 Live from San Francisco, it's theCUBE. Covering Informatica World 2017, brought to you by Informatica. Welcome back everyone. We're live in San Francisco for CUBE's exclusive coverage of Informatica World 2017. I'm John Furrier with SiliconANGLE. Our next guest is Neha Chakravarti, who's the CEO of Informatica, CUBE alumni multiple times, but the chief executive officer leading the charge of a great private company doing very well. Welcome back to theCUBE. It's great to be here, John. Thanks very much. Now we've got a couple things to talk about, but I want to just jump in. Behind us you see the new logo, Informatica. Really kind of the last leg of the stool, if you will. You guys have gone private, great product work over the years, and you know I'm pretty been complimentary of you guys, although we've had a critical analysis session yesterday, but all the big bets were very well done, playing off, you've got a great product team, great leadership team, new CIO hire, but the last leg of the stool is the brand. You guys haven't been showboating much. You just, now you've got to kind of brag and be humble about it and get the word out. New marketing program, what's that all about? Yeah, that's exactly right. So you said the transformation that we are going through, three big steps of the transformation, the product portfolio transformation, we've been talking about that. This is all driven by cloud, by big data, and machine learning and all of that. Then the transformation of the business model. So from license to subscription and cloud services, and now the brand transformation, and we see the brand transformation as actually catching up to where the company actually was. We were just talking about that right before we got started. We actually have done a lot of things like, for instance, did you know that we are doing a one trillion transactions a month in the cloud? I mean, very few people knew about that. Yeah, it was more impressive on that. I found that out earlier. It was one billion in January. It's unbelievable. I mean, I mean, how do you do that? It's a growth hockey stick. It's it's a hockey stick, it's huge. It's huge growth and that's driven by the fact that we are the leader in cloud data management for the biggest ecosystems, for Salesforce, for Amazon, for Azure, and that drives a lot of the data volume across the globe. Before we get in the keynotes on that note, one of the big bets you know I've been impressed on is the cloud play, right? Well, the data architecture, I think, is a winning formula. But you got cloud presence, you had Amazon web services. Okay, Google just announced Spanner, horizontally scalable database, generally available. You were one of the three data partners on the front end of that. That's correct. And part of the launch of Google. I didn't know that. So, you know, the way we think of the world is, from our customer's perspective, it really is the best way to think about it is as the enterprise cloud. Put it together. All the data you have in the enterprise that you have generated over the years, that's still very valuable data, and then the data you have in the cloud. And you can't think of those two things as separate. For instance, you could have customer data, the same customer. John, you're a customer of a retailer. Some of that data about you is in their on-premise systems and some of the data might be in a cloud system, but it is all interconnected data and you can't have two separate silos. And we believe that we are the only ones that can really manage that. And that's why we are supporting every major cloud platform, a cloud system, just like we are supporting every major on-premise system. You guys call Switzerland, it was a great way to describe it, but really to me, what's bigger than that is that you guys make data ready. And that's really the value of what I call this tier two data layer that's building where you got stuff in memory, I get that, there's some obviously streaming stuff and things going on there. But now, then you have third tier archive, but tier two is just like all the data, IOT, structured data, that's growing, but the cost of store is getting lower and lower. So now companies are incented to store. How is that impacting your business? We heard that at Dell EMC World over and over and obviously they're in the storage business, but the tier two storage is significantly growing. Well, data is still growing at over 25% a year. That's a huge number given already the size that you have. So it's going to be within by 2020, it'll be going over 15 zettabytes for those of you who are interested is 10 to the 21. That's a huge amount of data. And what we're seeing is the value comes from being able to first of all, see your way through the data, being able to understand what data is valuable and what's not, and then connect the data. If you have customer data, product data, location data, et cetera, being able to put all of that together. That's really where the value comes in. So I got to ask you about your keynote. You talked about the digital transformations unfolding and data is the critical foundation for digital transformation. Okay, we've heard digital transformation. I mean, I'm not to say it's played. I know you guys are on your theme, but there's business transformation going on. So digital transformation is known trend, but it kind of played in my mind. I want to know what's different about Informatica now. Why is it unfolding now versus when two years ago when we started talking about digital transformation? What's the most relevant thing now? Well, I think the biggest relevance is two years ago, as you exactly said, people were talking about digital