 Live from Midtown Manhattan, it's theCUBE, covering Big Data New York City 2017. Brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media and it's ecosystem sponsors. Hello everyone, welcome back to theCUBE's exclusive coverage of Big Data NYC. It's where all the actions have us. Our 50 year doing our own event here in New York City. The hashtag is Big Data NYC. Also in conjunction with Strata Hadoop. Used to be called Hadoop World and Strata Hadoop now is called Strata Data as they try to grow to where the future's going to be. A lot of hype over there, a lot of action. But here's where we do the intimate interviews and stories. I'm John Furrier, co-host of theCUBE with Emma McGratton, who is the Senior Vice President of Engineering at Actian. Great to have you on. Thanks for having me. We love having everyone from Ireland because the accents always get great, the gate tracks, so I appreciate you coming on. Have a beer later at the pub. We love it on New York, it's got a lot of great Irish pubs. In all seriousness, we've had Actian on before. Mike Hodkins has been on. We had Jeff Beeson yesterday give us the marketing angle of hybrid data that you guys are doing. What's under the hood? Because Actian has a lot of technology in their portfolio through how you guys had your growth strategy, but now as the world wants to bring it together, you're seeing some real critical trends. A lot of application development where data is important. Huge amount of security challenges. People are just trying to build out and bring IT. Security out of IT. And then you got all this data conference stuff. That's just on the top line. Then you got IoT. So people are busy, their plates are full, and data is the center of it. So what are you guys doing to bring all the Actian together? That's a great question, perfect question for Actian. So we have in Actian a number of products in the portfolio and we believe that best fit product, right? So if you're doing something like graph database, it doesn't make sense to put a vector and Hadoop solution against that. So we've got the right fit technology for what we're doing. And for IoT, we've got an embedded database that's the smallest 30 minutes, right? So I've got PowerPoint files that are bigger than this database that we'll just, you put it in a device, set it, it can run for 20 years, you never have to touch it. But all that data that's been generated, typically you're generating it because you want at some point to be able to analyze it. And what we've got in the portfolio and vector in Hadoop is the ability to take that data from the IoT sources perform very high speed analytics on that. So the products that we have within the portfolio are focused around data integration. So pulling data into an environment where you're going to perform analysis or otherwise operationalize that data. Data management, so that's a lot of our customers are just doing CRM, ERP applications on our product and platforms. And then the analytics is where I get really excited because there's so much happening in the analytics world in terms of new types of applications being built, in terms of real time requirements, in terms of security and governance that you're talking about and referencing your question. And we've got a unique solution that can address all of those areas in our vector in Hadoop product. So it's interesting that we see the name Hadoop coming out of the show this week because we see that the focus on Hadoop kind of moving to the background and where the real focus is around the data and not so much on the platform. And the business value, I hate to sound cliche about outcomes, but we were joking on theCUBE yesterday and kind of can't coin the term outcomes as a service which is kind of a goof on the whole. That's about the outcomes which is a cliche in tech, but that really is the truth. At the end of the day, you got a business goal, but the role of data now in real time is key. You're seeing people want real time, not real time response with old data. They want the real data. So people are starting to look at data as a really instrumental part of the development process. Similar to what DevOps did with infrastructure as code, people want data to be like code. And that is a hard architectural challenge. So if you go into your customer base, what do you guys tell them? And I don't know the hybrid cloud is the marketing message, but I have challenges. I'm the CXO, I'm the CDO, I'm the CIO, I'm the CFO, CIO, whatever the person making these huge, sweeping operational cost decisions, and Reverend is, what's the architecture? Because that's what people are working on right now and how do you present that? Right, so we recognize the fact that everybody's got a very distributed environment and part of the message around hybrid data is that data can be generated pretty much any place. You may be generating data in the cloud with your own custom applications. You may be using Salesforce.com or Netsuite or whatever and you've got your on-premise sources of data generation and what we provide in Actian is the ability to access all of that data in real-time and make it part of the application set that you're deploying that is going to be able to react in real-time to changes. You don't want to be acting on yesterday's data because things have happened, things have moved on. So the importance of real-time is not lost on Actian and all of the solutions that we bring together enable that real-time analysis of what's happening in every part of the environment. So it's hybrid in terms of the type of data that you're working with. It's hybrid in terms of it could be generated in the cloud, in any cloud or on-premise and being able to pull all of that together and