>> Announcer: Live from Boston, Massachusetts,
it's the CUBE,
covering IBM Chief Data Officer Summit,
brought to you by IBM.
(soft electronic music)
>> Welcome to theCUBE's coverage
of IBM Chief Data Strategy Officer Summit
here in Boston, Massachusetts.
I'm your host, Rebecca Knight,
co-hosting here today with Dave Vellante.
>> Hey, Rebecca. >> Great to be working
with you again. >> Good to see you again.
It's been a while. >> It has.
>> Last summer, in the heat of New York.
>> That's right, and now here we are
in the dreariness of Boston.
Dave, we just finished up the keynote.
As you said, it's a meaty keynote.
It's a seminal time for Chief Data Officers
at companies.
What did you hear?
What most interested you about what Joe Kavanaugh said?
>> Well, a couple things.
I think it's worthwhile going back a few years.
The ascendancy of the Chief Data Officer
as a role and a title kind of emerged from the back-office
records management side of the house.
It really started in regulated industries.
Financial services, healthcare, and government.
For obvious reasons.
These are data-oriented companies.
They're highly regulated.
There's a lot of risk.
So, there's really sort of a risk-first approach.
Then, that sort of coincided with
the big data meme exploding.
Then, this whole discussion of is data an asset
or a liability?
Increasingly, organizations are looking at it, as we know,
as an asset.
So, the Chief Data Officer has emerged as the individual
who is responsible for the data architecture of the company,
trying to figure out how to monetize data.
Not necessarily monetize explicitly the data,
but how data contributes to the monetization
of the organization.
That has a lot of ripple effects, Rebecca, in terms
of technology implications, skillsets,
obviously security, relationships with line of business,
and fundamentally the organization and the mission
of the company.
So, IBM has been
pretty leading and aggressive
about going after the Chief Data Officer role,
and has events like this,
the Chief Data Officer Summit.
They do them, kind of signature moments,
and these little its and bit events.
I don't know how many people you think are here.
>> 150, I think. >> 150? Okay.
And they're the data-rowdy of the Boston community.
They're chartered with figuring out what
the data strategy is.
How to value data and how to put data front and center.
Everybody talks about being a data-driven organization,
but most organizations--
Everybody talks about becoming a digital business,
but a digital business means that you are data driven.
The data is first.
You understand how to monetize data.
You know how to value data.
Your decisions are data-driven.
I would say that less than 10% of the organizations
that we work with are of that ilk.
So, it's early days still.
What was interesting about what Jim Kavanaugh says,
they put forth this cognitive blueprint
that Inderpal Bhandari, who'll be on theCUBE later,
envisioned and has brought to life in his two years
as the Chief Data Officer here at IBM.
Now, what I like about what IBM is doing is they're
sharing their dog food experience with their clients.
He talked about that enterprise blueprint architecture
but he also talked about what IBM is doing to transform.
So, James Kavanaugh is the Senior Vice President
of Transformation at IBM, and works directly
for Jenny Remetti.
He fundamentally talked about IBM as an organization
that is data-first,
cloud, and consumerization was the other big trend.
Now, I don't know if IBM's hit on all three of those yet
but they're certainly working to get there.
The other thing that was interesting is they talked
about the data warehouse as the former king,
and now process is king.
What I think is interesting about that,
I want to explore this with those guys,
is that technology largely is well known today.
People have access to technology.
You can get security from--
You can log in with Twitter linked in our Facebook.
You can--
Look at Uber and Waze.
They're really software companies but they're built on other
platforms, like the cloud, for example.
These horizontal platforms.
It's the processes that are new and unknown.
You know, when you look at these emerging companies
like Air BnB and Uber and Waze, and so forth,
the processes by which consumers interact with businesses
are totally changed. >> Exactly.
That is what Jim and James and Inderpal were saying
is that this explosion in data is really forcing companies
to rethink their business models.
And it's--
Their reporting structures, how they innovate,
the kinds of things that they're working on,
the kinds of risks that are keeping them up at night.
>> Yeah, Kavanaugh cited a study for 4,000 CXOs
and they said the number one factor impacting business
sustainability in the next five years
are technology-related.
Which again, I want to poke at that a little bit,
because to me technology is not the problem.
It's process and skill sets and people
are the really big challenges.
But, I think really what I interpret from that data,
what the CXOs are saying,
the challenge is applying technology to create
a business capability that involves all the process changes,
the organizational changes,
the people and skills set issues.
Of course, they threw in a little fear, uncertainty,
and doubt with GDPR,
the recent breaches.
The other big thing that you hear from IBM at these events
is that IBM is a steward of your data.
That it's your data, we're not going to--
They have this notion of data responsibility.
He didn't mention--
He said the unnamed west coast companies.
Of course, he's talking about Google and Amazon,
who are sucking in our data
and then advertising to us
and telling us, hey there's a special and what to buy
and what movie to watch, and so forth.
That's not IBM's business.
But, there's a nuance there that again, I want to explore
with these guys if we have time is,
while IBM is not taking your data and then turning it into
business through advertising,
IBM is training models.
I'm interested in hearing IBM's response about where's
the dividing line between the model--
sorry, the data, and the model.
If the data is informing the model,
the model then becomes IP.
What happens to that IP?
Does it get shared across the client base
within an industry?
So, I really want to understand that better.
>> Right, and that is one thing that Jim Kavanaugh
will talk about, definitely, is the responsibility
that IBM has in terms of our data and protecting it
and keeping it private. >> Yeah, so what I like
about these events is they're intimate.
We get into it with the CDOs.
We got CDOs at banks,
we have the influencer panel coming on,
a lot are data practitioners.
And, so much has changed over the last three or four years
that we're happy to be here with the CUBE.
>> It is.
It's going to be a great day.
So, we will have much more here at the
IBM Chief Data Officer Strategy Summit.
I'm Rebecca Knight for Dave Vallante.
Stay tuned.
(soft electronic music)