>> Live from San Francisco, California,
it's theCUBE covering the IBM Chief Data Officer Summit.
Brought to you by IBM.
>> Hi everybody, welcome back to theCUBE's coverage
of the IBM Chief Data Officer Event.
We're here at Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco
at the Centric Hyatt Hotel.
This is the 10th anniversary of IBM's
Chief Data Officer Summits.
In the recent years, anyway, they do one in San Francisco
and one in Boston each year,
and theCUBE has covered a number of them.
I think this is our eighth CDO conference.
I'm Dave Vellante, and theCUBE,
we like to go out, especially to events like this
that are intimate, there's about 140
chief data officers here.
We've had the chief data officer from AstraZeneca on,
even though he doesn't take that title.
We've got a panel coming up later on in the day.
And I want to talk about the evolution of that role.
The chief data officer emerged out of
kind of a wonky, back-office role.
It was all about 10, 12 years ago,
data quality, master data management,
governance, compliance.
And as the whole big data meme came into focus
and people were realizing that data is the new source
of competitive advantage, that data was going to be
a source of innovation, what happened was
that role emerged, that CDO, chief data officer role,
emerged out of the back office
and came right to the front and center.
And the chief data officer really started
to better understand and help companies understand
how to monetize the data.
Now monetization of data could mean more revenue.
It could mean cutting costs.
It could mean lowering risk.
It could mean, in a hospital situation, saving lives,
sort of broad definition of monetization.
But it was really understanding
how data contributed to value,
and then finding ways to operationalize that
to speed up time to value, to lower cost, to lower risk.
And that required a lot of things.
It required new skill sets, new training.
It required a partnership with the lines of business.
It required new technologies like artificial intelligence,
which have just only recently come into a point
where it's gone mainstream.
Of course, when I started in the business several years ago,
AI was the hot topic, but you didn't have the compute power.
You didn't have the data, you didn't have the cloud.
So we see the new innovation engine,
not as Moore's Law, the doubling of transistors
every 18 months, doubling of performance.
Really no, we see the new innovation cocktail
as data as the substrate,
applying machine intelligence to that data,
and then scaling it with the cloud.
And through that cloud model,
being able to attract startups and innovation.
I come back to the chief data officer here,
and IBM Chief Data Officer Summit,
that's really where the chief data officer comes in.
Now, the role in the organization is fuzzy.
If you ask people what's a chief data officer,
you'll get 20 different answers.
Many answers are focused on compliance,
particularly in what emerged, again,
in those regulated industries:
financial service, healthcare, and government.
Those are the first to have chief data officers.
But now CDOs have gone mainstream.
So what we're seeing here from IBM is the broadening
of that role and that definition and those responsibilities.
Confusing things is the chief digital officer
or the chief analytics officer.
Those are roles that have also emerged,
so there's a lot of overlap and a lot of fuzziness.
To whom should the chief data officer report?
Many say it should not be the CIO.
Many say they should be peers.
Many say the CIO's responsibility is similar
to the chief data officer, getting value out of data,
although I would argue that's never really been the case.
The role of the CIO has largely been to make sure
that the technology infrastructure works
and that applications are delivered
with high availability, with great performance,
and are able to be developed in an agile manner.
That's sort of a more recent sort
of phenomenon that's come forth.
And the chief digital officer is really
around the company's face.
What does that company's brand look like?
What does that company's go-to-market look like?
What does the customer see?
Whereas the chief data officer's really
been around the data strategy,
what the sort of framework should be
around compliance and governance,
and, again, monetization.
Not that they're responsible for the monetization,
but they responsible for setting that framework
and then communicating it across the company,
accelerating the skill sets and the training
of existing staff and complementing with new staff
and really driving that framework
throughout the organization in partnership
with the chief digital officer, the chief analytics officer,
and the chief information officer.
That's how I see it anyway.
Martin Schroeder, the senior vice president of IBM,
came on today with Inderpal Bhandari,
who is the chief data officer of IBM,
the global chief data officer.
Martin Schroeder used to be the CFO at IBM.
He talked a lot, kind of borrowing from
Ginni Rometty's themes in previous conferences,
chapter one of digital which he called
random acts of digital, and chapter two
is how to take this mainstream.
IBM makes a big deal out of the fact
that it doesn't appropriate your data,
particularly your personal data, to sell ads.
IBM's obviously in the B2B business,
so that's IBM's little back-ended shot
at Google and Facebook and Amazon
who obviously appropriate our data
to sell ads or sell goods.
IBM doesn't do that.
I'm interested in IBM's opinion on big tech.
There's a lot of conversations now.
Elizabeth Warren wants to break up big tech.
