 Live from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE. Covering Sapphire Now. Headlines sponsored by SAP HANA Cloud, the leader in platform as a service. With support from Console Inc, the cloud internet company. Now, here's your host, John Furrier. Okay, welcome back everyone. We are here live in Sapphire now in Orlando, Florida. This is theCUBE, SiliconANGLE's flagship program. We go out to the events and extract the signal and noise. We want to thank our sponsors, SAP HANA Cloud Platform and Console Inc at Console Cloud. Our next guest is Anil Sabu, VP of Business Development and Fred Balboni, who's the GM of IBM, here on theCUBE together. SAP, have you welcome back to theCUBE. Good to see you guys. Good to see you. So, Microsoft's up on stage. IBM's here with SAP. This is the old SAP. No real change of the game in terms of you guys have been multi-vendor, very partnering, very ecosystem-driven, but yet, the game is changing very rapidly in this ecosystem of multi-partnering with joint solutions. I mean, even Apple, your announcement earlier. So, is this kind of like a bunch of Barney deals, as we used to say in the old days, or what is the new relationship dynamic? Because data is the new currency, it's the new oil, it's the digital capital, data is capital, data is a digital asset. Partnerships are critical. Talk about this dynamic. Partnerships are critical, and I think what we're doing is we are going deeper than we've ever gone with these partnerships with IBM. We announced last month, we announced the joint SAP-IBM partnership for digital transformation. What does this do? So, what we've been doing traditionally with IBM, we've had siloed partnerships with different IBM brands, right? We've had a partnership with a power brand, we had a partnership with the cloud team, we had a partnership with GBS. What we've done now with the digital transformation is bringing it all together. So, we have a CEO level discussion that's driven this partnership, and I think that's really the differentiation. So, we have moved away from the so-called Barney deals because our customers expect, Bill talked about it in the keynote today, he says when it's a multi-partner situation, customers expect that you're going to have one voice, you're going to be aligned, you're going to provide value to those customers. That's what we're trying to do, and that's what this partnership is all about. Brad, I want to get your thoughts on this, Barney's reference to the character, I love you, you love me, kind of like a statement of mission, but really not walking the talk, so to speak, but I want to get your thoughts because you have the analytics background at IBM where you built that business up. There's a conflict in a way, but it's also a great thing in the market. Apps are changing in very workload-specific at the edge, whether it's IoT or a mobile or whatever digital app, they have to be unique, they have to have data, they have to be somewhat siloed, but yet the trend is to break down the silos for the customer. So how do you guys, is it the data that does that? Because you guys are doing a lot of work in this here, you want to build great apps, they'd be highly differentiated, but yet no silos, how do you make that work? Well, okay, so it's, first of all, it's very exciting, and it's confronting, but also exciting for not only our companies, but also for our customers. It's all enabled really simply because of a couple of major technology shifts that have happened. Number one technology shift is the cloud. The cloud without question is driving all of this. In addition to your notion about data, readily available data and the algorithms and software that can make cognitive sense of that is both driving this whole change. Last but not least, and I think HANA really enables this, embodies this, is the architectural change. So you put those three things together, availability of data, cloud, which means the capital investment required to build the infrastructure is inexpensive, and then finally HANA, which is the technology platform that rapidly allows you to take using generic term APIs and wire them to different sources, allow you to dynamically reconfigure businesses. Now there's one last thing I think is really important here that we don't want to underplay, and this is the social phenomena of the consumerization of IT. And this has been going on for many, many years, but we've really seen it accelerate in the last three to four years. It's been 100% validated now. Absolutely, and when you see a device like this becomes the system of engagement, and oh by the way, if you don't like dark skies weather app, well then go to the weather channels weather app, and if you don't like their weather app, go to one of 40 other weather apps. So therefore this consumerization of IT is bombarding our CIOs. What's exciting is that cloud, cognitive insight, a flexible core with great social engagement allows a CIO to really rapidly reconfigure. So that's why these partnerships are rising. That's very important what you just said too, about this relationship now about consumerization of IT is a complete game changer on the enterprise software business, because now the relationship to the suppliers, I'm the CXO or CIO, I had a traditional siloed as you used that word earlier, relationship with my vendors. One pane of glass, I got IT service management down here, I got the operations, I changed my app every six months or six years, the cadence of interaction was very inside the firewall. Absolutely. So the relationship has