perform real-time analysis is incredibly important to generating value from the data. And I want to get your thoughts on a comment that I heard last night and then multiple times but the same pattern, they don't get it. I mean they could be the venture capitalist as part of the startup or the customer because this is the way we do it. There's definitely things that are out there, silos, legacy things that are in environments. They're not going away and we know that. But how do you go into a customer and say, look, there's a whole new way of doing things right now. It's not necessarily a radical lift and shift or rip and replace whatever word you want to use. There's always a word that, you know like rip and replace, we'll say lift and shift. It's the same thing, right? You don't want to do a lot of incremental, operational wholesale changes but you want to do incremental value now. How do you go in and saying, look, this is the way you want to think about real time in your architecture because I don't necessarily want to change my operational mindset for sales force and all these different data sources. How do you guys have that conversation? So Actian is unique in that we have a customer base that goes back 20, 30 years. I personally will be acting in 25 years in December, right? So we've got customers that are running our, I would like to call them legacy products but they're products that are pairing their business every day of the week. And we've also got incredibly innovative product that we're on the bleeding edge. And what we've done in our recent release of Actian X is to combine bleeding edge technology with this more mature and proven technology. So in Actian X you've got the OLTP database that was Ingress and now got rebranded because it's got new capabilities. And then we've taken the engine from our Actian Vector product and brought that into Actian X so that you can do in real time analysis of your OLTP data and react in real time to changes in the data. And it's interesting that you talk about real time because it means different things to different people, right? So if you're talking to somebody doing risk analysis, real time is milliseconds. If you're talking to some customers, real time is yesterday's data and that's fine. And what we've done with Actian X is to provide that ability to determine for yourself what real time means to you and to provide a solution that enables you to respond in real time. Now bringing analytics into what is a more traditional OLTP database and kind of demonstrating for them some of the new capabilities it enables that opens up other opportunities for us. We can have conversations about maybe backing up that data set to the cloud. So somebody that may have been risk averse and not looking at cloud, all of a sudden is looking at cloud, looking at analytics. So we're kind of opening up new opportunities for us and new opportunities for them, right? Because the data, as they say, is the new OL. That's great, great. And you guys have a good customer based to draw from so you got to bring in the shiny new toy but make it work with existing. So it sounds like you're building like an abstraction layer that you're bolting on tech to, tech that was very useful and is useful by decoupling it with new software that adds value. That's the, is it a abstraction layer or sort? We don't think of it as an abstraction layer but certainly one could think of it that way because it's, well yeah. It's a product. I mean, basically you basically take the old product and bring new stuff to it. Exactly, exactly. Okay, so I got to ask you about the trend around IoT because IoT is one of those things right now that's super hype and I think it's going to be even more hype but security has been a big problem and I hear a lot of CXSF, certainly IoT is on the agenda. Industrial IoT is kind of a low hanging fruit. They go that first. But no one wants to be the next Equifax, right? So there's a lot of security, you know, stuff that causes that, plus there's other things going on they got to take care of. How do you guys talk about the security equation where you can come in and put in a reliable, workable solution and still make the customers feel like they're moving the ball down the field. So that's one of the benefits that we have been in the industry for as long as we have. We have a very deep understanding as to what security requirements are in terms of providing capabilities within the product to do things like control who can access what data and to what degree. Can they update it? Can they only read it? Providing the ability to encrypt the data, right? So for many use cases the data is so sensitive that you'd always want it encrypted when it's stored. You'd want any traffic coming in and out of the environment to be encrypted. Being able to audit everything that's happening in the environment. Who's issuing what queries and from where and to set alarms if something, if somebody attempts to access data that they shouldn't be attempting to access. So taking all of those capabilities together, we're then able to look at things like GDPR, right? What are the requirements for securing the data? And we've got all of the capabilities within the product and we've got the credibility because we've been doing this for 30 years, right? That we can secure these environments. We can conform to the various standards and mandates that are put in place for data security. So we have a very strong story to tell. What's your position on GDPR? Obviously that is super important. I mean, I call it the Y2K that actually is real because there's compliance issues and there's a lot of obviously political things going on but this is a real problem. People have to move as a