 Live from San Francisco, it's theCUBE, covering Informatica World 2017, brought to you by Informatica. Welcome back everyone, we're here live in San Francisco for our wrap up of day one, theCUBE's exclusive coverage of Informatica World 2017. It's our flagship program, we go out to the events and extract the signal of the noise, I'm John Furrier with SiliconANGLE theCUBE, and my co-host this week is Peter Burris, head of research at SiliconANGLE Media, also the general manager of Wikibon.com, and check out all the great research, some great stuff behind the paywall, subscription require, but also some free content there as well. And our special guest is Neil Raiden, who's the new analyst on the Wikibon team. Welcome to the team, you're covering the value of data and analytics industry veteran, great to have you on the team. Thanks for joining us on our wrap up here. Thank you. Neil, welcome, Peter. Look at, this is kind of a coming out party for Informatica, we've been following them for multiple years, some of their top executives and CUBE alumni for many, many years, I think, I mean, Wally's going to be on his eighth year, eighth time on theCUBE, but look behind us, you see a new branding, Informatica has a new CMO and she's got Swagger and she's got brand impact, Informatica is now going to start bragging about their products, although it has some critical analysis of Informatica we'll get to in a second, but I've always said they've brought in a team of folks during the going private that have product chops and they've had an install base and their goal has been from the beginning, let's go private, close the curtain and get stuff reorganized and really work on the product. They had an install base and can they pivot? That was my question three years ago. Every year they keep on coming out with not a land grab but an incremental, they're moving the ball down the field to use your football analogy, burst in 10, do it again, but starting to get into that horizontally scalable cloud model in with good cloud deals, looking poise in my opinion for being a data layer potentially for making that data fabric on. So to me, I think that's the big story here so far is some good news around the brand, product increases got AI, augmented intelligence with Claire, some interesting dynamics, which means the interface to data is changing, not only the underlying value of the data which we want to get into, but Informatica's trying to up level the interface. Your thoughts? Well, so I think you're absolutely right, John. I think we've seen three things here. First off Informatica's always had a pretty decent product get well embedded within some really first rate customers. Number two, they've been talking about the need to accommodate some of the new trends around cloud and how they're going to move in that direction. They've been talking about it. This is the first year we've really seen it. And then number three, they even went Informatica talks, people have historically not listened as much. Sally Jenkins, the new CMO has gotten an enormous amount of work done in a very, very short period of time and this is a bang so and it's manifesting itself and that people are buzzing about it. Even if Informatica has a lot to do to really be that enterprise cloud data management leader, lot left to do, but it all starts by presenting themselves in a coherent way and that's something that we've seen. For the first time. And the value proposition has changed significantly. I was just talking about the Amazon stock price and since 2010 it's just been a skyrocket growth for Amazon across the board. Yeah, they've got the retail, but AWS certainly has been powering it. Having a good brand behind you is going to really energize the channel, ISV, software developers. And like I always joked about the old days when I used to work at Yula Packard, the joke was they used to call cold dead fish versus sushi, HP would be so accurate, so engineering oriented, it would be so accurate around the products. They didn't really have a lot of marketing and the joke was if they had sushi they'd call it cold dead fish because that's what it is, sushi sounds better. But again, back to marketing. They need to bring the brand out and put a message around the shift to value. Well, think about how important it's going to be to a company that increasingly acknowledges or acknowledges it increasingly, their customers are going to find them in something like the Amazon marketplace or in Google or in some other cloud environment. It means that they have to bias the customer to choose Informatica versus a range of tools that may not be as good, but some of them are going to be open source. To get people to bias at that moment you got to get your brand out there. You have to get your identity out there. And Informatica was not going to be a success when the customer's making that decision as they're looking at that Amazon marketplace just by word of mouth. They have to get their name out there. So this is big. The product is still good and improving. Getting to the cloud is a big deal. They're delivering on their promises and now having a marketing platform that allows them to scream a little bit louder from the rafters about who they are and what they want to be. A lot of it's coming together. And day two, we're going to have all the top execs on. They were in an offsite down the street right here at Intercontinental in San Francisco with Executive Customer Day. But we had SVP on for cloud business. We had the board member, Jerry Held, who's five decades in the business. I mean, he essentially laid it out. Hybrid cloud's here to stay and it's not going to be an overnight success. It's going to be a transition and that favors the legacy vendors who are sharpening their saw and getting their products in line. Of course we had the Chicago Cubs on