I'm a lifelong fan and student of the game of football. I grew up in the South. You can tell from the accent. And in the South football is like a religion and you pick sides. I chose Auburn university working in the athletic department. So I'm Testament to you can start the journey can be long. It took me many, many years to make it into professional sports. I graduated in 1987 and my little brother, well, not actually not so little. He played offensive line for the Alabama Crimson Tide. And for those of you who know SCC football, you know this is a really big rivalry. And when you choose sides, your family is divided. So it's kind of fun for me to always tell the story that my dad knew his kid would make it to the NFL. He just bet on the wrong one. My career has been about bringing people together for memorable moments at some of America's most iconic brands, delivering memories and amazing experiences that delight from Universal Studios, Disney to my current position as CIO of the NFL. In this job I'm very privileged to have the opportunity to work with the team that gets to bring America's game to millions of people around the world. Often I'm asked to talk about how to create amazing experiences for fans, guests, or customers. But today I really wanted to focus on something different and talk to you about being behind the scenes and backstage because behind every event, every game, every awesome moment is execution, precise, repeatable execution. And most of my career has been behind the scenes doing just that assembling teams to execute these plans. And the key way that companies operate at these exceptional levels is making good decisions, the right decisions at the right time and based upon data so that you can translate the data into intelligence and be a data-driven culture. Using data and intelligence is an important way that world-class companies do differentiate themselves. And it's the lifeblood of collaboration and innovation. Teams that are working on delivering these kinds of world casts experiences are often seeking out and leveraging next-generation technologies and finding new ways to work. I've been fortunate to work across three decades of emerging experiences, which each required emerging technologies to execute a little bit first about Disney in the 90s, I was at Disney leading a project called destination Disney, which it's a data project. It was a data project, but it was CRM before CRM was even cool. And then certainly before anything like a data-driven culture was ever brought up, but way back then we were creating a digital backbone that enabled many technologies for the things that you see today, like the magic band, Disney's magical express. My career at Disney began in finance, but Disney was very good about rotating you around. And it was during one of these rotations that I became very passionate about data. I kind of became a pain in the butt to the IT team asking for data more and more data. And I learned that all of that valuable data was locked up in our systems. All of our point of sales systems, our reservation systems, our operation systems. And so I became a shadow IT person in marketing, ultimately leading to moving into IT. And I haven't looked back since. In the early two thousands, I was at universal studios theme park as their CIO preparing for and launching "The Wizarding World of Harry Potter" bringing one of history's most memorable characters to life required many new technologies and a lot of data. Our data and technologies were embedded into the rides and attractions. I mean, how do you really think a wan selects you at a wan shop. As today at the NFL? I am constantly challenged to do leading edge technologies, using things like sensors, AI, machine learning, and all new communication strategies and using data to drive everything from player performance, contracts, to where we build new stadiums and hold events with this year being the most challenging yet rewarding year in my career at the NFL. In the middle of a global pandemic, the way we are executing on our season is leveraging data from contract tracing devices joined with testing data, talk about data, actually enabling your business without it w wouldn't be having a season right now. I'm also on the board of directors of two public companies where data and collaboration are paramount. First RingCentral, it's a cloud based unified communications platform and collaboration with video message and phone all in one solution in the cloud and Quotient technologies whose product is actually data. The tagline at Quotient is the result in knowing I think that's really important because not all of us are data companies where your product is actually data, but we should operate more like your product is data. I'd also like to talk to you about four areas of things to think about as thought leaders in your companies. First just hit on it is change how to be a champion and a driver of change. Second, how do you use data to drive performance for your company and measure performance of your company? Third, how companies now require intense collaboration to operate. And finally, how much of this is accomplished through solid data driven decisions. First let's hit on change. I mean, it's evident today more than ever, that we are in an environment of extreme change. I mean, we've all been at this for years and as technologists we've known it, believed it, lived it and thankfully for the most part, knock on what we were prepared for it. But this year everyone's cheese was moved. All the people in the back rooms, IT, data architects and others were suddenly called to the forefront because a global pandemic has turned out to be the thing that is driving intense change in how people work and analyze their business. On March 13th, we closed our office at the NFL in the middle of preparing for one of our biggest events, our kickoff event, the 2020 draft. We went from planning a large event in Las Vegas under the bright lights, red carpet stage to smaller events in club facilities. And then ultimately to one where everyone coaches GM's prospects and even our commissioner were at home in their basements. And we only had a few weeks to figure it out. I found myself for the first time being in the live broadcast event space, talking about bungee jumping. This is really what it felt like. It was one in which no one felt comfortable because it had not been done before. But leading through this, I stepped up, but it was very scary. It was certainly very risky, but it ended up being all so rewarding when we did it. And as a result of this, some things will change forever. Second, managing performance. I mean, data should inform how you're doing and how to get your company to perform at it's level. Highest level. As an example, the NFL has always measured performance, obviously, and it is one of the purest examples of how performance directly impacts outcome. I mean, you can see performance on the field. You can see points being scored in stats, and you immediately know that impact those with the best stats usually when the games. The NFL has always recorded stats since the beginning of time here at the NFL a little this year is our 101 year and athletes ultimate success as a player has also always been greatly impacted by his stats. But what has changed for us is both how much more we can measure and the immediacy with which it can be measured. And I'm sure in your business it's the same. The amount of data you must have has got to have quadrupled and how fast you need it and how quickly you need to analyze it is so important. And it's very important to break the silos between the keys, to the data and the use of the data. Our next generation stats platform is taking data to a next level. It's powered by Amazon web services. And we gathered this data real-time from sensors that are on players' bodies. We gather it in real time, analyze it, display it online and on broadcast. And of course it's used to prepare week to week in addition to what is a normal coaching plan would be. We can now analyze, visualize route patterns, speed match-ups, et cetera. So much faster than ever before. We're continuing to roll out sensors too that will gather more and more information about a player's performance as it relates to their health and safety. The third trend is really, I think it's a big part of what we're feeling today and that is intense collaboration. And just for sort of historical purposes, it's important to think about for those of you that are IT professionals and developers, more than 10 years ago, agile practices began sweeping companies where small teams would work together rapidly in a very flexible, adaptive, and innovative way. And it proved to be transformational. However, today, of course, that is no longer just small teams, the next big wave of change. And we've seen it through this pandemic is that it's the whole enterprise that must collaborate and be agile. If I look back on my career, when I was at Disney, we owned everything 100%. We made a decision, we implemented it. We were a collaborative culture, but it was much easier to push change because you own the whole decision. If there was buy-in from the top down, you've got the people from the bottom up to do it and you executed. At Universal we were a joint venture. Our attractions and entertainment was licensed. Our hotels were owned and managed by other third parties. So influence and collaboration and how to share across companies became very important. And now here I am at the NFL and even the bigger ecosystem, we have 32 clubs that are all separate businesses. 31 different stadiums that are owned by a variety of people. We have licensees, we have sponsors, we have broadcast partners. So it seems that as my career has evolved, centralized control has gotten less and less and has been replaced by intense collaboration, not only within your own company, but across companies. The ability to work in a collaborative way across businesses and even other companies that has been a big key to my success in my career. I believe this whole vertical integration and big top-down decision-making is going by the wayside in favor of ecosystems that require cooperation yet competition to co-exist. I mean, the NFL is a great example of what we call co-op petition, which is cooperation and competition. We're in competition with each other, but we cooperate to make the company the best it can be. And at the heart of these items really are data driven decisions and culture. Data on its own isn't good enough. You must be able to turn it to insights. Partnerships between technology teams who usually hold the keys to the raw data and business units who have the knowledge to build the right decision models is key. If you're not already involved in this linkage, you should be. Data mining isn't new for sure. The availability of data is quadrupling and it's everywhere. How do you know what to even look at? How do you know where to begin? How do you know what questions to ask it's by using the tools that are available for visualization and analytics and knitting together strategies of the company. So it begins with first of all, making sure you do understand the strategy of the company. So in closing, just to wrap up a bit, many of you joined today, looking for thought leadership on how to be a change agent, a change champion, and how to lead through transformation. Some final thoughts are be brave and drive. Don't do the ride along program. It's very important to drive. Driving can be high risk, but it's also high reward. Embracing the uncertainty of what will happen is how you become brave. Get more and more comfortable with uncertainty, be calm and let data be your map on your journey. Thanks. >> Michelle, tank you so much. So you and I share a love of data and a love of football. You said you want to be the quarterback. I'm more an old line person. (Michelle and Cindi laughing) >> Well, then I can do my job without you. >> Great. And I'm getting the feeling now, Sudheesh is talking about bungee jumping. My vote is when we're past this pandemic, we both take them to the Delaware water gap and we do the cliff jumping. >> That sounds good, I'll watch. >> Yeah, you'll watch, okay. So Michelle, you have so many stakeholders when you're trying to prioritize the different voices. You have the players, you have the owners, you have the league, as you mentioned, the broadcasters, your partners here and football mamas like myself. How do you prioritize when there's so many different stakeholders that you need to satisfy? >> I think balancing across stakeholders starts with, aligning on a mission. And if you spend a lot of time understanding where everyone's coming from, and you can find the common thread that ties them all together, you sort of do get them to naturally prioritize their work. And I think that's very important. So for us, at the NFL and even at Disney, it was our core values and our core purpose, is so well known and when anything challenges that we're able to sort of lay that out. But as a change agent, you have to be very empathetic. And I would say empathy is probably your strongest skill if you're a change agent. And that means listening to every single stakeholder, even when they're yelling at you, even when they're telling you your technology doesn't work and you know that it's user error, or even when someone is just emotional about what's happening to them and that they're not comfortable with it. So I think being empathetic and having a mission and understanding it is sort of how I prioritize and balance. >> Yeah, empathy, a very popular word this year. I can imagine those coaches and owners yelling. So, thank you for your leadership here. So Michelle, I look forward to discussing this more with our other customers and disruptors joining us in a little bit. (upbeat music) So we're going to take a hard pivot now and go from football to Chernobyl. Chernobyl what went wrong? 