>> From Sunnyvale, California
in the heart of Silicon Valley,
it's theCUBE!
Covering Accelerate Your Journey to AI.
Brought to you by NetApp.
>> Hi, I'm Peter Burris with Wikibon and theCUBE
and we're broadcasting from theCUBE here
from NetApp's data visionary center today.
We've got a number of great conversations
with some NetApp executives,
specifically about the role that NetApp and AI
are going to play together as the market evolves.
And we're joined first by Jean English,
who's a Senior Vice President and CMO of NetApp.
Jean, welcome to theCUBE.
>> Great, thanks Peter, nice to see you again.
>> Lot of great stuff to talk about, Jean,
so let's start with this interesting relationship,
NetApp, AI, the centerpiece of it is data.
>> Yes. >> What does that mean?
>> Absolutely. Well I think just to start,
technology is changing everyday lives.
Digital transformation really tops
the strategic agenda of most CEOs today.
When you think about what does that mean
in terms of data,
data is the lifeblood of an organization.
And it has to really be able to seamlessly flow
through that organization
to really add value.
So we think of data as the heart,
and when we think about data and AI,
we want to accelerate the journey to AI.
But to do that,
you have to be able to holistically manage your data.
>> So as we think about the need to manage data,
that says that there's a number
of challenges that customers face.
You have to be able to bring great technology,
but in ways that allow customers
to do things specifically with it.
So talk a little bit about the relationship
that NetApp is developing with its customers
to try to ensure that that journey to AI
can be accelerated.
>> Absolutely. Well the first is really around
when we think about digital transformation,
and especially as AI is the heart of it,
how are they going to get more connected
to their customers?
A better customer experience.
An experience that allows them to feel connected
not only to the experience they have with the company,
but to their peers, and to their customers,
as well as suppliers.
We also know that we want to
be able to think about
what do customers need to do
to create new value?
And new business opportunities,
new services, new companies?
Companies are also looking at
how do they optimize their operations?
How do they even take out
the cost of back office,
and take out that capital
to be able to fuel innovation,
especially when it comes to customer engagement.
AI is becoming more and more
a part of how companies are doing each of those.
They're using those analytics and insight
to be able to power through
that digital transformation,
which is now really being seen
as a data-driven digital transformation.
>> Well, we certainly agree at Wikibon,
SiliconANGLE, and theCUBE.
We believe that the relationship
between business and digital business
is, in fact, that digital business uses data as an asset.
>> Mhmm. >> There's a special class
of customer, though,
as we move forward,
and that is some of the hyperscalers,
the big cloud suppliers,
who are participating in this process
of driving so much innovation in the industry.
Serving them is a particular challenge.
Talk to us a little bit about
how that works.
>> Sure.
Well, we are definitely seeing
that there is a certain class of customers
that are starting to think
about what do they do to thrive on data?
And not only can they thrive,
but they have to be able to put data
as an asset.
It has to be at the top
of the strategic agenda of the company.
It has to be able to seamlessly flow through
that company.
We're seeing that they're called data thrivers.
Those thrivers are set apart.
They're driving bottom line revenue,
they're driving increased customer acquisition,
they're seeing definitely higher profit margins.
But in all those results
we notice that there's a few things
they're really doing right,
and they're getting it right.
One of those is that they're using the cloud.
They're using public clouds.
They're using private clouds.
They're acquiring more dev-op skills.
They're hiring data scientists.
They're really being able to think about
how do they hire digital officers,
data officers,
and a lot of that is around
how they want to leverage AI.
We know that over 50% of companies
will start to adopt AI next year.
We know that they're going to start
to leverage AI to gain better insight.
These new roles of people are definitely
the ones who are being able
to think about how did they manipulate that data,
how did they use that data
to have a competitive advantage,
and how did they leverage the cloud
to get more services like AI
from these big cloud providers.
>> Well, it's pretty clear as you try
to service that broad a range of potential customers
that you have to have a couple of touchstones
to keep coming back to.
Increasingly, design has to be one of them.
Thinking in terms of design great products,
but also designing engagement,
designing how you work with customers,
designing how you work with partners.
Now, you have, along with your team,
has bought some of that data first,
data-driven notions into
how you've designed this data visionary center.
