 It's theCUBE, covering Sapphire Now 2017. Brought to you by SAP Cloud Platform and HANA Enterprise Cloud. Welcome back everyone to our special Sapphire Now 2017 coverage in our Palo Alto studios. We have folks on the ground in Orlando. It's the third day of Sapphire Now and we're bringing our friends and experts inside our new 4500 square foot studio where we're starting to get our action going and covering events anywhere they are from here. If we can't get there, we'll do it from here in Palo Alto. Our next guest is Satyan Sangani, CEO of Elation, a hot startup funded by Kusno Adventures, Catalyst, Data Collective, and I think Andreessen Horowitz is also an investor. That's right. Satyan, welcome to theCUBE conversation here. Thank you for having me. So we're doing this special coverage and I wanted to bring you in and discuss Sapphire Now as it relates to the context of the biggest wave hitting the industry waves, or one's cloud, we've known that for a while. People surf in that one. Then the data wave is coming fast and I think this is a completely different animal in the sense of it's going to look different but be just as big. Your business is in the data business. You help companies figure this out. Give us the update on, first take a minute to talk about Elation for the folks who aren't following you. What do you guys do? And then let's talk about data. Yeah, yeah. So for those of you that don't know about what Elation is, it's basically a data catalog. You know, if you think about all of the databases that existed in enterprise, stuff on-prem, stuff in the cloud, all of the BI tools like Tableau and MicroStrategy and BusinessObjects. I mean, you've got a lot of data that sits inside the enterprise today and a wide variety of legacy and modern tools. And what Elation does is it creates a catalog crawling all of those systems like Google crawls the web and effectively looks at all the logs inside of those systems to understand how the data's interrelated and we create this data social graph and it kind of looks at the fields. Is it a metadata catalog? We call, you know, we don't use the word metadata because metadata is the word that people use when, you know, that's Johnny back in the corner office, right? And people don't want to talk about metadata. If you're a business person and you think about metadata and you're like, Adam, not my thing. So you guys are democratizing what data means to an organization? That's right. We just like to talk about context. We basically say, look, in the same way that information or in the same way when you're eating your food, you need, you know, organic labeling to understand whether or not that's good or bad. You know, we have on some level a provenance problem, a trust problem inside of data in the enterprise and you need a layer of, you know, trust and understanding and context. So you guys are SaaS or you guys are SaaS solution? Are you a soft force subscription? We both, most of the business is actually on-prem because most of the people that have the problem that Elation solves are, you know, very big complicated institutions or institutions with a lot of data or a lot of people trying to analyze it. But we do also have a SaaS offering and actually that's how we intersect with SAP Altascale. And so we have a cloud based SaaS offering that we work with. And talk about your relationship with SAP because you kind of backdoor it in through an acquisition. Quickly note that and we'll get into the conversation. Yeah, that's right. So Altascale, two big intersections, big data, and then they do big data in the cloud. SAP acquired them last year and what we do is we provide a front-end capability for people to access that data in the cloud so that as analysts want to analyze that data, as data governance folks want to manage that data, we provide them with a single catalog to do that. So talk about the dynamics in the industry because SAP clearly the big news there is the Leonardo that's trying to create this framework. We just announced an alpha because everyone's got these names of dead creative geniuses. We just introduced our Nostradamus products since they have Leonardo and SAP's got Einstein and IBM's got Watson and Informatica's got Claire. So who thought maybe we just got our own version. But anyway, everyone's got some sort of like bot or like AI program. I mean, I get that, but the reality is the trend is they're trying to create a tool chest of platform, replatforming around tooling to make things easier. You have a lot of work in this area through relation try to make things easier. And also they get the cloud on-premise, HANA, Enterprise Cloud, SAP Cloud Platform, meaning developers. So the convergence between developers, cloud and data are happening. What's your take on that strategy? Do you think SAP's got a good move by going multi-cloud or should they be taking a different approach? Well, I think they have to. I mean, I think the economics and cloud and the manageability, really the human economics and being able to have more and more being managed by third-party providers that are effectively like AWS and have the skill and the capability to manage at scale. And you just really can't compete if you're SAP and you can't compete if your customers are buying and assembling the tool kits on-premise. So they've got to go there and I think every IT provider has to go there. They've got to go to the cloud, you mean? They've got to go to the cloud. I think there's no question about it. And I think that's at this point of foregone conclusion in the world of Enterprise IT. Yeah, it's pretty obvious. I mean, hybrid cloud is happening because it's really a gateway to multi-cloud. This admissions, we'll have Bill Norton, a guest in later, how about latency, multi-cloud issues there, but the reality is not every workload's gone there yet. A lot of analytics going on in the cloud. Dev test, okay, check the box on dev test. That's right. Analytics is all the ballgame right now in terms of state of the art. Your thoughts on the trends and how companies are using the cloud for analytics and things that are challenges and opportunities. Yeah, I think the analytics story in the cloud was a little bit earlier. I think that the transaction processing and the new applications and the new architectures and the new integrations, certainly if you're going to build a new project, you're going to do that in the