 It's kind of a boring business, but it's become, in the past year, very of a hot focus area relative to cloud mobile and social in memory, and it's the focus of this segment. I'm Joe and Jeff Kelly and Shree from Cap Gemini. Guys, welcome to this conversation. Thank you. So, Cap Gemini, honestly, you guys make a lot of money from working with SAP. It's no secret these consulting firms roll out a lot of SAP, going back to the glory days when the dollars are much bigger. They're still big, but it's changing. So, we are hearing from SAP. They're not saying it, but we'll cannibalize our old business to build the new. You're seeing cloud off-premise with cloud in the same. We're going to keep you on-premise in the core and move from the core in the cloud. Sounds good on paper. So, you've got to execute on that. Tell us your perspective on the issues around moving to the cloud. And then we can go into some of the conversations specifically about things you're working on. Sure. I think the single most important fulcrum here is the customer's needs. And the customer's needs, when they change from the traditional CAPEX-based buying to OPEX-based buying, that shifts the needle in terms of how the ecosystem, whether it's the software, hardware, services, companies respond. And in that context, Cap Gemini is no different. We have traditionally been working with SAP in very different segments, broad-based system integration projects. At the same time, we have invested very heavily in the cutting-edge big data, HANA, and mobility areas as well. So, we are essentially reacting to the customer's demand in terms of that shift of buying patterns in adopting cloud and virtual technologies as the needle moves ahead. I'm interested, so how do your clients view SAP from that angle? When it comes to cloud and big data, I mean, SAP often associated with, they have a long and rich history. But it's not necessarily known as the most cutting-edge of companies these days. It's starting to change that image. But just curious, what do you see in terms of perception? When people think cloud, do they think SAP now? Do they hear, when you hear big data, do your clients think SAP? I think it has come a far away in the last two, three years. I think ever since the, I think a couple of years ago when SAP jointly announced the initiative with EMC, VMware, and VCE, Intel, that kind of set a stage in SAP's ambition to embrace the cloud and big data much more in terms of how things are being perceived by the companies. And in that regard, it has come in the last two, three years. It's come a long way, particularly with technologies like VMware helping SAP move the needle on the database front as well as on the cloud enablement and infrastructure in this front. And that also is powered by some of the leading technologies from EMC and VCE, which lends credibility to that fact. So talk about the channel opportunities around partners. Because obviously SAP, huge partner message, EMC, we talk to those because all the time in the VX, VFCache launch, it's all about kind of prefabricating, packaging, making it easy to sell to the channel. We covered that with theCUBE. But we are now in this new era of channel partners or providers. There's a lot of services to wrap around these solutions. There has been a trend towards hardening the solutions, like with VBlock and with VCE. It's complicated, then they package it, now you can turn key and you wrap services around it. So it's kind of the old SAP model of ERP and CRM, where we have huge deployment with a business objective in mind. So my question is, one of the key business objectives that you're seeing right now is a forefront on the customer's minds and the partners are servicing. Is it a pain point? Is it specifically a use case? Where are you seeing the traction relative to these new solutions that have a lot of services wrap around them? I think the unified compute architecture or the integrated architecture as people call that space, I think it is really emerging. And it's an automatic use case for green field opportunities. So there is no easy answer or rather difficult answer there. The difficulty lies in when existing large enterprises wants to adopt the benefits of a fully virtualized environment, clubbed with these heavy workloads which are running on some machines which are the order of the day. I think the real challenge, as I see it, is certain industries like retail and financial services and even a large state government like State of Texas very recently announced adopting these as the unified architecture as they want to move to. And as you probably may be aware, Cap Gemini is the leading services integrator and management operator there. That puts us in a unique position to control the various providers and their outputs to that unified architecture. Can you talk about some of the projects you're working on to give the folks out there a feel for some of those Cap Gemini opportunities that you're pursuing and give them a taste of what's it like out there, what are the kinds of projects, just some examples of people? I think the biggest uptake that we're seeing is in the retail sector, and that's a strong suit for us. We are taking increased penetration in the oil and gas areas as well in terms of actually winning projects in the old model but clubbed with offering them a whole suit of license, build, host, operate and run the whole nine yards. The value proposition, while earlier it was just on the system integration side of the business, now it is encompassing the IT as a service model which covers the whole gamut of operations. Right, interesting. So I wonder, can we dig in a little bit in the details from a services perspective? So what does it take? What are some of the key things when you go into a large enterprise, got a legacy infrastructure, maybe some outdated technology, and you do want to invest in unified infrastructure. What are some of the key issues, challenges in that opportunity there? I think the biggest thing is it's a journey. So it's not like the real value is to establish immediate return on investment on specific pockets which is part of a larger milestone to get to the end goal. So companies which have invested smartly in figuring out that roadmap as to how can I be fully utilizing the benefits of that unified computer architectures are investing in figuring out that journey elements. What are those milestones and picking the right bets which demonstrate immediate ROIs so that you are benefiting from the OPEX play and adding on to the current market scenarios around grow at the not compromising on the cost. So that's how the dynamics at least we are seeing playing it out in our customers' ways. So in a way it's kind of short-term wins to kind of build momentum as you're moving forward, which we've seen a lot of technology areas just around infrastructure. I think like any other disruptive technology, the shift from client-server technology areas to the new world will take its own time and time. I think it's really managing the pace at which it can be