 Hi, Jeff Rick here with theCUBE. We're in the Palo Alto offices today for a CUBE conversation as part of our ongoing Women in Tech feature. We're really excited to have Randy Barshak, the CMO of X Matters in the office. Welcome, Randy. Hi, thanks for having me. Pleasure. So, and do a little research for this segment. Looked you up online. You've been around for a while, seen a lot of changes in the valley. I think the term we've heard before is a woman of the valley. A woman of the valley. I don't know how that sounds. No, that's a good thing. No, I mean. Better than a woman of the night. Even all the way back to organic, which to me is a special company is kind of a symbol of that time, of when things were just booming back in like 96, 97. People were dropping out of school to go start companies. VCs were throwing money around like crazy, and it was really the boom. So here we are now. So talk a little bit about kind of your perspective as you've seen this thing morph for the last, kind of like 20 years now. It's a little bit everything old is new again. That's true. I think people are still dropping out of school to start companies, maybe even more so now, and they're getting paid to do it. But some of what we're seeing now is very similar to what I think we saw back in 1999, 98, the first boom, or the first one right now. We're in the second and a half, it's boom 2.0. Right, boom 2.0. Boom 2.0. But it's, my perspective has changed because I've got several years under my belt now that I didn't have there. So with that, I think comes some cynicism for some of the unicorns and rainbows. That's right. Not last forever. You didn't have unicorns the last round. I remember the unicorns. That's true. It was all just rainbows. But also, having seen it through, I think as an executive in a company right now, you understand what's important and what's not important and what's more sustainable. So I think it's more fun this time around having some experience under my belt and being a little bit more realistic about things. And it seems, too, that this boom is really more enterprise-boomy. It's all about, to me, it almost reminds me of early ERP days, really this kind of transformational unlocking value at an enterprise level where little, tiny changes, 1% improvement, 1.5% improvement on a really big number really delivers a significant number. But let's back up again. I apologize. Why don't you give us a quick rundown on X Matters? Sure. So X Matters is a company that plugs intelligent communications into any business process. We started in the IT market where you would have a server going down at 2 o'clock in the morning, 500 people working in your IT department. And you really need to find the one or two or a handful of people that you need versus sending emails out to all 200 people and nobody responding. Everybody responds or no one responds when you have that scenario. So we really apply the intelligence both in terms of finding the person with certain skill sets that's available, that's responding, along with the business process, based on what's happening. What do I do if they respond or if they don't in a certain way? So it's the business process, the intelligence, and the communications all together. And now with cloud communications growing so much and you no longer needing to be dependent on a physical phone or a physical phone line, we're seeing uses in any imaginable business scenario. It could be I need 10 extra nurses to work this weekend. So I send something out with the internet of things. We're seeing a lot of devices now that can talk to us. They tell us they need help, but they need to find a human. So we find that human who's closest with that skill set that fits them and get them to respond as quickly as possible. So that's interesting. So you said we talked a little bit before we came on air. The next matters has been around a lot, but really there's some transformational stuff that's changed recently. How much of that is cloud-based? Talk about really the impact of the cloud because obviously we go to a lot of shows and cloud big data, mobile social, or the big recurring themes over and over and over. What's the impact of cloud to X Matters business and is there a big data play in there as well? Yeah, both are relevant. The cloud's been huge tremendous for us from two perspectives. One is our platform now is cloud before we were an on-premise solution and now we're primarily in the cloud. And that's enabled us to grow on-board customers much more rapidly, give them a lot of flexibility, gives us more insight into what's happening so that we can help clients more rapidly and they can scale instantaneously. Cloud is a wonderful, good thing. The other thing that's really changing in terms of the cloud is cloud communications means we're getting rid of all those desk phones and fax lines and physical constraints of communications and with it all in the cloud, it gives us the ability to be much more infinitely more flexible in our communications. And cloud communications is probably one of the fastest growing segments, growing about 150% year on year versus traditional communications which are stagnant if