>> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas it's theCUBE, covering
NetApp Insight 2018. Brought to you by NetApp. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's continuing coverage of the third
annual NetApp Insight, with customers, partners
about 5,000 plus people here Lisa Martin with Stu Minamin and very excited to welcome to theCUBE, for the first time George
Kurian the CEO of NetApp. George, thank you so much for stopping by. >> Of course, thank you for having me. >> Really enjoyed your
key note this morning, first of all it was standing room only there was about 5,000 plus people here Jean English, your CMO
mentioned to us a few hours ago, that this is the biggest collaboration of your partners and
customers under one roof, the momentum is palpable the messages are palpable, and I really enjoyed some of the messages that you delivered in your keynote. One, I'd love to get your perspective on the data authority and how NetApp itself has transformed in recent years to become that data authority, what does that mean from
your C-level perspective? >> You know, we've always
been in the business of helping our customers, help make their businesses
better with data. We used to do it strictly in the form of storage systems, but
over the last few years we have built a much more robust
portfolio of capabilities. Both technological as well as partnerships to enable customers to use our technology wherever their data sits, whether it's in the edge of the enterprise or in heart of the biggest
cloud providers in the world, and we believe that the
world will be a hybrid, multi-cloud world, because
of the need for speed and efficiency in how IT delivers support to digital businesses. And our idea is to help our customers by using our tools to integrate all of their data for business advantage. So, we see ourselves as someone who is really knowledgeable about being, managing customers' data
in a hybrid cloud world. That's what we call data authority for the hybrid cloud. >> And you talked about, this morning too, kind of early in your keynote it sounded like you were addressing, NetApp has a massive install base, to helping those customers understand those that weren't born in the digital age they have to be there now to be relevant, to compete, to identify
new service models, so I thought that was a
very, poignant message. But something, that Stu
and I were talking about is the four, kind of, pillars of digital transformation, walk us through, for those that didn't have a chance to see your keynote, walk us through those four pillars, how NetApp is enabling customers to utilize them. >> Absolutely, we talk to our customers about if you're not a
born digital business you need to transform yourself especially using your data, to compete with these
born digital companies. And, there are four ideas that we shared with customers that are the cornerstones of such a transformation. The first is that, digital transformation requires IT transformation, businesses usual in IT wouldn't
cut it for the digital era. The second is an idea that was created by the Boston Consulting Group, which is that, speed is the new scale. It's the hallmark of competitive differentiation and advantage in the digital world. You know, I was talking about
the fact that, Fortnite, a game that was created just a year ago has now got 125 million
customers or players. That wouldn't happen
in the physical world. And the third is, that because of the need for speed you need to be
able to take advantage of innovation sources anywhere, which creates the necessity to operate in a hybrid multi-cloud world where IT is enabling the business to access innovation everywhere. And finally, that while you're doing it you need to think about your data. The critical asset that you have, that the born digital companies don't and how to use that and you need to build a data strategy which requires you to move from thinking about data
centers to data fabrics, and so those were four key principles that we're sharing with our customers. >> Yeah, George I think that's a great way to measure what's happening with digital transformation. I wonder if you can help us take a lens at NetApp itself, so, when you talk about speed, NetApp has 26 years of experience, you've
got over 10,000 employees a company of this size and this heritage you have some strengths
but you're competing against some of those
cloud native players. You know cloud is the bar
which we are all measured someone said in the keynote this morning, I believe it was you, can you speak especially
to the speed aspect how you look internally,
what has to change culturally, I know Jean talked to us this morning, operationally
there were changes made, that's your background. >> Absolutely, you know I think that we are an example of a company that is using data to accelerate our business right, in multiple ways. The first was in product development, we have used a lot of information about how customers use our systems. How, the support organization reacts to customer situations, and have accelerated cycle
times for software development, it was 20 months when I joined, it's now six months on
our hardware platforms and on the cloud we're releasing new capabilities every two weeks. So, we've really become a cloud native development organization and it required a lot of changes, I will just tell you that, getting the engineers through to the other side of it, has been extraordinary,
they love the new world. They would never want to
go back to the old world. Another place is around
our custom interface where we've invested a lot more in digital marketing capabilities our CMO Jean English, is
an expert in that world and so we have had new discussions with cloud only customers
