 from Las Vegas expecting the signal from the noise. It's theCUBE covering InterConnect 2016, brought to you by IBM. Now your host, John Furrier and Dave Vellante. Okay, welcome back everyone. We are here live in Las Vegas for exclusive coverage of IBM InterConnect 2016. This is SiliconANGLE Media's theCUBE. This is our flagship program. We go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise. John Furrier with my co-host Dave Vellante, our next guest, CUBE alum. She's, I think, she's been on every CUBE and we've done here at IBM in heat. She's a general manager of now collaboration solutions. Promoted again, congratulations. Every year you get promoted. Sometimes. Welcome back, great to see you. I know you've been in a lot of meetings. You have a new job. Give us the update, GM collaboration solutions. What's this about? Yep. You're turning it around and shaking the tree. Transforming. All of the above, all of the above. So I think you guys have known, I've known you guys for years now and I've been in the data and analytics space really for the last decade and I've had a fundamental belief that analytics transforms decision making but also vertical industries and roles and professions and now I have a unique opportunity as now leading the collaboration unit to actually infuse analytics in the next generation of collaborative tools. So when you think about the things that every end user uses and a professional uses, they're using things like mail. They're using instant messaging. They're using persistent chat. They've got communities and wikis and blogs. It is so ripe for disruption with cognitive. So my goal is to embed and infuse analytics and cognitive in that next generation of tooling. And so what you're gonna get to see this year and next year is new set of capabilities from IBM that actually embed much more analytics cognitive within the tool set. So you got the cloud. It's a really nice accelerant for this transformation. Obviously the asset is analytics and then the insights that come out with cognitive. So that's great. It cleans you to paper. It would probably be really easy to do but now you have legacy IBM. Oh. You have customers that have voice over IP. I have Lotus Notes. So you have a lot of, and this is classic enterprise. You have pre-existing conditions that can be hard to break through. Is data the strategic weapon? Is that the weapon of choice or catalyst of choice for you? That's a great question. So yes, I have Lotus Notes, Domino. We have a tremendous partner base that have built let's say applications and workflows around various business forms, things like if you think about case management, there's a number of capabilities. The thing that's really exciting with cloud that's very disruptive is that you can start to allow different levels of communications, different levels of personal productivity and begin to surface content and data wherever the user is from any device that's multimodal and economically better than probably historically was affordable. And so one of the things you're gonna see more in the business and in the business unit I've got now is that we're gonna actually be delivering more and more cloud first set of SaaS services, including new capabilities like persistent chat. So that's not a capability we've had historically, but that's a new set of services that we're gonna bring to market. So you're re-imagining a collaboration platform that's sort of horizontal. Yeah, and that's connected to existing collaboration ecosystem players as well as ISVs and application for layers today. So I expect it to be open. We're gonna expose some APIs that will be easily accessible and composable. And then you're wanting ecosystem of developers that are also developing new things. So for example, one of the things we're working on research are things like personal bots. Bots to actually understand calendaring, meeting and being conscious of the social interactions and being able to do that across multiple population sets at the same time. It could be things like auto triage. Oh, you could look at the email, parse out the text, understand that a set of actions are required, surface relevant content in the reply note. And automatically it says this is how you should respond back to the note. I mean, even in this morning's keynote, you saw the comments around surfacing tone. You could have indicators in a knob. We have a lot of tone in our email. David and I emailed back and forth. In text. Text is the worst, but you have to nine o'clock. Tone could also be, that's enough. I'm done with you. I'm done with you. It's not just TMI. It's like, no, no, seriously, you're done. But using different kinds of analytics to enhance and augment the way we have conversations. But I see a real industry excitement around developing new types of human-to-machine interactions and new services that we can expose and embed in the application. So the thing that I'm really excited about the division is that you're gonna get to see a lot of cognitive set of capabilities that are more, what I would say, ubiquitously available amongst our software tool set. So it's not a rip and replace. I mean, if you have a preexisting business, you have a lot of software. First of all, in the collaboration group, there's a boatload of software. You get the socials thing, you get the Lotus and Domino, among other things, unified communications. Yep, connections, verse, yep, a number of things. So what you're saying is you can come in and do the cognitive thing, be horizontal, but connect to this. So it's not a rip and replace reboot. Maybe some revamping here and there, but for the most part, you're gonna adapt and integrate in. Yeah, that's right. That's a good way to think about it, or not just adapt and integrate in, but let's think about a couple things. One is in a mobile-first