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ALISON WAGONFELD: Hi, everyone, great to see you here
this afternoon.
So I'm Alison Wagonfeld, and I head up
marketing for Google Cloud.
And I have the great honor and pleasure
to be able to spend 20 minutes asking questions
to one of our great customers, an awesome partner,
and to also the CIO of Google.
So Aireen is here from AirAsia, Fidelma from Iron Mountain,
and, as I mentioned, Ben.
So I'm going to start by asking each of them a question
and then go into a little more specific.
And then we will wrap with a speed round.
So I want to start off by-- we were
listening to [? PH ?] in the back room
and talking about being your customer.
And thinking then, as we were chatting,
about what it means to use the Cloud to get closer
to your customer, what does that mean for you at AirAsia?
AIREEN OMAR: Well, for us, we have a lot of growth in AirAsia
really, looking at how we started
with just two airplanes in 2001 with just
over 20,000 passengers.
And now, we're looking at about 90 million passengers
per annum.
And that's a lot of data coming from our booking
system and data coming from our aircraft and also from engines.
So we see that, in terms of, how do we integrate all this data,
centralize them, and be able to use them
in terms of being more responsive and more innovative
to our consumer needs?
And it's not just about the consumer needs
that we're looking at, but also understanding their behavior.
How do we design a personalization program
that actually incorporates natural behavior?
How do you also look at our operational efficiency
so that at least our consumer actually
enjoy the journey with us by being on time,
by being able to serve what they want to and so forth?
And how do we use that data to be
able to give them a seamless journey from the moment
they book until they arrive and until they
return from their flight?
And that also means in terms of how
do we give them a one-stop travel and experience
needs for them and not just the flights, basically?
So for us, it allows us the ability
to be more consumer-centric.
And with all the data that we have from all the consumers,
we can see what other business opportunities can we
build around it.
And I think that, with that, we can serve our consumers better.
ALISON WAGONFELD: Yeah, that sounds great.
The growth of AirAsia has been incredible to watch.
Fidelma, with respect to Iron Mountain, when
you think about getting closer to your customer
with the Cloud, what does that mean to you?
And maybe talk a little bit about our recent partnership.
FIDELMA RUSSO: Yeah, so we've just
announced a great partnership with Google.
And Iron Mountain, our specialty is information management.
And it's really been focused around paper
and physical records and compliance and risk
and managing that for our customers.
So as we look at where our customers are going
and what they want from us, we have now
started to invest in technologies and solutions
to basically take paper--
any physical assets, any digital assets--
digitize them in a seamless process,
and then, working with Google on your ML and AI technologies,
coming together on vertical solutions
so we can provide more insights for our customers.
So providing really what they need and what they want
and expect from us all the time around risk and compliance
and record-keeping, but also making sure
that that data, now, has basically been enlightened
and enriched so that we can provide
more insights to the business and drive
revenues for our customers.
ALISON WAGONFELD: Yeah, I'm sure everyone here
will appreciate that.
Probably 2/3 of this room or probably more
are customers of yours, and to be able to use ML and AI
will be fantastic.
And in fact, when we were chatting before this panel,
Ben mentioned that you've been a customer
of Iron Mountain for a while.
But maybe tell us a little bit-- in your role at Google,
you kind of have a different set of who's your customer.
BEN FRIED: Right, and actually, "who is my customer,"
"what is my customer" has been this great challenge.
I think I've been at Google about a decade now.
And in that time, Google has grown by-- the employee base
has grown by something like 7X.
And business complexity, lines of business, lines of revenue
have grown by maybe a factor of 10.
So knowing my customer is this ongoing challenge
for me and my organization.
Trying to keep up with--
or stay ahead of-- and deliver technology
that automates a workforce that's always changing
is kind of the big story and a way
in which both GCP and G Suite have been key enablers.
ALISON WAGONFELD: Yeah, it's great.
As one of your customers, I appreciate the work
that your team does.
So Fidelma, you probably looked at all of the different cloud
providers when deciding to work with Google.
What was it about Google Cloud that appealed to you?
