 Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage here in Barcelona for theCUBE's four day coverage of MWC, Mobile World Congress 2024. I'm John Furrier, your host with Shelley Crane. We've got a great guest, Gretchen Tinnerman, who's the vice president and general manager of U.S. telco, media and technology, the industries for Kindrel. Really helping customers do the transformation in this transition. Gretchen, great to see you. Thanks for coming on theCUBE. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. So we've been covering you guys since the launch, okay, from the new name and the new launch and just what a perfect opportunity is now you guys are building on, had great success and growth coming out of that. Now with this market, with the AI GIF that keeps on giving every day, people need help. They need help. Platform transitions, new platforms are emerging, the role of data as an advantage, business model changes, costs, efficiencies, just so many opportunities, but a lot of challenges. A lot of investment, new implementations are going on. So really we're seeing that clearly in every major industry. That's what you do, right? So. We do all day. You're busy, you're busy. So here at NWC, what's on your mind? What are you guys doing? Last year you had a big news. What's happening this year? But give us a quick update on Kindrel. We'll go into the questions. Yeah. So it's a last year big announcement with Nokia for our private 5G solution at Kindrel. Yesterday we made an important announcement expanding upon that ecosystem with HP and Athonet. So again, expanding upon that ecosystem of providing private wireless 5G LT solutions to our clients, not just in the industries of which I support, but all of Kindrel. So I think it goes to continue to support what our clients, as we've been advising them and what we're seeing in the market and what they're asking for us is for us to engage with other partners. And as we do, we bring those skills on board and continue to evangelize those with our clients. What's your role at Kindrel? To find real quick, what do you oversee? Take us through the moving parts. What's going on? What does industries mean? And how is it implemented in today's world? Yes, so my role is to manage our telecommunications, media entertainment and high technology industries. Three very fast growing and evolving industries for different reasons. One, AI, which we're seeing everywhere here, right, at Mobile World Congress. And moved into this role in November. I think it's important, though, to talk a minute about the industries at Kindrel. It's something that we have been very intentional about to provide our clients in these industries with subject matter experts, meaning we understand, we listen to our clients, we understand the challenges that they're facing in these industries every day. And my team brings to them solutions and offerings, advice to advise, build and deploy those solutions to solve their challenges. So you help carry the load so that they don't have to carry it by themselves. Yeah, that's awesome. So what kind of trends do you see happening in telco and media entertainment? Talk about that a little bit. So I would say really three similar trends across three really different industries, right? First one, certainly being sustainability, right? How can we help our clients build a better planet, right? How can we work with our clients on things like data centers and climate control and power and consumption we bring the skills to support clients and those challenges around sustainability really important for that man for us. Yeah, absolutely. Data, I mean, it's all over, we're hearing it, but it's true, right? As we as consumers willingly provide more data, our clients are receiving that consumer data and now saying, what do I do with all of this data? And it's not the same data for every consumer at every client, right? And it's beyond just managing the data, it's being able to get the right kind of insights you need to pull from that data and use it strategically. So it's a big, I mean, it's a big challenge and everybody's wrestling with that. And how to keep it secure, right? Yeah, absolutely. And then I would say third is transformation. And I think Kindral is a great story actually for our clients on transformation. We actually call ourselves, refer to ourselves as customer zero. We work customer zero for transformation. So post-spin, we have spent our last two, two and a half years transforming our company and it's a great example and showing our clients the skills that we have to support that. I have some- Hold on, Jeho, just to make sure we get spin means spin out from the IBM. Spin out from the IBM, just make sure we care about that. Spin out from IBM. So I have a lot of friends who work at Kindral and who, you know, I've been connected to since the spin, right? And one of the things that they have expressed in different conversations is that it's a whole new world from a culture standpoint. You know, IBM is a great company and a gigantic company, but it's really interesting to see sort of the transformation of the culture at Kindral as well. I mean, it really is, I don't know if you've experienced that, but it's something that's palpable from what I hear. I, that thrills me to hear that. It's been a very, something very intentional. We have done with all of the leadership and support at Kindral as to what we've labeled the Kindral Way. And it is our culture of how we show up empathetically, trustful, and thoughtful to our clients. And it really has re-energized the 90,000 employees that we have and- The little startup that you spun out with 90,000. The little startup that we were in 2021. But it's really the core