and we took the ring, almost put it in my pocket in a very Putin-esque-like style. We all know Robert Kraft lost his Superbowl ring to the biggest criminal in the world, Putin, but kind of a fun there. But the baseball team highlights the customer journeys. They have customers that love them and stay with them because they install base. Absolutely. And Informatica is deeply embedded and has been, Neil, has been on the vanguard. I mean, look, they got a lot of work to do but they've been on the vanguard of tying together the idea of data, data as an asset, tooling, so you can get more value out of data through analytics. That's right. I'll tell you a little story. I mean, I brought Informatica into one of my clients the first time in 1996. They were pretty much a brand new company. About a year after they started. Yeah. And what motivated me to think about Informatica, as opposed to any other way we were trying to get data into a data warehouse, was that they understood metadata. They were the only company that had an active metadata repository. So this is their heritage. I know that Informatica claims they have, I don't know, 10,000 customers. I think a significant number of those are not going to be interested in this whole thing. They don't have the budget for it. They don't have the time or the staff or anything. But they've got the elite. When you look at the companies that are clients of Informatica, those are the people that would be interested and spend time and money on this sort of thing. So let me get you guys' perspective as analysts, because let's turn this into the analysis of what's happening here with Informatica and compare that to what's happening in the industry. SAP Sapphire is happening right now in Orlando. We've got Cube Coverage in our studio in Palo Alto, but Oracle, SAP, these are database guys. They have systems of record, IBM, Amazon's now a new player in that. They have to balance the install-based systems of record of their data. Now granted, old techniques, four walls, data warehouse, whatever you want to call it, it was an old way. Now the new way is to empower developers to actually build and use that data. So the question is, how do they get their product from old to new and modernize quickly and highlight data as value? Because this is the thing that you guys are both researching heavily, is that data now is going to start to be a valuation discussion. Are we getting the data through the pipes, if you will, into the hands of the developers, into the apps, into the decision-making process in the value chains that are being reconstructed? This is a top conversation that not a lot of people are laying out there with best practices. Your thoughts? Well, I think the first thing, and I'll start, Neil, I think the first thing is that that's probably my biggest thing on Informatica here, is that they need to be more of a beacon about what is the new data management. It's more than just the combination of tools, it's more than just getting data out of applications and getting data out of databases and freeing it up so that it can be applied. The notion of data management is evolving rapidly, and businesses are trying to, as they try to use data as an asset, is going to require some significant changes to how we think about data. Do you think they can put that stake in the ground right now and own that right now? I think somebody has to, I think they need to take a crack at it. Neil, what's your thoughts? I think they're weak on the value, I think they're weak on what happens. I always have this idea that you see their layer cakes and the things that go from left to right, but on the right-hand side of the diagram, there are no people. What happens when you implement all this? How do people use this? And that's true of everybody in this industry, not just Informatica, so that's one weakness. Last year when I was here, I thought they had a real weakness in governance, but with the Daikou axon acquisitions, I think they made a giant step towards that. They've got a lot of the peace parts and they're putting them together, but I don't think they're addressing what happens next. I call it the Jordan River problem. We wandered around for 40 years, we got to the Jordan River, we can't get across the damn river, right? Is it a river or a lake or an ocean? I mean, it's a data river, it's something happening. It's a lake, it's something. I think that's where they are because it's a whole different discipline. But is that on Informatica? I mean, they're now a smaller company, or is that an industry issue? No, it's an industry issue, but companies like Informatica, if they really want to be a leader, as he flings his glasses around, that's all passionate I am about this. If they want to be a leader or the leader, they have to put a stake in the ground, don't they? I believe so. Okay, so what about positives, Neil? What's your thoughts on how are they well positioned in your mind? Well, you know, putting together all these different pieces so that they operate together is phenomenal. Moving to, I still don't understand how enterprise software companies move to a subscription model smoothly. That's got to be a real headache, but they're moving to that. They've adopted the cloud. They still have the data integration. I mean, that's their keystone. It works beautifully, it gets better every year, and that's what attracts people to them. So I think these are all good things. And the good news is they're privacy. They can do that subscription, kind of hide the ball a little bit and then come out. But they're not doing bad. I mean, they have a spring to their step. You know, here's, I think Neil's absolutely right. Here's what I would add to it. They're executing. They have demonstrated over the past couple of years, certainly that we've been here and listening to them. They've made