>> Announcer: Live from Santa Clara,
in the heart of Silicon Valley,
it's theCUBE, covering Cloud Foundry Summit 2017.
Brought to you by the Cloud Foundry Foundation and Pivotal.
>> Welcome back.
I'm Stu Miniman joined by my host, John Troyer.
Really excited to welcome to the program
one of the keynote speakers from this morning,
Mojgan Lefebvre who is the SVP
and chief information officer.
We always love CIOs,
from Liberty Mutual Insurance Global Specialty.
Thank you for your keynote this morning
and thank you so much for joining us on theCUBE.
>> Thank you, thanks for having me.
>> So you went through a lot of data and a lot of information
in your keynote.
Liberty Mutual, you say spent a billion dollars
in tech yearly.
There's certain technology companies that spend that much.
As the CIO, what are some of the biggest things
on your plate and we'll get in the discussion
of Cloud Foundry and cloud and everything
as we go from there.
>> Sure so I'd say probably the priorities differ
by the business unit you're in.
The specialty business has generally been a bit more manual
and we have over 200 or so insurance products.
So really automating it is very different
from automating consumer insurance
which is really focused on home and auto.
So really right now,
our focus is increasing the productivity
and the risk assessment for a lot of our underwriters.
And then I say probably analytics, pricing.
Making sure that we're assessing risks correctly
is definitely another point of focus for us.
>> Okay with so many products,
we understand the rate of change must be difficult.
In your keynote you spoke about embracing cloud
and agile methodology.
Maybe take us back to what some of the pain points were
and led to yourself and management to embrace
this big change.
>> Yeah, absolutely so several things are going on.
One is that we see a lot of new players
entering the world of insurance,
and it both about new capital coming
into the world of insurance.
Just 'cause there's not enough investments that capital
can be put towards so insurance is one place to come to
and the other is technology players
that are coming into our world.
Companies like Metromile, Lemonade,
the list goes on and on and so really our world is changing.
Technology is driving a lot of that change
and so we know that we've got to be a big player
in that area as well.
And as I said really, we've got to become one of those
software companies that can actually sell insurance
as opposed to the other way around.
I'd say some of the other things that are happening
is the fact that our employees.
Our consumers now have all these other software companies
that they have experience with and so
their expectations are very different.
They've got one experience when they're at home
and then they come into the workplace
and it looks like they've gone back 100 years.
So that paradigm needs to change.
So those are some of the things
that have really made us think we have no choice
but to truly change the way that deliver software.
We've got to get out of this mode where everything takes
multiple years and multiple millions of dollars
and really at the end of the day.
The people that you started the work with
are no longer even there to appreciate
what you've delivered to them.
And usually it's not what they ask for anyway.
>> As you adopted the Cloud Foundry platform.
One of the things about Cloud Foundry,
even very early in it's life cycle
was that it was associated with digital transformation,
and cloud native.
And especially once it was joined up with Pivotal Labs.
So how much of, as you all embark on this journey.
The great thing about here at Summit,
there is a lot of talk about visual transformation.
A lot of talk about agile.
That's what we were just talking about.
Some shows you go to it's a lot about features
and a lot about speeds and feeds.
And a lot about the latest, greatest.
So how much apart of it as you all were adopting
this platform?
Was that culture of digital transformation
surrounding the actual tech.
How important was that?
>> I think that was very important because again,
as I said we know that, that's what the consumers expect.
They no longer want things to be manual.
They want things to be at the tips of their fingers
and so really transforming us from being a company
that's very paper intensive to really being
more and more digital was critical to us.
The very first application that we actually
put in the cloud which was in my business unit
was for document management in our Al Fresco.
And actually what we named it was we're going paperless.
As something that we started about three years ago,
and today I can say that yep, we are paperless
and so the great thing about Al Fresco was that
it was indeed cloud native,
and that was very important to us.
We started out looking at some of the other solutions
that are out there.
I won't necessarily name them
but they did not lend themselves to the cloud.
And so really going with a cloud native solution
that would enable us to become much more digital
and paperless was very critical to us.
