 Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for joining me today. We will be talking about maximizing the value of cloud native technology across borders. My name is Katerina Arjajev, and I am a director of product management at SUSA. However, before this new job that I started two months ago, I worked as a strategist for Hitachi and SUSA for six years. In this time, I worked with executives across the entire globe very closely, implementing their strategy internally and externally, focusing on organizational changes, bringing new products to the market, and doing the best that we can to make sure that our customers and community members get the most value out of our products. So for a very long time, I had the opportunity to understand what drives executives from different backgrounds in different countries and how we can make them successful. Now, I grew up in the United States as an immigrant of Russian parents. I do not have a lot of experience in Asia. So today's presentation will be sharing my background with Western executives and how you can take my knowledge and the case studies and apply them here. Unfortunately, I will not be telling you about selling to Eastern executives. I will need one of you to raise your hand next year and volunteer that knowledge so I can attend and make the best out of that. It is also important to understand that everything is a generalization. Everything is a stereotype. All of the comments that I will share are based on my experiences and the best practices of different academics and professionals in the industry. There will be many, many situations where these lessons do not apply to the individuals that you are speaking to and the individuals you are sharing your technology with. However, some of these best practices can be leveraged with the knowledge you have to make sure that your cloud-native technology meets the needs of your executives in the most beneficial way. So why are we even talking about this right now? What is happening in the industry to make this a very important topic? Well, 40% of CEOs think their companies will not be economically viable a decade from now if they continue on their current path. These CEOs, CIOs understand that they need to make change in order for their companies to be successful in the long term. For many of them, according to the 2023 PWC CEO survey, think that cloud-native technology is one of the ways that they can transform to save their companies. However, they have a lot of different problems and their problems will be addressed in different ways. Here in China, you know that environment is a very important problem to solve. 71% of Chinese CEOs see climate change as something that will be affecting their supply chains something very important to address. 70% of American CEOs know that this is a problem but do not plan to implement anything to solve it. Despite these similar problems, these executives are going to be prioritizing different solutions to this problem. Because business reinvention is going to be a full-contact sport for CEOs and their teams in the years ahead, it is important that we as professionals in the open-source community responsible for bringing new technology that is revolutionary to our customers, we need to be equipped and ready to help these leaders. Today, I will talk about the context, what even is the West, then address the benefits of cloud-native technology as particularly appreciated by Western executives. Talk a little bit about a case study that shows cultural context in approaching risk and innovation, how different companies, how different individuals based on their experiences of where they're from approach risk and innovation in implementing cloud-native technology. And finally, I will share the best practices for communicating across borders some very specific pragmatic tips that you can take to make sure that you reach these executives in a beneficial and pragmatic way. So, leadership across the globe. As I mentioned, I am American, Russian, neither one of each enough and now I'm in China, so it's a wonderful experience to see so many different cultures. Generally though, I would say that I'm more Western. In the West, we have North America and Europe primarily and in the East, Near East, Greater Middle East and Far East. Once again, this is a generalization according to a lot of different academics and additionally supported by a study by Hofstede. In the middle, we have Latin America and Slavic countries that generally fluctuate depending on the amount of religion and the turbulent history that they have experienced. Generally, there are going to be very, very, very many different problems and different approaches to solving those problems depending on where you're from. Whether you approach it from a Western perspective or from an Eastern perspective. Everything from communication, business, and hierarchy. All of these different cultural elements will change the way that you approach risk, the way that you approach innovation, and the extent to which you will appreciate cloud-native technology. However, I only have 30 more minutes, so we will not talk about those things. Instead, we will talk about problem solving, time, and leadership and how executives in the West approach these particular elements when it comes to making business technology decisions for their companies. Problem solving in the West is focused on documenting best practices in a very linear approach. If A is B and B is C, then A can be solved by C. In the East, it is generally more proper to have a spiral thinking pattern that approaches problem solving in a spiral, root cause, analytical sort of way. People, when they're solving problems, will like to understand the problem, whereas in the West, there are very many times an executive will walk into a meeting and say, I don't want to know what the problem is, I want to know how you will solve it. In addition, Western executives prioritize time differently than in the East. There are shorter time horizons which focus on prioritizing immediate results, adaptability, and flexibility, versus in the East where longer time horizons allow executives at companies to prioritize stability and endurance and be more proactive versus reactive when it comes to solving problems or market changes. Finally, leadership. In the West, leaders will demonstrate the fact that they are a good leader by being an individual demonstrating leadership versus in the East, generally, consensus building for long-term success is key. In today's presentation, I will talk about these three elements, problem solving, time, and leadership when it comes to approaching Western executives