cloud. But I think the analytics stack, first of all, there's a data gravity, right? So there's a lot of gravity to that data and moving it all into the cloud. And so if your transaction processing, your behavioral apps are in the cloud, then it makes sense to keep the data in an AWS or in the cloud. Conversely, if it's not, then you're not going to take a whole bunch of data that sits on-prem and move it whole hog all the way to the cloud just because, right? That's super expensive. You've got legacy. A lot of risk too on a lot of the governance and a lot of compliance stuff as well. That's exactly right. I mean, if you're trying to comply with Bazel 2 or GDPR, and you want to manage all that privacy information, how are you going to do that if you're going to move your data at the same time? And so it's a tough move. I think from our perspective, and I think this is really important, we sort of say, look, in a world where data is going to be on-prem, on the cloud, in BI tools, in databases, and no SQL databases on Hadoop, you're going to have data everywhere. And in that world where data is going to be in multiple locations and multiple technologies, you got to figure out a way to manage all that. I mean, data sprawls all over the place. It's a big problem. Oh, and by the way, Pete, that's a good thing. Storage here, too, storage is getting cheaper and cheaper. Data lakes are popping out, but you have data lakes for all. You have data everywhere. That's right. How are you looking at that problem as a startup, and how are customers dealing with that? And is this a real issue, or is this still too early to talk about data sprawl? It's a real issue. I mean, so we liken it to the advent of the internet in the time of traditional media, right? So you had traditional media. There were single sort of authoritative sources. We all watched, maybe CNN, maybe CBS. We had the Nightly News. We had Newsweek. We got our information. All of a sudden the internet comes along and anybody can blog about anything, right? And so the cost of creating information is now this much lower. Anybody can create any reality. Anybody can store data anywhere, right? And so now you've got a world where, with Tableau, with Hadoop, with Redshift, you can build any stack you want to at any cost. And so now what do you do? Because everybody's creating their own thing. Every dev is doing their own thing. Everybody's got new databases, new applications. Software is eating the world, right? And data is eating software. And data is eating software. And so now you've got this problem where you're like, look, I've got all this stuff and I don't know, I don't know what's fake news, what's real, what's alternative fact, what doesn't make any sense. And so you've got a signal-to-noise problem. And I think in that world, you got to figure out how to get to truth, right? And so- And what's the answer to that in your mind? I mean, if it's not, you have the answer if you did, we'd be solving it better. But I mean, directionally, where's the vector going in your mind? And I try to talk to Paul Martino about this at Bullpen Capital. He's a total analytics geek. He doesn't think there's big data can solve that yet, but you started to see some science around trying to solve these problems with data. What's your vision on this? Yeah, so I believe that every, I think that every developer is going to start building applications based on data. I think that every business person is going to have an analytical role in their job, because if they're not dealing with the world and the certainty, and they're not using all the evidence that they're disposable, they're not going to have the disposal, they're not making the best decisions. And obviously they're going to be more and more analyst. And so, you know, at some level, everybody's an analyst in my mind. I wrote a post in 2008 in my old blog when it was hosted on WordPress before I started SiliconANGLE. Data is the new developer kit. I saw that early, and it was still not as clear as it is now, as obvious as at least to us, because we're in the middle of this industry. But it's now part of the software fabric. It's like a library. Like as a developer, you'd call a library of code, software, to come in and be part of your program. Building blocks approach, Lego blocks. But now data as Lego blocks completely changes the game on things. If you think of it that way, where are we on that notion of you really using data as a development component? I mean, it seems to be early. I haven't seen any proof points that says, well, that company's actually using the data programmatically with software. Yeah, I think that, no, well, I mean, look, I think there's features in almost every software application, whether it's, you know, 27% of the people clicked on this button and did this particular thing. I mean, that's a data-based application, right? And so I think there is this notion that we talk a lot about, which is data literacy, right? And so that's kind of a weird thing. So what does that exactly mean? Well, data is just information like a news article is information and you got to decide whether it's good or it's bad and whether you can come to a conclusion or whether you can't, just as if you're using an API from a third-party developer, you need documentation. You need context about that data and people have to be intelligent about how they use it. Yeah, and literacy also makes it addressable. That's right. If you have knowledge about data, at some point it's named and addressed at some point in a network, right? Yeah. Yeah, especially data in motion. I mean, data lakes I get, data at rest, when you start getting into data in motion, real-time data, every piece of data counts, right? That's exactly right. And so now you've got to teach people about how to use this stuff. You've got to give them the right data. You got to make that discoverable. You got to make that information usable. You've got to get people to know who the experts are about the data so they can ask questions. You know, these are tougher problems, especially as you get more and more systems. All right, as a startup, you're a growing startup, you guys are lean and mean, doing well. You have to go compete in this war. It's a lot of big whales in there. I mean, you got Oracle, SAP, IBM, they're all trying to transform. Everybody's transforming all the incumbent winners, potential buyers of your