 From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of AWS re-invent 2020, sponsored by Intel, AWS, and our community partners. Everyone, welcome back to theCUBE's virtual coverage of AWS re-invent virtual 2020. It's not an in-person event this year, it's remote, it's virtual, theCUBE is virtual and our guests and our interviews will be remote as well. And so we're here covering the event for the next three weeks. Throughout the next three weeks, we'll be weaving in commentary from theCUBE, check out theCUBE.net and all of our coverage. And here at AWS, we have special feature programming. We've got a great segment here, talking about big data in the cloud, governance, data lakes, all that good stuff. Rick Tamm Daniels, Vice President of Strategic Ecosystems and Technology for Informatica and Rick Turnoff, Head of Enterprise Data Services in Vesco, customer of Informatica. Welcome to theCUBE. Hey John, thanks for having us. So Rick with a K from Informatica, I want to ask you first, we've been covering the company journey for many, many years, always been impressed with the focus on data and specifically cloud and all the things that you guys have been announcing over the years have been spot on the mark. AI with Claire, making things cloud native, all that's kind of playing out. Now with the pandemic re-invent, that's the story here. Building blocks with high level services, cloud native, but data is the critical piece again. More machine learning, more AI, more data management. What's your take on this year's re-invent? Well, absolutely John. And again, we're always excited to be here at re-invent. We've been here since the very first one. You know, I think you tapped into a couple of key trends there, especially in the era of the global pandemic here. There's so many challenges that so many enterprises are experiencing. I think that the big surprise has been that has actually translated into a tremendous amount of demand for digital transformation and cloud modernization in particular. So we've seen a huge uptick in our cloud relationships with AWS when it comes to transformational architecture solutions around data and analytics and using data as a fundamental asset for digital transformation. And so some of those solution areas are things like data warehouse modernization of the cloud or end to end data governance. That's a huge topic as well for many enterprises today. Before coming in to re-invent, I had a chance to sit down exclusive interview with Andy Jassy. I just spoke with Matt Garmin, who's now heading up Sales and Marketing who ran EC2. Rick, you're a customer of Informatica. Their big talking point to me and validation to the trends is there's no excuse to go slow anymore because there's a reason to go fast because there's consequences and the pandemic has highlighted that you got to move faster. Otherwise, you know, you're going to be on the wrong side of history and necessities the mother of all invention. Okay, great. I buy that, by the way. So I have no complaints on the talking point there from Amazon Web Services. The problem is you got to manage the data. It's to go fast. The gas in the tank is data. And if it's screwed up, it's not going to go well, right? It's like putting gas in a car. So this is where I see the data lake coming into the cloud and all the benefits. And look at the successes of companies. The cloud is a real enabler. What's your take on this? The importance of data governance because cloud scale is here. People want to go faster. Data is the key thing. Yeah, the data governance was a critical component when we started our enterprise data platform and looking at, you know, how can we build a modern day architecture with scale bringing our enterprise data but doing it in a government fashion? So when we did it, we kind of looked at, you know, what are critical partners? How can we apply data governance and the full catalog capabilities of knowing what data is coming in, identifying it and then really controlling the quality of it as to meet the needs of the organization. And it was a critical component for us because typically it's been difficult to get access to that right data. And as we look in the future and even current needs, we really need to understand our data, bring the right data in and make it easily accessible and governance and quality of that is a critical component of it. I want to just follow up with that, if you don't mind because, you know, I've done so many of these interviews I've been in the block for now 30 years in the industry I've seen the waves come and go and you see a lot of these mandates, you know data governance, we had even data governance from the ivory tower, are you here? Everything's got to be a service but when you peel back and look under the hood to make that happen, it's complicated. You got to have put things in place and it's got to be set up properly. You got to do your work. How important it is to have, and well, what's under the covers to this? Because governance, yeah, it's a talking point, I get that but to make it actually happen well is hard. We started really with the operating model from the start. So I kind of took over data governance seven years ago and had a government global architecture that's been around for 40 years and it was hard. So this was really our shot and time to get it right. So we did a operating model, a governance model and really ingrained it through the whole build and execution process. And so it was part with technology and it was foundational to the process to really deliver it. So it wasn't governance from a governance say it was really part of our operating model and process to build this out and really succeed at it. Rick on the Informatica side, got to get your take on the new solution you guys announced. The govern data lake, I think it was solution. Does this tie into that? How does, tell us first about, take a minute to explain the announcement and how does this tie in? Yeah, absolutely, John. So I think you take a step back and look at, we talked about some of the drivers of why companies are investing in cloud data lakes. And