FIDELMA RUSSO: So when I came to Iron Mountain, which
was a little over a year ago, my first mission
was to talk to customers and understand
what they wanted from us.
And we're very informed by a number of our customer councils
that we run.
So we set out on this mission to provide the solutions
that we're starting to roll out with you.
And part of that was, who is the best
provider and the right provider for these type of solutions?
And for us, we initially intended
to roll out compliance and risk products
and then follow that up with ML and AI.
And honestly, Google helped catapult us in that roadmap.
And so we really chose Google Cloud
as underlying infrastructure for these solutions because
of your ML and AI capability-- and quite
frankly, also because of the talent of the people
that we interacted with at Google and their ability
to really work with us to take some of our customer problems,
work with our engineers, who truly understand how these are
used, and then translate that into different technologies
and different work that we could do together.
So we really chose you because of your--
what I would call your leadership in ML and AI,
above all other things.
ALISON WAGONFELD: Yeah, that's great to hear.
And we actually hear that quite a bit on a couple of fronts.
One is-- Diane says it often when she's
engaging with customers-- it starts out
talking about specific workloads or very specific elements.
And then the conversation gets broader and broader.
And then, as we bring in more and more Googlers
into the conversation, everyone's like, oh,
this is great.
This is the team I want to work with.
So I'm glad that you had that experience.
And so Aireen, you talked a bit about
the digital transformation or what
you're putting in place now with the Cloud
that you're hoping to achieve in terms
of digital transformation.
Looking out three years, what would success look like?
If you were back on this stage three years from now, talking
to everyone, saying, we are really well on our way
to what we want to do, what would you be saying?
AIREEN OMAR: Well, what I would be looking at
is in terms of our response time with consumers--
our passengers, basically-- and to be
able to provide all other offerings and not just flights.
Because really, with all this data that we have,
there are a lot of business opportunities
that we're creating in terms of other e-commerce platforms,
such as an online travel agent, FinTech, and so forth.
And this is just providing them with a one-stop center
for all their needs whenever they travel
or even their own lifestyle.
So really the ambition is, how do we not only
use machine learning and so forth, but with that,
how do we create other business opportunities
that we will be the biggest e-commerce platform, which
so happens to fly an airline?
ALISON WAGONFELD: Well, that's a very ambitious goal.
We're happy to be working with you on that-- super exciting.
Ben, you know, you have an interesting vantage point,
working across all of Google.
And also, as being, in many ways, Google Cloud's biggest
customer.
What's some advice that you would give?
And how have you seen that evolution of becoming
cloud-on-cloud, in a sense?
BEN FRIED: So it's been an amazing journey.
And I'd have to say, for me, the transformational thing
has been this laser-like focus that we've
developed on the enterprise and now on the large enterprise.
So the transformation element, for me,
has gone from being an IT group with audacious goals
around moving as many workloads as would
fit to Cloud to understanding that actually, we
can be pioneers, partnering with the rest of the Cloud
organization to understand how to move all of an IT
organization's workloads.
And that level of engagement and that partnership with Cloud
and the opportunities that that's
created for our technology organization
have been incredible.
We've been on a path over the past couple
of years to move all of the packaged software residing
on conventional servers and so on into Google Cloud.
That's resulted in something like 83 new features that
are on-track for delivery in Cloud
over the course of the next year or so.
That's been an amazing journey to be on.
ALISON WAGONFELD: Well, that's great to hear.
So you each manage pretty big teams
and have big organizations.
If you could bring a hundred people from your team
here, which I know is hard to-- well, Ben,
you do get to do that.
But maybe this is for Aireen and Fidelma.
What would you hope they could learn?
What's the information that you want to get
and the knowledge you want to get to your teams right now?
AIREEN OMAR: I think, with data, they're
empowered to be able to make decisions quickly,
as opposed to how we used to do things.
And that, I would like them to embrace that and work
collaboratively and how businesses are all
aligned nicely for them to make that decisions.
So that's something that I would like
them to be able to use that quickly,
to be able to be empowered, and make sure that they also
can create ideas in terms of what they can do with this data
that they are now able to see and know
what they can do with it as well.
ALISON WAGONFELD: Yeah, and how about you, Fidelma?