promises, they've delivered. They've made new promises, they've delivered. Some of these promises have been complex. Some of them have been extremely hard. They've still delivered. That is a real important piece of the story, because this notion of data management is changing. Customers are going to want to work with companies that have competent management that deliver on the promises that they're making. And Informatic is proving that they're up to that problem. I think, I think, I think. They have brilliant people. Everybody I've met here from Informatic is really special. You know, I mean, you know, maybe they kept the clunkers in the closet somewhere. But they've got, they've got brilliant, motivated people working here. They've got a ton of experience. We're passionate about this stuff. And they've got a lot of experience too. And they've brought in some new guns with the product side. We're going to emit as a fantastic product executive, Aneosly, has that background. But I got to want to shift now to the end user now. They're now living in a world of massive business transformation. Yeah, digital transformation, rah rah. It's kind of over-hyped. But the repair, what that translates to is business transformation. That's the conversation on all CSOs. Business transformation around data. Around data. So I want to get your thoughts now. Vis-a-vis that, the customer's perspective. I'm looking at Informatica. How do I feel about them? Well, look, you know, before I march off this mortal coil, this is what I want to happen. I want to say, look, computer, I want to put together a new pricing model. All right. Here are a couple of variables I'm interested in. One of my competitors just issued a press release with some new pricing data. Go get that. And come back to me with some data. Recommend some data I need to build a model. Give me some options. Yeah. And that's clear. I mean, that's something to talk about, losing some automation and machine learning. Peter, you think that's the nirvana? That is a nice position to be. It's like, hey, Alexa, play some music. And, you know, they play a genre for you. Right. Give me some data. Let's think about the elements that are going to be important as we think about this new notion of data management. And again, I don't think Informatica is too far from this. A new notion of data management suggests, number one, that if your business is going to use data differently, you have to introduce some notion of some concept of design. How do I design business around data and how do I design data around business needs? Part of that problem is going to be being able to go out and capture inventory catalog metadata. No question about it. You're going to need the next generation of data management is going to be very metadata focused. Secondly, you need a lot of the tooling that's capable of doing the transformation and creating derivative value out of data. That's something else that they have. The third one, and this is a really, really important piece and we talked about it, for example, with Ryder and a couple of other people. Data has to move, but it has to move, not just based on point-to-point interfaces that are programmed and built, but based on patterns of utilization and in a way that the system recognizes that. And that is going to be crucially important, the whole notion of data moving in response to what the business needs and not what the people recognize and do. Okay, so that reminds me, I was speaking to someone who is part of their security stuff, right? And I said, well, have you considered how data security could benefit analysts as opposed to keeping the company out of trouble? Business analysts. Yeah, just couldn't answer the question, right? Because I said, so tell me how this works. And she said, well, you know, if someone has a pattern of how they work with data, if suddenly they work out of that pattern, it's going to send off a signal. I said, well, what's the signal? Are they going to get a skull and crossbones? They go, you can't have this data. Well, it sends a policy flag. Okay, hey, you matter your swim lane. That's like, get back into your jail cell. I mean, it's restrictive. Absolutely restrictive. Don't you want your analysts to be thinking out of the box, which means on a regular basis, they would be requesting data they don't normally want. Here's what I like about Informatica from my perspective again. You guys are under the hood in a deeper way. But from my perspective is that what they're doing with the horizontally scalable is interesting. And this is interesting on the metadata side. You mentioned that with Google Spanner now available. They're in Amazon. If they can somehow create that addressable data sets, that could be horizontally scalable and freely available. I think that is a winning stretch because most of the vendors in the data take a siloed stack approach. Okay, here's our stack, you own it. So I think they're on this genius play of, okay, if we can get this horizontal layer, that is now the lock spec because now I'm agnostic on cloud. So to me, I think that directionally is correct. Where that is when the rubber meets the road is a whole other story. So your thoughts on that. It's very exciting. I hope they pull it off. I think it's very exciting. So if you think about it. They pull it off. Let's, well, there's, so there's, let's- Without being shot by the other incompetent thing of guns. Let's think about a couple of different ways of thinking about this, right? On the one hand, you have new ways of thinking about how data is going to be spread in a multi or in a hybrid cloud world. So that's happening. Secondly, we're thinking about data control and a data control plane above that. And there are a bunch of companies that are talking about how you bring control across all these different multi-cloud instances. And