 From theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a CUBE Conversation. Hello everyone, welcome to theCUBE Studio here in Palo Alto. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. We're here with our quarantine crew. We've been here for three months quarantine in, but we're getting the stories that we're talking to all of our favorite guests and most important stories and technologies here remotely. And we have a great conversation on store for you today with Amit Wally, CEO of Informatica, CUBE alumni, frequent guest of theCUBE, now the CEO of Informatica. Amit, great to see you. Thank you for coming on this CUBE Conversation. Good to see you, John. It's different to be doing this like this versus being in the studio with you, but I'm glad we could leverage technologies to still talk to each other. You're usually right here, right next to me, but I'm glad to get you remotely at least, and I really appreciate you. You always have some great commentary and insights. And I want to, before we get into some of the real meaty stuff that I love around the data, I want to get your thoughts on this COVID-19 crisis. It's a new reality. It's highlighted as we've been reporting on Silicon Angle for the past few months and at scale, the at scale problems that people are facing, but it's also an opportunity. People are sheltering in place, a lot of anxiety on what their work environment is going to look like, but the world still runs. Your thoughts on the current crisis and how you're looking at it and how you're navigating it as a leader. Well, you're doubt it is a very, very unique situation we all live in. I mean, we've never all faced something like this. So I think, first of all, I'll begin by expressing my thoughts and prayers for anybody out there who's been impacted by it. And of course, a huge round of thank you to all the heroes out there, the front lines, the healthcare workers, the doctors, the nurses, the care of our community cities. So we can't forget that. I mean, these are very, very unique situations. But as you said, I mean, look, let's not forget, this is a health crisis for us. And then it becomes an economic crisis. And then as you said, there is a tremendous amount of disruption and opportunity. I think all of them will go through some phases. And then I think you can see already while there is disruption in front of us, but you see the digital front ends of organizations who are ready for that have definitely faced it a lot better. Whereas obviously the ones that have been somewhat in the previous generations of, let's just say business models or technology models are struggling through it. So there is a lot that will change. I think we're still learning. We're absolutely still learning and we will continue to learn till the end of this year. And we'll come out very, very different for the next decade for sure. You know, if anyone who's watching goes to YouTube on the Silicon Angle Cube, look at your videos over the years. We've been talking about big data and these transformational things. It's been an inside the industry kind of discussion, obviously boardroom for your clients and your business and Informatica. But I think this is now showing the world this digital transformation. The future has been pulled forward faster than people have been expecting it. And innovation strategy has been on paper, maybe some execution, but now I think it's apparent to everyone that the innovation strategy needs to start now because of the business model impact, the economic crisis, it has exposed the scale opportunities and challenges. There will be winners and losers and projects still need to get done or reset or reinvented to come out of this with growth. So this is going to be the number one conversation. What are your thoughts around this? No, no, so I've talked to hundreds of customers across the globe and we see the same thing. So in fact, I'll actually, in some ways, as we went through this, something very profound dawned on me. You know, we've, John talked about digital transformation for the last few years, right? And we clearly digital transformation will excel. But you know, as I was talking to customers, I came to this realization that we actually haven't digitally transformed. To be honest, what happened in the last few to four years is that it was more digital modernization. A few apps got tweaked, a few front ends got tweaked. What did you realize? It was more digital modernization, not transformation because in my opinion, there are four aspects to digital transformation. You think of new products and services. You think of new models of engaging with your customers. You think of absolutely new operating models and you think of fundamentally new business models. That's a whole rewrite of an organization which is not just creating a new application out there. Fundamental end-to-end transformation. My belief is, our belief is that now starts a whole new era of transformation, digital transformation. We've just gone through digital modernization. Well, that's a great point. And the business model impacts great. And you know, in times of these inflection points, again, you're a student of history in the tech industry, you know, PC revolution, TCP IP, these are big points in time. They're not transitions. The big players tend to win the transitions. When you have a transformation, it's a Cambrian explosion of new kinds of capabilities. This is really, I would agree with your point, but I think it's going to be an Cambrian explosion because the business model forcing function is there. How do you see a player? Because you're