 Prepare for the extraction point. We've been briefed in all the important stories and events in the world of emerging information. Now it's time to extract the data and turn it into action. Live from the SiliconANGLE Studios in the heart of Silicon Valley, this is extraction point with John Furrier. Welcome to siliconangle.tv. I'm John Furrier for the extraction point. Here are my guests today is Tony Colas, the Senior Vice President of Customer Service at EMC here in the studio in the Cube in Palo Alto, home of Cloudera where we share our space. Tony, welcome to the Cube and extraction point. Thanks for coming in today. Thanks for having me, John. You're in Silicon Valley for EMC and you're running the EMC business for customer service which is hot these days because the market's changing, infrastructure's changing. Tell us your role about you and your role at EMC. So I run a worldwide customer service for EMC that's what you normally think of as the guys who go out and change disks and do the break-fix stuff and the folks who provide technical support services and all the folks who provide services technologies like e-services in our customer-facing websites. Yeah I used to work at HP back in the day in the 80s and you know they had mini computers and networks and customer service you got to deal with all the enterprises support contracts all that and but today's changing environment we're living in you know massive change obviously you know there's all kinds issues out there that we're seeing that are happening real-time I'll see new platforms around conversion networking etc and then you got things like these catastrophes like in Japan disaster mean this huge issues what are the big market forces that you're seeing out there I mean out in the market what's the angle in the marketplace what's your angle on what's going on in the market today. Well you nailed the one right off the bat which is convergent infrastructure and I think as you know it feels a whole lot like the paradigm shift that we've seen once or twice in our lengthy careers from client server and things like the emergence the internet this whole notion of convergent infrastructure in the data center is really transformational across the industry and happening very very quickly from a technology platform stack so that's certainly transformational in the industry and EMC is fortunate enough to have a decent play in that space which was very good position to be in. You mentioned another one which is the big data this is this big leap forward for data warehousing and business intelligence which has now gone to some inflection point where the value provides is just a whole lot more than it has been in the past and is really really taking off. The third is with things like the data domain space the acquisition that EMC made a little more than a year ago. Local VC funded that NEA funded that here big data domain. Exactly and you know what a rocket ship that's been along with these other two market areas. They own back up they're doing the disaster recovery to that part of their deal to they do that and it will combine it with EMC combined it like the other players in the industry with some of the other duplication backup recovery and some of the bricks and mortar kinds of things which are very very useful in disaster recovery. So what's the biggest force in the marketplace I mean honestly you know you're in a business where you have to have things pretty much five nines you get a service customers escalation all kinds of processes. You know those things you mentioned those are disruptive forces. Yes. Which one's the most disruptive in your mind and what is it disrupting? Well I think you know for the one that we have that seems farthest along the inflection curve is this conversion infrastructure though I think the other two the big data and the things in the data domain space are maybe 12 to 18 months behind but the thing that's really just seems to be very interesting to me for the conversion infrastructure thing is is the value proposition is not the normal value proposition you know we're talking about what do you mean the you know the what we're trying the way we're going to transform or customers see this potential to transform the way they actually spend their money on IT and you know I've been in this business a lot of time where you talk about squeezing two or three percentage out of your capital budget here and getting operational efficiency here and when you look at the the conversations around converged interest infrastructure and the new data center technology we're talking about much much much bigger chunks of return and that scale of the value proposition is just 10x what it has been for other types of technology initiatives. So translation if I can translate that customer speak into or EMC customer service speak into reality is what you're basically saying is the numbers are so massive that it's re-engineering a lot of a lot of change. Yeah exactly this does big benefits not little micro oh yeah yeah do some efficiency here and you know don't buy paperclips here and there kind of thing but more of radical numbers that's exactly right and you know the interesting side angle to it is you know the psychology of it it's also seems to appeal to a long held aspiration of the CIO community you know they spend 95 percent of their time keeping the lights on on their on their major systems and have been impressed by their their own customers within their own organizations to spend more of their IT dollars on things which are actually transformational for the business they want to be able to do that that's both something that they're getting pressure to do and that actually they'd like to do rather than just feeling like they're keeping their lights on so those combinations of things about this fundamental value proposition and then there's this fundamental appeal for people or professions that's pretty consistent I'm doing a panel actually this week where you know we're talking about cloud in particular and which also the conversion networking and we cover HP