of who we are. And it's really important as well as the inclusive nature of which we're building within Kindral is also very important and I'm very passionate about that. Yeah, well, we talked about that a little bit earlier and I would love for you to share a little bit about, you know, inclusivity sometimes when you start talking about that, especially a lot of times people automatically assume we're talking about men and women and, you know, that sort of spanning that divide in the world, which is not unimportant. But when you're talking about inclusivity and your passion, you look really much broader than that. So talk with us a little bit about some of how you think about inclusivity and what you're doing. I know you're participating in a round table conversation that's happening here in Barcelona tomorrow. So tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, I think, you know, for me personally for Kindral, inclusivity means we're creating a safe space and environment for everyone. We're creating a welcome environment and we're being very intentional in our recruiting and hiring and within our own teams, right? To create inclusive networks for them. And I'm happy to lead the women's inclusion network at Kindral or Kin as we refer to them. And I think it's really important for us to again be conscious and be intentional that I am very passionate myself on empowering others, empowering girls in STEM, empowering the women that I work with. And we learn from each other, we network with each other and it's again helps establish a very safe environment for all of us and show others and show others in the industry that we can do this together as an inclusive company. Absolutely, well, strong teams are diverse teams. Absolutely. You know, absolutely. I want to get your thoughts on the opportunities that are out there for whether young STEM candidates, one, they're seeing the landscape change. Again, AI is a generational shift here. People, it's getting data, data used to be kind of a boring field back when I was in college. But not anymore. If you're young right now, if you're young, you're looking at AI as an inflection point. And there's a huge in migration of talent, young talent coming, it's still got skills shortages. So a lot of opportunities, the challenges are skilling up workers, the role of how much data is out there, but then also the expectation of success is a big thing we're hearing. So given that expectation that AI is going to be great, the pressure to deliver given some of those challenges is huge. How do you see that from a tangible standpoint? You guys are helping customers not only cross the chasm across that bridge to the future, but build the bridge together. So what's that expectation management? Is it at an all-time high is getting higher? Is it a matching reality? It's getting higher, right? As our customers receive more data from their customers, from their employees, it's the skill part our customers need and continue to need help with. And the skill around data is spans from where does that data or workload go? To what hyper-scaler? How do I secure it? How do I provide predictive data and information to improve employee productivity, efficiency, customer engagement, create a better fan experience, right? And we've made an investment in consultants within Kindral to, again, listen to our clients to understand what can they gain from the data that they're receiving? And by listening to our clients and advising our clients, we can help them through that process of where's the data go, how do I secure it, and how do I improve my experience? It's a whole new world and the listening's critical because there's knit new problems and opportunities coming down the pike. So I have to ask you, as you look at that success formula, being a trusted advisor is one, let's check the box, you guys know that, that's Kindral way. But now, Chelly and I were talking about this last night at dinner with a bunch of other analysts, the role of being a trusted advisor and delivering a service in a market that has got the highest risk management profile, meaning the risk rewards are high too. But if you mess up, AI's got a great upside potential. So having a real provider is important and people who just mail it in. So you got to formulate it, you got to listen, then you got to deliver. What, explain the magnitude of this right now in this market. We think this is a time where people need the most help. More transformation going on at a higher speeds. That's the theme here. What's your view of this new advisory consultant service model in this market? And what's different about it? Yeah, I think it's different, it's different for a lot of reasons. But I think the main difference is, again, our clients are transforming through this transformation, new data's coming into the environment. How do I act with the data today and how do I use the same data to improve six months, one year, three years from now? The skill part of that and the people part of that is still sits in the center of AI. And we are the heart of progress. You hear Kendra and we refer to ourselves as the heart of progress because people are the heart of who we are. We are people company with the skills to support our clients through their own AI journey because it is a journey and it will continue to be a journey and we will grow with them through that advice and consult engagement as we have for their cloud journeys and others in the past. Well, the reality of it is this relationship is actually, in my opinion, more important than what technology solution should we buy because this is complicated. It's more complicated than ever before and you have to be able to develop a strategy and you have to