 From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of Postgres Vision 2021 brought to you by EDB. Well, hi everybody, John Walls here on theCUBE and we're now welcome in Jeremy Wilmot who is the Chief Product Officer at ACI Worldwide part of the Postgres movement, you might say or certainly benefiting from the great value that Postgres is providing number of enterprises across the globe. Jeremy, good to see you today. And first off, congratulations. You are the first guest I've talked to maybe in a year and a half in their office. So good for you. Hey, John, that's very kind of you, John and great to see you and thanks for having me here. Yeah, it's great to be in the office. It really is. I'm here in Miami in South Florida and getting some sort of normalcy back is great for all of us and I'm certainly enjoying it. So thank you for being here. I'm sure you are. Yeah, congratulations on that front. First off, let's talk about ACI Worldwide for the folks in our audience that aren't familiar with the payments, your role in terms of that payment ecosystem and tell us a little bit about ACI Worldwide. Sure. Well, primarily we're a software company. That's ACI. We started in 1975 in Omaha, Nebraska, built the first debit card system and ATM system for First National Bank of Omaha. And over the last 45 years, we've globalized ourselves. We are delivering mission-critical, real-time payment systems across the world to banks, to merchants, to billers. We help them meet the payment needs of their consumers and their corporates. So we process managed digital payments. We power omni-commerce and e-commerce payments. We present and process bill payments. We manage fraud. We manage the risk all within that. And as I said, on a global basis, 13 of the G20 countries were the leading DDA account or current account payment processing software in those countries and have been for many years. So as the CPO, then, quite obviously, in the financial space, your plate is quite full these days in terms of providing for your client base. How would you characterize maybe the evolution in terms of product development that you've been through in the financial world here over the past, say, three to five years? Where were you back then to where you are now? And what role has Postgres played in that journey? Sure, yeah. So specific to the Postgres part of the ecosystem, previously five plus years ago, our previous database solution was complex. It was expensive. It was hard to change and maintain. And we leveraged multiple pieces of software from multiple vendors as a result of that. So at that time, we looked for an alternative that was simpler and better. And we went through a very comprehensive due diligence process. We explored both open source and license models of database to support our solution. And when we looked at all of the options, we determined that second quadrant Postgres was the one that provided the most comprehensive solution we were looking for. It had the right mix of capabilities and performance at the right total cost of ownership that we were looking for. And in the payments world, as you can imagine, you've got to be 24, seven, 365. And we also required a lower cost of ownership than we had before. But we also wanted a greater flexibility and time to market that we could pass on to our customers. And then the last thing I'd say that we were looking for was a multi-deployment capability. And what I mean by that is that we would be able to use this new platform, Postgres platform, in our own data centers, in our own private cloud, but we could also deploy it in the public cloud, whether we would run it or whether our customers would run it. We wanted that ability to make some match between these different deployment options. So you've talked about a lot of key elements here, right? Attributes in terms of availability, accessibility, reliability, security, obviously. Walk us through those in terms of why you think second quadrant was addressing your needs in those particular areas or any others for that matter. But what it was that checked the box specifically about what Postgres was offering you as opposed to what these other possible solutions and services were that you were looking at. Yeah, I think we're very focused on being able to identify what our customers need. And when they're offering services to consumers and to their corporates, what is it that they require that's going to enable them to win and compete? And payments industry has a lot of cost pressures within it. It has regulation, it has consumer convenience and the whole movement of digitalization that puts a lot of downward pressure on the cost space. And those who are going to win in the payment space need to be able to address that. So that is relevant for our banks, for our merchants, for the billers. They all come under very similar regulatory pressure and market pressure. And as a result, the ability to reduce dramatically in a very significant way the total cost of ownership upon which payment software was going to be operating, that was one of the key elements that was very important to us as we made the decision. The second one, I think was to enable us to be able to do what we are good at and what our customers expect us to do. And that in turn enables them to focus on their core competencies. We're a software company. We own our own IP, we'll manage our own software for the needs of the 24 by seven, 365 payment requirements. And therefore the merchant or the biller or the bank can really focus in on the digital experience for their customers, focus in on their core competencies and what they need to do to win. That was a second key factor for us. I think the third one for us was as well speed to market, speed to market for ourselves in being competitive to the