- It's lunchtime, and this is Brad Anderson's Lunch Break.
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Here in Redmond, we're visited by some of,
the smartest people on the planet, pretty much every day.
Every chance I get, I meet up with them for lunch.
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Today I finished talking with Jay Emery,
the senior director of Global Enterprise Architecture
at Anheuser-Busch-InBev.
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Anheuser-Busch is really a case study about market
domination through cost innovation.
You're the first to use pasteurization,
first to use refrigeration,
first to do mass bottling,
the first refrigerator railroad cars,
and then the 1870's when you're already big,
you went back to Europe to even learn more,
and you came back with Budweiser.
How does this history of innovation and this growth mindset,
you know from the history impact the work,
that you do today?
- Innovation, like you said it is kind of in our bloodline.
The couple things we really look at one is,
you know how do we innovate technology wise right,
so we're really focus at least in the beer garage at,
how do we leap frog right?
Get rid of the incremental thought, cause everybody's
doing incremental updates,
but how do we jump from on premise data centers,
directly to cloud right, versus this phase approach right?
How do we really leap frog in terms of a,
technology road map,
to help create a bit of that competitive advantage.
We also look at how do we lead from a social responsibility,
perspective, and then we also wanna make sure that,
we're really driving the change on consumption right,
so really focus on spending almost a billion dollars over
the next several years on communicating
the responsible drinking message because
we want people to enjoy our products,
but we wanna do it responsibly.
- I gotta tell you,
I hear that you guys got the best products on the planet,
but I could honestly say
I've actually never tasted one. (laughs)
- We will find a way for you to do that.
Right I'd tell ya.
You know believe it or not we,
a big part of what we've been doing, and we do a lot,
being in the alcohol industry we really,
focus on social responsibility.
- Oh yeah.
- Environmental.
- I've seen that in your messaging.
- Yeah, we're actually made kind of an internal,
pledge really by 2025.
20 percent of our volume is gonna come from,
low alcohol or no alcohol.
- You know I was gonna ask you about that,
that's huge change, tell me what you're doing there.
- So what we're finding is that with the new generation of,
drinkers that come into the world,
they're more focused on health right,
and kind of less loyalty in terms of single brands,
so they like to experiment,
we wanna kind of to take the stigma away from that,
and say why can't you have a non alcohol beer,
- Yep
- Right, with lunch.
- Sure.
- Right or if you don't have a, you know where to
get Coke or Pepsi, or whatever,
why can't you have a non alcohol product right?
And so we're really seeing some good growth in that
marketplace right as people.
- It's probably safe to say that, that kind,
of like starts after the kids graduate from college.
- Exactly, exactly, exactly.
No absolutely, absolutely, absolutely.
So next time we'll I'll have some non alcohol for you.
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I read and article where you were talking about,
the balance of working with service vendors,
and software vendors versus doing as much as,
you can do in house.
- Yep.
- And you know the way you're describing about it
is you know you want to leverage the skills of the world,
but you want to keep the architecture internally.
What results have you seen from that?
- Very positive results.
I think we look back, and I think what we realized was that,
we didn't have as much in house technical knowledge,
that we needed to really set the strategy right.
Where in many cases we're dependent on,
and sometimes our vendors to set the strategy for us right.
And that's great we love our vendors and our partners,
but a lot of times there's that they maybe,
don't understand as deeply as the business needs,
and where we're going as a company,
so we really made a concerted effort to bring those,
enterprise architects back in house right,
And we're starting to see big big benefits from it right,
we're much more quickly able to push,
and kind of leap frog technologies right.
- Nice.
- So, we're not having to get stuck with that technology,
where we just look at minor upgrades,
and we're able to really sell the thing in,
because we're coming up.
- Be much more bold and impactful.
- Exactly, exactly.
- A few months ago we brought even more,
of our solutions together in Microsoft 365.
As you think about that vision from Microsoft,
what from that is gonna help you with your future workspace?
- What we try to do and I think this is where that,
this fits into kind of our strategic road map,
is we really sit down and really to understand,
technology profiles right?
What are the tools that our users need to do their jobs?
So we really go through and we really try to figure out,
what's the right profile for the right roles,
we don't look at people, we look more at the roles.
- Yep.
- Right?
And then, make sure that we've got the right security,
and technologies for those individuals to be productive.
So, one of the things that we're looking at,
I like the Windows 10 S product, specially for,
that security component.
- That's right.
- Where we have a mix of corporate laptops, BYOD,
we also have kind of thin client infrastructure,
how does that fit into that kind of that profile.
I think it's very interesting conversation.
- One of the teams that I run here,
is a team that is actually out doing pilots right now,
and you know roughly a hundred customers,
where they're all piloting S mode to understand,
you know which roles, exactly your point,
does configuring Windows to be in S mode,
as oppose to being in pro mode.
And it's pretty remarkable the benefits,
that they are seeing, you know in terms of the security,
but the simplicity and costs,
I mean it really is great experience.
Alright thanks Jay.
- Thank you so much Brad.
- No, thank you for doing that.
- That was painless, I liked the questions too.
- [Brad] Yeah alright.
- [Jay] Thank you. - [Brad] Thank you.