 The Cube on cloud continues. We're here with Anna Pinsuk, who's the chief development officer at Annaplan. And we've been unpacking the future of cloud. We've heard from a number of CIOs how they're thinking about cloud in the coming decade. And first of all, Anna, welcome back to theCUBE. Thanks for participating. It's great to see you again. It's great to see you, Dave. And I'm so excited to be here with you again. So hopefully we'll be doing this soon. I hope in 2021 we'll be able to be face to face that everybody out there will miss you all. Now, Anna, in a lot of respects, you think about the CIO role, something that you're intimately familiar with. And it's unique because she or he has a very wide observation space across the company. You know, where's a GM or a business line manager? They're most concerned with their respective business. The CIO, they got to worry about the whole enchilada. And we've heard a lot in this program about digital transformation. We've heard a lot of course in the past couple of years. A lot of it was lip service, but digital transformation, it's no longer optional. What's changed in your view in the way that businesses are going about it? You know, Dave, I mean, from my perspective, it's interesting and this year in particular has been really telling for us, right? So I think before many companies were thinking about, hey, I want to be online. I want to grow my revenues with digital. I want to have a presence. But what's happened actually this year with COVID in particular, is that it's gone from being kind of a good to have, you know, to really a fundamental necessity. We must have it. And so when I talk to CIOs today, they're really thinking about different kinds of things than before, not just going digital, but how do I enable my people to work remotely, right? I've got to enable that. How do I bring the agility and the flexibility that I need in our business, especially with these new ways of working, right? How do I look at business resiliency, you know, not just from a, you know, something happens and then how do I recover from it? But also how do I help our company and our people then actually spring forward and grow from where we are? So it's gone from a topic that was happening at the CIO, maybe at the business level, but now it's really also a fundamental CEO and board conversation. And so now we're seeing the CIOs having to present to boards, you know, what is our digital transformation or our digital strategy? So I wonder what you've seen in that regard. I mean, I'm interested in what role, you know, cloud plays in supporting those digital initiatives, but more specifically, you know, cloud migration came, you know, off the charts in terms of interest because of COVID, but you had those that were, you know, deep into cloud had a lot of experience and those maybe not as much. Are you seeing any kind of schism in the marketplace where there's maybe a great advantage to those who really had years of experience and maybe a disadvantage to those who didn't or is there kind of an equilibrium you're seeing in the marketplace? How do you see that playing out? Yeah, I mean, you know, what I'm seeing is that I think there used to be a spectrum of CIOs in effect, you know, the ones that were kind of a little bit, you know, forward, ahead on the cloud, both on cloud infrastructure as well as SaaS, right? And what are the services that we have? And then there were some that were really, you know, trying to think about what's the security, you know, implications of the cloud and, you know, is it more expensive? And, you know, so there was this spectrum of CIOs. And I think now what's happened is there's such a business imperative that I think CIOs are saying, look, I'm either gonna survive, you know, in this new world with the agility and the flexibility that I need. And so cloud, you know, I'm seeing a lot of CIOs really saying, okay, cloud is not just fashionable, but it's in and a necessity, right? And we must do it. And I think, frankly, the CIOs that don't embrace the cloud and that level of agility are going to struggle, right? It's really a personal imperative for a CIO in addition to sort of for the company. So a lot of times we talk about, you know, the three dimensions of people process and technology and I'm interested in your thoughts on how cloud has affected those traditional structures and the value chains. I mean, you got some people are really good at tech, some people are really good at people, some people are really good at process. Has the cloud affected that? Has it upended it, changed it in any way? Yeah, I mean, let's like unpack that a little bit, you know, Dave, because if you think about process, I mean, one of the interesting things about the cloud is that, and if you think about the cloud as going all the way from like I as a sort of infrastructure all the way up the stack to actually providing business processes embedded, you know, in a SaaS service, then from a process perspective and for CIOs, it's really upended how they think about business process re-engineering in their companies. If I think even, you know, five years ago where you would have a whole organization that's focused on business process