 From the CUBE Studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a CUBE Conversation. Hello everyone, welcome to this CUBE Conversation here in the CUBE Studios in Palo Alto. We're here for a remote interview. We're continuing with the COVID coverage, the quarantine crew, I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. Got a great guest, Crystal B. Montt, the CEO of Talon. Just joined the, come in the middle of the pandemic. Crystal, thanks for joining us and nice seeing you. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me. Well, I think it's a really great conversation to have. A couple of threads that are interesting to me. One is Talon's a company we've been covering for a long time. Obviously their position in the marketplace, we've been following their trajectory. You're new to the company, but you joined right in the middle of as COVID was going down and we're still in this mode and it looks like it's going to be for some time. I'd love to get your thoughts as we're in this mode. First, what attracted you to Talon? You're new and what's it been like there since you've been there? You can't meet people face to face. So you must be doing a lot of remote interviews than remote conversations. Well, you're right about that. I had a very short window that I could get out on the road and I'm so grateful that I did because visiting our offices, our customers and our partners is critical to, you know, really surrounding ourselves with amazing people that we have at Talon. But you know, I'll just go back to why I joined Talon and it really goes to the customers. Our customer stories just captured my attention right away. The way that Talon shows up to drive outcomes for customers that are tangible, that are quantifiable and that are game changing was something that interested me. And it really is that at the heart of every conversation is data. So it was a simple decision for me to say those are the types of things I want to be involved in. And so Talon was definitely something that became very attractive. It's interesting. We've watched the progression of the big data market in now 10 years in and the explosion of cloud. Obviously everyone's talking about data as a key ingredient for application development. And you're still seeing kind of the challenges of how do you manage the data? And then how do you put that into action for insights? Because now you have these connected experiences and even more highlighted with the COVID pandemic. You still got to run the business. You still need the data, the workforce is remote. The future of work, workforce, workplace, workloads and workflows all have data. This is a real challenge with now the connected experience being the number one problem and making that good and making that valuable. What's your take on that? That's right. I couldn't agree more. We talk a lot about digital transformation for years, quite frankly. And I would say, we've been in a digital transformation evolution. And I think what has happened now is COVID is an accelerant and it's a, now it's a digital revolution. And at the heart or maybe the cornerstone if you will of any digital transformation is data transformation. You think about digital transformation is about mindset. It's about changing the entire way that you operate as a company. It's not just about systems and technology. That's a really critical part. But everything that fuels the ability to get outcomes out of a digital transformation is data. And so the ability to leverage, like you said, there's connected data. There's more data than we've ever had. And that's a massive opportunity. But having a lot of data is not always the answer. Sometimes that becomes a big responsibility with regulations and also something that if not carefully governed, not really something you can leverage properly to run your business. So data is at the heart of all the things going on at this moment. It's interesting too. You know, a lot of the main trends outside of kind of the inside the industry discussions around data and the role of data. The consumer side of it is seeing it with fake news. You're seeing it with the data around COVID. Anyone can make data tell a story. And there's always, you know, causation versus correlation that discussion. But when you start thinking of people being exposed to the data problems, there's an opportunity in there. And one of the big things is trust. What data can I trust? What's authentic? And then how do I make sure that it's not just supporting a story. There's all kinds of things going on around it. It makes it seem like a broader challenge. Trust seems to be at the heart of it. What do you trust? Who's the source? It's just all life now is data infiltrated all of our lives. It's certainly now exposed. You couldn't be more right on that one. And you can see it play out in the media. You can see it play out again, this accelerating set of circumstances that are playing out every single day as people are staying so closely, you know, watchful of data informing decisions that everyone's making around the world in a lot of different ways. And you've seen a lot of times where there's a question about the quality of the data, the accuracy of the data, who's providing the data. And, you know, that's the environment that talent, you know, really supports and lives in, you know, even prior to COVID, but it just underscores the importance of not just having a complete set of data. And I would say even taking it further than just having what we would traditionally call quality of data and really taking it down to something you used a really important word is trust. How can you make sure that the data that you're