 Welcome back to SuperCloud 2, which is an open industry collaboration between technologists, consultants, analysts, and of course practitioners to help shape the future of cloud. And at this event, one of the key areas we're exploring is the intersection of cloud and data and how building value on top of hyperscale clouds and across clouds is evolving, a concept we call SuperCloud. And we're pleased to welcome Harvir Singh, who's the chief data architect and global head of data at Western Union. Harvir, it's good to see you again. Thanks for coming on the program. Thanks, David. It's always a pleasure to talk to you. So many things stand out from when we first met. And one of the most gripping for me was when you said to me, when data moves, money moves. And that's the world we live in today and we have for a long time. Money is moved as bits. And when it has to move, we want it to move quickly, securely, and in a government manner. And the pressure to do so has only grown. So tell us how that trend has evolved over the past decade in the context of your industry generally and Western Union specifically. Look, I always say to people that we are probably the first ones to introduce digital currency around the world because, hey, somebody around the world needs money. We move data to make that happen. That trend has actually accelerated quite a bit. If you look at the last 10 years and you look at all these payment companies, digital companies, credit card companies, that have evolved, majority of them are working on the same principle. When data moves, money moves. When data is stale, the money goes away, right? I think that trend is continuing and it's not just that trend is in this space, it's also continuing in other spaces, specifically around acquisition of customers, communication with customers, it's all becoming digital. And at the end of the day, it's all data being moved from one place to another. At the end of the day, you're not seeing the customer, but you're looking at the data that he is consuming and they are making actionable items on it and be able to respond to what they need. So I think 10 years, it's really, really evolved. You operate, Western Union operates in one of the 200 countries and you have what I would call pseudo federated organization. You're trying to standardize wherever possible on the infrastructure and you're curating the tooling and doing the heavy lifting in the data stack, which of course lessens the burden on the developers and the line of business consumers. So my question is in operating in 200 countries, how do you deal with all the diversity of laws and regulations across those reasons? I know you're heavily involved in AWS, but AWS isn't everywhere. You still have some on-prem infrastructure. Can you take, paint a picture of what that looks like? Yeah, a few years ago, we were primarily mostly on-prem and one of the biggest pain points has been managing that infrastructure around the world in those countries. Yes, we operate in 200 countries, but we don't have infrastructure in 200 countries, but we do have agent locations in 200 countries. United Nations says we only have like 183 odd countries, but there are countries which you don't declare themselves countries and we are there as well because somebody wants to send money there, right? Somebody has an agent location down there as well. So that infrastructure is obviously very hard to manage and maintain. You have to comply by numerous laws, and in the last few years, specifically with GDPR, CCPA, data localization laws in different countries, it's been a challenge, right? And one of the things that we did a few years ago, we decided that we want to be in the business of helping our customers move money faster, security and with complete trust in us. We don't want to be able to, we don't want to be in the business of managing infrastructure. And that's one of the reasons we started to migrate and move our journey to the cloud. AWS has obviously chosen first because of its, first in the game has more location than more data centers around the world where we operate, but we still have existing infrastructure which is in some countries, which is still localized because AWS hasn't reached there, or we don't have a comparable provider there. We still manage those. And we have to comply by those laws. Our data privacy and our data localization text tag is pretty, pretty good. I would say we manage our data very well. We manage our customer data very well, but it comes with a lot of complexity. We get a lot of requests from the European Union. We get a lot of requests from Asia Pacific, every pretty much on a weekly basis to explain how we are taking controls and putting measures in place to make sure that the data is secured and is in the right place. So it's a complex environment. We do have exposure to other clouds as well, like Google and Azure. And as much as we would love to be completely, a very, very hybrid kind of an organization, it's still at a stage where we are still very heavily focused on AWS yet, but at some point, we'd love to see a world that is not reliant on a single provider, but it's a little bit more democratized. As and when, what I want to use, I should be able to use and pay for use. The concept started like that, but it's obviously, it's now again, there are three big players in the market and they're doing their own thing. We'd love to see them come collaborate at some