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>> Introducer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE.
Covering Splunk .conf19.
Brought to you by Splunk.
>> Hey, welcome back everyone.
It's theCUBE's coverage here
in Las Vegas for Splunk's.conf,
I'm John Furrier, the host of theCUBE.
This is Splunk's 10th year user conference,
it's theCUBE's seventh year.
We've been riding on the same wave with Splunk
over the years and just watching the phenomenal growth
and changes at the level of data
and scale we've been covering.
Remember, I said from day one, data at the center of this,
not just log files, >> Yeah.
>> it's now gone beyond that.
We're here with Carrie Palin, the CMO,
Chief Marketing Officer, for Splunk.
Welcome to theCUBE, thanks for coming on.
>> Thank you so much,
it's great to be here.
>> So the folks that know us, know about Splunk,
notice the color changes in the background,
the popping pink, burning yellow, orange underneath.
New branding. >> Yes.
>> You're new to Splunk. >> Yes.
>> Storied career in technology.
(Carrie laughs)
This is exciting, and the portfolio,
first of all the news is phenomenal.
Good news flow, very relevant. >> Yeah.
>> Carrie: Yes.
>> Right on mark.
Data is now creating value. >> Yes.
>> And data is like software, it's enabling value.
Splunk's software and solution >> Yes.
>> platform has done that.
And there's new ground to take, but you're now
setting the agenda for the brand.
>> Carrie: Yes.
>> And the company.
>> Yes. >> John: Tell us.
>> I mean, it's a marketer's dream, what can I say?
It's, you know I joined nine months ago,
and when I was interviewing for the role,
I remember Doug Merritt saying to me,
hey, you know we might be the only two billion dollar
enterprise software company that nobody's ever heard of.
And he said, I want to go solve for that, right?
The folks who know Splunk and our customers,
they love us.
Our product is awesome and our culture is awesome.
But the world doesn't know about us yet
and we haven't invested there,
so I want to go take the brand to the next level,
and I want the world to understand
what data use cases are out there
that are so broad and so vast
and we believe that every problem
ultimately can be solved through data,
or almost every problem,
and we wanted to set the stage for that
with this new brand campaign.
>> You know, just on a personal note
in following the journey of Splunk,
a scrappy startup. >> Carrie: Yes.
>> Goes public and growth mode.
>> Carrie: Yes.
>> So when you're in growth mode,
it's hard to lay down foundational things
like branding and whatnot. >> Carrie: Totally.
>> But now Splunk's a leader. >> Yes.
>> We did a poll within our community
and for cloud and on-premise security,
Splunk's the number one supplier for, not just logs,
but workloads-- >> That's right.
>> and then now cloud security's kicking in,
so the relationship to Amazon, Google Cloud platform,
and Azure is a critical part.
So Splunk is now the leader. >> Yeah.
>> So leaders have to do things like
make sure that their brand's good,
this is what you do.
Take us behind the scenes of the branding.
>> Yeah. >> The things you chose,
and Data-for-Everything.
>> Yeah.
The little small nuance,
Data-to-Everything. >> Data-to-Everything.
>> And the reason behind that was
we believe you can bring, and we can enable our customers
to bring data to every question,
every decision and every action to create
meaningful outcomes, and the use cases are vast
and enormous, we talked about some of them
before the show started,
but helping global law enforcement get ahead of
human trafficking through Splunk,
and splunking what's going across all sorts
of data sources, right?
Helping Zone Haven, which is our first investment
from Splunk Ventures, which, start up that's actually
helping fire fighters figure out burn patterns
with wildfires but also when temperatures and humidity
change where sensors are they can alert fire fighters
30 to 45 minutes earlier than they would usually do that,
and then they can also help influence evacuation patterns,
I mean, it's remarkable what folks are doing
with data today-- >> Yeah.
and it's really at the core of solving some of
the world's biggest issues.
>> You know it's hard to tell a story for a company
that solves so many use cases, >> Yes.
>> because, depending on who you talk to, that's the company.
This is what we should be talking about,
no but we do this over here. >> Yeah.
>> So we are horizontally creating this kind of value,
>> Carrie: Yeah.
>> It's hard to brand that because you'll get
a lot of opinions. >> Yes, it is.
>> Because you're doing a lot of different things,
it's not like one vertical. >> Carrie: That's right.
>> So this is the challenge that most P2P marketers
will fall in the trap,
we do this because we have a lot of customers in
this one segment but, >> Yes.
>> you guys are hitting so much more.
How did you deal with that?
>> Ha ha, we had a lot of talks about it,
a lot of discussions, a lot of debate
and I love diversity of thought,
it usually drives the right outcomes,
but we had a lot of, this was not an easy answer,
if it had been, it would have been done years ago.