done and also de-risking the whole process from a compliance and all of those perspective, which is a key element here. Have you seen a change in the developer community? This came up in the company Q&A with the CEOs around the developers. One of the things they said was they want to get a million more developers. These enterprises that are rolling out these big infrastructures, they need more developers. You guys do a lot of the work in these high-end projects you mentioned. You've had breaks, you've had communications. It's complicated. So okay, as it gets harder, are you seeing a new landscape of developers that you're hiring and working with? Yeah, I think the software as a service industry is really throwing open a whole new development community like the Spring Source and Ruby on Rails are becoming the de facto Java development community for the new enterprise applications. And then of course you have the traditional players getting challenged by companies like Salesforce.com. And that throws up a whole new order and magnitude of providing solutions. But I think at the same time, companies like SAP are embracing the whole process of how to make it more new age-friendly in terms of programming languages and capabilities. And that's very amply demonstrated in the new products that SAP is rolling out. What are you hearing in the hallway comments here at SAP? From your perspective and your view of them, CapJam and I, what are some of the hallway conversations that you can share with the folks out there? What are people buzzing about? What's the top of mind here at this year's SAP conference? I think the biggest data is the connection between how big data is meeting the club. It seems like an EMC tagline, but I think it's the SAP has really embraced it to the degree of a productization. And what it really does, it amplifies it in terms of the HANA initiatives, the mobility initiatives, and of course, how does the whole architecture work on a cloud? I think those are the fundamental touch points of SAP. Services in general? Are you bullish on the services industry right now? Do you think it's a transition? Do you think it's going to be higher growth? You're in the trenches, and you guys are on the high end of the perspective of the providers. How do you see the ecosystem developing on the services landscape? I think from a growth perspective, we just came out with the results last week, so it's pretty public information. I think we're growing reasonably well. I think from an industry perspective, the Gartner predicts reasonable single digit growth, and then specifically the movement between the traditional IT towers and the new generation IT towers is mixed. And as you can see, the adoption of the new generation towers is the penetration is increasing, and that really opens up a whole new opportunity for the community out there, the new IT professionals to embrace those technologies and be a part of the journey. So, I was going to talk about developers. What about the seed level, CIOs out there? Are their mindsets changing? What are you seeing in the mind of the CIO today? What are the challenges and opportunities that they're wrestling with? What's on their plate? I think that the biggest thing that I've encountered mostly is around growth, and in the challenged recession-prone environment that we're just coming off in the Americas, and Europe seem to be dabbling up and down on that front, and the only growth pocket is in Asia Pacific. So I think the real challenges from a CIO perspective is how to monetize and capitalize the growth opportunities in the growing economies, the BRICs, if you can call so, and marry it with a cost model which can be consumed there, which they probably are at different price points and the traditional Western economies are operating on. So globalization is a big issue, right? That's a big issue, and at the same time, the strategy is to go the growth, how do you tap into the growth and opportunity there without losing your core foundational business values. Is there a difference on that thread? Is there a difference, honestly? I mean, what are you seeing relative to the differences in these new emerging economies because in some of these developing countries, we think they're more of a mobile economy. It's not a peace-speaking case. We've got Kerry, we've got Fearing Arrangements. Any insight you can share there? I think our company probably has, we also invested heavily into countries like Brazil, for instance, and India and China, of course. I think the single biggest thing that we see are the best practices, what has worked well in the Western economies are not the ones that will work there. So cracking the code which is in-country, which is price points suited for that country, culturally appropriate for succeeding in that country, and the arrangements that you make in those countries become the order of the day. I think those become the key tend to watch out in terms of as the growth happens in Asia Pacific more and more and even Africa for that matter. So that's the dirty you have to kind of find those, fine-tune that strategy and kind of hit the sweet spot to really establish growth there? Growth obviously will happen in those economies while the sort of consolidation and journey to those virtualization will happen in the Western economies. So given that we heard a history lesson from Shnabe around technology growth, final comment for you if you could share the audience, your view of the future, shooting the arrow forward the next couple of years, plus with all this kind of foundation in place, which we are kind of doing in Kool-Aid, we love to find mobile social and new architectures, what can you share with the folks around the future? I think that the single biggest prediction if I may call it, I think is the embracement of these unified architectures and the virtualized benefits that adds directly to the cost. The other direction that I see is the ITS service journey is here to stay. So paper is here to stay. It's been exhibited in some pockets. The real impact is when the large enterprises fully understand and embrace the consequences of getting there and find a recipe to get there where they can try the benefits on that. Street from Capgemini, thank you very much. We are in Orlando for The Cube. We're broadcasting all day wall-to-wall coverage. Eight hours today, eight hours tomorrow. We're covering the Kinos. We've got commentary, analysis, and thought leaders and guests. And we're excited to be here, siliconangle.com and wikibon.org to bring you this independent coverage of the event. And it would not be possible without the support of SAP and EMC, which we want to really thank SAP and EMC for providing the underwriting support throughout the year, now two years of supporting The Cube. We want to thank them for that. So if you can just virtually tip your hat to SAP and EMC, we really appreciate it. Again, they power this independent content that we can bring to you. So we'll be right back with our next guest here in Orlando right after this break.