Talk to us a little bit about
how you have been using design to ensure
that great experience across the board from NetApp.
>> Absolutely.
Well first, as NetApp thinks about
how to holistically manage data,
that was really the inception of data fabric.
And data fabric was a vision,
it was a strategy years ago.
And we've been really working to see
how do we bring that strategy alive?
And being that data visionary for our customers
thinks about from the edge, to the core,
to the cloud.
And what do we do to help bring
that data fabric across so you can
seamlessly manage data,
integration points across all those environments,
you can migrate data to the cloud,
you can make sure you're consuming data services,
like analytics and AI,
and you're really being able to bring
that value back.
AI is at the center of that.
We wanted to design an experience
that brought data fabric to life for our customers.
One, how did they modernize
their current architectures?
Especially with cloud-connected flash
and what we're doing with AI.
We wanted to make sure
that we were thinking about
"How did they build these private clouds?
What do they need to do
to really bring out applications at speed?"
Third is we wanted to inspire innovation
with the cloud.
And the work we're doing with the cloud providers.
We've had new services like cloud volumes
that have been launching with AWS, with Azure
as well as Google.
And with all of the biggest clouds,
we've been thinking about how do we bring
that customer experience to life?
That design comes forward through
the data visionary center,
where we are today.
This center is where we want to actually
have customers come in
and be inspired by what they can do
in their own digital transformation journey.
We want to build trust with those customers and partners.
We want them to know that we understand their industry,
we understand their needs,
we understand what's happening in the market.
IOT, AI, what's happening with securing data.
How did they think about leveraging the cloud
to really maximize business impact?
We want to be able to have frank conversations.
Inform each other of our strategies.
How did they then able to interpret those
and internalize that information?
The whole data visionary center's been based on
"How do we help them to be able to grow?
How do they partner with us so they
can leverage our services to help them
to maximize the value of data?"
So we provide those opportunities.
Hands-on kiosks, demos, learning,
even being able to do
what we've done with NVIDIA
with an advanced solution around even
our events at solution where
they can start to play with AI in real time.
Then we want to be able to enjoy the conversation here
at the data visionary center,
and talk about next steps in the journey ahead.
So we're excited about the data visionary center.
We just opened it a few months ago,
and we're thrilled to be able
to invite customers and partners to be here.
>> So let's extrapolate, extend beyond
the data visionary center and make the observation
that marketing broadly has become altered,
changed, transformed as a consequence
of using data.
Marketing at NetApp in particular is interesting
because you're fundamentally marketing
data-driven as a concept.
So how is marketing's evolved experience
with data informing how NetApp broadly
engages customers and builds products?
>> CMOs are becoming one of the top functions
to really drive digital transformations.
When you think about how do you connect
and engage with customers more?
How do you engage with them on a personalized level?
How do you ensure that you're having
that constant communication, online, offline?
And continuously being able
to build that relationship.
Marketing's at the center of that.
We're excited that we're a data-driven organization,
and as a data-driven organization,
we're having real business impact to the business
and real customer engagement.
We're excited that we're at the heart
of what we're doing to transform the business.
Not only from our branding
and how we think about reinventing NetApp,
we are data-driven company.
We are data-driven as we think about
that aspiration for our customers.
Our data visionary concept is about
how do we inspire people to want
to bring all that data together
and really simplify and integrate,
and then unleash that potential
for their own companies.
Marketing is at the center of how we're engaging people,
especially in the cloud.
And as we have a no-touch experience
and customers are engaging with us
to be able to download trials,
being able to see demos,
being able to watch other customers
and where they are on their own journey.
But being able to surface that, again,
digitally as well as offline
and personal engagement.
Analytics, big part of what we're doing
to understand customer needs better.
Understanding those needs from the solutions
they expect from us, understand their needs
from what they're enduring in the market,
and then being able to help
the company think about that in terms of road maps,
think about that in terms of key messages,
think about that in terms of real solutions
and real engagement.
>> Jean English, Senior Vice President and CMO of NetApp,
thanks again for being on theCUBE
>> Thanks, Peter.
>> And talking about data-driven and marketing.
>> Thank you. Nice to see you.
>> Good to see you again.