1986, as the reactors were melting down, they had the data to say, this is going to be catastrophic. And yet the culture said, "no, we're perfect, hide it. "Don't dare tell anyone." Which meant they went ahead and had celebrations in Kiev. Even though that increased the exposure, the additional thousands getting cancer and 20,000 years before the ground around there can even be inhabited again, this is how powerful and detrimental a negative culture, a culture that is unable to confront the brutal facts that hides data. This is what we have to contend with. And this is why I want you to focus on having, fostering a data-driven culture. I don't want you to be a laggard. I want you to be a leader in using data to drive your digital transformation. So I'll talk about culture and technology. Is it really two sides of the same coin, real-world impacts and then some best practices you can use to and innovate your culture. Now, oftentimes I would talk about culture and I talk about technology. And recently a CDO said to me, "Cindi, I actually think this is two sides "of the same coin. "One reflects the other." What do you think? Let me walk you through this. So let's take a laggard. What does the technology look like? Is it based on 1990s BI and reporting largely parametrized reports, on premises data, warehouses, or not even that operational reports at best one enterprise data warehouse, very slow moving and collaboration is only email. What does that culture tell you? Maybe there's a lack of leadership to change, to do the hard work that Sudheesh referred to, or is there also a culture of fear, afraid of failure, resistance to change complacency. And sometimes that complacency it's not because people are lazy. It's because they've been so beaten down every time a new idea is presented. It's like, no we're measured on least cost to serve. So politics and distrust, whether it's between business and IT or individual stakeholders is the norm. So data is hoarded. Let's contrast that with a leader, a data and analytics leader, what is their technology look like? Augmented analytics search and AI driven insights, not on premises, but in the cloud and maybe multiple clouds. And the data is not in one place, but it's in a data Lake and in a data warehouse, a logical data warehouse. The collaboration is being a newer methods, whether it's Slack or teams allowing for that real time decisioning or investigating a particular data point. So what is the culture in the leaders? It's transparent and trust. There is a trust that data will not be used to punish that there is an ability to confront the bad news. It's innovation, valuing innovation in pursuit of the company goals, whether it's the best fan experience and player safety in the NFL or best serving your customers. It's innovative and collaborative. There's none of this. Oh, well, I didn't invent that. I'm not going to look at that. There's still pride of ownership, but it's collaborating to get to a better place faster. And people feel empowered to present new ideas to fail fast, and they're energized knowing that they're using the best technology and innovating at the pace that business requires. So data is democratized. And democratized, not just for power users or analysts, but really at the point of impact what we like to call the new decision-makers or really the frontline workers. So Harvard business review partnered with us to develop this study to say, just how important is this? We've been working at BI and analytics as an industry for more than 20 years. Why is it not at the front lines? Whether it's a doctor, a nurse, a coach, a supply chain manager, a warehouse manager, a financial services advisor. Everyone said that if our 87% said, they would be more successful if frontline workers were empowered with data driven insights, but they recognize they need new technology to be able to do that. It's not about learning hard tools. The sad reality, only 20% of organizations are actually doing this. These are the data-driven leaders. So this is the culture in technology. How did we get here? It's because state-of-the-art keeps changing. So the first-generation BI and analytics platforms were deployed on premises on small datasets, really just taking data out of ERP systems that were also on premises. And state-of-the-art was maybe getting a management report, an operational report. Over time visual-based data discovery vendors disrupted these traditional BI vendors, empowering now analysts to create visualizations with the flexibility on a desktop, sometimes larger data, sometimes coming from a data warehouse. The current state of the art though, Gartner calls it augmented analytics at ThoughtSpot, we call it search and AI driven analytics. And this was pioneered for large scale datasets, whether it's on premises or leveraging the cloud data warehouses. And I think this is an important point. Oftentimes you, the data and analytics leaders will look at these two components separately, but you have to look at the BI and analytics tier in lockstep with your data architectures to really get to the granular insights and to leverage the capabilities of AI. Now, if you've never seen ThoughtSpot, I'll just show you what this looks like. Instead of somebody hard coding, a report it's typing in search keywords and very robust keywords contains rank top bottom, getting to a visual visualization that then can be pinned to an existing Pin board that might also contain insights generated by an AI engine. So it's easy enough for that new decision maker, the business user, the non analyst to create themselves. Modernizing the data and analytics portfolio is hard because the pace of change has accelerated. You use to be able to create an investment place a bet for maybe 10 years, a few years ago, that time horizon was five years, now it's maybe three years and the time to maturity has also accelerated. So you have these different components, the search and AI tier, the data science tier, data preparation and virtualization. But I would also say equally important is the cloud data warehouse and pay attention to how well these analytics tools can unlock the value in these cloud data warehouses. So ThoughtSpot was the first to market with search and AI driven insights. Competitors have followed suit, but be careful if you look at products like power BI or SAP analytics cloud, they might demo well, but do they let you get to all the data without moving it in products like Snowflake, Amazon Redshift, or Azure synapse or Google big query, they do not. They require you to move it into a smaller in memory engine. So it's important how well these new products inter operate. the pace of change, its acceleration Gartner recently predicted that by 2022, 65% of analytical queries will be generated using search or NLP or even AI. And that is roughly three times the prediction they had just a couple years ago. So let's talk about the real world impact of culture. And if you read any of my books or used any of the maturity models out there, whether the Gartner IT score that I worked on, or the data warehousing Institute also has the money surety model. We talk about these five pillars to really become data-driven. As Michelle, I spoke about it's focusing on the business outcomes, leveraging all the data, including new data sources, it's the talent, the people, the technology, and also the processes. And often when I would talk about the people and the talent, I would lump the culture as part of that. But in the last year, as I've traveled the world and done these digital events for Thought leaders, you have told me now culture is absolutely so important. And so we've pulled it out as a separate pillar. And in fact, in polls that we've done in these events, look at how much more important culture is as a barrier to becoming data-driven it's three times as important as any of these other pillars. That's how critical it is. And let's take an example of where you can have great data, but if you don't have the right culture, there's devastating impacts. And I will say, I have been a loyal customer of Wells Fargo for more than 20 years. But look at what happened in the face of negative news with data, it said, "hey, we're not doing good cross selling, "customers do not have both a checking account "and a credit card and a savings account and a mortgage." They opened fake accounts facing billions in fines, change in leadership that even the CEO attributed to a toxic sales culture, and they're trying to fix this. But even recently there's been additional employee backlash saying the culture has not changed. Let's contrast that with some positive examples, Medtronic, a worldwide company in 150 countries around the world. They may not be a household name to you, but if you have a loved one or yourself, you have a pacemaker, spinal implant diabetes, you know this brand. And at the start of COVID when they knew their business would be slowing down, because hospitals would only be able to take care of COVID patients. They took the bold move of making their IP for ventilators publicly available. That is the power of a positive culture. Or Verizon, a major telecom organization looking at late payments of their customers. And even though the U.S federal government said, "well, you can't turn them off. They said, "we'll extend that even beyond "the mandated guidelines." And facing a slow down in the business because of the tough economy, they said, you know what? "We will spend the time up skilling our people, "giving them the time to learn more "about the future of work, the skills and data "and analytics," for 20,000 of their employees, rather than furloughing them. That is the power of a positive culture. So how can you transform your culture to the best in class? I'll give you three suggestions, bring in a change agent, identify the relevance, or I like to call it WIFM and organize for collaboration. So the CDO, whatever your title is, chief analytics officer, chief digital officer, you are the most important change agent. And this is where you will hear that oftentimes a change agent has to come from outside the organization. So this is where, for example, in Europe, you have the CDO of Just Eat a takeout food delivery organization coming from the airline industry or in Australia, National Australian bank, taking a CDO within the same sector from TD bank going to NAB. So these change agents come in disrupt. It's a hard job. As one of you said to me, it often feels like Sisyphus. I make one step forward and I get knocked down again. I get pushed back. It is not for the faint of heart, but it's the most important part of your job. The other thing I'll talk about is WIFM. What is in it for me? And this is really about understanding the motivation, the relevance that data has for everyone on the frontline, as well as those analysts, as well as the executives. So if we're talking about players in the NFL, they want to perform better and they want to stay safe. That is why data matters to them. If we're talking about financial services, this may be a wealth management advisor. Okay we could say commissions, but it's really helping people have their dreams come true, whether it's putting their children through college or being able to retire without having to work multiple jobs still into your 70s or 80s for the teachers, teachers, you ask them about data. They'll say we don't, we don't need that. I care about the student. So if you can use data to help a student perform better, that is WIFM. And sometimes we spend so much time talking the technology, we forget what is the value we're trying to deliver with it. And we forget the impact on the people that it does require change. In fact, the Harvard business review study found that 44% said lack of change management is the biggest barrier to leveraging both new technology, but also being empowered to act on those data-driven insights. The third point organize for collaboration. This does require diversity of thought, but also bringing the technology, the data and the business people together. Now there's not a single one size fits all model for data and analytics. At one point in time, even having a BICC, a BI competency center was considered state-of-the-art. Now for the biggest impact what I recommend is that you have a federated model centralized for economies of scale. That could be the common data, but then in bed, these evangelists, these analysts of the future within every business unit, every functional domain. And as you see this top bar, all models are possible, but the hybrid model has the most impact, the most leaders. So as we look ahead to the months ahead, to the year ahead an exciting time, because data is helping organizations better navigate a tough economy, lock in the customer loyalty. And I look forward to seeing how you foster that culture that's collaborative with empathy and bring the best of technology, leveraging the cloud, all your data. So thank you for joining us at Thought Leaders. And next I'm pleased to introduce our first change agent, Tom Mazzaferro chief data officer of Western union. And before joining Western union, Tom made his Mark at HSBC and JPMorgan Chase spearheading digital innovation in technology, operations, risk compliance, and retail banking. Tom, thank you so much for joining us today. (upbeat music) >> Very happy to be here and looking forward to talking to all of you today. So as we look to move organizations to a data-driven, capability into the future, there is a lot that needs to be done on the data side, but also how does data connect and enable different business teams and technology teams into the future. As you look across, our data ecosystems and our platforms and how we modernize that to the cloud in the future, it all needs to basically work together, right? To really be able to drive and over the shift from a data standpoint, into the future, that includes being able to have the right information with the right quality of data, at the right time to drive informed business decisions, to drive the business forward. As part of that, we actually have partnered with ThoughtSpot, to actually bring in the technology to help us drive that as part of that partnership. And it's how we've looked to integrate it into our overall business as a whole we've looked at how do we make sure that our business and our professional lives right, are enabled in the same ways as our personal lives. So for example, in your personal lives, when you want to go and find something out, what do you do? You go onto google.com or you go on to Bing we go onto Yahoo and you search for what you want search to find and answer. ThoughtSpot for us as the same thing, but in the business world. So using ThoughtSpot and other AI capability it's allowed us to actually, enable our overall business teams in our company to actually have our information at our fingertips. So rather than having to go and talk to someone or an engineer to go pull information or pull data, we actually can have the end-users or the business executives, right. Search for what they need, what they want at the exact time that action need it to go and drive the business forward. This is truly one of those transformational things that we've put in place. On top of that, we are on the journey to modernize our larger ecosystem as a whole. That includes modernizing our underlying data warehouses, our technology, or our Eloqua environments. And as we move that, we've actually picked two of our cloud providers going to AWS and GCP. We've also adopted Snowflake to really drive and to organize our information and our data then drive these new solutions and capabilities forward. So they portion of us though is culture. So how do we engage with the business teams and bring the IT teams together to really drive these holistic end to end solutions and capabilities to really support the actual business into the future? That's one of the keys here, as we look to modernize and to really enhance our organizations to become data-driven, this is the key. If you can really start to provide answers to business questions before they're even being asked and to predict based upon different economic trends or different trends in your business, what does this is maybe be made and actually provide those answers to the business teams before they're even asking for it, that is really becoming a data-driven organization. And as part of that, it's really then enables the business to act quickly and take advantage of opportunities as they come in based upon, industries based upon markets, based upon products, solutions, or partnerships into the future. These are really some of the keys that become crucial as