 Live from San Francisco, it's theCUBE. Covering IBM Think 2019, brought to you by IBM. Okay, welcome back, everyone, live here in theCUBE here in San Francisco, exclusive coverage of IBM Think 2019. I'm John Furrier, Stu Miniman. Next guest is Kaleen Sanchez, Vice President of IBM Systems Lab Services. New role for you, welcome back to theCUBE. Thank you for asking me back. So the new role, Vice President of the Systems Lab Services. Sounds super cool, sounds like you got a little lab in there, a little experimentation. Think of it as a sandbox for geeks worldwide. So, and what that means is we enable like high performance computing deployments as well as what we do with blockchain and also artificial intelligence. So it's a playground for people who want to do some big things, solve big problems. What are some of the things that you offer? Just take us through how it works. Do I just jump in online? Is it a physical location? How, what's that? What's it like? So we've, in 2018, 9000 plus engagements worldwide in 123 countries. So, to net it out is it's not necessarily a single lab or a single garage. We have multiple locations and skills worldwide to enable these engagements. How big is the organization roughly? It's over a thousand folks. Consultants who are smart and capable. Yeah, we had a conversation yesterday with Jamie Thomas talking about, from a supercomputer standpoint now, IBM's reclaimed the top a couple of positions there and from a research standpoint, David Fleuer from our team's been talking for years about how 8PC architectures were really going to permeate what happens in the industry. And I think about distributed architectures. It all seems to go back to what people in the HPC environment lived in. You've got background in that. You worked for one of the big, big labs. Explain how this has become from something that just some government lab used to do to something that now many more companies around the globe are leveraging. Yeah, so before IBM I worked at Sandia National Laboratories. And the reason why I chose to work with these awesome skills worldwide in lab services is that I wanted to be part of the cool group, so to speak, right? So they were doing work in deployments with regards to, with Oak Ridge National Laboratories and also Lawrence Livermore. So you'll hear Thomas Emilio with Lawrence Livermore speak on stage about some of the relevance associated with high performance computing and why we're number one. So to get to your question, it's cool to be back aligned with what I could say high performance computing deployment. We are the mechanics, so to speak, in this organization. Similar to like what we do with Formula One, like people who put on the tires, add the air and also enable the cars to move around. Well, without them, guess what? Things don't move around. So you guys work on the high performance systems. You got quantum coming around the corner. You got AI, front and center. So you guys are like the hot shots. You come in, you build solutions with what's kind of in the tool chest, if you will. With IBM, is that right? No, you're 100% correct. I will say it, in my mind, we make things real. We deploy and implement strategic technologies worldwide for the benefit of our end users and we do that also with our partners. Give an example of an engagement you guys have had that's notable, that's worth sharing. Recently, this was a really exciting area. Smarter cities with Kazakhstan. And so here's this independent city that works on basically AI for filming things, like whether it's a security thing, recognizing certain faces, deployments associated with weapons, et cetera. And they were able to secure safety based on the films that they've taken, those assets. Now the other aspect is managing safer traffic. So even the president of Kazakhstan felt it was extremely relevant that we helped him deploy. And he comes back to one of our European leaders saying, hey, we need more of this and we want it to be extensive. We want to scale this opportunity. Talk about the philosophies you guys are deploying because it sounds like it's a, you said sandbox, but I think sandbox, I think you're doing prototypes. I'm thinking about cool stuff, building solutions. And also that kind of brings this whole kind of entrepreneurial creation mindset. Do you guys have like a design thinking methodology? Is there things you're bringing to the table? What else is involved besides the sandbox? You are correct. We have a very key component of design thinking. There's a CTO that reports to me directly who leads our overall design thinking. And so that's a key component of what we do worldwide. Now, as far as we also enable incubation of technologies. So it's like what we intend to do with IBM Q. What we intend to do with blockchain on system Z. So those things we have garages worldwide to deploy or incubate the technology. What's the coolest thing you worked on so far? Or the teams