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Alison Wagonfeld, Google Cloud | Google Cloud Next 2019
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    Narrator: Live from San Francisco, it's theCUBE, covering Google Cloud Next '19. Brought to you by Google Cloud and its ecosystem partners. Okay, welcome back everyone. We are here live in San Francisco for Cube's coverage of Google Next 2019 hashtag google next '19. This is Google's Cloud conference where their customers, developers all come together. It's theCUBE's three days of coverage, day one. I'm John Furrier, with my co-host David Vellante. As well as, Stu Miniman, who's out there, doing some reporting. Our next guest is Alison Wagonfeld, is the CMO of Google Cloud. Great to see you, thanks for joining us! Thanks for having me, I'm glad to be here. So I got to say, looking out on the floor here, we're in the middle of the floor, great demographics, a lot of developers, a lot of enterprise customers, a lot of, you know sea levels but also, enterprise architects, and cloud architects. So this is not just a developer fest. This is a business developer conference. Yes, so that's been a real change this year. Not only have we increased the numbers, I think I mentioned earlier that we have 30,000 people, or actually probably even more than that. We had a cap registration. We sold out last week. But the composition is different this year. Because this year we have over 70% from enterprise companies. And then within enterprise companies, it stems, IT decision makers, business leaders, and the we have a whole executive track. A leader circle program as well. So, it's been a really great mix of different energy, different questions, and different sessions. You guys do a great job with the event, kudos to the team. I mean, the original Google IO was a great event. That continues to be the consumer side on google. You guys have that same kind of groove, swing going on, a lot of sessions. Take a minute to explain the theme of the show, what's going on around the events, breakouts, what's the focus? Yeah, so the focus, well there's a theme on a couple different levels. The broad theme is, a cloud like no other, because we've introduced a lot of new, different features, and products, and programs. We introduced Anthos this morning which was a really revolutionary way of using containers, broadly, multi-cloud, hybrid cloud. So, it's from a product stand point. But its also a cloud like no other because, it's about the community that's here, and its truly a partnership with our customers and our partners about building this cloud together. And we see the community as a really key part of that. It's really core to Googles values, around openness, open source technology, and really embracing the broader community to build the cloud together. What I thought was interesting the key now, is phenomenal you had the CEO of Google come out, Sundar Pichai, and the new CEO was only on the job 10 weeks, TK. >> Yes. Thomas Kurian. >> Yes. A lot of action going on at Google Cloud right now. There's a lot going on. (laughing) It's been great having Thomas, Diane was phenomenal in building the business. It's wonderful to have Sundar here. He's showed a lot of commitment. Really engaged with our customers. And, so it's a lot of energy, and a lot of excitement at Google. I thought it was a very class act of Thomas Kurian, his first words on the stage as the CEO was to give props to Diane Greene. Very, very respectful that was great. I agree, it was very gracious of Thomas. But he said , oh sorry. He said to the press the other day, one of the things I really like about Google, is they aren't afraid of hard problems. Right. So, I wanted to ask you, as the CMO, I always ask CMO's about brand promise. What's the brand promise that you want customers and the community to take away from an event like this? So, The brand promise has a couple different areas. First and foremost, we want our customers to be successful with their customers. And so, we think really holistically about, let's just make sure we're delivering the cloud technology, so that customers can really serve everyone that they want to serve. Whether it's be a retailer that wants to create a wonderful offline and online experience. Whether it's a healthcare provider that wants to ensure that every doctor knows all of the right data about all of the patients, or within a hospital. And so, that's the way we're always thinking, is how can we ensure that we help our customers set up to be successful. So, one of the big themes we heard this morning was the industry focus. And you just referenced it again. It seems to be an increasingly important part of the messaging and the technology that you're creating. And it ties into digital transformation. You're seeing every industry transform. Data is at the heart of that transformation. You're seeing big companies traverse different industries. So I'm wondering if you can talk about the industry focus? Where'd that come from, where do you see it going? Yeah. So there's really three core parts of what we've been talking about today. First and foremost is the infrastructure and ensuring that we have the world's best infrastructure. Then, on top of is ensuring that we have all the right applications to help with digital transformation. And then, as part of that, further, is the industry solutions. Because, in our six focus industries, we want to make sure that we are really developing the right applications with the right solutions and have a deep expertise that companies are looking for so that we can really partner with them, and really truly be innovative. And we can feel much more comfortable being innovative, when we really understand our customer problems. The key part of that is, the global SI's. You look out here and you see all the big names. I won't name them, cause I'll forget one. But there's two obvious ones right there. Alison: Yes. And because once you start to see those guys come into the ecosystem that's when you can partner and get real deep industry expertise, globally. I agree, and so we do have a great partnership as said here with Accenture, and Tai Loy, and Athos are three of them. But many more that uh we're working really closely with. And they really are an extension of what we want to build. Because we know we will not be able to create every single last mile industry solution in every single industry and working with those companies really helps us. I was on the plane last night watching the game, of course. I don't know if you guys got to see it. You were probably up here busy. But I focused. Google was all over the NCAA's this year. So this is our second year of our partnership with the NCAA and it's been great. There's a couple dimensions to that partnership. First and foremost, we helped them analyze 80 years worth of data. And through all that analysis, we've been working with them about making predictions about games, and helping them understand players, and coaches, and teams better. Everything from creating brackets, to how do you, the fan experience. And then, as part of that we also had opportunity to do some advertising within their game. So you may have seem some of the TV spots that we did, which was about analyzing that data. And we put ourselves on the line by making predictions during the game about what we thought would happen based on all of our analysis. And then, the big ship this year was we included students. So it was really exciting. 'Cause last year we created all these models, but we did it within Google. We had Google Dev, and Google engineers creating the prediction models. And we said like, what if we brought students in to help us? So we recruited 30 or so all-star students around the country from their schools, brought them together. They learned GCP like that. It was awesome. And then they started working together doing predictions. And so a lot of what you saw on the games and on our hub was actually students using Google Cloud Platform, to make predictions about the games. So, just to get this right, and this was referenced on stage by TK, to the students. So you had data from the NCAA that was exposed to the students? They had a hackathon? Yes. How much lead time did they have? What was the, explain more. They did everything within 30 days. So they, the hackathon was about two or months ago or so. But within the last 30 days they did all of these different projects. And they were actually doing really creative things like trying to come up with new types of stats, like explosiveness. What does that mean? Does it mean that you move in closer to the basket, or does it mean that, you know they were coming up with stats around pace of game, and different elements of the play, so it was really fun. How many slam dunks? Missed fouls? So question, who are you rooting for? I was rooting for Virginia. But you know let's say, I was rooting for Virginia after my bracket got busted. And so I was allowed to kind of change a little it in there. Michigan, once they were gone I as like hmm. So I used no AI but I hit 99 percentile. So, there you go. 'Cause I had Michigan and Michigan State, rather, and Virginia in my final four. You did? That's impressive! Yeah Michigan State lost but, still I would've been. That's pretty good! 99.9. Yeah. So, what kind of predictions were the students doing? Just trying to predict outcomes? >> The students were doing predictions about everything from, well, last night we had some predictions about the numbers of two point. We had about how many different times we were going to exchange, like, the ball would go back and forth between teams. We had predictions about three pointers in one game, and everything, so it's been really fun to work with them. And kind of end game predictions too? I see that a lot, right? Yeah, you probably toss some stats, real time. Probability of victory, which of course last night, forget it. I mean it changed so quickly. Alison: Yes, it was super fun. Great , great program, one of the things I want to ask you, not to change gears, is you have a book in the press room, called Customer Voices? Alison: Yes. So, this has been a focus, and I think a lot of people, have been like oh, Googles got great tech, but not a lot of costumers, which you guys are debunking with not only this disk but, here at the show, showing the logo slide, really kind of showing the traction from a costumer stand point. Yes. Talk about the focus on the customer. How is that changed how you're doing your job? How is the tech rolling out? Can you share some insite into the customer focus? Yeah. This has been a really being step change this year. We have over 400 customers speaking throughout this event, and then we have a number of them that are on stage and the keynotes telling real stories. Two years ago we had some customers speaking, and they would say oh, I'm looking, I'm dabbling on this. But now they're making real, kind of epic company decisions, using our technology. And so this, Customer Voices, is looking at those companies. We have something called the customer innovation series this afternoon where the CIO of HSBC will be talking about their evolution into the cloud. Two years ago Darrell West was on stage, talking about just what they were beginning to do on Google Cloud Platform. And now here we are two years later, where they've made a lot of progress, and will be sharing their stories. And the customer devotion series is one of my favorite parts at Next. You know we cover a lot of events, David and I, we're like the ESPN of tech. On game day, go out in the shows. We see a lot of events and you kind of hear the key words over and over again at some of these events. Here we're hearing scale. Which is we've heard all the time. Google, scale, scale, scale solve our problems. But we're hearing more about customers. Alison: Yeah. Okay this has been a big focus. How have you guys shifted internally? Because this seems to have been around for a while. Like you said I think its step function from what we're seeing as well. What's going on internally, how are you guys mobilizing? How are you guys taking this to the market? 