entirely electronically, and on the back end in terms of support we have amassed a lot of information about our customers systems, and now we're using
artificial intelligence through a capability called active-IQ to tell them proactively what they can do to bench mark themselves against the best. So we say, listen Stu,
we think your system which is operating in exactly similar environment to Lisa's system, is not working as well because you've done these five things. And so there's a lot of
ways where we are trying to progress our own transformation. I would tell you that the secret, there are two important lessons learned. One was we started with
business led initiatives rather than an end to end transformation of the business. And the second is we structured a transformation program led by the chief transformation officer so that it would become the day to day reality of our business, not the after thought of the
normal course of business. And so, those are two key practical tips that we would share with our
customers about transformation. >> George, NetApp has a strong
history with partnerships, when I think about channel lead, NetApp has always been there, from a technology stand point, NetApp has negotiated
some challenging waters I think specifically,
VMware was a big wave of course acquired by EMC, but NetApp did better
in VMware environments than it did in the market as a whole. Today VMware is still a very important piece of the marketplace, but Amazon's another one
that is a challenging company to partner with, everybody's always worried, okay how long do you partner with them before they take over. How do you look at that, what are the most important partnerships from a NetApp standpoint, and
how do you face those today? >> We've always kept the customer at the center of a partnership. I think that the secret to our success has always been that we keep the customer interests paramount, and it allows us to partner with companies who may be part of some
of our competitors. I think today, if I look at it, clearly, in terms of the customer lens we have a lot of work going on with the big cloud providers, both in North America as well as overseas. To help customers architect
a truly hybrid multi-cloud, we showed some really exciting work that we've done over the last year to make that a lot more tangible and real, and it's the result of
deep engineer to engineer collaboration with them. I think the second area that
we're making investments in are really to build the
foundation for using data alongside artificial intelligence
and machine learning, specifically with training
and inference models and there we've been fortunate
to be able to collaborate with the leader, NVIDIA, in that market. And it's about focusing on what we bring and keeping the customer at
the center of the conversation. In terms of the go to
market side of things. We've also done work, for example, with Lenovo, where we are
bringing complimentary skill sets into the market, they are bringing computing skills, we're bringing storage and
data management skills. They have strength in certain geographies and so we feel like it's a
really complimentary relationship and we respect all of our partners, what they bring to the market and we're excited to, and honored to work with them to be honest. >> So, one of the things that I've read recently and it was apparent in a lot of the messaging today is the evolution of the data fabric. It's moved, it's transformed from a vision to a legitimate architecture. Talk to us about some of the evolution in the last twelve months and how your customers have helped be able to really make that real? >> We've learnt a lot,
about, real use cases of the data fabric. Today, we have hundreds
of customers deployed and in production with it, and we've been fortunate to be able to iterate at cloud speed
on the new capabilities, it is real today, we allow you to have
data management services integrated across all
of your environments, in your data center with
the world's best flash we've connected and we're
very excited to connect our enterprise Grade 8CI solution to it, and of course a catalog of
consistent data services that cross enterprise cloud with our 8CI and the
biggest public clouds, we have taken advantage of
new container technology and capabilities that Kubernetes and HDO bring to the market to build a really good
control plane for all of this, we've innovated around data insights using foundational technology
from on command insight that gives you now visibility
into where all your data sits. And you'll see us continue to bring out really exciting innovations
in the data fabric. The reason that the data fabric is resonating with customers is because it helps you build a consistent set of data services in a
hybrid multi-cloud world, and use your data for business advantage. That's why it's resonating. >> George, NetApp has gone through some ups and downs over the 26 years. In many ways, it's been close, or people have said it's
on the brink of being gone, and it's remade itself. How has NetApp continued to do this, and why should people believe that NetApp is in the position to
execute best for the future? >> I think we've always been
resilient at looking at things that could have been threats,
and making them opportunities. Throughout the generations
there was the transition from the internet
computing, the dotcom bust that affected everybody, virtualization was
supposed to kill storage, the cloud was supposed to kill storage, and through every one of those transitions we have looked carefully at how could we take what could be a threat and make it an opportunity, and make it an opportunity
by serving our customers best through those technology moves, and I think that's the
core to our success, I would say that what we have done over the last few years, is massively upped the game on execution. We laid out the data fabric