and presenting them with cloud-native technology as a solution. So let's look at how this really looks in the world. CEOs from across the globe in a very, very small sample size and additionally how many years or days all of them have been leaders at their companies. So recently, Walgreens, a very large corporation in the United States, replaced their CEO with an interim CEO. This individual has been a leader at this company for about 30 days. As you move across the spectrum of leadership, you start noticing that the leaders and the CEOs have longer and longer tenures. On average, it extends in the East to more than a decade. It is very common in the current leadership environment in the East to have been with a company for a very long time, whereas in the West, it is very typical for leadership to change every three to five years. And this is not just something that happens on accident or because there are maybe culturally relevant factors. Actually, when I was at my MBA in Georgetown, we were told that it is healthy for you as an individual for a company to change CEOs every three to five years. The Harvard Business Review in 2019 said that the average ideal tenure, according to CEOs or boards, is seven years and definitely no more than ten years. This is something that is pervasive and very, very well established in the West, not just for individuals who are looking for their next step, but also for companies who want to make sure that they have the strongest, best experienced leaders at the helm. Now, the benefits of cloud-native technology are not something that I have to teach you all, but I thought that establishing a very base foundation of what cloud-native technology is and primarily the benefits as observed by Western executives would be beneficial. We can focus on these elements down here. The benefits of cloud-native technology primarily lie in the scalability, innovation, agility, and cost efficiencies that can be presented to executives making long-term technology decisions for their companies. And you might think, oh, didn't you just say that executives make short-term decisions in the West? Yes, they do. The long-term decision is maybe six months. A long-term decision for a Western executive is three years. In fact, when you think about a long-term strategy for a company like Hitachi or SUSA, you will only ever have a three-year strategy. So when the executives consider cloud-native technology as a way to save their company, they will approach problem-solving, time, and a leadership in a unique way. Problem-solving, cloud-native technology addresses all of the scalability, innovation, agility, and cost-efficiency requirements to address the different problems that these executives faced. They need to be efficient, data-driven, and empower collaboration, all of which is possible with cloud-native. Here on the bottom, you have a quote from the CIO of Choice Hotels, who says, you use the technology in real-time on demand to drive down costs. This is critical because Brian will not be at Choice Hotels for a long time. He needs to make sure that the problems that he is reacting to can be solved in a way that can scale with the size of the problem, while also empowering him to be cost-efficient so that he does not get fired or have any problems with his board. When it comes to time priorities for Western executives, also addressed by all of the benefits of cloud-native technology. You have immediate results with adaptability and responsiveness that is possible due to the inherent scale and approach to cloud-native. The CEO of Navigo said that we immediately saw a 60% savings when we moved to Oracle Cloud for internal development and testing. This was very, very important because CEOs, CIOs, and other executives need to make sure that the time that they have in that leadership position is full of quick wins and actions that they can point to that will show their leadership, that will both move the company forward into a safer space but also present themselves as someone who is ready for the next step in their career, which moves us into leadership. How do these individuals approach cloud-native as a way to portray leadership? Well, cloud-native is something new and exciting and part of transformation and innovation and any other buzzwords that we can say. It is important for these executives to focus and show innovation, quick wins, and that they are a risk-taker who is willing to experiment to get bigger rewards for the actions that they take. The CEO of AWS said, the biggest thing that I've seen in the past year and a half is that most often CEOs want to speak with me about transformation, not about technology. This change of language will affect the way in which the leadership you're speaking to perceives the kinds of problems that you can solve for them. You are not just selling them technology, not cloud-native versus on-prem. You are transforming them as an individual and transforming their business. It is a solution that you are offering to them that will enable them to solve problems in a timely manner and allow them as an individual and a company to portray leadership. But how does this look in the real world? Risk and innovation are very key to understanding how different executives will approach different problems. Let's talk about PlayStation and Sony. These are American-Japanese companies. Technically, PlayStation is owned by Sony. However, there is some very unique differences to the way the leadership of PlayStation and Sony have addressed the problem, the challenge of going into the cloud world with gaming. PlayStation's approach has been to build the plane while flying it. This is a common idiom in the English language that says, we will solve the problems while moving forward with the implementation. Versus Sony leadership that said, we will build the plane first and then we will fly it. How do we know that this case study is happening? Well, in the last three months, the CEO of PlayStation and the CEO of Sony Group have both spoken about the transformation of gaming to the cloud. And Jim said something very interesting. He said, we do have some quite aggressive plans to accelerate our initiatives in the space of the cloud that will transform in the coming months. And the CEO of Sony likewise in addressing this topic said, the technical difficulties are high, so this will be a challenge, even though he recognizes that this is an important, amazing transformation. Now, Jim is British, lives in the United States and is the PlayStation CEO. And Kenichiro Yoshida is the Japanese local to Japan CEO of Sony. They have a few cultural differences between them, even though