 Live, from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Informatica World 2019. Brought to you by Informatica. Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage of Informatica World here in Las Vegas. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host, John Furrier. We're joined by Sally Jenkins. She is the Executive Vice President and CMO here at Informatica. Thank you so much for coming on theCUBE, Sally. Oh, you're welcome. Thank you for having me. It's nice to see you all again. So congrats on a great show, and we're going to get to the stats of the show. But the framework of Informatica World is built around these four customer journeys. Next-gen analytics, cloud hybrid, 360 engagement, data governance, and privacy. Can you tell our viewers a little bit about how this framework reflects what you're hearing from customers and their priorities? Yes, absolutely, Rebecca. And yes, you got them right in the right order. Thank you. So look, we started this journey with our customers and trying to understand how do they want to be spoken to? What business problems are they solving? And how do they categorize them, if you will? And so we've been validating that these are the right journeys with our customers over the past few years. So everything that you see here at Informatica World is centered around those journeys. The breakouts, our keynotes, all the signage here in our solutions expo. So, and it's all in validation of how our customers think and those business problems they're solving. So the show, 2,600 attendees from 44 countries, 1,200 sessions. What's new? What's new and exciting? Oh gosh, there's so many things that are new this year and one other stat, you forgot, 92 customers presenting in our breakouts. So our customers love to hear from other customers as to what journeys they're on and what problems they're solving. So yes, so those record numbers for us, record number of partners sponsoring. We've got AWS, we've got Google, we've got Microsoft, we've got the up and comers that we're calling in the cloud and AI innovation zone. So people like Databricks and Snowflake. So we wanted to highlight those up and comer partners, what we call our ecosystem partners, along with the big guys. Because you know, we're the Switzerland of data, we play with everybody, we play nicely with everybody. So a lot of new things there. A few other things that are new, direct feedback from our customers last year. They said, we want you to tell us which breakouts we should go to or what workshops should we attend. And so we rolled out two things this year, one's called the intelligent scheduler. And that's where we ask customers, what journey are they on? What do they want to learn about? And then we make a smart recommendation to them about what their agenda should look like while they're here. You're using the data. Yes, AI, right, we're involving AI, making the recommendations out to our customers. In addition, our customers said, hey, we want to connect with other customers that are like us on their journeys so we can learn from them. So we launched what we call the intelligent connect. And again, this is part of our app, which our app's not new, but what we've done with our app this year is new. We've added gamification. In fact, as part of the AI and cloud innovation zone, we are asking our customers and all of our attendees to vote on who they think is the one with the best innovation. And so they're using our app to use voting. They can win things. So there's lots of gaming. There's social that's involved in that. So the app's new. We're taking advantage of day four. We usually end around lunchtime on day four this year. We're going all in all day workshops so that our practitioners can actually roll up their sleeves and get started working with our software. And our ecosystem partners are also leading a lot of those workshops. So a lot that's new this year. And as I mentioned, the cloud and innovation zone, that's new. It's like a booth within a booth here on the Solutions Expo floor. So this is the year of new, for sure. You know, one of the things that's been impressive, I was talking to Anil and also Bruce Chisholm was on, board member, the bets you guys have made have been as impressive. You look back and we, this is our 10th year in theCUBE. So we go to a lot of events, hundreds of events a year, over 100 events, over 10 years. We've seen the story with you guys. This is now our fourth year doing theCUBE here. And the story has not changed. It's been early moves, big bets, cloud, early, going private to see this next big wave, AI, early, before everyone else. So this is really kind of shown, and I think the ecosystem partners on stage with Databricks, Snowflake, really kind of point to a new cast of characters in the ecosystem. You're seeing a, not just the classic enterprise, because you guys have great, big, large enterprises that you do business with who want to be SaaS-like, who want the agility, they want all those great things, but now you have cloud. Go to market, seems to change. This is an ecosystem opportunity. Can you share what's new? Because you see Amazon, Google, and Azure, get the cloud, you get on-premise, you get now Edge and IoT. Everything's happening with data. Hard, complex. What's new? What's the ecosystem benefit? Can you just share some color commentary around how you guys view that as a company? Yeah, thanks, John. And that's a good question. I'm glad you're pointing out that our whole go-to-market motion is evolving. It's not changing, it's evolving, because we want to work with our customers in whatever environment they want to work in. So if they're working in a cloud environment, we want to make sure we're there with our cloud ecosystem partners. And it doesn't matter who, because like I said, we work with everybody. We work nicely with everybody. So we are tying in our cloud ecosystem partners as it makes sense, based on what our customer needs are, as well as our GSI partners. So we've got Accenture's here. They brought 35 people to Informatical World this year. So we play nicely with Accenture, Deloitte, Cognizant, Capgemini. So we really are wanting to make sure that we're doing what makes sense with our customer and working with those partners that our customers want to work with. Well, I think one of the observations we've made on theCUBE, and we said in our opening editorial segment this morning, and we're asking the question about the skill gas, which we'll get with you in a second. But these big partners from the global system integrators to even indirect channel partners, whether they're software developers and or channel partners, they all are now enabled and are mandated to create value. And if they can't get to the value, those projects aren't going to get funded and they're not going to get renewed. And so we've seen with the Hadoop cycle just standing up infrastructure for infrastructure's sake isn't going to fly. You got to get to the value. And data, the business that you're in, at the heart of it. Yeah, well data's at the heart of it. That's why we're sitting in a really nice sweet spot because data will always be relevant. And as you, the theme of the conference here is data needs AI and AI needs data. So we're always going to be around. But like I said, I feel like we're sitting right in the middle of it and we're helping our customers solve really complex problems. And