 It's theCUBE, covering Sapphire Now 2017. Brought to you by SAP Cloud Platform and HANA Enterprise Cloud. Hey, welcome back to our exclusive SAP coverage here in our studio in Palo Alto, our 4,500 square foot studio. I'm John Furrier. Three days around third day of Sapphire Now 2017 coverage. I'm on the phone with RJ Bibby, who's the SAP Global Alliance Manager for SAP. Handles the relationship. RJ, great to have you on the phone and thanks for calling in from Orlando. Really appreciate it. You bet, John. Love theCUBE, love SiliconANGLE. We're great partners. It's been a great week and looking forward to talking to you about it. Tell us what's going on on the ground. First, give us the updates. I'm day three, so pretty much everyone's coming. Always a great, great activities at night as well. So SAP, a lot of business done during the day. They work hard, they play hard. But day three, what's it like? What's settling in is the storylines for Sapphire 2017? Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, you're starting to feel, you know, you've gone through about, we're on our third tour for the partners community. We're in day four because we had the partner day. Last night was the big partner night. We actually met up with our partners with Cisco and KPIP. Did a private event at Universal Studios at the Jimmy Fallon theme park that was highly successful. What was great about today was in the morning we kicked off with Bill McDermott on stage with Kobe Bryant and Derek Jeter. And it was all about leadership and mentorship and experience and being in the business, whatever industry that you're in for so long and how you just stay creative and hungry and passionate. And I thought it was, and it was packed. One of the comments was they couldn't believe on the day after the big party night of all the partners that you still have a lot of energy, a lot of energy on the floor. Ultimately, it's still about data which is great for our business that we can get into as NetApp. There's a lot of buzzword bingo going on here, John. All week, whether it's machine to machine, blockchain, cloud. And at the end of it, it's still our customers who we've talked to a lot this week and wow, what are we gonna do with our data? How do we analyze it? And how do we improve that user experience based on all this data that we have? And I think that's one of the things that I see on the floor that's almost overwhelming with the amount of people, 30,000, all the partners. Just a lot of information. And lastly, I'll say the good news with that is everybody is hungry for content. Whether it's a mini theater, whether it's at one of the booths, interactions one-on-one, people are hungry for what is happening in the industry. And I think that's exciting for all of us. Well, we do our part in trying to get as much coverage as possible even if we are gonna do it from Palo Alto. Question for you on NetApp. I mean, you guys have been, I've been scuttlebud in Silicon Valley is that NetApp is doing very well with the hyperscalers. And obviously I know for a fact I've interviewed the former CEO and others in within NetApp. They were really on early with AWS. And obviously AWS is a big part of the announcement at Sapphire. So you guys are kind of like getting these relationships with these key players has changed a little bit of the business model or culture within NetApp. What's different about NetApp right now and with respect to some of the big players that you've had relationships with, it's not like this new relationship with SAP. You guys have a deep relationship. What's changing as the cloud wave hits, as the data wave hits, those are the biggest waves hitting the world right now. How are you guys playing in that world and share some insight there? Absolutely no great question because the world is going through digital transformation and so with NetApp. So we are actually celebrating our 25th year as a company right now. And we've been a traditional global technology and data management company. And the digital shift to hybrid cloud is where we're moving. So specifically with partners like AWS, Microsoft and Azure, the hyperscalers like CenturyLink. It's how we can help our customers really collect, transport, analyze, protect data in whatever environment they want to hold their data whether it's on-premises. If you're in a cloud, you can choose whatever hyperscaler you want. You still have to deal with the data and then how do we manage it? How do we consume it? Where is that data that needs to be taken out? So data is the currency with our data fabric methodology and tools from software, hardware. We're really able to help manage that complete life cycle whether it's SAP or any other type of environment you hold. So the exciting thing for us and the stock price is showing that at an all-time high is what Bill McDermott said on Monday in the keynote or excuse me, Tuesday. Data is the currency. Our new mission statement is we're trying to empower our customers to change the world with data. So, back to the buzzword bingo comment I made earlier, we're