environment, if you think about mobile developments for GoEase and UX, user experience, as well as in the UI itself, there are things that we can do in a very progressive way to enhance the UIs for even some of our traditional applications, but it still is leveraging what the infrastructure may be on the back end. So the clients that have that in the implementation can actually take advantage of it, but also express maybe in a more web-friendly client. Or agile push notifications. That allows them to kind of surface and support their end users. Now, for new clients and new white space areas, we're gonna be entering new services that won't necessarily have that history, but it also doesn't have the same pull or the technical kind of requirements. So I wanna take advantage of some of the greatness in our, what I would say, legacy business and base, but at the same time, what I wanna do is modernize it because clients are really thinking through, hey, do I wanna access my communication collaboration tools with my teams and directories in a more progressive way? And the answer's absolutely. Okay, so you're gonna add value to the existing base by making incremental improvements, the UX, UI, and then for the new stuff, you're saying it's really the data that is the linchpin. Yeah, the data's core. Absolutely. Presentation layer, too. Yeah, the presentation layer, the way you consume and understand information, even our partnership, it would be all new. But the thing too, if you think about like last year, we made a huge announcement in our partnership with Box, right? Transforming content in the cloud and the way we're gonna reimagine the way you do workflow on top of file synchronization and cloud storage is reimagining things like case management and electronic discovery and new types of industry specific workflow where the relevant content is surfaced based on specific roles and you've captured the right regulations and changed control management capabilities. So this is pretty much consistent with what Bob Pachino was talking about two years ago when he was really introducing the systems of engagement and he would explain, oh, systems of records, systems of engagement, now we get cognitive. So is this a layered approach? I mean, you're basically saying, okay, by connecting, you're abstracting layers on top of it, is that kind of how you see it? Yeah, well, I don't, maybe I wouldn't quite say as a layer versus I really wanna do is infuse analytics actually in the application. So that rather than people having, obviously historically I've focused on teams creating data science teams, creating analytics for greater decision making as a core competency. Now I actually wanna infuse that into the tools so that the next generation of what we call cognitive solutions and actually tooling is gonna be expressed in everyday things that we all use. So, new role, what does the general manager do? I know he or she does a lot, but so what's that role like? I mean. I don't know, it's three weeks in, I guess. Come on, what's the responsibilities? Do you have R&D? I do, I have R&D, I've got, so research, engineering, services, we also have a cloud delivery team, sales, consulting sales, marketing, finance, legal department, all the core function is a complete business unit with PNL responsibilities. And I think what's really exciting is it's also a business unit that everyone can experience, right? Cause everyone experiences things like mail and messaging and documents and so forth. So it's something that everyone has an opinion on. There's no shortage of that. And as a result of that, what I get to now think about is, okay, how do I improve and how does a team begin to improve personal productivity? So re-imagine the future. And then there's an element of reality on the current business, right? Business in terms of the business operations, the clients we serve, what markets are we penetrating? How do we package and price what we have? How do we transition to new areas? So it's at the end of the day, it's about new innovations and talent and culture. So from an R&D perspective, are you a chef picking and choosing from the best of IBM? Are you a farmer growing seedlings in the, you know? It's a little above, it's all of the above. I actually have my whole team and the research team next week, we're spending a full day in IBM's Yorktown Research, which is a home of Watson actually to do a full review of all of our Watson capabilities that would be relevant for collaboration and content and access and creation for the next generation. So that is a deep research session. I mean, Watson is the digital assistant for collaboration. It has to be. I mean, that makes sense. We have a number of ideas. I'm really excited. I want probably by insight time, not just to be able to talk about it, but actually demonstrate to you. So a lot of that R&D is going to be on making those improvements to existing products. You have to do that to keep that base alive. But is the rest of it, if you will, or a big chunk of the rest of it going to be integration of all these wonderful piece parts that you can grab? Yeah, there will be. And also new invention. Yes. So there's going to be core seeds that we're going to plant with research and our existing teams. And then there's integration of not only existing IBM capabilities and other divisions, but actually integration with partners in the ecosystem. So I've already mentioned box as one partner that we're going to do more with, but they won't be the only one. So I'm not going to be able to divulge some things I'm working on behind the scenes already, but you can be pretty confident with my skills and both not only the organic investment side, but some of the activities that we've done on strategic partnerships and acquisitions that we're going to be busy in collaborations