 TheCube presents Ignite22, brought to you by Palo Alto Networks. Welcome back to Las Vegas, everyone. We're glad you're with us. This is TheCube Live at Palo Alto Ignite22 at the MGM grant in Las Vegas. Lisa Martin here with Dave Vellante, day one of our coverage. We've had great conversations. The cybersecurity landscape is so interesting, Dave. It's such a challenging problem to solve, but it's so diverse and dynamic at the same time. You know, Lisa, TheCube started in May of 2010 in Boston. We called it the Chowda event. Chowda and Lobster, it was the EMC World 2010, BJ Jenkins, who was here, of course, was a longtime friend of TheCube and made the transition into, well, still data, from data to cyber, so. True, and BJ is back with us, BJ Jenkins, president of Palo Alto Networks. Great to have you back on TheCube. It is great to be here in person on TheCube in Vegas. Yes, it's awesome. We can tell by your voice will be gentle. You've been in Vegas, typical Vegas occupational hazard of losing the voice. Yeah, it was one of the benefits of COVID. I didn't lose my voice at home sitting talking to a TV. You lose it when you come to Vegas. Exactly. But it's a small price to pay. So, things kicked off yesterday with the partner summit. You had a keynote then. You had a customer, a CISO on stage. You had a keynote today, which we didn't get to see. But talk to us a little bit about the lay of the land. What are you hearing from CISOs, from CIOs, as we know security is a board-level conversation? Yeah, it's been an interesting three or four months here. Let me start with that. I think cybersecurity in general is still front and center on CIOs and CISOs minds. It has to be, if you saw Wendy's presentation today and the threats out there, companies have to have it front and center. I do think it's been interesting though with the macro uncertainty. We've taken the calling this year, the revenge of the CFO. And these deals in cybersecurity are still a top priority, but they're getting finance and procurements scrutiny, which I think in this environment is a necessity, but it's still a number one, number two imperative, no matter who you talk to. It was interesting what Nikesh was saying in the last conference call, hey, we just have to get more approvals. We know this. We're bringing more go-to-market people on board. We're filling the pipeline because we know they're going to split up deals. Big deals go into smaller chunks. So the question I have for you is how are you able to successfully integrate those people so that you can get ahead of that sort of macro transition? Yeah, I think there's two things I'd say about uncertain macro situations. And Dave, you know how old I am. I'm pretty old. I've been through a lot of cycles. And in those cycles, I've always found stronger companies with stronger value propositions separate themselves actually in uncertain economic times. And so I think there's actually an opportunity here. The message tilts a little bit though, where it's been about innovation and new threat vectors to one of, you have 20, 30, 40 vendors. You can consolidate, become more effective in your security posture and save money on your TCO. So one of the things is we bring people on board. It's training them on that business value proposition. How do you take a customer who's got 20 or 30 tools, take them down to five or 10 where Pelo is more central and strategic and be able to demonstrate that value? So we do that through, we're making a huge investment in our people. But macroeconomic times also puts some stronger people back on the market and we're able to incorporate them into the business. What are the conditions that are necessary for that consolidation? Like I would imagine if you're a big customer of a big competitor of yours that that migration is going to be harder than if you're dealing with lots of little point tools. Do those point tools, are they sort of, is it the end of the subscription? Is it just stuff that's off the books now? What's the condition that is ripe for that kind of consolidation? Look, I think the challenge coming into this year was skills and so customers had all of these point products. It required a lot more human intervention as Nikesh was talking about to integrate them or make them work. And as all of us know, finding people with cybersecurity skills over the last 12 months has been incredibly hard. That drove, if you think about that, a CIO and a CISO sitting there going, I have all this investment in tools, I don't have the people to operate them. What do I need to do? What we tried to do is elevate that conversation because in a customer, everybody who's bought one of those, they bought it to solve a problem. And there's people with affinity for that tool. They're not just going to say, I want to get consolidated and give up my tool. They're going to wrap their arms around it so what we needed to do, and this changed our ecosystem strategy too, how we leveraged partners, we needed to get into the CIO and CISO and say, look at this chaos you have here and the challenges around people that it's presenting you, we can help solve that by standardizing, consolidating, taking that integration away from you as Nikesh talked about and making it easier for your high school people to work on high challenges in there. Let chaos reign and then reign in the chaos, Andy Grove. I was looking at some stats that there's 26 million developers, but less than three million cyber security professionals. Talked about that skills gap and what CISOs and CIOs are facing. Do you consider, from a value prop perspective, Palo Alto Networks to be a facilitator of helping organizations deal with that skills gap? I think there's a short term and a long term. I think Nikesh today talked about the long term that we'll never win this battle with human beings. We're going to have to win it with automation. That's the long term. The short term right here and now is that people need, people with cyber security skills. Now, what we're trying to do is multifaceted. We work with universities to standardize programs to develop skills that people can come into the marketplace with. We run our own programs inside the company. We have a cloud academy program now where we take people high aptitude for sales and technical aptitude and we will put them through a six month boot camp on cloud and they'll come out of