>> Live from New York City, it's theCUBE.
Covering Lenovo Transform 2.0.
Brought to you by Lenovo.
>> Welcome back to theCUBE, everyone.
We are here at Lenovo Transform in New York City.
I'm your host, Rebecca Knight,
along with my cohost Stu Miniman.
We're joined by Laura Laltrello.
She is the VP Datacenter Group Services here at Lenovo.
Thanks so much for coming on theCUBE.
>> Thank you. It's your first time
on the show.
>> Yes, thank you for inviting me.
>> Welcome.
We're talking to you today about DevOps and blockchain,
two of our favorite topics here on theCUBE.
Let's start by talking about DevOps in general.
About how much it has transformed the way we test
and monitor and deploy new kinds of technology,
and then add blockchain to this.
Tell our viewers a little bit about what you do.
>> DevOps has absolutely transformed many companies.
The companies I've talked about today, at Transform,
all three of them in the past two years
have doubled their stock price.
Imagine being able to double your stock price.
Some have gone almost to triple, and they've done it
by being able to go to market very fast
and get what they want out in market.
Then, adjust to the market as market demands change.
They're using both agile software development
along with setting up instant infrastructure
and combining those techniques and the methodology
and culture that goes on top of that to have small teams
focused on business outcomes and that is,
in summary, the DevOps process.
>> I love that.
Rebecca and I love talking about the cultural piece
and we know a lot of times the technology piece
is the easy part, the networking, it's the things upper
in the stack, it's the people and processes
and politics where we get tough.
If I knew we were talking about DevOps,
I wouldn't have worn the tie today.
(all laughing)
>> Yeah.
>> How is Lenovo transforming internally,
and how are you helping customers
that are digging into this process?
>> That's a really good point.
DevOps is more of a mentality than a methodology.
The methodology's great, but we work with our customers
to ensure that they have the right project,
that they have the right culture, and that they've gone
through change management process they need
to get everybody onboard to a new way of thinking
about driving their business.
We've done it internally with our blockchain process.
We've implemented blockchain in our supply chain
in three different areas, and they started as tiny
proof of concepts and we just keep iterating
and building on it like a typical DevOps model
so that we're getting benefit from it,
and we're starting to see it.
>> You're using yourself as a case study here.
>> Absolutely.
>> Can you explain a little bit to our audience,
a lot of times, they're going to hear blockchain
and they're going to think bitcoin.
>> Sure.
Maybe explain, we understand that there's relationship,
but it's not the same at all.
>> One of our blockchain processes,
we work with our suppliers, and we use it
for supply and demand forecasting.
If anyone knows how supply and demand forecasting works,
typically by the time the person gets the information,
the information's old and something's happened
in the market and it's changed.
With blockchain, you have access instantly to the exact
same information, so you're working on the same level
and the same basis, and it makes it transparent
and clear to everyone.
One of the other places we've used it is in software.
Software licensing credits.
We don't want to pay inventory costs for software licensing,
so we're able to use blockchain so that when our users
start using the software, then we start paying for it.
It saves a ton and everybody's aware of what's happening
because of the blockchain.
>> You were talking about the right mindset for DevOps.
Can you describe what you mean by that?
>> A lot of IT teams still operate under we've got
a milestone to hit, and then we've got another deliverable,
and we have another milestone.
With DevOps, what you're doing is you're having a very small
group of people with a business outcome,
which is extremely different.
You want to take your time-to-quote process
and cut it in half.
That might be the business outcome that you're aligning
your DevOps group to, and then they figure out
exactly how to get there.
It's very different than planning up front
and saying I need this released in the U.S. by this date.
Because a lot of times, by the time you get there,
it's not the outcome you really wanted.
>> When you talked about yourself as a case study here,
how would you describe the Lenovo team and how everything
changed and how the iteration process worked
and whether or not you had to win over any skeptics?
>> There are a ton of skeptics just on DevOps itself,
and then obviously there are more on blockchain
because it's so foreign, it's such a foreign concept.