not declining. And what do you define as traditional because even phones have been kind of voice over IP for a long time. So is that considered cloud or that was just kind of digitization of old analog? Where do you kind of draw the lines? I'm not sure where the lines are drawn in. I'd say voice over IP is probably somewhere right there in the middle of things. But I'm talking about traditional telcos selling you landlines and if you want to make 500 calls, you need 500 phone numbers, right? I think somewhere I still own a phone line in Japan, you just have to pay $500 to own a phone telco. Well, I hope there's a shrine to a pager somewhere in the office, right? The original. Yeah, we've got some old equipment. You've got some old equipment? Absolutely. That's great. What's the big data play? I mean, how is big data and again, the change of technology over the last couple of years enabled you guys to deliver better service? The big data is a really interesting play because big data is all about getting to the answer more rapidly and crunching all of this information. But at the end of the day, I like to say if big data falls in the forest but nobody hears it, did it really ever compute, right? I'm not sure if that works or not, but and it's really about I, you're crunching all these numbers and you can predict that you're about to, there's about to be a security breach or something's changing in your business. And if you've got to wait for an email to be sent Monday morning, it's almost useless that you went through that entire process to begin with. And we're really about that last mile about making sure once something's been detected, you're engaging the person or people that need to be as rapidly as possible. So it's created tremendous opportunity for us because suddenly big data is creating all of these insights but you need to deliver that information to the right person to take action. Right, so the actionable insight. So are you finding it's easier to kind of get ahead of the curve because we always talk about two kind of predictive versus prescriptive. How is that journey going for your company? Are you getting from kind of a predictive to prescriptive in some of these actions and some of these systems? I think people are still quite honestly working on the predictive part. The space that we came from used to be about resolution. It really focused on resolution. Something's broken or something's wrong and how quickly can you get things back up and running. So getting to the predictive is a next step for I think many IT shops. I think we talk about it a lot and people still quite, quite, quite, quite hard. Get excited about the future. It's always interesting to see, you know, you read the white paper from Gartner and you're like, yes, this is exactly what we're talking about and you realize no one's actually quite there yet, right? So I think people are really, honestly, I think people are still working on predictive and obviously we, to be able to prevent something happening is much better than to be able to restore it rapidly, right? So that's sort of the next step of where we're seeing our clients, our clients going. We always talk about real time being real time means, you know, in time to do something about it. You know, that's real time as you need. Well, the other thing that comes up and I'm interested in getting your take is on the cloud is the security piece. You know, early days, obviously, that was one of the biggest criticisms of certainly public clouds is the security. What are you finding in terms of your customer's comfort level with cloud in terms of security? That's a good question. I'm not, I don't want to claim to be a security expert. We're, we see the full range, right? I mean, we see shops that are cloud only, all cloud, you know, everything's cloud and no concerns. And then we'll see more conservative clients that are coming from regulated industries that might have more concerns. But once you actually go through the, our particular infrastructure and any concerns, we don't see any issues with addressing them. I personally don't think, you know, the cloud, whether it's cloud or on premise, it's you're often with shadow IT these days that you've got cloud in there anyway. So I think embracing it is a better strategy than denying it. Right, right. Well, the other evidence would be, you know, how much of your marketing material collateral effort is focused on laying the fears of security in the cloud? And it sounds like not very much. We have, we have them, you know, in the drawer for when it comes up. But it's, I think in today's world, a lot of that is a given, but we, we often, again, for larger companies, security is a big issue. And so we will, you know, we do have marketing materials, but it's not first in, first in form of, you know, we're safe and then explain. No, I think it's a good thing. I mean, I think in a lot of ways, probably public collateral is safer and better security than private cloud, because that's their job and that you don't have kind of rogue employees running around necessarily that are pissed off that something bad happened. So then let's kind of look to the