>> Announcer: Live from Berlin, Germany, it's theCube,
covering NetApp Insight 2017,
brought to you by NetApp.
>> We are wrapping up a day of coverage
at NetApp Insight at theCube.
I'm Rebecca Knight along with my co-host Peter Burris.
So we've had a lot of great interviews here today.
We've heard from NetApp executives and app customers,
partners about this company's transformation
and about what it's doing now
to help other companies to have a similar transformation.
What have been some of your impressions
of where NetApp is right now and what it's saying?
>> I think it starts with the observation
that NetApp realize number of years it got
that if it was just going to be
a commodity storage company, it was gonna have a hard time.
And so NetApp itself went through digital tranformation
to try to improve its understanding
of how customers really engaged with it,
how it could improve its operational profile,
it's financial footprint, and the result of that
was a company that, first off, was more competitive
but also that it learned something
about digital transformation and realize the relationship
between the products they were selling
and services that they were providing,
the ecosystem that they had that they could tap
and working with customers,
and said what if we took this knowledge
and apply to those things, what would we end up with?
And so we now have a company that is still
talking about products but very much is also talking
about what businesses can do what they do differently
to affect the type of transformation
that NetApp itself has been going through.
That's a compelling story.
>> No, and you're describing this introspection
that the company did.
As you said, if we can't survive
with our old business model, what can we do differently?
And now eating its own dog food
but then telling other companies about its story
and how it's made changes.
I mean, do you think NetApp is where it should be today?
I mean, are you pleased with the progress you've seen?
>> Well, that's one of the great challenges
in the tech industry today
as nobody's quite sure where they should be
because nobody's quite sure...
>> There are no benchmarks.
>> What's going on underneath them.
So many years ago, in response to a reporter's question
about IBM, they said, "Well, what do you think?
Is IBM gonna be successful with moving the aircraft,
turning the aircraft carrier?"
And I said, "You don't get it.
IBM's problem is not that they are trying to turn
the aircraft carrier.
It's that they're trying to rotate the ocean
so that they could go straight
and everybody else's position would change.
And that's a lot of what's happening
in the technology industry today.
As people are turning, the ocean is being rotated,
and there are couple of companies like ABWS
that seem to have their fingerprint
or their finger on some of those changes.
I'm not sure NetApp has that kind
of a presence in the industry,
but what is clear is that the direction
that NetApp has taken is generating
improved financial results,
lot better customer satisfaction,
and it's putting them in a position
to play in the next round, so to speak,
of competition in the industry.
And in an industry that's changing this fast,
that, all by itself, is a pretty good position to be in.
>> Well, you know, and you're talking
about the changing industry,
and then also the changing employment needs
that this company has in terms of getting people
in their workforce who really understand
not just the data as an asset,
which is what we keep hearing today too,
but really understanding how to capture the data,
tease out the right insight from the data,
and then deploy a strategy based on those insights
that actually will create value to the business,
whether that's acquiring new customers,
or saving money, or earning new lines of business too.
>> Well, for example, we had a great converstion
with Sheila Fitzpatrick about GDPR.
It's phenomenal conversation.
Sheila is in charge of privacy at NetApp,
and the decision that she drove
was to not just to GDPR.
NetApp have to GDPR here in Europe
but to do GDPR across the entire company.
Now, two years ago, I don't know
that a NetApp person would've come on
to theCUBE and talk about GDPR.
But that is a problem,
that is a challenge that every business is faced.
>> Yes.
>> And bringing somebody on
that has made some really consequential decisions
for company like NetApp to be able to say,
"Here is how other businesses need to think about GDPR,
think about data privacy,"
is a clear example of NetApp trying to establish
itself as a thought leader about data
and not just a thought leader about commodity storage.
So I think there's a lot of changes
that NetApp's gonna go through.
They still are talking about ONTAP,
they're still talking about HCI,
talking about all the various flash products that they have,
so that's still part of their conversation.
But increasingly, they are positioning those products
not in terms of price performance
but in terms of applications to the business
based on the practical realities of data.
>> And I also think we've heard a number of executives
talk about NetApp having a more consultative relationship
with its clients and partners
and really learning from them,
how they're doing things, and then sharing the learnings
at events like NetApp Insight here
and just really on the ground more
working in partnership with these companies too.
>> Data is a physical thing.
And I think a lot of people forget that.
A lot of people just look at data and say,
"Oh, it's just ephemeral thing.
Yeah, it's out there and I don't have much
to worry about it."
But physics is an issue when you're working with data.
