 Live from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE, covering Microsoft Ignite, brought to you by Cohesity, and theCUBE's ecosystem partners. Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage of Microsoft Ignite here in Orlando, Florida. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host, Stu Miniman. We're joined by Tim Crawford, he is CIO strategic advisor at AVOA. Thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. Thanks, Rebecca. So, what are your thoughts and impressions of Microsoft Ignite? You come to a lot of these conferences. I'm curious to hear what's interesting you. Yeah, you know, it's interesting because when you think about all of the different conferences, all of the different companies that are trying to get their message out there, whether it's from product, whether it's how they engage with customers, whether it's their partner ecosystem, it's really hard to separate kind of the weed from the chaff or the signal from the noise, right? One of the things that I find really interesting about Microsoft specifically is not just the breadth in which they are engaging with customers, both at a technological level, but also with their partner ecosystem, and also in the engineering groups, but then also the depth in which they're going into this. So this is not about just a show to demonstrate the latest technology. Yes, that is out there, but it's also to talk about Microsoft as the company and how Microsoft is really engaging with customers. And to me, that's really different. I want to talk about how Microsoft is engaging with customers, because that's really interesting. You talk to a lot of CIOs in your job. What are you hearing, and what do you think is the real differentiating factor in terms of how Microsoft approaches its clients? You know, this is something that I just learned at this show that is really interesting. Microsoft is starting to move away from these interesting sales motions around product categories, or particular aspects of the technology, and starting to think about industries. And this is really important for a couple of reasons. One is it gets them deeper into understanding how these technologies really apply to each of those industries, but it also starts to develop a deeper relationship with their customers and also their partners. So they can start to carve out specific spaces that they can go deep into that is pretty unique and differentiated. Well actually, I'm interested in that. I want to hear both of you're both analysts here. Does that create more silos? That's sort of my first impression that you wouldn't then be able to see the best practices that are emerging in manufacturing versus retail, and have everyone talking together. What is your take? I don't know. First, if I think about, I'm not an AI expert, but one of the challenges we had in big data was that everything seemed to be custom. And usually, when you talk about data, there's so many specific things that I need to worry about in industry that sometimes I need to bake that solution all the way down into the product. Now of course, it doesn't mean that you create a silo. It means that you will share amongst your groups. There's plenty of ways internally that you can build solutions, but learn from those, repeat them, change them, and iterate them. But it could be interesting. I haven't heard of a company driving it down. I mean, I was a product manager once in my day, and you thought about certain industries, but it was more, okay, somebody in marketing wrote a white paper to position as to how it did, or who implemented it would make an adjustment. But yeah, that was my take. But even when you take something like AI, we all know that for AI to be successful, it's the amount of data you can really gather. It's about learning. And the only way that you're going to learn is to get in depth and understand the applicability of this to that particular industry. And the only way you're going to do that is if you start focusing on a particular industry. One of the things that I do see is they're not taking on 100 different industries here. They're focused on the top six or eight industries to start out with, and that's grown just in the last 18 months alone. But within each of those industries, figuring out how do you take these technologies and do meaningful work? How do you solve meaningful problems? And back to your question, Rebecca, around what are the CIOs looking for? They're looking for companies that are actually talking about and can deliver solving business problems. It's no longer enough to say, hey, I've got this great technology. It's really earth-shattering. It's differentiated. That's not enough anymore. You really have to connect with the customer and help them understand how you're going to solve a business problem. So, Tim, I want to give you a point as to how CIOs perceive Microsoft today. When you talk about, you know, there's the industry says, well, you know, Microsoft is a bit rejuvenated. Satya Nadella, there's more coming. There's great energy here at the show. I mean, the numbers prove out that are here. But Microsoft has a strength of, you know, they're in business productivity. Everybody uses Microsoft solutions. But there's a lot of change happening in the industry. What is the relationship that companies have with Microsoft? How do they perceive Microsoft in innovation? What are you here? Yeah, and that very question has changed just over the last 12 to 24 months too. Microsoft is one of the few companies that has relationships with pretty much every enterprise on the planet. For just like you said, the productivity apps, even getting into the server and data center environment, Microsoft has a place there. The problem has been historically, it hasn't innovated as quickly as some of its competitors in those spaces. Not in the data, in the productivity area, but when you look at the data center, historically it hasn't evolved as quickly. Fast forward to the last 12 to 24 months and we've seen a huge shift. 12 months ago, we saw Microsoft actually taking the lead in some of these emerging areas like cloud, where it was producing products and actually bringing them to market before some of its competition. That's a huge shift from just 12 months prior. If you look at what people are trying to solve for today and bringing these technologies to bear, some of this stuff is really complicated, really complicated and that level of expertise just does not exist within the enterprise IT organization. So what do you do? And that's where I think Microsoft has a strength. Because it understands the enterprise, it can talk at an enterprise level. That's a unique attribute that is something that Microsoft has in its Bailiwick that it can pull out and just in the way that the Zen, starting at the CIO and kind of working its way in to really empathize with the customer and really kind of delve into those specifics of how these technologies are going to make a difference is a huge, huge step up for them. I want to really get into that because I'm actually curious about both of your perspectives on this, talking about the perceptions of Microsoft and you talked about it as being a little bit slower to innovate, now it's starting to change. I'm also curious that we're living in this time where so many technology companies are under fire for being careless with user data and being so susceptible to other influences and lack of privacy for their customers. Is Microsoft trying to be sort of a moral, ethical leader in this space in the sense of we take this stuff seriously? We