in the middle of all this because you guys are the control plane for data in the industry as a company. You enable these new hopes. Can you share your thoughts? We see a lot of that. And I think the way to think about it, I think first of all, you said it right. This is a step function change in your opinion. This is a whole new, you know, you get to a new curve. You go to a different model. It's a whole new equation you're writing for the curve you're going to be on. It's not just changing the gradient of the curve you've been on. This is going to be a whole new journey. And when we think of the new world of digital transformation, there are four elements that join. First of all, it has to be strategic. Has to be board, CEO, executive, top, down, fundamentally across the whole organization, across every function of an organization. Second, when you talked about scale, I believe this is all about innovating at scale. It's not about, hey, let me go put a new application and some far flung of my business. We got to innovate at scale end-to-end. Change does not happen in bits and pieces. Third one, this is cloud-native, absolutely cloud-native. If there was any minuscule of doubt, this is taking it away. Cloud-nativity is the fundamental differentiator. And the last but not the least is digital natives, which is where everybody wants to go, become a digitally transformed company or data led. You got to make data led decisions. So four components, strategic mindset, innovation at scale, cloud-nativity, and being data led is going to define digital transformation. I think that encapsulates absolutely innovation strategy. I agree with you 100%. That's really insightful. I want to also get your thoughts on some things that you're talking about. And you know, you and I've always had some really kind of high level conversations around this. And you know, theCUBE has been a very social organization. We'd love to be that social construct between companies and audiences. But you use a term, the digital transformation, the soul of digital transformation is data 4.0. This idea of having a soul is interesting because the apps all have personalization built in. You have Claire, you've been doing Claire AI for a while. So this idea of social organizations, a soul is kind of an interesting piece of metadata you're putting out in the messaging. What do you mean by that? How can digital transformation have a soul? You know, I think we thought about it a lot. And I think it just came to me that, look, at the end of the day, any transformation is so fundamental to anything that anybody does. And I think if you think about, you can go through a kind of fundamental transformation that is just qualitative. It's qualitative and quantitative. It's about a human body. It's about a human body transforming itself. And when something doesn't have a soul, John, it does not have life. It cannot truly move to the next paradigm. So our belief is that any transformation has to have a soul. And the digital world is all about data. So obviously we believe that you're walking into a data 4.0 world, where as I said, the four pillars of digital transformation include being data-led and our deepest data is the soul of that transformation. And data itself is moving into a new paradigm. You've heard us talk about 1.0, 2.0, 3.0. And this is the new world of 4.0, data 4.0, which basically is all about cloud nativity, intelligent automation, AI powered, focusing on data trust and data ethics and operation and innovation at scale. When you bring these elements together, then that enables digital transformation to happen on the shoulders of data 4.0, which in my opinion is the soul of digital transformation. All right, so just rewind on data 4.0 for a minute. Pretend I'm a CIO, I'm super busy. I don't have time to read up about it. Give me the bottom line. What is data 4.0? Describe it to me in basic terms. Is it just an advancement, acceleration? What's the quick elevator pitch on 4.0, data 4.0? Very simple. I mean, we're all walking into a world where we're going to be digital. Digital means that we're basically going to be creating tons of data. By the way, and data is everywhere. It's not just within the four walls of us. It's basically what I call transaction and interaction. And with the scale and volume of data increasing, the complexity of it increasing, we want to make decisions. I say tomorrow's decision today, right? And with data that is available to us yesterday, so I can be prepared for that decision. So we need intelligence, we need automation, we need flexibility, which is where AI comes from. These are all very fundamental rewrites of the technology stack to enable a fundamental business transformation. So in that world, data is front and center. And you look at the amount of data we're going to collect, the whole concept of data ethics and data trust become very important. Not just good old governance, governance is important, but data privacy, data trust become very important. When we're going to do things like contact tracing, it's very important for the society, but the ethics, trust and privacy of what you and I will give to the government is going to become very much important. So to me, that world that we go in, every enterprise has to think data first, data led, build an infrastructure to support the business in that context. And then, and I said, then the soul, which is data, will give life to digital transformation. That's awesome. Love the personalization, the soul angle on it. I always believe that you guys had that intelligent automation fabric. And to me, you said