future and you even got it on the website, which is the internet of things and using these types of processes that used to be kind of break fix, go, go page somebody to do this into new applications, new business process, and then ultimately the internet of things. I love the internet, I think, so I'm a big fan of it. Connected refrigerators and everything. So the internet of things, again, if you look at art history at X Matters, it used to be a server, a network could tell you that it's having a problem. Those are the machines that could talk to you. Those were the things. Now, now with, yes, well, they're still around. For yesterday's things. There's yesterday's things. Now everything's a thing, right? Even my husband's in the medical field and he had a pacemaker sample yesterday and he said it's Wi-Fi enabled. So everything can tell you what its status is. But again, that last part is, but you need to engage someone. It's actionable, but people, are they really actually taking action? And in order to take action, you need to get someone engaged. So for us, it's really exciting because we see sensors and monitors everywhere. They'll be everywhere and they can give us really valuable information. But at the end of the day, you still, until robots have completely taken over the world and I think we're not quite, maybe that'll be tech, tech, tech, tech, tech, tech. They're sending this, they're sending the software download to the Tesla cars. They'll be driving themselves next week, I mean. I mean, let me tech them for point out. You've already aged me. So I, I don't know that I'll be around for that. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not. But, you know, at the end of the day, if something, if there's an anomaly, right? If something goes wrong, you need to engage a human. So the more we automate, the more you're screwed when things go wrong. Because you really can't leave the building. Somebody's got to be there to take care of things. So the, that's where we come in. The pager metaphor will never go away, even though. Probably won't go away. So let's talk, let's shift gears, talk a little bit about your journey. And, you know, again, looking at your LinkedIn profile and doing a little research, you went to Dartmouth and you studied Asian studies and film production. Yes, yes. Awesome. Very obvious path. Straight to Silicon Valley. Not the, not the obvious stem that's getting so much talk about today. So how, how did you get here for, for again, for, for people that are, you know, kind of figuring out what they're going to do and potentially trying to get a career in technology. Talk about how you got here from there. Yeah. And I think we were talking about this a little bit before. I mean, first and foremost, I followed my heart. You know, I always did what felt right versus something that felt necessarily calculated. Right. The next step, rather than plotting some master plan out from an early age. So I was passionate about international and particularly Asian relations and film and school. And I was a filmmaker in Japan for, for six years of, of my career. What kind of films did you make? Mostly documentary, but I did spend a year creating propaganda films for the Japanese government. Propaganda films, alright. Propaganda filmmaker. And first and foremost, I think of myself as a storyteller, which parlays amazingly well into tech because particularly as a marketer in tech, you're really bridging the gap between two cultures, people that understand the tech and the consumers, whether they're business consumers or consumer consumers. Right. They need to understand what this technology does and how it's gonna change your life. So I went from media into multimedia, which was slightly more technical. And then when I came to Silicon Valley in 1999, hooked up with a group of engineers that were in working out of SAP at the time about to spin off a company, they couldn't tell their story. Nobody, nobody, everybody understood they were brilliant, but no one could really understand what they were doing and what the value was. And it was like all the pieces fell into place for me. I was not interested in ERP or enterprise. I wanted to work in internet advertising and something a little bit, but it felt to me at the time a little bit more sexy. But I realized as a storyteller that being able to bridge that gap was even a bigger challenge than cultural gaps between two countries. And kind of been doing it ever since, I think the best marketers are storytellers. That's interesting. So I'd love to get your position because I agree and I think a lot of times people get away from the story, the story of the customer, the way the customer, what are they doing that they need your product or service? How are they gonna use their product or service? How is it gonna change your world? To now, with a lot of companies, the very successful companies, it's really an engineering-based culture. It's just like we're gonna just keep rolling out. We're just gonna keep rolling out new features. We're gonna keep rolling out new products. Hopefully they work. If they don't, that's fine. We'll do a fast fail, we'll roll out some