solution. What do you guys offer there? I think Equifax was a prime example of why GDPR is incredibly important, right? So for Actin, I talked about the capabilities we provide with regard to securing data and secure access to that data. And when it comes to GDPR, a lot of it is around process. So what we're doing is guiding our customers and making sure that they have secure processes in place, that putting all of this smarts into the technology and then having somebody doing an offline backup on a CD that they leave on a seat on the train, right? Which has in the past been a source of data breaches is an issue with process and not with technology. So we're helping with that and helping educating our customers. Well, Equifax had some PPN issues, but also, I mean, I haven't reported on this yet, but also have confirmed that there were state actors involved, foreign actors penetrating in through their franchise relationships. So in partnering in an open internet these days, you need to understand who the parties are, even if they're in the network. Absolutely, and that's why this idea of providing all of the capabilities required for data security, including auditing, who's coming in. So failed attempts to get into the system should be reported as those problems. And that's a capability that we have within the database. So you've been acting for 25 years. I did not know that's cool. Good folks over there have been in the office a few times. I'm sure you got a good, healthy customer base, but for the folks that don't know Actian, what's the pitch from your standpoint? I mean, I had the marketing pitch hybrid data, I get that. I mean, what should they know about you guys? What is the problem that you saw? What do you bring to the table? From an engineering perspective, how do you differentiate? So my primary focus is around high-speed analytics, right? So Actian enables the fastest SQL access to data on Hadoop and off of Hadoop, proven through benchmarks. So high-speed analytics is incredibly important, but for Actian we're unique in having this 30-year history where, and we understand what it is to run 24-7 mission-critical operational databases. So Actian's known for products like Ingress, like P-SQL, and being able to analyze data that's operationalized, but then also bringing in new data sources, because that's where things are really going, that people want to choose the best application, whether it's in the cloud or on-premise, doesn't matter, it's the best application for their need. And being able to pull all of that data together, and for operational purposes and for analytics purposes is incredibly important, and Actian enables all of that. And that's where the hybrid mission, I think, is really clever and smart, because you've got the consumption side and the creation side, and data integration isn't a project, it just happens. So you want to enable that, and I think you can see that would be a key benefit, certainly as whether these decentralized apps get more traction, you're going to start to see more immutable things, transactions happening, blockchain clearly points to that direction of the market where, hey, that's cool, distributed computing has been around for a while, but now decentralized, we know how to behave there. So we're seeing some apps that will probably be rewritten for that, but again, if architected properly, that shouldn't be a problem. Right? Exactly, and we don't want anybody to have to rewrite apps. What we want to be able to do is to provide a platform where the data that you need is available. They're called Dapps for decentralized apps, and it's a whole new wave coming. It's not being talked about here at the show, we're on it, it's obviously a silicon angle, and Wikibon are on those trends, as you know, we're riding the big wave. Okay, Em, I want to ask you a final question. Kind of take your acting hat off, put your, you know, your Irish techie hat on, and let's get down and dirty on what the main problem in the industry is right now. If you look back and kind of go to the balcony, if you would look at the stage of the industry, now you see Hadoop is now in the background, it's an element of the bigger picture. We're seeing, we were commenting yesterday that these customers have these tool sheds of all these tools they've bought, and they bought a hammer that wants to be a lawnmower, right? And so it's just like they have their tool platforms are being pitched at them, there's a lot of confusion. What's the main problem that the industry's trying to solve? If you look at it, if you can put the dots together, what is the big problem that needs to be solved that the industry should be solving? So I think it's that data is every place, right? And there is not a whole lot of discipline around corralling that and putting security around it, being able to deploy security policies across data regardless of where it's deployed or sourced. So I think that's probably the biggest challenge is bringing compute to the data and pulling all of that together, and that's the challenge that we're addressing. And so the unification, if you will, people use that word, all unifying data, what does that actually mean? You guys call it hybrid data, which means you have some flexibility, you need it. All right, cool. Emma, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. Really appreciate it. Congratulations on your success. And again, you guys got to a good spot. You got a broad portfolio. You're bringing it together with hybrid data. Best of luck, we'll keep in touch. Emma McGracken here, the Senior Vice President of Engineering at Acti and here on theCUBE. More live coverage here in New York City from theCUBE's coverage of big data NYC after this short break.