Announcer: From around the globe, it's theCUBE! With digital coverage of IBM Think 2021. Brought to you by IBM. Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's coverage of IBM Think 2021. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. We're here with Mark Foster, Senior Vice President of IBM Services and IBM's Global Business Services. It's a global landscape, the world's changing, it's going hybrid. Mark, thanks for coming on theCUBE. Great to see you, John, good to be with you. You know, the theme this year is all about hybrid cloud. Global transformation is the innovation at scale. That's the discussion, that's the way I see it. The question I have for you to start right away is how has the last year in particular changed businesses as they're leveraging the tech? You know, they want to solve their critical problems and transform themselves, the pandemic has forced them to look at this. How has this last year changed the way businesses are leveraging tech? Well, there's definitely been an acceleration in the digital transformations across all of our clients around the world. They have been compelled to leverage technology to connect with their customers in these unique times. They've been forced to use technology tools to allow their teams to connect and operate around the world. And all of this has reinforced also the opportunity to leverage things like extreme automation, AI, and the leverage of things like the cloud to deal with the virtual and more remote nature of working around the world. How much of the change last year do you think's going to to be temporary or long lasting. What's not going to be given up? (laughs) What are people realizing? Is it temporary or is it long lasting? What's your take? Well, I think we have to recognize that we are moving into a genuinely hybrid world, well, hybrid insofar as I think that some of the lessons we've learned over this past period are going to durably change the way we work, but we're also going to have a certain amount of back to the future, as well, as we try and put back some of the aspects of physical interaction, the ways of actually bringing empathy, creativity together through being together in groups. But I do think also we're going to take a number of these areas of acceleration and they're going to be extrapolated out to genuinely lead to an acceleration of what might've taken place over over five years taking place over a lot shorter period. You know, I think that group dynamic is really a big deal. I think that's going to be something that, to me, jumps out at this transformation. People want to work together. They want to be part of something, totally right on. With that, I got to ask you, now that we have this kind of new virtual experience, we're remote, we're not in person, wish we were, but even when we are in personal, it'll still be hybrid virtual experience events means we're still going to act as a group. This kind of brings up the idea of a virtual enterprise. You kind of mentioned that. What you mean and how do you define a virtual enterprise? Well, I think a virtual enterprise for us is an extension of the thought process we've had before around how technology is transforming the way all businesses operate. If you do apply, you know, the power of technology to build new business platforms and think about new ways of applying technology to transform your business processes, you think about the way that all of us are reinventing the relationship between people and technology in our organizations, the virtual enterprise just takes that to the next level. It recognizes that if you are able to take a location out of the equation, if you're able to leverage ecosystems more completely through connecting through networks of organizations, all of this extends the vision that we have of how the cognitive enterprise of the past comes to life. And we create this even more connected, even more expansive vision of business which is of course able to leverage technology within its own four walls. It's able to leverage it powerfully with its business partners. But then finally, it's about how you create the platforms upon which you create new ecosystems for competition and new markets that can be created in that way. That's really compelling insight right there. I think that's right on the money. I have to ask you, what do you think the differentiating characteristics are for this enterprise? What's going to be the differentiator, what's going to make it work? What do you need- I think what's going to make it work first of all, I think we think there's going to be a sort of a golden thread of what you might call an extended intelligent workflow that runs through the enterprise and its partners. And the power of that sort of thread of core processes and core differentiation to be brought to life by the mutual leverage of technology through partnerships is going to be a hugely powerful. So therefore all the partners' ability to embrace those technologies to embrace the vision for how those workflows come together is going to be very important. I think it's going to be very important that actually the ecosystem and its success becomes the strategy of the of the participants as opposed to being something that they happened to be going along with. So it becomes the strategy of the organization. And I think finally, there's a huge amount around here around how you leverage and think about the power of your people, the culture that you create to be inclusive and expansive in terms of applying new talent, building new talent, to allow this virtual enterprise to thrive. That's actually brilliant. You know, ecosystem is part of it, not an afterthought or a marketing gimmick. It's got to be part of it, that's awesome. Let's bring that to the next level. The role of the ecosystems are taking a bigger role for you, as you said, what specifically can you point to that has a change that's made in the ecosystem that you can point to, says that's an impactful change, this is a table stake, this is a guaranteed continuing practice. Can you give an example? Well, I think what we can see around the world in terms of how the world has solved for something like you're getting vaccines created and distributed on the back of the COVID crisis, that's taken an ecosystem coming together to work in completely different ways in an accelerated way to deliver on very big outcomes. Well, we can also see, you know, clients who are developing their strategies to try and connect the dots across different players to position their business as a platform upon which others bring their parts, their organizations to bear. And I think that we can see therefore that this idea of ecosystems is being used to solve really big problems, but it's also potentially a model that can be used to actually define really big market opportunities as well. And when you can connect the dots and you can expand your market footprint by combining with other key players at scale and also create a way that smaller organizations can come and sit upon the platforms that you create and leverage those capabilities, then the opportunity to actually use that to really expand your horizons of where your business can go are very real. You know, that's a really interesting, mind blowing concept. You think about the idea of a network effect or ecosystems, and integration, and collective intelligence. These are paradigms that have been around for awhile, at least past 10 years. It was the Holy Grail, let's hope we get to that. It seems like that's happening right now. And I think more than ever, it can be harnessed. And so I think you starting to see that with the hybrid cloud and it's not just tech, it's societal impact, it's impacting people, their jobs, and their ability to contribute and work. So this is a huge concept. So really excited this conversation. I guess the next question I have for you, Mark, is how do you bring clients this value? How do they create value? And how do they take this and transform their business with it? What's the playbook? Well, I think for clients, the first thing for them to recognize is to understand that this is the world that they are operating in. And I think that from a playbook point of view, the first thing I would say is you do need to think about which ecosystems do I want to play in? How do I think I could win by being a part of, or shaping an ecosystem? I think, secondly, there's the opportunity to think about how you use all the data that's out there in the world to be a stronger source of innovation across an ecosystem, to think about how your products and services could be modernized to succeed in that world. How you build those innovations into this new vision of an extended workflow or process view that binds the players of your ecosystem together. And you're really thinking about how to reinvent the way work gets done.

