00:04
I like to bring out Stephanie Richardson our vice president of Product Marketing Stephanie are you out there all right thank you hope
00:20
thank you Jennifer that was great um alright well thank you all for being here we are bringing up the rear here
00:27
and starting to wind things down um so Charlie kicked off the day talking really challenging all of us and talking about how we need to kind of challenge some of our fundamental beliefs
00:38
when it comes to how we think about storage and infrastructure if we're really going to be successful in this era of AI right we all we all know that AI
00:47
is bringing a velocity and a scale that we've never seen before and many of you in this room spend a good portion of your day trying to figure out what on earth
00:57
we're gonna do with it how we gonna stay ahead of this change how we gonna navigate it how we gonna really just kind of prepare for what's on the other side and also how we gonna take advantage of the opportunity
01:09
and what we also know is this isn't just a technology problem AI is touching every single part of our orgs it's changing how we drive revenue it's changing how we build software
01:22
it's changing how we build and drive our teams everything needs to be rethought right is and the the the extra tricky thing
01:32
which makes it extra interesting is that we're trying to do all of that and build a plan for this new era while we're trying to deliver business results today right so is anybody else getting like heart palpitations
01:47
the more I talk right we all know that this is a big change and we're all in the middle of it and we're all trying to figure it out well the good news is is that we have somebody here
01:57
who's gonna give us a little bit of perspective and give us a little bit of a different way to think about this transformation um so here to share his insight and expertise on how we should be thinking about this disruption
02:11
and how we as it leaders can really lead from the front through this massive transformation please welcome to the stage CEO of The Future Group Daniel Newman
02:35
you know after that last one all this all that relationship they had all those years they've known each other I thought it was important we let them know we've we've we met about 45 minutes ago
02:45
yes yes you know full circle moment from rehearsal we did a we did a zoom call that's pretty much like we did we're like old friends now
02:53
we are like old friends thank you for being here appreciate you um so AI big opportunity messing everything up no big opportunity that's causing a lot of angst and disruption
03:07
on the way to this opportunity right um you we've talked a lot today about the disruption and the opportunity you use this phrase often uh
03:18
which I love which you talk about how the entire software industrial complex needs to be rebuilt what does that mean all the eyes are on me
03:30
all the eyes are on you my friend yeah you know so I've spent well over a decade just studying digital transformation and wrote seven books about it
03:41
and one of the greatest parts of my job is that I get to talk to about 100 to 150 Fortune CEOs every quarter and I've never seen a transformation that's a this fast and b that has put so much strain
03:56
on the organization and the culture because we have this incredible opportunity right we have this chance to be more productive to drive this great efficiencies in our business but at the same time
04:06
change is always rate limited by people but never in history have we had the situation where we had change that was technologically impacting knowledge and impacting labor
04:17
so that's the big macro picture here of what you know everyone's up against but the software industrial complex is it's it's fractured now all of you right anyone in this room
04:29
want to actually be brave enough to say you haven't used an LLM I'll take you out back and we'll talk about that we see you nobody we see you I'm glad because we all have
04:39
and here's one of the things that like when you use these new technologies you realize how amazing they are now enterprise software and I know there's a lot of it leaders in this room
04:47
most people have a pretty challenged or strained relationship with at least many parts of their their their enterprise software whether it's ERP CRM
04:56
you know you get them in the in the room and either the it team doesn't like these technologies or the people that use it which is even worse cause that's their customer right
05:05
but we use chat GPT and we say hey build me a table or we use cursor and we say build me a website we use cloud code and we say you know develop me an application and you do it in minutes
05:14
and it's this like really seamless ubiquitous frictionless experience it's the it's really the best I I'm not a coder but I swear on the weekends I've done this amazing work
05:24
I mean as an analyst I can sit down with chat GPT I can ingest all my data I can write research reports that are 10 times better than the analysts I'm paying right off the right off the
05:33
you know in seconds um and so you're looking at all this and you're saying okay how do we charge for this how do we build a business model for this so so I've spent time with some of the largest
05:41
you know enterprise c uh software boards and they're like well the old way software was sold was licensed right it was every seat it was like oh the bigger the company got
05:51
the better we are how many seats can we sell and then how many add on services can we have and all of a sudden you just build this this amorphous massive software and you're you're like oh my god
06:01
this isn't better than the licensing model this is a subscription of from from hell you know um but in the future it's gonna be outcome based it's gonna be what we call outcome as a service
06:11
it's gonna be token based it's gonna be uh all about you know the ability for these agents to deliver work and so these software industrial complex
06:20
the enterprise software companies right now Stephanie are gonna have to figure out how to rebuild their software how to change the way they charge for software how to actually move finally
06:29
after all these years to outcomes next we'll get consultants to do this good luck um yeah I knew they I knew they'd all laugh about that um
06:39
because in the end like the value of software is a it's a tool and the value is being able to ascribe whether it's productivity gains efficiency gains or outcomes experiences if you can't deliver why
