 Good afternoon and welcome back to Sin City. We're here at AWS re-invent with wall-to-wall coverage on theCUBE. My name is Savannah Peterson, joined with Dave Vellante, and very excited to have two exciting guests from Click and AARP with us, Molly and Samir, thank you so much for being here, welcome to the show. Thank you for having us. Thank you for having us. How's it been so far for you, Molly? It's been a great show so far. We've got a big booth presence out here. We've had a lot of people coming by, doing demo stations, and just really, really coming to the voice of the customer. So we've really enjoyed that. Love a good VOC conversation myself. How about you, Samir? Oh, it's been great meeting a lot of product folks, meeting a lot of other people, trying to do similar things that we're doing, getting confirmation we're doing the right thing, and learning new things. And obviously, here with Molly, it's been a highlight of my experience. What's the best thing you learned from your peers this week? You know, some of the things that we're all talking about is, how do we get data in the right place at the right time? And, you know, that's something that people are now starting to think about rather than, you know, doing it, and then not only getting it to the right place, but taking insights and taking action on it as it's getting there. So those are the conversations that are getting around in the circle I've been hanging around with. You're hearing the same thing at the booth? Or, and how are you guys responding? Well, I think as a company and the shifts in the market, people are really trying to determine what workloads belong and which cloud, what belongs on-prem. And so talking about those real-time transformations, the integration points, the core systems they're coming from, and really how to unlock that data, it's just really powerful and meaningful. So that's been a pretty consistent theme throughout the conference and a lot of conversations that we have on a regular basis. I believe that. Molly, let's stick with you for a second. Just in case the audience isn't familiar, tell us a little more about Click. Yeah, so Click is a robust end-to-end data pipeline, starting with really looking at all of your source systems, whether it's mainframe, SAP, relational database, kind of name your flavor as it's related to sources, getting those sources over into the target landing spot, whether it be Amazon or other cloud players, or even if you're managing hybrid workloads. So that's kind of one piece of the end-to-end platform. And then the second piece is really having all that data, analytics ready, coming right through that real-time data pipeline, and really being able to use the data, to monetize the data, to make sense of the data, and then Click really does all that data preparation work underneath the visualization layer, which is where all the work happens, and then you get to see the output of that through the visualization of Click, which is the dashboards of things that people are used to seeing. I love that. So at AARP, what are you using Click for? What sort of dashboards are you pulling together? So when we started our journey to AWS, we knew that we're going to have our applications, they're distributed in the cloud, but again, how do we get the data there in the right place at the right time? So as members are taking action, they're calling into the call center, using our website, using our mobile apps, we wanted to be able to take that information, we used Click to take those changes when they happen, as they happen, be able to stream it to Kafka, and then push that data out to the applications that need it in the time that they needed it. So instead of waiting for a batch job to happen overnight, we're able to now push this data in real time, and by doing that, we're able to personalize the engagement for our members. So if you come in, we know what you're doing, we can personalize the value that we put in front of you, and just make that engagement a lot more engaging for you, and in the channel that you choose to want to come in with, rather than a channel that we're trying to push to you. Everyone wants that personalized experience. As we discussed, I love AARP, I've done a lot of work with AARP, I look forward to being a member, but in case the audience isn't familiar, you have the largest membership database of any company on Earth that I'm aware of. How many members does AARP have? We have nearly 38 million members, and 66,000 volunteers, and 2,300 employees across every state in the United States. It's a perfect use case for Click, right? Because you've been around for a while, you've got data in a million different places, you're trying to get, you got a mainframe, right? You know, I hear Amazon's trying to put all the mainframes in the cloud, but I'm guessing the business case isn't there for you, but you want the data that's coming out of that mainframe to be part of that data pipeline, right? So can you campaign a picture of how, what Molly was describing about the data pipeline, how that fits with AARP? Yeah, it's actually, it was a perfect use case, and when we engaged with Click, what we wanted to be able to do is take that data in the mainframe and get it distributed into the cloud, accurately, securely, and make sure that we can track the lineage and be able to say, hey, application A only needs name and address, application