you move forward, right, into this new age, especially with COVID. With COVID now taking place across the world, right? Many of these markets, many of these digital transformations are accelerating and are changing rapidly to accommodate and to support customers in these very difficult times, as part of that, you need to make sure you have the right underlying foundation ecosystems and solutions to really drive those capabilities and those solutions forward. As we go through this journey, both of my career, but also each of your careers into the future, right? It also needs to evolve, right? Technology has changed so drastically in the last 10 years, and that change is only accelerating. So as part of that, you have to make sure that you stay up to speed, up to date with new technology changes both on the platform standpoint tools, but also what do our customers want? What do our customers need and how do we then service them with our information, with our data, with our platform and with our products and our services to meet those needs and to really support and service those customers into the future. This is all around becoming a more data organization such as how do you use your data to support the current business lines, but how do you actually use your information, your data to actually put a better support your customers, better support your business, better support your employees, your operations teams, and so forth, and really creating that full integration in that ecosystem is really when you start to get large dividends from this investments into the future. But that being said, hope you enjoy the segment on how to become and how to drive it data driven organization. And, looking forward to talking to you again soon. Thank you. >> Tom that was great thanks so much. Now I'm going to have to brag on you for a second as a change agent you've come in disrupted and how long have you been at Western union? >> Only nine months, so just started this year, but, doing some great opportunities and great changes. And we have a lot more to go, but, we're really driving things forward in partnership with our business teams and our colleagues to support those customers going forward. >> Tom, thank you so much. That was wonderful. And now I'm excited to introduce you to Gustavo Canton, a change agent that I've had the pleasure of working with meeting in Europe, and he is a serial change agent, most recently with Schneider electric, but even going back to Sam's clubs, Gustavo welcome. (upbeat music) >> So, hey everyone, my name is Gustavo Canton and thank you so much, Cindi, for the intro, as you mentioned, doing transformations is high effort, high reward situation. I have empowered many transformations and I have led many transformations. And what I can tell you is that it's really hard to predict the future, but if you have a North star and where you're going, the one thing that I want you to take away from this discussion today is that you need to be bold to evolve. And so in today, I'm going to be talking about culture and data, and I'm going to break this down in four areas. How do we get started barriers or opportunities as I see it, the value of AI, and also, how do you communicate, especially now in the workforce of today with so many different generations, you need to make sure that you are communicating in ways that are non-traditional sometimes. And so how do we get started? So I think the answer to that is you have to start for you yourself as a leader and stay tuned. And by that, I mean, you need to understand not only what is happening in your function or your field, but you have to be varying into what is happening in society, socioeconomically speaking wellbeing. The common example is a great example. And for me personally, it's an opportunity because the one core value that I have is well-being, I believe that for human potential, for customers and communities to grow wellbeing should be at the center of every decision. And as somebody mentioned is great to be, stay in tune and have the skillset and the courage. But for me personally, to be honest, to have this courage is not about not being afraid. You're always afraid when you're making big changes when you're swimming upstream, but what gives me the courage is the empathy part. Like I think empathy is a huge component because every time I go into an organization or a function, I try to listen very attentively to the needs of the business and what the leaders are trying to do. What I do it thinking about the mission of how do I make change for the bigger, workforce? for the bigger good. Despite this fact that this might have a perhaps implication on my own self-interest in my career, right? Because you have to have that courage sometimes to make choices that I know we'll see in politically speaking, what are the right thing to do? And you have to push through it. And you have to push through it. So the bottom line for me is that I don't think they're transforming fast enough. And the reality is I speak with a lot of leaders and we have seen stories in the past. And what they show is that if you look at the four main barriers that are basically keeping us behind budget, inability to act cultural issues, politics, and lack of alignment, those are the top four. But the interesting thing is that as Cindi has mentioned, these topics culture is actually gaining, gaining more and more traction. And in 2018, there was a story from HBR and it was about 45%. I believe today it's about 55%, 60% of respondents say that this is the main area that we need to focus on. So again, for all those leaders and all the executives who understand and are aware that we need to transform, commit to the transformation and set a state, deadline to say, "hey, in two years, we're going to make this happen. "What do we need to do to empower and enable "this change engines to make it happen?" You need to make the tough choices. And so to me, when I speak about being bold is about making the right choices now. So I'll give you samples of some of the roadblocks that I went through as I think transformation most recently, as Cindi mentioned in Schneider. There are three main areas, legacy mindset. And what that means is that we've been doing this in a specific way for a long time and here is how we have been successful what was working the past is not going to work now. The opportunity there is that there is a lot of leaders who have a digital mindset and there're up and coming leaders that are not yet fully developed. We need to mentor those leaders and take bets on some of these talent, including young talent. We cannot be thinking in the past and just wait for people, three to five years for them to develop because the world is going to in a way that is super fast. The second area, and this is specifically to implementation of AI is very interesting to me because just example that I have with ThoughtSpot, right, we went to implementation and a lot of the way is the IT team function of the leaders look at technology, they look at it from the prism of the prior all success criteria for the traditional Bi's. And that's not going to work. Again the opportunity here is that you need to really find what successful look like. In my case, I want the user experience of our workforce to be the same as user experience you have at home is a very simple concept. And so we need to think about how do we gain the user experience with this augmented analytics tools and then work backwards to have the right talent processes and technology to enable that. And finally, with COVID a lot of pressuring organizations, and companies to do more with less. And the solution that most leaders I see are taking is to just minimize costs, sometimes in cut budget, we have to do the opposite. We have to actually invest some growth areas, but do it by business question. Don't do it by function. If you actually invest in these kind of solutions, if you actually invest on developing your talent, your leadership to see more digitally, if you actually invest on fixing your data platform, it's not just an incremental cost. It's actually this investment is going to offset all those hidden costs and inefficiencies that you have on your system, because people are doing a lot of work and working very hard, but it's not efficiency, and it's not working in the way that you might want to work. So there is a lot of opportunity there. And you just to put into some perspective, there have studies in the past about, how do we kind of measure the impact of data. And obviously this is going to vary by your organization maturity, is going to, there's going to be a lot of factors. I've been in companies who have very clean, good data to work with. And I think with companies that we have to start basically from scratch. So it all depends on your maturity level, but in this study, what I think is interesting is they try to put attack line or attack price to what is the cost of incomplete data. So in this case, it's about 10 times as much to complete a unit of work when you have data that is flawed as opposed to have perfect data. So let me put that just in perspective, just as an example, right? Imagine you are trying to do something and you have to do 100 things in a project, and each time you do something, it's going to cost you a dollar. So if you have perfect data, the total cost of that project might be $100. But now let's say you have any percent perfect data and 20% flawed data by using this assumption that flawed data is 10 times as costly as perfect data. Your total costs now becomes $280 as opposed to $100. This is just for you to really think about as a CIO CTO, CHRO CEO, are we really paying attention and really closing the gaps that we have on our data infrastructure. If we don't do that, it's hard sometimes to see the snowball effect or to measure the overall impact. But as you can tell the price that goes up very, very quickly. So now, if I were to say, how do I communicate this? Or how do I break through some of these challenges or some of these various, right. I think the key is I am in analytics. I know statistics obviously, and love modeling and data and optimization theory and all that stuff. That's what I came to analytics. But now as a leader and as a change agent, I need to speak about value. And in this case, for example, for Schneider, there was this tagline called free up your energy. So the number one thing that they were asking from the analytics team was actually efficiency, which to me was very interesting. But once I understood that I understood what kind of language to use, how to connect it to the overall strategy and basically how to bring in the, the right leaders, because you need to focus on the leaders that you're going to make the most progress. Again, low effort, high value. You need to make sure you centralize all the data as you can. You need to bring in some kind of augmented analytics solution. And finally you need to make it super simple for the, in this case, I was working with the HR teams in other areas, so they can have access to one portal. They don't have to be confused in looking for 10 different places to find information. I think if you can actually have those four foundational pillars, obviously under the guise of having a data-driven culture, that's when you can actually make the impact. So in our case, it was about three years total transformation, but it was two years for this component of augmented analytics. It took about two years to talk to IT get leadership support, find the budgeting, get everybody on board, make sure the safe criteria was correct. And we call this initiative, the people analytics portal, it was actually launched in July of this year. And we were very excited and the audience was very excited to do this. In this case, we did our pilot in North America for many, many manufacturers. But one thing that is really important is as you bring along your audience on this, you're going from Excel, in some cases or Tableau to other tools like, ThoughtSpot, you need to really explain them what is the difference and how these tools can truly replace, some of the spreadsheets or some of the views that you might have on these other kind of tools. Again, Tableau, I think it's a really good tool. There are other many tools that you might have in your toolkit. But in my case, personally, I feel that you need to have one portal going back to Cindi's point. I really truly enable the end user. And I feel that this is the right solution for us, right? And I will show you some of the findings that we had in the pilot in the last two months. So this was a huge victory, and I will tell you why, because it took a lot of effort for us to get to the station. Like I said, it's been years for us to kind of lay the foundation, get the leadership, and shaping culture so people can understand why you truly need to invest on (indistinct) analytics. And so what I'm showing here is an example of how do we use basically, a tool to capture in video the qualitative findings that we had, plus the quantitative insights that we have. So in this case, our preliminary results based on our ambition for three main metrics, hours saved user experience and adoption. So for hours saved or a mission was to have 10 hours per week per employee save on average user experience, or ambition was 4.5. And adoption, 80%. In just two months, two months and a half of the pilot, we were able to achieve five hours per week per employee savings. Our user experience for 4.3 out of five and adoption of 60%. Really, really amazing work. But again, it takes a lot of collaboration for us to get to the stage from IT, legal, communications, obviously the operations teams and the users in HR safety and other areas that might be, basically stakeholders in this whole process. So just to summarize this kind of effort takes a lot of energy. You are a change agent. You need to have a courage to make the decision and understand that I feel that in this day and age, with all this disruption happening, we don't have a choice. We have to take the risk, right? And in this case, I feel a lot of satisfaction in how we were able to gain all these very source for this organization. And that gave me the confidence to know that the work has been done and we are now in a different stage for the organization. And so for me, it to say, thank you for everybody who has believed, obviously in our vision, everybody who has believe in the word that we were trying to do and to make the life of four workforce or customers or in community better. As you can tell, there is a lot of effort. There is a lot of collaboration that is needed to do something like this. In the end, I feel very satisfied. With the accomplishments of this transformation, and I just want to tell for you, if you are going right now in a moment that you feel that you have to swim upstream what would mentors, what would people in this industry that can help you out and guide you on this kind of a transformation is not easy to do is high effort, but is well worth it. And with that said, I hope you are well, and it's been a pleasure talking to you. Talk to you soon, take care. >> Thank you, Gustavo, that was amazing. All right, let's go to the panel. (air whooshing) >> Okay, now we're going to go into the panel and bring