>> You talked a lot about developer adoption now
in your journey.
Was that a tough sell at the very beginning
or did developers go wait a minute,
This is going to save me a lot of time.
I'm on board.
>> So you mean with Cloud Foundry in general?
>> John: With Cloud Foundry, in general.
>> So if anything I'd it was probably the developer
community that really sorted this out
and so by the time that the leadership
and management started to pay attention.
There were pockets of developers who were just
very, very bought into it,
and so I would say that went a long way.
And then made it easier to sell it to other developers.
I say they're much more listening
to what their peers are saying than what we have to say.
And then really meeting with the Pivotal Labs guys.
I'd say those folks have truly a magical way of selling
their story and they've truly helped us.
Not only sell it to our developers
but also sell the story to our business.
I'd say that the mindset shift
from thinking I'm going to have everything in one go
versus no, I'm going to get it in iterations
and I'm actually going to trust the fact
that the next releases are going to come is a big mind shift
and Pivotal was instrumental in helping sell that to us.
>> One of the benefits of Cloud Foundry is to give you
flexibility as to where your applications and data live.
That being said, a majority of customers
that have deployed Cloud Foundry are doing it on premises.
How do you manage what goes, stays in your own environment.
What handles the public cloud.
My understanding you're doing quite a bit of AWS today.
What's your viewpoint for you
and management on public cloud?
>> We certainly see public cloud as the future.
I know Chip mentioned something about,
well it's not going to be cheaper.
We're actually counting on that in the end
from a total cost of ownership perspective.
That it will be cheaper and we truly mean it
when we say we want 75% of the people writing code.
And by that I mean the staff within the IT group of course.
And we don't want them to have to worry
about the infrastructure and so while we've started
with AWS, we absolutely have a relationship
with Microsoft as well.
We definitely want to be independent on this cloud
and I would say something like Cloud Foundry
definitely allows you to do that.
>> When you're looking at that total.
That full TCO, you don't have fully burden, I have gear
and I have people managing that gear
and all the operations there.
If you can shift that piece of it.
You're not differentiated on the infrastructure
or at those needs.
You want to focus on those thousands of products that you have
and your people coding to create those next opportunities.
>> Exactly.
We want to focus on the value add.
That's where we want our people to really be focusing
and we want to let the cloud players who do it extremely well
to be doing that for us.
>> You put forth in your keynotes
some pretty audacious metrics.
I think it was 60% of the work load public cloud.
More than 50% of apps to release code on daily basis
and you wanted 75% of the IT staff to write code.
How did you come up with those numbers.
How are doing against those?
>> About a year ago,
once we decided that the imperative for change
was so critical.
The IT leadership team got together.
We spent a couple of days off site
and we said let's come up with
what we're calling today our IT manifesto.
And so we said we just have to change
and there are multiple things that we're going to change.
And we said we're going to put some,
what we call bold, audacious moves or BAMS
as they've come to be known together.
And so those were just some,
we knew they were out of right to some extent,
but we said if we don't really put some goals
that are really hard to reach,
we're never going to get there.
>> What are some of the head winds there?
What have slowed you from meeting those
and any lessons learned that you share to your peers
on what you've learned going through this.
>> Certainly deciding on what goes to the clouds first
is one of those areas that we're learning as we're doing.
We know that it's easy when you're working in a greenfield
and it's something new.
So yeah, you can very easily say I'll build in the cloud.
When you're looking at what you're existing environment is
and what you move to the cloud.
One of the questions as well,
if we move all of our development environment.
How's that going to interact with the production environment.
If you have them in different clouds.
Other things are how it interacts with active directory
and held app and some of those things.
And I say finally would be kind of the global applications
always make it much more difficult as you think.
How do you replicate among different clouds
in different geographies.
Those are some of the blockers that we've got to tackle
and make sure that we get around.
>> One of the interesting parts of any management strategy
in any company is skills, up skilling.
So how have you been approaching that
in terms of this new cloud native world.
Both for the devs, is this year at Cloud Foundry Summit.