which big into conversion networks with Donatelli ex-EMC guy heading up the charge over there so plug for Donatelli over there is that there's economic benefits that's that's attractive but there's also value creation or extraction opportunities for these environments where it's not only an economic benefit but there's value opportunity value creation right new services can you talk a little bit about what's happening there in the market and forces on the value creation and economic side is that true I think so I mean you know there's so much demand for to get more out of the technology dollars and you know if you ask most of the companies you know what would they do if they weren't spending money keeping the lights on and what kinds of value they could get from the data that they have from their customers and from doing business they they don't really have any problems coming up with this very long list of high value things that they'd like to get to but they've been feeling hindered based on their infrastructure costs and a lot of people have been saying IT's been kind of in this 10-year slump you know a lot of do more with less has been the drum that was been banging on for you know 10 years and it's kind of depressing I mean people that I've talked to an IT like you know it kind of kind of been depressing right it's like come on where's the where's the sexy new toys in the iPad and this new stuff's coming around so this is kind of a rejuvenation of IT that's my point is like God the CIOs have been waiting for something like yeah yeah I can actually use open-source software with Cloudera or use stuff with Green Plum to do stuff then get these projects off the out the door I totally agree and I think you know I think my my angle on the market is that it's really hot right now and you know there's new opportunities to create new processes to change the value chain and deliver the same objectives with for less and with more value so you know hot market congratulations thanks let's talk reality you're from your you're a business executive SVP your port to the to the big dogs at EMC EMC is a tough company to work for they have high standards in customer service it's pretty well known in the in the business but EMC is known as a storage powerhouse yep clearly but now you guys are morphing into a tech giant category Joe Tucci said that you guys now are the the went from the big fish in the pond to the smallest of the big at the analyst meeting in New York so we got to change the game a little bit for you dealing with a different set of customers new product lines what's the update on the business side from your standpoint you know I see breaking you know breaking records with it with the big show but what's happening with EMC service business well it's a you know it's certainly analogous to your CIO thing where you know storage is important but not particularly necessary the sexiest thing so for services guy to be able to have a few more rocket ships and flight with converged infrastructure and big data and the things that data domain doing and to exercise you know management skills associated with explosive growth man that feels good that really feels like our really really good thing and you know for us you know we've got this as you said these this very deep true service culture DNA that's really been a differentiation for EMC for a long time and you know my challenge and my my charter is to make sure that we continue that legacy with these new areas that we're going into so that same you know best in class you still got the multi-vendor issues you got to deal with the whole conversion networking what conversion networking particularly you think is the hottest opportunity for you right now I mean obviously you know Michael Capellis I was interviewed by me at the New York event and he said that conversion networking was the real deal and that it's probably one of the most exciting things he's seen in a trend for 20 25 years what's the hottest thing that you're seeing in that with regard to that well you know I really look at this as an opportunity to you know add a little fuel to the rocket ship here from the services angle and the way we're choosing to do that I heard Michael speak about this a couple years ago and frankly one of the people that was most sparking that sparked my interest the most was listening to Paul Maritz talk about this with Joe Tucci about a year and a half ago and it was literally the epiphany in my head about what what this really meant when you're getting back to like this value proposition thing the scale of it and for for me what I see is like I don't want to just adapt to this market opportunity or get ready for it from a services thing I want to see if I can add some more fuel to this rocket ship and so for what what that fuel the fuel for us is to work with VMware and Cisco and act like one service organization because for us that's what converged infrastructure is the virtualization along with the the VC stuff right yeah exactly and so we created this joint venture VC the virtual compute environment and Intel's now in that yes they are they are minority shareholder in that they are indeed and what we vice V I see that's a good one vice that's a very good one what's your tech vice Intel's now in the acronym it's not VCE anymore it's official breaking down one silicon angle dot com it's a vice trade one vice for another that's the metaphor so Intel is now involved with what he told me that's right okay and so for us in the service organization is to for us to do really act like one service organization so I've reached reached out about a year and a half ago to my colleagues at Cisco and VMware the services execs and said how do we do this it's got to be more than just a multi-vendor service agreement and a collaboration agreement what can we really do to manifest this as one service experience and what we found is that it really has been if it's not like this same sentence as asking about the value proposition of the products the V block products it's the second thing like great I understand what those