Cindi, Michelle, Tom, and Gustavo back and have an open discussion. And I think we can all agree how valuable it is to hear from practitioners. And I want to thank the panel for sharing their knowledge with the community. And one common challenge that I heard you all talk about was bringing your leadership and your teams along on the journey with you. We talk about this all the time, and it is critical to have support from the top. Why? Because it directs the middle and then it enables bottoms up innovation effects from the cultural transformation that you guys all talked about. It seems like another common theme we heard is that you all prioritize database decision-making in your organizations and you combine two of your most valuable assets to do that and create leverage, employees on the front lines. And of course the data. And as you rightly pointed out, Tom, the pandemic has accelerated the need for really leaning into this. The old saying, if it ain't broke don't fix it. Well COVID is broken everything. And it's great to hear from our experts, how to move forward. So let's get right into it. So Gustavo, let's start with you if I'm an aspiring change agent and let's say I'm a budding data leader. What do I need to start doing? What habits do I need to create for long lasting success? >> I think curiosity is very important. You need to be, like I say, in tune to what is happening, not only in your specific field, like I have a passion for analytics, I can do this for 50 years plus, but I think you need to understand wellbeing other areas across not only a specific business, as you know I come from, Sam's club Walmart, retail, I mean energy management technology. So you have to try to push yourself and basically go out of your comfort zone. I mean, if you are staying in your comfort zone and you want to use lean continuous improvement, that's just going to take you so far. What you have to do is, and that's what I try to do is I try to go into areas, businesses, and transformation that make me stretch and develop as a leader. That's what I'm looking to do so I can help transform the functions organizations and do the change management, change of mindset required for these kinds of efforts. >> Michelle, you're at the intersection of tech and sports and what a great combination, but they're both typically male oriented fields. I mean, we've talked a little bit about how that's changing, but two questions. Tell us how you found your voice and talk about why diversity matters so much more than ever now. >> No, I found my voice really as a young girl, and I think I had such amazing support from men in my life. And I think the support and sponsorship as well as sort of mentorship along the way, I've had amazing male mentors who have helped me understand that my voice is just as important as anyone else's. I mean, I have often heard, and I think it's been written about that a woman has to believe they'll 100% master topic before they'll talk about it where a man can feel much less mastery and go on and on. So I was that way as well. And I learned just by watching and being open, to have my voice. And honestly at times demand a seat at the table, which can be very uncomfortable. And you really do need those types of, support networks within an organization. And diversity of course is important and it has always been. But I think if anything, we're seeing in this country right now is that diversity among all types of categories is front and center. And we're realizing that we don't all think alike. We've always known this, but we're now talking about things that we never really talked about before. And we can't let this moment go unchecked and on, and not change how we operate. So having diverse voices within your company and in the field of tech and sports, I am often the first and only I'm was the first, CIO at the NFL, the first female senior executive. It was fun to be the first, but it's also, very challenging. And my responsibility is to just make sure that, I don't leave anyone behind and make sure that I leave it good for the next generation. >> Well, thank you for that. That is inspiring. And Cindi, you love data and the data's pretty clear that diversity is a good business, but I wonder if you can add your perspectives to this conversation? >> Yeah, so Michelle has a new fan here because she has found her voice. I'm still working on finding mine. And it's interesting because I was raised by my dad, a single dad. So he did teach me how to work in a predominantly male environment, but why I think diversity matters more now than ever before. And this is by gender, by race, by age, by just different ways of working in thinking is because as we automate things with AI, if we do not have diverse teams looking at the data and the models and how they're applied, we risk having bias at scale. So this is why I think I don't care what type of minority you are finding your voice, having a seat at the table and just believing in the impact of your work has never been more important. And as Michelle said more possible. >> Great perspectives, thank you. Tom I want to go to you. I mean, I feel like everybody in our businesses in some way, shape or form become a COVID expert, but what's been the impact of the pandemic on your organization's digital transformation plans? >> We've seen a massive growth actually in a digital business over the last, 12 months, really, even in celebration, right? Once COVID hit, we really saw that in the 200 countries and territories that we operate in today and service our customers, today, that there's been a huge need, right? To send money, to support family, to support, friends and support loved ones across the world. And as part of that we are very, honored to get to support those customers that we, across all the centers today. But as part of that acceleration we need to make sure that we had the right architecture and the right platforms to basically scale, right, to basically support and provide the right kind of security for our customers going forward. So as part of that, we did do some pivots and we did accelerate some of our plans on digital to help support that overall growth coming in and to support our customers going forward, because there were these times during this pandemic, right? This is the most important time. And we need to support those that we love and those that we care about and doing that it's one of those ways is actually by sending money to them, support them financially. And that's where, really our part of that our services come into play that we really support those families. So it was really a great opportunity for us to really support and really bring some of our products to this level and supporting our business going forward. >> Awesome, thank you. Now I want to come back to Gustavo, Tom I'd love for you to chime in too. Did you guys ever think like you were, you were pushing the envelope too much in doing things with data or the technology that was just maybe too bold, maybe you felt like at some point it was failing or you're pushing your people too hard. Can you share that experience and how you got through it? >> Yeah, the way I look at it is, again, whenever I go to an organization, I ask the question, hey, how fast you would like transform. And, based on the agreements from the leadership and the vision that we want to take place, I take decisions. And I collaborate in a specific way now, in the case of COVID, for example, right. It forces us to remove silos and collaborate in a faster way. So to me, it was an opportunity to actually integrate with other areas and drive decisions faster, but make no mistake about it. When you are doing a transformation, you are obviously trying to do things faster than sometimes people are comfortable doing, and you need to be okay with that. Sometimes you need to be okay with tension, or you need to be okay debating points or making repetitive business cases until people connect with the decision because you understand, and you are seeing that, "hey, the CEO is making a one two year, efficiency goal. "The only way for us to really do more with less "is for us to continue this path. "We cannot just stay with the status quo. "We need to find a way to accelerate the transformation." That's the way I see it. >> How about you Tom, we were talking earlier with Sudheesh and Cindi, about that bungee jumping moment. What could you share? >> Yeah, I think you hit upon it, right now, the pace of change with the slowest pace that you see for the rest of your career. So as part of that, right, that's what I tell my team is that you need to be, you need to feel comfortable being uncomfortable. I mean, that we have to be able to basically scale, right, expand and support that the ever-changing needs in the marketplace and industry our customers today, and that pace of change that's happening, right. And what customers are asking for and the competition in the marketplace, it's only going to accelerate. So as part of that, as you look at what, how you're operating today in your current business model, right. Things are only going to get faster. So you have to plan into a line into drive the agile transformation so that you can scale even faster in the future. So as part of that, that's what we're putting in place here, right, is how do we create that underlying framework and foundation that allows the organization to basically continue to scale and evolve into the future? >> Yeah, we're definitely out of our comfort zones, but we're getting comfortable with it. So, Cindi, last question, you've worked with hundreds of organizations, and I got to believe that, some of the advice you gave when you were at Gartner, which is pre COVID, maybe sometimes clients didn't always act on it. They're not on my watch for whatever variety of reasons, but it's being forced on them now. But knowing what you know now that we're all in this isolation economy, how would you say that advice has changed? Has it changed? What's your number one action and recommendation today? >> Yeah, well, first off, Tom just freaked me out. What do you mean? This is the slowest ever even six months ago I was saying the pace of change in data and analytics is frenetic. So, but I think you're right, Tom, the business and the technology together is forcing this change. Now, Dave, to answer your question, I would say the one bit of advice, maybe I was a little more, very aware of the power and politics and how to bring people along in a way that they are comfortable. And now I think it's, you know what you can't get comfortable. In fact, we know that the organizations that were already in the cloud have been able to respond and pivot faster. So if you really want to survive as Tom and Gustavo said, get used to being uncomfortable, the power and politics are going to happen. Break the rules, get used to that and be bold. Do not be afraid to tell somebody they're wrong and they're not moving fast enough. I do think you have to do that with empathy, as Michelle said, and Gustavo, I think that's one of the key words today besides the bungee jumping. So I want to know where's the dish going to go bungee jumping. >> Guys fantastic discussion, really. Thanks again to all the panelists and the guests. It was really a pleasure speaking with you today. Really virtually all of the leaders that I've spoken to in the Cube program. Recently, they tell me that the pandemic is accelerating so many things, whether it's new ways to work, we heard about new security models and obviously the need for cloud. I mean, all of these things are driving true enterprise wide digital transformation, not just, as I said before, lip service. Sometimes we minimize the importance and the challenge of building culture and in making this transformation possible. But when it's done, right, the right culture is going to deliver tremendous results. Yeah, what does that mean getting it right? Everybody's trying to get it right. My biggest takeaway today is it means making data part of the DNA of your organization. And that means making it accessible to the people in your organization that are empowered to make decisions, decisions that can drive new revenue, cut costs, speed access to critical care, whatever the mission is of your organization. Data can create insights and informed decisions that drive value. Okay. Let's bring back Sudheesh and wrap things up. Sudheesh, please bring us home. >> Thank you. Thank you, Dave. Thank you, the Cube team, and thank goes to all of our customers and partners who joined us and thanks to all of you for spending the time with us. I want to do three quick things and then close it off. The first thing is I want to summarize the key takeaways that I had from all four of our distinguished speakers. First, Michelle, I will simply put it. She said it really well. That is be brave and drive. Don't go for a drive along. That is such an important point. Oftentimes, you know that I think that you have to do to make the positive change that you want to see happen but you wait for someone else to do it, not just, why not you? Why don't you be the one making that change happen? That's the thing that I've picked up from Michelle's talk. Cindi talked about finding the importance of finding your voice. Taking that chair, whether it's available or not, and making sure that your ideas, your voices are heard, and if it requires some force, then apply that force. Make sure your ideas are heard. Gustavo talked about the importance of building consensus, not going at things all alone sometimes building the importance of building the quorum. And that is critical because if you want the changes to last, you want to make sure that the organization is fully behind it. Tom, instead of a single takeaway, what I was inspired by is the fact that a company that is 170 years old, 170 years old, 200 companies and 200 countries they're operating in. And they were able to make the change that is necessary through this difficult time. So in a matter of months, if they could do it, anyone could. The second thing I want to do is to leave you with a takeaway that is I would like you to go to topspot.com/nfl because our team has made an app for NFL on Snowflake. I think you will find this interesting now that you are inspired and excited because of Michelle's talk. And the last thing is please go to thoughtspot.com/beyond our global user conference is happening in this December. We would love to have you join us. It's again, virtual, you can join from anywhere. We are expecting anywhere from five to 10,000 people, and we would love to have you join and see what we've been up to since last year. We have a lot of amazing things in store for you, our customers, our partners, our collaborators, they will be coming and sharing. We'll be sharing things that we've have been working to release something that will come out next year. And also some of the crazy ideas our engineers have been cooking up. All of those things will be available for you at the Thought Spot Beyond. Thank you. Thank you so much.