IBM was under the watchful eye of the DOJ
25 years ago, 30 years ago.
IBM essentially had a monopoly in the business,
and the DOJ wanted to make sure that IBM
wasn't using that monopoly to hurt
consumers and competitors.
Now what IBM did, the DOJ ruled that IBM
had to separate its applications business,
actually couldn't be in the applications business.
Another ruling was that they had to publish
the interfaces to IBM mainframes
so that competitors could actually
build plug-compatible products.
That was the world back then.
It was all about peripherals plugging into mainframes
and sort of applications being developed.
So the DOJ took away IBM's power.
Fast forward 30 years, now we're hearing Google, Amazon,
and Facebook coming under fire from politicians.
Should they break up those companies?
Now those companies are probably the three leaders in AI.
IBM might debate that.
I think generally, at theCUBE and SiliconANGLE,
we believe that those three companies
are leading the charge in AI,
along with China Inc: Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu,
et cetera, and the Chinese government.
So here's the question.
What would happen if you broke up big tech?
I would surmise that if you break up big tech,
those little techs that you break up,
Amazon Web Services, WhatsApp, Instagram,
those little techs would get bigger.
Now, however, the government is implying
that it wants to break those up
because those entities have access to our data.
Google's got access to all the search data.
If you start splitting them up,
that'll make it harder for them to leverage that data.
I would argue those small techs
would get bigger, number one.
Number two, I would argue if you're worried about China,
which clearly you're seeing President Trump
is worried about China, placing tariffs on China,
playing hardball with China,
which is not necessarily a bad thing.
In fact, I think it's a good thing
because China has been accused, and we all know,
of taking IP, stealing IP essentially,
and really not putting in those IP protections.
So, okay, playing hardball to try to get
a quid pro quo on IP protections is a good thing.
Not good for trade long term.
I'd like to see those trade barriers go away,
but if it's a negotiation tactic, okay.
I can live with it.
However, going after the three AI leaders,
Amazon, Facebook, and Google, and trying to take them down
or break them up, actually, if you're a nationalist,
could be a bad thing.
Why would you want to handcuff the AI leaders?
Third point is unless they're breaking the law.
So I think that should be the decision point.
Are those three companies, and others,
using monopoly power to thwart competition?
I would argue that Microsoft actually did use its
monopoly power back in the '80s and '90s,
in particular in the '90s,
when it put Netscape out of business,
it put Lotus out of business,
it put WordPerfect out of business,
it put Novell out of the business.
Now, maybe those are strong words,
but in fact, Microsoft's bundling,
its pricing practices, caught those companies off guard.
Remember, Jim Barksdale, the CEO of Netscape,
said we don't need the browser.
He was wrong.
Microsoft killed Netscape by bundling
Internet Explorer into its operating system.
So the DOJ stepped in, some would argue too late,
and put handcuffs on Microsoft so they couldn't
use that monopoly power.
And I would argue that you saw from that two things.
One, granted, Microsoft was overly focused on Windows.
That was kind of their raison d'etre,
and they missed a lot of other opportunities.
But the DOJ definitely slowed them down,
and I think appropriately.
And if out of that myopic focus on Windows,
and to a certain extent, the Department of Justice
and the government, the FTC as well,
you saw the emergence of internet companies.
Now, Microsoft did a major pivot to the internet.
They didn't do a major pivot to the cloud
until Satya Nadella came in,
and now Microsoft is one of those other big tech companies
that is under the watchful eye.
But I think Microsoft went through that
and perhaps learned its lesson.
We'll see what happens with Facebook, Google, and Amazon.
Facebook, in particular, seems to be conflicted right now.
Should we take down a video that has somewhat
fake news implications or is a deep hack?
Or should we just dial down?
We saw this recently with Facebook.
They dialed down the promotion.
So you almost see Facebook trying to have its cake
and eat it too, which personally,
I don't think that's the right approach.
I think Facebook either has to say damn the torpedoes.
It's open content, we're going to promote it.
Or do the right thing and take those videos down,
those fake news videos.
It can't have it both ways.
So Facebook seems to be somewhat conflicted.
They are probably under the most scrutiny now,
as well as Google, who's being accused, anyway,
certainly we've seen this in the EU,
of promoting its own ads over its competitors' ads.
So people are going to be watching that.
And, of course, Amazon just having too much power.
Having too much power is not necessarily
an indication of abusing monopoly power,
but you know the government is watching.
So that bears watching.
theCUBE is going to be covering that.
We'll be here all day, covering the IBM CDO event.
I'm Dave Vallente, you're watching theCUBE.
#IBMCDO, DM us or Tweet us @theCUBE.
I'm @Dvallente, keep it right there.
We'll be right back right after this short break.
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