 Live from New York, it's theCUBE covering Big Data NYC 2015. Brought to you by Hortonworks, IBM, EMC, and Pivotal. Now for your hosts, John Furrier and Dave Vellante. Okay, welcome back everyone. We are live in New York City for Big Data NYC. We are here on the ground, a lot of action happening here inside theCUBE, SiliconANGLE's flagship program. We go out to the events and extract the signal and noise. I'm John Furrier, the founder of SiliconANGLE. So my co is Dave Vellante, founder of wikibon.com, research group of SiliconANGLE media. Next guest, Ken Dema, VP of Big Data Analytics at SAP. Welcome to theCUBE. Thank you. Good to be here. We've seen, we've been in Sapphire a multiple years in a row. We missed last year, but we've always been impressed with the Big Data demos there because they actually show the humanization of it. Like they actually show the beautification on the iPad because the analytics has to be user friendly, right? So we're always impressed. So, you know, glad you came on theCUBE to chat. But the reality is that now I got to operationalize all this stuff. So, you know, you guys are a world leading software company globally. What is the challenge now? I mean, can these customers out in the enterprise pivot and transform to get to the IT market that they need to be in for Big Data? Because they want solutions. They don't want this version of Hadoop and that technology. Oh, by the way, it's not compliant for the enterprise here and there. And a lot of kind of puzzle pieces in there for solutions. They just want solutions. Exactly. Add some color to that. What's your take on that? What are you hearing? So we actually look at that internally at SAP as well. So we use our own systems, software, and so on to try to drive our business with Big Data. So in our area of Big Data Analytics, we're always looking at how are we going to extract value out of this stream of data coming in that we're going to be able to use. So, you know, you mentioned Sapphire a moment ago. It's a perfect example for us and how we do humanize the data. So for an event like Sapphire, we within SAP use all kinds of data before the event, during the event, and after the event, making that the best customer experience we can for each individual being there. And, you know, Big Data type of applications. We look at sensors to understand how the traffic is flowing. We look at how people attend sessions. What's popular? What isn't popular? Things like that. So humanization of the data is a big deal. And something we look at internally. And then to your point, we try to talk to our customers about it as well. I mean, I've always liked the word workflow. It's been kicked around from the old ERP days, CRM. You guys, that's your business. Business software, business continuity, non-destructive, these are all the buzzwords. But I got to ask you because this is important. I was talking to a colleague last night here at our event. He's now at CTO at Centure. And he was telling me, do you realize how many data scientists that they have? And he told me, oh, that's really impressive. And the point was I didn't really have any visibility. I mean, I thought at Centure, you know, they're a consulting firm, but a lot of changes are going on in the big company. So share with us some data around SAP, the core competency and big data. Can you share any insight in the folks watching? Like, yeah, I know SAP, yeah, they run some software for my company. But from the big data standpoint, what do you guys have? What's the bulk of the personnel, technologies? What's the meat in the bulk? So within SAP itself, we have about 350 people in what we call enterprise analytics. So this is using analytics within our business to run our business. Within that, within our big data competency, we do have data scientists. And although you were impressed with the number of Centure gave you probably, truth is they need more. And if they could find more, they'd be grabbing them. And if we could find more, we'd be grabbing them too. There's a skills gap for sure. Both are in full size of the coin. Suppliers and customers. So once was a time, we had all these great ideas about the analytics we wanted to do as marketers, as business people. And now we have more data than we have ever imagined. We have these great technologies to get value out of the data. And now we're running out of people who know what to do with the data. So the challenge on the business side, whether for our customers or us, is do you have people in the business to put this into action? How do you put big data in action? So we internally as a competency work along that. So we do have data scientists, yes. But we also have folks who work directly with the business to take an idea such as, how do we improve our employee engagement at SAP? Work directly with the business to figure out how we can harness big data to solve that. So in 2011, John, the year after we did the first to Duke World, we did the Sapphire and we were talking on theCUBE. And I said, you know, SAP needs to be talking more about big data, because they have big data meat. And you said, you know, SAP is not only big data about fast data, big fast data. So is that what customers are talking to you about? Is that what they're attracted to? Big discussion down here around real time, near real time. Is that where companies, your organizations, your customers are pivoting? Yes, we're seeing that customers want, they see that opportunity. They see what it means to them to move more quickly. I mean, at the end of the day, we are talking about competitive advantage. And getting out there with your analytics in front of the customer sooner is your competitive advantage to provide them what they want. And that's what we see, and that's what we even see internally at SAP, in terms of how can we take this data, put it in real time fashions so that we can interact with our customers. So as an example, we have built a number of automated engines that we have within the business that help us better understand how our customers are interacting with us, building that context, right? Not just what we know about them that sits in the CRM system, but things as they're interacting with us now. And bringing that context forward in real time allows us to then