 Cute little guy, huh? This guy could take down you. Live from Las Vegas, Nevada, it's theCUBE at IBM Interconnect 2015. Brought to you by headline sponsor, IBM. Okay, welcome back everyone. Live in Las Vegas, this is theCUBE, our flagship program from SiliconANGLE Media. We go out to the events, I'm John Furrier with my co-host Dave Vellante, and our next guest is Aaron Schuch, executive software architect at Point Source. Welcome to theCUBE. Yeah, thank you for having me. So your next IBM right now, you've got a big shop here, web experiences, digital experience, social experiences, development, design, art, all that good stuff. You must be busy, mobile is hot, you must have a lot of mobile stuff. So tell us, what's going on with your company and why are you here at IBM Interconnect? Yeah, so we're actually out here with a fairly large team. We've got 19 board sources here, anywhere from our design team to our developers, to our executives. And really the main goal is to, you know, look at what's coming for IBM, educate ourselves, educate our partners, so we can deliver the best mobile solutions possible. So what are you seeing out there right now, obviously for the needs? The old days was, you know, put up some websites, do a web app, web responsive. People want to go native, native app, Android, iOS, whatnot. But now we're living in an API world. Mobile apps are hard not to crack, right? Going native, people go web response. What are you seeing in trends? Obviously the cloud can power a lot of this stuff. But on-prem, what's the landscape and what are some of the top conversations that you're having with your customers? Yeah, the cloud API, one that you mentioned is huge right now. But, you know, we actually start even before that we get to there. Because, you know, I can build you a world-class cloud API, but if it's not doing the right thing, if it's not engaging your customer, you've already pretty much lost. So where we start is at the business requirements phase where we go in with the BA and we figure out how the customer wants to use the app prior to even starting. And then, you know, at that point, I'll come in and we'll talk cloud API, we'll talk Node.js, which is something that's been pretty big for us going forward in that space. Clients like Amazon a lot? Or, and how is BlueMix doing VisaV, standing up stuff that is easy on Amazon? People use that for a decade now almost. So now, BlueMix, what are some of the things that you're seeing with IBM, BlueMix? VisaV, Amazon, and Microsoft as your Azure's out there. Yeah, BlueMix is interesting because it has so many capabilities around the ability to automatically scale. And that's specifically interesting to me because I lead our retail practice. And as I'm sure you guys are aware, retail has very unique scale demands. So things like Black Friday where- Auto scaling is huge, right? Exactly. And do they support auto scaling? BlueMix? Yes. So what, you know, the technology that I think is going to really revolutionize things in the API areas, Node on something like a BlueMix where you can auto scale with that. So you've got really a four tiered architecture model centered around Node as your delivery and aggregation tier, caching the data and aggregating data from all these legacy systems and making it friendly for mobile. So what is the number one hurdle for customers? I mean, it's pretty easy. You can hire a firm, do some design work, looks great. But then the user interaction is becoming designed as a huge issue. So it's not just look and feel. It's actually user expectation experience, which is a design thing, not so much art. I mean, looking beautiful is one thing, but actually being functionally beautiful is another. Can you just tease that out and what that means for some of the back end architects? So again, looking feel, looking beautiful, functionally and beautifully and then actually integrating. Absolutely. Yeah, so, you know, as an architect, what I'll do is, when I'm designing an API, what that user experience part is the most important part. So we look at how is the user actually going to use the app? How's the customer wants to engage their user? We send in a UX team that will actually do user research, ideally, to figure these things out. And once we have that knowledge, we can design the app technically in such a manner that it's going to function the best way possible for the user. So can you talk about the discussion of do I build a mobile app? Do I make it a responsive design? What are those discussions like with customers? Yeah, I think it really depends on the customer and what their industry is. In something like retail, obviously an MDOT site is a must have and that's kind of table stakes as of now. And then you can get into the app. So a good example of that is the one that we did for HH Greg, which is a retailer out of Indianapolis. They do very large appliances, televisions, electronics, furniture. So what we did there is we started with the MDOT site. We were able to get that going from the ground up in three and a half months or so on top of IBM WorkLite. And then what we did was we utilizing hybrid technology, we were able to share 80% of the code from the MDOT site into an installable app. So not a lot of invests once we had the MDOT site going to actually get the app in place. And they were able