(funky jazz music) >> From our studios in the heart of Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, California, this is a CUBE conversation. >> Hello, and welcome to theCUBE studios in Palo Alto, CA for another CUBE Conversation, where we go in-depth with thought leaders driving innovation across tech industry. I'm your host, Peter Burris. Everybody talks about the unbelievable explosion in the amount of data that digital business is going to generate. That's true. But there's an analogue to that, and that is the unbelievable explosion in software that's going to be created over the next decade. The difference, though, is that if you create data, sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad, different quality levels, but it's really easy to create really bad software, and bad software can take down a business. So as a consequence, every business, from the CIO down to the most lowly person in the organization, has to participate in the process of creating great software, either in the design or conceptualization standpoint, to a use standpoint. It's a very important topic and it's one I'm really excited about, and to have that conversation, we're joined by two great thought leaders in this space. Dominik Tornow is the principal engineer at the office of CTO at Cisco, and Sara Lynn Hua is a UX designer at Chegg, Inc. Thanks for joining us on theCUBE. >> Thanks for having us. >> So, Sara. Let's talk to you first. Tell us a little bit about Chegg. >> Yeah, so Chegg is an education technology company that provides both physical and fiscal services to students. >> Okay, great. So with that in mind, I want to come to this issue of the marriage of UX and the marriage of cloud native. Let's start here, what is UX? >> So UX stands for user experience design and user experience design is the process of creating a meaningful and intuitive experience in a product, like a software application for a user. >> So, cloud native. >> Well, cloud native applications, as we talked about, are applications that are scalable and reliable by construction. So in order to have a cloud native system, you need a system that is capable of detecting and mitigating load in failure, and you can basically say cloud and cloud native applications have as much in common as Java and JavaScript, or, if you want to avoid the bar fight, have as much in common as car and carpet. So cloud native application or cloud native systems have effects on your entire organization. >> So, Sara, as a UX person, a person who's really worried about having a, building software that is intuitive and useful for human beings, how do you think about the impact of cloud native? Is that something that is good, bad, indifferent? Where's cloud native at Chegg? >> So, Chegg is in the process of adopting cloud native principles. Chegg has three million subscribers and is actively growing especially in the international space, so obviously reliability and scalability are one of our highest priorities. We have a lot of different applications and we have a lot of different teams, so, due to a lot of different acquisitions, we're at different stages of adopting cloud native principles. >> So it's something that has immediate implications, not only as you talk to students and people who you are trying to inculturate to great UX design, but also in your business as well. >> Exactly. >> Alright, so let's get into this. Because there is a lot of excitement about cloud native and building applications faster, but as I said up front, it's not uncommon for people to build really bad applications fast. So, how does UX and cloud native come together? From your perspective, Sara, what do you think that marriage needs to look like? >> So I think a lot of what ends up happening with cloud native, adopting cloud native principles, is that user experience designers are sometimes left outside of that decision. We learn about it later on and there are lot of far-reaching implications of adopting cloud native principles that we normally don't think about from a design perspective, and one of them would be, we don't know to design for partial failure. If certain components depend on a service, and that part of the system then fails, then from a user experience perspective, a user using that component may have an awful experience, but we're not necessarily thinking about that in terms of reliability. >> So it's a reliability question, so some of the precepts of cloud native aren't recognized as potential constraints as you imagine the nature of the application, but still, you're still focused on translating user insights and user practices and user realities into design elements that can be built. But it starts with at least into design elements. You're trying to build the right application. Have I got that right? >> Mm-hmm. I think when we talk about how cloud native relates to design we also have to talk a bit about how designers and developers collaborate. >> So you've got UX folks that are really focused on building the right application. How does that impact the way cloud native developers have to start thinking? >> Well, if Sara is responsible for building the right application, I am responsible for building the application right, and there is, of course, there is a collaboration. There is a peer relationship between design and development, and design happens to be the first step in the process. So while designers uncover the requirements of the application, right, it is my job to implement these requirements. And in this case I am a service provider to the UX and UI designers, and I get to veto only on three counts. That is, if a certain design negatively impacts scalability, negatively impacts reliability, or, of course, negatively impacts security. Other than that, I only communicate the consequences. For example, consequences in terms of costs. So if designers lay out a few alternatives, design alternatives for an application, I can, of course, communicate, how long is it going to take to implement it? Or how costly is this solution going to be? However, it is, at the end of the day, the business and the design makes the decision. >> So if I think about it, if I can, just let me throw out kind of how I think about some of this stuff. I imagine you really focusing on the social dynamics that have to be reflected in the software, given, you know, human constraints and human experiences, and quite frankly whether or not people are going to find the system useful and meaningful and enjoyable to use, otherwise they don't adopt it, and I think of you in terms of the technology dynamics. So both of you are thinking about the underlying dynamics of how it's going to work. You facing the system and you facing the user. Have I got that right? >> Yes, you absolutely got that right. So if you make people happy, I make systems happy, and you see this is also a core conflict, right? So even though we are working on the same application, right, there is, of course, a lot of tension because we are pulling in two different directions. >> Mm-hmm. >> Well, you mentioned earlier what cloud native is and the idea, you know, all the things by design at the system level, but there are a number of techniques that cloud native developers are starting to apply. We talked a little bit about one of them up front, partial failure, that has to be accommodated because we're talking about a greater distribution of systems. One of them is eventual consistency. Historically we like to say, "Oh, when I tell the computer to do something, "it's going to do it "irrefutably and absolutely." But that doesn't work in cloud native. Talk a little bit about eventual consistency and what that's going to mean from a design standpoint. >> So for some applications, scalability and reliability may benefit, as you said, for applying eventual consistency. So eventual consistency, meaning that the effects of the last write converge in the different parts of the system at different times, right, and yes, while that benefits the scalability and reliability of the system, that may absolutely negatively impact the user experience. >> How? >> Well, for example if you have, let's say a sports app, right? So two users are using ESPN to get their sports updates on how the game is going, and these two users are getting information. If they're getting information from the same node then we don't have a problem, but if these two users are getting information from different nodes, there's a delay in when they get the game score. This doesn't matter unless the two users are actually sitting in the same room. So someone might get an update about this game way earlier that someone else might, and then they'll be like, "Oh, look at this, the Warriors just scored!" And the other person is like, "What are you talking about?" So once you have the use case of them being in the same room then that actually creates this negative user experience of someone assuming their app is slower. Something like that. >> I'm going to take that example and I'm going to add another one, because I think that this has significant importance when we talk about the implications. Let's talk about financial transactions. So we're, you know, stock trading. That, it shouldn't necessarily be that the fact that I'm a few thousand kilometers away necessarily puts me at a disadvantage, but metaphorically if my node is processing slower than your node and you get that information about what's happening with stocks faster than I do, then I'm at a disadvantage. That has a pretty significant impact, social as well as technical, on subsequent behaviors. So there's this notion of blast radius, of how those impacts affect not just a particular transaction at a particular terminal, you're going to have impacts in much broader social settings. Tell us a little bit about that. >> Yeah, so for blast radius, the way I like to look at it, is the parts of the system that are directly or indirectly affected by the failure of another part of the system. Would you say you agree with that? >> Perfect definition. So the blast radius being the parts of the system that are transitively affected by one part of the system failing. And even so we share the same definition of blast radius, our experience is actually very different. >> Mm-hmm. >> So let's talk a little bit about, for example, a recommendation service like in an e-commerce application or a video streaming service that takes my past behavior into account and recommends additional items to consume in the future. So, I would say in typical systems the recommendation service is a standalone service. Not many services depend on the recommendation service. Right. So if the recommendation service fails, for me the blast radius is very small. I may not necessarily want to get up at a Saturday night in order to fix the recommendation system. >> You, being the cloud native person. >> Correct, but the UX designer may have a complete different view of that. >> Yeah, so at Chegg, for example, we use recommendations to give our users certain parts of content, so users really rely on our recommendations to really master a subject that they are studying, and we have all these pages dedicated to just having recommendations for the user. You're studying math, great. Here's a list of practice problems that you probably should go through before your quiz. So imagine they're studying for a math exam tomorrow and they're up at two a.m. and going through these practice problems and bam! That recommendations module suddenly fails. That is something that keeps me up at night because the parts of this system that, or what I think about as parts of the system, are user flows and user interactions, and if we do not provide that service to that user at that time, it could result in them leaving us as a subscriber because of that negative user experience. >> So it's very clear today that we need to factor the practical constraints of the system as we do UX, but more importantly, we need to really accommodate the real human experience, those user interactions, user flows, in how we design the systems. It's not really what's happening today the way we want it to. Give us one simple step, Sara, we'll start with you. One simple step that you think would improve these two groups working together. >> Well, like I mentioned before, having those conversations with designers because when a company is moving towards cloud native principals, and towards adopting cloud native principals, and they leave designers out of the conversation, designers aren't aware that they need to design for partial failure. >> So get designers into those sprints early on in the system design and not just later on as you get close to thinking about what the user is going to experience. >> Right, exactly. >> That is, I 100% agree with that. It is first and foremost a conversation to be had, and you have to have this conversation on the very first step of the journey. You cannot bring in, whether UX or UI, designers at a late stage in time. You have to bring them in at the very first moment. And you have to establish the peer relationship, and you do have to understand that as a developer you are a service provider to the designers. >> And you know, I'll make a quick observation, and my quick observation is having been in this world a little bit. It's actually a lot more fun to think about the human element early on in the process. It just makes the constraints on the technical side a little bit more interesting and a little bit more meaningful. >> That is very true, I agree. I very much like the examples that Sara brought up because if you think about a cold-hearted technology, you would think about nodes that scale up, for example, in the example of the eventual consistency. You think of nodes to scale up but you do not think of the consequences. Yet, if you have this conversation early on with the designers, right, you see the consequence of what it does if your system scales, and you can actually apply simple remedies that have great effect on the user experience. In that case if there is geographical proximity to users you route them to the same node and you make the user experience so much better. It is very fulfilling. >> Sara Lynn Hua, Chegg. Dominik Tornow, Cisco. Thank you very much for being on theCUBE. Great conversation. >> Thanks for having us. >> And once again, I want to thank you for participating in another CUBE conversation. Until next time. (funky jazz music)