do believe in customer privacy and data security. What's your take on that? Do you think that that is also something that Microsoft is really trying to put out there? So I'll start off and Stu, feel free to chime in. I think you have to go back to the keynote yesterday. Look at Satya, they're CEO and I had a chance to spend some time with him after the keynote. If you look at how he speaks and that permeates into the organization, this is not about a company that's just looking to sell product. This is a company that's looking at humanity, looking at the bigger purpose that they serve in the world that we all share. The same thing holds true when it comes to the technology aspect of that. And when you look at cybersecurity, when you look at artificial intelligence, there's a lot of conversation happening right now within the organization around what should we be doing from an ethics standpoint with some of this technology? Artificial intelligence is great, but it can be scary too. And there can be some bad actors that come in and take advantage of that. And so with the size of a company and the expertise of a company like Microsoft, how do we start to leverage that strength to do good? And so that comes in a couple different factors. We have to think about governance within the enterprise. We have to think about policy. So the legal aspects and frameworks, how do we start to get those to catch up? Another conversation that was just taking place recently was around how you balance between moving quickly and letting laws catch up. And it's almost to the point where we need to start slowing down because we are kind of running with scissors. I like to say, we need to take a step back, take a breath, figure out how to kind of button some of these things up and then go for the next step. Yeah, Rebecca, I'll go back to something we talked about in our opening analysis talking about the keynote. Microsoft is going through its own digital transformation. And as part of that, they're actually really well positioned to help customers through their own digital transformation. Things like the Open Data Initiative. Three great companies, Adobe, SAP and Microsoft, all at the center of that transformation. Patrick Moorhead this morning said, well Oracle and Salesforce, if they were part of this, which they can join it, I'm sure the imitations out there would be the ones that are at the center of data. If we talk about those dream forces going on this week, we've got a team there. So Microsoft's there, obviously, security, trust at the core of everything they do. Tim, I want to ask you about something else that Satya talked about. Customers have to choose between the build and the buy. Microsoft has taught us how to buy shrink wrap software back in the day. The economics of another, you know, disk or CD, everybody knows Microsoft. They helped customers move to the SaaS model. Office 365 push, I want to buy from SaaS. But when I look around, most of it is in the buy. Doesn't mean that they don't have great platforms and ability to build. There's a great section over in the show floor for developers that I walk through, talk to their serverless team. There's a lot of pieces there. But when I look at the buy versus build, well, if I look at the other big clouds, I seem to see a little bit more builder mentality. Well, here feels a little bit more buy, but I'm curious if you have the same reaction. Exactly the same perspective. It's, if you look at the different contingents of traditional buyers, right? The startup and web scale, they're looking for tools. They want to be able to take the components off the shelf and be able to put it together themselves. They're looking at a level of specialization that is unique to their service or unique to their product. But when you look at the enterprise, it's a totally different world. And going back to what we were talking about earlier around what the CIO is looking for, they need to be able to up level the conversation in their organizations. Right, left and center, when I'm talking to CIOs, when I'm talking to IT organizations, they're looking for ways to build less and buy more. When they do build, they're focused on those aspects that are core to their IP. So things that are strategic and differentiated for their company. I mean, if you look back to the anthropology of IT, and I know Stu, you and I've had a lot of conversations about this on theCUBE and off theCUBE. If you look back to the anthropology of IT, we had to, within the enterprise IT or we had to build everything ourselves. We had no choice. There were not mature solutions that we could turn to like cloud and be able to say, you know what? I don't want to run email myself, who do I turn to? Now, fast forward to today, there are mature solutions for many of these non-differentiated services. How do we start to leverage those from the enterprise perspective and focus our developer attention into those aspects that are differentiated? That's where it really makes a difference and that's the conversation that's happening within the IT rank and file as well as at the executive levels. So what's your advice to a Microsoft or to some of its other big partner players in terms of what you hear from CIOs, what their pain points are and what they could do to really make their customers happy? Yeah, you know, it's a great question and it's not an easy answer. But if I were to try and kind of boil it down a bit, we have to stop thinking about technology as technology and a silo. We have to think about how this gets used. You know, it's one thing to say, great, this is a bright, shiny object. Let's take it off the shelf. Let's put it to use. It's another thing when you can take it off the shelf, put it to use and really make a big difference for your company. When you do that, things happen. And that's a big difference in terms of the marketing message, the PR messaging, that's different in the sales motion. It's different in terms of the partner ecosystem, how the customer thinks about how they engage with a company like Microsoft. All of those factors are in play. All of those are up for grabs. All right, so Mr. Avola, consultancy. I've heard Microsoft's doing a bunch of interesting things. How should I look at Microsoft? What things did you learn at Microsoft Ignite that can help my business do more, move faster, stay relevant? Yeah, I think the first thing is to understand, there is a bevy of different products and solutions out there, not just for Microsoft, but from other companies too. It's important to understand which ecosystems really fit your business best and who is really spending the time to understand what your challenges are today and where you're going. Because let's face it, when you make an investment from an enterprise perspective, it's not just for today or tomorrow. It's for the next six months. It's for the next two years, five years. And you need to know that whoever you're working with is going to have those same aligned goals and objectives. And so I think that's where, again, coming back to Microsoft, Microsoft has a lot of those components. Are they for everyone? Absolutely not. But it's important to understand which components make sense for you to use within your organization. Great. Well, Tim, thank you so much for coming on theCUBE. It was a pleasure having you here. I know you two go way back, so this was fun. Great. Thanks for having me. Thanks. I'm Rebecca Knight for Stu Miniman. We will have much more tomorrow from the Orange County Civic Center here in Orlando, Florida at Microsoft Ignite. See you next time.