 Live from Boston, Massachusetts, it's theCUBE at the HP Vertica Big Data Conference 2014. Brought to you by HP. With your hosts, John Furrier and Dave Vellante. Okay, welcome back everyone. We are here live in Boston, Massachusetts. This is theCUBE, our flagship program. We go out to the events, extract the signal of the noise. I'm John Furrier, the founder, co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media with Dave Vellante, co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media. Next guest is Chris Selland, VP of BizDev with HP Vertica and VP of Marketing. Welcome back. Thanks. It's great to be here again. We've got a quick segment here. I know you're really super busy. You put on the event, great show, packed house. We just did a little cube thing up on stage. A lot of interesting conversations. Certainly yesterday was a great cube day. United States Postal Service really to me, like I said on stage, the poster child for, you know, the modernization in play for across all sectors and other things. But the attendance here has been, it's not a vendor fest. It's really like last year's theme. You have really big players here, good players, technologists, practitioners, really making the change. So what's your thoughts, give us an update on what your impressions are, what you've learned past two days and what's different from last year? Yeah, well again, you know, we have, we have all, most of our ecosystem partners here. We have a very broad ecosystem across BI visualization, data transformation, ETL, CDC, and of course Hadoop. But at the same time, this is not about the technologies about the customer. So we've got our customers on the cube, we've got our customers on stage, you know, talking to each other about what they're doing and how they're being successful. And also, you know, in some cases where they stub their toe, because that's what this event is really all about. We hold it here in Boston so that our engineers can get together with our customers and really talk about these things and have, you know, open honest conversations. So this is a different kind of event for sure. But you know, it's been great. I think clearly one of the things that's evolved over the past 12 months has been the adoption of Hadoop. And we talked about the, you know, our ecosystem, the fact that we're working with Clouder, we're working with MapR, and of course the fact that two weeks ago or I guess two and a half weeks ago, we announced that we were making a strategic investment in Hortonworks as well. So, but I think, you know, above and beyond the commercial Hadoop, I thought the fact that Dave, you talked earlier this morning, you asked the question to the audience, you know, who's using Hadoop and a bunch of hands went up and who's paying for it and a bunch of hands went down. Not all of them, but a lot of them, you know, indicates we're still at a very early stage. So early innings, early stage, a lot of excitement, a lot of interest in Vertica plus Hadoop. That's kind of what I've heard so far. So I want to clarify the whole Hortonworks and this is, we've got some feedback and we talked to some folks out there and we've been following Vertica and you guys, it's pretty clear we've known when you guys have done great ecosystem, you had great partnerships. So, you know, that's well documented. But if you look at HP's commitment to open source, this seems to be a bigger issue for HP. The commitment to open source at the cloud level has certainly changed the face of HP because they were also running in the cloud business to now a player with OpenStack and you've had a huge history with Red Hat as a company. So is there other forces at play besides the big data team that with Martin Fink getting involved in this? What's your take on that? Well, there's no denying that customer enthusiasm because as I said on stage this morning, we're all about doing a story for the customer and adapting to the environment that the customer is in and where the customer wants to go and there's a huge amount of interest in open source. But at the same time, there's also a real desire for enterprise class performance. You know, I keep saying big data and I keep hearing big data is at this crossing the chasm moment where it's not just about the technology anymore. And so, you know, performance really starts to matter. You heard it this morning that, well, wow, you know, we really needed to look at Vertica because, you know, we're dealing with all this data, performance matters, business users don't want to hear about Hadoop or Spark or Shark or any other alphabet soup or even about Vertica. They just want answers and they want performance. We heard somebody from the audience, a woman from Singapore asked the integration question. And you could tell, so there was frustration, right? I'm a business person, this stuff is so complicated. You know, when is it all going to come together? It sort of sets up the, I mean, it doesn't happen overnight. We know this, but it sets up the ecosystem question. So is that the answer is the ecosystem, you know, with HP's leadership, the answer to bringing things together and doing that integration? Well, you know, what I heard her saying was, she was hearing a lot of buzzwords and acronyms and wondering if that was going to slow down and the short answer is, I doubt it. The way, you know, those of us who are in marketing and those of us who are in research, like you guys, you know, we're in sort of the acronym and buzzword production business, but at the same time, and this is why my answer was, go talk to your peers. You know, what's working and what do you use what for? I think that's really the thing that is really kind of being recognized and acknowledged is why the ecosystem is so important. It's, you know, there's different tools for different types of jobs. And as I was saying in my one answer, you know, I was referencing, I think it was a Gartner event, I was at not long ago. There was sort of a session that was all about Hadoop and all about big data at low cost, was all about price. And then there was another one about in memory technology and performance and speed. And so there was one session talking about price and one session talking about performance. But nobody's talking really about where there's not enough conversation about price and performance and the fact that there's different use cases, different types of data, different, you know, different value. And so we really got to look at the whole thing. And that's what, and we got to look at putting technologies together and using different vendors and different