products are going to do and how they can impact and fundamentally transform the way we do business how you're going to service it and how you're going to support it's literally the second thing out of their mouth and so that's what our real angle has been is like let's work together in a very real way to be one service organization of the customers that choose to go with VCE for conversion infrastructure and how's that working for any success stories I mean you guys aren't going to compete with the channel I mean there was a channel conflict you know scuttle butt that's right so we are we are not so the joint venture is is up and running and is really helping us bring all of our great all of our collective go to market energy and bandwidth together into one place and also to you know funnel things out to serve as partners because there's no way I mean that that's what the thing is this market is too big even with you know companies of relatively massive big mass like Cisco VMware and emcee we're not going to get out this mark on us we have to go through partners and we have to make that make that really you have all kinds of test verification labs I know that you guys have that the multi-platform there's all kinds of testing various certifications not easy that's right for VCE that's right and we have for the same thing on the service side we have joint labs that we work together we don't want to recreate the wheel we've created this very cool technology that lets us actually collaborate together on service requests in ways that aren't normal you know so that we're all able to do it at the same time and without having to use us you know a common serum system so some pretty cool things that we're doing there together it's for a service experience I'm John Furrier with silicon angle TV my guest today is Tony coalist SVP senior vice president of customer service for emcee customer service is changing in today's marketplace with new tools social media social networks mobility open source software new tools are emerging new customer experiences Tony talk about with me the conversation around touch points I see in service you have customers you you have processes and their you know paths and processes escalation etc but now you have a new set of data coming in from from customers new service of channels possibly emerging in this new social web people are on Facebook saying hey emcee this emcee that people on Twitter you know tweeting about all kinds of things yep what do you do do you just go after it I mean you have you know the the forum so we should take us through that I know you handle this the e side of the business you know the e service service which is the all the emcee knowledge banks and all the knowledge centers in the forums that's right you know your intranets and your relationship with jive which is the software that you guys use and then your case study on there on their website so you're pretty proficient on social you've been doing it for four years or so you mentioned to me prior to this what's going on I mean we know about Comcast we know about all these kind of proof of concept stuff going on and real hype depends how do you feel about this it's real and the idea that you know that we have is to be able to interact with customers in whatever channel they happen to prefer which is not the same in every circumstance so when they've got something really hot going on and you know that's one angle and one media or one channel that they want to work with us when they're in a more relaxed frame of mind they may want to interact with us in another frame of a set of tools and which may be more social unless you know so what we need to do is be able to serve customers through whatever interaction channel they happen to want to and that's you know for the old school constituents among our customer email telephone still we're old we use email my kids tell me you know you use email dad you're completely old and irrelevant meanwhile they're 5,000 texts a day yeah I know how they do it you know hey that's the new world and you know it's cool it is if you can pull it off right and we're early on in this emerging market so you know we know Facebook's growing like a weed LinkedIn just crossed a hundred million users a LinkedIn more business-oriented social Facebook more social this is one to many relationship that used to exist EMC to many clients now it's many many yeah how do you deal with that I mean it's actually a very interesting area here and that there's some you know a lot more work to be done on how you actually connect with communities of interest that self-identify and be able to you know have people who are good at what they in that peer group get identified promoted stay there and actually feel like they want to do it in the way that they want to right which is not the same thing all the time one of the other kind of very interesting things which we think is a real opportunity that we think we've actually touched into the actually gotten this really going is being able to connect skill sets to the types of problems or issues that customers have faster than we used to before and that's been a very very interesting angle for us it's you know more you know the old-school model is going through the ticket get a ticket way of sales or escalates to the top of the line normal in a log ways exactly so we've got this services technology that looks that starts looking at customers as they start interacting with us in one channel another on the web and starts identifying potential skill sets in our service organization that are best equipped to handle that and their availability and connect those things so when a customer either either proactively do that or when they actually physically say I need some help that we are able to get the best equipped person to hand to work with them as fast as possible that's a very that's been working out well for us we've been seeing customers really really really like that it bypasses all of the things that they don't like about the older school models yeah what about Twitter have you guys done