 Live from Las Vegas, it's The Cube. Covering Informatica World 2018. Not you by Informatica. Okay, welcome back everyone. This is The Cube here at Informatica World 2018 in Las Vegas. Cube's exclusive coverage, I'm John Furrier here for the wrap up of day two of Informatica World wrapping up the show coverage. Peter Burris been my co-host all week. She found us at wikibond.org, SiliconANGLE, and The Cube, and Jim Kobus, lead researcher on AI analytics, big data for wikibond, SiliconANGLE and The Cube as well. Guys, let's kind of analyze and dissect what we heard from the conversations, Peter and Jim. We heard from their customers, we heard from their executive management, top partners, and their top executives. So interesting, and Jim, you've been at the analysts one-on-ones, the keynotes. Good show, I thought it was well done, the messaging, again, continuing the brand, 25th anniversary of Informatica, which, you know, that's okay for me, but it's really not 25 years old. It's really like five years old. The private equity came in, they took the legacy and made it new. Well, they're a continually renewed company. They're a very different company from what they were even 10 years ago, and they've got a fairly aggressive roadmap in terms of evolving into the world of AI and so forth, so they continually renew. As every vendor that hopes to survive the inflection points, it must. Jim, what was your takeaway from your sessions? I mean, you saw the keynotes, you saw the messaging, you had a chance to sit down one-on-one and ask some tough questions. You heard the hallway conversation amongst the other analysts and customers. What's your personal takeaway? My personal takeaway is that Informatica understands that their future must be in the cloud and a subscription model. That means they need to get closer to their core established cloud partners, Microsoft, Azure, AWS, Google. At this show, Microsoft, the most important new announcements at this show were all about further integration of the new ICCS, which is the Informatica, you know, integration and platform as a service offering into the Azure cloud. That was the most important new piece of news in terms of enabling their customers. They have many joint customers already to bring all of their Informatica assets more completely into the Azure cloud. That was quite important, but there was a lot of showing from AWS here on the main stage and so forth. And I, we expect further deepening of their, you know, Informatica footprint on AWS for those customers. So, A, Informatica's future and their customer's future is in public clouds. And I think Informatica knows that the prem-based deployments will decline over time. But there's, this'll be a- They're still good now, so the migration- Well, it's a hybrid cloud story. They have Informatica, a strong hybrid cloud story, in the same way that an IBM does or that a Hortonworks does, because most of their customers will have hybridized multi-cloud models for deployment of this technology for the long-term, really, with a emphasis on more public deployments. And I think it's understood. Peter, what's your thoughts? You had some great observations and questions I was listening to. You highlighted some of the digital business imperatives that you've been observing and researching and reporting on with the team. But also, these guys have been doing it themselves. Any takeaways from you on any change of landscape on digital business, the role of data, the role of the asset? What's your thoughts on that? Yeah, I think, if we look at what, the 25-year history, and Jim mentioned it, they've been a lot of inflection points. The thing that's distinguished Informatica for years is that it always was a company that sought to serve underserved data requirements. So it started out in, when relational database was the rage, it started out doing OLAP and new types of analytics. And then when that became, data warehouse became what it was, it became a data integration issue. And you can kind of see Informatica's always tried to be one step ahead of the needs of hardcore data people. And I think we're seeing that here, too, that they have got really, really smart people. They went private so that they could retool the company and they are introducing a portfolio that is very focused on the next needs, the next rounds of needs of data people. I think it's very positive. It's just a lot of cloud, too. They made it. They're a data pipeline pure player, par excellence. Well, I wouldn't say they're a data pipeline pure player. I think you're doing, you know. They're closest to anybody out there. But I think the key thing is, I think the key thing is that the right now, they're at the vanguard of talking about data as an asset, what it means to present data as an asset, tools that should provide for managing data as an asset, and they have all the pipeline and all the other stuff. You know, the catalog story that they have is very tied to that. The Claire story that they have is very tied to that. Data is very, very complex stuff, and it takes an enormous amount of time to deliver. I think checking the boxes on some of the things that I've observed over the years, going back to the early Hadoop days, streaming data requires some machine intelligence, obviously machine learning, AI, Claire, check. Ingestion of data, managing, getting it all in an intelligent, not a data lake or data swamp, in a fabric that's going to be horizontally scalable with APIs. Where horizontal and scalable actually means something. It means expanding out through APIs and finding new ways of leveraging data. And I think we can make a prediction here based on four years of being here that Informatica will probably be at the vanguard of the next round of data needs. So today we're talking about cloud versus on-premise. I wouldn't be surprised if in a year or two years, Informatica isn't talking more about how IoT data gets incorporated and utilized. And blockchain and blockchain. Yeah, IoT was not mentioned, nor was blockchain. I think those are kind of significant deficiencies in terms of what we're hearing at this show from Informatica in terms of strategic direction. Well, they had a great team. I think they had a great team. I expect to see more of that in coming years. Well, that's a double edged sword. When the hype's