I think what comes down to is when you think about that core foundation of data analytics, you know, they're really looking at, how do we go ahead and create tremendous, a tremendous leap forward in terms of their ability to leverage data as an asset. And again, we talked about one of the biggest challenges is trust around the data. And what this solution does though, is it really looks to say, okay, first and foremost, let's create that foundation of trust, not just for the cloud data lake, but for the entire enterprise. To ensure that when we start to build this new architecture, when we understand the data assets that are coming in at the very get go, right? It's much harder to add data governance after the fact. But you put it in up front, you understand your existing data landscape. And once that data is there, you make sure you understand the quality of the information. You cleanse the data. You also make sure you put it under the right data management policies. There are so many policies that enterprises are subject to now like CCPA and GDPR. They have to be concerned about consumer privacy and being able as part of your governance foundational layer to make sure that you're in compliance as data moves through your new architectures, it's fundamental that having that end trust and confidence and be able to use that data downstream. So our solution looks to do that end to end across a cloud environment. And again, not just the cloud environment, but the full enterprise as well. One thing I do want to touch on, if you don't mind is on the AI side of things and the tooling side of things. Because I think data governance has been around a while. As you said, it's not that it's a new concept, but how do you do it efficiently in today's world? And this is where Informatica is focused on a concept of data 4.0, which is the use of metadata and AI and machine learning and intelligence to make this process much, much more efficient. You guys have a good point. Rick from, there's two Rick's here, so I got it. One's with a K, one is a C and a CK. So Rick CK and from Invesco Customer, I want to just check that with you because I was a year customer of Informatica, but they brought up a good point about governance. And I saw this movie before, we've all seen this before, people just slap on solutions or dueling to a pre-existing architecture. You see that with security. You know, now it's, you can't have a conversation about saying, oh, security's going to be baked in from the beginning. Okay, cool, I get that. No debate there. Governance, same kind of thing. You know, you're hearing this over and over again. If you don't bake governance into the beginning of everything, you're going to be screwed. Okay, so how important is that foundation of trust for this piece? It's critical and to do it at the beginning, and right, so you're profiling the data, you're defining entitlements and who has access to it. You're defining data quality rules that you can validate that. You define the policies, is there PII data, all of that. As you do that from the start, then you have a well-governed and documented data catalog and taxonomy that has the policies and the controls in place to allow that to use. If you do it after the fact that then you're always really catching up. So a part of our process and policies and where the really informatic tools delivered for us is to make it part of that process and to use that as we continue to build out our data platform with the quality controls and all the governance processes built in. I got to ask you on your journey. You said seven years ago, you took over the practice. You were probably right in the middle of the sea change when everyone kind of woke up and said, hey, Amazon, you go back seven years, look at Amazon where they were to where they are today. Significantly strong then, total bellwether now, in terms of value opportunity. So how did you look at the cloud migration? How do you think about the cloud architecture? Because I'm sure, and I'd love to get your story here about how you thought about cloud in the midst of architecting the data foundational platform there. Yeah, we're a global company that had architecture and we grew by acquisition. So a lot of our data architecture was on-prem, difficult really to pull that enterprise data together to meet the business needs. So when we started this, we really wanted to leverage cloud technology. We wanted a modern stack. We wanted scale, flexibility, agility, security, all the things that the cloud brought us to. So we did a search and looking at that and looked at competitors, but really landed on Amazon just by core capabilities and scale they have innovation and just the services to bring a lot what we're looking at and really deliver on what we wanted from the platform. Why Informatica and AWS? Why the combination? Can you share some of the reasons why you went with Informatica with AWS? Yeah, we, again, when we started this off, we looked at the competitors, right? And we were using IDQ. So we had an Informatica product on-prem, but we looked at a lot of the different governance competitors. And really the integrated platform that Informatica brings to us was the key deliverer, right? So we can really have the technical metadata with EDC and enterprise data catalog, scan our sources, our file, understanding the data and lineage of what it is. And we can tie that into acts on the governance tools to really define business glossary terms. We're very critical of defining all our key data elements, business glossary. And then we can see where that is by linking that to the technical metadata. So we know where our PII data, where all our data and how it flows, both technically and from a business process. And then the IDQ. So when we define and understand the data we want to bring in the delay and how we want to conform it to make it easily accessible, we can define data quality rules within the governance tool and then execute that with IDQ and really have a well-defined data quality process that really takes it from governance in theory to governance and really execution. That's