re-engineering, you do that, it takes a long time, you know, you get a consultant maybe to help you and then you work through that process. If you look at a SaaS service like AnaPlan today where we, our goal is for example, to orchestrate business performance, we are a SaaS business planning platform, we've incorporated into our platform that business process, right? So the role of the CIO relative to business process and effect changes, right? Now it's about how to leverage a cloud infrastructure and then how do you enable the customizations on top of that? But generally speaking, that's a lot easier than having to think about re-engineering the whole company. If you think about the technology stack, obviously the cloud embeds a lot of technology, you know, in the cloud, right? So you have a lot of native services that are available to you. That is awesome from a talent perspective, you know, because before maybe you need to have, you know, need to have database experts or, you know, Kubernetes experts and not that we don't need those today, but many of those capabilities come, you know, native in the cloud today. So in effect, how it helps the CIO is to provide sort of this ecosystem of talent kind of embedded in what the cloud provider does, right? So I wonder, so let's stay on that for a minute. So I remember before Amazon announced AWS in 2006, the CIO said to me, yeah, I'm thinking about, maybe I don't need to run my own email, right? So of course, we've seen the classification of businesses, which to your point, you know, makes things simpler and that I can focus on other areas and not to worry about, you know, managing infrastructure to support apps. At the same time, you've had this proliferation of cloud. You mentioned, of course, that you're with Anaplan, you see, you got Workday, you got Salesforce, you got ServiceNow, Oracle apps and people struggle, okay, how do I get these things talking to other? There's that, worried about that data layer. So there's this new level of complexity. How do you see that playing out in the next decade? Yeah, you know, we used to say that, you know, we sort of shift what we do at a certain level and now as an organization, we start to look at kind of higher value outcomes, right? And so I see that happening and you're absolutely right. The conversations that I have with customers now are, hey, you know, there's things that are enabled by the cloud and then on top of that, you need a set of APIs or connectors or ways to get data in and out of a particular system or ways to link. In our case, we're linking with Salesforce, to Anaplan, to Workday or other tools, right? And so you start to think more about the business outcome that you want. The CIO needs to be focused on that instead of maybe sort of the fundamentals of the technology, those come for you. And then it's really more about the partnership with the business side, right? To say, okay, what is it that you're trying to do and can I enable that through my cloud architecture, the Workdays, the Adobe's or the Salesforce's of the world? So I think the conversation is changing. And from my perspective, what's really cool about that is it brings the CIO to really makes the CIO a business and thought leader, a strategic leader, right? Because the IT shop is not just talking tech. The IT shop has to talk a lot more about the outcome that they're trying to deliver. So, I mean, in the early days of cloud, I just want to pick up on what you just said. I mean, a lot of people in IT saw the cloud as a threat to their livelihoods. And I think I'm inferring from your statements that we're largely through that dynamic. And the CIO is now really trying to make the cloud platform for transformation and monetization or whatever other organizational goal might be saving lives or better government. Is that sort of how you see it, that the role has changed for that? I know, I mean, I talked to so many companies and we're still going through that transition. So I don't think we're completely over the hump of cloud all day everywhere. But at the same time, I think what the CIOs really focused on these days is really around business agility and business outcomes for their partners. By the way, that's one of the things. The second thing, especially these days is around people, collaboration, communication. How do we facilitate interaction of people, whether inside or outside of the company? And so that's a very different conversation for the CIO. It doesn't mean that we're not still having the basic conversation of how safe is the cloud? What security do you have built into the cloud, right? But I think, frankly, Dave, that we've crossed the chasm where before it used to be, hey, I'm a lot more secure on-prem. And given the tremendous focus that the cloud providers and SaaS companies have put on security, I see many more companies feeling very at ease. And in fact, telling their organizations, right? We actually need to switch to the cloud, including large companies that have compliance issues, or large financial companies, many of those are making that switch as well. Well, it's interesting, we talked about security. I mean, I think it's kind of a two-edged sword, right? Because I think a lot