 Live from Las Vegas, Nevada. Extracting the signal from the noise. It's theCUBE covering Informatica World 2015. Brought to you by Informatica World. Now, here's John Furrier and Jeff Frick. Hey, welcome back, everyone. We are here live in Las Vegas for Informatica World 2015. This is theCUBE's Silicon Angles flagship program. We go out to the events, extract the signal from the noise. I'm John Furrier, founder of Silicon Angles. I'm my coach, Jeff Frick. Our next guest is the chairman and CEO of Informatica. So, hey, Abasi, welcome to theCUBE. Thank you very much. So, honored to have you here. Great keynote, great company event here. Congratulations on all your success. I got to ask you in your keynote today, you had a lot of this topic about big data. But the thing that caught my attention was this transition from productivity era to the age of engagement. What is that about? Well, if you look at what our industry was focused on, was to improve productivity by implementing database applications across a variety of departments. And the most exciting part of our industry is that we are now helping facilitate interactions, engagement, social media, mobile devices, and internet of things. And we're collecting a new kind of data instead of transaction data, interaction data. And we're very excited about the possibilities of what we can help our customers attain with that. So, as data becomes more frictionless from the infrastructure up to the applications, there's a focus of intelligence, there's a focus of real time, focus of for security purposes. What are you guys doing with the product and the vision to bring the data to the forefront as a competitive advantage for businesses? Kind of platform you guys building and what's the vision? They're countless examples. There's an insurance company whose growth strategy is to go from 1.2 products per customer to 3.7 products per customer, which is of course a very sensible strategy that would give them sustained growth. We're helping them identify the customers and the products that they could sell to them. There are a number of banks that are using us in order for them to comply with Dodd-Frank, for example, as one of the many regulatory compliance where they need to have a single view of the legal entity identifier. There are oil companies that are looking at shale oil exploration that are collecting data from sensors that are in oil wells and we're helping them optimize that. They're countless examples where data is now becoming increasingly strategic and important. I have to ask you because you're such a veteran of the industry, you were involved in Oracle back in 1982 and saw that growth to $10 billion. I mean, fantastic. Larry Ellison, the king of the industry, still at the helm, almost technically CTO, but chairman, talk about from your perspective, you've seen a lot of innovation cycles. What's so important about this cycle that we're in now? It seems to be the confluence of a perfect storm of innovation. What's going on in this world now? And how does that compare from an order of magnitude from other cycles and its impact? If you consider the disruptions that are shaping the computer industry, the economics of cloud computing, instead of by rent, consider the implications of social media, which is no longer, it's not just about transactions, but also about interactions. Consider the implications that analytics is not just about historical analytics, but it's about predictive analytics anticipating what will happen in the future. Consider the implications of the pervasive computing world that we live on, Fitbits and other devices that are collecting all that data. We've never seen a confluence of so many technology trends that are disrupting the industry and that's what's so exciting is that the industry is transforming itself. What gets you most excited right now? What trend, what enabler, what disruptive enabler do you get excited about right now? Clearly the availability of interaction data. We lived in a world where all we knew were the business transactions that were ever conducted. Now we know a lot about interactions and being able to use that to predict what would happen. I mean, that is allowing us to do things that we would not have been able to do earlier. There are cities that are now looking at how did they do a better job in terms of making sure that traffic patterns, they can improve that and collecting the information. Look at the applications in personalized medicine. They're countless examples with data is truly enriching our lives. I want to shift gears a little bit about trying to run a company in the middle of all these huge transformations. You mentioned cloud, mobile, social, these are huge impacts. How do you pick what to focus on? You guys have been around for a long time under the classic sense, but now you're really embracing some of these new trends. How do you focus where are you guys going in the next year or so? We have been singularly focused around data. So if you look at it from a data lens, we're able to actually take a look at a particular disruptive trend. For example, we were one of the first to recognize that cloud computing represented fragmentation of data. Data was not on premise anymore, but was in the cloud. When we looked at about the social media, we said, well, this is a new type of data, interaction data that needs to be correlated with transaction data. So looking at it from the data lens has allowed us to remain very focused and know exactly how we need to be viewing all these disruptive trends. Because it's data. You're not worrying about getting distracted by the application. You know, it's the baser's data in there. Data is king. And you hear that repeated by a meet with customers and say, data is their primary asset. I had a conversation with one of the CEOs of one of the largest banks. And he said, we are sitting on a goldmine of data. We know more about suppliers. We know more about consumer spend than most organizations as one of the largest credit card issuers. We know more about the housing market because we're one of the largest mortgage lenders. And we could monetize all of that data. So these are exciting times when even the CEOs of financial services institutions are beginning to view data as a strategic opportunity for them. So data coming together and data integration, we were talking earlier with some of your execs about data at rest, data in motion, outside data, you mentioned interaction data could be from social media. It could be internal data, transaction data, systems of records, systems of engagement, all that's great, but the intelligence can come from these new breakthroughs and intelligence comes from new use cases that are being bumped into for the first time by customers. So the data integration is a big piece. How does that come together? And with Informatica, what are you guys doing on the data integration piece today? And what's that market look like? Is that going to be exploding? Is that going to be, is it a market or is it a feature? The data integration seems to be a hot area right now. It certainly is and it is because we're collecting a lot more data than ever before and there are a lot more reasons why customers are looking to find value out of the data. Maybe they're trying to predict what the, what would be the next big idea that they have. Maybe they're trying to, if they're in healthcare trying to prevent a disease. So given the applicability of the data is so varied, the data integration will continue to be a high growth category and it's only limited by our own imagination. So as a CEO and chairman, you get the best of both worlds. You get to look down on the organization, talk to your staff, get them motivated, play with the products, look under the hood and then also talk to customers. So you talk to