>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE.
Covering Interconnect 2017,
brought to you by IBM.
>> Okay, welcome back everyone.
We're here live in Las Vegas for IBM Interconnect 2017,
theCUBE coverage with SiliconANGLE Media.
I'm John Furrier,
with my co-host Dave Vellante.
Next guest, Tom Ready, Senior Vice President with
State Street Corporation.
Welcome to theCUBE.
>> Thank you, thank you.
>> So State Street is obviously financial powerhouse
you guys have,
and that we're just talking before (laughing)
we came on about the Red Sox.
(laughing)
You had season tickets.
You guys own a pavilion there.
Love Fenway Park, always great to visit.
But seriously IBM,
you've had history with IBM and State Street.
>> Tom: Mm-hmm.
>> What's going on?
Why are you here?
What's the conversations?
>> Well, we've, as you said, right?
We probably go back 30 years,
in terms of the relationship
State Street has with IBM,
starting traditional technology, right?
So hardware and software,
and evolved to a much more dynamic services relationship
about 4 years ago, right?
Where, combined with IBM and Wipro,
we've taken advantage of their capabilities,
both on application and infrastructure management,
and transitioned quite a bit of our services
from in house managed to IBM managed.
>> And your scope, specifically, in your role?
>> The responsibilities I have are
around infrastructure management,
so which is the primary responsibility IBM has, right?
Wipros on the application side of the house.
>> Okay, so big hybrid cloud discussion, right (laughing).
>> Tom: Yes. >> So what does that all mean
from a practitioner's perspective?
>> Well, I think our challenge, candidly, is
we probably have about 1,700 applications,
give or take, deployed today
within the enterprise,
within our enterprise.
And predominately hosted within our own core data centers,
and as other financial companies and GSIF's, right,
we have been a little bit reluctant to take advantage of
the emerging capability
and opportunity that the cloud represents.
We're starting our journey now to
entertain IBM's capability in SoftLayer.
We've got an initiative underway
to move the predominance of our development
infrastructure there,
so our development teams can take advantage of
that capability, if you would, speed.
It's a mix of understanding what they've got,
it's a mix of understanding how we take advantage of it.
It really is a challenge for us to understand
as those capabilities evolve,
how a company like ours can continue
to take advantage of it,
not just for development but for real production work.
>> So obviously you remember
Y2K very well. >> Yeah.
Everybody, every CIO went through an application portfolio,
assessment before that. >> Yeah.
Are we sort of entering a new wave of that
assessment, >> Yes.
understanding the portfolio, cloud ready and not?
>> Well I think anyone would
say it's >> Ongoing?
one of the chapters in the playbook, right?
Kind of application rationalization.
I think a challenge that companies like we have are,
one of our growth models is through acquisition,
so every time we acquire another company,
we just acquired two this year,
it comes with some additional applications
that honestly have to be rationalized back in right?
So that's kind of what we've got, right?
Combine that with
data placement as it relates to privacy
because we've got an awful lot of data
under management,
that's another challenge that has to factored.
>> So talk about the application developer scene
in your world,
because if you look back, I mean we were kind of joking
on a previous interview about throwback Thursday
and hackathon for a mainframe, >> Yeah.
there's a lot of workloads that are
legacy enterprise or >> Yeah, mmhmm.
mission critical. >> Yeah.
You guys are a great example,
but I probably have from soup to nuts,
from old school to new school cloud native going on,
but the rage right now is enterprise readiness,
enterprise grade,
enterprise strong as Ginni Rometty was saying,
but the ap developers,
it's been around for awhile but what's the new mojo,
what's the new vibe, what's the new culture like
for developers, in a large institution like State Street?
>> Well we've been pushing the Agile framework
and the Agile method, right?
We undertook that about three years ago.
We've got 200 certified teams, right?
At State Street, that are actually using Agile now,
and that's across probably six of the eight platforms
that we run code on,
everything from the mainframe all the way out
to open systems, right, or distributed systems.
We've got some stagnant platforms like AS400.
