>> From Sandhill Road
in the heart of Silicon Valley, it's theCUBE.
Presenting the People First Network,
insights from entrepreneurs and tech leaders.
>> Well I'm John Furrier, with theCUBE. I'm the cohost,
also the founder of SiliconANGLE Media.
We are here on Sand Hill Road at Mayfield
for the People First Conversations.
I'm John Furrier with theCUBE. We're here
and Alan Boehme, Global CTO and IT of Innovation
at Procter and Gamble, formally the same position
at Coca-Cola, has done a lot of innovations over the years.
There was also a reference account back in the day
for web methods when they called on the financing
of one of the most famous IPOs, which set the groundwork
for web services and has a lot of history going back
to the 80's, we were just talking about it.
Welcome. This conversation on People First Network.
>> Thank you for inviting me.
>> So, the People First Network is all about people
and it's great to have these conversations.
You're old school, you were doing some stuff back
in the 80's, doing RPA, 3270. You've been old school here.
>> Yeah. And I go back to APLs, my first
programming language, went through the third generation
languages and, of course, the old 3270 emulation,
which is what we know today as RPA.
>> One of the cool things that I was excited to hear
some of your background around, your history, webMethods,
you were a reference call for a venture financing
of webMethods, which was financed on the credit card
of the two founders, husband and wife.
Probably one of the most successful IPOs,
but more importantly, at the beginning of the massive wave
that we now see with web services. This is early days.
>> Yeah, this was very early days. When I was at DHL,
we were looking at what we were going to do for the future
and, in fact, we built one of the first
Object Oriented frameworks in C++ at the time,
because that was all that was available to us.
It was the best that was available.
We rejected Corbus and we said look it, we're going to go
this direction, and one of my developers found
webMethods, found Phillip Merrick, who was literally
at the time working out of his garage,
and had this technology that was going to allow us
to start moving into this object-oriented approach.
And I remember the day Robin Vasan from Mayfield called
and said hey, I'm thinking about investing in webMethods,
what do you think about it? And not only was it
one of the first startups that I ever worked with,
but it's actually the first time I met anybody
in the venture community, way back in 19...
I think it was 1997, is when it happened.
>> And that was an exciting time in computer science
and then the rest is history, and then XML became
what it became, lingua franca for the web.
Web services now, Amazon, web services, you're seeing
cloud computing microservices, Kubernetes, service measures,
this is the new stack that's being developed in the cloud
and this is the new generation.
You've seen many waves and at Procter and Gamble,
formerly Coca-Cola, you're the same role,
you have to navigate this, so what's different now?
What's different say fifteen, twenty years ago?
How are you looking at this market?
How are you implementing some of the IT
and infrastructure and software development environments?
>> I think what's changed is, you know, we got into
the early 2000s, Nicholas Carr came out and said
IT doesn't matter and I think anybody that was in IT
had this very objectionable response initially.
But when you stepped back and you looked at it,
what you realized was many cases IT didn't matter and those
are those areas that were non-competitive, those things
that could be commoditized and it was completely right.
The reality is IT has always mattered,
that technology does give you a competititve advantage
in certain markets and certain capabilities for a company,
but back then we had to go out and we had to
purchase equipment, we had to configure the equipment,
there was a lot of heavy lifting and corporations just
did not want to invest the capital, so they outsourced
the stuff wholesale. I think General Motors was
the first one that just outsourced everything and was
followed by other companies including Procter and Gamble.
The decision at that time was probably right,
but as you go forward and we see what's happened
with corporations, we see the valuations of corporations,
the amount of return on equity based on the capital
that's being invested, we can see that data's important,
we can see that agility, flexibility, is key
to competing in the future and therefore what's changing
is we're now moving into an age of, away from, Europeans.
We're moving into an age away from these outsource providers
on a wholesale basis and using it selectively to drive down
costs and allowing us to free up money in order to invest
in those things that are most important to the company.