their tenures at their respective companies are very similar. Keep in mind that this is my observation and should not be used anywhere beyond this presentation. However, Jim and Kenichiro both joined their companies very long time ago in 1994 and in 1987. They have been with their companies for a very long time and they both became the CEOs very recently in 2019 for Jim and in 2018 for Mr. Yoshida. However, their approach based on their cultural background is evident in the actions that they are taking to bring gaming to the cloud. Jim, according to Hofstede's insights, which is a six factor approach to understanding the differences cultures take to all elements of their society, has very high individualism whereas typically in Japan individualism is very low. According to Hofstede's insights, individualism is the way that we approach success as either an individual or as a group. In the United States and in Britain we have very high individualism. You take actions that are good for you first and then good for the group. In Japan and other Asian cultures you have very low individualism. This means that the decisions you take need to be focused on the group in order to be deemed successful. In addition, uncertainty avoidance is very low in the United States and very high in the East. Uncertainty avoidance is our ability to make decisions and act without understanding the full scope of the changes that we will be implementing. So Jim is very comfortable with fluid processes, very comfortable with having uncertainty, whereas in the East predictability is key to making any decisions that will lead to the long term success of you as an individual and the company with which you represent. This long term orientation is also a factor within Hofstede's insights. Now in the UK and in the United States, uncertainty long term avoid orientation is generally neutral. It doesn't matter if a decision is for a short term or a long term, it does not really affect your ability to make a decision. However, in the East, long term orientation and the subsequent generational impact is very, very key to making sure that your decisions will not be compromised or changed in the long term. All of these examples are just one unique case study to something that happened in the last three months with two individuals at two companies. If we start analyzing and looking at the behavior of executives in different industries, different multinational corporations, we will start to see patterns, but at the same time, all of these behaviors cannot be applied broadly, right, stereotypically. These are generalizations. So please use this knowledge intentionally and make sure that whenever you understand your own technology and you walk into a meeting with customers, you have a very specific, unique approach to that conversation. And the best way to do that is by asking questions. But there are also other best practices to remember. So Cloud Native is not something that is going away, right? 86% of companies have growth in cloud initiatives. 41% of companies care about security innovation and are worried about the complexity of business change. In addition, 80% of executives know that lowering risk is one of the ways that they can avoid failure of their company in the next 10 years. We know that the best practice to coming up with a strategy involving cloud is to think of cloud as a means to an end. You use this technology to transform your business, but you must know what the transformation will entail. The end must be specified first, and unfortunately, the end will almost never be specified in the context of a western executive whose entire job is to go from function to function, business unit to business unit, and put out fires. Because according to the CEO survey, less and less do people want to be responsible for decisions. More and more the CEOs and other executives need to make decisions that other people implement. So how in a very, very intentional way can we focus our understanding of culture to make sure that the cloud technology we're presenting solves problems in a timely manner and allows these individuals and their companies to portray leadership internally and to the industry. When it comes to problem solving, we can show a clear, linear, step-by-step path to the solution. So very, very specifically, you will have one, two, three. Our technology, your transformation. Also be very data driven in your presentations, highlighting what others are doing in the industry with similar problems. Remember, the problem does not have to be the same because western executives don't know what their problem is. They rely on you to come to them and tell them, this is your problem, this is my technology, this is how my technology will solve your problem. In this way you can highlight case studies where their competitors have been successful with your technology. The question these executives are asking is what has worked before and how can I best replicate it in the short amount of time that I have to solve this problem. Time. You need to highlight the short term one quarter to one year and if you really want to highlight that you are thinking about the long term, you can talk about one to three year strategy. It is not beneficial to talk to a CEO about something that will happen in five or ten years when this person does not even believe in their own head that they will be at this company in that time. They need to show quick wins for their board when they sign a big check and they need to know how doing that now will help them in the immediate future. By emphasizing these quick wins you show them the measurable benefits. You can position flexibility as a key benefit in this way, allowing your technology and your go to market to be flexible to their approach. So if your technology is not very flexible you can say well at least we will work with you to scale in our commercial terms or other ways. You also help these leaders answer the question how can I show I am making a difference right now by doing so and in the same way you can help them show and demonstrate leadership. You make it easy for these executives to be a hero. In the West the concept of being a hero and superheroes is very very ingrained in our culture. You can do this by being proactive, maybe showing them additional materials that they can then share with their leadership and make it easy for them to help their teams make this decision. One of the ways that we have been successful before is having a chief of staff type person who would join the executive in meetings, document all of the questions that were asked, and then prepare a response that was sent to the executive with