of, frankly, I think a lot of executives early days used security as a way to sort of kick the can down the road. But the reality was the cloud, better or worse, you can make that argument, but it's different. And so, different concerns people, but it's still at the end of the day, bad security practices, Trump, good security. And so that's what we've seen so many times, the shared responsibility model. And so people are still learning there. So security is almost this beast in and of itself. I'm interested in your thoughts on the priorities. I mean, are customers, are they streamlining their tech investments? I mean, the major focus, as you pointed out, on cloud has been, it's a driver of agility and shifting resources as we talked about, but there's this constant cost pressure. You know, the procurement, looking at the Amazon bill, do you see a lot of the same going forward? Or do you think the value equation is shifting such that there'll be, maybe, IT is less cost pressure, is always going to be cost pressure, I know, but more value producer. I think you're right. I mean, I see it and I see it. Over the last six months, I've seen it really accelerate where CIOs are thinking about three things. And one is business resiliency. And when I talk about business resiliency, I talk about the ability to recover from crap that happens, you know, whether it's pandemics or, you know, global events and shifts that companies have to accommodate, right? So that's one thing that I see them thinking about the second one that we talked about a little bit is just agility. You know, I see them really focused on that and the cloud enables that. And, you know, the third one in conversations is really speed innovation because, you know, when companies are talking to cloud providers and particularly SaaS companies, what I see them talking about is, look, I've got this particular need and it would take me, you know, two years to do it with a legacy player because of, you know, I've got to do this on-prem but you have the fundamentals built in and I think I can do it with you in three months. So I think, you know, business resiliency, both to grow and to recover from stuff, agility and innovation are really three fundamental levers that I see for movement to the cloud, right? And any one of those at these days, I mean, it's funny, depending on who you talk to, any one of those can propel a CIO to make that choice. And when they have all of that together, they have a lot more lift in effect as a CIO. They have a lot more leverage, right? In terms of what they can do for their companies. Well, let's stay on innovation. I mean, innovation, I've said many times in tech, you know, for decades, it came from Moore's law. I mean, it seems so 90s to even say that. But it's true. So what's going to drive innovation in the coming years? I'm interested in your perspective on how machine intelligence and AI and ML and cloud, of course, play into that innovation agenda. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting, you know, I see it a lot in our business with Anna Plan. Innovation comes from the ability to bring in sort of what you do internally and match it with what's available in the external world, and you mentioned it earlier, data. Data is like the new currency that's like software, it's the world now, we talk about data, right? And I think what's really gonna drive innovation is being able to have access to the world's data. Once a company builds this digital DNA, this digital foundation and is able to have access to that data, then you start to make decisions, you start to offer services, you start to bring intelligence that wasn't available before, right? And that's a really powerful thing for any company, whether you're doing forecasting and you need to sort of bring the world's data, whether you're a agricultural company, and in these days, innovation comes in the form of speed, being able to just deliver something new to an audience faster. So to me, the cloud enables all of that, the ability to bring in data. And then on top of that, I mean, think about all the AIML innovation that's happening around the world. We just launch an offer actually to be able to do forecasting, intelligent forecasting on top of the cloud. We partner with AWS forecast for that. If we didn't have a cloud platform to do that and a set of APIs, being digital that way really enables us the opportunity to match one plus one equals 100 really and bringing the power of that to get two companies together to be able to enable that type of innovation. Well, that's interesting. It reminds me of one of my friends, Ed Walsh, who's the CEO of a startup called Chaos Search. And he used the statement, he said, we're standing in the shoulders of the giants. We're not trying to recreate it. And I think what you just said is the same thing. You're sort of relying on others to build out cloud infrastructure. Totally. So here's a totally left field question. When you hear all the talks about breaking up big tech, is that irrelevant to you because you figured, okay, the cloud's going to be there. It's maybe more about search or it's about Facebook or Amazon's dominance. Interestingly, Microsoft's really not in those discussions