making decisions on is something you can trust? And when it comes to health and wellbeing, that's certainly something that you can't afford not to have. And it's an area that is underserved right now that we've spent a lot of time thinking about and how we're starting to show up to provide those solutions to our customers. I want to get into the customer conversations. I think there's a lot of use cases I want to unpack with you, but I want to first get your vision on how you guys see the future. What is the vision of talent? How do you see it? What's the plan? What's the big story there? You know, there's a couple of things. I look at this and say right now in the industry and in our customers, which we cover all different segments, all different sizes of customers all around the globe, they have a variety of use cases, if you will, a variety of needs, everything from the most simple ingestion to some of the more complex transformation and governance projects that they're running. And first and foremost, we show up uniquely as a platform, a platform that allows people to activate and utilize different parts of our services that we can provide to an entire organization. And that's something that is really important to us. And we also look at how do we make the process in which they're using talent and the skills that are required really push the envelope on making those as simple as possible. The ability to get to time to value as quickly as possible is our ultimate goal. And then looking, you know, finally, you know, the third kind of, the third lane is to make sure that we can provide not just as I said, the completeness of data, but that it's really data that they can boil down to something that has intrinsic and quantifiable trust because all the time we spend, all the money that's spent on collecting the data is really only as good as the, you know, ability to say, I can emphatically trust it and I can tell you why and I can show you the footprint of that data. And that's something really important right now more than ever. I was talking to my family, I got four kids and they're all kind of growing up now and, you know, we're having these conversations around COVID and the question of AI comes up all the time and AI is very, you know, cool for kids, but they don't really talk about machine learning. So I got to ask you around how you see the machine learning piece come in because data feeds AI. I mean, you got, it's a real, that's how I described to my kids. Data is the fuel for AI and you got to feed that in there, but it's not that easy. What's your reaction to that? Because I think a lot of companies are saying, I have to automate things. The DevOps world and agility come into the mainstream operations of businesses and there's a agility piece. There's a value of the data that's being recognized, but now I've got to put it into practice. What's the playbook? What's your reaction to all that? Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, first of all, AI and machine learning have a really important role in the simplification, the ability to move its speed and to, you know, perform functions that quite frankly are going to move us into an entirely new realm of possibility. I still will contend whether you're feeding that with, you know, anything that you feed data into with data has to be really good quality data. You know, AI machine learning is only as good as the information that you're feeding it with. And so it is really, really critical that we, you know, we leverage these technologies to their fullest extent, but that we make sure that we feed it in the right way. So I think it's a really big part of our future. I think it's something that's going to be important, but we have to have the certainty that we're using them in a way that's coming to, you know, a place of the right outcome. And that starts with what you feed it to use to go use to improve the processes. Crystal, one of the patterns we're seeing is that decision makers and CXOs are looking at the COVID pandemic and saying, okay, I did my thing, we're triage. Now I got to reset and get the foundation set again and look at the projects that are going to be important. And I got to figure out the holistic architecture. So I need a growth strategy and I got to reset maybe some of the team members, projects and whatnot. What's your view on this? Because now new decisions have to be made, roles might change as well. So this is going to change how come he's going to make decisions. What's your reaction to that with the customers? They are trying to figure this out. What's your advice? Yeah, that's absolutely right. And this is about reinstimating a business, reinventing it in many cases. A great example is Domino's who is maybe surprisingly for some, a pioneer in digital transformation that's been a number of years in the making that really has shown that with being in a state of being able to adapt quickly to circumstances and to be forward looking, how critical it is. And so I think this has been a wake up call for organizations across the globe to say we have to be on the ready. We have to be able to be instrumented in a way that we can make quick decisions. In Domino's case it became originally the ability to, they were the first pizza delivery to try out drones for a pizza delivery and to have gaming devices where you can order pizza because that's where their customers ran. And when COVID hit, contact lists became a criteria. And so you can really see how they are able to separate themselves. You see people being leaders that have been further along in their transformation. So I think what this has done is exposed some vulnerabilities