alternative to ACI, but also more importantly, speed to market for our customers. And there are, the payments world is highly regulated, requires significant certification in order to launch new services. That's often the long pole in the tent. So we want to be able to get to that point as quickly as possible and be able to have public cloud deployment, open systems capabilities. That would really allow us to pass on that speed to market to those customers. So for example, an acquirer, a payment acquirer moving into a new geographical country they want to compete in, they can steal a march on their competitors by launching minimum viable products in six to nine months versus five years ago, that could have been a 24 to 30 months endeavor for them to take on. So I, you know, those were important considerations for us as we were choosing our long-term partner for the Postgres world and the public cloud world. Obviously, you've talked a lot about your relationship with your clients, right? And I know you have a really keen awareness of the need to ensure that trust, to ensure that reliability, to ensure the collaboration. How about your relationship on the other side with EDB and in terms of all those elements. So how has that evolved over a period of time and what kind of service and what kind of value do you think are you deriving from that relationship now? Yeah, yeah. So with EDB, first of all, our journey started with second quadrant and now EDB. And we were specifically looking at the, one area was that the bidirectional replication or BDR that we were wanting to support with our solutions, particularly in the public cloud. And that was going to enable us to replace multiple pieces of software from multiple vendors. And so we worked to create that solution that was right for ACI. It was right for our customers, from a functionality and agility and a cost perspective. So technologically with the non-functional requirements and the reliability, availability, serviceability aspects that we were looking for, that was in partnership with second quadrant and EDB, that was a key element. I think the second piece of it is we worked really well with second quadrant and EDB in terms of partnering to meet the needs of the market. It's great to have the right technology in place, but then you need your partners really to be able to work with you tactically real time in order to win in the market and make it work. And I found that they've been a great partner for us to be able to do that and to be able to react quickly, do the right thing and really enable us to be a great partner to our customers as we deliver real time payments, as we deliver the acquiring capabilities, as we deliver modernization for the big banks that we work with as well. Before I let you go, I'm going to give you a two-part question here. That's always one way to squeeze a little more info out of the guests. First off, advice. You've been through this transformation. Obviously you're very happy with all that is transpired. So your advice to others who are considering this journey, okay? And then secondly, what can they and you, do you think expect in terms of future challenges, opportunities, how we might want to frame that with Postgres? Where are we going from here, basically? So two parts advice. And then where do you think this is headed? Sure. So advice, I certainly learnings from us versus advice is that number one, be very thorough in the due diligence that you do and be very clear on what you want and what are your goals that you're looking for? So from an AGI perspective, we would clear the total cost of ownership in terms of the stack that we were going to be providing to our customers. That was very important. Number one, number two, non-functional requirements. So I've talked about the mission criticality of payments 24, seven, three, six, five. That was a key second piece. And then the third one, ease of deployment. I talked about that, multi-cloud deployment that we were looking for. So we were clear what we wanted and we took our time from a due diligence point of view. It's a multi-year decision being made. So it's not something specifically I think you want to rush into. In terms of looking forward and where do we go from here? Performance is critical. So further performance enhancements, ability for rapid failover, availability at near 100% availability that we're looking for five nines and above. Working together with Postgres in order to make those failovers more seamless because they'll happen, particularly in the real-time payments world where we're now seeing billions of transactions happening in a week. And soon that'll be in a day that we'll need to be able to deal with. And for all of this to happen in a public cloud environment, we I think all understand a lot of the benefits of public cloud. And we need to be able to provide this failover availability capability in the public cloud but also in a hybrid cloud environments or in a multi-cloud environment. So we need to keep working that and make that happen. That will make Postgres a payment grade infrastructure that could power the world's real-time payments. And we would love to be able to be able to do that into the future. Well, Jeremy, thanks for the insights. We appreciate that. And once again, congratulations on getting back in that office. I know it's probably a pretty welcomed addition to your regimen now. Yeah, John, thank you very much. And thanks to everyone who's dialed in for this. And John, look forward to welcoming me in the office soon, soon, thanks a lot. Very good, sir. Look forward to that as well. I'll take you up on that in Miami for sure. John Wallace here on the field, talking with Jeremy Wilmot, Chief Product Officer at ACI Worldwide part of our Postgres vision 2021 coverage.