Apply automation, apply AI, apply blockchain, apply IoT to transform those workflows is a massive, massive opportunity. To recognize that actually by the power of that, you're able to have significantly more impact than before. So make sure you're setting your ambitions high enough around the impact the change you're trying to drive can bring, and then I think also just making sure you're thinking all the time about what this means for the culture of your organizations, the workforce you want to connect with, how you want to access talent and bring it to bear across this new extended value chain? You know, who do you need to employ, versus who do you need to contract with, versus who do you need to make sure are participating in the processes that you're driving? And then finally, how do you make sure that you have the infrastructure, and the systems, and the applications that are open enough to allow you to really bring this vision to life? So the underlying hybrid cloud, hybrid architectures that you have and the networks you have that bind you together become fundamental. That's awesome. Great insight there. I guess my final question is how has your personal outlook changed in the past year when everyone is working from home? And now we're starting to see the pandemic, you know, light at the end of the tunnel from this pandemic, once we emerge out of it, people want to have a growth strategy, want to get back to real life. Any words of advice for our viewers on your personal outlook and as we come out of the pandemic and they can participate- Well, I think the first thing to recognize is we all have a collective wish around the world, probably for the first time for a long time, I think pretty much most people in humanity are sharing a shared view about a desire to have a more expansive horizon than the one that's outside the window of their kitchen, which I'm looking out of right now, and being able to get out and about, and engage in some more aspects that of normal life. And I do think that we're all looking forward to that opportunity. I think we're going to have to recognize that we're probably all going to also adapt our behaviors, going forward, but there's almost an enormous amount of exciting things that we've all got pent up we want to go and do, and I think, you know, the critical thing for us all is to hopefully approach that world safely. But at the same time, recognize that there is hope, we are working our way through this as a world. And as long as we try and make sure we do that in a way that is actually equitable, and that we do make sure that all boats are lifted as we return here, then I think that's a really positive view of how the future will be for all of us. So we should all look forward to that. Mark, it's great to have you on theCUBE. I love the insight, I love your message. It's right on, it's relevant, and super cool because that's what people want. They want to collaborate and be with people. I guess with the final minute we have left, share an observation from the past year and a half. Something that surprised you that happened in the industry, something that you didn't expect or something that you did expect that's positive that we can look to and say, "That's a good thing, we want to double down on that." Well, I think the positive thing that I think we can double down on is that we have all actually learned to be perhaps more open to interacting with people who we wouldn't otherwise have interacted with through this medium, that actually I have found that I've broadened my network of people that I've been engaging with through the fact that it has been actually relatively easy to connect even at high levels with people, but all the people have been able to connect in a strange way with a bigger group of connections than you would have done through the normal physical constraints of flying somewhere, seeing someone, meeting someone, and how you use your time to do that. So I would say one of the positive things is actually how open people have been to start new relationships over this virtual medium. Of course, the trick is going to be, can we build on those virtual relationships we've created and make them more sustainable once we're back to a more normal life and they become, you know, the new friendships, the new business relationships and networks that we can thrive on for the future? That's genius, love it. I agree. CUBE Virtual's here doing it. We're trying content, community, collaboration, connection, friendships, new things, touch someone with a click and engage. Mark Foster here, clicking into our CUBE Virtual for IBM Think. I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching. (upbeat music) ♪ Dah, deeah ♪ ♪ Dah, dee ♪ (chimes ringing)