 Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Informatica World 2018. Not to you by Informatica. Okay welcome back everyone, this is theCUBE's exclusive coverage here in Las Vegas at the Venetian Hotel, I'm John Furrier, co-host of theCUBE with Peter Burris, co-hosting with me this next two days, wall-to-wall coverage, our next guest is Richard Kramer who's the chief healthcare strategist for Informatica World, back from last year at a great chat, we talked about data swamps and data lakes this year, it's about governance and the enterprise, great to see you again, thanks for coming back. Thanks for having me back. Obviously healthcare, we can go on and on, Peter and I can arrange about that, but this is really where the healthcare has had data challenges always, and they've had regulations, governance, some will say maybe, maybe not. What's different this year for you and your conversations? Obviously we talked about data swamps last year and data lakes, where is it this year? What's the conversation with customers in healthcare? What's happening? Well I think it really is a reflection of the maturity of people using data, naturally coming from a data swamp or a data lake and how do we keep it from becoming a swamp, you govern it, and so as people start to use data, which we're really coming into our own in healthcare, governance becomes the top topic. When I start to share data and people ask me where did this come from, what did it mean, and I'm not able to answer that question, that's a governance problem, and so we're really starting to see enterprise data governance and compliance come to the forefront of almost every one of my conversations. And where's the catalyst coming from? Is it some of the regulation? Is it some of the awareness? Is it a moment where the straw breaks the camel's back, so to speak, I mean, where is it coming from? The governance question. It really is coming from an executive level, whereas we start to use data, we have more executive dashboards, there's a desire to actually make data driven decisions, both for business purposes and clinical care. If you can't explain where the data came from and what it means when people ask you questions, they don't trust it. And so I think it really is, as we start to really use data for the first time, it needs to be reliable and trustworthy, and that's a governance problem. It's not a tool problem, it's not an architecture problem, it's a people process problem, and that's governance. Well, one of the things that's true about healthcare is healthcare has been driving the vanguard of ethics in society for probably a few centuries now. And it's starting to happen in technology as well. I think the whole concept of GDPR is made even that much clearer as a consequence of people actually becoming a little bit more concerned about their health information getting into the hands of people they don't want to get access to that information. How is this relationship between healthcare, ethics, and now governance starting to affect the conversations that you're having in healthcare and beyond? Well, I think healthcare has had HIPAA, which is all about privacy and protection of information. We've had that for a long number of years, and but that was really at a data element, not an appropriate use, but hey, this data you can't share without permission. Now we're talking- And it wasn't about the subject, it was about the data that you controlled. That's right. And now we're really talking about, and genomic data is a big part of this, is the ethical use of data, right? Can I use this data appropriately? If I'm doing it for your benefit and to help you care for yourself? Yeah, I think we probably can, but it's a governance challenge, right? What data do I have? What am I allowed to use it for? For what purpose and who is consented to that? I mean, we have a similar issue that if you're a hospital that also has a health plan and you can share data about a patient from that health plan with that hospital, but how about a competing hospital across town? Well, I can't share that data potentially because of regulatory reasons. So really the need to know what data you have, what policies apply to that data, and be able to consistently and authoritatively govern that data, I think is really a good example of what's driving enterprise data governance and compliance. So on the compliance side, when you think about outside the United States, obviously GDPR Friday kicks in. That's creating a lot of awareness. Yes. What's the impact of that, if any, to healthcare? Is it no big deal? We've been there, we can handle this. They have the data issues. What are you hearing on that front? So really two-fold. First, GDPR is probably the best representation of really good, stringent, proper consumer privacy data controls that exists. So even if you're not compelled to abide by GDPR, it's a great roadmap and it's a great model to follow because it's just good data discipline. We also have the good fortune data informatica that some of the leading healthcare organizations in the country are our customers and they happen to have footprints in Europe. And so they do in fact have a GDPR challenge. Do I have a patient from the EU that's coming to my US based facility? Do I have a US based patient that's in an EU facility? Do I have an EU licensed provider? The complexity of the GDPR challenge for some of our US based healthcare customers is pretty involved and they're acutely aware of it. So I don't think there's been anything like GDPR in terms of data protection that's existed in healthcare. That's going to change the game. I guess my gut feeling again, you're the expert on this, but my feeling is that it's just will slow things down. I mean, just it's mind boggling that. I'm a European patient going to the US hospital. Now, something has to happen that didn't have to happen before. Or is that, am I getting it right? I mean, I think that it holds the potential to get it to slow things down if you treat it as a one-off, if you treat it as good data architecture and you implement a system that that's just an artifact of how you manage data, it doesn't slow anything down. I think it makes things quicker. So the mandate is go faster. Because it sets the priorities. That's right. Well, it sets a priority and it forces you to have a good data architecture that operates like a well-oiled machine. But let me explain what I mean by that because it's very consistent with what you're saying. One of the biggest challenges about data is a lot of executives don't understand it, don't know what to do with it, can't treat it as an asset. GDPR, amongst other things, is forcing a consensus around what data can be to the business, what it should not be to the business. And that's helping to set priorities so that folks, you may be right, it may be on one-off basis, people may complain about it. But if it's used as an architectural direction, it may actually accelerate because it sets a consensus about what the priorities should be. Yes, and where you started is exactly why. It is a universally understood business imperative that every executive knows. And the fact that underlying it is great data architecture, well, that's just a bonus because it sets the priority correct. But here's my challenge on that because great data architecture is aspirational for many, but not feasible in the short term. So how do they get there? They want to have, hey, I want, that's some great data architecture. Well, what the hell does that even mean? Like some customers might be, I know hospitals might be more advanced, but they might hate, well, maybe not. But, okay, okay, so take us through that. Some people might aspire for great data architecture, but might take time to get there. So great data architecture, though, this is part of the generational market shift in data. And in the past, we had data silos. And data silos are bad, we must break them down, and we must centralize and control data as a path to value. That took a heck of a long time and actually could not really be achieved. What's changed now is we accept silos are going to exist, self-service for data consumption exists. The problem is not now, how do I centralize and control data within an inch of its life to get to value? The challenge now is how do I manage enterprise data as an asset, accepting that that's the landscape? A data catalog changes everything. Talk about the impact of that, because this is super important. It's not centralizing the data, it's just having a catalog with visibility into the metadata of all the data. Exactly right. So before, I didn't know where all of my data was, and data security being enough. If I don't know I have it, how the heck can I secure it? Well, with a catalog, for the first time, it's straightforward, simple, and easy to know what data I have. You actually have a chance of securing it. So the answer, that's the path to getting real value with great data architecture without taking decades to try and centralize and control. It's time for dancing. Richard, we got the music coming on. Last year, it was data lakes, data swamps. That's awareness now as enterprise, enterprise governance, the catalog looking good from you guys, congratulations. Good to see you. Thanks for coming on. Thank you very much. All right, day one, wrapping down, kicking off the solutions exhibit hall here for Informatica World 2018. I'm John Furrier in Peterborough. Stay tuned for more coverage here from Las Vegas. This the Cube.