B needs name, address, and payment. So we were able to do all of that within a couple of weeks, right? And getting that data out there, knowing that it's going to the right place, knowing it's secure, and knowing it's accurate, regardless of the application it goes to, we don't have to worry about seeking data across different applications. Now we know that there's a source of truth and everything is done through the pipeline, and it's controlled in a way that we can measure everything that's going through, how it's going through, and how it's being used by the applications that are consuming it. So you've got the provenance and the lineage of that data, and that's what Click ensures? Is that right? Your role, or is that a partner role combined? No, yes, that's absolutely Click's role. So for our new offering, Click Cloud Data Integration, it's a comprehensive solution delivered as a service, delivers real time, automates transformations, catalog and lineage, all extremely important. And in the case of Smear and AARP, they're trying to unlock the most valuable assets of their data in SAP and Mainframe. And surprisingly, sometimes the most valuable data in an organization is the hardest to actually get access to. So just statistically, 70% of Fortune 500 companies still rely on Mainframe. So when you think about that, and even when Smear and I were talking about it. And that's a lot of scale, that's a lot of data. It's a lot of data. So Mainframe isn't a thing of the past. Companies are still relying on it. People have been saying that for years, but when we're talking about getting the complex data out of there to really make something meaningful for AARP, we're really proud of the results and the opportunity that we've been able to provide to really improve the member experience and how people are able to consume AARP and all the different offerings that they have. Kind of like you mentioned, Savannah, and the way that you go about it. Well, it's also the high risk data, high value data, high risk data. You don't want to mess with it. You want to make sure that you've got that catalog to be able to say, okay, this is what we did with that data. This is where it came from. And then you essentially publish to other tools, analytic tools in the cloud. Can you paint a picture of how that extends to the cloud? Sure. So there's a couple of different things that we do with it. So once we get the data into our streaming apps, we can publish it over to like our website. We can publish it to the call center, to mobile apps, to our data warehouse where we can run analytics and AI on it. And then obviously a lot of our journeys, we use a journey orchestration tool and we've built a CDP, a customer data platform to get that, those insights in there to drive personalization and experience. I'm smiling as you're talking, Sameer, because I'm thinking of all the personalized experiences that my mother has with AARP. And it is so fun to learn about the technology that's serving that to her. Exactly. This segment actually becoming a bit more personal for me than I expected for a couple of reasons. So this is great. Molly, click has been a part of the AWS ecosystem since the get go. How have things changed over the years? Yeah, so click still remains the enterprise integration tool of choice for AWS, especially. We call that a casual and just brag, because that's awesome. That's great. Congratulations on that. Thank you for SAP and mainframe. So the relationship continues to evolve, but we've been part of the ecosystem since inception. So we look at how we continue to evolve the partnership. And honestly, a lot of our customers' landing spot is AWS. So the partnership evolves really on two fronts. One, with Amazon itself and a partnership lane, and two, with our customers and what we're doing with them and how we're able to really optimize what that looks like. And then secondly, earlier this year, we announced an offering Amazon and click called click ramp, where we can come in and do a half day architecture deep dive, look at SAP mainframe and how they get to the Amazon landing spots, whether it's S3, Redshift or EMR. So we've got a lot of different things kind of going on in the Amazon ecosystem, whether it's customer forward and first and how can we maximize the relationship spend, et cetera, with Amazon. And then also, how can we deliver kind of a shorter time to value throughout that process with something like a click ramp? Because we want to qualify and solve customers' needs as equally as we want to, you know, say when we're not the right fit. So data is a- Love that honesty and transparency. Data is a complicated situation for most companies, right? And there's a lack of resource, lack of talent, there's hyper-specialization. And you were just talking about the evolution of the cloud and the relationship. How does automation fit into the equation? Are you able to automate a lot of that data integration through the pipeline? What's your journey look like there? Were you resistant to that at first? Did you got to trust the data? Take us through that. Yeah, so the first thing we wanted to make sure is security. Right? We've got a lot of data. We want to make sure- Very personal data, too. Exactly, and privacy and security is number one. So we want to make sure anything that we're doing with the data is secure and it's not given out anywhere. In terms of automation, so what