 It's The Cube. Here is your host, Jeff Crick. Hi, Jeff Crick here with The Cube. We are on the ground in Santa Clara, California, really the hardest Silicon Valley, just across the street from R&B, Intel's headquarters. And we're at the EMC Silicon Valley headquarters. And we're at the ACG Silicon Valley Can Big Data Make Big Money panel. We had tonight hosted by John Furrier, and we're psyched to have a few of the panelists. It's been a few minutes where they share the information that they shared at the panel if you weren't fortunate enough to be here. And I'm joined by my next guest, Gavin Sherry, VP of R&D for Data at Pivotal. Welcome. Thank you. So that was a pretty good panel, had a lot of spirited conversation. I wanted to jump in though on a point when John, towards the end, really asked, can you summarize what's going on in terms of big impact in two words? And you, without hesitation, said open source. So talk a little bit about open source. I mean, people know kind of Linux has been around for a long time, but how is it really fundamentally changing the way things get done? Yeah, it's entering really into the enterprise space now. It's becoming a new buying pattern within open source. We're noticing more and more that open source is becoming an RFP kind of criteria for big traditional enterprises. And what we believe is that it's giving kind of, you know, the kind of optionality that, you know, large enterprise really needs in order to remain competitive. And it's allowing them to determine which software they should use within their enterprise. There's more and more software being produced in the world these days. And in order to select which software is appropriate for a particular company requires increasing due diligence. And with open source, you can go to GitHub, you can work out which projects, you can satisfy what requirements, you can look at how many contributors there are, how active the communities are, and then make your decision. It's very different to how software sells used to work. Right, right. And it's not really about the price, right? It's the software, people say software's, you know, open source is free like a puppy, you know, this is a lot that comes with it besides a puppy. But it's a different way of software development. Absolutely, yeah. IT budgets aren't growing dramatically like they have in the past, but they're also not shrinking. And so the same amount of IT spend is being allocated to different kinds of software. It's often open source, as I mentioned before. We're finding that enterprises willing to spend money on this next generation of software. But they wanted to have that open core at the heart of the software. Right, and we were just at Open Compute Project Summit, which was really kicked off by Facebook, a really interesting phenomenon where they, you know, run big data centers. And they decided to open source the way they run their data centers to help other people build better clouds. Fascinating when traditionally you would think that would be core IP. Why would you do something like that? Right, it really is a fundamental change in how technology is working. Recently, we established with our partners Hortonworks, IBM, and so on a similar program called the Open Data Platform, which is a means by which we'll hope to push a standard for enterprise big data computing. Right, right. Now you guys are big partners with GE. And we've been out to the GE software facility. It's amazing, you know, they set up out here in Silicon Valley. They have like 500 people in Pleasant and it's grown like crazy. Talk a little bit about, because that's really the front lines. You and your partnership with GE are really on the front lines of this internet of things. And I'm sure people have heard of industrial internet, internet of things that's coming. They think it's all about ads on their phone, but it's really much more than that. Talk a little bit about what you guys are doing with the GE and some of the examples if you can share of where this is really becoming real. It's not just vapor. Right, yeah. GE is not only a partner, they're also an investor in our company. And so large was the opportunity that they saw in big data and in pivotal that they decided to take that investment. One very interesting use case that we worked on with GE recently was around aviation. And by recording information from engine sensors, they were able to determine where and tear upon individual parts within those engines and provide guidance to some of the largest companies in the world, airlines like United and so on, about how to change flying habits so as to reduce wear and tear in different parts of the world. This is where, as you said, like the rubber hits the road. Right, right. So I want to circle back on one last thing on open source where I let you go. Because I think it's a fascinating thing about is really the juice that engineers get being contributors in open source projects while they still work for a company. It's almost like they've got kind of a dual role. And in fact, a lot of them take leadership positions on projects. In terms of managing that, how do you manage where somebody should spend their time? What kind of impact does that do in terms of employee morale and the juice that they get from that that makes, again, open source kind of this new way to drive innovation? Yeah, open source and top engineering tell it today go hand in hand that it's a kind of lifestyle decision for a top engineer that'll often work not just within the office on the project but outside of office hours as well. It's not so much that I'm interested in driving up efficiency of R&D spend. It's more that when you have that level of engagement when it really becomes the most passionate thing in a person's life, the impact is not just incremental. It's orders of magnitude difference on a relative to innovation level, quality of code and so on. Excellent. So I'll give you one last word before we sign out. Any favorite story that you like to tell people about the reality of big data you're at a dinner party? Someone says, what is this big data thing? I don't understand. Is there a favorite kind of anecdote you like to use? Yeah, I guess it's more of a general trend. Recently, we've seen massive value migration from traditional industries like the transportation industry. For example, toward next generation solutions, Uber, Lyft and so on. When you look at the magnitude of that value migration, measured in the billions of dollars, it's just amazing to sit back and think about what the potential is for other industries. Well, it's funny because on the panel, somebody asked a question from the audience. Can you imagine any industry that's not going to be disrupted by this? And who wouldn't have said two years ago, the taxi, I mean, the taxi industry would have been the last thing you would have guessed. Which we were all quiet. Yes, exactly. The answer is no. Well, Gavin, thanks for stopping by. Thanks for being part of the panel. I appreciate it. Gavin, Sherry, VPR and D for data for Pivotal. I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE. We're on the ground in Silicon Valley at the ACG. Can big data make big money? Thanks for watching.