earlier, cloud native is apparent to everyone now. I think out of all this crisis, I think the one thing that's not going to be debated anymore is that cloud native is the operating model. I think that's pretty much a done deal at this point. So having this horizontally scalable data, you know I've been on this rant for years, I think that's the killer app. I think having horizontally scalable data is going to enable a lot, souls and more life. So I got to ask you the real, the billion dollar question, Amit, I'm a customer of yours or prospect or a large enterprise. I'm seeing what's happening at scale, provisioning of VPNs for 100% of employees at home except for the most needed workers. I now see all the things I need to either, I didn't need to cancel and projects to double down on. I still got to go out and build my competitive advantage. I still have to run my business. So I need to really start deploying right out of the gate. Data centric, data first, virtual first, whatever you want to call it, the new reality first, this inflection point. What do I do? What is the things that you see as projects or playbook recipes that people could implement? You know, first of all, we see a very, very fundamental revaluation of the entire business model. In fact, we have this term that we are using now that we have to think of business as a business 360. And if you think about in this new world, the businesses that stood the test is that had basically what I call a digital supply chain or a very digital scalable way of interacting with their customers, being able to engage with their customers. A digital fabric of making sure that they can bring their products and services to the customers very, very quickly. Or in some cases, if they were creating new products and services, they had the ability to a whole new supply chain to reach their customers. And of course, a business model that was flexible, so they don't obviously, they can cater to the needs of their customers. So in all of these worlds, customers are building a digital scalable data platforms. And when I say platforms, it's not about a some monolithic platform. These are also, you and I have talked about very modular microservices based platform that reside on what we call metadata. Data has to be the sole of the digital enterprise. Metadata is the nervous system. That makes it all work. That's the, you know, the left brain, right brain, that makes it all work, which is where we put our AI on top of. AI that works for the customers, with them, they leverage it. But AI applied on that metadata allows them to be very flexible, limbo and make these decisions very rapidly, whether they are doing analytics for tomorrow's offering to be brought in front of a customer or understanding that customer better to give them something that appeals to them in changing times or to protect their customer's data or to provide governance on top of it. Anything that you would like to do has to ride on top of what I call a AI led metadata development platform that can scale horizontally. Okay, so I got to go to the next level on this, which is, okay, you got me on that. I hear what you're saying, I agree. Great, but I got to put my developers to work. And I got insights on analytics teams, I got competencies, but admit my complexities don't go away. I still got compliance at scale. I got governance at scale. But I also got now, my developers, not just to get analytical insight, there's great dashboards and there's great analytic data out there. You guys do a good job there. I got to get my developers coding so I can get that agility of the data into the apps for visualization in the app or having to be a key ingredient of the software. How do I do that? What's your answer to that one? So that's a great use case. If you think about it, for a developer, one of the biggest challenge for an analytics project is how do I bring all the data that resides across the enterprise so that I can put it in any kind of visualization analytics tool, right? And things are happening at scale. I mean, an enterprise is spread across the globe. It's so many different data sources available everywhere. Again, what we've done is that as a part of the data platform when you focus on the metadata, that allows you to go to one place where you can have full access to all of the data assets that are available across your end. You remember, at the cube years ago, we unveiled the launch of our enterprise data catalog which, as I said, was the Google for enterprise data through metadata. Now, developers don't have to go start wasting their time trying to find where the data assets are. Through the catalog where Claire is in with, they have access to it. They can start putting that to work and figuring out how do I take different kinds of data? How do I put it in some data science tool through which we have been built integrations? Do what I call the valuable last mile work which is where the intelligence is needed from them versus spend their energy trying to figure out where good data, clean data, all kinds of data sits. We have eliminated all of that complexity with the help of metadata, data platform, Claire, who let the developers do what I call value added productive work. I'm at final question for you. I know you talked to customers a lot. You're always on the road. You had a great product background. That's where you came from. Good mixed understanding of the business. But now your customers and prospects are trying to put the fires out. The big room that, you know, no one's going to talk about their kitchen appliances when the house is burning