06:51
why would people want to pay for it so it's gonna get rebuilt it's gonna get restructured and it's gonna start to happen really fast and by the way that's the way
06:57
the reason the entire SAS market if you pay attention to the to the stock market has been completely rerated the the SAS companies that used to be the high flyers have been some of the slowest moving companies
07:07
yeah in the uh in the agentic era so that's that's a really interesting way to think about it right outcome is a service um and so you've really kind of
07:18
put a new spin on where the goal posts are yep and um you know I think that for the folks in the room and you know that that that that's a ways away there's
07:29
there's some things that we need to do to get there so from you talk to a lot of customers you talk to a lot of you know you talk to a lot of boards you talk to a lot of organizations
07:36
that are at varying points in this journey how are people really uh choosing how are people figuring it out figuring out where to place their bets play where
07:46
how to prioritize where to put their investments investments as they figure out how to get to that yeah Nirvana yeah the the trillion dollar question cause now a billion is not very big
07:59
there we go um we get a trillion and spend every day on AI right um is really about how to balance the transition so I think you said something really really you know uh
08:10
you know very savvy in your introduction thank you yes very good thank you very much about the fact that you're sort of balancing this every day if you're running it
08:16
it's how do we continue to deliver the services that keep our businesses running every day mm hmm um at the same time it's a board initiative it's a
08:24
it's a mandate yeah we have to implement AI uh you know you are really trying to find this balance and at the same time you heard me say before about culture
08:33
the culture of a company I think the other day uh Satya Nadella was on the record from Microsoft he was talking about how the impact of AI has yes it's created a ton of market value for the company but at the same time the culture of the company
08:47
you know they've had a number of you know layoffs um it's not necessarily because the AI is doing the work yet but it's because the belief is they have to invest in AI yeah
08:57
which is displacing and offsetting cost because they want to deliver outcomes to the street they got to hit numbers um but at the same time you have to build a deliver today and so you know
09:08
we actually did a survey at right before when I went to Davos this year and we talked to 200 of the CEOs of billion dollar companies so not all the biggest biggest companies
09:17
but large companies and those were large companies going into the year with their AI mandates and the bottom line is that every one of them was under massive pressure from their boards
09:27
to show progress in AI at the same time have you guys seen that 95% study the one that MIT said 95% of enterprise AI projects are not delivering ROI so it's like we're super conflicted right now
09:41
you've got most companies are saying we're spending a fortune on this we're not showing any returns so any if anything it's actually
09:48
it's actually eroding profitability in the near term but at the same time there's so much pressure from the board so much pressure from leadership to show that we're having success
09:57
but in the end and you said this word you said about people in the end what I think is happening is that you have a lot of people that are kind of digging in people that are seeing technology
10:07
and they don't yet understand how do I fit in while this change is happening and this is where I think and you just had him video on stage Jensen says this all the time
10:16
and I think it's one of the great things he says is people that work with AI will succeed those that have picked up and that's why I said you know on the weekends I'm learning how to use cursor
10:25
I'm learning how to play with cloud code like I'm not a developer I did a little HTML in high school um I don't know it's funny just to us um it's funny
10:34
the 45 minutes where we got all our chemistry same page but like I'm cause even I'm learning it cause you know like as an analyst as research what we used to do is create research
10:43
that was our work like writing it's like what does AI do best yeah generates so like every business has to be really willing to you know do this introspective thing
10:53
and I think everybody in the room has to do a little introspective thing because infrastructure will run with AI and a lot of things that it did will will be impacted data the way we optimize our data
11:03
AI will be a tool that will support how we build our data infrastructure the reason AI is so powerful and gonna do so much that the big data era didn't is because AI can supplement the complexity
11:13
yep but there's still a ton of work to do with storage with data management to get our data in shape to be compliant to be governed all those things so you gotta balance it all but in the end um
11:24
you really have to work with it and you have to understand that the timeline you know it's not gonna take 3 months or 6 months you gotta bring the people along like every digital transformation
11:33
and you have to really stay with it though cause I do genuinely believe Stephanie the companies that stick with it are going to outperform just like companies that did analytics right
11:43
there was a big gap over the last two decades for the companies that nailed their analytics strategies absolutely okay I've got a I've got a bunch of follow UPS here so um
11:51
so first of all four minutes I I oh gosh okay um alright uh you know stick with it
11:58
I got it I again how do how do you know how do you know that um your your project that you're investing in is either not the right one
12:09
or it just hasn't seen had the bake time the soak time to really see the return on investment that you've been looking for how can you tell one from the other yeah we really believe in first principles
12:20
we believe that you have to have an outcome in mind and it's the old uh you know the old metaphor about how to eat the elephant uh huh a bite at a time I mean
12:29
most companies are really trying to do a lot at once and I think AI creates this kind of belief that you can't I mean you should see the developers building on our stack
12:37
like what I ask them to accomplish it's like oh you can't just have AI do this over the weekend it's like there's real work to be done I think it's if you're in the technology part