not there, they have a lot on sizzle and steak. So they got a lot of. But I say deficiencies, I mean, in terms of them strategic discussions of where they're going. Okay, so I got to ask you. I would like to have heard more of Peter's description. I would, let's get to that in a second, but I want to get your reaction on the whole enterprise catalog piece. Pretty much promoted by Jerry Helds, founder of Ingress, legend in the industry, Bruce Chisholm, really pumping that up. Their quote was, this is part of the most important product. Now, is that a board perspective? Is that really something that you guys believe? That's really organic. Metadata management is their core competency of all, and really their core asset inside of all their applications at Informatica. And that's what the big data catalog is all about. It's not just a data catalog, it's a metadata catalog for data discovery and so forth. Everything that is done inside of the Informatica portfolio requires a central metadata repository. And I think, and not only do I think, we Wikibon, our recent report on the big data market, focused on the big data catalog as being one of the key pieces of infrastructure going forward in multi-cloud. You know, there's not just Informatica, there's Alation, and there's Cloud-Darrot-Hortworks and IBM and others that are going deep on their big data catalogs. So you see that's a flagship product for these guys. Oh yeah. Well, let's put it this way. AI has been around since the late 1940s. The algorithms for doing AI have been around since the 40s, 50s, the algorithms have been around for years, but the point is that what's occurred recently is the introduction of technology that can actually run these algorithms, that can actually sustain the algorithms against very large volumes of data. So the technology's gotten to the point where you can actually do some of this stuff. You know, the catalog concept has been around for as long as database managers have been around. The problem was, is you can only build a catalog for just that database manager. The promise of building enterprise-wide catalogs, that dream has been in place for years. One of the worst two days of my life was flying back in Japan into New York and sitting in an IBM Information Model meeting for analysts. It was absolutely- Is that in the 40s or 50s? That was in the 80s, it was absolute hell. But the point is, is that Informatica is now- It was a project. Yeah, it was a project. Informatica is now bringing together a combination of technologies, including Clare, to make it possible to actually do catalog in a very active way. And that's trend-setting. I think they're right too. I think that's clearly- They're making good protocols. I got to say, you know, in watching them over five years, we've been cutting, this is our fourth year covering Informatica World. Our first meeting with, you know, Anil, when he was chief product officer, was 2014, and they did this re-invent. So we've seen the progression. They're right on track. And I think they have an opportunity with IoT and Blockchain. But the question I want to ask you guys is, this event, about 4,000 people, not a huge big data show, but it's really all about data. There's no distractions. And the fact that they can't even get a lot of IoT airtime means that there's been a lot of- They're really focused. So this is not like- They're really focused. This is not like a strata where everyone's, you know, marketing, you know, some tool or platform. These guys are down and dirty with the products. They're really focused on their core opportunities. You know, like Peter was saying. They're really focused on, you know, they're the premier. I've seen the data pipeline solution or platform vendor. The data pipeline is the center of the AI revolution. And so, you know, many ways, all of the forces, all the trends have converged to the advantage of Informatica as being the core go-to vendor for our complete data pipeline. So for all your requirements, including machine learning development. This is a show become the next show. There's one thing, there's one more thing that we have, we didn't hear blockchain, we didn't hear IoT, although there's a lot of conversation one-on-ones between customers and Informatica about some of those things. But there's one other thing we didn't hear, which I think is very telling and speaks to some of our trends. Didn't hear open source. Yeah. Open source was not once mentioned on theCUBE, except maybe you mentioned it once. Now, if we think about where the big data market was forged and where it was going to always remain, was going to be this big, huge open source play. And that has not happened. Informatica, by saying we're going to have a great individual product and we're going to create portfolio that works together is demonstrating that the way to show how the new compute model is going to work is to take a coherent integrated focused approach in how to do it. It's interesting. I mean, we could dissect this open source as a great observation because is there really open source needed if you have a pipeline things? I'd much rather have a question about open data, which I think the Azure deal points to is getting into hybrid cloud as fast as possible in a console. To me, that is so much more powerful than open source. Open APIs. Open APIs where I cannot get locked into Azure. Look, I think open source, I think open source is still important, but I'll bet you that the open source, if you start looking at what these guys are doing and others like them are doing, my guess is that we'll see open source vendors start saying, oh, so that's how you're going to do catalog. Okay, great. Well, let's take an open source approach to doing that. And Informatica's going to have to stay in front of that. They might be using some open source. It might not be a top line message, but let's go to the next level. Let's go, okay, let's go critical analysis on Informatica. What does Informatica need to do? Obviously, they got a tailwind. They got great timing with GDPR. You couldn't ask for a better time to showcase engineering data, governance, and application integration across clouds than now, right? So they're in a good spot. Where are they strong? What do they need to work on? Well, okay, let's just focus on GDPR because it is three days