 Live from the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas, extracting the signal from the noise. It's theCUBE covering Splunk.com 2015, brought to you by Splunk. Now, here are your hosts, John Furrier and Jeff Rick. Hey, welcome back everyone. You're watching theCUBE live here at Splunk.com conference. This is theCUBE SiliconANGLE's flagship program where we go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise. I'm John Furrier with Jeff Rick, my co-host. Our next guest is CUBE alumni, Lee Cummings, the data analytics CTO of Compute Center. Compute Center. Computer Center, sir. Computer Center. Welcome back. Thank you very much, John, and welcome, Jeff. Yeah, it's fantastic to be here. I did this two years ago and to be back is absolutely thrilling. You're now a CUBE alumni. I am a CUBE alumni. I'll have to have my little badge. Yeah, thank you, sir. We're putting a hall of fame together. You're getting maybe a first ballot nominee. I'll look forward to it. We're always entertaining. Thanks for coming on. So share with us what's happening. What are you seeing in the show here? Just give us some color around the vibe of the show. What's jumping out at you? What observational data can you share? So, I mean, what I see in the show certainly is the level of maturity we now have using sort of operational analytics, what we can do with Splunk. I think when I was here two years ago, it was sort of emerging, evolving, but we're now reaching a saturation point and the opportunities are sort of reaching up and catching up with the vision. So now what we can do is real things to help enable our users and certainly help to drive the promise of data analytics in a very positive way for ourselves as a business and indeed for our customers. It's a very exciting space just now. So let's talk about the market dynamics and what you guys are doing with your customers because we were commenting last night and certainly in the CUBE, we've always said this publicly that, you know, nothing to be ashamed of Splunk. You start on the bottom of the food chain, log data, kind of no one wants to do that job. And finally, someone did it really well, okay? And they grew from that as a company heritage, great software. So they're moving up the food chain. Now you're hearing business analytics, you're hearing machine learning. This is like, this is like the big game. It is. What's your thoughts on that? What are you guys seeing? Well, I'm very pleased that sort of my company computer center of sort of taking the bit by the teeth and we're looking at getting a data analytics CTO. It's the first one that I'm aware of across the world. So we're actually taking this very, very seriously. You know, let's not just go for low-hanging fruit. I think we're in a situation where, you know, using big data is not just a nice to have, it's something that we need to have in terms of competitiveness. It's going to be, I think, a differentiator for us. And we're determined to actually, you know, grab onto this. And what I could do in my job, I can be dedicated across the entire group across the world to ensure that, you know, these best practices are industrialization and indeed our promise is delivered consistently. And not only deliver consistently, we can actually have a life cycle for that. So we'd have a backlog of what we need to achieve. We bring it together, we bring it through and we have quality around that at all times. So I think we need a lot of rigor, a lot of governance and a lot of determination because it's now all parts of the business. You know, it's not just IT, it's about I'm speaking to marketing, I'm speaking to everyone. It's about how can we actually, because with data analytics, it's a thread that goes through the entire business. So it's vital that we put into the fingers of the decision makers those beacons of enlightenment so we can actually have lovely actionable information and insight. So that's the drive, that's the motivation. But the amount of opportunity that we have is palpable. It's absolutely everywhere and it's so easy to see and to visualize. But the beauty is with operational intelligence and Splunk is that we can be hitting success factors all the time. It's not just we'll do something and come back in a couple of months. We can be hitting those at all times and actually keeping the momentum, keeping the traction and keeping the excitement and the energy moving. So it's a very exciting place to be. And are you getting that same vibe from your customer? So are they to the point now where they get it? They've got to be there. They know it's not an option anymore. I think so, I mean, you know, our customers are very mature. We've been going since 1981. People know that we are living in a big data world. People know we are living in a world where data analytics is something that has expectations around that. So our customers are expecting more and indeed we are expecting of ourselves more to give to our customers to help enable their experience. So we are actually moving into this next sort of era in what we need to be delivering in a very fast and furious way. We cannot stand still. We absolutely cannot stand still. But you got to be careful, right? They don't get defocused with all this great opportunity and things pulling you a lot of different ways. So how do you kind of prioritize both internally but also for your customers on, you know how to grasp this opportunity without just getting drowned in too many projects and too many kind of angles? So I mean, I've got a lot of experience in the data analytics world and the beauty is, you know, my company computer center brought me in specifically to do this. Because we