point. Yeah, wouldn't we all? I want to double click on the whole multi-cloud strategy, but if I understand it correctly in a perfect world, everything on premises would be in the cloud. First of all, is that a correct statement? Is that nirvana for you or not necessarily? I would say it is nirvana for us, but I would also put a caveat is it's very tricky because from a regulatory perspective, we are a regulated entity in many countries. The regulators would want to see some control if something happens with a relationship with AWS in one country or with Google in another country. It keeps happening, right? For example, Russia was a good example there. We had to switch things off. We should be able to do that. But if let's say somewhere in Asia, this country decides that they don't want to partner with AWS and majority of our stuff is on AWS, where do I go from there? So we have to have some level of confidence in our own infrastructure. So we do maintain some to be able to fail back into and move things it needs to be. So it's a tricky question. Yes, it's nirvana state that I don't have to manage infrastructure. But I think it's far less practical than it said. We will still own something that we call it our own where we have complete control, being a financial entity. And so do you try to, I'm sure you do, standardized between all the different on-prem's and in this case, the AWS cloud or maybe even other clouds, how do you do that? Do you work with different vendors at the various places of the stack to try to do that? Some of the vendors, like a snowflake is only in the cloud. Others, whether it's whatever, analytics or storage or database might be hybrid. What's your strategy with regard to creating as common an experience as possible between your on-prem and your clouds? You asked a question which I asked when I joined as well. This is one of the most important questions is how soon when I fail back if I need to fail back and how quickly can I, because not everything that is sitting on the cloud is comparable to on-prem or it's backward compatible. And the reason I say backward compatible is, our on-prem cloud is obviously behind. We haven't taken enough time to kind of put it to a state where because we started to migrate and now we have access to infrastructure on the cloud, most of the new things have been built there. But for critical application, I would say we have technology that could be used to move back so technologies like couch-based technologies like Post-Stress Equal, technologies like DB2, et cetera. We still have and maintain a fairly large portion of it on-prem where critical applications could potentially be serviced. I'll give you one example. We use Neo4j very heavily for our AML use cases and that's an important one because if Neo4j on the cloud goes down and it's happening in the past, again, even with three clusters, having all three clusters going down with a DR, we still need some accessibility of that because that's one of the biggest fraud and risk application that supports. So we do still maintain some comparable technology. Snowflake is an odd one. It's obviously there is none on-prem. But then, you know, Snowflake I also feel it's more analytical based technology, not a transactional based technology at least in our ecosystem. So for me to replicate that, yes, it'll probably take time, but I can live with that. But my business will not stop because our transactional applications can potentially move over if needed. Yeah, and of course, you know, all these big market cap companies like the Snowflake or Databricks, which is not public yet, but they've got big aspirations. And so, you know, we've seen things like Snowflake do a deal with Dell for on-prem object store. I think they do the same thing with Pure. And so over time, you see Mongo extending its estate. And so over time, all these things are coming together. I want to step out of this conversation for a second. I just ask you, given the current macroeconomic climate, what are the priorities? You know, obviously people are, CIOs are tapping the brakes on spending. We've reported on that. But what is it? Is it security? Is it analytics? Is it modernization of the on-prem stack, which you were saying a little bit behind? Where are the priorities today given the economic headwinds? So the most important priority right now is growing the business, I would say. It's a different, I know this is more, it's not a very techy or a tech answer that you would expect, but it's growing the business. We want to acquire more customers and be able to service them as best needed. So the majority of our investment is going in the space where tech can support that initiative. During our earnings call, we released the new pillars of our organization where we will focus on, you know, only channel digital experience and then one experience for customer, whether it's retail, whether it's digital, we want to open up our own experience scores, et cetera. So we are investing in technology where it's going to support those pillars, but the spend is in a way that we are obviously taking away from the things that do not support those. So I would say it's flat for us. We are not like heavily investing or aggressively increasing our tech budget, but it's more like, hey, switch this off because it doesn't make us money, but now I'll switch this on because this is going to support what we can do with money, right? So that's kind of where we are