any customer support changes like tickets in the Twitter social CRM kind of things very light very light and you know one of the things that we want to understand better is this again the what are those channels that customers want to use what would they use Twitter for and and how represented are they amongst our customer base so that's something that we have a pretty big Twitter following out there for the folks out there why don't you share with them what you're looking for is there anything particular that you'd like to see answered that are challenged I mean we're the top of the first inning some say bottom of the first inning whatever maybe top of the second you know social media really has not delivered the juice that some claim it would there's a lot of proof of concept involved we know that but I mean what is what's missing what do you need well I mean I'd really like to know whether the things like the technologies and tool sets like jive actually suffice for what customers want to do in that kind of environment or whether they whether there's a richer experience that lets them tell you know expose more about them a more profile about them that also then has benefit to other people are out there saying that's the guy who knows this particular topic and he's at the water cooler right now is that a value that's a particular thing that's a value would how would customers use things like Twitter to engage in customer service what scenarios would it actually service them best those are some of the kind of key things that we so in basically what you're saying is you need use case data forecasting so early you don't even actually know the use cases most people don't that's right yeah you know we you know can't buy a product for a use case you don't know exists right so figure out the use cases right and then match the product exactly and you know one of the other angles I think has got a lot of potential is again it's using our eating our own dog food which is the the big data notion I mean we collect in the process of interacting with our customers massive amounts of data and frankly I see a huge opportunity for us to be able to mine that data into things like risk analysis of particular technology configuration do you expose that data publicly or is it only internal behind the firewall yeah it's mostly internal but you can see how this could grow so that you would actually first of all the next point would be to deliver to partners yeah we're servicing you could say we see this risk profile emerging in your customer base maybe you should get ahead of it here's something that you can do about it and so on so that's you know that's the kind of sphere that's a business analytics equation yeah exactly we've had click fox on the show marker Pacelli folks out there at click fox commas a site you want to check out they've been using big data analytics to identify fingerprints in customer relationships so they can actually pull up different one customer through multiple channels so it's kind of flattening the silos out in terms of cool stuff in terms of and then they're probably the most progressive companies that I've seen out there so we're following them but they're pushing the envelope this is like they have sprint as a customer so they can go in and say hey when someone calls in they just came from the website oh by the way they come in another way they hang up their frustrated customer you can see a life's lifecycle of customer experience that's a whole nother angle that's a great that's some very very cool stuff there yeah but I think I'm into the big data what do you think about big data I mean you know big data is a now the big theme in the industry you guys are getting behind it with I salon green plum you have a high-end offering complimentary to the symmetric stuff is that rock on your world a little bit you mentioned it's a rocket ship it's a turbulent yes the integrations going okay from a service perspective those technologies fitting in with your organization they are I think we've gotten better at doing M&A because we've just done a lot of them and then compared to how clumsy I felt we were with some of them four five years ago the ability to bring in new colleagues in a way that preserves what they're good at and still providing the leverage and scale of emcee is something that we I think we've gotten all much better at you know frankly I think right now emcee has almost as many people in the Bay Area as it does in the East Coast which is you know an astonishing transformation for our company like emcee you know there's the data domain folks do you want to include VMware that makes it even a fundamentally different thing that you've got data compute and all the folks over like the former document and people still around but it's going very very well but it's to your rocket ship analogy it it's about it feels to me about where we were with a converged infrastructure about a year ago but it is really taking off very quickly where Tony Colas CEO as president customer service at EMC final question how is the social side of this equation meaning benefit to users the social angle to society meaning customers mean you have customers are they happier what is in being enabled by these new big trends that you see your customers taking advantage of what's the benefit to them I mean what's the what's in it for wealth you know as people who need to reach out for service it means that they can do it in the ways that they want to and and if we're using the big data analytics correctly it means that they have to do it less often because we're taking the experience that we have and feeding it back into the products so you know the paradigm that no customer not needing customer service is the best customer service that's making customers happier right so we just taking that out off their plate when giving them products that work and but when they do need to reach us then and work with us we let them do it in the way that they want to in the language they want to and in the sun and vary it based on the scenario that they're facing