 Live from San Francisco, it's theCUBE. Covering Google Cloud Next 19, brought to you by Google Cloud and its ecosystem partners. Everyone, welcome back to theCUBE coverage here live in San Francisco for Google Cloud Next 2019. I'm John Furrier, my co-host Dave Vellante, student minimums also here, doing interviews without getting stories and reporting them. We've got two great guests here for you for a while, who's the global head of industry solutions for retail at Google Cloud and Richard Soldenberg, who's the digital workspace manager again. Thanks for coming on theCUBE, appreciate it. Thank you for having us. So we've been talking about, just talked about security. You know, the devices now can have a key inside the Android device. We're a big G Suite user, productivity is really important, but the IT world has changed. So how is that all coming together? What's the big story? You know, retail is an incredibly important sector for us and G Suite is a very important product suite for retailers. We're seeing a lot of adoption of G Suite from different kinds of retailers around the world. They're coming to us to solve some very specific challenges they face. They want to reduce or eliminate the information silos they have in their organization. They want to be able to foster and improve communication and collaboration within the organization. And they want to get rid of innovation processes they have in the organization. So we're very excited to see the adoption that we have with retailers coming onto G Suite. And the retail, obviously there's a lot of dynamics going on, very data driven, huge opportunity. What's your story? What's your relationship with Google? You as a customer, what's your implementation? Well we have been using G Suite for quite some time. We have been using it since 2010 I think. From the beginning it was more of a consumer product back then when we started using it. But today it's really enterprise friendly and we can use it in all aspects of our business especially out to retail as well. It's just going to see how the cloud is kind of changing shape of G Suite. Like there's the connected sheets. It's interesting you now have big query on the back end. Turn that basic interface into a full on global scale data warehouse. This is kind of the story here this week. Is to give more power to the edge whether it's retail or and not compromise any of the productivity suite. Is there? Absolutely. There's so much data in the retail organization today and with G Suite we're able to bring that access to that data and insights right down to every single worker within the organization whether they're in the headquarters or whether they're in the store. For example a store associate now has access to insights about the consumer that they can use to proactively service that consumer a lot better than they could have in the past. And that's where G Suite is starting to shine now for retailers. So retail obviously is an industry with a heavy disruption scenario. You mentioned some of the challenges for being data silos and you want to put data at the heart of your organization. So how are you competing in retail today specifically at Gantt and then how is Google sort of helping you transform and be the disruptor versus the disruptee? Well one of the things that works well for us is just the speed in which we can set up new markets because we use as much cloud tools as we do. So we can set up a new market in minimum time just by they only need internet access and that's it. So it gives us an edge in that sense. Tell us more about Gantt and then. So Gantt has quite an heritage. It's as an old company we was formed in 1949 on the American East Coast actually in New Haven, Connecticut. And we moved the business to Sweden, Stockholm where I'm from in the 80s. But we used to be one of the biggest shirt makers in the 50s and 60s and there's a lot of innovation in the Gantt shirts that like the locker loop. Do you know about that? Yeah, that's a Gantt concept. Oh, no kidding, I didn't know that. Oh, thank you. All right, I'm looking at some good stuff. So yeah, retail is an incredibly important industry for us in Google Cloud. And you touched on this, retail is going through so much transformation and disruption right now. And what we're seeing is retailers are really striving to transform the entire business across all parts of the retail value chain. And we believe that technology and cloud computing is a big part of that transformation journey, which is why we're very excited to launch in a Google Cloud for retail, which is a suite of solutions that addresses specific business challenges retailers face. And this is actually a collection of solutions that are both built by Google Cloud, like vision product search, recommendations AI, and also from our ecosystem of technology and SI partners, solutions like intelligent inventory, targeted digital marketing, or demand forecasting. So we're very excited to bring technology to our retail consumers and help them in their transformation journey. Well, it's great you got a customer here, Ricard. I will have to ask you kind of a work question. What do you do on a day-to-day basis? What is your job function? Because IT's certainly changing. The workforce is going