a lot of customers and CEOs, CXOs, what are the top conversations that you're involved in with customers that you could share with the folks out there that are important to document? I've met, I visited 100 customers last year around the world across a variety of industries and one of the things that impressed me was data is now a seed level priority. I gave you the example of a CEO of a bank that is looking at monetizing data but there are lots of such examples of it. There's a cancer research center that is looking at finding cure for five types of cancer. Data is obviously a key element of it. So the first theme is data is becoming very strategic to them. The second theme that has come up is data is being collected in more places than ever before and it is important for them to be able to actually integrate data from across all of those and the third theme is that they need to not only integrate the data, they need to prepare for analysis, they need to master it in order for them to have a single view of a customer, they need to secure it because everyone's concerned about data breaches and they need to govern it because of regulatory compliance. So they're viewing it as much more of a holistic approach that they need to take for a very strategic asset. You know, I'd love to get your take on innovation and innovation inside your customers and enterprises and the companies out there is that it's coming organically and from developers, you know, programmers and also business analysts who are, I guess programmers or developers if you will but they're users and practitioners of the data. So there's a lot of experimentation going on, certainly with cloud computing, a lot of availability, a lot of playing with data and these are where the new discoveries are going to be coming from. So with that in mind, that's kind of happening organically. The command and control governance is also a priority. So what's your view on balancing the chief data officer role to provide some comfort around policies and data at the same time not squashing any innovation? So how do you balance and keep the innovation alive at the same time having the governance policy in place? You bring up a very good point and that is in order to innovate you need to provide certain autonomy for the organizations to come up with new ideas because you can't limit them in terms of the norm and how you've done things. Well, at the same time, you want to make sure that you can provide governance for that. Now our view is that data needs to be shared very broadly that there will be business users that will be using it in order for them to come up with innovative use cases and at the same time, you need to provide governance in order to make sure that you end up having complete visibility in terms of what's going on and that is one of the things that we believe is going on in the data area where there are a lot of roles involved with data. You've got data scientists, you've got business analysts, you've got IT developers, you've got enterprise architect, you've got information security enterprises and we are developing a lot of technologies that would make it possible to share artifacts and innovations across all of them while at the same time provide governance. And that's something that you feel comfortable you guys can provide that balance. We have the breadth of capability. We've invested $2 billion in all things data which is a bigger investment than any other company and that's been our vision as well that we want to be the company that is known for all things data. So it's interesting you just listed all those roles because I was struck in your keynote that you would go through a section of your keynote and talk about what you were going to do. It always came back to this is such a great opportunity for you, the audience, who's composed of members of people in all those different roles that you just outlined. What an exciting time for people in this business and I think a prior guest said, we're short, we're short on people to fill the roles that we need. So I was really struck by you really touching the people and saying this is a great opportunity, a great time for you. It is a great opportunity because the thing that I find remarkable is University of California, Berkeley now offers a master's in data science and online degree that will only cost $70,000. Now that's a sign of the times. That is a sign of the times when people are with the big seven to thousand dollars and here you get it for free. So I mean that is an acknowledgement that anything to do with data, it is in high demand and it commands a premium. Certainly it definitely, and the security too. We were talking earlier the opportunities for security folks in data. Talk about security because this is where we were talking earlier and I had Pat Gelsinger on theCUBE just last week say the perimeter is dead and the cloud creates a new security model so when the perimeter dies in security that's going to fall on your shoulders, the data folks. So you guys are a big part of the security equation. How are you guys looking at that market opportunity as a growth opportunity, product, both services? I think there are two things that have changed. One of which is the threat has changed. It used to be denial of service attacks. The headlines was somebody brought Amazon.com down and the inconvenience of not being able to shop to something which is much more devastating, data breach. And not a day goes by where you don't really read of another data breach and huge implications. Brands are affected, reputations are tarnished as a result of it. And the other is that computing is pervasive. It's everywhere, you've got mobile devices, you've got sensors, you've got cloud services. So clearly an idea of a perimeter doesn't make any sense at all because computing is everywhere. And arguably the only thing that is worth protecting is the data. And we are very well positioned, as I said earlier, $2 billion invested in all things data and we're leveraging our core competence in order for us to provide something that would secure, arguably the single biggest asset, the data. So I want to ask you a final question because we're getting short on time here. As a veteran, you're running a big company here, and you've got a lot of experience, a lot of new management coming into the industry, a lot of young developers, a lot of young executives, and customers managing this sea change. What advice would you give those folks out there around how to have a mindset in this new world that we're shifting to, is a shift happening and an inflection point? As a manager, as a technologist out there, who, what would you be your advice to them and how to attack in a proactive way and create these new opportunities? What would you advise them how to have a mindset, management approaches? What would you share? Well, at the end of the day, I mean, it is a very personal decision. What I would say is there's never been a more exciting time to being the technology business that there are countless opportunities. And if you look at the business models, whether it's in consumer internet or whether it's enterprise software, there's never been a better opportunity and they should follow their passion. And there is so many, it's endless. The possibilities are endless. Final question, your innovation strategy for the next five years, what's the vision? Throw the arrow forward five years from your perspective, your innovation strategy for Informatica. I would like Informatica to be known as the company, the go-to company for all things data. So thank you so much for coming. I know you're super busy. Chairman, CEO of Informatica here inside theCUBE, bringing you the data and sharing it with you here inside theCUBE live in Las Vegas. We'll be right back after this short break.