still dealing with the fact that we have all this great technologies, all these sensors, machine and machine, on-prem to cloud. At the heart of everything is the data and what you do with it. And I think that one of the things that NetApp does and the best in the world of it is we can continue to evolve digital transformation with the tools on how we deal with data. So what about the data dynamic? Because data is the fundamental story in my opinion. Cloud has been around and Cloud Arati, we were part of that from the beginning. Now Cloud is mainstream, Amazon stock price is looking like a hockey stick now, it's going straight up. But that took years of development, right? And you saw the cloud formation coming really in the mid-2000s and then really at 2008, 9, 10 was the foundational years and then the rest is history. Data is now going through the same thing. As people get over themselves and say, okay, big data is not Hadoop, it's everything. IoT is certainly highlighting a lot of that. SAP has recognized that legacy systems have to move to a multi-cloud and certainly multi-vendor world in a whole new way. But at the end of the day, you still got to store this stuff, right? So that's your business. How are you keeping up with the moving train of data as it architecturally shifts in the marketplace? Great question. Think that we have some of the best minds in Silicon Valley again, been there 25 years. I think with the deep relationships we have with companies like SAP, on the front end, I think the one thing that we bring is the value to SAP is the consumption model licenses. Through owning the data and the user experience, we're able to enable and accelerate the license consumption to the edge, right? From application into the system. From an architectural standpoint, it still comes down to the things that we are creating in the labs and launching around, like the data fabric, the tool system, really, software. The software that can help from an analytical perspective, right, affect the user experience. Everybody wants it live. And the other part is the data protection and the DR aspect of it. I think that's another core competency that we're continuing to develop as a service for the customers, so I hope I've answered your question. Yep. But it's definitely- Well, I need the bottom line. You know, why NetApp? Say I'm a customer. Okay, I get the SAP, why should I go with you guys over new, the Dell EMC powerhouse over there, or the white box storage? Oh, I mean, at the end of the day, we are the best at capitalizing the value of data in the hybrid cloud. I mean, nobody can help collect, analyze, test, and do life cycle management live like NetApp can. And that's the reason that we are going more upstream, you know, selling, I could always say, ABC, always selling to the CXL. I think we're changing the landscape from a true storage company on the infrastructure side to a full end to end hybrid cloud data management portfolio company. And it's been proven by the acquisition of solid fire from bringing flash into the portfolio, you know, our cloning and snapshot capability. So anywhere in the stack at any time during the day when you're looking live at your operations, your data that you can take live snapshots, just if there's a glitch from a data protection side or there's some type of spike from a request on the, you know, ticketing side or demand side of your system. So I think that's some of the things that we're differentiating. And that's the reason that the AWS and the Azure and the SAPs are so excited about co-innovating together to again, improving the customer experience with their data. R.J., final question, what's the net net? What's the bumper sticker for you this year at Sapphire in 2017? What's the walk away, you know, revelation? Well, I think from the SAP side, it's the revelation on the push of Leonardo. I think that the SAP, I'd like to see them continue to hone out the what or and the if for partners with Leonardo from the, from blockchain and machine to machine and IoT. For us, it is the beautiful fact that now at the center of everything that SAP and the ecosystem is trying to do is around the data side of it. And it's the actual currency. And the fact that we have kind of the leading edge tools to enhance the customer experience with our platform for customers and partners data is really, really exciting for us. And we're excited, we are all psyched to be partnered with theCUBE. And everything we do is in the cloud. So we're here to help. R.J., thanks so much for taking the time calling in from Orlando. R.J. Bibby, SAP Global Alliance Executive with NetApp, he runs a relationship with NetApp. And again, it's been a long-term relationship. I remember taking, you know, photos on my phone way back in the day, years ago. So not a new relationship in continued momentum. Congratulations and thanks for sharing the insight from Orlando, appreciate it. You bet, thanks for the partnership. Have a great day. Okay, more coverage from theCUBE in Palo Alto on SAP Sapphire 2017 after the short break state with us.