>> Live from Boston, Massachusetts.
It's theCube.
Covering IFS World Conference 2019.
Brought to you by IFS.
>> We're back at IFS World 2019,
from the Hynes Convention Center In Boston.
I'm Dave Vellante, with my Paul Gillin.
You are watching theCube.
The leader in live tech coverage.
We go out to the events,
we extract the signal from the noise.
Get the best guest, Christian Pedersen is here.
He's the chief product officer at IFS.
Christian, great to see you.
>> Alright, thank you very much--
>> Your first--
>> Happy to be here.
>> Your first IFS World Conference, so--
>> It is my, absolutely--
>> Mine too, so--
>> Yeah, I'm happy to be here.
It's like getting an injection
of customer input and feedback.
In a very short amount of time, so that's awesome.
I really love it.
>> Yeah, these events are great,
to connect with customers.
It's (mumbles) one to many conversations.
But give us a sense of your background
and why you are attracted to IFS.
Why'd you join?
>> Well from a background perspective,
I've always been in the (mumbles) of business and technology
and my passion has always been,
what we can actually do with technology for businesses,
to innovate, to differentiate,
to do new things, to automate things.
Really, really a strong believer in the promise of software.
Cause' that's what software is all about.
So I have a past with startups,
the start of IT companies.
I've been with Microsoft, for 15, 16 years.
I've been with SAP for a number of years.
So I joined IFS last year,
really because of the transformation
and the journey IFS was on.
And the passion that IFS has always had for the customers,
and the outcomes been greater for the customers.
It's just a perfect environment
to realize the dream of providing value to customers,
outcomes for customers
and leveraging technology in the process of doing that.
>> You're a challenger, hashtag for the challenger--
>> Really you were at the giant, SAP
and going to a smaller, not much smaller,
but a smaller company.
What were they doing that you thought,
that excited you so much?
>> Well the exciting thing again,
is the focus on the customer
and the close proximity to customers
in everything IFS does.
>> Wouldn't SAP, sorry to interrupt.
Wouldn't SAP (mumbles) say the same thing though?
>> Let me put it this way.
I went through IFS because,
IFS does that really, really brilliantly.
So, is that a nice way of saying it?
(laughing)
>> Okay.
>> So we hear for the keynote today,
you sort of laid out a roadmap, a little vision,
talked a little bit about digital transformation.
But I wanted to talk about,
you made a big, big emphasis on your API platform,
open API's, embracing that.
It's been somewhat criticism of you guys in the past
and so maybe, it's a response to that
or a response to customers.
But why the platform, explain it's importance
and how it fits in to your roadmap going forward?
>> Well, the API enablement is important
from many different perspectives.
First of all, we use API's ourselves,
to create user experiences and drive a lot of the innovation
with emerging technologies and so forth.
That's one aspect of it.
So just for our own, our own level of innovation
and the pace of which we can innovate with,
going forward on a API platform is dramatic.
The second area is really,
again back to the digital transformation,
that customers are really driving out there.
A lot of that involves, really most companies
become a software companies themselves.
So now we have, a lot of our customers,
That actually have developers, they're writing software,
they're driving new offerings to their customers.
And to get value out of these offerings, for their customers
they really need to get access to a lot of the capabilities,
that lives inside of the IFS models.
They need to get access to data.
They need to get access to proccesses.
Because one of the keys in digital transformation,
regardless in what shape or form it comes to us.
You need data, you need massive amounts of data
and you need data from within your firewall,
you need data from third party
and you need structure data, unstructure data.
And participating in that world is absolutely essential,
that you have that open API philosophy,
where you expose yourself
and your own datas through API's.
But also, so we can turn the other way
and we can consume data and API's for others,
so we can create similar scenarios.
So it's really,
about being part of the ecosystem of technology
and solutions, that customers rely on.
And that's why we joined.
Also, the open API foundation.
>> You also demonstrated this morning, Aurena,
your new customer experience platform.
Talk about what that is and why it's important.
>> It's important, of course again,
because we had this generational shift
in people that are coming in to the workforce,
that expect and want to work differently.
And if you think about how people actually work to do
and get things done today
or think about ourselves,
we are no spring chickens anymore.
We've been around the block--
>> Speak for yourself.
>> We've seen dos systems--
>> Yeah, my hand went up on the 3.1 (mumbles).
>> With the three point,
did you put the mouse on the screen, as well?
(laughing)
I really seen that.
So we've been through that,
but the people we get in to the workforce now,
they have a different mentality,
they are not thinking about what they do.
Like we are thinking about,
how does the system work?
Where do I click?
Where do I go next?
The intuition that people now apply to the system,
when they start working with them,
the systems just have to reflect that intuition, as well.
It has to be intuitive, it has to be immersive, as well.
And the immersive part is really,
based on what the user see, what they do,
the contextual information,
the contextual intelligence they get,
the context of what they do,
should want them to do more,
because they can, so they get dragged in
and the new types of users,
they just have that natural intuition.