this year. So based on the smile on your face is an M&A target list out there. So let's just go try to get that. No, you know what it is? It's about like flexing the full muscles we have within our full suite at IBM. So, okay, without divulging any specifics because you can't do that, but what's the tone of the press release that's going to be written at Insight? What's it going to sound like? What are some of the superlatives? You know what? At a high level, what can we imagine? I would say it's probably a continuation of a lot of the messages you've heard in new ways, which is continuing to advance around enabling analytics for new roles, new buyers, new solutions, pervasive cloud data services and an open platform for innovation for all types of data. You're going to see more contributions and partnerships in the broader open source world. Now, in the collaboration unit, what I'd hope to have by that timeframe is examples of how we've surfaced that innovation in an application setting that an end user uses and not just, you know, here the analytic tools, that's actually how analytics is inherently embedded so that maybe the UI or the windows to how people are collaborating are giving recommended guided decisions or navigation paths or connections. Yeah, like a really simple example today we've actually embedded already in VIRS. So VIRS is our web client for mail, is based on the emails that you're getting from different individuals, it already surfaces who your relationship folks are. So it will actually apply some basic elements of cognitive capability. So it's already applying some machine learning algorithms that says, oh, you tend to do more mail with Dave than you might with me. And as a result, within your top bar pane, it actually shows pictures of Dave and here's the graph analysis of the people that you tend to communicate with either in terms of because your response rate, even if they don't email you a lot, your response to their emails has a higher ratio of percentage, that could be it. So kind of how it works in some movies or shows, right? When you see the way they collaborate, say, wow, I wish the real world worked like that. Is there a sci-fi example you aspire to? Well, you know what? This goes back to the IBM research aspect. We have some pretty amazing people and actually our Think Lab at Yorktown Research is completely, if you've been there, is completely wired with these large screens that you can actually interact with. And the designers, the movie set designers for Minority Report actually helped design some of the application and visual tooling there. But some aspects are definitely what I would say a sci-fi, but other aspects are definitely viable. So how about design? Do you have designers on your team or do you have a resource within IBM? So this is a great example. So the IBM collaborations business of all the business units across IBM actually has the largest design team. So I have almost a hundred designers. Wow, wow, that's great. A lot of people don't realize. So design is gonna be first and foremost a key element because what we wanna do ultimately is design for an experience. Historically, we've had a lot of design where it's been focused more on feature function and product or enhancements, right, or usability. And here it's gonna be about simplicity. So with mobile visualization aspects of data, those kinds of things, that what you're referring to? Well, it's gonna be things like user experience, but it could also be front-end developers. It could be folks that are very knowledgeable on true use. It could be research. So there's a number of elements including visualization. How do you think about just generally, again, you're not gonna divulge any secrets, but how do you think about the evolution of devices and we were talking about the internet of things and how does that play into the collaboration? Oh, I think it's gonna be like a huge intersection. I mean, think about unified telephony today. You go into a conference room, there's like, you know, there's Polycom or some telephone, there's probably like a screen. Yeah, in the future. Some telepresence, that's not connected. I'll start the, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it takes like 10 minutes to figure out how to get something started. Sadly, I've had some real experiences there, poor experiences. So now, in the future, you can begin to say, okay, can you start, whether you're in a physical space or in a virtual space, a meeting very quickly? And how do you do that in one or two steps? Well, the only way for that to actually come to fruition is for us to partner with others that are in that space in a more meaningful way to co-design, right? From the very beginning, how that experience is gonna be. So that's one of the areas that you're gonna see more from. Are you not just gonna resell? That's not IBM's model, is it? No, no, no. So co-design. Not in my business. On the co-design, you gotta get in early though. These are the relationships thing. So is that kind of where you're kind of thinking about the M&A Organic kind of thing where you're gonna work together? Well, yeah, it's, you know, over the course of last year, we really forged some great partnerships including the partnership with like Twitter and Box and the Weather Company, and the Weather Company became an acquisition. Co-design starts from a shared view of how we think the market's gonna evolve and taking not only our existing products to integrate, but actually reimagine if we actually could design it from the beginning together, what could we do together? And that's something that I'm really excited. So I think the intersection of some of the work we're gonna be doing, we have potential with Apple, we have potential with Box, we have a potential with a number of partners. The Apple-Twitter