 Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Edge 2016, brought to you by IBM. Now, here are your hosts, Dave Vellante and Stu Miniman. Back to Las Vegas, everybody, this is IBM Edge. Hashtag IBM Edge, check out ibmgo.com. You'll see all the keynotes, the main session presentations, the breakout sessions, of course, CUBE content and other content flowing in from SiliconANGLE. Mukesh Sharma is here. He's an IT practitioner from Welch Food. Mukesh, welcome to theCUBE. Thanks for coming on. Thank you, Dave. Pleasure being here. So, local Massachusetts boy, like Stu and me. But your keynote is tomorrow, tomorrow morning. Tomorrow morning. But talk a little bit about your role at Welch Food and your background. So, you know, Dave Welch is, you know, and we are 150 plus years old company, you know. We are the co-op, owned by farmers. So we call ourselves the stewards of their trusted brand. You know, they trust us. So Welch is actually the national grape co-op marketing arm. And we are on the earth to sell whatever grapes they grow. We take all their grapes and sell them in different forms and shape. You know, innovation has been the key for us. And we connect what business can use rather than what business is asking. You know, what do they really need? Try to translate that into the bottom line where they can see benefit. Be it ERP system, be it CRM systems, be it BI systems. You know, you got to connect the real need with the technology. You know, you don't go with the buzzword and just keep on going with the flow. You got to figure out what impacts the bottom line. And that's our DNA, you know. Get the most out of every dollar you spend. That's interesting. I'm going to go right to it. Your quote that you use is from Einstein. If I had an hour to think about a problem, I'd spend 55 minutes on the problem and five minutes on the solution. Okay. But you're saying, it's really interesting what you're saying. It's like, it's Steve Jobs-like in that if you ask a customer or a consumer what they want, they don't really know. They may tell you, and if you go build it, you're going to miss it. So you're saying you somehow peel the onion. You have a process to do that. Explain that a little bit. And that's a great segue into, you know, how do you solve these great IT problems by identifying the bottleneck? You know, you really need to look at what is business going after rather than looking at, oh, there's a performance problem. Well, what is the problem? What are you trying to solve? If everybody can spend more time in identifying the problem, solutions are easy. And solutions are developed by partners. You know, it doesn't come all from one head. And I'm listening here at Edge that partnership is the theme. You know, you can compress the data into this storage or you can take chip and compress it, but really it's the partnership with different people which brings it. So our mantra is you understand the bottleneck, look beyond your four walls, find out that data which tells you that this is how you need to solve the problem and then let the experts do the job. You know, it's not going with the buzzwords as I said, hey, I got a Mercedes, let's get that, that'll go fastest. No, I mean, if the lane is not wide enough, Mercedes, Arcadlec or Ford all will go same speed. So you got to look at that bottleneck, define the problem and rally the team behind you. A lot of the technical folks and a lot of the business folks, they go after the buzzwords, they go after the consulting companies who can define, oh, this is how you can fix it. But in our world, you truly have to understand the underneath problem. And that's why I take that Einstein quote that if I had an hour, you know, as he said, he would spend 55 minutes in defining the problem. Now I would take it and turn it with the technology. How do I reduce that 55 minutes into something less and utilize that time to do more value-added tasks, not only for me, for the whole team? If I can divert my team into doing value-added tasks rather than just brainstorming, that's the value for business. So people always talk about people process and talk technology. When you go to solve a problem, you spend more time, I'm inferring, on people and process and the technology sort of takes care of itself or becomes obvious after you solve for people and process? So I call it, it's connecting the dots. If you can figure out one dot, what exactly business is requiring, where does business want to go? Sit with them, learn with them, understand their roadmap. This is when you can take, there's so many technologies out there. You can connect that technology solution with that dot. However, usually this dot is not there. Technology comes before the problem. We deploy it thinking this can solve your 10 problems and bring the problem. You're putting cart before the horse. That's not the right way to do it. You got to figure out as to how do you define that problem, find out the technology after you know the problem to find the fix. Well that says you have to take a systems view of the problem, right? So, I mean, let's break it down. Business says, I want to make more profit. Okay, I need a new way to interact with customers. I'm losing too many customers. You know, I need better customer service. Okay, but what do you do? You look at the whole problem. How would you break a problem like that down? So Dave, in that context, you're looking at data. You know, data is a problem. It's not the question. It's the amount of information which is hidden. How much information is visible to you? Or is it 80% sitting in dark, which is usually the case? Yeah, right. How do you get that information and define that information and give it to business? Of course, there's no magical wand that any technology company can come out there and increase your profit. It's a question of you taking that information, peeling that onion, showing them the real data, taking that customer social media