on top of that, now we're talking about some of the analytics and how data gets used from a metadata standpoint. So this is extremely relevant to where the industry is going to be in five years. Somebody is going to, somebody is going to get there and it's best to look for the folks who are, you know, skating to that puck. And Informatica seems to be skating there. All right, I want to ask you guys a question. I want you to tell me if I'm smoking crack or not when I say this. The whole goal of getting data from any database at any given time in less than a hundred milliseconds. No matter where it came from, when it came from, IOT included all the stuff's coming in. I got an, I'm an app developer. I want data programmability. Meaning I have an app and I'm doing some, some cognitive cognition thing. And all of a sudden, Neil, you bought something at Nordstroms from three years ago. It's some database. Yeah, let me just think about the logic on that query. But that data could be cross connected with other relevant data, your Twitter stuff or whatever you're doing. And pull together, provide some insight for you. Now that sounds like I'm smoking crack to pull that off. Is that possible? Can it be done in the kind of low latency mechanism? You know, it can be done, but I don't think we know enough about the data. There are four types of metadata still leave out deep semantic information. I'm hoping they're going to work on that. I mean, I was in here 10 years ago pitching ontologies and they threw me out. So, but I think that the four types of metadata. Hard to scale ontologies. Yeah, I think the four types of metadata are great, but they're still generating it mechanically from data sets as opposed to some knowledge about what the data really means. And to do what you want to do, I think you need some kind of semantic metadata. I agree with that. And you also need semantic information about the underlying network as well. So there's a lot more work to do to make that happen. A lot more work. All right, so final question. It's probably not going to be 100 milliseconds. 140, 150, maybe 200. Yeah, well, I mean, anything's, just getting the data would be a win. Okay, final question. This is kind of more on the stuff we've talked about in leading in the intro of the work you guys are doing. The valuation concept of data. I mean, I'd say valuation, I could mean financial valuation, how valuable of a firm is. Or what is our CFO, where's our assets? Where's our data assets? So there's a combination of data hygiene and also in heart surgery, right? If it's the heartbeat of your organization. Who the hell's the surgeon? Who's the doctor? When do you do CPR? Who does the hygiene? Who's the, who does the amputation? I mean, who does, I mean, this is like, I mean, this is a data nightmare of a reconstruction of a company. The nature of the firm is completely upside down when you start thinking data. Just your reaction to that concept. Well, they have a very loyal customer base. So I think that they can get out with this before it's completely cooked and have some success. Maybe I'm being optimistic, I don't know. Peter, good thoughts. Valuation of data. I think that there is, that a way of thinking about it is not to value data in a narrow sense, to think about what we're calling data dynamics. And the idea that data's value is founded in its use. It's not something that has value when it's just sitting there and not being used. It's, yeah, it's like that old saw, I don't know how to define pornography, but I know it when I see it. Yeah. Right, I think that. And data and motion. And that was the Supreme Court justice, I didn't say that. Yeah, exactly. But it's like teenage sex, you know, the things they're having it. But in recent years, this goes back to that notion of data management. It's, how am I going to use data? How am I going to get value out of data through its use? And that suggests a whole different set of principles and practices that are quite different from how we normally value assets. Okay, tomorrow we've got the topic sex coming in, we've got the CMO, we've got the CEO, we've got the EVP of products. What should we be asking them tomorrow? What should I be opening up the kimono on and digging into them on? I'd ask them what, you know, the roadmap is in terms of getting this implemented in their best customers. Not the software development roadmap. So tell us the adoption roadmap. How this is going to roll out for you. That's what I'd like to hear. Peter, you're certainly be here until two o'clock, we'll be there. What are you going to be looking at? I'd look for two things. One is I would continuously push on the execution. Are they really executing as reliably as we think they are? Because they're making some big promises this year too. The second one I'd look at is again, that beacon, that touchstone. What is this new data management? What are you really going to be leading? That's true. And I'm still blown away by the conferences I go to and everyone's like, well there's a new way, new modern era is evolving, it's transforming. But yeah, we're number one in five magic quadrants. Wait a minute, how can you get magic quadrants as the scoreboard if you're going to do a new definition? So again, our metric KPI on that is customers. What is your customer attraction? Show me the proof point. I don't care what magic quadrant. That's an old metric. That's siloed based, that's not reality based in my opinion, so we won't drill them on customers to me, that's the scoreboard. Okay, this is theCUBE breaking down day one wrap up here at Informatica World. This is theCUBE coverage. I'm John Furrier, Peter Burris and special guest, new Wikibonist, Neil Raden, covering the value of data and analytics. See you tomorrow, stay with us for more continuing coverage tomorrow for full day. Be right back.