that ready to really work with the leading experts in cloud security. The third angle is partners, right? There are partners in the marketplace who want to drive their business into high services areas. They have people, they know how to train. We partner with them to give them training. Hopefully that helps solve some of the short term gaps that are out there today. So you made the jump from data storage to security and network security, all kinds of security. What was that like? You must have learned a lot in the last better part of a decade. Take us through that. So the first jump was from EMC. I was 15 years there to be CEO of Barracuda and it was interesting because EMC was large enterprise for the most part. At Barracuda we had 250,000 small and mid-sized enterprises and it's interesting to get into security in small and mid-sized businesses because Wendy today was talking about nation states. For small and mid-sized business, it's common thievery. It's ransomware and those customers don't have the human and financial resources to keep up with the threat vectors. So Nekesh talked about how it's taking them four and a half years to get into cybersecurity. I remember my first week at Barracuda I was talking with a customer who had breached data shutdown, there wasn't much Bitcoin back then so it was just a pure ransom. And I'm like, wow, this is incredible industry. And so it's been a good transition for me. I still think data is at the heart of all of this, right? And I have always believed there's a strong connection between the things I learned growing up at EMC and what I put into practice today at Palo Alto Networks. And how about the culture? Because I know, have observed the EMC culture and you were there and really the heyday, right? Which was an awesome place. And it seems like Palo Alto obviously different times, but similar like laser focus on solving problems, obviously great value sellers, you guys aren't the commodity product, but there seem to be some similarities from afar. I don't know Palo Alto as well as I know EMC. I think there's a lot. When I joined EMC it was about, it was $2 billion in revenue. And I think when I left it was over 2020, 2021. And we're at hopefully five, five, five in revenue. And I feel like it's very similar. There's a sense of urgency. There's an incredible focus on the customer. I near and Moshe are definitely different individuals, but they're both same kind of disruptive Israeli force out there driving the business. There are a lot of similarities. The passion, I feel privileged as a go to market person that I have this incredible portfolio to go work with customers on. It's a lucky position to be in. But very, I feel like it is a movie I've seen before. And of course the challenges from the target that you're disrupting is different. It was, EMC had a lot of big IBM obviously, it was a bigger target. Whereas you got thousands of smaller companies. And so that's a different dynamic, but that's why the consolidation play is so important. Look at that's why I joined Palo Alto Networks. When I was at Barracuda for nine years, it just fascinated me that there was 3,000 plus players in security and why didn't security evolve like the storage market did or the server market or network where two or three big gorillas came to dominate those markets. And I think it's what Nakesh talked about today. There was a new problem and it was always best to breed. You can never in security go in and say hey, it's good. I saved us some money, but I got the third best product in the marketplace. And there was that kind of gap between products. I believe and why I joined here, I think this is my last gig, is we have a chance to change that. And this is the first company as I looked from the outside in that had best of breed as Nakesh said, 13 categories in the, you know, we're in the leaders quadrant. And it's a conversation I have with customers, you don't have to sacrifice best of breed, but get the benefits of a platform. And I think that resonates today. I think we have a chance to change the industry from that viewpoint. Give us a little view of the voice of the customer. You had, it was Saber? Yeah. It was Gabbo Zero, the CISO from Saber. Give us a view. What are you hearing from the voice of the customer? Obviously, they're quite a successful customer, but challenges, concerns, the partnership. Yeah, look at, I think security is similar to industries where we come up with magic marketing phrases and, you know, things to, you know, make you want to procure our solutions. You know, zero trust is one and, you know, you'll talk to customers and they're like, okay, yes. You know, the government, right? Joe Biden's putting out zero trust executive orders. And the problem is, if you talk to customers, it's a journey. They have legacy infrastructure. They have business drivers that, you know, they just don't deal with us. They've got to deal with the business side who's trying to make the money that keeps the company going. And it's really help them draw a map from where they're at today to zero trust or to a better security architecture or, you know, they're moving their apps into the cloud. How am I going to migrate, right? Again, that discussion three years ago was around lift and shift, right? Today it's about, oh, no, I need cloud native developed apps to service the business the way I want to, I want to service it. So I think there's this element of a trusted partner in relationship. But again, I think this is why you can't have 40 or 50 of those, you got to start narrowing it down if you want to be able to meet and beat the threats that are out there for you. So I, you know, the customers, and I see a lot of them, it's here's where I'm at, help me get here to a better position. And they know it's, you know, Scott said in our keynote today, you don't just, you know, have layer three firewall policies and decide, okay, tomorrow I'm going to go to layer seven. That's not how it works, right? There's, and by the way, these things are admission critical type areas. So there's got to be a game plan that you help customers go through to get there. Definitely. Last question, my last question for you is, you know, security being a board level conversation, I was reading some stats from a survey. I think it was the, what's new in cyber survey that Palo Alto released today that showed that while