Because that's how you browse the web,
you go to one place on the web,
go to the next thing,
you get inspired by this, you go there.
And there's no reason why
the systems that you get your work done with,
shouldn't be the exact same thing.
Aurena is a huge step in that direction.
Together with our mobile enablement
on multiple phone factors and devices.
>> So you mentioned, everybody's becoming a software company,
every company is becoming.
You've been in the software business for awhile,
you work for a software company now.
You talking about Aurena,
you're talking about API integration
and I showed you our software.
My point is softwares hard.
There's a talent (mumbles) for employees,
we talked about that off camera.
So as you see these companies digitally transforming,
becoming software companies,
marketing (mumbles) softwares leading the world.
(mumbles) everybody's becoming a software company.
How are they doing?
And what role can you play, IFS,
in terms of helping them become a software company?
Because it's so damn difficult.
>> Yeah, I think the role of being a software company,
I think the absolute differentiation
they want to create through software
and differentiate are things,
are the things really want to do.
We can't really help them there,
because they are differentiated.
Like, if you're differentiated,
you can't find something standard and use for that.
But we can enable that.
And as we are looking at a lot of the emerging technologies,
that we can enable them with, to achieve it.
There's a number of things we can do.
And we are introducing the notion of an application,
of application services here.
Where we really enable these emerging technologies,
in the context of what we do.
So while you hear about technologies of
augmented reality, mixed reality,
artificial intelligence, and robotics and IOT
and artificial intelligence, all the stuff that you have.
We take that and put it in context of the focus industries,
that we focus on and the solution categories,
that we focus on.
So EIP, enterprise (mumble), service management.
And in that way, our customers can focus on
what they actually need to do with it
versus focus on the technologies.
>> And the API platform allow those customers,
to whatever they build,
to integrate to their ERP system, if in fact--
>> That's correct, that's correct.
And as I mentioned, we also use API's,
not only on the front end of what we provide,
and (mumbles), but we also consume on the back end.
So the way we actually consume the application services
and drag them in and embed them,
is through API's to these application services.
>> I understand you're working on
a entirely new architecture
that you'll be debuting in the spring of 2020.
How is that going to change the game?
>> We don't really think about it as a new architecture.
We think about it as a natural evolution,
that includes some of these things.
So for instance,
the introduction of the application services layer,
that I mentioned.
Is more a new layer in our architecture we are introducing.
So we don't think about it as a new architecture,
we are just evolving what we have.
And because of that evolution,
that is something that our entire product portfolio
will benefit from.
And I already mentioned today,
how we are aligning the product portfolio
from an experienced prospective.
We are bringing the Aurena experience to our FSM product,
to our PSO product,
to our customer engagement product, and so forth.
So we are aligning that front end experience
on the same design patterns and so forth.
Because, you know, a good experience
is a good user experience.
>> You talk about Aurena bot
and this gentlemen here who is giving us this talk.
Just throwed a (mumbles) status,
that by (mumbles) whatever year 2023.
More money will be spent on bots than mobile integration,
which was quite a prediction.
Your thoughts?
>> Well there's always all kinds on interesting predictions.
I think actually,
I actually think the amount of money may go down.
But I think the number of bots will go up dramatically.
And I think we'll actually get to a situation
where bots will be creating bots.
Right, so that's when you get,
when we talk about intelligent and autonomous systems,
I really believe it.
Because there's no reason why
we should not begin to see autonomy in software.
>> Right.
>> We see it, I used the example this morning,
that we put our lives in the hands of technology everyday,
when you go in your car
and you use your adaptive cruise control.
You're trusting technology.
Like, when you're driving your Tesla.
There was an example in San Francisco.
I think, in December last year,
where the police had been following a driver for 17 miles
and the car wouldn't stop,
because it was driving itself and the driver was sleeping.
So they had to call out testing
and say how can we manipulate this technology,
so the car actually stops,
so the police could have actually got the car to stop?
And finally, the guy woke up
and he probably had one too many,
but he claimed he wasn't driving,
they shouldn't charge him, but they did.
>> Of course.
Well, bots are getting better.
I still often know when I'm talking to a bot,
but it's getting better.
What did you say?
>> Getting really good.
>> Last year, I was completely fooled by a fundraising bot.
But I got a phone call from a bot,
I spoke to for 90 seconds,
before realizing it was a bot.
So it's getting pretty good.
As you look at the technology that excites you,
about what you're bringing to your product.
You talk a lot this morning,
about different kinds of technology
and how you want to be a leader.
What technologies excite you most
about the markets that you are serving?
>> I tell you what excites me the most
is to work through the different levels
of digital transformation, that I talked about.
I'm excited about the inflection
between business and technology.
I'm excited about the inflection
between people and experiences.
And I'm excited about the inflection between
automation and efficiency.
We have a lot of technology at our hands,
that can help us achieve these different things.
But at the end of the day, it's the outcomes, that matters.
The technologies are exciting,
and I can get super geeky
about a lot of different technologies.