strategy four years ago, as a vision and four years later we've got customers, we've got the biggest cloud providers, we've integrated it with
the world's best flash and the world's best HCI and we are delivering road maps. So, I think that's really the
promise of the new NetApp, we are really, really,
focused on execution. >> Another, thing, sorry Stu, that we've heard along those lines in terms of NetApp's evolution, and continuing to stay relevant, is that the NetApp on NetApp story is one that NetAppians are
proud of and should be, but it's also seeming like, is that a differentiator,
when you're talking with customers who have so much choice that NetApp on NetApp story, that authentic, this is how we pivoted over the last 26 years to
stay relevant, to compete. Tell us little bit about how you're, as the CEO, when you're
meeting with customers, how does that story resonate with them? >> Our transformation story is a topic of conversation with
all C-level executives. Everything we talked about
with our customers today, we are an example of. So, for example, we did not take on an end to end IT re-architecture, we prioritize the digital
business initiatives in the company and said, what are the barriers in our own IT that preclude that and so we prioritized IT initiatives to support the digital business transformation of the company. We have created two data hubs in the company as we have
progressed those initiatives, one a product data hub through
our auto support mechanism, which is now integrated
into every technology that we sell to customers, both in the data centers of our customers and the cloud and on
the customer facing side we've evolved to a customer hub that so, I think that there are
examples that we share both in terms of leadership,
people change management, transformation of IT that
are extraordinarily relevant and I think that one of the things that we are open about sharing is the mistakes we've made. I think that brings an honesty and a transparency to our
relationships with our customers and they trust us because of that. >> Alright, George, it's been really interesting, people have said for years storage is going to be killed
off by everything else. If you look at all of
the big waves right now data's at the center of all of it. >> George: That's correct. >> What I want you to help us understand is connect the dots for us, because NetApp, most of the
customers I talk to here, the first thing they'll think about is, oh, well, NetApp's my storage company. Storage versus the data and how I get value out of that, help
us connect the dots as to how I go from
being a storage supplier to helping customers become
data visionaries, as you say. >> I think one of the really important discussions we have with customers is data is the foundation of a digital business it's sort of
the oil of the digital business, and software is the engine. It operates on the data to make the business go better, the challenge that most business leaders have as they think about
digitizing their businesses is that they have fragmented their data across systems and silos that were the prevailing norm in IT, not only did it fragment the data, but it made operating
IT much more complicated and so two long held paradigms that we have shared are
finally coming to reality, NetApp has always been a
simplify your data center unlike our competitors and that's coming through for the needs of simplification. And the second is, while you're doing it build a platform that can
integrate all of your data, so that you can accelerate
your transformation, and I think we're well
positioned for that. I think there are customers here who have never met us in the
storage systems world, that have joined us on the cloud like WuXi NextCODE, the genomics company that never buys a piece
of equipment from NetApp, so we're really excited
about an enormous number of those new faces that we're seeing. And then there are customers
that started with us, as a storage system supplier, that we are bringing to the cloud. And, so we're going to
keep pushing forward. >> Just quick follow up on that, it really opened my eyes, I was at the Cisco show earlier this year and when you talk about the future, Cisco, the networking company, they said, ten years from now you won't think of us as a networking company, you'll think of us just
as a software company. What's NetApp of the future? >> We will offer our intellectual property in a broad range of ways, I think we'll still be offering systems but I think the brains of those systems will really be super smart software. Software that's, digitally enhanced and software that's enhanced with machine learning capabilities. I think we'll offer them
also as cloud services, and we're really going
to be focused on helping our customers with their data problems we think that's an
extraordinarily rich landscape and we think that it has the opportunity to propel our business to achieve everything we've wanted to achieve. So, we're excited about the momentum. We are, honored to have so many customers, partners, and technologists here, and I think this is the best insight in the three years that I've been CEO, and I'm looking forward to having an even better one next year. >> Excellent, keep moving up bar, George. Thanks so much for stopping by theCUBE, you're now an alumni so
I'm going to give you a sticker so you-- >> Thank you
>> Can brand yourself. Stu and I really
appreciate you sharing your insights and your time with us. >> Thank you so much, it's
been an honor to be here. >> We want to thank you
for watching theCUBE, we are live from NetApp Insights 2018 in Las Vegas, I am Lisa
Martin for Stu Minium, stick around we'll be back
with our next guest shortly. (upbeat music)