quite frankly. And this is a wake up call for companies around the globe that can no longer afford to be in a state where they can't pivot quickly. And looking backwards is no longer the thing that informs people in a state of something like COVID because there really aren't examples or patterns to look at. So reinstimating the business is really critical. Data has to be transformed to perform better for companies. It's interesting. You bring that point about the pivot and the kind of people's resetting and reinventing for that growth strategy is that you're seeing brand impacts and also financial results are directly related to it. If you're not ready, this could have a real detrimental impact on the brand value and ultimately financial results. And this is kind of forcing people to say, it's not just an IT problem. It's a business model change. And data is shown now to be the key ingredient because that's where the agility is going to come from. That's where the value is there. And this has all been talked about in the industry before, but now it's kind of kind of mainstream. This is now the new reality that my brand opportunity and the financial results of my company are at stake. Can you comment on your thinking around that because this is a top line, a high order bid, if you will, conversation among the top boardrooms. Yeah, it is. And I agree with you. You know, many of these conversations have been going on for a while now, right? And I think this just exposes the criticality of what happens when you're not in a state of being able to really reinvent yourself or like I said, reinstrument. And if you're already in that state, how much better off you are, brands are taking a hit in terms of their ability to show up and it goes beyond just their ability to perform as a business, but to really show up differently for their customers, support people in a different way and really make sure that they can respond also from a social perspective. How are they going to help and contribute to what the world is facing? And so it really is asking companies to really fire on all cylinders, quite frankly. I want to get your thoughts on two thought tracks and they're kind of connected, so bear with me. One is we've heard a lot from the marketplace that with the pandemic, the reality of the IT teams that collect the data and the business teams that have to make the decisions are changing obviously with the work at home and all the different dynamics from the app re-architecting. And then you have the competitive advantage now which people are pointing to as speed and scale. So you've got internal kind of organizations that are managing wrangling data, ingesting data, the business teams with the customers and that's kind of was the slow rolling way it was before. Now you got that changing and now you got pressure to be faster and more scalable. So scale is a competitive advantage, speed's a competitive advantage. These are important kind of flywheel elements of the new models that people are being successful with. What is your reaction to that? I couldn't agree more. It is a competitive weapon quite frankly. It is an operational accelerant and it is an innovation catalyst and time is no one's friend quite frankly. It's one of those odd things right now where for all of us that are working from home and time has this odd sense of reality to it. But it's really quite frankly, you cannot act fast enough but what's interesting about enabling companies to act fast that has to come down to the ability for them to be able to spend the time in the right places. So for example, when I think about the number one thing that we can do is it takes a lot for organizations sometimes to put the information in the hands of the right people at the right time so that the time that's being spent by an overall company, not just an individual within a company but the entire company, you have to be able to decrease that so that the time that they're spending is actually on helping drive outcomes. And so some of this and you just struck a chord in everything I think about is how quickly we can get the right data in the hands of the right people because in AstraZeneca's case, for example, the difference of being able to do that, their highest cost in their business is clinical trials. Being able to get information you can use and reduce a month of how fast they can bring those clinical trials to bear is saving them hundreds of millions of dollars but right now AstraZeneca is an important player in helping us solve for this. So you think about how important it is to get information to the right people and time is of critical essence right now. Yeah, it's interesting, Yeltsman, there's that business model advantage but also you got a lot of, and that's an opportunity for many, but there's also a lot of, I won't say heavy lifting but maybe a drag since some might call it compliance. You know, GDPR or whatnot, balancing that kind of, I won't say drag, I mean, I think it's a drag personally but I think we have to have those things in place. You want to maintain the compliance rigidity that's out there but also have room to innovate. That balance is very difficult and it's really mostly highlighted in the data business because that's where the action is around data privacy and those compliance things. But if you got an innovation formula there that you're talking about and you got compliance, if you get one wrong and right, you got to balance it. What's your take on that? Because that's a huge challenge. It's one of those things that's kind of not talked about much but it's pretty much there. You're right and it is a complete balance but you can't have one