digital. The innovation, certainly on your product side that you sell in clothing. But you got to run it all. What's your role? What do you do on a day-to-day basis? What I try to do is to optimize collaboration between us, between the main company and the subsidiary companies and all the out-to-the-retail and the stores to get people to move as fast as possible. Because that's, Gantz motto is never stop learning. And that's something that we try to live by from day to day. And that's a big part of it, this collaboration and speed. That's our main issues. What's the core problem that you're trying to solve? What's the challenge? What's the opportunity that you're going after? Just more human-to-human inventory? Is it just, I mean, what are some of the core challenges that you're trying to solve and turn them into opportunities? Well, the, let's see, it's just getting people on board to have a new way of thinking when it comes to technology and not be stuck in old ways. But we kind of try to foster ever-continuous change in the IT, from an IT perspective. So instead of doing big releases of new technology, we always try to just keep it flowing and doing changes all the time. And that's something that our users are very used to working in that way, which is, yeah. I mean, data is critical in this whole equation. And, you know, it's sort of alluding to earlier, a lot of successful companies these days, Google being one of them puts data at the core. In 1949, you weren't putting data in the core. It might have been a manufacturing plant or, right, so, punch cards. So, conceptually, we can see, okay, we can draw the picture of putting data at the core and putting people around it. But what does that mean from a practical standpoint? How are you using data at Gantt? And again, I'm interested in how Google is helping and if you can be specific in the context of G Suite, that would be helpful as well. Well, we are using data from the very beginning of the process, because our end product is a very analog product. It's a shirt. But the first step from the design department and all the data are surrounding sizes, colors and everything. So it is data from the beginning to sales figures in the end, definitely. And we try to, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. For being, talk about the challenges around cloud and the opportunities that, the challenges customers have in retail, as Dave mentioned, data is killer opportunity. But it's also could be a double edged story. It could actually cut you the other way. I mean, if you're not managing the data, because the user experience is number one. So you have to have access to data. You have discovery mechanisms in place to know when the right data to mix with the right data, knowing which profiles to look at, all kinds of things going on that's really data driven. What have you found in the industry to be a correct direction or best practice for retail? Because the difference between getting it right and wrong could be literally one data point. Absolutely. So share your thoughts. Yeah, data is hugely important. And I think capturing the right data in your ecosystem is the starting point. So we talk about machine learning and AI all the time, but really that starts with the foundation of strong data sets. So one of the things we work with retailers on every time we have relationships and partnerships is, let's identify the challenges you want to solve for and let's figure out what data you have in your ecosystem that we need to bring together to set the stage for solving that problem. So whether if it's things like demand forecasting, you need to start with capturing inventory information in real time first. So maybe your supply chain has some level of tracking of your inventory, but then let's look in store. How do we capture real time inventory flow within the store? Lots of new technologies to help you do that now. And we build that data set, the foundation with the retailer and then we take them to the next step of infusing machine learning and other capabilities. Machine learning is only as good as the data. Bad data in is bad machine learning, bad AI. So getting data right at the beginning versus going in and cleaning it later is a huge issue. Incredibly important. And it's something that retailers have to focus on and make a priority to capture the right data, the right clean data, as you said. So with a big theme this week that we've been talking about is old way, new way. And you're seeing all kinds of old techniques, whether it's perimeter based security or data warehouses, now moving to a whole new modern era and you guys are kind of leading the charge here. So if you guys could comment about what you think the biggest misconception is for people not understanding this new way, using data, using a lot of big scale applications in the cloud, having microservices and cloud native techniques. A whole new way of building apps, whole new way of workspace collaborations changing. What is the big misunderstanding that people on the old side of the world aren't getting that before they move over? What's the- Yeah, you know, one of the common misconceptions I see is that they believe it's all or nothing. You don't have to take everything at once. There's a