heading towards. So it's not driven by technology, but it's driven by business and how it supports our customers and our ability to compete in the market. You know, I think, Javier, that's consistent with what we heard in some other work that we've done, our ETR partner who does these types of surveys. We're hearing the same thing is that, you know, we might not be spending on modernizing our on-prem stack. Yeah, we want to get to the cloud at some point and modernize that, but if it supports revenue, you know, we'll invest in that and get the, you know, instant ROI. I want to ask you about, you know, this concept of super cloud, this abstracted layer of value on top of hyperscale infrastructure and maybe on-prem, but we were talking about the integration, for instance, between Snowflake and Salesforce, where you got different data sources and you were explaining that you had great interest in being able to, you know, have a kind of, I'll say seamless, sorry, I know it's an overused word, but integration between the data sources and those two different platforms. Can you explain that and why that's attractive to you? Yeah, I'm a big supporter of action where the data is, right? Because the minute you start to move, things are already lost in translation. The time is lost, you can't get to it fast enough. So if, for example, for us, Snowflake Salesforce is our actionable platform where we action, we send marketing campaigns, we send customer communication via SMS in-app as well as via email. Now, we would like to be able to interact with our customers pretty much on a, I would say near real-time. The concept of real-time doesn't work well with me because I always feel that if you're observing something, it's not real-time, it's already happened. But how soon can I react? That's the question. And given that I have to move that data all the way from our, let's say, engagement platforms like Adobe and Particles of the World into Snowflake first, and then do my modeling in some way and be able to then put it back into Salesforce, it takes time. Yes, I can do it in a few hours, but a few hours makes a lot of difference. Somebody sitting on my website couldn't find something, walked away. How soon do you think he will lose interest? Three hours, four hours, he'll probably go on, he will never come back. I think if I can react to that as fast as possible without too much data movement, I think that's a lot of good benefit that this kind of integration will bring. Yes, I can potentially take data directly into Salesforce, but now I have two copies of data, which is again, something that I'm not a big proponent of. Let's keep the source of the data simple, clean, and a single source. I think this kind of integration will help a lot if the actions can be brought very close to where the data resides. Thank you for that. And so, you know, it's funny, we sometimes try to define real time as before you lose the customer, so that's kind of real time. But I want to come back to this idea of governed data sharing. You mentioned some other clouds, a little bit of Azure, a little bit of Google. In a world where let's say you go more aggressively and we know that for instance, if you want to use Google's AI tools, you got to use BigQuery. You know, today anyway, they're not sort of so friendly with Snowflake, maybe different with AWS, maybe Microsoft's going to be different as well. But in an ideal world, what I'm hearing is you want to keep the data in place. You don't want to move the data, moving data is expensive, making copies is badness. It's expensive and it's also changes the state, right? So you got governance issues. So this idea of super cloud is that you can leave the data in place and actually have a common experience across clouds. Let's assume for a minute, Google kind of wakes up my words, not yours, and says, hey, maybe you know what? Partnering with the Snowflake or Databricks is better for our business. It's better for the customers. How would that affect your business and the value that you can bring to your customers? Again, I would say that would be the Nirvana state that we want to get to because I would say not everyone's perfect. They have great engineers and great products that they are developing, but that's where they compete as well, right? I would like to use the best of greed as much as possible. And I've been a person who has done this in the past as well. I've used tools to integrate and the reason why this integration has worked is primarily because sometimes you do pick the best thing for that job. And Google's AI products are definitely going really well, but that accessibility, if it's a problem, then I really can't depend on them, right? I would love to move some of that down there, but they have to make it possible for us. Azure is doing really, really good and investing. So I think they are a little bit more closer to getting to that state and seeking our attention than at Google at this point of time. But I think there will be a revelation movement because with more and more people that I talk to like myself, they're also talking about the same thing. I'd like to be able to use Google's AdSense. I'd like to be able to use Google's advertising platform. But you know what? I already have all this data. Why do I need to move it? Can't they just go and access it? That question will keep haunting them for a very long time. You know, I think obviously Microsoft has always known, you