>> So you're saying is that the folks, and naturally
the server consolidation, they bought all this gear,
all this software over 18 month roll-outs before they
even see the first implementation, those were the glory days
of gravy trains for the vendors, not good for the
practitioners. But you're saying that the folks who
re-invested or investing in IT as a core competency
are seeing a competitive advantage.
>> They certainly are, you know,
I think I made the statement in front of a number
of the vendors a few years ago and people were not
comfortable with it, but what I said was,
gone are the eras of these 10, 20 million dollar deals.
Gone are the eras of the million, 2 million dollar deals.
We're in the era of throw-away technology.
I need to be able to use and invest in technology
for a specific purpose, for a specific period of time
and be able to move on to the next one. It's the perfect
time for startups, but startups shouldn't be looking
at the big picture, they should be looking at the tail
on these investments; let me try things, let me get out
in the market, let me have a competitive advantage
in marketing, which is most important to me,
or supply chain. Those are the areas that I can
make a difference with my consumers and my customers
and that's where the investments have to go.
>> Isn't it just the cost of throw-away technology
and, you know, you could also be said of
being more agile. But interesting, if you look at
the cloud SaaS business model, if Amazon, for instance
I think that's gold standard, where they actually
lower prices on a per unit basis and increase more services
than value, but in the aggregate you're still paying more,
but you have more flexibility and that's kind of
a good tell sign so that you're seeing that ability
to reuse either the infrastructure that's commodotized
to shift the value, this is... people are having a hard time
understanding this so I want to get your reaction to
how should IT leaders understand the wave of cloud,
the wave of machine learning, what AI can bring
to the table, these new trends... how should leaders
figure this out, is there a playbook?
Is there things that you've learned that you could share?
>> I don't know that there's really a playbook, it's still
early on, everyone's looking for one cloud fits all.
The reality is, whether it's Google, whether it's Amazon,
whether it's Microsoft, whether it's IBM, all clouds
are different. All clouds are special, are purpose-built
for different solutions and I think as an IT leader,
you have to understand you're not just going to take everything
and lift and shift, that's what we used to do.
We're now in the position where we have to deconstruct
our business, we have to understand the services,
the capabilities that we want to bring to the market,
and not lock ourselves in. It's building blocks.
It's Legos. We're in the period of Legos, putting these
things together in different manners in order to create
new solutions. If we try to lock ourselves in the past
of how we've always financed things, how we've always
built things, then we're not going to be any better off
in the new world than we were in the old.
>> Alan, I want to get your reaction to two words,
RPA and containers. (laughs)
>> (laughs) Well as I said earlier, RPA is 3270 emulation
from the 1980s and for those of us old enough to remember
that I still remember scraping the old green screens
and putting a little processor around it.
What's nice though is that we have moved forward,
machine learning and AI and other capabilities are now
present so that we can do this. I actually played around
with neural nets, probably back in 1985, with
an Apollo computer so that tells you how far back I go.
But technology's changed, processing speeds changed,
everything that technology trends are allowing us
to now do these things, the question that we have
is also a moral dilemma. Are we trying to replace people
or are we trying to make improvements? And I think that
you don't look at RPA as a way simply to replace work,
it's a way to enhance what we're doing in order to create
new value for the customer or for the consumer in our case.
I think in the area of containers, you know, again,
it's been around for a while, it's just another approach
that we're not, we don't want lock-in, we don't want to be
dependent on specific vendors, we want the portability,
we want the flexibility, and I think as we start moving
containers out to the edge, that's where we're going to
start seeing more value as the business processes and
the capabilities are spread out again. The idea of
centralized cloud computing is very good,
however, it does need to be distributed.
>> What's interesting, I find, about the conversation here
is that you mentioned a couple things earlier,
you mentioned the vendors locking you in and saying
here's the ERP, buy this, and with this you have to have
a certain process 'cause this is our technology,
you got to use it this way, and you were a slave to
their tech, and your process served their tech,
with containers and, say, orchestration, you now
have the ability to manage workloads differently.
