 From theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto and Boston, it's theCUBE covering IBM Think, brought to you by IBM. Hi everybody, we're back and this is Dave Vellante. You're watching theCUBE's continuous coverage of the IBM Think 2020 digital events experience. Sriram Visvanathan is here. He is the Global Managing Director for Government, Healthcare and Life Sciences. Sriram, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. Great to be with you, Dave. I wish we were there in person, but it's great to be here digitally. Indeed, it would be good to be face to face in San Francisco, but this certainly will help our audience understand what's happening in these critical sectors. I mean, you are at the heart of it. I mean, these are three sectors and then there are sub-sectors in there. Let's try to understand how you're communicating with your clients, what you've been doing in the near term, and then I wanna really try to understand what you see coming out of this. But please, tell us what's been going on in your world. You're right. I mean, these sectors are keeping the engine running right now in terms of keeping society running, right? So if you look at the federal government, the state government, the local governments, you look at providers of healthcare. You look at payers who are making sure that their members are getting the advice and the service they need. You look at life sciences companies who are rapidly trying to find a cure for this virus. And then you look at education where the education establishments are trying to work remotely and make sure that our children get the education they need. So kind of existential industries, right front and center of this. Interestingly, Dave, 95% of IBMers have continued to work from home and yet we are able to support the core operations of our clients. So if you look at some of the things that we've been doing over the last eight or nine weeks that we've been under this kind of lockdown. IBM is involved in the engine room. I would like to call it the engine room of many of these operations, right? Whether it is to keep a city running or a hospital running, our systems, our software, our services teams are engaged in making sure that the core systems that allow those entities to function are actually operational during these times. So we've had no blips, we've been able to support that and that's a key part of it. Now, of course there are extraordinary things we've done on top. For instance, in the first two weeks after the crisis started, we used a supercomputer with the Department of Energy that you must have heard about to narrow down over 8,000 compounds that could potentially be cures for the COVID-19 virus and narrow it down to 80 that could be applicable, right? So shortening the time and allowing researchers now to focus on 80 compounds instead of 8,000 so that we can get a vaccine to market faster. And that's tremendous, right? I mean, we've formed a supercomputing, collaboration with 27 other partners that who are all co-innovating using modeling techniques to try and find a cure faster. The other end, you look at things like what we're doing with the state of New York where we work with the government, we do it to get 350,000 tablets with the right security software, with the right educational software so that students can continue to learn while they're remote with the right connectivity. So extremes. And then of course as a backbone we're starting to see real use of our AI tools, chat bots to stop it that we have allowed customers to use for free so that we can consume the latest CDC advice, the latest advice from the governor's and the state and then allow the technology to answer a lot of queries that are coming through with citizens being worried about where they stand every single day. Yeah, so let's kind of break down some of the sectors that you follow. Let's start with government. I mean, certainly in the United States it's been all about the fiscal policy, the monetary policy, injecting cash into the system, liquidity, supporting the credit markets. Certainly central banks around the world are facing similar but somewhat different depending on their financial situations. And so that's been the near-term tactical focus and it actually seems to be working pretty well at the stock market's any indicator. But going forward, I'm interested in your thoughts. You wrote a blog and it basically was a call to action to the government to really kind of reinvent its workforce, bringing in millennials. And so my question to you is how do you think the millennial workforce, when we exit this thing will embrace the government? What does the government have to do to attract millennials who want the latest and greatest technology? I mean, give us your thoughts on that. Well, it's a really interesting question. A couple of years ago I was talking about this is the time where governments have to really transform, they have to change. If you go back in time, compare governments to other industries. Governments have embraced technology, but it's been still kind of slow incremental, right? Lots of systems of record, big massive systems that take 10 years, five years to implement. So we've implemented systems of record, we've started using data and analytics to kind of inform policy making, but they tend to be sequential. And I think coming back to the changing workforce, what is it by 2025, 75% of the workforce are gonna be millennials. And as they come into the workforce, I think they're gonna demand that we work in new ways, in new, more integrated, more digitally savvy ways. And strangely enough, I think this crisis is going to be, is a proof point, right? Many governments are working remotely and yet they're functioning okay. The world of providing policy seems to be working even if you're remote. So a lot of the naysayers who said we could not operate digitally, now are starting to get past that bias, if you like. And so I think as digital natives come into the fore, what we are going to see is this restless innovation of why do we do things the same way as we've done them for the last 20, 30 years? Granted, we need to still have the divisional policies, make sure that we are enforcing the policies of government. But at the same time, if you look at workflow, this is the time where you can use automation, intelligent workflows, right? This is the time where we can use insights about what our citizens need so that services are tuned, are hyperlocal, are relevant to what the citizen is going through at that particular time are contextual. And are relevant