 Live from Washington D.C., it's theCUBE. Covering Inforum DC 2018, brought to you by Infor. Welcome back here on theCUBE. Along with Dave Vellante, I'm John Walls as we wrap up our coverage here at Inforum 18, Washington D.C., nation's capital. Again, just saying what we are between Capitol Hill and the White House here. And just on top of the show floor, Dave had a chance to check out the goings on down. So good feeling here, good vibe on the floor, good feeling on the keynote stage. I know tomorrow, good lineup as well. But just your thoughts as we wind up here on day one. Well, I think Charles Phillips is an awesome host. I mean, first of all, he looks great up there. He's tall, he's thin, he's got his awesome suit on. I mean, the guy is just dressed impeccably. Add to that his mind. I mean, he's a very clear thinker, a clear strategist. He's able to articulate the value, the strategy that Infor has and has had for quite some time in the value that it brings to customers. So I really like listening to him. He's not a hype machine, unlike so many in this industry who are incredibly successful, Larry Ellison, Mark Benioff, others love to hype what they do. Charles throws a little few little jokes in there, but very low key as we heard this morning. And it seems to be working. I mean, as a private company, they can write their own narrative. All right, if this were a public company, people would be hammering on the debt. They'd be knocking them on the top line growth because the income statement from a growth standpoint is not exploding, but the sass pieces of the business are. So, but you know, Wall Street, they would be picking at that scab. So as a private company, they're not subject to the 90 day shot clock. And so as a result, they can write their own narrative, which I think is incredibly important for this company right now because they have a large install base of customers that they're trying to move to their new platform. Move, migrate, those are scary words for customers. And so the competition, this is why, why is Oracle coming at Infor so much? Two reasons, there's maybe others, but number one, Infor's hurting Oracle. They're taking share away. And Oracle, I think it should have 100% market share. Same with SAP. The second is that it sees an opportunity to fight back, you know, the best defense is a good offense. And so they're trying to go after those customers that Infor's trying to woo to their new platform. And anytime you're moving, it's an opportunity, right? We saw this with big acquisitions like Dell and EMC, kind of, EMC took the eye off the ball. Others came in and allowed, you know, a company like NetApp to come back. So you see that, you know, certainly HP when it was splitting up got distracted. So you see that. And so now what's key about sessions like this, events like this, is it allows Infor to stay relevant, to put a relevance story in front of its customers. So what is that story? It's got a platform, it's got a full stack, it's investing in R&D, it's innovating with technologies like AI, it's building organic innovation and it's bringing in inorganic through acquisition, things like burst for modern BI and injecting that throughout its application portfolio. It's got a full suite. It was interesting, somebody said we had to make a bet. Do we go full suite? Or best of breed? Or do we go best of breed? I would argue by going micro vertical, they can claim both. It's very hard to be both best of breed and both full suite. I mean, I would agree. If you just want to do one thing, you're probably going to do that one thing better than anybody else. And so I'll grant you that. But I think that the balancing act is how do you stay like best of breed or near best of breed with that full suite? And I think Infor has found the answer with micro verticals. And bringing in technologies like AI, I was very impressed with all the the robotic process automation talk this morning. That's going to be a huge business. It's already, I mean, it's growing like crazy. So if I'm an Infor customer and I'm an old legacy lossing customer, I'm thinking, wow, these guys are really making some interesting investments. Yeah, I got to spend and I got to maybe migrate, but if I don't, I'm going to get, you know, digitally transformed by somebody else. And they didn't actually put a lot of scare tactics in there, but maybe that's something they should, you know, might want to add in is some examples of customers that are, you know, been left behind. But maybe that's bromide in the industry today. But I think that that relevance message came through loud and strong and I think it's critical for this company. I think it's interesting just to start with the keynotes. And we heard it throughout the various guests that we had here on the program today was that it's a company that really knows who it is. That's the feeling I get