interact with these customers better, have them understand better how we might solve their problems. So to your point, customers want their problems solved. So there is a speed aspect to this for sure, not just volume, because the volume means nothing if we can't operationalize that quickly into the business. So a lot of these events that we go to is the hoodie crowd, right? A lot of developers, Sapphire clearly isn't your constituency, you're business people. A lot of business gets done at events like Sapphire. So who are the constituents that you're working with? Who's driving the analytics bus within your customer base? Right. So within SAP itself, we work with the entire business. In fact, it's our goal to get all of the different lines of business within SAP's business, whether it be HR, whether it be finance, product development, to be much more analytically oriented. And to your point, they bring in the data scientist. And instead of looking at, say, our pipeline, begin predicting it. Begin predicting areas where we think we're going to see return on marketing investment and so on. So a lot of our crowd is in fact in the education business in helping our business people see how analytics can advance their business. One of the trends here is multi-vendor, not one vendor will win everything. So when you look at that equation, you guys have a huge footprint with customers all over the world. I'm sure you're not the only supplier for software and or solutions and big data. How do you guys look at that? Because the customers want, you know, you guys all figure out how you work together, but I just want my data. And I don't want people to hoard the data. I want data sharing. I want open data. I want these kinds of new cultural shifts. So what's your take on that? So we are very, and under the leadership of our CEO Bill McDermott, we're a very customer focused company. We start from the customer, not just our customers, but their customers back into our business. Right, so we look at the whole idea of omni-channel commerce and how customers want to interact, as in consumers want to interact with some of our customer companies, and how can we deliver that. So to your point, not breaking it down bit by bit, but helping them have a strategy that works so that they can, in fact, meet their customers' needs in the best way across whatever that footprint is. Now we of course feel we have the right footprint for that and have the bells and whistles. And that's the challenge. I mean, if you look at, and I was talking about the data silos, stove pipes that's been an IT problem for going back generations, but data in particular has been a compliance risk management conversation. And now over the past decade, you're seeing, okay, I need to integrate the data. So that now becomes the challenge. So the question is, how does a customer transform the mindset internally at the same time protect the data? And it's a huge issue. Then no one's really, they talk about it, no one's really unpacking that and saying, okay, I got API economy. I mean, SAP was one of the first companies really to talk about service-oriented architecture, API economy. Where are we with that? Is that still the case within SAP? Pro APIs, pro sharing? So you put your finger on it, it's a mind shift. It's a mindset change that needs to occur. In fact, Dave and I were at MIT in Cambridge this summer talking about that in terms of chief data officers. And in fact, our position and our point of view at that conference was, it's not just about the governance. We're going to assume you have that based on your point about the data silos and all that. You need to think differently about this. We need to take a different view because big data changes the game for us, right? And if we take a defensive posture and continue looking to be locking things down, as opposed to understand where it can take us, that's part of the issue, right? Now that's not to say there isn't governance, that's not to say we shouldn't focus on those things, but we need to move past it. And we need to see what the opportunities of this data is allowing us. So perfect example is social data, right? That's the one that causes people a lot of heartache, right? Because hey, even just from a corraling point of view, right? People point their hair out, this is difficult to do. So what we are trying to do within SAP is, and again I'll go back to Safari, but we're doing it elsewhere as well, understanding social data, mining that data for sentiment around us, hearing what people are saying about us, what they think about our products, what they think about in terms of Safari, that particular event at the time, and specific pieces of it. So social is one of those areas that is going to be that pivot point for a lot of companies. They're going to have to begin moving towards, I get that we can't lock it all down, but what can we learn from it? And how can we take that and put that into the business and gain value out of it? Because it is big in volume, it is big in its vastness, and it is big in how quickly it comes in. So you mentioned the Chief Data Officer Conference, where we met for the first time. Yeah, exactly. And is that a constituency that you gather? Are you more there sort of learning? I'm sure you were learning, but like you go talk to CIOs for example, or you go to talk to senior business leaders, are the CDOs starting to come together as a constituency that you specifically collaborate with? So I think based on the MIT conference, and they're thinking about it, I mean this is an emerging discipline, if you will. This is somewhere between the CIO and other business disciplines, it's like you have CDO. For us at SAP, sure, that's a critical juncture, that's a critical point. And we built great relationships with CIOs, even CMOs over the last number of years as we've moved much more strongly in terms of front office and how marketing is done, CDOs are a natural audience for us. And it's important for us to understand them, understand what they're about. And again, this is where some of the analytics that we do at the SAP help us as well in understanding what makes these people tick, what keeps them up at night, and how we can best help them achieve those challenges. So how do you see that