to recover the initial investment in probably three, four days or so of the app being launched to the app store. Now how does it work? It's a full life cycle. So once you deliver the code and the final build, you've QA'ed it, you sort of hand it off. What happens next? I mean, I guess it depends, but what's the sort of typical model? Once the app is basically ready to go, ready for consumption. So yeah, you submit to the app store and that's kind of where our marketing experts can help our partners with the app launch. So one that we did for FinishLine was actually very, very successful where they were able to drive so many downloads to the app that we actually ran into issues with scale. And they're also on soft layers so we were able to handle those issues with scale pretty seamlessly, but it was the initial app downloads exceeded expectations by roughly 10X. Right. And that's all because of a strategy that was in place to market the app, to drive it into the stores because that's who's going to be, really that's your main marketer for your app, but in that case is your store associates. So when I come into the store, I'm looking for a new set of shoes. Maybe they don't have my size. The associate comes over with the new app, scans the bar code, locates the shoes for me. Here they are in another store. You can either go there and pick them up or we can ship them to your house. And by the way, you should download this app. Okay, now what about the sort of maintenance of that app? Your clients outsource to you, you build the app. Now what? How do I, if I want to make changes, do you have sort of a monthly retainer, monthly maintenance, or is it sort of a one off every time statement of work? How's it work? Yeah, so we work with different models. So some of our clients want us to come in and build the initial app and get it running while also cross training their team and teaching them the skills necessary to succeed in mobile. And then at that point they'll take over the maintenance and others want us to just continue to maintain it holistically for the life of the app. Okay, and in that latter model, you just have some kind of relationship with the business people, they're feeding your requirements, you guys are... Exactly, yeah. So we kind of see ourselves a bridge between the business and the IT. So we can kind of bridge the gaps between them, collect the requirements from the business, talk to IT in a way that makes sense, and then come up with a holistic solution that works for both sides. How long have you guys been around? So PointSource as a whole has been around for 10 or 11 years? Okay. Stephanie's been on theCUBE, there's COO, Stephanie Trunzo. Trunzo? She has, yeah. Trunzo, okay. At Pulse, I think last year at Pulse, yeah. We talked mobile back then. When mobile first was launched, that was the big messaging. So she's been on, you guys have been on for a while. You guys have a lot of big clients, right? What's some of the clients you have? We do, yeah. So actually at 3.30 today at the general session, we'll have Tom from Primerica talking about a solution we did for them that enabled their 100,000-person sales force to, it's kind of a two-fold value prop there. So number one is training the sales force so that they're comfortable enough with Primerica's business model to get started very quickly. And I think they've, they're down to around three days training or so using the app. And the second is the app is actually used when the sales force visits a client's home and we utilize things like offline storage capabilities because when you're in somebody's home, you could be out in the middle of nowhere, not have a cell signal. So they're able to access all this offline, enter the information, sync it as soon as they get back online, and it's really streamlined their operations there. So, but around for more than a decade, your strategy obviously has shifted in the last 10 years. Exactly. Talk about your strategy in general. Sure, so in 2012, we pivoted to mobile. So we, like I said, we'd been in existence for quite some time before that. Myself and three others started up a Raleigh, North Carolina office and at that point we pivoted to mobile. So since then we've been working with clients like a Primerica, like an HH Greg, a finish line, all state on their mobility solutions. And the relationship with IBM goes back to the early days or? Yes. Well, Stephanie worked at IBM. She was at IBM. You worked at IBM. I did. So you have that experience, affinity with IBM development platforms, tools, middleware experience. Yeah, I was out of the Raleigh, North Carolina lab in the development labs working on products like Webster application server, pure systems, smarter commerce, sterling commerce, et cetera. All right, let's get down and dirty then. Since Stephanie's been on, you're on. Okay, we'll get you all warmed up. Let's get down and dirty. Mobile first, is it working with IBM? It's kind of downplayed here. Bluemix is a big mess. Obviously Bluemix is a great enabler. Got auto scaling you mentioned about a bunch of other goodness in there. Not that mobile's going away. It's not a failed initiative, but it seems to be global first right now. A lot of global discussions and also clouds. Is it mobile first or cloud first? Global first? What's your take on this? A lot of work getting