worked on that? That's really hard to say, because there's so much. It's like picking a favorite child. Yeah, it's like I have way too many. So I would- And you mentioned blockchain, I like blockchain. Blockchain, you're doing healthcare, is it more, is there certain industries that are popping out for you guys? So healthcare is an example, but I have seen it in the telecom area, as well as other industries in general. So we have 11 industries in which we serve. How about AI? Always trying to understand where customers are, how they're really moving things forward. Understand that that HPC architecture is a foundational layer for many customers to help deploy AI. Where are customers starting to make progress? Give us some of the vibe you're feeling from customers out there. So it's exciting with AI right now because we have power vision that allows us, as any of us, to actually exploit, utilize and play with, so to speak. So from my perspective, that is what's nice is that you can enable opportunities with the consumer market and learn. Similar to what we do with, for instance, and I'm jumping around here, IBM Q, where users can actually become a user and start evaluating algorithms in order to enable this really amazing technology, as in IBM Q. Well, that was always the promise of big data is that we should be able to leverage our data and get the average business user to do it. So it sounds like AI will continue that trend. Correct. So in prior role, I talked to all of you about big data storage and replication. So now what's amazing about the conversations is they've transcended. It's like here you're looking to manage these large data warehouses, right? What do you do with the data? How is it monetized? How is it used in order to solution what's possible? What is the goal of your organization next six months? Year, what's the charter? What are you guys, what's your key performance indicators? How do you guys measure success, client engagements, onboarding people? What's some of the business objectives? So we look at the number of engagements. We also look at educational services worldwide. For instance, I'll be in Cairo, Egypt next week to work on specific things that are going on in Mia in order to enable this next growth market, so to speak. So now what in addition we do to measure ourselves? Utilization, classic services organization, view of the world. So we also evaluate what we can do with revenue profit and our understanding of growth. And we really believe the focus is these growth technologies. Is there a criteria if I wanted to get involved, just saying I'm a customer prospect. Wow, I really want to get in this design thinking, got this labs, cool labs services. I want to play with the cutting edge technologies. How do I get involved? Is there a criteria open to all and how does it work? So in addition to IBM systems lab services, I have technical universities. And we actually run technical universities worldwide for end users, clients, as well as what we do with partners and IBMers. And this is important because we're able to then discuss, talk, collaborate with SMEs across multiple areas of technology. So it's a very good question and very important that I mentioned the technical universities. Are there certifications along that line? What are some of the hot skill sets that people are looking to learn about? Well, it circles right back to your last question, AI. With regards to how we certify folks as well as we, in essence, they get enough training in boot camps in order to get badges. Okay. So is there a certification? They just passed the Turing test and then they're okay? Correct. Well, I don't know about the Turing test, so to speak, but yeah. So is there a website at IBM.com? Is it like a URL? Is it like labservices.ibm.com? So you can do a cert. I personally like the look at Twitter where you can do a search on IBM Lab Services or TechU. TechU. And training, how big is that focus? Use a lot of video. Is it collaborative tooling? Is it face-to-face? What's the virtual? How do you guys do the training all the above? Unfair. I was going to say all of the above. It depends, right? So that, giving that classic response, our favorite is video blogs. What we could do in social media with the YouTube channels, et cetera, to get our opinions or our voice out with regards to key technologies. Well, great. Make sure you let us know what those channels are. We will promote them. Get that metadata out there. Of course, theCUBE loves to collaborate. And thanks for coming on and sharing. I appreciate it. And I will definitely take a sticker and put it on my laptop. All right. President of the new IBM Systems Lab Services. A lot of opportunities to get in the worldwide sandbox and put the solutions together from blockchain to cutting edge AI. Here live coverage here in San Francisco at IBM Think. I'm Jeff Rose. Stu Miniman. Stay with us for more coverage after this short break.