technologies. I give you a lot of credit because you're bold thinker. And by saying ask your peers is a very risky proposition. You know, I just saw the tweet come up and said, hey, that's really aggressive. But in reality, that is the new normal. That's how people are finding out information with social networks. Go ask your peers. That's a risk for most people. Most companies, they don't ask your peers. Talk to our marketing department. What made you come there? I mean, was it rationale? Was it like realization, your experience? What made you go that route? Well, I will tell you, and this is going to sound like marketing spin, but I am being completely honest. In my 20 plus years as a technology marketing, BizDev, exec, one of the great things about Vertica is it's the happiest customer brace I've ever dealt with. A hundred percent? No, I don't think anybody gets a hundred. You know, you've always got customers having issues, but you know, we've got a rock solid platform. We've got a well established platform. It's been on the market for seven, eight years. So I'm very confident. And I think I know Colin will tell you the same thing. As a matter of fact, when we have unhappy customers, very typically what we do is we point them at other customers because, you know, we want them to learn from each other because you're exactly right. That's what they do. They talk to each other. They're going to do that anyway. So, you know, that's really how to get answers because if you listen to the marketing analyst, the buzzword machine, that's not going to get you very far down the path to success. That'll just make you confused. But so, let me push that a little bit because I agree, the Vertica customers are very happy. We've been impressed over the last two years with how happy. And my interpretation is a big part of the reason is they understand how to use Vertica. And they aim it at the right use cases and they nail it. And you guys have helped them do that. Having said that, you're now starting to build out the platform. It's not just the column store anymore. So what I heard from the woman from Singapore is, okay, great, I can talk to my peers, but I want HP to stand up and say, we're going to lead this integration. We're going to spend the money on R&D. We are going to actually make this happen as the leader of that ecosystem. Is that something that you can, you know, promise in quotes to your customers? Yes, that's exactly what we're going to do. And you know, it's a one step at a time thing, right? So there's a lot going on. There's a lot to filter through. And ultimately it starts with, and you'll hear this right from the very top at HP. You'll hear this in just about every speech. I think every speech I've ever heard Meg give. It's all about doing the right thing for the customer and the rest will follow. But yeah, leading the industry, that's absolutely what we're doing. That's absolutely what we're taking steps to. That's what this investment was about. That's what the stuff that we're going to be talking about, you know, not just in the past, but going forward. And that's what we want again. We want to show it like real through our customers, through the success of our customers. When our customers succeed, we succeed. But yes, that's exactly what we're doing. Chris, final word. I want to ask your ecosystem customers two pivot points. I want to add a third one in, get your take on it. Obviously developers and DevOps is coming across our radar as a huge affinity towards your business market right now. It's the Ferrari we called yesterday, but certainly you got entry level, you got Haven. That's targeting clearly the DevOps and or cloud developers. What is the developer update? Are you guys succeeding there? Are you going to have a focus there? What's the deal? Yeah, I think we're gaining mind share very rapidly. I mean, Vertica is a platform, Haven's a platform. We're all about, if you're going to be successful in the platform business, you absolutely have to bring developers on. Developers are customers. That's who our customers are. And the business executives, those developers serve, whether they're in-house developers or external ecosystem partners, the SIs, the resellers, and we've got a very, that part of our ecosystem is very active here as well. Would you say there's a hybrid conference right now in developers and customers? So I'm seeing kind of a mix in the audience. You certainly have. Yeah, but a lot of them are the same people, but yes. Yes, so I mean, because developers are customers, but yes, absolutely. So what do you think about the phrase born in big data, do you buy that rationale, that there's a cultural shift, and if the developers are the customer, that would seem to validate that trend? Yes, as long as the developers are recognizing that it's not just about the technology, it's about delivering solutions to the business, and it's about not just delivering solutions, but delivering performance to the business to answer the questions that it's not just the CIO, it's the CMO, it's the COO, it's the CFO, who most of those audience, I mean, if you say Hadoop, they'll say God bless you, right, as I often joke, but that's not a slam, but it's just that they don't talk the language of technology, we might say the same thing if you say Vertica, right, but they just know that they want answers, they need answers, and again, that's where some of our partners and things like BI and visualization, if you kind of walk around the ecosystem, who are, pictures those 1,000 words, right, who cannot just tell the story, but show the story and show the answers to the business execs, so that's absolutely the case. Chris Allen, VP Marketing and BizDev here at HP Vertica Live at the HP Vertica Conference, congratulations, just want to say a very successful conference, and I just highlight for the folks out there, it's not the biggest conference you're hearing about in terms of pomp and circumstance, they don't bring in the big U2 rock band to entertain and distract people, it's really the real deal, and the content is phenomenal, and an era of social media, which we have great touch with, people are, they want the content, they want the relationship, so great event, really big success, and it's awesome to be here. You've mentioned U2 enough, I think I'm gonna have to give Bono a call and see if he's available next year. People actually talk that tweet, they're like, oh yeah, U2's coming, I know, I know, sorry, thanks for that, John. Script your game there, but we'd love you, great to be here, we'll be right back with our next guest after this short break.