role emerging? Are they influential in the analytics equation? Are they owning increasingly the analytics equation? It's still too early to tell. It's probably too early to tell, but I'll give you a personal observation on that, which is at the same time the CDO role is growing, the CIO, chief analytics officer role, is also equally growing. So, you know. And there's still not enough people to hire for these people. It's still not enough for all of them. Because you really are talking about here hybrid disciplines, right? You're not talking straight one way or the other. So, you know, we see- This is a generational shift, really. I mean, that's what you're talking about here. I mean, that's gonna be- That's a part of it for sure. That's a part of it for sure. And it's also, you know, as companies get more mature in their analytics, the CIO grows even more. And likewise, the CDO role will be falling right behind that because someone's got to make sure that we're controlling the data to do it right. I mean, people fall on the same trapping. We've seen this move in more of age, you know what I'm saying earlier. It's like the same movies being played out of. I mean, I've even seen, you know, Databricks guys giving certification, like, okay, you sure if I have a Databricks, what else do you could do, right? So, I mean, I get that's the easy thing to do if you're training that way, to think, okay, let's just get people certified. That's step one. The interdisciplinary is the new thing. And when you talk to customers, do they talk like that? Or are the solution architects moving in that direction? Cause now if you're a solution architect at a big company, you got to be thinking in this place. So what's your comment on that? So when we, when my team talks, the customer is usually around the topic of analytics. So I can't speak to a solution architect per se, but I can talk from the analytics side. The biggest challenges companies are facing, aside from finding enough bodies, but we take that as a given, is the mix of the skill sets. Are we finding people that have those interdisciplinary skills of communication? Telling a story with the data. Again, remember, we're talking about big data, we're talking about a lot of it. We're talking about relatively complex stories sometimes that need to be told. And how can that happen, right? Do we have the right people that can do that translation? It's great that the data is telling me that, but now what? How does that influence my marketing? How does it influence the way I think about my HR? How does it influence my business? So to your point about business people, it's the idea of translating from the analytics into the business speak, or at least the business context. So we see that as a challenge in the market. As I speak to peers of mine in the industry and such, rarely does a conversation go by where people say they have enough data scientists and they're having just this great success of getting the business to adopt it all. It's all about what we call internally insight activation. How do you take that big data? How do you create the nuggets? But then how do you get them used? It's one thing to have, it's one thing to get them into the business. And those are those interdisciplinary skills. And in fact, we at SAP are also looking through the analytics prism to create a certification idea. Not all that similar to the one you were talking about. It's not a technology specific. It's going to be more of a skills certification around the idea of, what does it mean to be a data scientist and what does it mean to be a certain level of a data scientist? Can you in fact carry that business discussion? Can I sit with Dave and help him understand that what I have here has meaning for his business and he's going to move it? And the intent is to what? Remove some of that friction in the marketplace? I mean, is it constricting growth right now in the market or? Actually, we see more as providing some clarity in the market because just given the explosion of analytics and the need for data scientists, a lot of people running around saying, hey, I'm a data scientist. Well, how is this data scientist different than this one who might have a PhD in statistics, which is quite different than you know, you might have used certain types of software, right? Not saying either is not valuable but what combinations of those? But I think it also gets to this point of interdisciplinary, right? And these hybrid skill sets and we need to begin understanding where they'll sit in the market, who has them so that even for the people looking for jobs, they understand what they're looking for and what's going to be expected of them. So what's the outlook for this year for you when you talk to customers? What's on your radar? What's your plan? Well, we see, obviously through our recent launch of the hybrid front office that it's all about getting to the customer and it's all about helping our customers get to those customers, be in front of them in a very dynamic way. It said very well that when you think about kind of the profiles you pull out of CRM systems, obviously they're all backwards looking, right? What people own, what we know, making that much more dynamic in terms of what the context the customer's speaking to us in right now. What can we tell about the way they're interacting? Again, driving it down to the point of analytics, we are creating our analytics around those ideas of context, right? We're working with our product development team for the things we're doing at SAP to create that context as we interact with our customer so that we're not guessing at what they want, we're really following what they're telling us and showing us, not just by what they've bought, but by the way they're interacting with us now. Ken, thanks for sharing your insight here on theCUBE. Really appreciate it. Thanks for coming down and good to see you. Ken Demet, the VP of Big Data Analytics at SAP. This is theCUBE live in New York City for Big Data NYC. We are one block from the Javits Center. Strata had dupes going on. Big conclave of people here talking about Big Data. Hopefully we'll get some solutions out there and customers want more. I'm John Furrier, Dave Vellante. We'll be right back after this short break.