awesome. Hey, you're making, using the data, using the cloud, you're getting everything you need out of it. That's the whole idea, isn't it? Yeah. That's good stuff. Rick at Informatica, but tell us about what's going on. You mentioned data 4.0. I think people should pay attention to some of the interviews I've done with your team. They're online. Also, it's part of that next gen, next level thinking. Are it reinvent? What should customers pay attention to that you guys are doing? Great customer example here of cloud scale. What's the story for reinvent this year for Informatica? Well, John, I think it comes down to when customers think about their cloud journey, right? And the difference, especially with their data-centric workloads and priorities and initiatives, all the different hurdles that they need to overcome. I think Informatica, we're uniquely positioned to help customers address all those different challenges. And you heard Rick speak about a whole bunch of those along the way. And I think, and you participate in reinvent, first of all, it's welcome folks that want to learn more about our data governance solution. Please come by our virtual booth. We also have a great interactive experience that encourage folks to check out. One of the key components of our solution is our enterprise data catalog. And attendees at reinvent can actually get hands-on with our data catalog through the demo jam, the AWS demo jam as part of reinvent. So I'd encourage folks to check that out as well, just to see what we're talking about in action. Awesome. Final question for you guys. As reinvents going on, a lot of stores are popping up. We're seeing obviously the same trends, machine learning and you know, outposts is booming. So cloud operations is clearly here. Rick from Invesco, what do you think the most important story is for your peers as they're here? It's a learning conference. You guys have seven years in the cloud working together with Informatica. In your opinion, what should people be paying attention to as they look at this pandemic and what they got to get through and then coming out of it with the growth strategy. It's all going to be more about the data. There's more data coming in, more sources. IoT data, certainly the work at home. It's causing, it's workloads, workplace, workflows. Everything's changed, the future of work. What's your advice to peers out there on what to pay attention to and what to think about? We really started with a top-down strategy, right? To really the vision and the future. And what do we want to get out of our data? Data is just data, right? But it's the information, it's the analytics. It's really delivering value for our clients, shareholders and employees to really do their job, simplify our architecture. So really defining that vision of what you want and approach and then executing on it, right? So how do you build it in a way to make it flexible and scalable? And how do you build a operating and governance model really to deliver on it? Because garbage in is garbage out. And you really got to have those processes, I think, to really get the full value of what you're building. Get the data out there at the right place at the right time, the right quality data. It's a lot more involved now and you need to be agile. And I think agile data is a way to go. And then there's tools and capabilities that makes it easier, right? It makes it doable. And I think that's what cloud and the informatic tools, right? We're in the past, you know, there's people hard coding and doing it right. And the capability that cloud and these tools give us makes it really achievable. You know, we've been all saying here in our CUBE team, you know, if there's a problem, you got to see if it's important and then look at the consequences of not solving that problem, quantify the value of solving or not solving that problem and look and deploy solutions to do it. I think now with the data, you can actually do that and say, the consequences of not doing this or doing this have a quantifiable value. And I just love that because it brings the whole ROI back to the table. And, you know, it's a dark heart. It used to be, you mentioned the old days, you know, you got to do all this custom work. It was like a dark heart. Oh yeah, the ROI calculation, the payback. I mean, it was a moving train. That's the way it used to be. Yeah. Not anymore. You got to do it to survive, really. If you're not doing it, you know, I don't know. Necessity is the mother of all inventions. I think now more than ever, data is going to be the key. Rick, final word from Informatica. What should people pay attention to? Yeah, I mean, I think as you mentioned there, data is obviously a critical asset, right? And to your point with cloud, you can not only realize ROI quickly, but you can actually iterate so much more quickly where you can get that ROI immediately or you can validate that ROI. You can adjust your approach. But again, from an Informatica standpoint, we are seeing such a huge uptake and demand for customers who want to go to the cloud, who are modernizing, and we're investing every day. We're investing heavily in how do we make sure that customers can get there quickly? They can maximize the ROI from their data assets. And we're doing it with all things data management from traditional data integration, all the way to the data governance, all the capabilities we talked about today. You know, congratulations. That's the benefit of investing in a platform and having a set of out-of-the-box tooling with SAS platform as a service, really it can enable success. And I think the pandemic, it's pretty obvious who's taking advantage of it. So congratulations and continued success. Thanks for coming on, I appreciate it. Rick Turnock, Head of Data Service, Enterprise Data Service, InvestCo customer of Informatica, sharing his insight, great insight there. Necessities, the mother of all inventions, baking it in from the beginning, data governance foundational, it's not a bolt-on. That's the message. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE. Thanks for watching.