'Cause you've got great partnerships. Saw Cisco on stage. VMware is even up there. You got an ecosystem developing. Alison: Right. A lot of momentum. So, we are truly this year enterprise ready, to use a buzz word that comes up. (laughing) So, two years ago we still had some holes in some of our technology stack, and we were still really building the go to market teams. We still are vastly scaling that, so absolutely growing there. But we are in a whole different place as a business where we are able to serve really large enterprises at scale. You heard McKesson just announced, sixth largest company, that they are moving and working with us at Google Cloud. I mean these are major companies that are making big decisions to work with us. And so it's at a whole different level this year, and we're really proud that our customers have chosen to work with us. And we're building the organization to ensure that they are successful. So that's our customer success program. It's ensuring we have the right kind of customer engineers working hand in hand with our customers. So it's a big focus of our whole group. It's a focus where Thomas Kurian has a lot of background serving enterprise customers at Oracle for 20 years. Bringing that expertise. So you'll see that everywhere. So I'm glad you picked up on that and feel it, 'cause it really permeates everything we're doing at Google Cloud. And it's been a good, positive change, and the results are there. What's the focus for you as you look forward? There's a lot to do. You guys are a great opportunity. I always say Google's the dark horse. I mean obviously, Amazon's got a good lead out there, being first in, but, you guys have a lot of tech, you got the customer focus, you got a lot of momentum on the tech side, cloud native, open source, partner ecosystem developing, customer ecosystem. So kind of balls in your court, so to speak. Yeah, we feel really well positioned. It's early. So in the whole market a lot of people seem to think that oh, like all these decisions, but it's really still 80% of work loads are in data centers at these big enterprises. Everybody who's here with us right now. And most companies are choosing a multi-cloud strategy. This morning we announced a major product, Anthos, that really enables the multi-cloud strategy, so it enables Google to really be at the center of that multi-cloud and provide the services using containers and a lot of the biggest, best advances right now. And so as we scale or go to market, we can really bring this technology that we hear over and over again is the best technology in the business. Yet we hadn't really had to go to marketing place to bring it to customers, and this is really where we're taking it so we can help get this awesome technology. It's so fun as a marketer, to then bring it to everybody. I always say it's so early the wave is just getting started. There's more waves behind it. I'm very impressed and intrigued also by the rebranding of the Google Cloud platform, which you guys announced, as just kind of a hybrid. Anthos is interesting because its a rebrand slash new set of integration points. Cisco again on stage kind of integrating what your container platform is a key story that I think is nuance but kind of points to a whole new Google. What was behind the re-branding? Can you just share some insite to what the conversation was like? Google Cloud Platforms, is descriptive, but I mean, it says what it is. There's a couple things. So cloud serves as a platform. When we chose that name last year was when we went into Alpha with a product. And frankly, within the marketing team, we kind of knew was always a place holder name. And then the debate was when do we change the name, when we go to beta, which we did a couple months ago, or when we go to GA. And we decided this would be a great opportunity to change the name. So we always knew we were going to change the name. Picking a name is always complicated. And so we spent a lot of time thinking about what we wanted that name to mean and what we want it to stand for. And we really liked Anthos. It's a Greek word and is a nod to the Greek aspects of the history of the product with Kubernetes, and Istio, and other areas. It means to blossom. It means to grow. It means all, and so you may know words like anthology and things like that. So we liked both what it meant and we also liked that, with automating decisions, it's easy to spell, it's easy to find, it's all great. And its super blooming in California, here as we speak, a little ironic. It has an international flavor to it. Right you guys are taking this show overseas, right? You got a big show in London in November, I know. And you'll be in Canada as well? >> Yes. We'll be in Tokyo in July. At Nexon in London in November. And then we do, in between all of these, what we call Cloud Summit Series. Which are in country, slightly smaller, but we bring a lot of the same technology and speakers and sessions. Just slightly scaled down version. Intimate. Well we really appreciate you while we love doing theCUBE here. A lot of tech athletes, as we say, here on the show floor. A lot of knowledge. Good customer conversation. Allison, thanks for sharing the insights. Congratulations on the great show. Thank you, I love being here. And thanks for having me. And bring rebranding as the market shifts, it's a great time to have a rebrand. Certainly when it means something more multi-cloud, hybrid cloud, Google Cloud platform now, Anthos. It's theCUBE. Bringing you live coverage here from the floor at Google Next 2019. Stay with us for more after this short break. (electronic sounds)