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>> Hello and welcome back to "the CUBE,"
in our luxurious press room.
Festive green digs that we have here.
I think you know again we're at
Databricks Data and AI Summit.
I got to say I'm excited to have Steve Sobel with me
because, who heads up, global industry leader for
communications, media and entertainment.
I've known you for at least six months now.
>> We go way back. >> We go way back.
I actually have a sticker from,
when I spoke at one of their conferences back in December
when I was- >> I assume you're a good man.
>> Yeah, when I was somewhere else and everything.
Now I'm the other guy on the other side of the fence here
asking all the fun questions about this.
But, no I think this has been great.
I got to say you guys put on a fantastic show this week.
The customers have been fantastic.
We had Alexander on from the Texas Rangers yesterday.
You know, he's more on the sports side of things
versus the entertainment side of things.
He's not really the fan engagement side of things
but I know you guys do a lot with sports teams,
and I know it's just, you know,
there's such a wide variety of things they can do
with Databricks. >> Mm-hmm.
>> Not only in that part but also on the entertainment side
which is, you know more the traditional,
what people think of.
Help us understand kind of what is that you're doing
and what your customers look for.
>> Yeah I mean, I think, you know
where we find ourselves right now, you know
certainly in the telecom industry,
certainly in the media and entertainment industry,
we're in this massive time of transformation.
We've had this time in media
where everyone is going direct to consumer.
They're trying to figure out
how do we drive better consumer relationships,
how do we focus on personalization?
Of course that's all driven by data and AI.
On the telecommunication side of the world you know,
we have everyone you know, rolling out their 5G networks
and trying to understand how do we monetize
this beyond churn.
You know, what are kind of the opportunities we have
around monetizing our data?
So, we've had an incredible amount of excitement this week
simply because you know we're,
the excitement is powered by our customers.
You know whether it's customers like you know,
Warner Brothers Discovery.
Like if you're a Max customer, all of the personalization,
all of that consumer life cycle is driven by Databricks.
If you're a magazine reader, Conde Nast.
They power all of their advertising targeting
with Databricks so it's really, or companies like Comcast.
We power the X-One platform with you know
when you speak into your voice activated remote,
the reason you're getting those recommendations is
Databricks is under the hood.
So
>> What's funny is two out of the three of those,
I get more GQ emails than I've ever seen in my entire life.
So thank you very much for that.
>> You're handsome man. You should get those GQ emails.
I try to make it, you know, look quoi fort right so,
but also I think it, you start to look at what they're doing
and it's beyond that because I think what's critical to
those companies is it helps them with their margins, right?
>> Yeah. >> I mean 'cause they,
they need, they've, from what I've seen from those that,
and the media and entertainment industry,
they're really leaning in,
and really leaning in towards the AI.
They've been early on with modeling on top of Databricks
and really pushing you guys, isn't that true?
>> I mean, if you think about it, you know,
the whole industry on media, the legacy of media as
we create content, we throw it against the wall,
it sticks or it doesn't.
We're in this time now where consumers have more choice
than ever before on how they consume content,
where they consume content.
The content now has to find the consumer
and that's all powered by you know,
the ability to collect lots of data.
The ability to normalize that data, apply machine learning
so that you can create differentiated experiences.
It's super interesting because I think actually
we're in this really interesting time
where media companies are becoming retailers.
Where they're focusing on consumer experience.
Retailers now want to be media companies.
They're rolling out retail media networks.
They're trying to figure out how do they better monetize
the shopper experience via ads.
So, even though I focus on communications and media,
I actually am spending a ton of my time with retailers
as they're kind of getting a better understanding of
how do they build and scale sustainable ad businesses.
>> Yeah and I think that's also, it,
I think you hit on two things there.
It's not only the ad business part of it
but it's the customer experience part of it.
And I think that's a huge thing.
When I've talked to some of your customers,
even the one, beyond the ones that we've had on "the CUBE"
over the last couple days here, and even before this,
they really look at it about,
how do they make a better customer experience.
We actually had the guys from Fivetran on earlier on
that help bring some of that data in for you.
What are you seeing from a,
how are they pushing the envelope and adopting AI
in that way?
>> You know I think the big trend right now is
there's just this huge focus on realtime experiences
and you know from a technologist perspective,
being able to deliver realtime experiences is insanely hard.
Let's think of it for a moment.
I'm on a website, you're looking at my clickstream data,
seeing me hover over certain words,
certain topics, certain images.
You know maybe I'm feeding that behavior into
how I make recommendations for content,
how I make recommendations for an
omnichannel experience use case,
and the ability to be able to do that in real time.
I mean, we all have these experiences as consumers
where I abandoned my shopping cart, I get an alert.
Or, have you finished watching this content?