done on the hood right now. My take is that mobile is actually driving cloud. So because of mobile and because the interaction patterns have changed, it basically demands a new technology model, which is cloud. So all these legacy systems that customers have that have been around throughout the, before the web area and through the web area are no longer sufficient for meeting the needs of today's mobile customers. So we've transitioned to things like the four tier architecture model where the cloud is just key. You have to have that data out there. You have to have it accessible. It has to be open to everyone. But you can art while you can move. It's a lot of different. Depends on what side of the room you're looking at the problem opportunity. It looks different. So for instance, you could argue that okay, if I go mobile first, if I go native, not web-responsive, that could be a strategy. In fact, the step in I talked about that last year in detail, some say go web-response, then go native, figure out your requirements. Some say go native. That's your demand now, do that. But then it's the data issue. Where's the data come from? So if you're aggregating data, using APIs as you mentioned, really hot, that's a cloud play. So there's all this really weird plumbing going on in the cloud that affects the app. There's some architectural choices. What are you seeing on that? Could you share anecdotally what you're seeing with customers around this complicated area of, okay, I want to design just a great app that looks good and functions amazing. But yet under the hood, if anyone opens it up, it's got to work. Talk about that. So under the hood, you mean cloud, APIs, notifications, recency, frequency, a lot of algorithmic Watson, for instance, is now embedded in big lift for Bluemix was the Watson piece. So you're seeing this fabric develop at the data layer that necessarily is kind of just underneath the mobile front end. So there's a lot of flux going on here. Not saying in a bad way, but architectural decisions need to be made. Exactly, and those architectural decisions, I think are a result of the requirements of today's consumer that has a mobile phone in their pocket 24-7. And the cloud is kind of a way to stitch everything together. All of these systems, all this data that exists all over the place, can then be aggregated through the cloud, made accessible to mobile. And I think that's really what's changing. Let me rephrase it this way then. If I'm a mobile developer, and I have a customer, because it's all customer driven, obviously you guys do that. You don't want to foreclose the future, but you want to leave some headroom too. So how do you think that through and how do you work with a customer on that specific point? Because if you misfire on the architecture, you could foreclose a downstream opportunity for the customer. Absolutely, yeah. So again, starting with the business requirements, designing the API to handle those. And you mentioned earlier around responsive design, that's becoming even more and more important with the new Google SEO rankings where people are getting dinged if they don't have a mobile equivalent for a page. And they're enforcing that now and we're seeing a lot of people reexamine responsive design for that reason. So we've actually in-house developed our own, we're big fans of responsive design, obviously. We see it as something that's going to be key for success in mobile. So in-house what we've done is we've built up a lot of IP in this area that we think can help customers. So responsive design, native app. Yeah. Agile has proven itself in DevOps and now Cloud, the way to go. Continuous integration, deploy, test, redeploy. Constant sandbox sprint, run. That's the new software divine lifecycle. Done deal, right? You agree. Absolutely. So that's the case. Which one's better to run that on? Mobile or web response? Because mobile, pushing updates for users can be a challenge. It can be. So what have you learned there and shared with folks? A lot of the time, I don't think it's an either or. It can be both. So like I had mentioned earlier, we did a mobile website that we then transitioned to an app using hybrid technology, which we're still a big believer in. We believe that if you implement hybrid correctly, you get a lot of these code sharing advantages that you would not get with native. And yeah, I really don't think it's either or. I think it's something we're- It depends on the situation. Exactly. Some like the web response, we figure out their stuff. Right. And the update thing is a challenge. We've hit that in a few places. One example is Finishline, where we launched the app. We found a bug that was going to be fairly critical. So the app is a rewards app. It's meant for Finishline's VIP. They call them sneaker heads that are in there on a weekly or monthly basis, looking at the new shoes that release. Reach out seems a natural fit for the native app. Because that's all about engagement. It's table stakes. And certain apps are like, you can't go web response. Exactly. I mean, and push is the big reason for that. Because as soon as I install an app for a retailer that I'm loyal to, I'm saying, hey, I want to hear from you. And then I'm giving them the ability to push these messages to me, push promotions to me, communicate with me on a daily basis. And