 Live from Boston, Massachusetts, it's theCUBE, covering Red Hat Summit 2019, brought to you by Red Hat. And welcome back to Boston as we continue our coverage here on theCUBE of the Red Hat Summit 2019, along with Stu Miniman, I'm John Walls, and we're now joined by the EVP and CIO of Delta Air Lines and Mr. Rahul Samat. Rahul, good to see you, sir. Yeah, good to see you too, John, and Stu. Thank you for joining us and you have a little keynote appearance coming up here, right? I do at 545. Yeah, so we will not be, we won't hold you back, but thank you for squeezing this in. We really do appreciate that. First off, let's talk about just Delta from the macro level in terms of the technology emphasis that you have to have now. Obviously running an airline, extraordinarily complex, sophisticated systems, but how the view of technology has evolved maybe over the last five, 10 years to where it is today? Yeah, I mean, technology's always been core. I mean, we had reservation systems going back to the 60s on IBM mainframes, but it's as things have digitalized and the customer experience has become the key and empowering our employees with insights and tools so they can take better care, even better care of the customers has become the other prong. So it's kind of a two-pronged approach to digitalizing the company and technology's become central. Now, our culture is all about people and our frontline teammates take great care of our customers, but then technology plays a great role in empowering them to do that even better. So I think it's, within the company, we say we're transforming technology into a competitive advantage for Delta and so relevance is not a problem. We are extremely relevant to the company, have been forever, but I think it's getting more and more. But even more so today. Yeah, especially at the customer interaction touch points. So we understand how important technology is in your field there. Talk a little bit about kind of the role of the CIO, how, what's the business asking for you? What are the stressors on that and a little bit of that dynamic? Yeah, I think, look, I'm an equal member of the CEO's executive team, but you still have to earn your right and so things like reliability and stability, availability, security become table stakes. And so in 16 and 17 I started in 2016 and we needed to focus on that. So I came in, starry eyed going, I'm going to digitalize the airline experience, but what I needed to focus on was the table stakes and sort of earning my place at that table rightfully. And then that gives you permission to really start collaborating with the business and bringing technology solutions to bear on business opportunity. So we're there now. So it's a really exciting time. We launched an enterprise wide digital transformation of the company in early 2018, which is again both employees and customer focus. And so clearly we are central to the role of Delta and the airline. Yeah, just can you share with us what are some of those key goals of that digital transformation? Obviously, you know, we're all your end ultimate customers. So we see a value there, but is data at the core of that digital transformation? You said it. Yeah, you took the words right out of my mouth. You know, I mean any legacy, legacy is like a four letter word when it comes to technology everywhere else. We take great pride in our 90 plus year legacy, but not so much with our aging technology. So part of it was, of course, you got to modernize the technology. So we're doing that in the background, but data was strewn all over the company. We know a lot about our customers, but we hadn't brought it together. So now we have and we have a 360 degree view. We call it the single view of the customer. Along with that, we also have a single view of the operation. So those two data repositories are now real time and building APIs on top of that and unlocking the power of that data to equip, like I said, the frontline employees. They've now got tools they're mobile enabled and they have insights that they can take to serving the customer. And then directly, I'm guessing both of you are customers and directly with you, we've mobile enabled the experience and given you a whole lot more across the entire travel ribbon. So what are you learning then? Or what have you learned about customers then in terms of that data collection? I'm sure, I mean, there's pretty first level stuff. How often they buy tickets, where they travel to, that kind of thing. But then I guess going deeper and learning more about behaviors and impulsive reactions to certain cues, whatever. What are you getting at all this? We're just starting, that's an interesting one, John, because we do have, it's a huge data repository and we are just starting to get the use cases built on that. And where we focus our attention is on service recovery. Because we do with service recovery. So, when weather goes bad and the airline goes into what we call an irregular operation or an IROP in airline terms, you got to put that back together and you got to recover the customers. They might be delayed, they might have suffered a canceled flight or a missed bag in spite of all our best efforts. And that's where we're applying the single view of the customer. Because we know the history of all your interactions with us. And so at the top of the house, the executives decided that that's where we wanted to go. We wanted to make sure that we could acknowledge to you, we could recognize interruptions on your next travel with us. But while it's happening, we could actually help get you out of that and on your way again. So, now we're moving from that to more revenue generation and targeted offers and targeted recognition. But where we started was really around service recovery, because we think that's where customers sometimes feel the pain as much as we try for them not to. But whether it's not our ally at times. Yeah, and making the business case for that then, are you able to then see how behavior is modified in terms of whether it's customer reaction or customer uptake on your services or whatever and how that's translating to either retention or business growth or something along those lines? Absolutely, even with the early use cases that we've put forth, we're seeing that. The expectations of airlines over time that customers have and that they're going to use data and technology effectively is, I think, fairly low. And so when we go up and our folks walk down the aisle with the handheld device on board and they acknowledge someone for hitting a million mile milestone or for achieving diamond status, in a way, customers are impressed. And then you go to the next level and you're able to take care of them on a delay or on a cancel and reaccommodate before they even call the service center, they've been reaccommodated and rebooked. Those are things that, I mean, they engender so much loyalty. And I think it's technology equipping our employees in a big way, so the employees are doing great. Now you've put another helping of technology on top of it. Customers are paying us for that. We have a revenue premium on that. So you talk about internal, tell us a little bit about your team. How much has this been, digital transformation is retraining some? How much are you trying to get? People from the