different. And it seems like kind of the emphasis on the storytelling has fallen a little bit. I guess on the other hand though, when you talk about Kanban and a lot of the new algebra methodologies, they do start with stories. So what's been your kind of reception leading with I'm a storyteller and do you do that in terms of your product development meetings, your sales meetings, what is the story of the experience of this product or service? It, I think it always, I don't think the art of storytelling is ever lost. I think good salespeople, good marketers, whether they realize it or not, are good storytellers. The best calls we have are when we can, people talk about case studies and references. It's really stories, right? I wanna know if I engage with you and if I use this technology, what's my life gonna look like before and after? So sometimes that's done better in better ways than other. You don't quite build campfires in somebody's conference room. Right, right, right. And dim the lights. Bring out the marshmallows. But the, by far, the feature, and even when you're looking at something like features and functionality of a product, if you can't relate that to the story of, with this, you can do this. This is how your life is gonna change. And without this, you can't do that. I think you're not gonna be effective in the sales process. So I can't, I'm a big fan of storytelling as a marketing tool and as a sales tool. And actually, we've got a company meeting coming up in a few weeks and it's gonna be all around storytelling and how to tell the stories of what our clients are doing. Excellent. All right, so we're almost out of time, but I'll give you the last word of what we often do at the end of these segments. This is really give you an opportunity to talk directly to, again, usually it's, we think of young women, maybe early in their careers or they're in college or their families. And there's a lot of talk about women in tech right now. It's a very hot topic in the news and STEM. What advice would you give kind of looking back on your career to some of these people just getting started in their career? That's a good question. And I know you said you do some stuff with Dartmouth and you're involved. Yeah, we had, I had Dartmouth entrepreneurial network has an intern program and I had a group of interns here that were working on a project for me over the fall. And that was fun. You kind of get to relive your youth and also realize that I was not anywhere near that ambitious nor smart when I was back in college. So. I don't know. Documentary filmmaker in Japan is pretty good. You know, again, like I said, first and foremost, you do what you're gonna be passionate about. I sometimes will see younger people that are all about the success and success is not guaranteed anywhere you go. So make sure you like what you're doing and you go to work every day and you're happy about what you're doing because you can put a lot of time into something you're not passionate about and you might not see that return. So again, I've been fortunate enough to see some success by following my heart and that's maybe not the most practical advice to give but we've seen the ups and downs, right? So the options might be worth something or they might not. And if you kind of look back on five years and realize, God, I was miserable and I got nothing out of it, it's gonna be worse than, you know, I'd love that job even though it might not have been the most fruitful. And as for females out there, you know, you hear a lot about women in tech. Should you, shouldn't you do what you want? If this is what you wanna do, you know, this is your world too. So I would absolutely not discourage women in tech. We see the value, sometimes it's the softer skills like storytelling, they're also some amazing, some of the best engineers I know are women. So, you know, it's a free open world or at least it was last time I checked. And I, you know, it's great. I love this industry. It's always changing. If you want stability though, be a doctor. Stay away, because you do wake up and there's some new technology and everything's changed. But if you love challenging yourself, I mean, technology will continue to change all the time. That's what I love. Every year, everything's sort of being reinvented and you've gotta keep your mind fresh and it's a great, it's a great industry. Randy, it's a great message and I think what's really neat about your story is that, you know, you weren't a computer scientist. You know, you've brought your passion for storytelling and applied it to technology across a variety of companies in big data and hardware and software, now in IT services. So I think it's a terrific message and really like I said, follow your passion. We all have drawers full of options that are not worth the drawers that are holding them. So, if you're not liking what you're doing and it doesn't build off itself, you know, that's a problem. So, Randy Barczak, thanks for stopping by. CMO of X Matters. Really a pleasure. Jeff Frick here at theCUBE offices in Palo Alto, California. You've been watching CUBE Conversations. We'll see you next time. Thanks for watching.