FIDELMA RUSSO: So I think it varies on the type of person.
Personally, I'd like to bring a cross-functional team
as much as possible, not just the engineers.
Because I think it's the end to end that really
creates the value that a company brings to the marketplace.
So what would I expect them-- we have quite a big team here,
actually.
ALISON WAGONFELD: That's good to hear.
FIDELMA RUSSO: And first of all, it's
to engage in very intellectually honest discussions
around technologies.
Second one is learning from the rest
of the users of Google technologies, the best
practices, the things to avoid.
There's no point in repeating other people's mistakes.
And you're going to make your own
but you may as well not add to them.
And then I think the third thing is to really just soak up
the atmosphere of being around so many industries that
are being transformed and to soak up that bravery
to kind of cross the chasm.
How do you cross the chasm and how do you
do it enlightened by technology and knowing the right places
to apply and not to apply?
ALISON WAGONFELD: That's great.
Well, hopefully on Thursday afternoon, we'll meet up again.
And you can tell me whether or not
your team achieved all that--
FIDELMA RUSSO: Whether we're going to get there?
ALISON WAGONFELD: --and if not, what we
can do next year to make it better.
Ben, you probably have a bunch of people from your team
here, too.
What are they doing?
BEN FRIED: So they're doing a bunch of things.
Some of them are actually manning--
and personning-- booths.
They're staffing booths in the convention center.
We have a great demonstration of Chromebook Grab and Go
loners, which is a service that we built out
that maybe you've taken advantage of inside Google.
I have another team working on meetings in the showcase
area for meetings.
And I have a bunch of people who are here
because we have so much experience on my team
using all of the Cloud products that it's
really important for us to connect
with partners and customers and share our stories.
And I've told all my team and everyone
who's coming that there's this infinite value, both to us
and hopefully to the people we engage with in doing that.
ALISON WAGONFELD: Yeah, great.
So before we go into our final speed round,
I'm going to ask one last question of all of you.
So I'll start off with you, Ben, about, what would you
advise people in this room to do in the next six months,
based on what your experience is so far in working
with so many different--
BEN FRIED: Right.
Well, this is kind of inspired somewhat by Astro's talk
earlier.
One of the things Astro said was innovation
can occur all over in an organization.
But there's this organizational instinct
to smash it like whack-a-mole, I think he said.
And one of the things that we've seen that
is really the power of when you have your infrastructure and as
many services as you--
ideally, all your services running on Cloud,
that's the same platform that you can use for innovation
as you can use for running all of your traditional services.
So anyone who has a good idea can on-demand
get access to the compute and the infrastructure
that they need to actually realize that idea.
And when it works, thanks to capacity
on demand and global availability,
you can have a great, innovative idea
that you can deploy to the entire company [SNAPS]
like that.
And you don't have to worry about having success disasters
because there's a great PoC but you can't actually
deliver it globally or you have to re-implement it
because it only really ran in a test condition
for one or two people.
That would be, I think, if you want
to try to connect the dots about Astro's
inspiration around innovation with what
you could do over the next six months, start there.
ALISON WAGONFELD: Yeah, that's great.
So Aireen, what would you say, based on your Cloud journey
to date and where you're going?
What would you hope-- what would you
advise for the next six months?
AIREEN OMAR: Well, I think, in the next six months
with our Cloud journey, that's a lot of things
that we're hoping to do, firstly, in terms
of design a personalized program for our consumers
in terms of being more tactical and targeted in what we offer.
And also in terms of our operations,
to ensure that we incorporate efficiency and productivity
and so forth and how machine learning can help as well.
How do we use face and voice recognition?
And also in terms of ambient intelligence,
and able to provide that kind of efficiencies and productivity
and so forth.
And how do we use machine learning,
in terms of being able for us to monitor
our operations with precision?
Because accuracy is really important.
How do we use Cloud to be able to scale up our business faster
than usual and so forth?
And to be able to detect safety and operational issues, which
is very important for our operations.
ALISON WAGONFELD: Yeah, that makes sense.
And finally, Fidelma, how about you for the next six months?