>> Live, from Los Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Vmworld 2018. Brought to you by Vmware and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to our wall-to-wall coverage, here in theCUBE, of Vmworld 2018. We've been here for quite some time. We've got a lot to go, over 90 thought leaders are going to be working with us. I'm Peter Burris, I'm the head of research at Wikibon, and we got a great guest today. Killian Evers is the vice president of CX and UX >> You got it. >> Customer experience, user experience at Veritas. Welcome to theCUBE! >> Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here. >> You know, there's so much that you could talk about, when you start talkin' about CX and UX, and a lot of technology people are starting to understand what these things are. A lot of users are startin' to recognize that adoption doesn't happen if you don't make it easy for the user. What's the difference, though, between CX and UX? >> I love that you ask this question. User experience, as you know, it's everything that goes on in terms of a human engaging with technology. Now, when you think about how you engage with your phone, for example, that's a great example of a good user experience. Now, when we apply that user experience, we move beyond it, to customer experience. We are really looking at the customer's entire journey. How do you engage with Veritas? How do you find us, how do you engage with our sales, understand our marketing, buy a product, get support for a product, and upgrade a product, that entire life cycle with all of the best learnings from our user experience? That is customer experience. >> So, if I can kind of encapsulate that, we might think of user experience as the interaction or the quality of the experience you have with the device, or a piece of software, or a machine. Whereas customer experience is the experience you have with the brand that's ultimately delivering that. Is a sales person, is the sales engagement good? Is the support engagement good? It's the whole immersive-- >> Right. >> the degree to which the brand is immersive in how the business operates. So, great, obviously this is an important set of things, but what does the VP of UX/CX do, are you evangelizing this? How is this working out? >> You know, it is a bit of an evangelization role, but more importantly, I think of my job as the customer's advocate. I look at everything with a really critical eye, to make sure that our customers are getting the best experience in everything that Veritas supplies. Everything that we provide is to that mark, that really makes their experience fantastic. That's really my job at the end of the day. So I can be designing, I can be doing research, applying these great principles, redefining products experiences, pushing support, pushing sales. All with an eye to deliver the best for our customers. >> Now, as an analyst, someone who spends her time with large users, helping to make decisions and getting value, one of the biggest challenges, especially as these technologies are more embedded within the business, is how can I encourage everyone in my organization that should adopt a new solution or a new way of doing things, to actually adopt it. And that's much more than the quality of the interface and the software. Is that what you mean? >> Yeah. >> You want to facilitate the process by which your customers-- >> Absolutely. >> Let's talk about that. >> Yeah, let's talk about that, because, you know, the thing is I could make you use something, but that's not going to give you that level of adoption if you want to use something. So it's about getting to that want. Getting to what you, what's your motivation, what's your desire? It's about building that community so that you create that virtuous cycle of wanting to use the software, liking to use the software, continuing to use the product- >> Advocating for using the software. >> Advocating for using that. >> You know, I'll tell you something. I've actually seen a lot of examples where the product was the right product for the solution, the IT organization did a good job of implementing and rolling it out, but ultimately, because they didn't think about that journey process, within their own business-- >> That's right. >> Their customers, their users, ultimately abandoned ... >> Right. >> And so what you're trying to do is making sure that they don't abandon ... >> We don't have that. That's exactly right. >> But Veritas also is very deeply embedded within a whole lot of activities within a business by virtue of what you provide. So how does Veritas' customer experience provide a grow to other Veritas partners that are embedded within the business? >> I love it, and that actually speaks to a couple of different ways. So, one, we have a phenomenal program that we work with our customers, our partners, our end users, to understand what they're facing on a day-to-day basis, understand what's goin' on in their company world, to be able to create that integration. The other thing that might surprise you, considering that you had been talking about customer experience and design ... Let's go to the other end of the spectrum, API First. How do you create those customer interactions? How do you create great experiences? You create great interactions, great engagements, integrations. We have an API First methodology and perspective that we bring to be able to say it's not just about the screen, but it's about how you can integrate with that experience. Between the two of those things, we can create those great experiences from end to end. So, as an advocate for the customer, you're not just talking to the people who are building the product, you're talking to people who are engaging to talk about the sale, to conduct the sale, throughout the entire journey. >> Exactly. >> Give us a couple of examples of how Veritas has become a better partner to customers as a consequence of taking on this challenge. >> Wow, I have to talk about NetBackup, and specifically our new release of NetBackup 8.1.2. This is our flagship product; we have redesigned this from the ground up. It has the API First methodology. It has all of the integrations. It has a phenomenal experience. We have simplified the ability to create backups. We have simplified the creation process of our protection plans so that everything is seamless. One, two steps; that's it. We have worked through our programs to build this, and to create this overall experience by building it together. We have worked with our customers, with our end users, and partnered with them to create this experience. So that's just one example. And this is the first product coming out of the gate that has this incredible experience. And we're not going to stop there, we're continuing onward. We are thinking about upgrade; we are thinking about sales, marketing, all of those aspects together. >> So the notion of user experience and customer experience, it's interesting, it started in the technology world, when people started talking about personas as the user. >> That's right. >> And then, when we started digitizing marketing through the web, it moved into the marketing world-- >> That's absolutely right. >> And you're started thinking about broader notions of customer engagement. At Veritas, how is that notion of design, design thinking, informing the process of building products that are easy to use, easy to adopt, great time to value, and are going to stick and stay inside a customer organization? >> And that's really part of my internal evangelization. I have really transformed the overall organization at Veritas. We now have a dedicated, centralized customer experience and user experience organization. We work directly and deeply with our engineering, our sales, our marketing partners, our product managers, to infuse design thinking. We've done workshops, we teach on-the-go, to be able to teach that perspective. It's actually something that everyone's hungry for, because once you see it, then you start to know, aha, this is actually better, right? An engineer sees this is a better experience. Everybody wants to provide the best for our customers, so it's somewhat of an easy job, to do the evangelization, because folks are readily adopting it, because it's natural, it's intuitive. >> And look, there's some big, big IT organizations out there that are adopting some of these principles as well. >> Yeah. >> You start talking about Home Depot, and others, very, very successful efforts, their failure rates have gone down dramatically from an adoption standpoint, as they have adopted some of these practices. So, when you think about, ultimately, the impact that it's going to have on Veritas' relationship with its customers, where do you want Veritas to be in three years, as a brand, known for superior user and customer experience? Where do you think it's going to be? How will people reflect that back on Veritas? >> Yeah, so, if I can put on my prediction hats, we are already the number one in NetBackup. We are already the number one backup provider. We're going to be the number one experience provider. That is my goal. >> For? >> For everything that we do. >> Not bad. So, one more question as we think about where this is going. You've been here at Vmworld for at least some period of time. Pat Gelsinger talked significantly about bridging, and the new communities that have to be served, and the role that technology's going to play as we move forward. >> Yep. >> Obviously, for technology to become a bigger feature of people's lives, it's got to be easier, it's got to be more tied into, ultimately, how people live their lives. >> That's right. >> So, when you think about Veritas, you know, Silicon Valley company, been around for a long time, number one in a lot of markets, as you said, how does that end up translating into better community engagement, better customer trust, all these other things that are really, really important? Is this going to create capital that you guys can use to introduce faster products; introduce more functionality; better, richer partnerships? >> Absolutely, so I have to talk to you about our design strategy, because it's really the three pillars that we are building all of our new experiences on. It has to be simple; it has to be easy for everyone to understand, and this is what we were talking about earlier in the day. It has to be intuitive; it has to be based in human interactions, because that just feels intuitive. Technology is not scary; it's not hard. If it's simple, and if it's intuitive, you're going to be able to use it, the adoption rates are going to increase. And finally, it has to be integrated, because if it's not integrated, if it's siloed, the adoption rates are going to go down. No one's going to want to continue to use it. You're not going to build that community. You're not going to build that market share. So, really, my design strategy is based exactly in what you're talking about. It's simple, it's intuitive, and it's integrated. That makes great product. >> And it gets customers excited. >> You got it. >> And it makes them trust the solution so they themselves, there's something in the adoption world called reinvent. >> You got it. >> You want your customers to reinvent on Veritas, and constantly push the envelope of how they're getting value, because that makes you a better company. >> Exactly. >> Alright. Killian Evers, Vice President CX/UX-- >> You got it. >> Veritas. Thanks very much for being on theCUBE. >> Thank you so much, I appreciate it. >> And this is Peter Burris, once again, Chief Research Officer at Wikibon theCUBE. I want to thank you very, very much. This is our last shot of the day. We're going to be doing wall-to-wall coverage tomorrow. Stay here, with theCUBE, more about what's going on in Vmworld. We'll talk to you again. (techno music)

(intense orchestral music) >> Hello and welcome to this special VMworld preview, I'm John Furrier, co-host of theCUBE, here in the Silicon Valley, Palo Alto offices for theCUBE. I'm here with Peter Burris, head of research at SiliconANGLE media and Wikibon team. We're hear kickin' off, what we're going to talk about at VMworld, what we expect to see at the event in Las Vegas; and what are some of the highlights from the news, what's going to be discussed. Peter, great to see you. >> Great to be here John. >> I know you've been workin' hard, we're going to talk about this new true private cloud report that you put out, very comprehensive, a lot to go through, so, we're going to digest that, we're going to unpack that. But first, we're going to have theCUBE there for you know three days. >> Two sets right? >> Two sets. So, second year in a row we have two sets at VMworld. 72 thought leaders and interviews in the middle of the hang space, if you're going to to to VMworld, go to the hang space and look for us, come say hello there's some little cough areas to hang out. Come visit us, say hello, check in if you're an influencer, we're going to come preview some new technology we're going to show there, so, don't forget to ask about that, take a look at the video or the variety of tools we have with theCUBE Digital Tooling and Video Services. But, most notably, there's going to be a lot of headline news, Andy Jassy's going to be giving a keynote, we've got that confirmed on Twitter; and a lot of discussion around the future of the data center, future of IT, certainly of how cloud and on-premises are going to intersect. This is has been a groundbreaking report from Wikibon for the third year of the true private cloud report. So let's unpack that, because I think this is a notable backdrop to VMworld is that as everyone's been saying hybrid cloud, now multi cloud, essentially the same thing. The cloud is a great resource, on-premises (laughs) is not going away. It used to be aspirational to have this notion of having cloud operations. Your report is now definitively saying it's no longer aspirational, it's actually happening. So take a minute to explain the report in it's third year some of the key findings. >> Well the, we might want to, we want to step back a little bit and say what's goin' on with VMware? Because VMware's progress and both what it's enabling, and what constraints it still faces, are going to have a lot to do with what happens in the report. But speaking about the report specifically, True private cloud was a concept that David Floyer, Stu Miniman, kind of devised a number of years ago, and the simple observation is that ultimately a lot of hardware vendors, a lot of system vendors, were just taking the word cloud and slapping it on their hardware and saying oh here's our replacement strategy, does it have anything to do with cloud? Well, kind of, yeah, but not really. And their observation was increasingly, customers are going to want that cloud experience and the basic notion of true private cloud, and what all of our research shows, is that inevitably what's going to happen is the customer's not going to move their data to the public cloud en mass; there's going to be certainly some important elements that are going to there, it's no question about that, but then increasingly they're going to try to bring cloud, the cloud operating model, the cloud experience, down to where the data resides; and that's going to be at the edge, and that's going to be at what others call the core, on-premises. And near premises, so, you know side-by-side with public cloud players in in a number of different hosting companies. So the very concept is the requirements or the attributes of the data are going to dictate where the workloads operate, and increasingly those, that's going to demand an on-premises capability that still satisfies the basic notions of cloud. >> Great, that's a great backdrop. Now let's talk about VMware, and let's, I have something that I want to talk about the direct cloud report, we'll get into that. VMware had two or three years ago, Pat Gelsinger was under the gun, you know with the pressure of the Dell merger looming, what the future is going to be in there. Since then the performance of VMware has been spectacular financially, he's really proud of that. Some new products pivoting, I want to get what you're hearing first, but what I'm hearing is and I want to give you something, give you a chance to respond, I want to get your reaction. VMware has seen some acceleration over the years around vSphere, around kind of good, stable, that haven't lost anything with