anymore. They were the center of it back in the morning. I know, I know. But as a head of development for a company, does that even factor into the equation or do you kind of not worry about that? No, I mean, I'll be honest. For me personally, what I do is I compartmentalize my world, right? In a sense, I view the partnerships and we have partnerships with Google and AWS and Microsoft and others, right? So I view those as part of an opportunity to really provide an ecosystem set of solutions to customers and those are very powerful. I think those partnerships enable companies like ours, like SaaS companies to innovate faster, right? And so I compartmentalize and I say, those things are wonderful. I don't know why you would wanna break up those companies. At the same time, part of what you're referring to has to do with more the social and the consumer elements of what's going on. But as a business leader, I really focus on what the power is, particularly in the enterprise. What is it that we can do for global enterprise companies? And at least in my mind, those two things tend to be separate. A couple of things you said there that triggered my mind. One was ecosystems. We've been talking about data. One of our guests in this program, Alan Nance, has been talking about ecosystems and the power of ecosystems. And I definitely see cloud as a platform to allow data sharing across those clouds and then to form ecosystems and share data in ways that we really couldn't have half a decade or even longer ago. And that seems to be where a lot of the innovation is going to occur. Some of the people talk about the flywheel effect, but it's the power of many versus the resources of a few. And I'm such a big believer in the ecosystem play. And part of that is because frankly, even over the last 20 years, the skills that are required and the knowledge that is required is so specialized, Dave. If you think about AIML and all the algorithms that we need to know and the innovation that's happening there. And so I really don't think that there's any one company that can serve a customer alone, right? And if you think about it from a customer perspective, their made up of, their business is made up of needs from a lot of different parties that they're putting together to accommodate their business outcome. And so the only way to play right now in tech is in a collaborative way in an ecosystem way. I think the more that companies like ours work with other companies on these partnerships. And frankly, by the way, I think in the past, many companies that have made bold announcements and they would say, oh, I'm partnering with so-and-so and I've got this great partnership and then nothing would happen. Like it was just a lot of talk. But I think what's actually happening now and it's enabled by the cloud is we have much more of a show me culture, right? We can actually say, okay, well, let's say AnaPlan is partnering with Google, show me. Show me what you're actually doing. And I see our customers asking for references of how these ecosystem partnerships are playing and because these stories are out there more, I think partnerships are actually much more feasible and real and pragmatic. Yeah, Ana, we call those Barney deals. You know, I love you, you love me, we do a press release and then nothing ever happens. That's right, that's right. And I think that's not gonna work going forward, Dave, right? People are asking for a lot more transparency. And so when we think about ecosystems, they really want the meat on the bone, right? They don't want just announcements that don't really help their business move forward. Yeah, and you know, the other thing too, we come back to data, it's always comes back to data, right? Every conversation with the data that's created out of that ecosystem is going to throw off, you know, new capabilities and new data products, data services. And that to me is a really exciting, you know, new chapter, I think of cloud. Yeah, and it's interesting, you know, the conversations I'm having now are about data and believe it or not, also about metadata, right? Because people are trying to analyze what's happening with the cloud, you know, among cloud providers, what are customers doing with the data, right? How are they using data? How often are they accessing data security, you know, from that perspective, looking at who's accessing what? So the data conversation and the metadata conversation are truly enabled by the cloud and their key. And they weren't that easy to do in a prior, you know, legacy sort of environment. This is a great point, I'm glad you brought that up because in the legacy environment, all that metadata, that data about the data is locked inside of these systems. And if you're going to go across clouds and you're going to have it secure and governed, you've got to have that metadata visibility and a point of control that actually can see that and can manage it. So thank you for that point. And thank you, Anna, for coming on theCUBE and participating in theCUBE on cloud. It's been great having you. Thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure. All right, keep it right there. Everybody more from theCUBE on cloud right after this short break.