Are people here learning?
There's new certifications.
>> I say it's a multi prong approach.
We definitely have partnered with several companies
to put some training together to make sure
that we're training our staff.
We started a program that we call go for code
and so we've asked volunteers.
For people who are not coding today and who want to get there
that actually they go to these coding schools
and they're going to spend the next two to three months
actually learning how to code.
It's very rigorous.
>> So they might have been technical in an infrastructure way
before and they want to learn how to code?
>> Yeah, it may be that or they may have just been business
analysts who are just doing requirements gathering
or project management, and they want to learn how to code.
So we've tried to be as transparent as possible
because when you say I want 75% of my IT staff to be coding.
Like you've got 50% who are not coding today.
There's a message in that and so of course it's up to us
to make sure that we're providing the tools
and what's needed for that to happen.
Our goal is to get anyone on our staff
who really wants to get there
and is willing to put the sweat in to be able to do it.
'Cause we also know it's not like software engineers
are just lying out there on the streets.
There is a shortage of software engineers
and that's going to become more and more of a problem.
So really getting our own employees that we value greatly
to be able to do that transformation,
I think is critical for us.
>> Another great one line,
you had your keynote was out with the annual,
in with the weekly.
I think you said it was 16 releases in five months.
The counter to that and I'm curious how you deal with it
and talk to your peers is how do people keep up
with just all the changes that are happening?
I talk to the companies that create code
on just regular occasions and they can't keep up.
And how do you make sure your staff doesn't get burned out?
>> So great, great question again.
We're at the very beginnings of our transformation.
The one thing I will say is looking at the team
that did this and did the 16 releases in five months
versus teams that are working on annual releases.
The energy, the enthusiasm, the excitement
and hopefully some of it came through
in the video that you saw is just phenomenal.
So I'd say, I'm much less worried about them burning out
than hey can we keep the others as excited.
I will tell you automation and things like Cloud Foundry
that actually help you automate your pipeline
are critical.
You can not do multiple releases or daily releases
if you don't have those tools.
If you truly get to the point where you do have
the automated pipeline.
I think a lot of that is done for you
so that's what we're gearing towards and driving towards.
>> One of the things that people always love to pontificate
is in the future, what is the role of the CIO?
We'd love to see you embracing things like cloud
because it was like well, when I had gear,
and I had capital budget I understood it.
But I'm changing the role.
I'm doing that.
What have you been seeing as the changing role?
Anything down the line you see and how that changes?
>> You're right,
so a lot of people say, well there is no need for a CIO
in the future.
I'd say there's probably more and more need for
very business oriented, strategic CIOs who also understands
technology really well and they're the epitome
of someone who understands technology and is the head
of engineering so to speak.
But also making sure that they can work very well
with the business and understands the impact
of technology on the business.
I'll be waiting for the day where the need for someone
like that goes away.
I don't see it coming too soon.
>> Final question I have for you is what brings you
to an event like this?
Spend the time, give the keynote.
What do you get out of it personally and for your company?
>> One is really learning 'cause again,
if you're a doctor in medicine.
If you want to keep up with what's going on around you
you've got to educate yourself.
So certainly that aspect of go out there,
see what's going on.
Making sure that you're keeping up with new technology
that's one thing.
The other was my experience with Pivotal
has been phenomenal, and so I thought it was critical
to actually take the opportunity to share that.
Hopefully others will learn.
A lot of the tweets that I saw was well,
if a big 100 year old insurance company can do this.
Then nobody has an excuse and I'll say yeah of course.
So it's really both to give back and to continue to learn
and then to reconnect with colleagues.
Cornelia and I actually worked together over 10 years ago.
So just coming to here and being able to have dinner
with her tonight is going to be very enjoyable.
>> Absolutely a tight knit community.
Really appreciate you coming on the program.
We welcome you to theCUBE alumni list now,
our community, >> Thank you.
Of the thousands that we had on the program.
From John and myself, we'll be back with lots more coverage
here from the Cloud Foundry Summit.
Thanks for watching theCUBE.
(uptempo techno music)