changed with the suppliers, expand on that because that really hits a whole nother thread. I'm the buyer, I don't want complexity. You don't, and what you do want is time to value. So combining that with the beautiful user experience that thanks to devices like the one that Fred showed are an absolute necessity. It's understood now, it's an expectation that customers have and customers of customers also have. So I think that has impacted us in multiple ways. What you heard in Bill's keynote, you heard that with our supplier network, you heard our president for SAP Ariba, Alex talk about it. He says that the change within that organization itself with our different vendors, with the fact that we have to provide choice to our customers. I think that has changed the way we do business. And it's interesting too, just I mean, this is right now a moment in history as a flashpoint, not as a big event, but I've been seeing this trend happening over the hundreds of cube events that we've been to over the past few years, is that now, and just today highlights it, the giants of tech are here, SAP, IBM, or I mean, Microsoft, up on stage, Satya Nutella, the Apple announcement. You guys have a similar deal with Apple. These are the giants, okay? We're working together. Now, IBM has Bluemix, you have HANA Cloud Platform, you have HANA Cloud, everyone's got Cloud. So this kind of highlights that it's not a one cloud world. And so this really kind of changes the game. So I got to ask you, given all that, how do you guys talk to the ecosystem? Because there are total transitions going on at Capgemini, Accenture, PWC, CSC, it's an outside in dynamic now. How has that changed for you guys? As you guys go to market together in a variety of things, you know, co-opetition, some cases, how does that dynamic change for the partners that have to implement this stuff? So co-opetition is a reality. I think we've, SAP, we've learned this probably from a partner that does it best, which is IBM, they probably, they practically invented co-opetition in the enterprise software space. So I think here's the way we look at it, right? So we are looking at, with HANA, with HANA Cloud Platform, we're really morphing into a platform and applications company. And we have the strategy of essentially later thousand apps bloom. So what are we doing on HANA Cloud Platform in such a short time? So we have about 2,600 plus customers. We have, I think the more important part is that our ecosystem around HANA Cloud Platform is 400 plus part. So that's where- It's kind of an advantage vis-a-vis Oracle, for instance. Absolutely. Which claims to have an ecosystem. They have a lot of people there too. I think the DNA of SAP is in being an open company. We've had that for ages. So we work closely with partners, and by the way, I used to be at Oracle. I was there for seven years, and I know the difference. It's stuck. Oracle's got a different strategy. We've got a very, very different, very open strategy. So I think what we're doing is we're coalescing around these key assets, right? And our digital core is for HANA. HANA Cloud Platform as the key platform for our customers to build on its- Okay, so Anil, for the people watching out there and looking out over the next year or so, what execution successes do you put out there to say, to prove that you guys are open and you guys are doing good deals? What success KPIs, key indicators, would you say, look for the following things to happen? So number one, availability of APIs. I think if you look at the different APIs, the access to the variety of SAP systems, what you did see is that there's a digital core. There's all of the different assets we've got in the cloud. Easy access to those. I think customers can look for that, right? How can they rapidly develop an SAP SuccessFactors extension? Or how can they extend SAP Ereba very quickly, integrating that with the S400 Digital Core? I think that's number one. Number two is the HCP App Center. So we have probably about a thousand plus apps out there. And by the way, I do need to give a shout out here because we've got three apps that, three iOS apps that IBM put it on to HANA Cloud Platform. In the last six weeks, was it Fred? Six weeks. We're talking about an incredibly short amount of time that are now highlighted on HANA Cloud Platform App Center. Fred, talk about IBM right now because this has been a shift. More aggressively, the three years ago I saw the wave coming at IBM and now for the past two years it's just been constant battering on the beach head. IBM has been donating a ton of IP with open source. Everyone's behind blue. Blue Mix has gone from a fork of cloud foundry to a now really fast. They're moving very, very quickly. You have to writing apps, you're partnering. Is this part of the strategy? Just to kind of keep pumbling the market with assets like this? Is this open? The more open IBM? And how is open mean for you guys today? Well, because I think at the end of the day we got to realize that, I mean, you asked a question a couple of questions ago and Anil answered it quite well, which is customers are going to make their choice. Customers want to be flexible in their choice. So understand, I want to first of all, a shout out to Apple, excuse me, to SAP. A shout out to SAP here, which is SAP has always been about partnering in the ecosystem. And so that's a core, that's a core belief of theirs. So when you look at what they've technically done here with the HANA Cloud Platform, you know, many strategists can put this on a board and draw, well, this