the intention that it would be forwarded along. This person would say hey colleagues look at this email that I you know meeting that I had all of your questions will be answered. This company has great communication and they're proactive even though they're maybe a little bit more expensive but communicating with them and working with them is something that allows me to be a thought leader internally in my company. This concept of thought leadership positioning yourself as an authority within your company allows these individuals to build a platform for their future career or for their company to continue on the path of innovation and transformation. Remember when someone is an executive they've reached the peak of their career. You can think of them as an Olympian who is now competing with a select few individuals. There is not a lot of different opportunities for these individuals and at one point they start thinking about the legacy that they are going to leave because they realize that their whole life they've been chasing this time element of one to three years but now they need to think about what will happen after what will happen when they retire or when they are invited to give keynote speeches when they're no longer doing the busy work of being a full time CEO. With these different best practices you have the opportunity to enable them to solve problems in a timely manner and show leadership and this was based on my personal experiences. I appreciate your time and your attention and one more cultural thing that I would like to point out is that when a Westerner gives a presentation the more questions and comments they have the more important they feel the more they feel that people listen to them and appreciated what they said. So one of the ways that you can engage with me right now is asking questions that will allow me to further expand on some of the points that I made. And once again keeping in mind that these are good practices lessons to be learned but also need to be thought about and uniquely intentionally applied to the different situations that you find yourselves in. In both the technology that you represent and in the companies that you approach. Thank you. Hello. Could you introduce your own business progress in China of SOSC recently. Could you introduce the business progress of your company. Of my company? Yes. In China? In recent years. In China. My company SUSE? Yeah SUSE. So I will talk a little bit about what SUSE does in China. So three years ago China was a significant part of the SUSE business in Asia Pacific. And we had we have great teams here we have offices in Beijing and Shanghai and our leadership needed to make sure that they were not involving themselves in the unique cultural elements of China. So our American CEO who lives in the UK knew that Asia Pacific is very different in terms of doing business from the West and our leadership trusted the China leadership team. And we're happy to say that with the leadership of our China executives we're able to grow this business and continue hiring in Beijing. And now really focus on making sure that our customers are finding themselves with the right solutions for edge technology to address their problems. But one thing that we are learning as well is that the business in China is changing to more match what we find in the West. There is a lot of competition here. Customers are trying to find the best service for the best value. And very often the old loyalties that we thought were more important are starting to be less important. So it is going to be our goal in the coming years to make sure that we can address these changing environments and continue making SUSE technology something that will be ingrained in this culture. Thank you. Did that answer your question. Hello. Thank you very much. My question is a bit of the topic but I'm working for the pure Japanese company. 100 percent I believe not the hundred percent but 99 percent of the employees are Japanese. And in my division I have we have two foreigners in my team of seven employees. And I think it's kind of really beneficial that we have a diversity and we can get many opinions from many perspectives. And I want to say recommend CEO or some executives to get more foreigners from other places. But I don't really have many resources to show the ROI to make company diverse. So how do you like if you are me like how do you like how do you like talk to executives to show the strategy of hiring. This is very difficult because even the term diversity and inclusion is something that even the most Western trained executive will find to be less of a priority because it is more long term. And they're always solving problems real problems not enough revenue this quarter too many costs next quarter. Diversity is a longer solution that will bring more ideas to the table and the ROI like you said can really only be shown by the statistical long term studies done by a lot of different consultancies. When we try to bring diversity and inclusion to our company it's usually gender because we work in technology and it's mostly not women. And we start it by ourselves. We can bring the statistics and the studies but the attention is not there until there is a real problem. And so I recommend that if you find yourself with extra time to host a session invite someone you trust or respect to come and talk for 30 minutes to share their knowledge. Westerners love getting emails on LinkedIn and being like hey I found you. You're so smart. You went to such a cool school. Can you please share your your knowledge with me and my company. And they will say you know what I am really smart. I will do that for free. They really like that and they don't have to be very fancy titles. You can find MBAs from you know top 20 schools in the West and just ask them these questions. And once you start the conversation it becomes a lot easier for executives to see and people become braver. Right now with my colleagues in China I am struggling to make them brave. They say oh well our boss in America said we can't do this. I said what. Go to his boss. I can't do that. I will be fired. No no no he wants you to. I asked him. He said no because he cannot say yes. But his boss can say yes. You have to go to his boss. You have to be brave. And I recommend this. But unfortunately it's a lot of work. And the entire topic today is going to be a lot of work for all of us as we make technology appropriate and accessible across borders. That's all the time we have today. Thank you for your really really intuitive questions. I will be around to talk more. But I hope you have a great Susa Khan and safe travels home.