relationships are big and I think that highlights the thinking around IBM right now. It is, it is an exogenous data, right? And GitHub is gonna interview them shortly, the CEO couldn't make it on, but I gotta ask you, kind of an organizational, I guess, personal question, is there anything in it? Don't worry, it's gonna be good. Is there anything that you carried over from your other job, you mentioned Box. Oh, I know that was a deal that you did, Twitter, I think you did the Twitter deal too, didn't you? I did, I did all three. So is Twitter coming over with you or? No, Twitter, so those are global partnerships that we have. The Box one, I'll continue to play a significant role just because it's at that intersection of both content and collaboration. The Twitter one, we have actually the intersection with GBS plus the analytics unit at large. So that'll still stay within the analytics piece, also with Watson analytics, because that's a core feed into how we do things like sentiment analysis or personality insights, and how we also feed into Watson and others. The weather company is actually part of our overall IBM analytics unit, but is gonna be a pervasive platform and set of data that's used by multiple teams to build on top. So my team as well, from a collaboration standpoint, like as a very simple example, you could begin to infuse like the APIs for weather services or forecasting insights into the collaboration tools themselves. So you don't have to swap windows or panes in order to go figure out relevant temperatures for a particular day or inventory over a course of time if you're working on a project that is in the user experience itself. So the goal is to actually design the next set of collaboration tools that actually rethinks how you wanna surface the right information without you having to toggle between five different screens. Big, ambitious vision, I love it. All upside, great. Thanks so much for spending the time. I know you've been in these power meetings all day, big time executive. Five years has been a while since we've been doing the CUBE and IBM events. Since the beginning. We've gotten to know you and it's been fun. It's been great to know you. I gotta ask you the transformation of IBM itself. Over the five years that we've been having CUBE conversations with you, you've seen the dots connecting. We've been seeing the dots. The world's seeing the dots connecting. Is there anything that you could share with the folks out there through that journey, your journey, I know Bob as well, Bapachiano and others. A lot of people had their nose through the grindstone on this from six years ago. Transforming this. Absolutely, absolutely. It's come a long way. It's playing out, it hung together. It's executing out. Share some insight into your views, your learnings, anything magnified. Yeah, you know, I think a few things for sure. So big data's been hot long before it was ever hot because BBC and Forbes and the main headlines talked about it. And that was something that IBM was really early, I would say, in some of the more advanced technology and investment areas around real-time streaming, advanced algorithms. Even in Hadoop, we've seen the entire market evolve. But in the very early stages, I mean, we've always had kind of this. Got it early. We did. We did get in early. I think what you're seeing now, there's two dimensions. And at a high level, IBM also coming back to its roots around, we serve our clients. We are focused on delivering solutions. There are pieces and components of technology that we may supply, but we don't lose sight of the fact that clients expect and solutions from us that we help deliver. And the two cornerstones of our core strategy are around cloud and cognitive. And now what you're gonna see it is that it's not just a Watson solutions that are delivering cognitive, but cognitive and artificial intelligence and machine learning and advanced analytics are gonna be infused across multiple parts of IBM. Embedded all throughout the product sense. Embedded all the way down to the chip. I mean, just think about like the recent release of the 14 nanometer chip and then you get into things like the Synapse chip that use low wattage. I mean, it's crazy. And think about what you could do with low wattage chips on the next generation of voice techs, audio in any mobile device. Well, then the, you know, there's gonna be a new classes of ASICs that may develop. There may be new applications that are built on top of it, but there's both an opportunity to play in the technology fabric, but also in the vertical transformations, the industry transformation. So IBM's not even in this drive yet. So you're not even in your mind. You haven't hit full stride yet. Oh, we're getting there. I mean, the thing that's really exciting as a whole company and you've probably seen that pivot over the course of the last two years is the bets that we're placing on cloud and analytics and cognitive. I mean, that's come very clearly in terms of where not only what we've talked about to the street, but quite honestly where we've put a lot of our bets in terms of our money and investments. In heat, you saw here on the cube, thank you, CUBE alum, five years, six a year now. Great to see you again. Congratulations on the new job. Collaboration software, it is the future. Open source is collaborative. Content development is collaborative. You know what? I'd love to have you guys that connects. It'll be in January next year. That might be a new event. Great, I love it. It's been on our radar. It's been on our radar. Connecting. You're running the show. It's definitely on our radar. It's all about connecting with people. And that's collaboration, that's the future. Big data analytics. We got our cognition on here inside the cube. We'll be back with more action after this short break.