know that in the Splunk world we have people who do Splunk but actually they typically have a day to day function. My function is to do this, is to deliver on the promise. So I've got three key areas across what we would call supply chain because we're a big lead partner in Europe. And we have our managed services. So we do service tests even using 18 languages across the world. And we're also having our own internal use case. So we have those three pillars, if you will, that we have to deliver on. But there's synergies across them. So what we do internally, we can showcase to our customers that, yes, we do this. But yes, actually, we've done this ourselves and these are the results. Please come and see and you can have it as well. So it's very important with Splunk to manage your expectations and make sure you can deliver on those things because Splunk does create excitement, it does create energy. So we need to harness that energy and make sure that what we do is sustainable, is industrialized, and is quality. What are you seeing on the IT service intelligence? What's your take on that? Have you reviewed that? Have you even previewed it? Absolutely sir. Yeah, I did the IT service intelligence bootcamp last week in London. And it was for me a statement or an expression of how Splunk has grown up. That, I mean, I think sir, I've got a background in service management. For me to see that, I'm thinking, oh my goodness me, this is absolutely fantastic. Splunk are not just seeing what might happen, they're actually setting the trends. So the fact that we can now have IT service intelligence to ourselves, to high quality, and maybe we can expose some of that to our customers, we can be looking at our SLAs and we can be making decisions, taking actions before things may get surfaced up. So I do certainly congratulate Splunk on this and along with this continue. It does help us as a business and definitely helps our customers to make sure that they're driving what they need to be driving for themselves. So one of the European analysts out there firms, or global firms, DigiCom is had a post on Dennis Howlett's company. And I'm just going to quote a quote from that article and I'll get your thoughts on it. This is from the diginomica.com, it's on our crowdchat.net. It's evidence that Splunk is maturing across a number of areas and that it is consistently filling out the gaps across its product line while simplifying how it approaches the market. So how are they as a partner on the go-to market? Are they easy to work with? I mean, they're trying to simplify. We heard them, the partner focus is critical, global footprint, transition to the cloud. Do you agree with that statement? Yes, I do, sir. And my view is that we need to have grown-up maturity on both sides. So I take a 360 degree view. So I am absolutely determined and resolute as it was in my previous position that we are the most progressive partner you could imagine. So it's not just Splunk giving to us, it's us giving back to Splunk, ensuring that together we're creating synergies and energy and delivering what we need to be delivering. So we're completely focused. But we all have a responsibility in this. It's not just a case of consuming what it is Splunk do for us. It's a case of together we will make something quite special and robust. What are the top three conversations that you're having with customers in the market today? Well, I mean, a key one we're having is around our service tests. So we've got service tests around the world and we're delivering those in 18 languages. So when you have service tests around the world, you want to ensure that we have global standards. So what we can now do with Splunk, we can actually take what we've done in one place, do it extremely well rapidly and apply that across the board. So the service test is quite key and customers, they want to see these dashboards as well. If they can see that everything is good and especially so, I think executive dashboards are even better. We just want that green happy face and that tells for all okay. So I think there's options there to deliver quality and to deliver value to our customers. But for me, it's all about delivering value and delivering value in a highly visible fashion. Well, final question for you. Share with the folks that aren't here. What's it like this year? What's going on? What's the vibe? Share some color, how'd the party go? What's the conference sessions like? What's the overall walk away being here on the ground? Being here this year is absolutely electrifying. You can see that there's more stands. We have a sports car in the background. The party last night was amazing. But with Splunk, again, I do congratulate the SVPs or senior guys, they're walking around. You can get to them. They are accessible and they're approachable. Everybody around here is buzzing. We're all walking on water and we're all looking to the future. It's absolutely, you must come to dot com. You must come to Vegas. I think like a startup, but they're one of the big, big guys now. They're a big company. Yeah, I mean, okay, Splunk are a big company, but they still have the family feeling. And that's something that I'm very proud of to work with Splunk. And that's very important. We do that ourselves at the computer center. We do have the global reach, but with local expertise, you always have to remember your roots and they do that, so well done. Awesome. Well, thanks for sharing your insight on theCUBE. Appreciate you coming back. Thank you, John. Thank you, Jeff. Okay, we'll be back with more after this short break here. Day two coverage of theCUBE here at dot com 2015 Splunk conference. We'll be right back.