from now for the compliance date. GDPR, I mean, Informatica's had some good announcements at this show and prior to this show in terms of tools for discovery of all your PII and so forth, so you can catalog it in the big data catalog. What needs to be built up by them and other vendors as well is a more fully fleshed out GDPR compliance platform or portfolio ecosystem. There's a lot of things that are needed like a standardized consent portal so your customers can go in and look up their PII in your big data catalog and indicate their consent or their withdrawal of consent for you to use particular pieces of data for. That's like Hortonworks a few weeks ago at their data works in Berlin. They made an announcement related to such a portal. What I'm getting is that more vendors, including as every big data catalog vendor needs to have in their portfolio, and will, but I'm predicting within the next two years, a consent portal as one of several important components to enable not just GDPR compliance, but really compliance with any such privacy mandate. Or subject portal, a subject portal. That offers consent that then is verified. Yeah, for example. Here's what I'll say. That needs to be open sourced. Here's what I'll say, John. I would add, here's, and we had a conversation about it with Amit during the Chief Product Officer, or the President and Chief Product Officer. I think that if, is that what, that Informatica, similar to what we think, is on the right path. The world is moving to an acknowledgement that data has to be treated as an asset, that tooling is required so that you can do so, and that you have to re-institutionalize work, reorganize work, and rethink culturally what it means to use data as an asset. With penalties down the road, obviously you're on the horizon. Penalties and, you know, proxmit, you know, proxmit like GDPRs are from proxmit, but also, you know, big, like you're out of business if you don't do this kind of penalties. So, but one of the things that's going to determine that's going to gait their growth is how many people can they, will actually end up utilizing these technologies. And so if I were to have one thing that I think they absolutely have to do, we're coming out of a world that's focused on, we use process and process models and process-oriented tools to build applications. We're moving into a world where we use data, data methods, data models to build applications. This notion of a data-first world, as opposed to a process-first world, Informatica has to take a lead in what it means to be data-first, tooling for data-first, building applications that are data-first, and very importantly, that's how you're going to grow your user base. Ascension was really, Sajib was talking about data value, data change, data value change, or whatever you call it, data supply chains. I think there's going to be a series of data supply chains that are going to be well-formed, well-defined, and ones that are going to be dynamic. You're seeing it happening now. And related, actually, that's an interesting discussion, data value change, data supply change, but really data monetization chains, the whole GDPR phenomenon is that your customer's PI is their property and that you need their consent to use it, and then to the extent that they give you consent, on some level, the customer is expecting a return of value to them. Maybe monetization, maybe they make money for you. But you've got to, more enterprises have to start thinking of data as a product, and then they need to license the IP from whoever owns it. This is a huge issue. And vendors like Informatica need to understand that phenomenon and bake it, as it were, into their solution portfolio. Even if they're going to be in the right side of history on that or the wrong side, because you're right, and you just highlighted Peter's point, which is it's that data direction, not the process to your point. Data-first. If you own the data, it's got to be very dynamic. Okay, my final comment would be, and I mentioned this last night when we were talking, is that I think that things are clicking for them. I think they've got the tailwinds. I think they're smart enough on the product side. The trend is their friend. They've got the cloud deals in place. They're at a nice layer in the stack where they can be that Switzerland. You've got storage vendors underneath with a nice data layer. So in the position, with coming over the top cloud-native Kubernetes and containers. This is going to get messy for that. I didn't hear Kubernetes at all at this show. Hold on, hold on, let me finish, let me finish. This is going to be a robust Switzerland model where I don't think they can handle the onboarding of partners. I think they have a lot of partners now from their standpoint, but I think they might have an AWS factor where they're going to have to start thinking really hard about how to be efficient about onboarding partners. To your point about adoption, this is going to be a huge issue that could make a break-up. They could scale the partnership model through the APIs. They could have a robust ecosystem. And this show is 15,000. They can be a magnet brand inside Azure or a magnet brand inside AWS for how you think about building new classes of value, applications and others, with a data-first approach. Then a lot of interesting things are going to happen. Yeah, they could be a magnet brand to avoid getting disintermediated by their public cloud partners because Microsoft's got a portfolio, they could place it there, and by all kinds of other people. And by all kinds of other people. Everybody wants this. Everybody wants this. Everybody wants this. Yeah, everybody wants them. Not them. This is awesome, guys. Great job, Peter. Great to host with you, Jim. Great to have you on, making an appearance in between your meetings, one-on-ones in the analysts stuff. Great stuff. I'm a busy man. It's theCUBE here, wrapping up day two of coverage here at Informatical 2018. The trend is their friend. Data's at the center of the value proposition and more strategic ever data engineering governments and applications all happening right now. Regulations on the horizon, a cultural shift, cultural shift happening. And we're out here in the open doing it, sharing the data with you. Thanks for watching Informatical World 2018.