that's huge. So I was at our event we had last week, Big Data SV, and one of the top tier venture cavals, Ping Li at Excel Partners, said, I asked them, what's the opportunity that you're seeing from a discipline standpoint in opportunities, entrepreneurs? And in terms of success, disciplines, policy, computer science, you know, you can get the normal suspects, you know, computer science, math, physics. He said, the thing that we're seeing more and more is design. So talk about the role of design and how the word design has morphed into a broad spectrum. If any, what does that spectrum look like? Is there levels of skill sets on the design side where it's not just art, it could be tech trials, programming. So can you share what you've seen and what you guys are doing? Yeah, exactly. And that's actually key to our business model that's a big differentiator for us is that we marry people with technology, development, architecture backgrounds like myself, and then world-class designers with both visual and user experience skills that can go in there and research how this stuff works, how it should work, how do we solve business problems by working with our business analysts and then communicate with guys like myself to see the best way to make that happen with the technology. Because ultimately we want that user engagement to drive our technology choices in every scenario and without interacting with these designers on a daily basis, I don't think we'd be able to do that. So if you had to look out, so you've seen the number of changes in the last decade, you pivot to mobile in 2012, what's the next wave that you're looking at? I mean, everybody's talking about internet of things. We had a guest on earlier this week, it's kind of controversial in social. He said, I asked what percent of organizations are doing DevOps well, he said basically 0%, so that's the people a lot of people kind of pissed off at that, but nonetheless, all kinds of interesting things going on. What do you see, Aaron, instead of the next big wave that you guys are going to go after? Yeah, I think things like internet of things and near-field payment technologies, beacon, that kind of stuff is going to be huge, but honestly in the next year or two, there's still, a lot of people are still catching up with mobile. So I think once that happens, you will start to see those take off and you'll see some earlier innovators in that area that are able to take advantage of them before anyone else, but there's still a lot of catch-up to be done with mobile, with general architectures and making them mobile-friendly to even get to the point where you can enable things like internet of things and beacons and so forth, because to do these things, you have to have your data out there, and most people at this point do not have their data out there, accessible via APIs, and without that. They have the data. Exactly. You just can't get it. What are people seeing in life cycles now in your role, and you got a lot of clients, what's the normal turnaround time for projects that are in the size and the scope that you guys are doing? Share just like the size. What's the kind of current standard in market right now for the kind of gigs you guys are doing with customers on the app side? Sure. So I'm sure you expect this, but it's variable depending on the situation. So we've had anything from... Nine months? We've had anything from one, no, definitely not nine months. We heard one guy say it took nine years to get an app into production. They must have been run waterfall. So yeah, ours is typically anywhere from a month, which is obviously very, very aggressive. And you obviously have to cut corners there because you can't do your full user experience research if you do that. So in those type of engagements, we typically start very, very, very simple, run the analytics, see what customers think of it, and then expand upon that. For a more fully featured app, you'd be looking at where typically three or four months from inception and talking business requirements to launch to the app store. Awesome. Final question before we cut the segment out. What's the vibe of the show? What is this show about? I mean, it's the new way to blank, new way to fill in the blank, new way to do security, new way to do design, new way to work, all that stuff's great. But besides that, what is this show about here at Interconnect? Is it developers? Is it more business? Is it more building? What's the vibe and theme that you're seeing? It's a big mix of everything, I think. It's nice to get all these different backgrounds in one room and all these different perspectives and learn from one another. So I've seen, you know, we're from marketing, line of business, you know, technical executives all the way down through. We've brought our developers here so that they can learn about these different areas and be able to, you know, talk to the IBM portfolio, see how the IBM portfolio can help our customers because again, that's very, very important to us. All right, Aaron Schuchat, executive architect at Point Source, inside the Cube, telling the story, mobile first. Mobile's driving the cloud. It's a great opportunity to API economies upon us and a new way to do things. Certainly cloud is driving that. Thanks for joining us. We'll be right back after this short break.