We still have a few AS400's kicking around and
some Deck systems still sit, tandem decks right, so?
Some of that isn't necessarily >> Whose supports that system?
(laughing) Yeah.
Some that doesn't necessarily lend itself to
multiple deployments, right?
We just don't do much in that space, but
yeah I mean they're energized around ...
>> Are they all on the Agile bandwagon?
Obviously Agile's pretty huge, so.
>> They are, they absolutely are,
and honestly, it's been a little bit tough
for the infrastructure teams to keep up, right?
So we're not unique in that regard either, right?
One of the approaches that
was done a few years ago was, we do have our own
platform as a service that we developed,
our own orchestration model going back five years,
and the majority of that is supported today by
the application teams, right?
Application teams using Agile based methods,
deploying onto that platform as a service,
so that seems to work for us right?
Where the challenge becomes is for the
aps that don't run there,
and as we look to deploy those applications
into SoftLayer, how does that,
if you would, seamless deployment work, right?
From a SoftLayer development environment
and test environment
back into production, and that's what we need to learn.
>> So you've got blue mix and
your own paths >> Yeah.
sort of coming together,
right? >> That's right.
And so,
I mean it's a little out of your scope but
what does that mean, and maybe specifically
what does it mean from an infrastructure perspective?
>> Well ...
As I said, we've started that journey right now,
so we'll have 1,000 posts migrated by the end of the year.
That's the current target we've got,
with full deployment across
into the hybrid cloud,
probably within a year and a half from now, right?
So as we undertake that journey,
they're going to have to learn,
the development teams are going to have to learn.
The underlying service components,
infrastructure service components right?
We're probably being a little heavy with that now
so that the development and test environments
are exactly like the production environments are now.
We'll probably pare that back,
as they understand what they need and don't need.
Challenge on us to speed,
that's our current challenge.
How quickly can we get things turned up for them?
Challenge on them on with regard to what they need, right?
>> So Tom, from a practitioner's perspective,
what's the driver for a hybrid cloud?
Are there specific use cases,
is it agility,
is it bursting?
Help us understand that.
>> Well for us,
it's probably all of that right?
I think
the challenge that any legacy shop like ours has
is what's the speed by which you go to the cloud,
the hybrid cloud, right?
We've got our own centers, right?
There's a financial model that needs to be achieved.
You know, as we do rationalization
and data center consolidation, that feeds it, right?
So it ends up going at a rate and pace
that isn't necessarily in line with the speed that
a new company would potentially take advantage of,
or that a forced migration would perhaps do as well, right?
So it's a little bit of both.
>> So it's the support that
a little extra agility, kind of give you a tailwind for
that initiative, or?
>> Well, yeah,
it's to enable the application guys, clearly,
but you know,
the ideal benefit on the infrastructure side
becomes burstability, right?
And the ability for that capacity to come up quickly, right?
Today, you know, we'd struggle with that
using traditional infrastructure based models.
We are extremely interested in
some of the work that IBM's got going on with regard to
how some of these clouds actually comply with regulatory
requirements, right?
You know, we operate in 29 countries and
have to satisfy 48 different regulators, so
the work that they've got going on
with understanding what a regulatory compliant cloud is,
and which authorities does it satisfy and
what do those controls look and feel like?
That may actually
be something that we could take advantage of fairly quickly.
>> Can we talk about
the security >> Yeah, sure.
discussion a little bit?
You know most people I think,
early on in the cloud days, like, "Oh a cloud."
I think most people would agree
that there's a lot of advantages to the cloud
from a security standpoint.
That said, there's also
a lot of specials >> Yeah.
that a company
like yours requires. >> Yeah.
So it's not necessarily good or bad in the cloud,
it's just does it meet the edicts
of our organization? >> Yeah.
I wonder if you can talk about that a little bit.
>> Yeah, I think we've evolved.
Our policies have evolved and I think
the regulators have become clearer with regard
to what it is they want and don't want, right?
I think all three of those things
have helped right?
When we look at the security policies that we have to
adhere to, right?