significant numbers of organizations think they've got a cyber resiliency playbook, there's a lot of disconnect or lack of alignment at the boardroom. How are you in those conversations? How can you help facilitate that alignment between the executive team and the board when it comes to security being so foundational to any business? Yeah, it's, I've been on three, four public company boards. I'm on two today. And I would say four years ago, this was almost a taboo topic. It was a put your head in the sand and pray to God, nothing happened. And, you know, the world has changed significantly. And because of the number of breaches, the impact it's had on brand, boards have to think about this in duty of care and their fiduciary duty. Okay, so then you start with a board that may not have the technical skills. The first problem the security industry had is how do I explain your risk profile in a way you can understand it? I'm on the board of Generac that makes home generators. It's a manufacturing, you know, company, but they put wifi modules in their boxes so that the dealers could help do the maintenance on them. And all of a sudden, these things were getting attacked, right? And they were being used for bot attacks. Everybody on their board and a manufacturing background. So how do you help that board understand the risk they have? And that's what's changed over the last four years. It's a constant discussion. It's one I have with CISOs where they're like, help us put it in layman's terms so they understand, they know what we're doing and they feel confident, but at the same time understand the marketplace better. And that's a journey for us. That Generac example is a great one because, you know, think about IoT technologies. They've historically been air-gapped by design and all of a sudden the business comes in and says, hey, we can put wifi in there, you know. Connected to a home wifi system that, yeah. Make a lot of lives so much easier. Next thing you know, it's being used to attack. So that's why, as you go around the world, are you discerning, I know you were just in Japan, are you discerning significant differences in sort of attitudes toward cyber, whether it's public policy, you know, things like regulation, where they don't want you sharing data, but as a cyber company, you want to share that data with, you know, public and private. Look, and I think around the world, we see incredible government activity, first of all, and I think given the position we're in, we get to have some unique conversations there. I would say worldwide security is an imperative. No matter where I go, you know, it's in front of everybody's mind. On the governance side, it's really, what do we need to adapt to make sure we meet local regulations? And I would just tell you, Dave, there's ways, when you do that, and we talk with governments that, because of how they want to do it, reduce our ability to give them full insight into all the threats and how we can help them. And I do think over time governments understand that. We can not anonymize the data of others, but that's a work in process, definitely. There is a balance. We need to have privacy. We need to have, you know, personal security for people, but there's ways to collect that data in an anonymous way and give better security insight back into the architectures that are out there. All right, I'm going to shift the gears here, a little sports question. We've had some great Boston sports guests on theCUBE, right? I mean, Randy Seidel, we were talking about him. Peter McKay, Sneak, I guess he's a competitor now, but you know, there's no question about it. He got a little funding to the edge on that. Yeah, there's a little down round, but they still got a lot of money. They got a lot of money. Not in a down round where they were, but so, and then, but actually, you know, he was on several years ago, and it was around the time they were talking about trading Brady, he said, never trade Brady. And he got that right. I think we're going to agree Brady's the goat. The big question I have for you is Belichick. Do you have a question? Has your belief in him as the greatest coach of all time wavered, you know, now that, no, okay. So weigh in on that, weigh in. Still the goat. I'll give you my best, you know, never. Never. Never. In bill we trust. Okay, still. All right. And I, you know, the NFL is a unique property that's designed for parity and is designed, I mean, actively designed to let Mr. Kraft and Bill Belichick do what they do every year. The five feel privileged as a Boston sports fan that in our worst years, we're in the seventh playoff spot. Yeah. Okay. And I have a lot of family in Chicago who would kill for that position, by the way. And, you know, they're in perpetual rebuilding. And so look at, I think he, you know, the way he's been able to manage the cap and the skill levels. I think we have a top five defense. There's different ways to win titles. And if I, you know, remember in Brady's last title with Boston, the defense won us that Super Bowl. Well, thanks for weighing in on that because there's a lot of crazy talk going on. Like, hey, if he doesn't beat Arizona, he's got to go. I'm like, what? So, okay. Sometimes it takes a good loyal fan who's maybe, you know, has an now outside perspective. And there's a Boston where emotional fans do, so I understand that. You got to keep the long-term in mind. And we're in a privileged position in Boston. We've got Celtics, we've got Bruins, we've got the Patriots right on the edge of the playoffs and we need the Red Sox to get to work. You know, they were last year, so maybe they're going to win it all like they usually do. Fingers crossed. Crazy. Last, where's the first? Exactly. Well, you said, and Bill, we trust, it sounds like from our conversation in BJ, we trust from the customers, the partners. I hope so, yeah. Thank you so much, BJ, for coming back on theCUBE, giving us the lay of the land, what's new, the voice of the customer and how Palo Alto was really differentiated in the market. We always appreciate your coming on the show. Honor and privilege, thanks. You may be thinking that you were watching ESPN just now, but you know we call ourselves the ESPN of tech news. This is Lisa Martin for Dave Vellante and our guest. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in live emerging in enterprise tech coverage.