we've been able to do is being able to take these changes. And in technology, the one thing you can guarantee is it's going to break. Now it's going to go down. Or a server goes down, a database goes down. And that's the only guarantee we have. And by using the product that we have today, we're able to take those outages and minimize them because there's retry processes. There's ways of going back and saying, hey, I've missed this much data. How do we bring it back in? You don't want data to get out of sync because that causes downstream problems. So all of that is done through the product. We don't have to worry about it. We get notifications, but it's not like, oh, I've got to page someone at two o'clock in the morning because the network's gone down and how's the data sync going to come back up when it comes back up. All of that's done for us. Yeah, and just to add to that, automation is a key component. I mean, the data engineering teams definitely see the value of automation and how we're able to deliver that. So improving the experience, but also the overall landscape of the environment is critical. Yeah, we've seen the stats. Data scientists, data pros spend 80% of their time wrangling data 20% of their time. Extracting value from it, so. So sad, it's such a waste of human capital. And you're obviously relieving that and letting folks do their job more efficiently. And the thing is too, as somebody who's loved data, you dive into the data, you get really excited. Then after a while, you're like, oh. I'm still here. I'm slogging through this data. Taking a bath in it, I want to get to the insights. I think that world is changing a little bit, right? Yeah, it's definitely. So as we're starting to get data that's coming through, it's got high fidelity and richness, right? So in the old days, we'd put in a database, normalize it, and then we'd go and do our magic and hopefully something comes out and at least the frustration you just spoke about. Well now, because it's moving in real time and we can send the data to areas in the way we want it and add automation and machine learning on top of that so that now it becomes a commodity to massage that data in the format that you wanted, then you can concentrate on the value work, right? Which is really where people should be spending the time rather than oh, I've got to manipulate the data, make sure it's done in a consistent way, and then make sure it's compliant and done the same way every single time. It may be too early to quantify the business impact, but have you seen, for example, what I was describing creates data silos? Because nobody's going to use the data if it's not trusted. So what happens is it goes to the silo, they put a brick wall around it and then they do their thing with it, they trust it for that one use case and then they don't share it. Has that begun to change as you've seen more integration that's automated and augmented? Absolutely. I mean, if you're bringing in data and you're showing that it's consistent, and this is where governance and compliance comes in, right? As long as you have a data catalog, you can make sure that this data's coming through with the lineage that you said is going to, here's the source, here's the target, here's who gets what they only need rather than giving them everything. And by being able to document that in a way that's automated rather than somebody going in and running a report, it's key. Because that's where trust comes in, rather than, oh, Samir has to go in and manipulate this stream so that, you know, Molly can get the reports she wants. Instead, hey, it's all coming in there, the reports are coming out, they're audited, and that's where the trust factor comes in. And that enables scale. Yeah, without confidence in scale. Big topics of the show this week. It's been the whole thing. Molly, what's next for Click? Yeah, Click's on a big journey. So we've released a lot of things, most recently, Click Cloud data integration as a service. But we're just continuing to grow from a customer base, from a capabilities perspective. We also recently just became HIPAA compliant and went through some other certifications. Congratulations, that is not an easy process. Thank you, thank you. And so for us, it's really just about expanding and having that same level of fidelity of the data and really just getting all of that pushed out of the market so everybody really sees the full value of Click and that we can make your data Click. And just for a minute, back to your earlier point. Beautiful pun drop there, Molly, just going to see that. Thank you, Savannah. Yeah. But back to your earlier point, just about the time that people are spending. When you're able to automate and you're getting data delivered in real time and operational systems are able to see that, because you're trying to create the least amount of disruption you can, right? Because that's a critical part of the business. When you start to automate and relieve that burden, then people have time to spend time on the real things, future forward, prescriptive analytics, machine learning, not data preparation, solving problems, fixing stock gaps, right? It's actually the full end-to-end pipeline. And so that's really where I feel like the power is unleashed and as more sources and targets come to light, right? They're all over the showroom floor so we don't have to mention any of them by name, but it's