And so an interesting time, does that change the notion
of "rip and replace," lift and shift? Because
if I have a container, I can just put a container around it
and not have to worry about killing the old
to bring in the new. This is sort of the fundamental
kind of debate going on, do you have to kill the old
to bring in the new?
>> Well, you need to kill the old sometimes just because
it's old and it's time to go, other times you do need
to repackage it, and other times, I hate to say it,
you do need to lift and shift. If you're a legacy
organization, you have a long history such as most
of the manufacturing companies in the world today,
we can't get rid of old things that quickly.
We can't afford to, a lot of the processes are still valid.
As we're looking to the future, we certainly are
breaking these things down into services.
We're looking to containerize these things.
We're looking to move them into areas where we can compute
where we want to, when we want to, at the right price.
We're just at the beginning of that journey in the industry.
I still think there's about 5 to 7 years to go to get there.
>> Now talk about the role of the edge, the role of
cloud computing, as it increases the surface area of IT
potentially, combined with the fact that IT is a
competitive advantage, bring those two notions together,
what's the role of the people? Because you used to
have people that would just manage to rack and stack,
provisioning some storage, doing this- as those stovepipes
start to be broken down and the surface area of IT is bigger
how's that change the relationship of the people involved?
>> You win with the people at the end of the day,
you don't win with technology in a company of such
as Procter and Gamble and I think what's happened,
if you look at historically the ERP vendors came out
probably '99, 2000 and it used to be, I remember this
'cause I'm old, I'll be honest with you, but I remember
that we used to have to worry about the amount of memory
we were managing, we had to be able to tune databases
and all of this, and the vendors went ahead and they started
automating all those processes with the idea that we can
do it better than a human. And a lot of people,
a lot of the technology talent then started leaving
the organizations and organizations were left with people
that were focusing on process and people, excuse me,
process and the business, which is very good, because
you need the subject matter experts. Going forward,
we have to reinvest in people, our people of the
subject matter expertise, they have some technology skills
that they've developed over the years and they've enhanced
on their own, but we're in this huge change right now
where we have to think different, we have to act different,
and we have to behave differently so doubling down on people
is the best thing that you can do.
>> And the old outsource model, of outsourcing everything,
kind of reduces the core competency of the people
and now you got to build it back up again.
>> Exactly. When we left at P and G 15 years ago,
about 5,000 people left the organization when we outsourced,
we outsourced the technology to our partner at that time.
Now it's time we're starting to bring it back in.
We've brought the network team back in and stood up
our own sock and our own knock for the first time
in years just this past year. We're doing the same thing
by moving things out to the cloud. More and more's
moving to the cloud, we're setting up our own cloud
operations and DevOps capabilities. I can tell you
having been on both sides of it, it's a lot harder
to be able to bring it back in than it is to take it out.
>> And you know, interesting, Procter and Gamble's
well-known as being very intimate with the data,
very data-driven company. The data is valuable,
and having that infrastructure in IT to support the data,
that's important. What's your vision on the data,
future of the data in the world?
>> Well I think data has a value to itself, but when you tie
it to products, you tie it to your customers, consumers,
it's even more valuable. And we're in the process now of
things that we used to do completely internally
with our own technology or technology partners,
we're now moving all of that out into the cloud now.
And I'm going to say cloud, it's clouds, plural. Again,
going back to certain clouds are better for certain things
so you're seeing a dramatic shift. We have a number
of projects underway that are in the cloud space,
both for customers and consumers, number of cloud projects
in the way for our own internal employees,
it's all about collecting the data, processing the data,
protecting that data, 'cause we take that very seriously,
and being able to use it to make better decisions.
>> I want to get your reaction on two points and two lines
of questioning here, one 'cause I think it's very relevant.
On the enterprise side, you're a big account
for the big whales, the old ERPs, the big cloud providers,
so people want to sell you stuff. At the same time,
you're also running IT innovations, so you want to
play with the shiny new toys, experiment with startups.