journey that you can map for yourself based on where your organization is in the maturity curve and the understanding and capabilities that we have from a technology perspective. So what we work with our customers on is really identifying where are they at and what is important to them and how can we craft a journey that's specific to their business to take advantage of cloud and the technology that we have and the solutions that we have. And it may be different for everybody, but that's what we're here for, to work with them closely to do that. Rick, are there any comment on your end on misconceptions people might have that haven't moved yet over to the new way? Is it just- Well everyone has the legacy applications and legacy systems, but I think that now it's pretty obvious that everything should move into the cloud both for security reasons and just practical reasons. I think that's the way to go. Yeah. Ain't a picture for us. I mean, I like this journey concept. It's a good metaphor. And we had Amy Locke on yesterday. We were talking kind of the future of work and I was sort of envisioned, okay, I want to be work faster, smarter. I want to be more collaborative. I want to be secure. That's kind of the frontline worker. What you were talking about Praveen is this whole backend data model as well, integrating that with the front end. So, and then maybe there's some specific things in retail, in specific use cases. So, I'm interested if you could paint a picture of sort of the vision of the digital workplace that you're building and that journey that you're on. What's that look like? Well, less local servers is one big thing and just flexibility in how you work and how you can access on any device. That's a very important thing for us. We should be able to work on the move and as I said, be able to set up a new market super quick. We can do online training via hangouts, for example. We can do meet people digitally instead of traveling. That's a big thing for us. We recently set up a new office in Hong Kong and I didn't even go to Hong Kong for that. We just made sure that they have a good internet connection and that's it and they are up and running. Anything you'd add to that Praveen? Absolutely. If you talk about G Suite adoption, some of the common use cases that Ricard talked about already about just enabling better communication and collaboration is one thing. But then think of the next step in the journey, right? If they're centralizing their data on Google Cloud, so data like inventory data, both from their supply chain but also from in-store captures. Now they can use that data and plug it into some sort of client telling application that's integrated with G Suite where the store associate has very quick understanding of what real-time inventory they have as the customer comes in and asks for something, they're able to very quickly respond to that customer without having to go back and check in the back of the store or on the shelf because that information is available to them right on their fingertips with a combination of G Suite but also the data that's flowing into G Suite. Ricard, as a customer of Google, what's your impression of Google next this year? What's your impression? I think it's amazing. It was a lot bigger than I thought it would be. This is still overwhelming to take in. It's really interesting. I've met a lot of interesting people and have a lot of good talks with people around here and a lot of good information from potential customers or partners to us. Contents on message with the enterprise, digital transformation, but real meaty deep dive sessions, experts around. Yeah, it's a lot of good stuff here. Praveen, your thoughts on the show? It's incredible. Every time I come to, this is my fourth Google Cloud Next and every time I come here it's just incredible to see the passion that we see from the attendees and it's growing so tremendously every single year and we can be more excited to have all these customers here sharing and learning from each other. In your opinion, what's the most important story that people should pay attention to coming out of Google Cloud Next? What's the high order bit? What's your opinion? I'll be biased. It's our focus on industries. Thomas talked about it quite a bit. We're very much focused on key industries and trying to solve challenges faced by our customers in those industries and we're bringing solutions to market that addresses the biggest focus they have for their business. Rickard, shopping's important these days even for men and women. What's some shopping tips that we can share? Insight information from the data. Even for men, that's beautiful. I love the shop for it. I'll never go wrong with a white shirt. I'll never wear a tie on stage. I told Dave. I got my big tie on today. What do you think? I'll never go wrong with a white button down Oxford shirt. That's my own. Okay. And some chinos maybe? Chinos are hot. We have a lot of those. All right. Rickard, thanks for coming on. Thanks for sharing your story. Thank you very much. For being, thanks for coming on. Thank you for having us. We're talking about clothing, the cube, data, all here in the cube. We're on the ground floor. I'm Javier DeValante. More cube coverage after this short break.