 from theCUBE studios in Palo Alto and Boston. It's theCUBE, covering IBM Think. Brought to you by IBM. Welcome back to theCUBE. I'm Stu Miniman and this is theCUBE's coverage of IBM Think 2020, the digital experience. We're getting to talk to the IBM executive, their customers and their partners, where they are around the globe. Really happy to bring back to the program one of our CUBE alumni, Michelle Paluso. She is the senior vice president of digital sales and chief marketing officer for all of IBM. Michelle, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you so much, Stu. It's great to have you as we get ready for Think 2020. Boy, Michelle, working for a big company like IBM, I can only imagine how much current global activities have been impacting you. Anybody, if you turn on TV, the ads that you're seeing are obviously have a very different manner than what we were seeing before this happened. And the focus of Think, of course, really centers around what is happening, how you're helping IBM customers and partners through there. So give us a little bit of insight as to how much the team has had to rapidly move towards the new reality. Well, like our company has been very focused on a couple of major priorities. First of all, our people, keeping them safe and healthy and thinking about what are we learning from all this? How do we use new tools in different ways? How do we work in agile ways that will outlast even this current crisis? Secondly, of course, our clients, we have pivoted hard to the essential offerings for recovery and transformation our clients need most right now. Things like business continuity, things like enabling Watson to engage all your customers virtually, things like supply chain resiliency, things like increased agility on the cloud, health and human services. These are new offerings, new bundles that we know our clients need most right now. And so we've been pivoting hard. Third thing as a marketer, of course, I've been very focused on, how does the brand show up in this moment? How do we think about this cadre of events we used to do in person? How do we transform and think about generating demand in a virtual world, really improving the end to end digital experiences of everything we do? And of course, lastly, it's about how do we help create a cure? How do we help make sure that we speed this process along? So we've done a lot from taking super computing power and really applying it to the fight to find cures and find vaccines. We have donated things like Watson Assistant so that governments can get access to free chat bots to help their customers with knowledge and information about COVID-19. So lots of things we're doing across all those friends, it's certainly been a time of really rapid transformation. And the most important thing we can do is listen and pivot quickly. Yeah, really important points, Michelle. Listening to customers, I'm curious, what are you hearing from customers? Obviously, they have lots of challenges and therefore it probably changed a little bit how they think about who they partner with, who they go to to be a trusted partner in these times. So what feedback are you getting from customers? How do they look at the relationship with IBM and your ecosystem that might be a little different than before? Well, we're talking to customers more than ever, as you can imagine. And I think we have seen seven offerings, seven things that our clients really are learning going through this experience and need help with. And those range, as I mentioned earlier, from supply chain continuity and resiliency to the new cybersecurity landscape. There's so many different and unique cyber risks right now, virtual teaming, virtual work from home, business continuity and resiliency, increased agility on the cloud, things like making sure that we're supporting the health and human services of our people. So those are some of the examples of what matters most to clients right now, virtually engaging with customers with Watson. So those are the things that we have pivoted hard to make sure that we help our clients with the essential process of recovery and transformation because there isn't going, there's no back to normal. I mean, we're very convinced that this is a rethink and think 2020 is coming at the perfect time. As businesses start to slowly reopen their doors, it's going to be a very important conversation with our clients on how we accelerate recovery and transformation and transformation is important because we have learned a lot and there are some things that we need to go back and improve and there are some lessons we've learned that we can take with us into this sort of new world. So it's a challenging time for sure, but it's also one that is ripe with opportunities and I've seen so much creativity and so much dedication as we had to remake think in 60 days, a totally new platform, new capabilities, new content and at three X of volume. So the teams have done a remarkable job and I'm excited for the conversation. What I'm curious what you're hearing is customers that are starting or in the midst of that journey, is the global pandemic, is it accelerating and what they're doing? Is it stalling of them? I think because they're not trying to keep things accelerating. It's absolutely accelerating. And I think it's really two things. One is how does the team operate? And I've been very passionate for my entire career about agile as the discipline, small cross-functional teams lined on a mission, shared values, really have an incredible ability using the agile rituals to prioritize and to move quickly and to optimize. That is more important than ever before. That is what is enabling this more rapid cycles we're seeing and then I think are critical. What should we be taking as lessons and new practices that will continue in the future? Well, from a client perspective, I think we're going to see where digital has always been mission critical. I think there's going to be incredible and continued rapid acceleration to a digital environment. And that's not just outside in. Do we have a good mobile app? Do we have a good web experience? That's inside out. How do we digitize the call center so that customers can get virtual answers with chatbots? How do we digitize and use AI to improve HR, supply chain, fundamental manufacturing, operational procedures? So that's one thing I think will be a permanent change. Secondly, I think we're going to see the same thing on the cloud. I think clients that had three to five year journeys on their roadmaps of how they think about their cloud architecture and what workloads they were going to move to the public cloud, almost all of them are saying that now has to be compressed. So I think we're going to see more rapid acceleration and adoption and journey to cloud. I think there's some new things that we'll see in terms of blockchain and cybersecurity and others that will also reimagine the landscape of our clients. On the people side, we're adjusting, right? And we're going to have to figure out this new way of being, this new way of normal, which might be a bit more hybrid than we're used to. Sometime in the office, sometime at home, I fundamentally believe more agile teams, truly agile as a mission. So I think these are just some of the areas that we're going to see a reimagination of how work gets done and what work gets done to make us more resilient, you know, stronger and to emerge from what has been an immensely challenging period for so many and personally so for so many. How do we take some lessons from this? So we emerge stronger. All right, so Michelle, I was looking back at when we first arrived on theCUBE and when you were just coming on IBM at CMO and you know, you talked then about how you've always worked for digital companies. So here in 2020, global pandemic of course, you know, is on everyone's mind, but when people leave Think, how should they be thinking about IBM? It's, you know, what is different? You know, and what is the same? Over a hundred year old company, one of the most trusted brands in the industry, but new leadership with Arvind and Jim. And how do you want people to think of IBM going forward? I think times of great challenge are actually meant for the IBM brand. I think that our clients are looking more than ever for partners they can trust who can help them apply the world's most innovative technology with deep expertise and understanding of how work actually happens across these industries and with a blanket of kind of security and frankly trusted responsible stewardship that matters more. So I hope our clients and our business partners because we have an immensely rich agenda for our business partners. I hope they emerge knowing that IBM is their essential partner for recovery and for transformation. And there is simply nothing we won't do to help them make their business stronger and so doing to build a stronger, more resilient world. Well, Michelle Paluso, congratulations to the team on everything to make Think 2020 digital come and really appreciate being able to participate with theCUBE. Thanks, Drew, I really appreciate it. Stay tuned for lots more coverage from theCUBE. I'm Stu Miniman. Thanks for watching.