So, if startups want to get your attention, and big vendors
want to sell to you, the tables have kind of turned.
It's been good, it's a good buyers' market right now
in my opinion. So what's your thoughts on that?
Start with the big companies, what do they got to do
to win you over, what do they got to look like,
how they got to engage, and for startups,
how do they get your attention?
>> I think the biggest thing for either a startup
or alarge company is understanding the company
you're dealing with. Whether it's Procter and Gamble,
whether it's Coca-Cola, whether it was DHL,
if you understand how I operate, if you understand
how decisions are made, if you understand how I'm organized,
that's going to give you a competitive advantage.
Now, the large corporations understand this because
they've been around the entire journey of computing
with these large corporations. The startups need to
step back and take a look and see where do I add that
competitive advantage? Many times when you're selling
to large corporate, you're not selling to a large corporate,
you're selling to divisions, you're selling to functions,
and that's how you get in. I've been working with startups
as I said back since webMethods and it was just
a two person company but we brought them in for a
very specific capability. I then took webMethods with me
when I left DHL, I took them to GE, when I left GE,
I took them to ING, because I trusted them and they matured
along the way. I think finding that right individual
that has the right need is the key and working it slowly.
Don't think you're going to close the deal fast
if you're a startup, know it's going to take some time
and decide if that's in your best interest or not.
>> Slow things down, focus, don't try to boil the ocean over.
>> Too many of them try to, you're right, too many people
try to boil the ocean. Get that win, one win will get you
another win, which will get you another win, and
that's the best way to succeed.
>> Alan, so if you could go back and knowing what you
know now and you're breaking into the IT leadership position
looking forward, what would you do differently?
You can do a mulligan. What would you do differently?
>> Well, you know, I think one of the dangers of being
an innovator in IT is that you really are a risk-taker
and taking risks is counter culture to corporations.
I think I would probably try to get by on a little bit more,
someone once told me, you see the forest through the trees
before anybody else does, your problem is that you don't
bring people along with you so I think I would probably
slow down a little bit, not in the adoption of technology,
but I'd probably take more time to build the case,
to bring people along a lot faster, so that they can see it,
and they can take credit for it, and they can
move the needle as well.
>> Yeah, and always, sometimes early adopters and pioneers
had the arrows in the back as they'd say.
>> I've had my share. (laughs)
>> Al, thanks for sharing your experience. What's next
for you? What's the next mountain you're going to climb?
>> I think that as we're looking forward, latency is still
an issue, you know, we have to find a way to defeat latency
and we're not going to do it through basic physics
or we're going to have to change our business models,
change our technology, distribution, change everything
that we're doing. Consumers and customers are demanding
instant access to enhanced information through AI and ML
right at the point when they want it. And that means
we're now dealing with miliseconds and nanoseconds
of having to make decisions. So I'm very interested
in looking at how are we going to change consumer behavior
and customer behavior by combining a lot of the new
technology trends that are underway, and we have to do it
also with security in mind now. Before, we used to,
security was secondary. Now, as we're seeing with all of the
hacks and the malware and everything that's going on
in the world, we have to go in and think a little bit
different about how we're going to do that. So I'm very much
engaged in working with a lot of startups, I live here
in the Silicon Valley, I commute to Cincinnati for
Procter and Gamble, I'm spending time, just flew in from
Tel Aviv literally an hour ago, I'm in the middle of all
the technology hot spots trying to find that next big thing
and that's what excites me.
>> And it's global, it's global.
>> Innovation happens everywhere and anywhere.
The venture community, if you look at the amount of funds
that used to be invested out of the Silicon Valley versus
the rest of the world it continues to be on a downward trend
not because the funding isn't here in the Silicon Valley,
but because everyone is recognizing that innovation
and technology has developed everywhere in the world.
>> Alan Boehme, who's the CTO, global CTO and IT innovator
here at theCUBE conversation, here in Sand Hill Road,
I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching.
(techno beat)