down. And in some cases on the business model side, or if it's a growth strategy, they're going to put all their energy to where the action is. So getting mindshare with them is going to be very difficult. How are you as a leader and how is Informatica getting in front of these folks and saying, look, I know things are tough, but we're an important supplier for you. How do you differentiate? How are you going to get that mindshare? What is some of those conversations? Because this is really the psychology of the marketplace right now, the buyer and the customer. First of all, obviously we had to adapt to reach our customers in a different way which is the virtual way, just like you and I are chatting right now. And to be candid, our teams were fantastic in being able to do it. We've actually already held multiple, pretty big sizes, but in fact, the first week before we started shelter today, we had set up a MDM and data governance summit up in New York and we expected thousands of customers to come there asking that they were doing it to virtual and we did it virtually and we had three times more people attend the virtual event, much easier for people to attend it than the confines of the living room. So we've gone 100% virtual and good news is that our customers are heavily engaged. We've actually had more participation of customers coming and attending our events. We've had obviously our customers speaking, talking about how they've created value. I mean, in light of that, next week, we have the big event which we calling Clareview named after Clare, our AI engine. It's basically a beautiful Netflix like experience. We'll have a keynote, we'll have seasons and episodes. People can do bite-sized viewing on their own leisure, we'll talk about all kinds of transformation. In fact, we have Scott Guthrie who's, he runs all of Azure and clouded Microsoft as a part of my keynote. We have two great customers, CDO at Axxl and a CEO of JDRFA, not profit that does type on diabetes work, talk about their data journeys. We have Mark Bayer from Gartner. So we've been able to pivot and our customers are heavily engaged because data is a P0 or a P1 activity for them to invest in. So we haven't seen any drop-off in customer engagement with us. And we've been very, very blessed that we have a very loyal and a very high retention rate customer base. Well, I would expect that being the center of the value proposition where we've always said data has been one more final, final questions since this popped in my head. You and I have been talking about the edge for years. Certainly now the edge is exposed. We also know what the edge is. It's working at home. It's the human, it's me, it's my IoT devices. More than ever, the edge is now the new perimeter. It's the edge and now the edge is there. This is something that you've been talking about in a while. This is another part of data fabric that's important. Your view on this new edge that's now I've visualized by everybody and realized this immerse immersion. What's your thoughts on the edge? Oh, I think the edge is real now. If you and me chatted about that, I don't know if four years ago I had an informatical word. Look, think of it just a minute. Think of how security is going to change. There's no more a data center through which we are out of traffic anymore. It's sitting over there somewhere where no human being is that often. People are connecting to all kind of cloud applications directly from their offices or living rooms or their cultures. And the world of security has to change in that context. And people are more going to be caught and enterprise life are more worried about, hey, how do I make sure that the data centric privacy and security is there in my pipes that I connect to the third party cloud vendors versus I can't route traffic to mine, everything through my VPN. So the edge is going to become a lot more compute-intensive as well as it will require a lot of the elements that are, to be honest, used to being data center-centric. We have to lighten them and bring them to the edge so enterprises can feel assured and working because at the end of the day they have to run a business by the standards that enterprises held to. So you will see a ton of innovation. By the way, robotics. Robotics is going to make edge even more interesting and lively, right? So I see the next couple of years heavy IoT edge computing, a lot of, you know, just like the client server model took mainframe, the PC became like a mainframe in terms of compute capacity. I guarantee at the desktop, compute capacity will go down to the edge and we're going to see that happen in the next five years or so. The edge is the new data center, as I always say. It's the land is the land, the land is the land. Amit, great to see you and thanks for sharing. And I'm sorry we can't do it in person, but this has been like a fireside chat meets cube interview remote. Thanks for spending the time and sharing your insights. And, you know, we've always had great interviews at your events, virtual again this year. Going to spread it out over time. Good call. Thanks for coming on, appreciate it. Thanks, Amit. Take care. Amit Wally, CEO of Informata, always great to get the conversation updates from him on the industry and what Informatica is at the center of the value proposition. Data 4.0, this is really the new transformation, not transition, data science, data, data engineering, all happening. It's a cube with our remote interviews, bringing you all the coverage here from our Palo Alto studios. I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching.