 Live from the Mandalay Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada, it's The Cube at IBM Insight 2014. Here are your hosts, John Furrier and Dave Vellante. Welcome back, we're here live, I was always mixing it up here in The Cube, live in Las Vegas for IBM Insight. This is the show about big day, this word all comes together around insights, analytics, and I'm John Furrier, we're with Dave Vellante. I'm John Furrier, we're with Dave Vellante and Tim Crawford, out in the field, getting all the data, appreciate the comments on CrowdChat. I want to do a quick segment and then we're going to bring in Bob Patiano to come in and talk with us because we've got some short time. Give us a quick take on keynotes and observations, I mean it's really got some energy here. It does. This is a big change from past IBM conferences, there's definitely a lot more energy as well as the conversation has evolved too. It seems to be kind of moving up the stack a bit, we're looking more at kind of the culmination of where data cloud, but there is definitely more of an emphasis now on the customer engagement piece, which is why we're doing all this in the first place. So everybody talks about how their company is data driven, they want to be data driven. When you look at the CIOs that you work with, what's the bell curve look like? Are they really data driven? What do they need to be to become data driven? Should they become data driven? Yeah, great question. They absolutely should become data driven. The problem is we're still in the early days, we're still in the early infancy of some of this move along the continuum of adopting data within IT. So IT getting more involved as opposed to marketing or other line of business groups. So I do think that we're going to start to see that shift and we are starting to see that shift, but it's not the masses yet. There's a lot of foundational work around cloud, around the infrastructure that needs to take place first to be able to capitalize on some of these other pieces. What are some of the other big mega trends that you're seeing within the CIO community that are relevant to sort of what's going on here at Insight? Yeah, the first piece is around cloud. How do we start to put together a holistic cloud strategy that helps us kind of up level the conversation but also gives us ready to adopt some of these new analytics and data strategies? You can't take your traditional infrastructure, your traditional methodologies and apply some of the things that are being discussed here at Insight and expect them just to work. It's a whole different methodology, it's a whole different process and that's part of the conversation in terms of how it's starting to evolve and how it's changing. So Tim, one of the things we've noticed is that when you look at these new emerging companies that whether they're data driven or they're born in the cloud, whatever buzzword you want to use, and I'm thinking about companies like Uber or New Innovations like Fitbit or Airbnb and the like they seem to be leveraging technologies but not worrying about owning them. And if you think about historically industries have sort of built their own vertical stack, whether it's design, production, manufacturing, distribution, sales, partnerships and everything's sort of hardened within that stack. It seems like these new organizations are riding on top of this digital matrix, if you will. So my question is can the traditional Fortune 1000 ride on top of that or is their stack too hardened? Are they open? Are they receptive to that? Should they be receptive to that? Yeah, I think great questions and I think this is where it kind of hits home especially for the traditional enterprise CIO. And we heard a bit about this in the keynotes this morning, right? There's a lot of discussion around the airline industry and I think that's a great example of what's an industry that I've worked with. At the end of the day you still have those legacy systems as a CIO. You still have those legacy systems you have to contend with, right? You're not an Airbnb, you're not an Uber, you can't just build from the ground up to start out with. You have to consider that you have those new aspects that you want to take advantage of, but at the same time you have this huge portfolio that you may not have the right economics to be able to make that shift yet. And so it's a balancing act for the CIO to start to evolve and move through this. I think the challenge is how quickly can they move through that progression? It's a time question as opposed to an interest or a move of whether they should or shouldn't. Tim, I got to ask you about the social engagement. Your comment on CrowdChat got a lot of votes social engagement, outpacing other more common sources of data. I really want to drill down on this because we're going to have Bob Pciano come on. I want to get his executive opinion but you're very involved in social media. You're involved in our beta with CrowdChat and you're out there as a probe in the social sphere. We're seeing all the dynamics. Engagement has always been like a business way of data warehousing. Systems of engagement. I mean, come on. That's like a data thing. But now engagement is a completely different animal when you've got mobile infrastructure. Internet of things is humans, aspect of it. You're actually touching customers. You're seeing this trend with IBM is pretty solid. Social business really is well positioned to be that e-business for this generation. What's your take? Where are they? Are they delivering? Are they in a good position? What's your analysis? Well, I think the first spot that you have to look at is are they having the right conversation? And I think they are having the right conversation in terms of connecting the dots. You have to think about how people are engaging, how customers are engaging with different services and different products. And it all starts with one of these. It starts with a mobile phone. I mean, everyone's got a mobile phone. I tweeted something, a quote that came out of the keynote, talking about that the mobile phone in your pocket is about a hundred times more powerful than the average satellite spinning around the earth today. I mean, that's a huge change. But if you look at how humans can go up like the Google executive in a parachute and break the record for Bumgart and it's like red bull what? So if I take my smart phone up with that, I mean, what impact does that have? But I think the first step is you've got to say the right words. And what I am starting to see with IBM is they're saying the right words. They're connecting the dots of why we're talking about technology, why we're talking about cloud, why we're talking about data is to get us better at customer engagement. And so that's the first step. The second step is actually being able to connect the dots technologically so it doesn't look like just silos of expertise but it looks like an actual cohesive portfolio. And that's the piece we have to dig a little further into. I think IBM is doing a great job at hanging the story together but I think they're really missing the boat on social engagement and it relates to long tail distribution. Let me give you my reason on this. Get your take on it. The long tail concept is not known to, it's not a foreign concept to internet companies, internet infrastructure, search engines and content, popular content, high traffic and then targeted content. We talked to Kirk who's the physicist, computational analysis, the values in the long tail, right? So the long tails where these data points were that were traditionally thrown away by software packages as skewed standard deviation off the medium, throw it away when in reality whether it's a conversation or data point, these key long tail data points are really awesome, valuable content pieces. They are and that gets back to the personalization and intimacy of the engagement itself. So now it's no longer about trying to figure out where is the mass and adopting to address the masses but it's trying to figure out how does John want his pieces and how does Tim want his pieces and how does Dave want his pieces. And that becomes your long tail. So you still have to address the masses and I don't think that goes away but that long tail becomes immensely important especially as we start thinking about one-offs. Of course that's our religion here at the Q. We love broadcasting to the long tail, using the crowd chat, having all the tools, the social engagement with things like the social lounge here which is an awesome event. The VIP got my little badge on here, VIP influencer. IBM is doing an amazing job with influencers outreach, bringing that social collaboration. I want to end it there and I want you to just tell us what you got on the agenda, what you got planned for this week, what events you're going to, what meetups, what kind of, where's the parties, give us a quick overview. Yeah I think it's jumping between the different discussions. So trying to cover not just what's happening here at Impact in terms of the sessions and the keynotes but also the one-off conversation. So we talk about the long tail but it's the conversations that are happening here in the lounge it's also the conversations that are happening in the hallway. But also look at the expo and I want to see how the ecosystem is starting to evolve too because now as we start to think about how people are buying these products and services it's not just about how one company is buying a product or service but it's about the ecosystem and so we're buying into ecosystems and that's another piece I'm going to be looking at. Well we love it. Dave and I love working with our crowd chat venture. We're introducing this new concept called Relationship Craft which is bad not the social interest craft which is exploding right now and I think the relationships in social is key. We love it. IBM is really a great opposition. I love their social business and I got to say folks out there if you remember the web e-business was a concept IBM pioneered. You don't talk about that anymore because everyone does e-business called e-commerce. I think social business is that same kind of spot where it's early and it's just going to be really really relevant. So great to have you involved in all of our collaboration. Tim, Tim, Crawford Influencer and a friend of the Cube. We'll be right back with our next guest for this short break.