transformation. Now they're doing digital transformation and you're seeing, you know, we talk about our own customers, like Tesla or GE or Amazon doing it, and lots of other customers are actually doing the digital transformation. Now when you first take the first step towards the digital transformation, that's when you realize, my data, I got to fix the data foundation. If I can't have a data foundation, then I just, you know, everybody cares about a good customer experience. If I can't tell all the interactions a customer has with my company and that data is in different places, there is no way I can provide a good customer experience because the customer knows what they're doing with me and I don't know what they're doing with me. And that's really the foundation for the data foundation. I want you to take a minute to just re-explain that because this is some, comes up all the time. I get different answers and people have different definitions. What does it mean to have a digital data foundation and what are some of the impacts to the customers when they do have that? Well, think of it the simplest way is, let's say you have a customer and a lot of the new customers like that, you're a bank and you have a customer who doesn't want to talk to anybody. They only want to do everything through a mobile application. They want to file a loan application through the mobile. They want to check their balance through mobile. They want to deposit a check through mobile, et cetera, et cetera. If they have a problem, they might talk to somebody through a chat on a mobile, but they don't really want to talk to a live person. And this is, by the way, a common scenario now. Now, they are doing probably 20 different things through the mobile, but when you get into your backend, that's the front end. You can put 20 things on the mobile, but the backend, you've got 20 different things. But you have to have a single picture across those 20 things. When did the customer interact with us? What did they do? What is the pattern of that customer? And how do you profile what the customer is doing? And if you don't have that picture, everything that you do with the customer is going to just appear disconnected to them. It's going to frustrate them even more. And that's really the reason we have to have the data foundation. Okay, so that's kind of a data layer. I get that. And believe me, horizontally scalable data, making it accessible only helps to apps. That's right. The question to you is your reaction to people saying, hey, Anil, I got to be innovative. I got to free the data up and I got to let it grow and a thousand flowers bloom, all this goodness. That's right. But hey, I got to control it. So that's a huge issue. I got governance, I got compliance, there's laws now. So am I stuck in the mud? I want to be innovative and go fast, but now I got to govern it and control it. How do you answer that question? You can do both now. And that's the reason why we're announcing Clare and all these innovations that we announced is the advent of machine learning and metadata lets you do both. You basically say, look, I can use all these new technologies to find out what data I have and it's not going to slow you down. In fact, if you set up something like an intelligent data lake, because it has the metadata layer, you are actually opening up the data you have to the end user without having to come through IT for every piece of data, which means they can go faster. That's where the innovation happens. So you can do both. It's a control catalog basically. It's exactly right. It's a control catalog and you basically get to define different levels of trust. You can say this data is curated data, it's trusted data and we can vouch for it. There may be other data that's just shared collaboratively and you can just flag it. And then that way the user knows, okay, here's data that I'm getting from a central system and this is what I need to use when I'm talking about something like revenue. If I'm talking something like a trend of what's going on, I might be able to use other data and that's the key there. Talk about the trend around Claire. With a lot of buzz here at the show. You Claire stands for clairvoyant. It's got the word AI in it. It's a name, SAP's got Leonardo, Salesforce has Einstein, all these different terms, but it's a clever way to point to AI, augmented intelligence and machine learning. What does that mean for Informatica as a company? Certainly it kind of humanizes it, shows that the access of data should be democratized. What does it mean for you guys and the customers? How does that play out in your mind as the CEO? What do you see Claire doing? Well, the three big points I'll make about Claire. First of all, when we built Claire, we did not invent the artificial intelligence or the machine learning. A lot of that is already available. So we took a lot of the best algorithms in machine learning and applied them to metadata and applied them to data management. That's the secret sauce. It's not the building the AI itself, it's the use of the AI for data management. That's number one. Second, we defined Claire very clearly and we said it's not a product, it's an engine. It's an AI-powered engine. In fact, I call it for Claire. I say, look, it's cloud-scale AI-powered real-time engine. That's Claire, right? So it's an acronym, but it's the engine that powers other products. The third big thing is we're telling customers, you're going to get the benefit of Claire, but you don't need to deploy Claire. When you buy any of our products that are powered by Claire or any of our solutions that are powered by Claire, that will automatically come in there. So