12:45
of the team I think there is a lot of work you have to do to kind of set the expectations of executives that truly are under the belief that this stuff's like
12:52
magic yeah they're not magic beans having said that the expectation is this is like there is a superpower the way agents can work the way code generation can work
13:01
is you can get 20 and 30 and 40% so I think it's about setting reasonable expectations um managing to those just like you did anything strategically but understanding that what AI
13:12
really has come in to do is I call it prune to grow it really is a pruning strategy to create great efficiencies great efficiencies in code
13:20
great efficiencies in in in in content marketing and generation um sales strategies and follow through there's lots of great things you can do but you have to say look okay
13:29
how do we get 10% 20% and turn the ratchet because I think a lot of people came into this thinking like we want a triple revenue because we're going to do a jillion sales calls with AI it's like no
13:40
these calls are terrible I mean people can instantly tell I mean it's better than the robocalls uh huh but there's still a big gap between where it's at today and where it's going to be
13:50
so I think expectation setting and and and largely finding that management between idealistic and ambitious boards and executives teams yeah and the technologists that can actually do this
14:00
got it um so bringing it a little closer to home here so you mentioned obviously data earlier so we've talked we spent the day talking about data storage and data management um
14:09
obviously your data strategy is super critical and your data storage and data management strategy super critical to doing this right so how what is what are you hearing from um
14:21
what are what are you hearing from it leaders what are the critical pivots that they are needing to make in their data management strategy as they start to really embrace AI
14:31
across their organizations yeah you had a conversation with Arvin Krishnan CEO of IBM he said to me he goes only 1% of enterprise data has touched AI so far
14:41
so the biggest problem the most overwhelming problem overall is that most companies data is only just barely being introduced and then it's sifting through this massive
14:51
set of structured and unstructured data and I kind of use that two decade reference but like for two decades I've been talking about big data and literally most of these
15:00
companies I talk to would say that when GPT hit where they were at with their data strategy versus where they would need to be to fully take advantage of the power of of AI was it wasn't a it wasn't a small gap
15:14
it wasn't a mind the gap it was it was a golf OK and so fixing the golf and basically this is where the right partnership becomes really important this is where you know having the
15:26
the ambition to figure out you know across the cloud offerings across the sort of point of sale and specialty vendors like where is your partnership and the biggest thing that we're seeing too is that UN
15:36
there's so much more value that lies in the UN like people can figure out the structured data the structured data was always pretty well understood the unstructured data though is where so much of the gold is unlocked
15:45
for organizations and there's so much more complexity to making that data available to compute and then of course building the applications the last thing I would say about getting it right
15:53
that does tend to be a real real hurdle is all the compliance there's so much promise all the application companies oh we're we're governed we're compliant
16:01
everything will work right out of the box and it's like you're you have to be so worried whether it's employee data you know whether you're a regulated industry company and you've got all kinds of risk related to that
16:11
like when you're doing things that are generative or proactive agentic and reasoning it's like when do you really feel absolutely sure that it's not gonna spill that data yeah
16:21
uh really personal private salary data health data people's banking data um it's a lot and so that's a lot to take on and it's a big responsibility um
16:31
but there there there will be companies that will get there first and so in your industry you have to be willing to kind of challenge yourself and disrupt yourself awesome
16:40
okay you've got a room full of it leaders in here you can't see any of you you can't see any of the bright lights everybody everybody wave say hi to Daniel okay you've got a room full of it leaders in here
16:50
you've got a room full of partners you got one piece of advice you can give them as as as we're wrapping up here what what do you what do you got I'm gonna go back to what I said um
17:00
work with it don't fight the current I think everybody in here like what I love about having a room full of technologists is I do think you all buy into it
17:07
having said that where we're seeing is is there is this little bit of like I am a certified this I've spent 10 years becoming deeply entrenched in that and this is the way I've always done it
17:17
I'm in Oracle certified AWS certified Cisco Certified Pure Storage like whatever you are and what I'm saying is like this era is like we've literally moved from a CPU era to a GPU era
17:27
we moved to this completely new era of architectures and compute and it's gonna be the same thing with it and delivery like how developers and it work together it's gonna be completely different
17:36
there's in the future the way the sandbox is over here it's like no we're gonna develop we're gonna build architecture we're gonna infrastructure we're gonna deploy um
17:44
and we're gonna do it really fast and so I think it's kind of blowing up a lot of all blowing up a lot of the way you've thought about things historically and really being willing to work with it
17:54
and and just to just uncover all the opportunities that exist awesome so embrace the change yeah give four things or five that's okay embrace the change really have a data strategy in place
18:07
and move quickly and iterate I think speed is basically sums it up I I do I think I think you go fast as it goes fast as you can I'm like I'm like
18:17
we're going fast awesome Will Ferrell Daniel that flew by speaking of going fast that flew by thank you so much for being here it was such a treat thank you thank you for having me
18:29
thank you