company or potentially you displacing them as a young CEO. You go, hey, we're going to eat some of their lunch. You have to go compete in a big game. How are you guys looking at that competition? Obviously you're focused, so I know a little bit about your plan, but take us through the mindset of a startup CEO that has to go into this world. You guys have to be good. I mean, these are big waves here. It's a big wave. Yeah, nobody buys from a startup unless you get, and a startup could be even a company less than 100, 200 people. I mean, nobody's buying from a company unless there's a 10x return to value relative to the next best option, right? And so in that world, how do you build 10x value? Well, one, you got to have great technology. That's the start point. But the other thing is, you've got to have deep focus on your customers, right? And so I think from our perspective, we build focus by just saying, look, nobody understands data in your company. And by and large, you've got to make money by understanding this data. As you do this digital transformation stuff, a big part of that is differentiating and making better products and optimizing based upon understanding your data, because that helps you and your business make better decisions. And so what we're going to do is help you understand that data better and faster than any other company can do. You really got to pick your shots. But what you're saying, if I hear you saying is, as a startup, you got to see the beach head segment you want to own. That's right. And own it. That's exactly right. No other decisions, just get it. And then maybe get to a bigger scope later and sequence around and grow with that. Yeah, you can't solve 10 problems. Can't be groping for a beach head. If you don't know what you want, you're never going to get it. That's right. I mean, you can't solve 10 problems unless you solve one, right? And so I think we're at a phase where we've proven that we can scalably solve one. We've got customers like Pfizer and Intuit and Citrix and Tesco and Tesla and eBay and Munich re-insurance. And so these are all amazing brands that are traditionally difficult to sell into. But I think from our perspective, it's really about focus and just helping customers that are making that digital analytical transformation do it faster and do it by enabling their people. We had a lot going on this week for events. We had Informatica World this week. We got Veeamon. We had Google I.O. We had Sapphire, a variety of other events going on. But I want to ask you kind of more of a entrepreneurial industry question, which is if we're going through this so-called digital transformation, that means a new modern era would be transformed, an old one would be transformed. Yet I go to every event and everyone's number one at something. It's like, I was just saying Informatica, they're number one in six quadres, Michael Dell, we're number one in every category. Mark heard at the press meeting and said they're number one in all categories. I mean, the Ross Perothe quote about you could be number one, depends how you slice the market, seems to be in play. My point is, I kind of get a little bit weirded out by that, because okay, I guess theCUBE's number one in overall live videos produced at an enterprise event. So we're number one at something. But my point is, my point is, in a new transformation, what is the new scoreboard going to look like? Because a lot of the things that you're talking about is horizontally integrated. There's new use cases developing. A new environment is coming online. So if someone wanted to actually try to keep score of who number one is and who's winning, besides customer wins, because that's clearly a one that you can point to and say, hey, they're winning customers, customer growth is good. Outside of customer growth, what do you think will be the key requirements to get some sort of metric on who's really doing well vis-a-vis others? I mean, we're not yet there with hoax on the track. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a tough problem. I mean, you know, it used to be the world was that nobody gets fired for choosing IBM, right? And I think that that brand credibility worked in a world where you could be conservative, right? In this world, I think that looking for those measures is going to be really tough. And I think on some level, that quest for looking for what is number one or who is the best is actually the sort of fools there. And if that's what you're looking for, if you're looking for, you know, what's the best answer for me based upon social signal? You know, it's kind of like, you know, I'm going to go do what the popular kids do in high school. I mean, that could lead to, you know, a path, but it doesn't lead to the one that's going to actually get you satisfaction. And so on some level, I think that customers like you are the best signal, you know, always. Yeah, I mean, it's hard. I mean, it's the rhetorical question we ask it because, you know, we're trying to see, not necessarily go with the fact called the fashion, fashion way, well, what's fashionable. That's different. I mean, talk about like really a key metric. In the old days, market share was one. Actually, IDC used to track who had market shares and they would say, based upon the number of shipments, products, this is the market share winner, right? That's pretty clean. I mean, that's fairly clean. So it's just what it would be now, number of instances. I mean, it's so hard to figure out. Anyway, I digress. No, no, I think that's right. I mean, I think, I think it's really tough, but I think customers, customer stories that sort of map to your case. Yeah. It all comes back down to customer wins. How many customers do you have? What's the, what's the growth? How much value are they getting out of your stuff? Yeah, that 10X value. And I think that's the multiplier minimum, if not more, and with cloud and some of the scale that's happening. You agree? Yeah. It's going to get better. Unfortunately. Thanks for coming on theCUBE. Ngani, CEO, co-founder of Elation. Great startup following him on Twitter. These guys got some really good focus learning about your data because once you understand the data hygiene, you can start thinking about ethics and all the cool stuff happening with data. Thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. More coverage, but sapphire after the short break.