it means once you have any product like our enterprise information catalog or our secured source or data governance, you're starting to use Claire and then you can use Claire for other use cases as well. What's been the reaction? Obviously, you get nervous, CEO, you probably got these things out there. You probably wonder what the reaction is. What's your take on the reaction? People are very intrigued. I know that's what they look at Claire and go, what is Claire? How are you guys using it? I think people are asking us, tell us a little bit more about how AI is being used in the world of data and data management. So it's absolutely the reaction we wanted. So I got to ask you this question. I asked Mark, heard the same question at the Oracle Media Day a few weeks ago. I want to ask you the same question. Everyone's number one at everything now. You guys are number one in six quadrants. Oracle's number one at Deli. They're everyone's number one at something. So the question really is not so much about being number one, congratulations, you got some magic quadrant wins that was highlighted in the keynote. But you guys are going through a transformation. You're telling your customers that they're going through a transformation. Wouldn't it make sense that the transformation scoreboard looks different than the old way? And I want to get your thoughts on this because not that we have the answer, but there's one answer in customer wins. But as this new world transforms and unfolds, what's the scoreboard look like? How, because it's not as clean to say, this is the category, you're starting to see a little blending. As you mentioned, how data is evolving. What's the new scoreboard look like? Is it the scoreboard for us or for the customers? You guys, the industry, how do I know if you're doing well? Obviously customer wins is obviously number one. Yeah, I think the best way to, I'll give you a couple of metrics, financial and non-financial, okay? From a non-financial perspective, as you said, the couple of key metrics. One is customers, how many new customers, how many new customers or reference customers do we have? Second one that you want to look at is just mind share. Or when people think about digital transformation, do they think of, hey, Informatica, they have a key role to play in my digital transformation. Just looking at mind share and so on, that's a good leading indicator. In terms of the non-financial, or the financial metrics for us, obviously as more customers do what we call enterprise cloud data management, you're going to see our subscription revenue grow dramatically. And that's something that when you look at our subscription revenue, you'll see that impact of the enterprise cloud data management. And you guys made the move to subscription, obviously you went private, Bruce Chisholm and Jerry held your board members, talked about this. You can do a lot of things, it impacts the P and L, but it's still baking out, it's evolving, you're private, you're not public. But you want to get it right before you go public. That's correct. How do you feel about the progress on that front now? Oh, we're making fabulous progress. We're very pleased with where we are. From my perspective, we are ahead of where we wanted to, where we thought we would be by this time. Yeah, I think customer buying behavior has converged really nicely with where we are in terms of where we want to go. So I think that's definitely been a big plus. Sally Jenkins, your new CMO, you got to feel good about her coming on board. Oh, she's done a great job. High impact. She said on theCUBE that you guys are the hottest, privately held, pre-IPO startup. That's right. 20 years of the making, whatever I mean. I mean, it's a, but you guys are private, you are. You're a billion dollar startup. You're acting as a startup, which is why we like you guys a lot, because you guys are like a very hustling startup. But now you're growing, right? And you're getting beyond the 200 million over a billion dollars now. When's the IPO coming? Yeah, I mean, look, I can tell you the factors that will be the lead to the perfect timing for the IPO. When those factors come together, I don't have a crystal ball right now, but I can tell you it's based both on us and the market. From our perspective, we are making this big shift in the business model. We want to make sure that we can say, hey, look, now the shift is very clear and stable, and we can see where they, we'll be able to project out our own forecast for the next three, four quarters. So that's one key indicator for us. The second key indicator that we look at is the total revenue growth of the company and what percent of the growth of the revenue is recurring revenue for us. So we're going to be looking at those two factors. And of course, from the market perspective, we want to make sure that the market wants to, is continues to be- Okay, wait, four years, so we had a new president and they've heard all the politics from the Kara Schwisher thing was, got a lot of people stirred up in the conversation. But in all seriousness now, I mean, you also have private equity, so you have to make the company worth money after they go public. So you got to have some growth left in you, right? I mean, you guys are- Absolutely. You feel good about the- Oh, we really do, because you know, we look, that's where these six categories that we talked about make a lot of sense is, you look at data integration, data quality, master data management, these are all categories that are well-established and we know the patterns and we're seeing very good growth in those categories. Then you look at the new categories, cloud, big data management, data