know, understood ecosystems. AWS is nailing it when you go to reinvent. It's all about the ecosystem. And I think they realized they can make a lot more money, you know, together than trying to have. And Google's got to figure that out. I think Google thinks, all right, hey, we got to have the best tech. And that tech, they do have the great tech. And that's our competitive advantage. You got to wake up to the ecosystem and what's happening in the field and to go to market. I want to ask you about how you see data and cloud evolving in the future. You mentioned that things that are driving revenue are the priorities. And maybe you're already doing this today, but my question is, do you see a day when companies like yours are increasingly offering data and software services? You've been around for a long time as a company. You've got, you know, first party data, you've got proprietary knowledge and maybe tooling that you've developed. And you're becoming more, you're already a technology company. Do you see someday pointing that at customers? Or again, maybe you're doing it already or is that not practical in your view? So data monetization has always been on the charts. It's the reason why it hasn't seen the light as regulatory pressure at this point of time. We are partnering up with certain agencies. Again, you know, some pilots are happening to see the value of that and be able to offer that. But I think, you know, eventually we'll get to a state where are, because we are trying to build financial, accessible financial services, we will be in a state that we will be offering those two partners, which could then extend it to their customers as well. So we are definitely exploring that. We are definitely exploring how to enrich our data with our data and be able to complete a superset of data that can be used because frankly speaking, the data that we have is very interesting. We have trends of people migrating. We have trends of people migrating within the US, right? So if a new, let's say, there's a new, like I'll give you an example, let's say New York City, I can tell you at any given point of time with my data, what is, you know, a dominant population in that area from a migrant perspective. And if I see a change in that data, I can tell you where that is moving towards. I think it's gonna be very interesting. We're a little bit, obviously sometimes, you know, you're scared of sharing too much detail because there's too much data. So, but at the end of the day, I think at some point we'll get to a state where we are confident that the data can be used for good. One simple example is, you know, pharmacies. They would love to get, you know, we've been talking to CVS and we're talking to Walgreens and trying to figure out if they will get access to this kind of data demographic information, what could they do better? Because, you know, from a gene pool perspective, there are diseases and stuff that are very prevalent in one community versus the other. We could probably equip them with this information to be able to better, you know, let's say staff their pharmacies or keep better inventory of products that could be used for the population in that area. Similarly, the likes of Walgreens and Kroger's, they would like to have more, let's say, ethnic products in their aisles, right? How do you enable that? That data is primarily, I think we are the biggest source of that data. So, we do take pride in it, but we know with caution, beyond obviously exploring that as well. My last question for you, Harvere, is I'm going to ask you to do a thought exercise. So, in that vein of that whole monetization piece, imagine that now, Harvere, you are running a P&L that is going to monetize that data. And my question to you is there's a business vector and a technology vector. So, from a business standpoint, the more distribution channels you have, the better. So, running on AWS cloud, partnering with Microsoft, partnering with Google, going to market with them, going to give you more revenue. Okay, so that's a motivation for a multi-cloud or super cloud, that's indisputable. But from a technical standpoint, is there an advantage to running on multiple clouds or is that a disadvantage for you? It's, I would say it's a disadvantage because if my data is distributed, I have to combine it at some place. So, the very first step that we had taken was obviously we brought in snowflake. The reason we wanted our analytical data and we wanted historical data in the same place. So, we are already there and ready to share. And we are actually participating in the data share, but in a private setting at the moment. So, we are technically enabled to share unless there is a significant, I would say, upside to moving the data to another cloud. I don't see any reason because I can enable anyone to come and get it from snowflake. It's already enabled for us. Yeah, or if somehow, magically, several years down the road, some standard developed, so you don't have to move the data. Maybe there's a new, you know, new Bob Mugley is talking about a new data architecture and, you know, that's probably years away, but Harvey, you're an awesome guest. I love having you on and I really appreciate you participating in the program. I appreciate it. Thank you and good luck for the future. Thank you very much. This is Dave Vellante for John Furrier and the entire CUBE community. Keep it right there for more great coverage from SuperCloud too.