(upbeat techno music) Announcer: Live from Boston, Massachusetts, it's theCube, covering your Red Hat Summit 2019. Brought to you by Red Hat. And welcome back to Boston as we continue our coverage here on theCube with the Red Hat Summit 2019, along with Stu Miniman, John Walls. And we're now joined by the EVP and CIO of Delta Airlines, Mr. Rahul Samant. Rahul, good to see you, sir. Yeah, good to see you, too, John. John: Thank you for joining us and giving a little appearance keynote appearance coming up soon, right? I do, at 5:45. >> Yeah, so we won't hold you back, but thank you for squeezing us in, we appreciate that. First off, let's talk about Delta from the mackerel level, in terms of the technology emphasis that you have to have now, obviously running an airline, extraordinarily complex, sophisticated systems. But how the view of technology has evolved maybe over the last five, 10 years to where it is today. Yeah, I mean, you know, technology has always been core, I mean, we had reservation systems going back to the 60s on IBM mainframes, but as things have digitalized and the customer experience has become the key, and empowering our employees with insights and tools so they can take better care, even better care, as the customers become the other prong. So it's kind of a two pronged approach to digitalizing the company, and technology has become central now. Our culture is all about people, and our frontline teammates take great care of our customers, but then technology plays a great role in empowering them to do that even better. Within the company, we say we're transforming technology into a competitive advantage for Delta, and so relevance is not a problem. We are extremely relevant to the company, have been forever, but I think it's getting more and more- Stu: Even more so today. >> Yeah. Especially at the interaction touch point. So we understand how important technology is in your field there. Talk a little bit about kind of the role of the CIO, what's the business asking for you, what are the stressors on that, and a little bit of that dynamic? Yeah, I think, look, I'm an equal member of the CEO's executive team, but you still have to earn your right. And so things like reliability and stability, availability, security become table stakes, and so when 16 and 17 I started in 2016, and we needed to focus on that. So I came in, starry eyed, going I'm going to digitalize the airline experience, but what I needed to focus on was the table stakes and sort of earning my place at that table rightfully. And then that gives you permission to really start collaborating with the business and bringing technology solutions to bear on business opportunities. So we're there now, so it's really exciting time. We launched enterprise wide digital transformation of the company in our early 2018, which is, again, both employees and customer focus, and so clearly we are central to the role of Delta in the airline. Could you show us, what are some of those key goals of that digital transformation? Obviously, you know, we're all your ultimate customers, so we seal value there, but is data at the core of that digital transformation- You said it, you took the words right out of my mouth. I mean, any legacy, legacy's like a four letter word when it comes to technology. Everywhere else, we take great pride in our 90 plus year legacy, but not so much with our aging technology. So part of it was of course, you've gotta monetize the technology, so we're doing that in the background, but data was strewn all over the company. We know a lot about our customers, but we hadn't brought it together. So now we have, and we have a 360 degree view. We call it the single view of the customer. Along with that, we also have a single view of the operation, so those two data repositories are now real time and building APIs on top of that, and unlocking the power of that data to equip, like I said, the frontline employees. They've now got tools, they're mobile enabled, and they have insights that they can take to serving the customer, and then directly, I'm guessing, both the fewer customers and directly with you, we've mobile enabled the experience and given you a whole lot more across the entire travel ribbon. So what are you learning then, or what have you learned about customers then in terms of that data collection? I'm sure, there's pretty first level stuff. Rahul: Sure. Often to buy tickets, where you travel to, that kind of thing. But then I guess going deeper and learning more about behaviors and impulsive reactions to certain cues, whatever. What are you getting out of all of this? Just starting, that's an interesting one, John, because we do have, it's a huge data repository and we are just starting to get the use cases built on that. And where we focus our attention is on service recovery, 'cause we do service recovery. So you know, when weather goes bad and the airline goes into what we call irregular operation, or an IROP in airline terms, you gotta put that back together and you gotta recover the customers. They might be delayed, they might have suffered a canceled flight or a missed bag in spite of all of our best efforts, and that's where we're applying the single view of the customer, because we know the history of all your interactions with us until at the top of the house, the executives decided that that's where we wanted to go, we wanted to make sure that we could acknowledge to you, we could recognize inner options on your next travel with us, but while it's happening, we could actually help get you out of that and on your way again. So now we're moving from that to more revenue generation and targeted offers and targeted recognition. But where we started was really about service recovery because that's where customers sometimes feel the pain as much as we try for them not to. You know, weather's not our ally at times. And making the business case for that, are you able to then see how the behavior is modified in terms of whether it's customer reaction or customer uptake on your services, whatever, and how that's translating to the pretension or business growth, or something along those lines? Absolutely, even with the early use cases that we've put forth were seen. The expectations of airlines over time that customers have and that they're gonna use data technology effectively is I think fairly low. And so when we go up and our folks walk down the aisle with the handheld device on board and they acknowledge someone for hitting a million milestone, or for achieving diamond status. In a way, customers are impressed. And then you go to the next level, and you're able to take care of them on a delay or on a cancel and accommodate before they even call the service center, they've been re-accommodated and re-booked, those are things that then, gender so much loyalty, and I think it's technology equipping our employees in a big way. So the employees are doing great. Now you've put another helping of technology on top of it, customers are paying us for that. We have revenue premium on that. So you talk internal, tell us a little about your team, how much has this been in a digital transformation is retraining some, how much you're