to what that individual needs at that particular time, rather than us having to go to a portal and submit an application, submit relevant documents, and then be told a few hours or a few minutes later that you've got approval for something, right? So I think there's this period of restless innovation coming through. That is from a citizen engagement perspective. But behind the scenes in terms of how budgeting works, how approvals work, how the divisions between federal, state, local, how the handoffs between agencies work, all of that is going to be restlessly innovated. And this is the moment. I think this is going to be a trigger point. We believe it's going to be a trigger point for that kind of a transformation. You know, Suryam, I've talked to a number of CIOs and sort of hard hit industries, hospitality, certainly the restaurant business, airlines, and they just basically had a dial down spending and really just shift to only mission critical activities. In your segments, it's mixed, right? I mean, obviously government, you use the engine room analogy before, some of you use the war room metaphor, but you think about healthcare, frontline workers. So it's mixed. What are CIOs telling you in the industries in which you're focused? Well, the CIOs right now, I mean, you're going to go through different phases, right? Phase one is just reactive. It's just coping with the situation today where you suddenly have 95%, 100% of your workforce working remote, so it's providing the network ability. It's providing the leadership, the ability to work remotely where possible. And take IBM, for instance, we've got 350,000 people around the world with 95% of whom are working remotely, but we've been preparing for moments like this where we've got the tools, we've got the network bandwidth, we've got the security apparatus, we've been modernizing our applications. So you've been going to a hybrid cloud kind of architecture where you're able to scale up and scale down, stand up additional capacity when you need it. So I think a lot of the CIOs that we talked to are, phase one was all about how do I keep everything running? Phase two is how do I prepare for the new norm where I think more collaborative tools are going to come into the work environment? CIOs are going to be much more involved in how do I get design in the center of everything that we do, no matter what kind of industry you're in. So it's going to be an interesting change as to the role of the CIO going forward, Dave. And I think, again, it's a catalyst to saying, why do we have to do things the same way we've been doing? Why do we need so many people in an office building doing things in traditional ways? And why can't we use these digital techniques as the new norm? Yeah, there are a lot of learnings going on. And I think huge opportunities to save money going forward because we've had to do that in the near term. But more importantly, it's like, how are we going to invest in the future? And that's something that I think a lot of people are beginning now to think about. They haven't had much time to do anything other than think tactically. But now we're at the point where, okay, we're maybe starting to come out of this a little bit, trying to envision how we come back. And organizations, I think, are beginning to think about, okay, what is our mid to longer term strategy? We're not just going to go back to 2019. So what do we do going forward? So we're starting to spend more cycles and more energy on that topic. What do you see? Yeah, I mean, take every segment of my sector, right? Take the education industry. Will you spend $60,000, $70,000 a year to send a child to university when a lot of the learning is available digitally? And when we've seen that they can learn as much in probably more agile manner and follow their interests. So I think the whole education industry is going to leverage digital in a big way. And I think you're going to see partnerships form. You can see more, you're going to see more choice for the student and for the parents in the education industry. And so that industry, which is being kind of following the same type of pattern for a hundred years, it's suddenly going to reinvent itself. Take the healthcare industry. It's interesting, a lot of providers are following staff because elective treatment has really fallen tremendously. On the one hand, you have huge demand for COVID-19 related treatment. On the other hand, electives have come down. So cost is a big issue. So I believe we're going to see M&A activity in that sector. And as you see that, what's going to happen is people are going to restlessly reinvent. So I think telemedicine is now going to become a reality. I think if you look at the payer space and if you look at the insurance providers, they're all going to be in the market saying, how do I capture more members and retain them? And how do I give them more choice? And how do I keep them safe? It's interesting, I was speaking to a colleague in Japan yesterday and he was saying to me in the automotive industry that I was arguing that, you would see a huge downfall. But his argument back was people are actually so afraid of taking public transport that they're expecting to see a spike in personal transportation, right? So I think from a government perspective, the kind of policy implications, whether it be economic stimulus related in the short term governments are going to introduce inefficiencies to get the economy back to where it needs to be. But over a long term, I think we're back to these efficiencies. We're going to look at supply chain. There's going to be a post mortem on how did we get where we got to now? And so I think in terms of citizen engagement, in terms of supply chain, in terms of back office operations, in terms of how agencies coordinate, do stockpiling, command and control, all of that is going to change, right? And it's an exciting time in a way to be at the forefront of these industries shaping the future. I want to ask you thoughts on education and excuse me drill into that a little bit. I've actually got personal visibility in sort of, let's break it down, secondary universities, nine through 12 and K through six. And you're seeing some definite differences. I think actually the universities are pretty well set up. They've been doing online courses for quite some time. They've started revenue streams in that regard. And so their technology is pretty good and their processes are pretty good. At the other end of the spectrum, sort of the K through six, there's a lot of homeschooling going on and parents are at