again, like I said, if we need to pull in a GSI partner for implementation, we'll do that. We've got close to 400,000 people around the world trained on how to use Informatica solutions. So we're poised and we are ready to go. You know, we were talking before we came on camera sitting there catching up Sally. And you know, I made a, I always make these weird metaphors and references, but I think you guys are in an enabling, this reminds me of VMware when virtualization came in. Because what that did was it changed the game on what servers were from a physical footprint, but also changed the economics and changed the development landscape. This seems to be the same kind of pattern we're seeing in data, where you guys are providing an operational model with technical capabilities, ecosystem, lift, different economics. So kind of similar, and that was a good, I mean, VMware had a good run now, I was about to tell. I'll take that analogy, John. Thank you. What's your reaction? Do you see it that way or? Yeah, no, I do. And again, it all comes back to the journeys that we talk about, right? Because our customers, they're never on just one journey. Most of them are on multiple journeys that they're deploying at the same time. And so as they uncover insights around one journey, it could lead them to the next. So it really comes back to that and data is the center of all that. I want to ask about the skills gap. And this is a problem that the technology industry is facing on a lot of different levels. I want to hear about Informatica's thoughts on this and what you're doing to tackle this problem and also what kinds of initiatives you're starting around this. Well, I'm glad you asked because it's actually top of mind for us. So Informatica is taking a stance in managing the future. So that we can get rid of the skills gap in the future. And last year we launched a program that we call the NEXT 25. And that's where we're investing in middle school age students for the next seven years. It starts in sixth grade. It takes them all the way through high school where they're part of a STEM program. In fact, we partnered with the Cash in Middle School here in Las Vegas because we wanted to give back to the local community since we spent so much time here. And so these kids that are part of the STEM program take part in what we call the NEXT 25 where we help them understand beyond academics what they need to learn about in order to be ready for college, whether that's social skills or teamwork or just how do we help them build the self-confidence? So it goes beyond the academics. But one of the things that we're talking about tomorrow is what's NEXT as part of STEM? Because we all know that they're very good at STEM. And so we've engaged with one of the professors at UNLV to talk about what does she see as a gap as she sees middle school students and high school students come into college. And so that's where she recognizes that coding is so important. So we've got a big announcement that we're making tomorrow for the NEXT 25 kids around coding. You know, it's interesting. You know, we've been talking about this all day because my daughter just graduated from Cal so it's fresh in my mind. But I was pointed out at the graduation ceremony on Saturday that the first ever class at University of California Berkeley graduated from Data Science. And graduate there in our world class. That goes to show you how early it is. The other thing we're also hearing on these interviews as well as others is that the aperture or the surface area for opportunities isn't just technical. There's, you could be pre-med and studied machine learning and computer science is so much more to it. What do you see just anecdotally or just a personal standpoint and professional key skills that you think people should hone in on? What dials should they turn? More math, more coding, more cognitive, more social, emotional. What do you see as skills that they can tailor up for their? Well, so just to start with the data scientists, right? So we know LinkedIn has identified that there are 150,000 job openings just for data scientists in the U.S. alone. Okay, so what's more interesting than that is four times that are available for data engineers. And for the first time ever, data engineers starting salaries are paying more than starting salaries on Wall Street. So there's a huge opportunity. Just in the data engineering area and the data scientists area, now you can take that any which way you want. I mean, I'm in marketing and we use data all day long to make decisions. So you don't have to be, you don't have to go down the engineering path, but you definitely have to have a good understanding of data and how data drives your next decisions no matter what field you're in. And it's also the other skills that you were talking about, particularly with those middle school kids. It is the collaboration and the teamwork in all of those too. Yeah, so it does, again, it goes beyond academics. I mean, these kids are brilliant. I mean, most of them are seventh or eighth grade, but they are just, nothing holds them back. And that's exactly what we're trying to inspire within. So we have them solving big global problems. And you'll hear as they talk about how they're approaching this, they work in teams of five and they realize to solve huge problems, they need to start small and local. So some of these big global problems that are working on like eradicating poverty, they're starting at the local shelters here in Las Vegas to see how they can start small and make a difference. And this is all on their own. I mean, we have, I have folks on my team who are junior genius counselors with them, but that is really to foster some of the conversations. All the new ideas are coming directly from the kids. My final question is obviously, for the folks who couldn't make it here, watching, know you guys, what's the theme of the show? Because the news right out of the gate is obviously the big cloud players. That's key and kind of the new breed of partner snowflake data braces example. Hallway conversations that I'm hearing can be kind of geeky and customer focused around like, where do I store my data? So you're seeing a range of conversations. What is the theme this year? What's different this year? Or what's more the same? Were you doubling down? What's going on here for the show? What's the main content? Well, so this is our 20th Informatica world if you can believe that. We've been around for 26 years, but this is our 20th Informatica world. And several years ago, we started with the disruptive power of data. And then last year, we talked about how we help our customers disrupt intelligently. And this year, the theme is around clarity unleashed. And you can tell that the theme that has been, that we've been talking about for the past three years is all underpinned with AI. So it is all about how AI needs data and data needs AI and how we help bring clarity to our customers' problems through data. And play on words, Clare. Exactly. Clare is the center of our intelligent data platform. So it is a play on AI, right? But that is where clarity unleashed comes from. Terrific. Well, thank you so much for coming on theCUBE, Sally. Great, thanks for having you. Great having you. Thanks, John. Thank you. Nice to see you all. I'm Rebecca Knight for John Furrier. We will have more from Informatica World. Stay tuned.