We started by just getting small groups of people to work
together in that type of environment so that they get it
and understand it and realize that the potential security
risks are not as threatening as you might think
because there's a DevSecOps security process.
Once they realize that you can align on business outcomes
and you can accomplish so much more by bringing something
to market faster, they start to realize oh, I can keep
making this better and we've gotten small teams,
grassroot efforts involved to start doing that.
>> Obviously, we've heard from Lenovo many times
that service levels and how you're measured by customers,
Lenovo does very well.
First of all, congratulations.
The question is is it enough, and of course it's a piece
of the overall puzzle, so maybe help explain
how support and service fit into the overall story
as to how you not only maintain customers
but win new customers.
>> It is not enough.
My service practice, my aspiration is to drive a complete,
effortless experience for the customer,
meaning every single time they engage with us
they do not have to put any effort forward.
When you start thinking about your processes internally
backwards, and you're looking at it from a customer
point of view and thinking what effort did they have to
put in, it drives a very different mindset and it shifts
people to think about doing the process very differently.
We're thinking about things like entitlement.
The customer doesn't get any value out of entitlement
so how do we make it go away,
and how do we make all unnecessary steps go away
so we can continue to maintain that high customer sat.
>> It's interesting, I think back, I'll date myself,
20 years in my career when I was out in the field
dealing with customers.
Customers loved me cause I took care of them.
Where'd you become the Maytag repair man?
They don't even have to see you,
they don't have to know you.
Certain people I talk to it's like wait, whose that Lenovo,
oh wait, those are all those machines I have everywhere
that I didn't even think about.
>> That's OK.
>> How do you balance that?
>> There is so much going on right now in tech
between machine learning and IoT and edge computing
that we have a place, and that place should be providing
value and driving business outcomes for our customers,
not in repairing their machines.
>> Going back to the culture, because this is just where I
love to be, we heard on the mainstage so much about Kirk
and (mumbles) talking about these points of pride
for this company is this customer centricity but also being
seen as an ethical, as a sustainable company,
lauded for its social conduct.
How does that feel when you're on the inside of Lenovo?
How does that feel as an employee?
>> I've talked to a lot of companies in the past 15 years
I've been with Lenovo, and I can truly say we're one
of the only companies that acts globally,
and we look at a diverse set of opinions
and that to me is really valued because when you're starting
to try to see the elephant from every single angle,
you get a better outcome.
Every time I think about what's going to happen with
this company, I know that foundation of thinking about
things globally and looking at it from our entire customer
set makes us a truly unique and different company.
>> That's a great point.
Do you have any examples or something you can say
because there's lots of multi-national companies
out there, but not that many that are truly global.
>> Our Lenovo leadership team, they meet every quarter.
They purposefully choose a different city to meet in
every quarter and a different continent.
When they do that, they go and immerse themselves
in the culture of that continent so they get that flavor,
and then we ensure that our board members and our LEC
is a makeup of different nationalities
and different perspectives.
That alone gives you that tension
to think about things much differently.
Where a lot of our competitors, and a lot of companies
out there, they really do make decisions in one city
and if you're not in that city, you're not really
part of the decision-making body of the company.
>> They pay a lot of lip service to oh no, we care about
these things, but actually what you're saying
is so important by actually living that.
What do you think, one of the questions that Stu
and I have had for all these executives
is the transformation story is great, as we know,
we know by the numbers that this company has turned
the corner and is really accelerating.
The momentum is there.
What are we looking at three to five years from now?
What does success really look like for Lenovo?
>> The customers will start to see us as
a customer experience company more than a product company.
You will see us transform our customer experience
end to end, from every contact point,
and even contact points within the devices.
If anybody's had a chance to look at our OK Google device,
they'll see that thing is based on looking at
a customer experience and changing the way
people use those devices.
It's just a simple add of a few things
in technology that's made that work.
>> Laura, thank you so much for coming on the show.
>> Thank you.
>> It's great to have you.
I'm sure you'll be back.
>> Yes, I appreciate it, thank you for the time today.
>> I'm Rebecca Knight, for Stu Miniman,
we will have more from Lenovo Transform
in just a little bit.
(upbeat music)