just continuing to move into that world, to have more SaaS integrations and to be able to serve the customer and meet them exactly where they're at at the place that they want to be. And for Samir and what we did in the transformation there, unlocking that data from Mainframe and SAP, getting it into ClickCloud, has been a huge business driver for them. And so because of partners like AWS and Samir and ARP, we're constantly evolving and really trying to listen to the voice of the customer to become better for all of you. Love that community first attitude, very clear that you both have it, both ARP and Click with that attitude. We have a new challenge this year to reinvent on theCUBE, little prompt here. We're going to put 30 seconds on the clock, although I'm not super crazy about watching the clock, so feel comfortable with whatever, however much time it takes. Whatever works, yeah. Yeah, whatever works. But we're looking for equivocally your Instagram reel, your hot take, your thought leadership, sizzle with the key theme from this year's show. Molly, your smile is platinum and perfect, so I'm going to start with you. I feel like you've got this. Okay, great. And just a closing statement is what you're looking for? Sure, yeah. Sexy little sound by what's going to be your big takeaway from your experience here in Vegas this week? Yeah, so the experience at Vegas this week has been great, but I think it's more than just the experience at Vegas. It's really the experience of the year, where we're at with the technology shift, and we're continuing to see the need for cloud, the move to cloud, mixed workloads, hybrid workloads, unlocking core data, making sure that we're getting insights, analytics, and value out of that, and really just working through that kind of consistent evolution, which is exactly what it is. It's never, you never get to a point where that's it, there's a bow on it and it's perfect, it's continuously evolving. And I think that's the most important part that you have to take away. Samir's got his environment in a great place today, but in six months there may be some new things or transformations that he wants to look at, and we want to be there at the ready to work with him, roll up our sleeves, and kind of get into that. So the shift to the cloud is here to stay, click is 100% here to stay, here ready to serve our customers in any capacity that we can, and I think that's really my big takeaway from this week. And I've loved it, like this has been great, this has been great with both of you, you both are super high energy, and Samir and I have had a great time over the event as well. Nailed it, yeah, absolutely nailed it. All right, Samir, shoot your shot. So, what I would say, I'm pretty so, that hits home. I like to keep the smiles organic on stage, my perverse sense of humor, everyone just tolerates. The one thing I think I'm hearing a lot is we have to look at data in motion. Streaming data is the way it's going to go, whether it's customer data, operational data, it doesn't matter, right? We can't have these silos that you spoke about, those days are gone, right? And if we really want to make a difference and utilize all of the technology that's being built out there, all of the new features that were just in the keynotes, we can't have these separate silos and the data has to go across, trusted data, it has to go across. The second thing I think we're all talking about is, we have to look at things differently. Unlearning the old is harder than learning the new, so we were just talking about event-driven architecture. Understatement of the century, sidebar, those, yeah. So, a lot of us techies are used to calling APIs, well, now we have to push the data out instead of pulling it. That just means retraining our brains, retraining our architects, retraining our developers, if you think in a different way. And then the last thing I think I've learned is, us technology folks have put the customer first, right? What does a customer want? How do they want to feel when they engage with you? Because if we're going to do that, none of this technology matters. And we have to get away from the day where the IT guys go in the back, black room, put it up, and then push something out and don't think about what am I doing and how am I impacting your mother? Yes, the end customer is no longer the person at the end of a terminal, looking at the green screen. And just one last thing, I think also it's fit for purpose transformations. And that's how we have to start thinking about how we're doing business, because there's a paradigm shift, right? From ETL to ELT, extract, load, transform your data. And so as we're seeing that, I think it's really just about that fit for purpose and looking at the transformations, the right transformations and what's going to move the needle for the business. What a great closing note. Molly, Samir, thank you both for being here. This was a really fantastic chat. Love where we took it. And thank all of you for tuning in to our live coverage from AWS re-invent here in fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada. I just want to give my mom a quick shout out since she got a holler throughout this segment, as well as Stacy and all of my friends at AARP. I miss you all. My name's Savannah Peterson, joined with Dave Vellante. You're watching theCUBE. We are the technology leader in coverage for events like this.