home. They're adjusting pretty well, whether it's young kids with manipulatives or basic math and vocabulary skills, they're able to support that and adjust their work lives accordingly. I find in the high school, it's really different. I mean, it's new to these folks. I had an interesting conversation with my son last night and he was explaining to me, he spends literally hours a day just trying to figure out what he's got to do because every process is different from every teacher. And so that's that sort of fat middle, if you will, which is a critical time, especially for juniors in high school and so forth, where that is so new. And I wonder what you're seeing maybe in those three sectors, is that sort of consistent with what you see and what do you see coming out of this? I think it's broadly consistent. And I have personal experience. I have one university grade university senior and I have a high school senior. And I see pretty much the same pattern no matter which part of the world they're in. I do believe that this notion of choice for students and how they learn and making curriculum customized to get the best out of students is the new reality. How fast we'll get there, how do you get there? It's not a linear line. I think what is gonna happen is you're gonna see partnerships between content providers, you're gonna see partnerships between platform providers and you're gonna see these educational institutions restlessly reinvent to say, okay, this particular student learns in this way and this is how I shape a personalized curriculum but still achieving a minimum outcome, right? I think that's gonna come but it's gonna take a few years to get there. I think it was a really interesting observations. I mean, many children that I observed today are sort of auto-didactic. And if you give them the tooling to actually set their own learning curriculum, they'll absorb that. And obviously the technology's gotta be there to support it. So sort of hitting the escape key. Let's sort of end on that. I mean, in terms of just IBM, how you're positioning in the industries that you're focused on to help people take this new technology journey. As they said, we're not going back to last decade. It's a whole new world that we're gonna come out of this post COVID. And how do you see IBM as positioned there, Sriram? Dave, I think IBM is positioned brilliantly. As you know, Arvind Krishna is our new CEO and he recently talked about this on CNBC. So if you look at the core platforms that we've been building, right? So our clients in the industry, whether it be government, healthcare, life sciences or education are going to look for speed. They're going to look for agility. They're going to look to change processes quickly so they can react to situations like this in the future in a much more agile way, right? In order to do that, their IT systems, their applications, their infrastructure needs to scale up and down, needs to be, you need to be able to configure things in a way where you can change parameters. You can change policies without having to wait a long time, right? And so if you think about things like HyperCloud, our investment in Red Hat, our position on data and open technologies and our policies around making sure that our clients' data and insights are their insights and we don't monetize that. All of those things are investments in blockchain, our deep, deep incumbency in services whether it be our technology services or our consulting services, our deep industry knowledge, allowing all of these technologies to be used to solve these problems. I think we are really well positioned. And a great example is the New York example, right? So getting 350,000 students to work in a completely new way in a matter of two weeks is not something that every single company can do. It's not just a matter of providing the tool itself. It's the content, it's the consumption, it's the design experience. And that's where a company like IBM can bring everything together. And then you have the massive issues of government like social reform, like mental health, like making sure the stimulus money is going to the people who need it the most in the most useful way. And that's where our work between industries between government and banks and other industries really comes to fruition. So I think we have the technology, but the services depth, and I think we've got the relevance in the industry to make a difference. And I'm excited about the future. Well, it's interesting. You mentioned basically one of my takeaways is that you've got to be agile, you've got to be flexible. You've been in the consulting business for most of your career. And in the early part of your career, and even up until maybe recently, we were automating processes that we knew well. But today the processes are so much is unknown. And so you've got to move fast. You've got to be agile. You've got to experiment and apply that sort of, test experiment methodology and iterate and have that continuous improvement. That's a different world than what we've known. Obviously, as I say, you've seen this over the decades, your final thoughts on the future. Well, my final thoughts are, you're exactly right. I mean, if I take a simple example, that controls how quickly the commerce works, think about simple things like bill of lading. The government has the issue. A federal government has to approve it. A state government has to prove it. And local government has to prove it. Why? That's the way we've been doing it for a long time. There are control points. But to your point, imagine if you can shorten that from a seven-day cycle to a seven-second cycle, the impact on commerce, the impact on GDP, and this is one simple process. This is the time for us to break it all apart and say, why not do something differently? And the technology is right. The AI is getting more and more mature. And you've got interesting things like quantum to look forward to. So I think the time is right for reinventing the core of this industry. Yeah, they really are. I mean, it's difficult as this crisis has been. A lot of opportunities are going to present themselves coming out of it. Sriram, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE and making this happen. Really appreciate your time. It's great to have been here. Thank you for having me, Dave. You're very welcome. And thank you, everybody, for watching. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE and our continuous coverage of the IBM Think 2020 digital event experience. Keep it right there. We'll be right back right after this short break.