But if it doesn't relate to any
not technical vision of product,
but any business vision you have,
on what you actually want to do with it as a business.
Then I think it becomes dangerous.
But of course, we have our geek sessions,
where we geek out on all these different things.
But we try to separate that
from when we actually deciding and building things
directly in to the product.
But we need the geek sessions to get inspired
and understand what is available.
So we can put it in the context of
what our customers need today
and also what they'll be needing in the future.
>> Since you have some decent observation space
on digital transformation,
I want to ask a question.
Our partner ETR, they have a data platform,
and I was down in New York last week just talking to them.
And one of the theories is
spending's starting to slow down a little bit,
overall in the macro.
One of the theories is that digital transformation,
in the last two years has been of experimentation,
it's a lot of try in everything
and now their going into production
with what they feel will deliver business value.
And two things are happening, is their premise.
One is, their narrowing down the focus on new technologies
and making bets for all the disruptive technologies.
The other is, alot of the legacy stuff,
they're pulling out.
Saying okay, we're moving on.
Are you seeing that?
Are you seeing the sort of that the bell weathers anyway,
going heavy now into production with digital transformation?
What are you seeing?
>> I think it's a progression.
I think it's scenario based.
I don't see companies
making an all out bet from one day to the other.
>> So it's mixed?
>> It's mixed.
And I think you need to take a cautious approach
because when you're in the technology world,
you don't always get it right in the first go.
We certainly don't get it right,
the first time, all the time.
Right, so often times
it's important to get something out there,
learn from it, innovate, fail fast sometimes.
The worst thing you can do,
is not acknowledge when you've made a mistake.
And I think that,
that's a risk that some companies
also bare with digital transformation is.
If you need to adjust
what you thought was the right thing to do,
make the adjustment as quickly as possible.
>> You talked in your keynote about tailoring solutions
and I want to understand your philosophy.
How dogmatic are you about not making customizations,
versus allowing your customers to make those tailored,
and how do you manage that
from a cloud and SAS delivery,
evergreen I think you called it, standpoint?
>> We absolutely believe that
customers should have solutions,
that meets exactly what they need and so forth.
We also, heard from (mumbles) today,
that a good philosophy,
and I really subscribe to that philosophy.
That if you're doing things that,
is not really differentiating you as a company or something,
just use the standard process.
Why do something custom,
if it doesn't mean anything?
Then you can adjust your processes to that.
But if you have things
that really differentiate you as a company,
you obviously want to have the technology
that supports that.
And since that is differentiated,
you're not likely to have the standard package (mumbles).
So in that process,
what we need to enable is,
we need to enable these scenarios where you can extend.
We call it extend on the inside, extend on the outside.
But you can achieve what you want,
but do it in a way, where you do it in a declarative way,
not by creating a modifying code.
So instead, we want to make sure that the code that we have,
that is part of the standard product,
can actually interpret declarative code.
And that means that when we have upgrades
and all that stuff, we upgrade the (mumbles),
but declarative code, that the customer has,
that is specific to them, remains there and stays there.
>> And that's why the API platform is critical.
You said no product will be announced or shipped
without API enablement.
>> That's correct.
>> (mumbles), okay.
>> We cannot because, we cannot create a user or front end,
to anything that isn't API enabled.
So it's very simple.
>> That's modern architecture.
I'm curious about,
you said that one of the reasons you were at IFS,
is it's so customer focused.
What is it that this company does differently
from companies you've worked at in the past,
that exemplifies that customer focus?
>> I think it goes deep,
not only into the culture,
but how we actually have people
in all of (mumbles) development teams.
I've been in other software companies
and the development teams,
you have developers, you have QA's, you have testers,
you have program end
is to write the specifications, so forth.
We actually have industry solution specialist,
embedded in the development teams.
So we are, probably our own worst critic.
And of course then, working hand in hand with customers
in that process, is essential.
But again, if we don't provide the value and the output,
from what we create for our customers,
then it's worth nothing.
And that's really the philosophy.
If we do not provide value, technology means nothing.
>> So the intersection of demand expertise
in software development.
Christian, last question is sort of,
what do you hope to get out of this event,
things that you hope to take away, or learn, or convey
to your customers?
Well, I always look to get feedback.
I'm a sucker for feedback input and learning.
So first of all, I can't wait to walk the expo floor here
and really see what all our partners
are bringing to the table of innovation.
Because they're doing amazing things,
so I always enjoy spending a few hours on the expo floor.
In the process, get to meet a lot of people.
And then, during the sessions,
I always encourage feedback from people.
During the session, if we can
or I'll always end any presentation with our email address.
Anybody, any customer, any partner,
will always be able to email me directly.
And I, sometimes a little hard to keep up,
but I will respond to every single request.
>> Feedback is a gift.
Christian, thanks so much, for coming on theCube. (mumbles)
>> It's great to see you.
>> Alright, thank you very much.
>> Alright, thank you for watching everybody.
Keep it right there, we'll be back with our next guest.
We're at IFS World, Boston.
You're watching theCube.
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