outside, when we go to shows like this, companies like yours are in heavy recruiting mode, typically, their skill sets are tough. What are you looking for and gives a little insight? Yeah, so we've had a very seasoned IT team and organization as you would expect and attrition very low at Delta. What I needed to do was bring in about 15 to 20% of the total team strength is new. That's what I brought in about 600 people in the last 36 months. And those were people who were hired for contemporary skills. I called them been there, done that type people. So cloud engineers, API, people, agile, cyber experts, and blending that with the seasoned veterans that know a lot about Delta IT and know a lot about the airline domain was really important. So you didn't create haves and have nots because that could have easily happened and then that causes a rupture. So we spent a lot of time on integrating those two halves and making sure that this was a sort of a shot of adrenaline into the bloodstream. But the bloodstream is strong and the combined force of those two groups has been terrific for us. So that's the other thing I would say, and I'm not saying that because I'm sitting here at the Red Hat Summit is the use of partners, not just for products, but a set of strategic partners, whether it's Red Hat or IBM or Microsoft, right, a small set of partners becomes a force multiplier from a talent perspective. So they become an accelerant to the transformation. Well, you brought it up. Talk a little bit about partnerships. How do you look at this? Is it, I want to have a primary one. Is it a handful? Talk about that depth of relationship and what you're looking for from that vendor ecosystem today. Yeah, absolutely. And look, we've got about a dozen that I meet at the CEO president type level on an annual basis where I would say, 10 to 12 that we really are tight with and that are inside the tent. They understand the pillars of our transformation and they know where they can provide swift acceleration to our transformation. And of course Red Hat is one of the others that I named. But they're giving us not just the product and the service, but they're in there helping us with setting the strategy and making sure that they put the right team on the ground with us or training our people. So it runs the gamut from sort of the system integrator types all the way to open source product types. For the Red Hat piece, can you highlight what are you using and are they involved in some of that training and transformation? Yeah, I think the behind the scenes sort of under the hood, the platform as a service that gives us tremendous interoperability. We are young in our journey to the cloud and like any big company, we're going to be multi-cloud and hybrid. So we've built our private cloud. We've got the Red Hat OpenShift container platform hosted in our private cloud. And so we're moving a lot of application components into that prior to that. And that's only about a year that we've been doing that. But prior to that, we've been big Linux users, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Jboss, a whole plethora of products. But I think the platform as a service is really helping us with our cloud journey. And we're totally jazzed about that. You talked about hiring and 600 new employees in a very short period of time. Glassdoor just stood up and said, hey, Delta Airlines, one of the top companies for hiring software engineers. Absolutely. Which is a very nice distinction to get. What does that do to, I mean in terms of first off, how do you do that in such an environment where you know, everyone's after the same market if you will. And how do you feel about something like that? I'm validated a little bit. I'm really proud of that. And it actually wasn't something that you self-nominate or you even have some kind of a selection process. It just arrived. We didn't know about it. And those are some of the best ones because it's also recognition from your employees because they're the ones who are voting with their posts and they're the ones that are telling Glassdoor that this is a terrific place to work. And we're doing a lot of new things and we're doing them at speed. And it's very relevant to the customer experience and to our frontline employee experience. So there's an impact story. This is the great thing about working for an airline. There's no place to run or hide when you're in IT. Because if it's down, within 15 minutes we're front page news somewhere. And so we strive hard to make sure it's never down. And on top of that we're building these great digital experiences. So it's been really gratifying and I think it's going to help us even further with our recruiting efforts. Yeah, it's interesting. Without getting political, it's like you're doing this modernization. But I mean you've got heavy regulations and just some of the basic infrastructure of your industry is a little bit antiquated. Do you know any comments on that? Well, I think it's a dichotomy and I don't think we're unique. I came out of banking, to insurance, to airlines and you'd think that the way the financial services guys spend money on IT, there would be no aging technology and there'd be no, none of that web of connectivity. It's not true. I think any company that's been around 40, 50 years has all the generations of technology still existing. So our endeavor is to make sure that we deprecate out of that technology as quickly as we can. And where it's useful, I mean we still use mainframes for a really good purpose. And someone asked me just a couple of weeks ago, would you get out of it? And I said no. It's a half a billion dollar project and it's a high-risk project and IBM serves me really well. And for that purpose, the mainframe is exactly what the doctor ordered. So this isn't about ideology, right? This is about purpose built and custom built. So if there's a technology that fits the purpose, I'm going to leave well alone. And I'm going to train people and recruit people so that I don't have a talent issue in 10 or 20 years when it comes to mainframe people. We've had no problem in getting apprentices and keeping our mainframe talent pipeline going. So never get away from it. Can you give us just a little sneak peek on the keynote tonight? I mean, just maybe a high level here, a couple of things, just for John and Stu. Yeah, it's going to be a fireside with Jim. You'll have to come and listen, but I think Jim's probably got a few questions up his sleeve. He's also, you know, Jim's got a heritage with Delta, he was our chief operating officer until I think about 10 years ago. And so it should be a fun, he hasn't told me what he's going to ask me. So it's going to be interesting as to which way he's going to come. But I would assume he wants to talk about, you know, digital transformation and of course how Red Hat's helping. I would assume there's going to be a question or two about Red Hat. Well then my only warning will be is what I hear when I walk on a Delta flight and it's fast in your seatbelt. Yes, there you go. Good luck to you. Thank you. Hey, thanks for the time. And I look forward to the keynote tonight. Thank you so much guys. All right, back with more here on theCUBE. We're watching coverage right now of Red Hat Summit and we're in Boston, Massachusetts.