 from San Diego, California. It's theCUBE, covering Cisco Live US 2019. Brought to you by Cisco and its ecosystem partners. Welcome back to theCUBE. Lisa Martin with Stupid A Man, rounding out day one of our coverage of Cisco Live in San Diego. We're pleased to welcome Tara Sumner, the Senior Manager of Global Product Management at CenturyLink. Tara, welcome to theCUBE. Thank you. Thank you both for having me. So we've had a number of folks from CenturyLink on theCUBE over the years. I know that you guys are a big US communications provider. We are. You've got customers in over 60 countries, but this is no longer your grandfather's CenturyLink. That's right. Tell us more about it. So we're focused in the next rollout or the next phase of CenturyLink for moving from a telecommunications company to a technology company. And the division that I work in for UNCNC, the Unified Communications, that's where it's at. That's where it's all going to take place and having a partnership with Cisco is key for us to get from that telecom space to the technology space, for sure. All right, so bring this inside a little bit. Unified Communication and Collaboration, Cisco obviously a strong presence in that space. Lots of people have used Webex and understand the various VoIP phones and everything that they do there. What particularly brings Cisco and CenturyLink together? Where is it? Engineering work, field, go-to-market, where are the pieces? Sure, and it's all of those, right? It's all of those. What's been very nice is that Cisco has embraced the idea of being a platform and not a siloed individual product line. And so for a service provider like CenturyLink, for us to be able to embrace that same philosophy of the platform of services, what that means is that our engineering and field ops folks, our operations teams do all the hard work on the back end to make sure that we have established all of the right security, the right network, the reliability, the global scalability of our specific platform of services and being that leader in telecommunications. And then we're able to lay that Cisco platform on top of it. And what happens then from a product management level is once you've established that foundation, it's really plug and play. The customer calls and says, I need calling, I need meetings, I need whatever it is they need and we build that solution and very quickly can put those components into play and get them to use the service right away. So we were all at Enterprise Connect. We were just talking about that Stu and I hosted theCUBE there just what a couple of months ago, and it's such an interesting, it was an interesting event because everything is centered around communication. You can't have a great customer experience without having a phenomenal and very connected communications platform within an organization. You can't have great satisfied employees that they don't have the connectivity that they need. So really looking at enterprise communication and collaboration tools as table stakes for any organization, because in any industry, there's a competitor right on your coattails ready to swoop in if you're going to be making any mistakes. Absolutely. And now as we look at the waves of change with respect to connectivity and the explosion and expansion of 5G, the proliferation of the amount of mobile data that's going to be video traversing networks, massive demand placed on any organization to be able to deliver communications extremely quickly and extremely securely. Yes. Talk to us about some of the waves that you're going to be writing and helping customers to mitigate with respect to these new demands for high density, high performance connectivity. Sure. So if we talk to customers, as you know today, one of the biggest things is it's all about security. We have a massive and really super intelligent security department, a century link, and it's kind of cool watching all the various projects that they get into because they're so passionate. And not only are they passionate about it, they're adamant that we make as much of a connection secure meetings, any kind of information secure that we possibly can and we've mitigated any risk possible. And then you take that and you have to communicate that information, but you have to also be able to showcase the various solutions that you have, all of the Cisco platforms that you have. So what we have also done is, we've taken that platform of services from Cisco and we put it in the hands of our operations folks, our sales folks, our field techs, our executives, our middle management group, and every one of them knows then how to quickly use a team's application from their desktop. They all have it on there and I don't have my phone with me. They all have it on their mobile device. So it's very familiar, it's very quick and it's always on, right? So they're connected all the time, which I know we all say, oh, I hate that, I hate that. The minute you don't have it, it drives people crazy. So it's a very valuable tool for us from a product management perspective to put these tools in the hands of our internal users who are the voice to that customer. So when the customer calls and goes, oh my gosh, I don't know what's going on. I've been there before. Let me help you out and let me do that very quickly. So I want you to help us understand how are you helping customers keep up with just the rapid pace of change that's going on here? As Lisa mentioned, Enterprise Connect, the themes I was hearing, very similar to what we're hearing here at the show. Cloud drastically changing architectures, AI and ML and fusing itself into all of the environments there. It feels like from a customer standpoint, every time they go to a role and it's like, oh wait, hold on, didn't you hear about the new thing and the new thing and the new thing? And there could be the tendency to like, oh wait, I thought I was down the path yet, I constantly need to hear about yet another thing. Absolutely, so yes, you're right. It's a constant game of catch up, if you will. Have you tried the new app? Do you have the latest version of X, Y and Z? What we're trying to do is also bridge that gap because we have tremendously intelligent and savvy customers where it used to be, if you build it, they will come and now it's, no, no, no, don't even build it. Let them tell you what your market needs to drive. The customers have the most unique uses for the technology these days and we have to keep up with that. So we let those customers help drive where we go from a product standpoint but at the same time, I've got traditional customers who are saying, okay, somebody told me I need to get to the cloud. Okay, I can help you with that. We have a very unique perspective on how we bring customers on board, how we get customers to adopt the technology and truly the way that we do that is with the human touch, right? We concentrate