is what they should be doing. But the reality of it is, is the reason companies stay with existing service providers, the reason companies stay with existing technologies, is because they've already got it. It's what they know how to do. And so, and what they want to do is very hard. So the HANA architecture and the HANA Cloud Platform was probably drawn on a board 10 years ago. The fact that it's real and here now, now makes clients the ability to actually make these kind of shifts. IBM's moved to the cloud, moving assets to the cloud, because we recognize clients are actually going to want to pick and choose and build these things in a dynamic fashion. And we want our workloads to be on the IBM cloud. Every single show I go to now basically feels like a cloud and a data show. Even Amplify, which is kind of a commerce show. It's all about data and the cloud. So, we got to get wrapped up here, but I want to get one final thread in with you guys. And that is unpartnering. And you mentioned Apple. Apple just spent the billion dollars with the Uber clone in China. So you see their partnering strategy, they had to partner with you guys and now SAP. This is a really interesting strategy for Apple to go into the enterprise. They don't have to get over their skis and over rotate on this market. They can come in with pre-existing layers and extend out versus trying to just have a strategy of rolling products out. So it seems that Apple is partnering, creating alliances as they weigh into the enterprise, similar to what they're doing in China with Uber. It's just a random example, but, which is impressed this week. Is that the Apple strategy? I mean, you guys both talk to Apple. You guys both have deals. Share some color on Apple's partnering and alliances, their joint venture, not joint venture, joint development. Seems to be very cool. So I want to, when I look at what we're doing with Apple, we have a goal and our goal is we believe that we can transform the enterprise. We IBM, we IBM and SAP, we IBM and our partners, including Apple, we want to transform enterprise. Apple signed on to that, because Apple realized that they were changing consumers' lives and then they woke up and they said, well, actually, but many people spend a large part of their waking day at work. So if I can change a consumer's life, I can also change an enterprise employee's life. And that is the work that we're setting about doing. And so therefore the partnership, IBM understands enterprise really well. SAP was built statistic today, 73% of the world's transactions run through an SAP core. So, Apple's very, obviously very deliberate in picking their partners. We're thrilled with the Mobile First for iOS work that we're doing. And Swift's great programming language, has great legs and so elegant and sweet. It's like C, but more elegant. Absolutely, I think, again, when you look at what Apple's mission has been and you look at SAP's mission, right? We talk about helping companies run better and transforming lives. So I think the missions actually do intersect here. And I think SAP is a very different company than we were 20 years ago. So for us now, that user experience. And product quality too, by the way. Absolutely. I mean, Apple's a proxol quality. Absolutely, so I think we converge on those areas. So I would say that it's a very natural partnership. I mean, if I'm Apple, it's a brilliant strategy because enterprise is hard, right? You guys, you live that every day. It's not easy and we see venture-back startups try to get into the enterprise and the barriers just go up every day with DevOps and integration now is, we can talk about another segment with a break, but we haven't gotten to the whole, what does it mean to integrate? That's a whole nother complex world that requires orchestration, really, really interesting. You can't just break that over the weekend in a hackathon. Absolutely, and I think now with the tools that we're making available on our cloud platform as a part of our platform as a service. I think, again, that's a way where we can get the user interface, the experience that Apple provides combined with the enterprise solid stuff that we do. And that's awesome. Well, I'll give you guys both the final worry on the segment in a bumper sticker. What is this show about this year? What is SAP Sapphire 2016 about? What's the bumper sticker? What's the theme? You know what, I love Bill's words today. I think it's about empathy. It's about making it real for customers. I think you'll see our demos, our joint demos as well both in an SAP IBM joint center here as well as in the IBM booth. You'll see real life solutions that are real, that customers can touch, that they can use. So I'd like to go with that, make it real. Listen to me, it's a really two simple words. Digital reinvention. Every single company in the world is trying to become a digital company. I think about my Hilton app when I checked into my hotel yesterday and I opened my door with my iPhone, my hotel, my room door. It is every company is endeavoring to become a digital company. And what Sapphire is about this year is everyone realizes at the core of every company is that platform, that SAP, the HANA or ECC platform. And every major enterprise that's waking up to that suddenly realizes we got to do something. And SAP and IBM are partnered here to help. Thanks guys so much for sharing your insight. Digital reinvention going on for real here at Sapphire. This is theCUBE, you're watching theCUBE live at Sapphire. Now, we'll be right back. Thank you.