They, our SISO teams have been working
fairly consistently and tightly with the different
regulatory entities, with regard to what it is
we think we need to adhere to, right?
That clarity allows us then to begin to look at
the marketplace, understand what capabilities are there
and begin to procure and use those, right?
So yeah, I think it's come a long way
but not only has the capability of the providers
come a long way, it's the clarity
around the controls and the regulatory.
>> And what role and involvement do you have
in security?
Are you sort of a recipient of the edict
and you have to enforce it, (Tom laughs)
are you a contributor, are you meeting with the board?
>> Tom: Yeah, I think it's a little bit
of everything, right? >> Uh huh.
So yeah, we receive, we're the recipient of the policies,
(Dave laughs) if you would, so ...
And therefor I have to be compliant with them.
We participate in how those policies are set, right?
So there's a process within our firm where
we sit down, talk about
emerging threats, talk about what policies
perhaps should be implemented, and then agree upon
what those policies are and the timeframes for adoption,
so we have that.
Then the team, my team,
for the controls it's responsible for,
have to stand up to regulatory oversight, right?
So the term we use is first line of defense, right?
We're the control owners
and our controls have to satisfy our own policies
and external regulators.
>> You know one of the things I want to drill into,
it brings up how hard it is with the cloud,
and IT in general these days.
You know Dave's in Massachusetts, I'm in Silicon Valley
and Palo Alto.
In Silicon Valley it's like, "Oh yeah, a new toy,"
you know? >> Yeah.
Shiny new so let's go fast and loose.
In fact Mark Zuckerberg once said,
"Move fast, break stuff."
Now they've gone to, "Move fast, be secure," so.
(Tom laughs) Your world doesn't really,
I mean you want to go fast and loose
to get innovation, >> Yeah.
but you have to also manage really, really heavy
requirements around
the compliance >> That's right.
and security things, so you got to balance that,
so that's a very tricky thing.
Can you share some insight into
what it takes to do that, because
you want to have devops, >> Mmhmm.
development and operations being
faster, more nimble, >> Yeah.
with Agile; At the same time you want to keep the pace
of innovation and not be in the stone age,
so what's the trick?
What's the secret?
What have you learned?
Share some anecdotal data.
>> Yeah, when we started out,
when we first looked at
hosting op offerings and opportunities five years ago,
we didn't really think, for a combination of capability
that was available generally in the marketplace,
and the controls we thought we needed around that,
we didn't think they were where they needed to be
so we developed our own right?
So that's the far end of the spectrum
where a firm like ours actually spent money and time
to deploy orchestration for platform as a service,
so we started there.
If we think of the continuum of that journey,
we're to the point now where we're considering using
hosting companies that have the same or similar
capability and
we're at an inflection point with regard to
where we're going to make our investments right?
Are we going to continue with our own
or actually begin to migrate right?
Honestly our challenge is just that, right?
How do we progress on that journey,
because as is always the case,
it becomes very difficult when
you're out of your sweet spot
and out of your core competency,
to maintain the investments that are needed,
and in this particular case it's pretty classic, right?
For us to keep pace with
the likes of IBM or Amazon or any of them are doing
tremendous investment stream, right?
We question whether that investment
is best suited from a shareholder's point of view.
>> It's a buyer built thing too,
>> Tom: That's right. >> 'cuz one of those things
you say, "Okay well, I'm going to rely on IBM Cloud
"or AWS," or whoever could be the provider,
it could be like an RFP process.
>> Tom: That's right.
>> You just got to start think, so you look at it that way.
>> We do, we do, and brokerage is going to help us there, right?
So we'll get brokerage up and running fairly soon
and assuming the capabilities are somewhat similar
or neutral if you would,
then we'll let the application team pick what they want
based upon what their specific requirements are.
>> Yeah, I just got to ask you in the few minutes
we have left, >> Yeah.
obviously Jimmy's up there and I've been a big believer
for a long time that data >> Mmhmm.
is the key asset, and we've been saying it
for a long time, >> Yeah.
but Dave and I have gone back almost ten years ago
talking about data as
a development asset, >> Yeah.
for developers, but she said something pretty compelling.