vSphere, so, one of their core products, virtualization storage; but their large accounts are stable in the Fortune 500, losing some business maybe in the lower accounts, but as the AWS, Azures, and Google Cloud, cloud native players are growing, the emerging products are front and center for VMware. vSAN, NSX, obviously the driver which we'll want to double click on, and the vCHS, the VMware vCloud Hybrid Service. These are, specifically the vSAN getting momentum, and these emerging products, how important is that for VMware? Obviously their stability is IT footprint. But why is the cloud driving some of these new emerging behaviors? >> Look, every company wish they had the install base that VMware has, and that install base is predicated on VDI, or Video Desktop Integration, Virtual Desktop Integration. It's vSAN, which is the use of VMware as a basis for virtualizing storage, and obviously all the stuff that's associated with virtualizing hardware. You know, John, it's interesting, if you think about what made the cloud possible, certainly AWS took on the heavy duty the heavy lifting associated with actually creating a business, and it's obviously you know very successful, but it all started with the idea of virtualization, and the notion that you could in fact bring virtualization in on top of hardware sources and generate a lot of not only cost avoidance, but also increasing flexibilities; you can get better utilization but also increase your flexibility, and that's one of the things that made the cloud possible. And so if we think about the VMware install base, that's where it all starts. It's the ability to get greater utilization and greater flexibility on-premise, and now it's moving into the cloud. So we got three basic questions for for VMware that we're looking at. One, there's been a lot of chatter about the relationship between Dell EMC and VMware, and what does that mean? You know Dell EMC is carrying a pretty significant debt load these days, and, there is visibility in where it's going to go, but VMware, as a brand is worth an enormous amount of money. So how does Dell EMC better you know increasingly attach itself to VMware is an interesting question, and what does that mean for the ecosystem? >> Having perverse incentives possibly versus-- >> Possibly, possibly, but we want to get that, there has to be a constant promise from VMware that they're going to take care of the ecosystem first with Dell EMC as a big participant in that. So that's the first thing, especially these days with all the financial chatter. Second thing is, this AWS agreement is really really important, and a lot of people are questioning is it a one way street? Do you just, you know, sure we have virtualization in cloud, we got virtualization here, does it make it easy to bring stuff up to VMware? What happens once it, or up to AWS, what happens once workloads get up there? Is AWS going to try to you know facilitate a migration? That's still a very very challenging technical problem, but we'll see a lot more, Andy Jassy has the keynote as you said, about how that partnership is working and where it's actually going. Because there will be a requirement also to be able to take workloads out of AWS, and out of public clouds, and bring 'em down on-premise. >> Hence the two-way street that you're looking for. >> Got to be a two-way street. A simple example, we're going to see increasing, in the AI world, we're going to see more modeling occurring in cloud, more training occurring in cloud, and more inferencing learning out on the edge and the core. Well, we want to see, you know VMware certainly wants to see more of those workloads being virtualized. And that leads to the third question what's the VMware story with IOT, with the edge? That is very very unclear at this point in time, and there's a lot of work that's going to have to be required to put into. And so I think that those are the three things that we're really focusing on, and how does VMware answer those questions can have a lot to do with future architectures, future business models, and future partnerships. >> And it's important, I think the edge one is clearly obvious that the don't have much announced, but that have to put a stake in the ground at some point. >> Absolutely. And you know, the reality is, the edge has real-time, often is associated with real-time, high performance, every throughput, very lightweight execution. >> Uses the cloud, uses the data center. >> Uses the cloud, uses the cloud, uses you know servos computing is an example, containers, those things all don't require a virtualized machine. >> I want to get your reactions on something, I sent an email out to a bunch of buyers, of friends in the network of theCUBE alumni and our networks and I asked them a question, I said: what do you think about VMware's prospects going forward as a buyer of technology, as you're transforming your organization from the obvious on-premise operating model to hybrid? Which they're all doing pretty much, and are agreeing to it. So the aspirational aspect was confirmed, to your point. So they responded, (laughs) and they said look it, VMware remains largely flat across server, infrastructure, storage, and virtualization buying. >> In terms of growth? >> No, what they're buying and growth, growth, no they're not really paying much attention to that, they're saying it's pretty flat, we're not going anywhere it's not going down, it's not going up per se, in the core segments. They said the main thing is going to be the emerging technology so vSAN, NSX, and vCHS. Then I asked 'em I said: What do you like about VMware, what do you think they're strong in? They said: well, we like the fact that they got, that they have technology, okay, and if they can keep the technology lead we're interested, so that's a question also, I'll get that in a second, the relationships that they've had with VMware, the supplier relationships, rinse reset a feature of products, and then compatibility with their existing IT footprint. I then asked 'em what're you worried about? (laughs) And they said: well, if there's a discussion about replacing VMware, it's around price cost and technology lag. Your reaction to those two points? >> First point is, again, there's no question that VMware has a great install base of customers that are thinking about what it's going to mean, and I think the most important observation is that, and we'll learn more about how many enterprises really are starting to move their virtual machines up to AWS, for example, more than VMware next week. But I also think that it provides cover for you know a CIO or VP of infrastructure to say yeah I'm going to continue to invest here, and I'm going to, you know, have the option of moving to something else. And there will be a lot more options for what you do with a VMware virtual machine in the future. Regarding the question of whether it's flat or not, I think one of the reasons why that perception is there, is because the hardware business overall has been flat, and VMware is a derivative of play in the hardware business, so, at least until recently. In many respects now it's dragging some of it forward because VMware allows you to put off additional hardware purchases. So we'll see where that cycle ends up, we might be at the nadir of that cycle, but I certainly think that we're seeing-- >> It's mature for sure, I mean. >> It's mature. But it used to be that you'd buy new hardware and then you'd put VMware on top of it to virtualize it, so you could get more productivity out of it. But as hardware's slowed down, why would you buy more VMware? But I think what's happening now is people are thinking first in terms of buying VMware, and what workloads you need to put on there, how they want to set those workloads up, and then looking for hardware to do that, and increasingly looking through the cloud. The third thing I'd say is that look, the VMware cloud foundation, and NSX, are two incredibly important technologies. For example-- >> Well hold on before you go there, 'cause I want to drill down on this because, one of the things that I mentioned in there which is a key word is existing IT footprint; this is a reality, some call it legacy. Having an IT footprint with VMware is not going to get you in trouble because of the path of the cloud, 'cause you've got cloud native, things like Kubernetes down the road, but that footprint's the base foundation. So as NSX comes in, (laughs) and the cloud foundation, interesting new lever. How does those enabling components fit for the enterprise who's sittin' there sayin' I got an existing IT footprint, I got all these clouds on the horizon, why NSX, why is the vCloud foundation important? >> Yeah, so let's start with VCF, VCF provides, or is a, takes you maybe 75, 80% of the way there to that cloud experience on-premises; a VMware based cloud experience on-premises. So, it's a really nice bundling of technology, that provides a relatively simple way of deploying, configuring, maintaining, and ultimately retiring workloads. So, it's a nice package for a lot of enterprises that have that VMware experience. That's a different story from NSX, so, on the cloud foundation standpoint, if you need to demonstrate to your board and to your CXO, and to your line of business people, that you are not just have an option to go to the cloud, but you're actually bringing that experience more to the business, a lot of customers are kickin' the tires on VCF, and it's a good thing to do. NSX is a little bit different. NSX, if we think about the long term, there has always been a need to flatten networks in the enterprise. Having that network, and that network, and that network, and trying to inter-network them together through bridging and gateways, is extremely problematic, even at the network level. It requires-- >> In terms of sprawl and complexity, or both? >> In terms of complexity, in terms of the amount of processing, I mean the cost of doing address translation and takin' packets and re-formatting them for different workloads in the network; very, very difficult to do. Now, you add programmability atop of that, 'cause at the end of the day, cloud is effectively a network program model. Very, you know, hey, you got a big problem on your hands. Somebody at some point in time is going to make, is going to build a $50 billion company around the idea of inter-networking clouds. I don't know who it is. >> Cisco wants to do it. >> Cisco would like to do it, but Cisco, quite frankly, probablyyyy, you know they could have started this process five or six years ago, and they didn't get out there. VMware took some steps to do that. NSX is a pretty good candidate right now, if we're thinking about how we build inter-networked multi cloud environments. >> So, you used the example before you came on camera, that you have this segment that in the old world of network stacks SNA, DECnet, variety whether stacks had proprietary things and bridges happened, to your point, to your explanation. And then TCP/IP came up and flattened it, TCP/IP. >> Yeah, just flattened it all out, made 'em all go away. >> So clouds aren't networks, but they're cloud environments, same concept, but flattening 'em out. >> Well, they are networks, at the end of the day they really are networks. >> They're a network of machines. >> Yeah, they're a network of services, they're a network of machines. >> So, explain the flattening piece, is it, are we still in the early stages of that, are you seeing visibility? >> Very much so. >> What are some data points around this? >> So the, and you said earlier, that the multi cloud, hybrid cloud are really the same, well today they are. We might envision a day when they're not, here's why. Hybrid cloud is I got this cloud, I got that cloud, it's more of a where is the data located, how am I going to run those environments together. Multi cloud is I got multiple clouds that I have to inter-network, and I have to bring together. I want to run a job in one of the Oracle application clouds, that also touches some of the machine learning that you get out of Google Cloud, and increase and include some of the retail capabilities you get out of AWS. That is a very very realistic scenario, it's going to happen, people are doing that kind of stuff right now. >> And that's the preferred outcome people are looking for? >> That's the preferred outcome that people are lookin' for. Well, each of those different environments are going to have an economic incentive to say yeah, that's great do that, but bring more of the workload into my cloud, 'cause I'm going to create interfaces that are a little bit better at working together than you know you can get from the inter-networking side. Well, they'll still have to stay open, but you know some of those environments are going to be better at that than others; but at the end of the day you want no penalty whatsoever, other than latency and where the data's located from amongst these different services. And so eventually what we're going to want to do is we're going to see the inter-networking itself flatten, where're the jobs, how the jobs are set up: flattened. Make it easier to move data, and jobs or workloads out of one cloud and be able to put it in another, because of any number of different reasons. And so, that's-- >> Yeah, competitive advantage, different economics, different product features >> Regulatory regimes change, you know what happens if if in Germany they decide to do something else from other than GDPR, what's it going to mean? >> So is NSX going to be that connector, you kind of think? >> NSX-- >> Has the opportunity. >> Has the potential to be that kind of connector. So an enterprise that's looking at how they can increase their set of options, their flexibility, their ability to bring networking closer to workload. NSX is as good of, that I know about, that we know about, as good an option out there as any. >> I want to ask you before we move onto the true private cloud versus private cloud and that whole report you did to private cloud in the third year. We're seeing a trend around the operating side, the personas are developing Google Cloud Next conference, the notion of an SRE, you know sight reliability engineer. Public cloud has always been known as developer friendly, very developer oriented, cloud native, all the developers love containers, Kubernetes, Istio, and a lot of cool services are coming out. But now with VMware, they kind of own the IT footprint from an operating model, operating the networks. The bridging of those two worlds are kind of coming together, right now we don't see a lot of cross over yet between pure cloud native developers in VMware ecosystem. Your thought on that connection to those personas, how it relates to how the ecosystem's rolling out, your thoughts? >> Yeah, you know John, I think that's going to be the big challenge for the next couple of years, literally, in the next couple of years. That ultimately, developers love the public cloud because they can avoid operations of people. Increasingly the public cloud players are going to have to provide platforms. And you know everybody talks about I, you know infrastructure as a service versus pass as a service, or platform as a service. But when, in Amazon, Google, Azure, Oracle, IBM Software, all of these guys