security, those are all coming into their own right now. So that's why when you look at our portfolio, you go, wow, there are some that you already have great, well-established and going, well, these other ones, they're well-established, but they also have a lot of promise and future growth. Great chatting with you. You're a great insightful and inspiration. You guys done a great job, but I got to ask you this, the question, because I think you have an interesting role. I mean, you have, you're acting like a startup, but you're not a startup. You went private from a public company, get great board of directors, you got Jerry Held and Bruce Chisholm on there, but you also got private equity sharks on the board. Well, I would do it. So, that's my definite. I won't say you said that, but- No, no, but I'll say actually, in the private equity world, to my pleasant surprise, I've seen the whole spectrum of investors and our guys on the board are very much growth-oriented. They know that the value gets created for them through growth, so it's well-aligned. Yeah, but you're not sitting back having pizza and drinking wine. These guys, these PE guys, they're financially driven. That's right. So the question is advice to other startups, whether they're venture-backed or other companies going through an innovation strategy, how do you manage the success of having such good product excellence? Yeah. I know you've got good people, so that's an easy one to answer. How as a CEO do you maintain the discipline to have the cadence of the financial performance? Correct. Because those guys look at it, they're probably not going to give you, hey, how are we doing? Numbers matter, but you're transforming technology and products. That's right. So what we do is- How do you do it? You know, we have a scorecard which has both the short-term and the long-term metrics. So, and we look at both of those. You know, we do monthly business reviews, so the pulse of the company is definitely quickened. We are operating at a new level of intensity, but when we look at the scorecard, it's not just the immediate financial metrics. It's things like, for example, are we building the backend infrastructure to be a subscription company? That doesn't get done within a month. That's a- That's an IT challenge, right? That's an IT challenge. It's a process challenge. It takes 12 months, 18 months, the kind of things that you talk with Graham about. But that is an example of, you can have a scorecard. You don't necessarily have to look at a scorecard just for the short-term metrics. You look at it for both short-term and what makes you successful over the long-term. And that's, you know, that's what we're doing is just keep our eye on the ball, focus on a few things, both short-term and long-term, and make sure we're doing them well. How about customer wins? To me, that's the scoreboard. Ultimately, that's what we look at at our team. How are you doing on customer wins? Can you share something? I saw you had a lot of great customers. I met a few last night. I asked you big wigs, big names. Yeah, exactly. What do some of the customer wins look like and why are you winning? Well, you know, we have 7,000 plus customers. We have a great customer base. Just at this show, we've had 85% of our sessions here at this show have had customer or partner speakers that give you a sense of customers want to talk about us. A couple of ones that I would highlight, for example, which are fairly recent, for example, Amazon is one that they just spoke at the show and, in fact, the CMO of Amazon was here, Ariel Kelman, and he spoke about how he is a customer of Informatica and how he's using Informatica for his own marketing systems and the marketing data analytics that he is doing. Another example is Tesla. You know, we talked about them at the show. I got a test drive on Friday with one. There you go, exactly. And then they are using us for the Tesla and the Solar City acquisition and driving synergies there. So, lots of great examples of customers, by the way. Oh, they are very, very finicky. Very demanding customers, and we are really proud to be serving them. Okay, final question, Neil. What's next? How do you look forward? Obviously, this event, congratulations on getting the branding out. Peggy and the team did a great job. Sally and the team did a great job. What about next? What's next? Yeah, so, you know, what's next for us is simply work with customers to, first of all, get our story out, understand their priorities, and make sure that they understand that we can be a great partner for them. So, we believe that this is the beginning of that journey. We talked about digital transformation and how we help them. Now, we take the show on the road to our customers, make sure that we help them at their pace to transform. So, bring the message out, build the brand. Absolutely. That's a key priority. And then continue. Product side, what's going on the product? Well, on the product side, for instance, you saw a teaser of all the big trends, machine learning, cloud, big data, security. All of these have full-fledged roadmaps that we're going to be working on over the course of the next six months. Anil, great to see you. Congratulations on your continuing. You're still intense. You got the intense. He's not going to stop, by the way. No, it's not. He's going to get more intense as you guys grow. And congratulations. Thank you for having me on your show. We are here live in San Francisco for Informatica World 2017 with the CEO, here, Anil, Chuck Routhy, and the side of the cube. I'm John Furrier. Thanks for watching. Stay with us for more coverage from Informatica World after this short break.