And we really talked about setting the stage for
where, you know I love the Wayne Gretzky quote about
skate to where the puck is going,
that's what he always did and that's why he was so good.
We believe there will ultimately be a data platform
of platforms and we believe Splunk
is that platform, right, and so that's
where the industry's going,
we wanted to cast a net that would take us there,
so that this is the beginning of a brand evolution for us
and not a total rebrand,
but it's setting the stage
for a category creation-- >> Yeah.
that we believe is coming in the industry.
>> I think you guys are smart and I think my observation
would be looking at some of our 10 years of reporting
and sharing some of our digital's that,
all the conversations around data's impacting real world.
>> Yes. >> You see Mark Zuckerberg
on Capitol Hill,
having to answer to the data debacles he had.
>> Right.
>> You're seeing cyber security attacks, national security,
ransomware taking down the cities and towns.
This is real Olympic forest fire disrupting,
rolling blackouts so, technology is impacting
real world lives. >> That's right.
>> This is really new to tech. >> Yes.
>> I mean usually behind the scenes, coding,
but not any more, we're on the front lines of real
societal global challenges. >> Yes,
data is at the forefront and it's really exciting
and it's also frightening, right?
Because we believe data presents the greatest opportunity
for humanity but also some of the greatest threats
and so hence our ability to really dig in on data security,
it's important to do that while we're actually also
surfacing data to solve real world issues.
>> You've been in the industry
for a while, >> Yeah.
>> and when you came to Splunk,
what was the couple of things that surprised you?
Obviously you had some thoughts going in,
you knew about Splunk. >> Yes.
>> What are some of the things that surprised you
when you got here?
>> Oh, I mean in such a good way a few things.
Well, here's the story.
Three days in to being at Splunk,
my Dad got very ill and I raced home to Austin
for heart surgery and he actually didn't make it.
And so it's been a rough year to say the least,
and the way that's Splunk's culture,
I knew about it before I came but the way that this
company treated me, like I had been here ten years,
when I'd really only been an employee three days,
was something I'll never forget,
and it's special, and so I believe that companies are
successful if they are smart and healthy,
and Splunk has the healthy in droves and not just the
compassion and the empathy but a very transparent culture,
we debate things, we talk about things, we support
each other, we are accountable, and I believe that's a big
part of why we've grown so fast because our culture
is incredibly healthy and very collaborative as a team.
>> I'm sorry for your loss. >> Thank you.
>> You mentioned culture. >> Yeah.
>> Community is a big part of Splunk.
>> Carrie: Yes.
>> In talking to some of the folks at Splunk
over the years there's no,
how do I say this?
There's no shortage of opinions.
>> No. >> They're happy to volunteer,
>> and good communities
are robust. >> Yes.
>> Diversity of thought, action, very actionable communities.
How do you look at that, because that could be a
force multiplier
for the brand. >> Yes.
How are you going to tie in Data-to-Everything with
the community, how are you going to harness that energy?
>> Yeah, so it's coming, and the reality is
Data-to-Everything is actually set up to tell the stories
of everyone who is using data today,
and so the community is going to be one of the first places
we go to surface some of those amazing stories,
and some of the things you see here at the show
are actually showcasing that.
In the keynote today, we heard from Zone Haven and
Porsche so many others around their use cases,
but the community is where it all begins
and that's the life blood of our sort of splunkiness,
and something we don't take for granted one second.
>> Tell me about Barack Obama, >> Yeah.
and your interactions with him and his interest in Splunk.
>> Yeah, so we had our big re-brand reveal last month,
we had an event and it was for C-suite type of folks,
it was a very intimate event and wanted somebody
to keynote that and headline that,
that really brought to life the whole notion
that you can bring data to everything,
and President Obama was the first POTUS that actually
used data in his campaign strategy,
he's very open about that,
he was the first President to appoint
a Chief Data Scientist to the White House,
he's actually exceptionally geeky and very data driven,
and so when we asked him to come and headline this
he actually was really excited about it.
In great fashion, his communications team was
really strict on curating the questions that we had for him
and he was so cute, he showed up to the event and he said
look, I'm so thrilled to be here, I love what you guys are
doing and you can ask me anything.
He was just ready to go and he was so wonderful
and teed up this notion of bringing
Data-to-Everything so brilliantly.
>> He can be ad lib
all the time. >> Yes.
>> He's very colorful as well. >> Yes.
>> His personality. >> Yes.
>> He's kind of nerdy, and he was very open
on open gov too, >> Yes.
>> one of the things that I remember, when big data
really started rolling into the scene around 2009, 2010,
>> Yes.
>> You saw that opening up data registries from cities
and towns actually created innovation from healthcare,
medical supplies, democracy, >> Yes, yes, yes.
>> so this has been a big part of him.
