 From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of IBM Think 2021. Brought to you by IBM. Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of IBM Think 2021 virtual. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE and it's theCUBE virtual. And Uli Hoeman, who's here, corporate vice president of cloud and AI at Microsoft. Thanks for coming on. I love this session. Obviously, Microsoft, one of the big clouds, awesome. You guys partnering with IBM here at IBM Think. I remember during the client server days in the 80s, late 80s, the early 90s, the open systems interconnect was a big part of opening up the computer industry that was networking, internet working and really created more lands and more connections for PCs, et cetera. And the world just went on from there. Similar now with hybrid cloud, you're seeing that same kind of vibe, right? You're seeing that same kind of alignment with distributed computing architectures for businesses where now you have, it's not just networking and plumbing and connecting lands and PCs and printers, it's connecting everything. It's almost kind of a whole nother world but similar movie if you will. So this is really going to be good for people who understand that market. IBM does, you guys do. Talk about the alignment between IBM and Microsoft in this new hybrid cloud space. It's really kind of now standardized but yet it's just now coming. Yeah, so again, fantastic question. So the way I think about this is first of all, Microsoft and IBM are philosophically very much aligned. We're both investing in key open source initiatives like the cloud native compute foundation CNCF, something that we both believe in. We're both partnering with the Red Hat organization. So Red Hat forms a common bond if you so want to between Microsoft and IBM and again, part of this is how can we establish a system of capabilities that every client has access to and then build on top of that stack? And again, IBM does this very well with their cloud packs which are coming out now with data and AI and others. So open source, open standards are key elements and then you mentioned something critical which I believe is misunderstood but certainly not appreciated enough is this is about connectivity between businesses. And so part of the power of the IBM perspective together with Microsoft is bringing together key business applications for healthcare, for retail, for manufacturing and really make them work together so that our clients that are critical scenarios get the support they need from both IBM as well as Microsoft on top of this common foundation of the CNCF and other open standards. You know, it's interesting, I love that point. I'm going to double down and amplify that and continue to bring it up. Connecting between businesses is one thread but now people because you have an edge that's also industrial business but also people, people who are participating in open source, people have wearables, people are connected. So the, and also they're connecting with collaboration. So this kind of brings a whole other architecture which I want to get into the solutions with you on on how you see that playing out. But first, I know, you know, you're a veteran with Microsoft for many, many years of decades. Microsoft's core competency has been ecosystems, developer ecosystems, customer ecosystems. Today that the services motion is built around ecosystems. You guys have that playbook, IBM's well-versed in it as well. How does that impact your partnerships, your solutions and how you deal with down this open marketplace? Well, let's start with the obvious. Obviously Microsoft and IBM will work together in common ecosystems. Again, I'm going to reference the CNCF again as the foundation for a lot of these initiatives. But then we're also working together in the Red Hat ecosystem because Red Hat has built an ecosystem and Microsoft and IBM are players in that ecosystem. However, we also are looking higher level because a lot of times when people think ecosystems it's fairly low level technology. But Microsoft and IBM are talking about partnerships that are focused on industry scenarios. Again, retail for example, or healthcare and others where we're building on top of these lower level ecosystem capabilities and then bringing together the solution scenarios where the strength of IBM capabilities is coupled with Microsoft capabilities to drive this very famous one plus one equals three. And then the other piece that I think we both agree on is the open source ecosystem for software development and software development collaboration. And GitHub is a common anchor that we both believe can feed the world's economy with respect to the software solutions that are needed to really bring the capabilities forward, help improve the world's economy and so forth by effectively bringing together brilliant minds across the ecosystem. And again, just Microsoft and IBM bringing some people but the rest of the world obviously participating in that as well. So thinking again, open source, open standards and then industry specific collaboration and capabilities being a key part. You mentioned people, we certainly believe that people play a key role, software developers and the GitHub notion being a key one but there are others where again, Microsoft with Microsoft 365 has a lot of capabilities in connecting people within the organization and the cross organizations. And while we're using Zoom here, a lot of people are utilizing Teams because Teams is on the one side of collaboration platform but on the other side is also an application host. And so bringing together people collaboration supported and powered by applications from IBM, from Microsoft and others is going to be I think a huge differentiation in terms of how people interact with software in the future. Yeah, and I think that whole joint development is a big part of this new people equation where it's not just partnering in market it's also at the tech and you got open source and it's just phenomenal innovation formula there. So let's ask about solutions here. I want to get into some of the top solutions you're doing that Microsoft and maybe with IBM but your title is the Corporate Vice President Cloud and AI, come on, could you get a better department? I mean, more relevant than that. I mean, it's exciting. Your cloud scale is driving tons of innovation. AI is eating software, changing the software paradigm. We can see that playing out. I've done dozens of interviews just in this past month on how AI is more certainly with machine learning and having control playing with data, changing the game. So tell us, what are the hot solutions for hybrid cloud and why is this a different ball game than say public cloud? Well, so first of all, let's talk a little bit about the AI capabilities and data because I think there are two categories. You are seeing an evolution of AI capabilities that are coming out. And again, I just read IBM's announcement about integrating the cloud pack with IBM satellite. I think that's a key capability that IBM is putting out there. And we are partnering with IBM in two directions there. IBM has done a fantastic job to build AI capabilities that are relevant for industries. Healthcare being a very good example, again, retail being another one. And I believe Microsoft and IBM will work on both partnerships on the technology side as well as the AI usage in specific verticals. Microsoft is doing similar things within our dynamics product line. We're using AI for business applications for planning, scheduling, optimizations, risk assessments, those kind of scenarios. And of course, we're using those in the Microsoft 365 environment as well. I always joke that despite my 30 years at Microsoft, I still don't know how to really use PowerPoint. And I can't do a PowerPoint slide for the life of me. But with a new designer, I can actually get help from the system to make beautiful PowerPoint happen. So bringing AI into real life usage, I think is the key part. The hybrid scenario is critical here as well, especially when you start to think about real life scenarios like safety, worker safety in a critical environment, freshness of product. We're seeing retailers deploying cameras and AI inside the retail stores to effectively make sure that the shelves are stocked, that the quality of the vegetables, for example, continues to be high and monitored. And previously people would do this on an occasional basis running around in the store. Now the store is monitored 24 seven and people get notified when things need fixing. Another really cool scenario set is quality. We are working with a finished steel producer that effectively is looking at the stainless steel as it's being produced. And they have cameras on the steel that look at specific marks. And if these marks show up, then they know that the stainless steel will be bad. And I don't know if you have looked at a manufacturing process, but the earlier they can get failures detected, the better it is because they can most likely or more often than not return the product back into the beginning of the funnel and start over. And that's what they're using. So you can see molten steel, logically speaking, with a camera and AI. And previously humans did this, which is obviously a less reliable and be dangerous because this is very, very hot. This is very glowing steel. And so increasing safety while at the same time improving the quality is something that we see hybrid scenarios. Again, autonomous driving, another great scenario where perception AI is going to be utilized. So there's a bunch of capabilities out there that really are hybrid in nature and will help us move forward with key scenarios, safety, quality and autonomous behaviors like driving and so forth. Well, great insight, great product vision, great alignment with IBM's hybrid cloud space what all customers are looking for now and certainly multicloud around the horizon. So great to have you on, great agility and congratulations for your continued success. You got great area of cloud and AI and we'll be keeping in touch. Love to do a deep dive sometime. Thanks for coming on. John, thank you very much for the invitation and great questions, great interview. Love it, appreciate it. Okay, CUBE coverage here at IBM Think 2021 Virtual. I'm John Furrier, your host. Thanks for watching.