We now almost have the digital assistance in our lives
for every aspect, every application
to deliver these better experiences and to deliver more.
You know, if you think about media as an industry,
I mean it's really the industry of fun.
It's the media of content and, really engagement.
So, how do you not just let content stand on itself
but deliver those better experiences vis-a-vis data
and machine learning?
>> Yeah, and they all have, they're all competing
with each other and there's, I think to your point
everybody has become a media company to a certain extent
and it keeps just growing,
>> Yeah.
>> And you know, I mean again Max with their name change
from HBO Max and all of that. >> Yep.
>> And see, they routinely reach out to me and say,
Hey, you haven't watched anything this week.
Why is that?
We think these are the good things for you to go and watch
based on your history and stuff like that
which I actually like.
I like the personal experience.
How have you seen them and them gauging
how that fits with their customer base?
>> You know I think the, there's always this bar around like,
as a consumer what level of data are you willing to give
a company in order to get an experience in return?
And it has to be based on a value exchange always.
You can't just like expect people to give you you know,
give you the house without wining and dining you before.
So, you know what we're seeing is a big focus right now
on experience, on how do we optimize the customer journey?
How do we focus on first party data collection?
A hugely important thing in media right now is
what do we do with life beyond Cookies?
Google's going to be degrading cookies next year.
And this has been a hair on fire issue for the industry for,
the last number of years but like,
it's finally coming to fruition that the tool
that most marketers and most media companies use
to be able to target their consumers and engage with them
vis-a-vis cookies is going away.
The challenge for the industry now is, well
what do we do in this world?
How do we, how do we kind of think about it?
And it's not a technology problem all the time.
It's often business processing.
What is the barrier with which we can collect information?
What is the value exchange?
How do we think about this like more holistically
in terms of the full experience?
And again, like data and AI is really at the core of
powering all of that.
Getting it to real time, getting it one to one.
And where we sit in all of that is we see a lot of customers
that almost think of us as like the glue.
Meaning you have all of your data coming in,
you need to ingest, clean it all, make it perfect so
that you can get it out and send it to Adobe or Salesforce
or HubSpot, your MarTech stack.
We're seeing more and more a trend around interoperability.
How can you basically have it such that you have
bidirectional flow of data across the full stack,
which really for our customers is all about
not only getting value from us, but deriving more value
from the application stack as well.
>> What I like about this is that you play very well
with your partners in this space.
Like you have Snowplow on the open source side,
you have Rudder Stack. >> Yep.
>> You actually, the one that surprised me most
about the announcements this week was Twilio.
>> Yep.
>> That one was, I think that's going to open up crazy value
for those customers that are over there
because >> Absolutely.
>> they can now take advantage of what you've been doing
for other CDPs in that space to, to really get
and you know again, people like there's five countries still
in Europe that have banned Google Analytics
and so they, beyond it the first party cookie issue.
>> Yep.
>> I think that also becomes an issue of data governance
and I think >> Totally.
>> you know, the sovereignty, data sovereignty.
>> Well you're bringing up a a really good point.
I mean it's been a very intentional strategy for us,
to particularly around like the CDP use cases,
clean room use cases, marketing activation use cases,
of us going out and building partnerships
with this ecosystem so that we're not leaving the
integration up to our end customer.
It's managed by the partner.
So Twilio segment, that's one.
We also announced a partnership with Braise recently.
Habu which is, you know, an awesome clean room partner
that's focused on interoperability.
They've been an amazing partner.
So in the last like six months, we've probably lined up
over a dozen different partnerships that are specifically
focused on the ad tech and Martech space.
And frankly we're just getting started.
We think that there's going to be a fast follow
for the ecosystem when everyone,
we're kind of seeing the demand and the pull
to us as kind of the data - Platform.
>> Yeah, I think we could go on probably for an hour
because I think especially on the clean room stuff
and how people are going to monetize their data
>> Huge >> in this space.
I think that one just, we could take a whole other segment
on that one and maybe we'll get up to be able to get you on
again soon and go through that.
But right now I want to thank you for being on.
This has been a lot of fun. It's great seeing you again.
>> Yeah of course. >> I mean it's been too long.
>> It has been.
>> You know, a whole six months or something like that
>> You can't even blame the pandemic anymore.
>> No we can't. We can't. But yeah.
But I'm glad 12,000 of our friends came along to see us
get together again and, >> It's been an amazing week.
>> 75,000 online.
It's been fantastic and you guys put on a hell of a show,
so, you should be very proud about that.
>> We're super proud and we're proud of all of the work
that our customers do and super grateful
that you could have me on today.
>> Yep. Thank you.
Alright, so that's it from " the CUBE"
here in the Lake House press room at the Intercontinental at
Databricks Data and AI Summit.
We'll be back shortly with a surprise guest for you.
Take care.
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