are going to have to add capabilities that are that much more intriguing and interesting to developers. Bringing the enterprise developer into this ecosystem is the next big round of competition, 'cause those people aren't going to go away, they're too important to the future of business. And, to the degree that VMware can provide, and I think this is the best that they can do, a neutral platform for those guys as opposed to starting to introduce you know machine learning services on VMware or or, you know, anything beyond some of the platform stuff that Dell EMC has Pivotal, and what not, on VMware. Yeah, we can expect to see greater integration for that, but I think ultimately what VMware needs to be is a phenomenal target for stuff that's written over here, that needs to run over there, and have it run on VMware, I think that's ultimately what's going to happen. >> Alright Peter, great stuff, now let's talk about the true private cloud report, 'cause I think VMworld is always a beacon, always a bellwether for what's going on in IT, with respect to on-premises private cloud, or true private cloud, or hybrid cloud, IBM as well, and some others, they're always a leader in engineering. Before we get into the report, first describe the difference between what true private cloud is and what people have called private cloud. Because the term private cloud's been kicked around, going back I think 2012 I first heard-- >> Oh, private cloud, I first heard the term private cloud in probably 2005, 2006. >> But you guys have nailed this definition called true private cloud. What does it mean, what's the difference? >> So, the idea is, the cloud experience wherever the data requires it, and increasingly data is going to require it at the edge, in the core, in the data center, you know, local to the business; because of latency issues, because of cost of bandwidth issues, because of regulatory issues, because of IP control issues, any number of other issues, there's going to be an increasing distribution of data; workloads are going to follow that distribution of data, and the systems have to be there to run it. But we want to have a common vision of how those workloads are operated, and a common model for how we pay to run those workloads. So when you think about true private cloud, it's basically, we want the cloud experience, which includes, you know simplicity, the one throat to choke, the regular and non-invasive upgrades and enhancements to software; we want to add to it, kind of the management interfaces that we're associating with the cloud, but also the pay as you go, and the flexibility to scale up and the greater plasticity to be able to add services. We want all of that, but in a footprint on premise. >> And that's for true private cloud? >> And that's what we mean by true private cloud. Now if you go back a few years, companies would you know, you'd get a hardware company that'd say oh look, cloud is Linux plus some manned control interfaces, no problem, we can put that directly into our operating system or have a management interface on our platform, now we can go on cloud. >> And put it in your data center. >> And put it in your data center. But you still paid for everything up front, you have to deal with software patches and upgrades, because it's software that's installed. >> So it's an operating model, how you're consuming technology, how you're buying it. >> Operating model, how you consume the technology, and the flexibility, and the future of the modern application approach, which is services oriented, and networks and data. >> And so one of the findings obviously, you're pretty strong on this sayin' this is no long aspirational, it's realistic. What does the report show, what're the numbers, how did you break down the report? >> Sure. >> What are the categories, and what are some of the data? >> So the aspirational notion was that we kept talking about true private cloud, but, the hardware vendors were slow to actually deliver on it, especially on that service oriented approach as opposed to a product oriented approach. By that I mean product approach is, you buy it all upfront, and it's caviat after I'm a consumer, service oriented approach is you know we have enough belief in what we're selling that you're only paying for the services you consume, which is what AWS and Azure and others do. So we're seeing that actually happen. That's number one. You take a loot at what HPE's with a technology called GreenLake. IBM is advancing it's cause with software. Dell EMC is doing some interesting things with both VMware but also some related types of technologies. All of that is happening right now, so the server companies, or traditional server companies, are introducing true and honest to goodness capabilities that mimic the cloud, so that's happening. The second thing that's happening is you know the AWSs the Google Clouds, and the big hyper scalers, are also starting to introduce technology that allows at least elements of their platform to run on-premise. The big holdover was AWS, but now, through snowballs, through their their kind of ranked box, data box, you can now put a fair amount of processing on there, and a fair amount of AWS stuff, and you can actually run workloads down on this box. So it extends the AWS platform out to locations in a very novel way. So we're seeing on the one hand the server companies truly will introduce technology and services that actually do a better job of mimicking the cloud. We're seeing the cloud players come up with technologies that allow them to extend their footprint, their cloud presence, down to where data needs to reside, and that's where everybody's goin' right now, everybody's goin for that spot in the marketplace. >> So, you have categories here, on-premise-- >> We have on-premise, which is kind of the traditional true private cloud, and the leaders from a hardware packaging standpoint are Dell EMC, HPE are two of the big leaders. Then we have-- >> Cisco's right behind them. >> Cisco's right behind 'em. We've got what we call the near-premise, or the host of true private cloud, and this is where you have AWS right next to your private cloud box so that they can communicate really fast, or it's hosted. IBM is very big here, but there is a number of other players-- >> IBM's got a sizable lead, it's 12% by your numbers, and Rackspace coming second and four-- >> Rackspace is good. And then you've got some very interesting and very important smaller players, like Expedient for example. And then-- >> So there's two main categories, there's hosted, >> Correct. >> And then on-premise. >> On-premise. >> And then there's another category >> So near premise, and on-premise. >> Near premise and on-premise or hosted. >> And there's the ecosystem side, there's a software that's actually utilized to do this, this is where VMware excels in. >> Explain what the ecosystem, so you called true private cloud ecosystem pull through shares, what is that? >> So, we have, so, VMware as we've been talking about, is one of those technologies that allows one to devise a true private cloud platform. Increasingly that's what they're doing, with some of the technologies that we're talking about. And so ultimately they are putting the software out to customers and customers are defaulting to that software, as their approach to building that true private cloud, and then pulling hardware through as a second decision. So the first decision is I'm going to build my cloud, my private cloud, my true private cloud with VMware, and I'll find hardware that doesn't get in the way. >> So it's leaders who are pulling hardware sales. >> It's the software leaders that are putting the software for building true private clouds out there, and then through partnerships dragging hardware in. >> And so there, they're there and everyone wants to talk to them. So that's VMware (laughs) 24% >> That's VMware, Nutanix is moving along. >> HPE, Microsoft, IBM. >> HPE's in there. >> Interesting, that's awesome. And any other findings that you've found, in terms of growth? Number sizes I think this year you had 21 billion roughly 2017. >> Yeah, it's just over 20, it's 20.3 billion, it's going to go to, you know over 260 billion in 10 years, it's going to be bigger than the infrastructure as a service marketplace, it is the true private cloud segment, the on-premise segment for the first time exceeded the size of the near premise segment as the software matures, as you figure out how to make these business models go. But this is going to be, you know Diane Greene said something very very interesting at Google Next. And she said look, nobody really understands how this business is going to work in 10 years, and she's right. Some companies clearly have a better understanding than others. >> So do you think your numbers are short or over? >> I think-- >> But that implies you know. (laughs) >> Well no, I don't know if it's short or over, but let me give you an example. That our numbers presume a relatively constant approach in thinking about how we price and how we generate exchange for this stuff. But how fast the cloud operating model, that pay as you go moves into the true private space, is going to have an enormous implication on what those revenues look like. The degree to which companies demand a three year commitment like Salesforce is starting to do with SaaS. It's going to have an enormous implication on how those revenues actually get realized. >> Well, we've debated this, you and I have debated this before with Dave as well, Dave this it's a trillion, Dave Vellante, so, you know I think you're sure, I think you took a conservative approach, and you know just my personal observation. >> Well we think the overall cloud market's going to be, if we add SaaS in there, it's going to be 260 to 300, probably a total of 700 billion, something like that, and so it's pretty sizable. So we're just talking about that on-premise true private cloud. >> Yeah, the true private cloud you know, $250 billion by 2027. Okay, so I got to ask you a question, since, I like that Diane Greene quote by the way, just kidding you about the forecast numbers, but, I think she's right. So I got to ask you, what is your observation around what this report says vis-a-vis the buyer market out there who are squinting through the fud, and, all these rankings around who's got the most market share. We hear, you know there was a post on Forbes from my friend Bob Evans that said: oh, Microsoft's number one in cloud! So, how you define cloud is a function of how you define cloud. Someone defines it by bundling an office and apps and, eventually, the level of granularity is going to have to be at least segmented a bit. How do you view how customers should keep a score card for market share, leadership, and besides customers, and number of services, I mean is there an approach that anything coming out of this data you would see and saying maybe the market might want to be sized this way, maybe we should be thinking about not so much market share numbers on some graph on some analyst firm. Is there any thoughts on that? Because it's a big thing, and true private cloud's just one sector. >> Yeah, yeah. >> You've got SaaS, and you've got PaaS, and you've got-- >> So I think John, there've been at least, you know we could probably say there're more, but just making it up off the top of my head, there have been at least three eras that users focused on. Era number one is the hardware as the asset, how do we get the most out of our hardware. That dominated probably until the late '80s or so. And then it became the application as the asset, and then we bought into the application, and we bought hardware and all the other stuff underneath that application, and that was pretty much the 2000's, up until maybe 2010. And now we're thinking of data as the asset, and what does that mean? What it means is that ultimately, I think that the way that, we think that the way that architecture is going to be thought of, is not on application architecture, but around data architecture; I don't mean data architecture like a DBA, I mean what is your brand promise, what, what activities do you have to deliver that brand promise, what data and services do you need to perform those activities. Get that data in as close as you possibly can to those activities, wherever they have to be performed, so that you can perform them predictably, reliably, at the lowest cost, and in the greatest, shortest period of time. So I would start with the idea, you know what I'm going to focus on where my data's going to be located to run my business, that's where I would focus. The second thing, as I think when we think about market shares, and we think about a lot of these other questions, it's okay which, this is a transformative period of time, which of these companies is going to be most likely to deliver a product now, but also create better options for how I do stuff in the future; and we like to talk to our clients about the idea of buy the stuff that provides the best portfolio of options on future data value. And so, data today, and helping think about architecture, work with companies that are demonstrating that they're going to be able to create the options that you need in the future, 'cause this is going to change a lot over the next five, six, eight years. And so, you want to work with companies that are demonstrating that they're able to create new technology, through IP, through things like opensource, >> Okay so the question is-- >> Are sharing it appropriately too. >> So, who's number one? Again, I don't think this is going to be one score, I think it's going to be level of services, how many services you're using. There was one angle I wanted to do, but I can't, I'm still having a hard time. But I guess I'll ask ya, to put ya on the spot. If I'm a customer, Peter, who's the number one in cloud, gimme the top three players. >> AWS, Azure, Google. >> Okay, (claps once) there ya go. (laughs) The top three clouds. Well we're going to keep an eye on it-- >> Let's go to four though, so AWS, Azure, Google, and then again, from that true private cloud-- >> IBM. >> Because that's a, no, no, it's got to be Vmware; because that's, that's where the pull through is right now, right. But when you think about it, the big question is is AWS and Google Cloud going to come down to the edge, and down to the true private cloud as fast as some of these other cloud players are going to go up to the bigger cloud? If I were to pick the one that's most likely to win, it's located somewhere near ribbon. So Microsoft or... In Seattle area AWS. Again, again, it's so early, I think if people, going to have to figure out what to do, that's going to determine the winners and losers. Certainly a true private cloud report, great report. Check out the true private cloud report from Wikibon.com, go to wikibon.com and check it out, preview for VMworld. I'm John Furrier with Peter Burris, a lot of exciting news, two large sets, 72 interviews, three days, come visit theCUBE team, we got to full team down there, we're going to have a lot of our team down there lookin' to talk to you. Join our community, join our network, we're going to have a lot of fun, and also learn a lot at VMworld, talk to some really smart people. Thanks for watching. (intense orchestral music)