trying to get, people from the outside, when we go to shows like this, companies like yours are in heavy recruiting mode typically and skill sets are tough, what are you looking for, give us a little insight? So, we've had a very seasoned IT team and organization as you would expect, electrician very low, at Delta. What I needed to do was bring in about 15 to 20% of the total team strat is new, that's what I brought in, about 600 people in the last 36 months, and those were people who were hired for contemporary skills. I call them been there done that type people, so cloud engineers, API people, agile cyber experts, and blending that with the seasoned veterans that know a lot about Delta IT and know a lot about the airline domain, was really important. So you didn't create haves and have not's, 'cause that could have easily happened, and that causes a rupture. So we spent a lot of time on integrating those two halves and making sure that this was sort of a shot of adrenaline into the bloodstream, but the bloodstream is strong, and the combined force of those two groups has been terrific for us. So the other thing I would say, and I'm not saying that because I'm sitting here at the Red Hat Summit, is the user partners. Not just for products, but for a set of strategic partners whether it's Red Hat or IBM or Microsoft. A small set of partners becomes a force multiplier from a talent perspective. So they become an accelerant to the transformation. Well since you brought it up, talk a little bit about partnerships. How do you look at this? Is it I wanna have a primary one, is it a handful, talk about that depth of relationship and what you're looking for from that vendor ecosystem today. Yeah, absolutely, and look. We've got about a dozen that I need at the CEO president type level on an annual basis where I would stay on a 10 to 12 that we really are tight with, and that our inside the 10, they understand the pillars of our transformation, and they know where they can provide swift acceleration to our transformation, and of course, Red Hat is one of the others that I named, but they are giving us not just the product and the service, but they are in there helping us with setting the strategy, and making sure that they put the right team on the ground with us, or training our people. So it runs the gambit from sort of the system integrator type all the way to opensource product types. For the Red Hat piece, can you highlight what are you using and are they involved in some of that training and transformation? Yeah, I think, you know, behind the scenes, sort of under the hood, the platform is a service that gives us tremendous inoperability. We are young in our journey to the cloud, and like any big company, we're gonna be multi-cloud and a hybrid, so we've built our private cloud, we've got the Red Hat open shift container platform hosted in our private cloud. And so we're moving a lot of our application components into that prior to that, and that's only about a year that we've been doing that, but prior to that, big Linux users, Red Hat Enterprise, Linux, Jboss, a whole plethora of products. But I think the platform as a service is really helping us with our cloud journey, and we're totally jazzed about that. You talked about hiring and 600 new employees in a very short period of time. GlassDoor just stood up and said hey, Delta Airlines, one of the top companies for hiring software engineers, which is a very nice distinction to get. What does that do? So first off, how do you do that in such an environment where everybody's after the same market, if you will? How do you feel about something like that? Validate a little bit. I'm really proud of that, and it actually wasn't something that you self nominate or you even have some kind of a selection process. It just arrived, we didn't know about it. And those are some of the best ones, because it's also recognition from your employees, because they are the ones who are voting with their posts and they're the ones that are telling GlassDoor that this is a terrific place to work, and we're doing a lot of new things, and we're doing them at speed, and it's very relevant to the customer experience and to our frontline employee experience. So there's an impact story, this is one of the great thing about working for an airline, there's no place to run or hide when you're an IT. Because if it's down within 15 minutes, we're front page news somewhere. And so we strive hard to make sure it's never down, and on top of that, we're building these great digital experiences. So it's been really gratifying, and I think it's gonna help us even further with our recruiting efforts. It's interesting, without getting political, it's like you're doing this modernization, but you've got heavy regulations, and some of the basic infrastructure of your industry is a little bit antiquated, you know, any comments on that? Well, I think it's a dichotomy. I don't think we're unique, I came out of banking to insurance to airlines, and you'd think that the way that the financial services guys spend money on IT, there would be no aging technology and there'd be none of that web of connectivity. Not true, I think any company that's been around 40, 50 years has all the generations of technology still existing. So our endeavor is to make sure we deprecate out of that technology as quickly as we can, and where it's useful, I mean, we still use mainframes for a really good purpose, and someone asked me this a couple weeks ago, would you get out of it? And I said no, it's a half a million dollar project, and it's a high risk project. And IBM serves really well, and for that purpose, the mainframe is exactly what the doctor ordered. So this isn't about ideology, right? This is about purpose built, and custom build. So if there's a technology that fits the purpose, I wanna leave well alone, I'm gonna train people and recruit people so that I don't have a talent issue in 10 or 20 years when it comes to mainframe people. We've had no problem in getting apprentices and keeping our mainframe talent pipeline good. So never get away from it. Can you give us just a little sneak peak on the keynote tonight? I mean, just maybe a high level, hear a couple of things, just for John and Stu? Yeah, it's gonna be a fireside with Jim. You'll have to come and listen, but I think Jim's finally got a few questions up his sleeve. You know, Jim's got a heritage with Delta. He was our chief operating officer until I think about 10 years ago. And so it should be fun, he hasn't told me what he's gonna ask me, so it's gonna be interesting as to which way he's gonna come. But I would assume he wants to talk about digital transformation, and of course, however that's helping. I would assume there's gonna be a question or two about Red Hat. Well then my only warning will be is what I hear when I walk out of Delta flight, and that's fasten your seatbelt. Yes, there you go, exactly, thank you. John: Hey thanks for the time, and I look forward to the keynote tonight. Thanks so much, guys. All right, back with more here on theCUBE, we're watching coverage right now at Red Hat Summit, and we're in Boston Massachusets. (upbeat techno music)