data, taking that IoT data and giving it to them so they can make faster decisions. Ask them, where do you feel you're spending more time? Where do you feel you're lacking in knowledge? Where do you feel you're lacking in information? And that's the direction you go and find the data. We as a steward in the business, from the IT side, we own that data. We got to enable them. They're not going to know the answers. They will know the question. We need to ask them three times. And once we verify, you go after the problem. Because you brought up some really great points there. I wonder if you can help unpack for us. For so long, it's been data's exploding and that's a problem. And what people are looking for is, how can I turn that data into new business value, help the company move faster, make better decisions? If you made that bit flip and, you know, is data now an asset for the company? And maybe you can give us some examples as to what you've seen the last three years. So, you know, data is an asset for everybody. The question becomes, where does that data sit? Do you understand the data combination and data, how it can help you? So, let me throw an example of, you take, hey, we need to find new customer base. For us, the bigger problem is, we're trying to take grape out of the bottle. We want to make grape as an ingredient for you to use in your baking products, for you to use in place of sugar. How do we find that customer intention? How do we find that customer base, which can tell us what products can work? Now we're looking at, we really want to function as a startup company. You know, we are 150 years old company, but we really want to function as a startup company. How do we function in an agile method using that data which is hidden and feel that? Now, it starts with building partnership with the business. You got to sit with them, partner with them, live in their shoes, understand it, and then you can talk their language. So, data is so vast as you said. It's living everywhere. And there is so much data which may not make sense, but there's a piece of data which can make whole world of sense. However, once you understand the business roadmap, you can find that nugget within this global data, you know, growth which is happening. Can you bring us inside the culture a little bit? How does a 150 year old company act like a startup, be agile, you know? How does that fit? Fantastic question. So, you know, we take this and we continue to innovate year after year. You know, I mean, like IBM, 100 plus years, we're 150 plus years, right? The key for our sustainability and survival is in this comparative market being innovative. Now, as I said, we are owned by farmers. We're not a big Coke, Pepsi, or any other big company. What we are is a small in size, but we build that pillar by using our partnerships. And those partnerships are huge key to us. So we look at ourselves, our DNA is, how do we get most out of every dollar we spend? And we define those values and behaviors. Be agile, fast failure, be ready to do it. Don't just shun the fact, bring the fact out. These are some of the behaviors which we are trying to feed into our people so that it becomes a part of their daily habit. You can't give a pill, you have to make it a behavior to become an agile and a innovative startup company. So what are some examples that you can share with us of successes that you've had with this partnering approach and this agile approach? So given the fact of partnering approach, you know, we have transformed every three, four years on IT side, we sit with our partners and we review what we're doing. And those partners involve IBM and other business partners. And what we look at is, next time we do this, how do we do same or more, but with less? The key for our innovation is finding money. Given our size, we need to continuously find money and invest money back in business, back into new ideas. How do you find money is sitting with that partner and figuring out, is there another way to do it? And let me tell you a secret. Every three years, we find a better way to do it and cheaper way to do it. So we become faster, better, innovative while really staying agile to find that process streamlining, money streamlining, and give it back to the value-added business. So it's process streamlining, it's applying new technologies that can dramatically cut costs, is that right? Exactly, now you got to go with it. So we don't shy away from the technology. We try to use technology in the sense where we can generate savings. And our example I'll give you is XIV, when it came out seven years ago. Welchers was the first one to deploy XIV for Oracle workload. Now we trusted our partner, IBM, and we said, well, we are ready to go into this along with you, but there's a huge trust on the line. And IBM came through. And that has enabled us so much that Dave, at this point, I do not have dedicated FTEs managing my IBM infrastructure. And that's huge for us. Given our size, if I can free up three FTEs, and give it to the value-added business task, that's innovation by itself. So we need technology which can run by itself, manage by itself, and hum by itself, while we add value to business. If I was doing the same job what I was doing four years ago, no value. So we continue to find time from our jobs by making it run by itself, better infrastructure, better partnership, and we go back to business and add the value. And you had FTEs running storage prior to XIV, is that right? Absolutely. We get FTEs and we will go and ask the question, how is the system performing? It'll take two days for them to give me the data. And now with the tools, it's right on my tips because with virtualization I need to see how things are happening. So Mukesh, did those people get retrained? Did they focus on something else? What happened to those people that were focused on storage? So it's a combination of people love growth path. Everybody wants to