completely on our customer experience from end to end. So if you give us a call and you say, here's a problem I need to solve and here are the components I have sitting in there today. We design the solution that you need for your business needs and then we walk you through that step by step and when we're all implemented and ready to go, we're still going to answer that phone, we're still going to answer your emails and take your calls and say, what else can I do for you? How can I help? How do we want to expand? So it's really that customer service on top of the focus of customer experience that makes CenturyLink, I think, still very unique in the industry because we care that what we are putting in your hands as a customer is something that not only you will use, but you'll talk about in a very positive light. So given that everything you talked about, connectivity, and what we don't have connectivity, you feel like you've lost a limb or you've lost sight or hearing. It's that disconnect that is just these days that feels so strange, but customers need to have definitely, and that was a theme I think that we hear at every event. We also heard it at Enterprise Connect. It's not just AI, it's humans and AI, but speed is essential for any industry, especially those that are undergoing any sort of transformation because they've got to stay ahead of their competition. So how do you balance that? How does CenturyLink balance that need for speed and also deliver a customer experience that's unique, as you say, that has that personalized element that it sounds like I'm hearing? How are you leveraging tools like automation and AI and machine learning to help CenturyLink deliver that customer experience but quickly? Well, we're doing lots of things. Some of the things that we're doing is that automation from the first time they click on the website to say, what's going on at CenturyLink? Oh, they've got UCNC. You click a button and you read a little bit about what the products are, and you can order it right then and there, and then you get it turned around very quickly just to put it in your hands. And oh, by the way, if you need some help, we've got the training videos. We've got a phone number for you to call if you really need some human explanation of, okay, I just can't figure this out, I can't get that. So the automation is key for sure. When you're talking about speed, as you know, if anyone has teenagers around and they're using gaming systems or you're watching Netflix or whatever it is that you're doing all day, you are eating a ton of bandwidth. And so what's nice about working for CenturyLink is that, well, we're the provider of the bandwidth. So we get to see the trending of what products are consuming the most of that bandwidth, and we very quickly can prioritize and say, this content delivery network needs more. Holy cow, what is UCNC doing in Latin America or APAC or AMIA? They're consuming a ton of bandwidth. We need to allocate more and put a priority on that. And so that's different than other competitors who aren't also service providers because then they have to go back and negotiate. No, no, no, my services really do need more bandwidth and I really do need some priority and be nice to me and I'll take care of it, right? So we have that ability at CenturyLink to do that very quickly. So Tara, CenturyLink's had a long partnership with Cisco, very deep relationship. Cisco's been talking a lot about their transformation. Remember a year ago, when you think about Cisco 2030, it's not as a networking company, it's a software company. Give us your assessment as a partner what you've been seeing in Cisco and also bring us in a little as to how CenturyLink is, as we said at the beginning, a different CenturyLink that we might have thought of in the previous generation. Sure, and it's a good question. It's, for me, I've been at CenturyLink for, as I mentioned, about 15 years and I've gotten to witness and be a part of the initial relationship with Cisco that we had up until today where I helped manage that relationship and it really has transformed from a relationship to a partnership and it's no longer just they give you something and you go and implement it. Now it's truly the give and take, right? You have these conversations but we also have the relationships with several of the employees of Cisco to say, okay, I understand you're putting this into the network, tell me a little bit more about that. How is that unique to a service provider versus an enterprise? How can I make that a better value proposition for my customer base because of CenturyLink? And we get the reciprocal communication back and forth. Whereas, you know, years ago it was, here you go, here's what we're giving you, go ahead and put that into the network. So it's really been exciting for us at CenturyLink and certainly I think for our Cisco folks because it's easy now. We know each other very well. We know so many of the employees of both companies that when I pick up the phone, you know, it's, hey, how's it going instead of, oh, I need to speak to the vice president of XYZ, right? So it's truly been a great transformation in a partnership from that relationship to that true partnership where there's give and take. And if we have a question or we think, you know, I've got this amazing customer who has this bizarrely intelligent ask, I want to help them with that. I have no hesitation to pick up the phone and call my partner and say, you're going to love this. Help me figure out how to get us there. And it's really been working quite well over the last few years. I'm kind of excited to see how far it goes in the next few. So it sounds like it's evolved into a much more strategic partnership. How is that an accelerator or a facilitator of CenturyLeaks transformation to a technology company? It's both of those things. It's a complete accelerator, but it just makes sense when you have partners who have that very similar vision that you do from a strategic company, you look at that and think, okay, you know what? This is going to fit very nicely into my strategy, my mission statement. And it's going to be a much easier transition for all of my colleagues as a result because then they can see, oh, that's exactly what we need to do. We need to take these steps to move into that technology mode. And now you're showing me how to do that with your strategic partnership with Cisco. It's very fun. Fun is good. Tara, thank you so much for joining Stu and me on theCUBE this afternoon. We're going to keep our eye on CenturyLink. We appreciate your time. Absolutely. Come and visit us any time to get. All right. First to you, Miniman. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE. Day one of our coverage at Cisco Live has just come to an end. We want to thank you so much for watching and catch us starting tomorrow morning, day two from San Diego. Thanks for watching.