What's on the agenda for you?
FIDELMA RUSSO: So for the next six months,
we're going to continue our transformation journey.
And it's really all aspects of the company.
They're really powered and fueled by technology.
Clearly, we want to have a successful launch with Google
in the next couple of months--
ALISON WAGONFELD: You and me both--
FIDELMA RUSSO: --solutions to market.
ALISON WAGONFELD: --all of us here.
FIDELMA RUSSO: All of us, together.
ALISON WAGONFELD: Everybody.
FIDELMA RUSSO: And really--
and deepen that relationship that we're
going to have around AI.
I'm bringing that to the market in a packaged solution where
workflows are easy to consume, and we can provide insights
to our customers.
And so that will be kind of on the commercial side.
On the internal, infrastructure side,
we are aggressively moving a lot of our internal workload
to the Cloud.
And I think, as I see people taking it,
they're seeing success.
And success breeds success.
So I think we're just going to see an increasing velocity
and adoption of cloud technologies
within Iron Mountain.
ALISON WAGONFELD: And that sounds great.
We're definitely there with you every step of the way.
So now we're going to wrap up with a speed round, where
I'm going to ask you a series of questions.
And you can just share some of your insights
so that people here can get to know you a little bit.
And then you can follow up afterwards.
So Ben, if you could take one university class right now,
what would it be?
BEN FRIED: Data science, definitely.
ALISON WAGONFELD: Fidelma, what would you say?
FIDELMA RUSSO: Psychology.
ALISON WAGONFELD: OK.
AIREEN OMAR: I'd probably take also data science, really.
ALISON WAGONFELD: What was that?
AIREEN OMAR: Data science.
ALISON WAGONFELD: Data science as well.
So no theater, no--
doing it different.
So I'm curious, and you can expand
on this one for a little bit longer.
But what was the last project you killed and why?
We talked about this a little bit earlier today
with Astro Teller as well.
Ben, I'll let you tee this one off.
BEN FRIED: OK, over to me first.
So at Google, the IT department has a pretty significant--
the dial is turned towards "build" pretty significantly,
as opposed to "buy."
And we had an in-house project management system
that had been in the company longer than I have,
so over a decade.
And it had been super tightly entwined
into all of these processes that go on inside the company.
But at the end of the day, there were a large number
of engineers working on a project management system.
And just from first principles, there's
a really good technology industry and offerings
around project management.
So shutting down this in-house built project management system
that had been under active development for a decade
was the most recent thing that I did.
And that was not--
these things are never easy, right?
I mean, the CIOs can share this with me.
You have a lot more launches than you
have shutdowns in a given year.
ALISON WAGONFELD: OK, and then two other quick questions
to wrap.
If you could wave a magic wand, Aireen,
and Google could do one thing for you, what would it be?
AIREEN OMAR: OK, it's probably in the way,
how do I use machine learning to predict my boss's behavior?
ALISON WAGONFELD: Your boss's behavior, OK.
We would all like that.
AIREEN OMAR: So that all of us can be prepared.
Yeah, I would do that.
ALISON WAGONFELD: And Fidelma, what's your favorite interview
question?
FIDELMA RUSSO: I think my favorite question
that I ask someone is, give me a description of a time
when you were very uncomfortable and why,
and what techniques you've come up with to get over that.
ALISON WAGONFELD: OK, great.
And so the final question, seeing
that, for many of us working at this event,
summer basically starts for us this Friday,
what's your favorite summer vacation spot?
Ben, go ahead.
That's tough?
BEN FRIED: Probably Cape Cod.
ALISON WAGONFELD: Cape Cod?
BEN FRIED: [? Just came into ?] Cape Cod.
ALISON WAGONFELD: Fidelma?
FIDELMA RUSSO: Florence.
AIREEN OMAR: Maldives.
ALISON WAGONFELD: Maldives, there you go.
Now you've got it.
Now we know all where we should be going later on this summer.
And with that, we are going to wrap up this panel.
And I want to thank all of you for joining us.
Thank you all for being part of this.
And now we're going to welcome back onto stage
our MC, Chris Klayko.
Thank you very much.
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