 from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering NetApp Insight 2017, brought to you by NetApps. Hello everyone, welcome to the special CUBE presentation. We are here at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, Nevada for NetApp Insight 2017. I'm John Furrier, co-host and co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media, here at theCUBE, here with Keith Townsend for all day today. Keith Townsend at CTO Advisor, covering NetApp 2017, here at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. And before we kick off, a long day of great conversations with thought leaders, experts, executives, and also customers of NetApp who are transitioning to a whole digital world and digital transformation. We can't not address the massacre that happened only a few days ago here in Las Vegas, here at the Mandalay Bay, our second home, theCUBE. If you know theCUBE, you know that we're here all the time, hit homes for us, but not even, that pales in comparison to the families and victims, the 58 dead and 59 total, but it's 68 that have died plus the shooter. Over 500 injured in the heinous cowardly act from the shooter who killed those people. Really, I'm trying to kind of hold it together because it really hits home for me because like 9-11, this is one of those moments that, you know, this is planned, this was a coordinated attack, kind of like the Oklahoma bombing. And it reflects on our society, we want to make a comment and Keith, I'd like to get your thoughts in a minute, but first I'd like to say our hearts and prayers are with the victims and families and want to put a shout out to the first responders because if you look at the Mandalay Bay and what happened here, there could have been a lot more that have died. And that is really a testament to the people who responded to this unpredictable act and our prayers go out to the families and victims. And again, a shout out to the law enforcement people. Keith, this is a tragedy that people are trying to make sense of and, you know, we have to move on. Obviously we're here at the NetApp event. A lot of great things to talk about with data in the future, how society will change with technology. But this is a time in history where we're seeing a societal shift, but we got to make sense of it. Yeah, you know, John, this, I'm going to try and keep it together as well. This is, you know, I think this is my seventh time in Vegas this year. And I'm sure every time I've spent at least some time in Mandalay Bay, you know, this event and then, you know, I have a personal tragedy in my own life of losing my nephew to gun violence. We're all stretching for answers and trying to find a solution to this. And I'm a little bit, it's a tough moment, I think, personally for us and our friends in the community. But the folks here at NetApp have done a really great job, not just NetApp, but the community in general, here in Las Vegas, there's been folks in the community that's organized blood drives. The Red Cross has actually asked us to stop donating blood because of the outgoing support. And I think that focus of hope in changing the world is what I would like to focus on. Well, I mean, take a tech company like NetApp, having their annual customer event, partner event here at Mandalay Bay, it's their big event. And on their doorstep, this happens. How they've handled themselves, I think shows the culture of NetApp, they respect, they took pause, they canceled the first day, they handled it with extreme class, George Curry and put up there, personal story. But this is what it's about, we've got to move on. But I think to me, it's not about politics, it's not about any of that, it's about how do we move forward? And I hate to use a cliche, it's a wake up call. The world is changing in an instant through a prism of an homeland. We heard that at 9-11. It's been 16 years, enough's enough, and here's the deal. We have to be awake and go, we are realizing that not the digital transformation for the enterprise, it is a transformation around the world. If you look at geopolitics, you look at what's happening even today in the news. Even though the president of the United States is here to visit with the families, the Senate Intelligence Committee points out more fake news influence via social media on Facebook with the Russians hacking the election. They didn't really hack the election, they just used advertising and arbitrage Facebook, among other platforms, to manipulate the election. Equi-hacks facts, turns out, as I reported originally on theCUBE, it was a state-sponsored activity, it was not a hack. These are, these are new realities. And this is the theme that we see at theCUBE across our events that we go to, the new reality that we are living in a completely different society, and it's on us to lean in and be part of the solution. And it's not about being a political solution or saying, hey, I'm praying, I mean, we're praying, but you can't pray, praying is what you do. Action is another, but it's not about just the gun laws or this or that, it's about the society and the communities. The GoFundMe's are going crazy for the victims, but you can't replace the mother. We had a loss in our community, former Cisco employee lost her life, three kids. The communities have to lean in, individuals have to lean in, if they have expertise. I think this is going to be a call to arms that's going to have a revolutionary effect on people. And I think it's an opportunity for the technology industry to lean in, use what we know. We have AI, we've got blockchain, we've got machine learning, this data, the slogan of NetApp couldn't be more perfect. Changing the world with data, this is the mandate. So George Cary gave an ardent and just compassion. I had a tough time keeping myself together at the end of yesterday's keynote. George shared how data helped save his son's life. His 13 year old son comes home every day thankful for technology. And we need to find ways to use AI, use machine learning to impact our communities. While we're talking about the larger global community, even in my hometown of Chicago that's ravaged by violence. You know, there's ways to use social media, data, AI driven changes to help create policies and to help enable community organizers to understand the source of this nonsense basically. You know, we say this is the new normal but we should never grow numb to it. And I'm grateful. It's not normal. It's not normal. And this is why I tell my daughter is the class president of junior high school, Palo Alto high school. This is not normal. This is not normal. This is not what we want. No. You know, your personal tragedy, you hit home with you personally, you have to rationalize it. And you're also a very active participant in the community. This is a new opportunity. The new normal is to behave differently, not the outcome. So what's your, how do you, how do you look at that? Given what you've been through personally and now this, it brings together motions but then the logic has to kick in. You have to execute, take action. So it started again Monday when a bunch of us had to make the decision on whether or not we're going to make the trip to Vegas to participate in a enterprise IT show. When you, you know, you count your initial gut reaction is, you know what, so many dead. What, what, what does it really matter to go to a conference at this point in time? And then you start to rationalize. You know what? My way of life, our way of life cannot change. We can't allow this tragic event to change how we approach it. And again, NetApp and George did a great job of kicking off the conversation saying that we need to use this as a pivot point to drive the conversation to how us as technologists can leverage it. Let's take this to where NetApp's living right now. NetApp Insight 2017 is the event that we're kicking off here all day coverage here in the Cube with Keith Townsend, expert in the field, cloud data storage, it's all converging. But the reality is that NetApp has solid fire. They've bought great, great company. You're seeing a DNA transfer off the original DNA of NetApp, which has been very innovative culture. They were very big success stories to start up, went public and now are continuing to transform. Their customers are transforming, but you bring up this new normal that the behavior we want to change and the outcomes that will become of it speaks to the culture of what we're seeing in the enterprise transformation. A new class of developers are coming in and the class of developers are about DevOps, they're about infrastructure as code and these new developers have a new mindset. Yeah, so NetApp, a storage company, right? They store bits, retrieve bits, not so much. They spent the hour on stage yesterday even before they talked about any products, any architectures talking about the value of data. And John, you've talked about data for, as long as I've known you, data is the number one asset of any company and NetApp focus not on storage, not on arrays, not on how fast the speeds and feeds go, but the value of data and extracting that value from your subsystems and then going into the conversation around how NetApp can assist in that journey in leveraging data. Okay, we're going to kick off day one coverage with NetApp Insight 2017 here on theCUBE, changing the world with data, that is the focus, that is the conversation and that is an aperture, that's the entire world, from how you store the data, how to use the data, how to put it to work, how to create value and transformation. This is theCUBE bringing the action here from the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas for NetApp Insight 2017. Stay with us, we'll be right back with our next guest after this short break. Digital Transfer.