knows where it's going. So it inspires a lot of confidence, right? He does, Charles does, the company does. And they're just kind of, they're just real comfortable in their own skin for one. And two, they're committed to other principles outside of business and talk about the diversity and inclusion. That's just not flap. That's really who they are. That's their DNA. I think there's an appealing aspect there too. Yeah, and so, and then we heard a lot about the, you know, the Koch Industries investment, two and a half billion. I said two billion earlier, it was two and a half billion. That money didn't show up in the balance sheet. Okay, so, you know, again, you get to write your own narrative as a private company. So there's still 338 million on the balance sheet. You know, still quite a bit of debt. So again, Wall Street would be picking at that. It doesn't even come up at this event. Customers aren't really asking those questions. They want to see a company that's viable. This company's clearly viable. They're throwing off a lot of cash. That's why private equity and organizations like Koch Industries are interested in them because it's cash flow positive. They see a lot of financial upside for this company. So that's kind of cool. The other thing is Hook and Loop, the design firm that Infor bought several years ago. We heard how that's evolving and becoming a fundamental part of not just design, but product development. I think that's pretty impressive. Many companies are doing that now. These guys got in first, and so they're a little bit ahead of the game. I think they're innovating in a way that I think has ripple effects for customers. I mean, the customer experience. You hear a lot about diversity at this company. I mean, this is not to me lip service. Charles is really serious about this stuff, and he's got the platform to do it, and he's investing in it. And so you see a lot of substantive examples, and I think that will pay off. It'll pay dividends. The Four Horsemen now have been sort of evolving. There's a succession planning with the Four Horsemen, because Stefan and Duncan have moved on. They've left the company, or at least they're not front and center anymore. The LinkedIn still says they're within Four, so they're somehow affiliated, but they don't have operating roles. It's clear. But Charles and Pam still do, and so you're seeing an evolution there. We're going to ask the head of HR tomorrow about that. We heard from Martine back to the University. Corey Tollison talking retail, again, micro-industry, we know. I mean, he didn't mention it, but guys like Macy's, Safeway, these are decent-sized customers of Infor. We're seeing the partner ecosystem grow. We had Capgemini on today, Grant Thornton's out there, Deloitte and others. I think Sentry's out here, I think. Sentry's out here. So that's important. Again, I think Koch Industries helped nudge some people in there. Like, hey, we just made a big investment. We're a big client of yours. Didn't hurt. You're going to pay attention and find some opportunities. They probably said, look, it's got to be substantive, it's got to be a win-win, but we want you to look in earnest. And I think others have. I've heard that there's been multimillion-dollar deals that these guys have catalyzed. Kevin Curry from Public Sector. Critical space for Infor, he has almost 1,000 customers here, and Amazon has a huge presence in Public Sector, and they're drafting off of that. And then, of course, we ended with Raul from AWS, which was a fun interview. AWS is obviously winning in so many different fronts. Big partnerships with guys like VMware, obviously number one in cloud. I mean, others, I guess, if you add up all the revenue or number one, but really, Amazon's number one in cloud. We know they're tops because they're in, for their serve market, which is infrastructure as a service, they're by far the leader, and they started the whole thing. Tomorrow we've got Charles Phillips coming on, we've got Pam Murphy, the two, what I consider founders of Infor, there weren't, but they were the founders of the new, co-founders of the new Infor, if you will. And some customers coming on, so we're really excited to be here. Big day. Looking forward to it. And we, unfortunately, can't share this with you at home, but Venus Williams on the keynote stage tomorrow, looking forward to that. Talk about a human potential. Shaq was going to be here, had a last-minute cancellation, so they've put Venus Williams in and talk about really thematically very consistent. Her life story with what Infor is talking about here this week, and we're glad to have the opportunity to be here with you throughout the week at their show. So that's it for day one here at InforM 18. For Dave Vellante, I'm John Walls. Thanks for joining us here on theCUBE, and we'll see you back here tomorrow from Washington, DC.