>> Carrie: Huge.
>> You guys are doing some things out here,
I see in the exhibits, where you're doing demos,
how do you see you guys helping society with that,
because to take it to the next level,
you've got some great use cases.
>> Yes.
>> The public sector is a big part of some news here,
FedRAMP is one little technicality.
>> Yes. >> But you got
some certification, but government's modernizing now so,
post Obama you're seeing modernization of procurement,
role with cloud, certainly cyber security,
Amazon with the CIA, >> Yes.
>> JEDI Department of Defense,
role of data in the military
and the public sector, >> Yes.
education, this is going to be a disruptive enabler.
>> 100%
>> Your thoughts on the public impact?
>> I mean, look, there's, Doug touched on this
a little bit this morning.
The reality, in our press conference, but the reality is
if you do it right, opening up data sets to
communities of people that can do better together
and you can get this collective momentum going,
for instance in healthcare, I mean I'm a little bit of a
healthcare nerd and I don't know if you've watched
the PBS special on the Mayo Clinic,
it's spectacular but one of the reasons the Mayo has been
amazing for years is because their doctors all work off
the same systems in every discipline in that facility,
and they can learn more holistically about a patient,
and I think about the impact that data can have,
if we can open up those datasets across every health
provider for one person or this same illness with every
major institution across the US collaborating and sharing
and what we can actually do to make real impact and strides
against some of the diseases that are really
crippling society today,
so I think that the good that we can do with data,
if we open up those datasets and do it in a way
that it's safe, it's remarkable the progress we could make.
>> You know, machine learning has been a big success story,
machine learning toolkit, customers are raving about it.
Opening up the data creates better machine learning.
>> Yeah.
>> John: Better AI creates better business values.
>> That's right.
>> Is that part of how you guys see things rolling out?
>> Sure, I mean as a marketer we use AI today,
and it's really more machine learning,
it's pattern recognition, but we use, my last stint
as a CMO, at the last company I was at,
we used an AI bot to augment our sales headcount for
following up on leads and it looked like a human being.
I mean, same thing for Splunk, the more we can see pattern
recognition, proffer up insights, the better off we are
to help out our customers and so Tim Tully's team
is driving that hard and fast,
>> John: Yeah.
>> Into our innovation curve with everything that we do.
>> Innovation culture big time here, right?
>> Huge.
Huge.
And one of the reasons I came to Splunk is,
when I interviewed with Tim and I said
hey, how are you doing on recruiting engineers
in The Valley?
We all know that that is liquid gold.
And he said that he had hired 370 odd engineers
in less than a year, and from really big brands,
like Air BnB, and I thought, all right, there's some
really cool innovation going on here.
If some of the best engineers in The Valley really want
to come work here and they want to work for a great leader
and Tim and his team are that.
>> So .conf is 10 years
now this year, >> Yeah.
>> we've been riding the wave together, it's been fun.
Your first as team executive. >> My very first .conf, yes.
>> Your thoughts on this community, this event,
share your thoughts.
>> I mean I'm blown away and this is a team sport.
I'm so proud of the events team, the creative team,
the sales teams, everybody who's come together to make
this event so spectacular, it's just sort of mind numbing
that a company of our size can put on such an experience
for our user community, but I'm also thrilled with
the engagement, we have over 300 sessions this week
and most of them are user
and customer use case driven-- >> Yeah.
>> and the stories they are telling are magnificent
and they're doing this all with Splunk,
>> Yeah. >> so it's pretty special.
>> And the eco system and the app showcase
is pretty hot here. >> Yeah.
>> John: We're seeing real applications,
people writing code on top of Splunk.
>> Yes, it's, I'm sorry, I don't use this word often,
I'm 48, but it's rad.
(John laughs) It's so cool.
Yeah.
>> Carrie thanks so much for coming on theCUBE
and sharing your insights.
>> Absolutely.
>> Final thoughts for the people who
aren't here at the event, watching on camera,
how would you encapsulate .conf this year?
What's the top story that needs to be told?
>> I mean look, the reality is that we are bringing data
to way more that just security and IT ops,
which has been our core use cases forever and they will
continue to be, but folks that are not incredibly
data literate are, through Splunk, are bringing
Data-to-Everything and solving some big gnarly issues
in the world and it's pretty exciting stuff,
so check us out.
>> All right, thank you.
Gnarly, rad, cool.
(Carrie laughs)
Okay Yeah.
>> Carrie: I need a surfboard.
(Carrie laughs)
>> Carrie thanks for coming on, I appreciate it.
>> Thank you so much.
>> theCUBE's coverage here at the 10th .conf,
I'm John Furrier theCUBE,
bringing you all the action here in Las Vegas,
three days of CUBE wall to wall coverage,
we'll be back with more after this short break.
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