Adam Steltzner, the Dr. Adam,
the gentleman from NASA who talked about
the role that data science is playing
at NASA and Mars exploration,
talked about the need to worry about sparse data,
because they have dial up speeds
to send data back from a place like Mars.
And they're working on problems.
But when you start thinking in those terms,
the physical limitations, the physical realities,
the physical constraints of data become very real.
GDPR is not a physical constraint,
but it's a legal constraint,
and it might as well be physics.
If a company does something,
we heard, for example, that there are companies out there
that, based on their practices and how they were hacked,
would have found themselves
facing a $160 billion liability.
Now that may not be physics, you know,
I can only move so much data back from Mars,
but that is a very real legal constraint
that would've put those companies out of business
if GDPR governance rules had been in place.
So what's happening today is companies
or enterprises are looking to work with people
who understand the very physical, practical,
legal, and intellectual property realities of data.
And if NetApp is capable of demonstrating that
and showing how you can turn that into applications
and into infrastructure that works for the business,
then that is a great partner for any enterprise.
>> Well, do you think that other companies get it?
I mean, the sense of where we are today,
I mean, you used this example of GDPR
and how it really could have sent companies out of business
if those rules have been in place,
and they've been hacked or suffered some huge data breach,
do you think that NetApp is setting itself up
as the thought leader, and in many ways is a thought leader?
Do other companies on the same level?
>> No, they're not.
And certainly, there are a lot of tech companies
that are moving in that direction
and that they are comparable with NetApp
and working both close with NetApp
and in an opposition with NetApp, at least competitively.
But the reality is most enterprises are...
How best to put this?
Well, what I like to say is William Gibson,
the famous author who coined the term
cyberspace for example, once said,
"The future is here.
It's just not evenly distributed."
So there are pockets of individuals
in every company who are very cognitive
of these challenge to react to physical realities of data.
What it means, what role data actually plays.
What does it mean to call data an asset?
What's the implications on the business
of looking at data as an asset?
That's in place in pockets.
But it's not something that's broadly diffused
within most businesses,
certainly not our client base,
not who we keep looking on our client base
is certainly not broadly aware of some of these challenges.
A lot of things have to happen
over the course of next few years
for executives and rank and file folks
to comprehend the characteristics
or the nature of these changes,
start to internalize and start to act
in concert with the possibilities of data
as opposed to an opposition to the impacts of data.
>> And those are the people who
we had guest on today
just talked about the data resisters,
because there are those, in companies,
maybe they're just an individual in a company,
but that can have a real impact
on the company's strategy of moving forward,
deploying its data smartly.
>> Yeah, absolutely.
And we also have a gentleman from The Economist
who made the observation that concerns
about artificial intelligence impacts on employment
might be a little overblown.
>> So a lot of those data resisters
might be seeking or asking the question,
"What will be the impact of additional data on my job?"
And it's a reasonable question to ask,
because if your business,
or we also talked about physicians
or radiologists, for example.
Someone who looks at X-rays
has historically not been a patient-facing person.
They would sit in back and look at the X-rays.
They'd write up the results,
and then give them to the clinician
who actually talk to the patient.
I, not too long ago, saw this interesting television ad
where radiologist presented themselves
as being close to the patient.
Why? Because radiology is one of those
disciplines of medicine that's likely
to be strongly impacted by AI
because AI can find those patterns better than
often a physician can.
Now, the clinician maybe a little bit less affected by AI
because the patient is a human being
that needs to have their hand held.
>> Rebecca: And their life is on the line.
>> Their life is on the line,
and healing and treatment is about
whether or not the person is able
to step up and heal themselves.
So there's going to be this kind of
interesting observation over the next few years.
Folks that work with other people
will use data to inform.
Folks that work with machines,
folks that don't work with other people
are likely to find that other machines
end up being really, really good at their job.
Because of the speeds of data
and the compactness of data,
human beings just cannot respond to data
as fast as a machine.
But machines still cannot respond to people as well
as people can. >> And they don't have empathy.
>> And they don't have empathy,
so if I were to make a prediction,
I would say that in the future,
if your job is more tied to using machines,
you got a concern.
But if your job is tied to working with people,
your job is gonna be that much more important.
And increasingly, the people who are working with machines
are gonna have to find jobs
that have them working with other people.
>> Right, right.
Well, it's been a great day.
It was always fun to work with you.
This is our first time together on theCUBE.
It was a great day.
>> But theCUBE is a blast.
It's a constant party.
(laughs) I'm Rebecca Knight for Peter Burris.
This has been NetApp Insight 2017 in Berlin.
We will see you next time.