Data is you own
(laughing) the data. >> Yeah.
That's profound.
Now we believe that to be the case, because
if you're renting everything
and you're buying or you're building your own,
the data becomes the critical layer of value.
You got to protect it.
It's obviously your
financial data, >> Yeah, yeah.
so it's secure.
How do you guys look at the data layer
as an architectural philosophy?
>> Well, we have probably over 12 petabytes under management
today, so it's a pretty, pretty significant environment
for us to manage.
The challenge, honestly, isn't ...
We've got the business side of the house
wants to take advantage of that data,
because it's got an awful lot of
client information within it,
that we should be able to take to market
the right way, right?
Clearly client confidentiality is important.
But the data actually becomes a little bit
of a millstone, if you would, around us
because we've got privacy concerns
over all of that data right?
And that data has grown up over time,
so strong lineage doesn't necessarily exist right?
A real strong data framework isn't there
for us to understand whose data it is,
when what state it happens to be
and where it sits at rest, so it's an investment -
>> And then the motion piece is kick up huge.
>> Tom: It is. >> With the mobile devices.
>> Tom: That's right. >> That motion going. (laughs)
>> Yeah, so it does all come back to the data
but it does require a pretty strong framework
around the data for you to actually be able to
take advantage of it, right?
>> It kind of leads to the digital transformation
discussion. >> Mmhmm.
It's the big buzzword today.
Now you guys, you know you're not servicing
mom and pop consumer situations,
big institutions, >> Yeah.
but nonetheless, they're ...
Data implies digital, implies you're changing your
business model. >> Yes.
You got smaller companies that are disrupting
your business, >> Mmhmm.
so what does it all mean to you generally
and specifically, to the infrastructure?
Are you guys developing SAS products, mobile aps
that have a ripple down effect to your infrastructure?
>> Well we don't have,
you wouldn't think of State Street as
a retail operation. >> Right of course.
So we don't have that right?
But there is a need for probably a third of
my colleagues to have
access to data,
you know via mobile framework.
>> Dave: So it's internal?
>> Internal, right? >> Yeah.
In terms of external clients,
we do have a framework that we are,
that we do provide through
my State Street, it's an internet portal,
and it's all back office, middle office data
that they would typically access.
Do they require that to be
generally mobile ...
Is it mobile enabled,
I guess is the term I'm struggling with, right?
Our competition hasn't gone there and so
we're undertaking the evaluation that says
do we need to go there,
from a differentiation perspective right?
But traditionally people are accessing that data
through web based portals
and using it in their day job that way.
Our clients are, right?
>> Tom, thanks for coming on theCUBE, really appreciate it.
Quick end to the segment.
Your impression of the event here?
People that are watching aren't here so they
can't feel the vibe.
What's your take of the show this year?
Certainly we've been seeing the
digital traffic, >> Yeah.
on IBMGO, doubled from World of Watson which we thought
was the hottest show (Tom laughs)
IBM's ever done.
Looks like Interconnect seems to be the hottest.
What's the conversation, what's the vibe like,
what's the experience here?
>> I generally like the collaboration that takes place
in these kinds of things, right?
I think what IBM's done here
in terms of how they've laid out the center,
you know all of the space that's available,
the sessions have all been reasonably collaborative.
You know you go to some of these things where
you kind of fall asleep in the back row.
I haven't necessarily seen much of that here,
so kudos to IBM for
running this the way they have, right?
>> Yeah, it's very engaging content.
>> It is. >> Tom, thanks
for coming on theCUBE, really appreciate your insight
and sharing what's going on at State Street Corporation.
I used to call it State Street Bank
from being from New England 18 years ago, but
great to see you and hope to see you at Red Sox games.
>> Sounds good guys. >> So we'll hit you up
for some tickets. (laughing)
It's theCUBE, of course, always trying to get
the Red Sox tickets.
I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante.
Stick with us.
More great interviews coming right up here.
Day two of three days of coverage of IBM Interconnect 2017.
We'll be right back.