grow. And you, as a senior leadership, have to give them a roadmap of growth. So certain people marry into that arena of growth, but certain people love the technology. And if you love the technology, they are newer technologies to work. So we find the right spot for each one of them. And that's how you position your team and become agile to continue to innovate. So, go ahead, Steve. I was just, one of the areas IBM's talking a lot about is cognitive. Is that something that resonates with you and something that you'll be looking at? So I'm a true believer that you continue to innovate from the data. Cognitive directly relates to data. Now, that data in cognitive sense lives in multiple places. It's no longer in my four walls. It's living everywhere else, but in my four walls. Between my ERP, CRM systems, and all of the rest solutions. We have gathered petabytes of data over decades. So we no longer need all the data just to be sitting there. However, we need that to combine with the social media, IoT data, to tell us the more facts. How can I put juice just in time on the shelf and make it a pleasant experience for the customer? Rather than me looking how I used to do my supply chain four years ago, well, I can't sustain that. So we are comparative because of our innovation. And that has been there since day one when Dr. Thomas Welch, 150 years ago, he came out with the first shelf stable juice from his local kitchen in New Jersey. He was the first one to pasteurize the juice and leave it on the shelf and not spoil it. And that's the innovation way Welch's was born and we take that DNA and continue to run with it. So, Mccase, let's take IoT as a good example because it's on the Gartner hype cycle and everybody's saying, oh, IoT, it's the next big thing. You need IoT. How would you approach that? And what are you guys doing in that regard? How do you translate we need IoT or we need to pursue this into a business opportunity, solving a business problem? Great question, Dave. So IoT, I mean, we have been doing IoT probably for eight, nine years now. And let me tell you how. We actually own weather stations around our farms which generate the data. And it was used to be sent to the processing facility in an old legacy way, but that was IoT. Now the key is can I use new technology to actually transform and use that same data and make faster decision? So we're going to go back to our grower owners and ask them, is there a need to use certain information from the miles and miles long of vineyards? Can you use some of this technology to improve your yield? Now let me tell you that our grapes yield is record year over year. And this year is the one of the most biggest crop we are going to take in. And our challenge is how do we sustain it because that's how co-op is. Farmer, you grow whatever you grow, we'll take it and we'll pay you. As a marketing arm, we're going to figure out how do we sell it in the best profitable manner so we give that return back to the farmer. So in between the crop quality, in between the supply chain data, in between the shelf data, how can I find out that you have picked up our 100% purple grape juice three times in last one week from that same shelf? Can IoT sense that and give that back to our sales team and tell Walmart and this location is short on this product rather than their manager figuring it out two days later and somebody else buying a somebody else brand, right? So that's where IoT has to make bottom line impact. How can I increase my value and income and revenue by using this technology? Well it's a good example of thinking about a system problem because if you're going to have record yields and you're responsible for the marketing of that product, you got to make sure you have a distribution channel and you've got to have systems in your supply chain and logistics and so forth that that's a big hairy problem. I wanted to ask you, staying on IoT, one of the other problems with IoT is speed of light, right? I mean, moving data is increasingly hard because you got so much data. Are there new approaches that you're taking to leaving data in place, doing analytics in place and only moving the stuff that has to be moved? So that's a great question. Our journey to hybrid cloud, that's what really it brings to you. We have taken the step to take our data center which used to be and conquered between the farms and telecom was a challenge there. We decided four years ago that we got to move out of this and we really used to need to utilize the commodity services where we can get good telecom at a relatively cheap price. So we took that decision four years ago when nobody was talking about hybrid cloud, us not knowing that we were building hybrid cloud. So we have taken that first step towards putting our data where it can be accessed in the fastest best manner. And now we are looking at how can we utilize our partners be transportation, be supply chain partners, connect to this data and utilize that better. Because remember that our network is really broad. We have co-manufacturing facilities. We have transportation facilities. Our plans are close to where grapes are grown. You know, they need to access that data fastest to scan that pallet and ship it. And that's what goes in our DNA. Where do we place the data so that they can fastest process it? I mean, remember that we take all these grapes and we press them in juice within eight hours of harvesting. Eight hours, that's the speed. And that's what translate into the authentic flavor of that purple grape juice which Welch's is proud of. Take off your shoes, Stu. We're gonna be stamping some grapes here. All right, Mukesh, we have to leave it there. Thank you so much for coming to theCUBE, sharing your insights on how to extract value from technology. Really appreciate it. It was a pleasure, Dave. All right, keep it right there, everybody. Stu and I will be back with our next guest right after this short break.