>> 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.
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