understand risk mitigation, you have to understand how the role security plays in so many things and it's really overwhelming to think about so the most important thing is who's my trusted vendor partner to go along with my team on this journey and I think that that's such an, I mean that's what customers are looking for is they're looking for a guide. Right, they're looking for us to listen to what their business challenges are and to develop use cases to solve them. Technology enables that. The conversation doesn't start with technology. It actually ends with technology. Absolutely. What's interesting is you got the verticals of US, telco, media and technology which technology is changing to be technology companies that you partner with and sell to at the same time. So I have to ask you because the common thread in all that's networks, connecting things. So I have to ask you, telco specifically, we've heard here on theCUBE from a lot of the luminary guests we had that when asked what's the impact of AI to telco and it says to the device. That's the kind of the common answer. So that means, okay, from the core to the device, all that data is coming in and that data now could be electrical property for the telcos and or their customer ecosystem that's growing. So you got open gateway emerging, which is interesting. You got the telcos themselves, the operators, your announcement with the private, public deal that you announced yesterday and pretty amazing. Give seamless mobility. Kind of getting better on the telco side right now for this next wave. How do you see it? It is. I think the telcos have a journey ahead of them also and I think one that system integrator like Kendral, we will find ourselves engaging more with our clients who are the telecommunications providers. You're right. The edge is literally at the edge now. The edge is considered that cell phone. That is the edge. And so we know our telecommunications clients continue to need our consult and advise on that journey to the edge for themselves. All of the technologies and the spectrums and everything that's available for network is still evolving. Well, and it's about so much more than just your mobile device. I mean, it's your smart devices. It's your smart cities. It's your sensors that are everywhere. It's not just limited to a mobile device. So I think that when you think about the realm of that, that's a lot. Endless. It really is. And it's going to get even more complicated, more sensors. I mean, those numbers are crazy. So yeah. One of my final question for you is on the sustainability piece. You mentioned that earlier about saving the world and saving the planet. Thank God we're doing it. Let's hope the GPUs are stuck up a lot of power. So power and cooling, data centers. The scarce resources are everywhere. So you've seen a lot of that big, sustainable conversation happening. How do you guys see that? What's your reaction to the constraints around power, power heating and cooling, data center scarcity, some real resource intensive challenges in sustainability. What's the kindral position on this? I think, listen, it's a priority for our clients. In fact, it's probably the highest priority for our clients. And not just because many of our clients have sustainability targets, but that they know they have to do this for their future, for our future, as a planet. And many, again, I go back to even the other challenges that we have with our clients are facing, whether it's transformation, whether it's data, the same with sustainability. Many are in a different part of that joke, right? They, that challenge ahead of them. And so we ourselves have a sustainability group to advise our clients on our own journey. And again, kind of meeting the client where they're at and building that sustainability roadmap for them to be at the table to talk about their data center strategy, power, consumption, storage and tie that into sustainability. And that's where I think our clients will, they need to see that improvement. They need to see the outcomes of that. And it has to be a priority. It's got to be designed in from the beginning, not bolted on as an afterthought. Not something correct. That's a key thing. I like security now. Yeah. All right, so first of all, congratulations on the round table on the inclusion, diversity and equity thing you're doing here. Thank you. For the last minute we have left, put a plug in for Kendra. What are you up to? What's your goals? What's going on? You put a little plug in for what you guys are up to. Yeah. So listen, it has been two and a half years of an exciting journey. My plug is we are continuing to grow the ecosystem to support our clients. The investment that we have made with our people, the skills, the hyperscaler certifications, the skills around the announcements yesterday and private wireless, everything from RF engineers to consultants to simply listen and advise. We've really have shown up differently and we're continuing to show up differently with a culture that's empathetic. And I'm really excited what this has in store for us in the future. Congratulations. Thanks so much for coming on the key. Really appreciate it. Thank you. We've been following your success. You guys have been doing really well. Now with this trend, I'm sure you're gonna be super busy. We will be. Yes. We'll see you next time. Thank you. Here in the queue, I'm John Furrier. Shelly Kramer, we'll be right back with more. This is day two of four days of live coverage from the show floor. The videos are up on YouTube immediately right after. See the clips on Twitter, Facebook and all the social networks. Go to SiliconANGLE.com, check out all the stories. We'll be right back after this short break.