without the other in highly regulated industries especially with companies like AstraZeneca but really if you think about any company, the ironic thing right now is that when you're looking at even a single report but certainly across an entire company or a line of business, right now you can see that there's quality measures and governance that we put into play but the ability to actually quantifiably say on a single piece of data that you can track where that data's been, who's touched it, how complete is it and really kind of put a measurable trust score against it. There's work to be done there but with GDPR, with HIPAA and interestingly enough, we're looking to kind of challenge some of the norms with COVID that says we now want to collect data that is formally considered privacy and maybe something that would be regulated and now we want to share it for the greater good of making sure that we can track and trace where people are at that maybe are infected and so forth and so you're starting to see this interesting conversion of challenging the fact that we've got at least be able to support people in their governance of data but take that a step further really. Awesome. Final question, you had Talon Connect which is your big kind of confab. What best practices are emerging out of Talon, these days for customers? If you had to kind of highlight the top use cases or best practices that customers and your potential customers could leverage right now with data, what are you guys putting out there? What are the key best practices? Because if everyone has a new reality, that's not all as we talk deeply about it but what's the best practices? What are you guys offering? Well, I think one of the things that I alluded to before is really making sure that we show up as a strategic business partner and this is really important to us. All of these things that we've been talking about, they're heavy lifting for organizations to really look at how they bring the digital revolution to the forefront. There's a lot to consider and so our part in that is to say, we believe that when you power your business on talent and you're able to solve for a number of different problems across the platform, that that's really important that we show up in the way that we can meet our customers where they're at. So that's one, making it simple, really pushing the boundaries on the level of expertise, the specialization, the time to value of making sure that they can leverage, again, spending their time on the things that are important, which are making sure that they're spending it in quality data and data they trust and then really making sure that that final lane is covered up saying, we want to make sure that data is accessible when you need it and where you need it. Things like IoT and Edge devices, this proliferation of data is just becoming immense and so taking the data, getting it to people but in a way that they can have confidence. It's the same thing you just said before. There's a lot to consider and there's in a way a burden of people not knowing maybe all the data they have and how it's being used. We feel responsibility to make sure that we're part of helping that become easy and identifiable and really taking it to the next step beyond quality. So it's really across all of it, just simply putting people in a position to be able to make good decisions and not have to do so much of the heavy lifting and making sure that they know for a fact that it's something that they've made a good decision around because of the data has been trusted and they can have the confidence in that. Awesome, we think data is a better advantage it's going to be more important ever as the days go on. So great insight. Crystal, thank you for that insight. Before we end, take a minute to put the plug in for Talon. What are you up to? You guys hiring, you're looking for folks? What's the business plan? Why are you guys winning? What's the hot products? Take a minute to give up a quick update on Talon. Sure, we're in a great situation where this is a point in time at Talon's where we have a great trajectory in front of us. We see speed and scale of our organization that has an opportunity in front of it to really help solve problems for every part of the market, whether it's the smaller businesses who are certainly at a point where they're having a big impact to the largest organizations. And we feel that there's a set of solutions that we can really work to drive as a partner to each of those customers to solve for the problems that put them in a position to really be able to reinstrument and to reinvent their business. And when we partner like we have with the companies that I mentioned, Domino's and AstraZeneca and many others, it comes back to why join Talon. We have the ability to change the outcome of really separating organizations from the pack and data is the competitive advantage. It is the thing that will put people on a different trajectory. And I'm excited about what we bring to the table and I'm really excited about what's to come and how we'll continue to push the envelope for how we help our customers. That's awesome. Congratulations. Congratulations on the new role of Talon as the CEO. Crystal, be my CEO of Talon. Data is the heart of the value proposition. We've been saying that for 10 years now more than ever. It's exposed that the value is there, speed and scales, the new table stakes for competitiveness and business models for the applications. Again, great CUBE conversations, great insight. Crystal, thank you for joining me today. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. It's been a CUBE conversation. Thanks for watching.