Building Bots Part 1

it's about time we did a toolbox episode on BOTS hi welcome to visual studio toolbox I'm your host Robert green and joining me today is Sam bazoo of progress hey Sam hello welcome to the show welcome to the cozy confines of Studio B and that's nice it's changed but it's nice yeah we're just gonna sit back and chat about BOTS it's about time now so bots is one of these new things that there's a lot of buzz about a lot of cool demos of bots running in Skype or you know BOTS calling and making appointments for you and there's just an amazing amount of stuff that's going on and that's all cool of course but what I want to focus on is you know us as traditional enterprise minded business developers whether we're doing desktop or web or mobile or whatever what does it take to build one of these things because it turns out it's not that hard to get started and then what are some of the uses that we might think about where we would actually take advantage of these in the types of businesses we're currently in mm-hm so we're gonna do that this is a two-parter so obviously this is part one of two so tell us about bots let's jump in yep let's switch to slides so we can talk through so what you see I think over the last couple of years is human-computer interaction is evolving mmm-hmm be it through a RvR be it through any other ways and you see the impact of AI so we are not only interacting differently with computers we're also expecting different things for computers and this is where BOTS come in and BOTS aren't new they're about maybe two three years old now but they're evolving fast so I think it's kind of the next frontier of apps so let's kind of dive in so as Cortana Alexa Syria those bots sort of their agents okay let's dive in all right so Robert already introduced me I'm Sam Basu I'm a telluric developer advocate at progress I kind of focus on the dotnet side of things across web desktop and mobile and BOTS is something that that actually does excite me nowadays so I think one of the fundamental questions we need to ask is what exactly are we talking about because yes BOTS is a very generic term we're not talking about robots we're not talking about like the spider BOTS that Bing or Google used to kind of crawl the web there are different types of BOTS what we are focusing on for enterprise application in particular are chat BOTS more conversational BOTS bots that we can actually have a conversation with be it over voice or be it over text and what can they do for us how smart can they get so actually automate things for us and can actually help us okay yeah one of the fun things that I've actually seen many people do whenever we talk about conversational BOTS back in 2013 I think there was a movie that came out it was called her it right hook in Phoenix in them in it and it got a little weird quickly it was about conversational BOTS but this lonely writer he started having a relationship with his conversational bot because it was so smart and it kind of got him very quickly right so that's kind of the AI aspects of being a bot and how smart it can get so let's kind of break down what exactly is a bot and how we can build it okay okay I think one of the reasons why building conversational BOTS is interesting and challenging and fun in a way is because we're all trying to make a cake we have a lot of ingredients there is no fixed recipe because it really depends on what exactly you want your body to be okay so you have to kind of break down what are my ingredients and how am i exactly going to build it so it suits my needs so let's kind of break down where conversational BOTS stand today and we're possibly looking at a slice of it but bots are apps okay that's fundamentally it I mean these are web-based apps that we can communicate over HTTP and they can be housed in different things but they're fundamentally apps but there are complex apps because they have lots and lots of integrations that's what makes them smart so a bot by itself if it was just talking to you and had no brain will be pretty dumb it was only going to go off if else statement and a bunch of rules and not be able to a whole lot so the real benefit of having a bot is all of these integrations that make it smarter okay so that's what we're talking about so there is a lot of plumbing there is a lot of different things that make up a bot so to your point are the voice assistant spots in a way they are but they are in the front end to the intelligence that's behind so when you talk to Alexa when you talk to Cortana or Google assistant you are firing things off over voice but things that you are firing off beat and as your function wheezed in an Amazon lambda that's what the intelligence lies so those are BOTS okay you're just using an agent to get to the bots yeah and I mean with Cortana you can type it in so I mean essentially is a conversational bar over over text right yeah so these are agents and then we talk about platforms because this is where BOTS can recite and this is kind of a big benefit of having a bot it really is platform agnostic what you're building is very fundamental and there are multiple platforms who can all talk HTTP so you can have your bot house inside of Facebook Messenger or filio or it's slack or team wherever your users are you can have a bot kind of integrated in there so it's easy for them to find it and talk to it okay so these are the platforms and then we have agents so like we said BOTS by themselves don't do much it's what we do behind the scenes with boss that makes it interesting so first up is there's got to be some sort of rules engine that tells you about what to do what questions to ask what path to kind of guide you down as we're having a conversation with your bot next thing is natural language processing if your bot is literally going off a bunch of strings to say find me a flight out of Seattle then that's the only thing it will understand if you say get me out of Seattle it's going to get confused but that's kind of how we naturally speak to each other so this is where natural language processing comes into play and all of the voice agents do it as well so when you say get me out of Seattle they find so it's an utterance intent what exactly are you trying to do like get a flight out of Seattle and then we'll find the parameters like what airport are you flying out of and then it's going to trigger the corresponding contextual thing that's going help you flying the fly so in that way it's it's a step or several steps beyond just voice enabling an app right like you could voice enable an app so that instead of having to pick from a menu choice or click a button you could say open the report open the monthly report right right so at that point there's one thing that the app does it opens the monthly report there is a command and you say open the monthly report but if you went in and said what happened last month then obviously the app has no idea what you mean because you didn't hardwired in a bunch of commands so the the beauty of the bot is that it can be trained to be more natural more cognizant right of what you're saying instead of just expecting if you say these five things I will do these five things if you say anything else I have no idea what you're talking about okay so there is a command there's a thing that the bot knows how do you know it's how you get to it because I think that's that's an important distinction because I think the very first time I saw a bot I was thinking oh well I can voice in and I can voice enable apps and I've been able to do that for a long time what's how is this better right so it's a bunch of things that your bot knows how to do and a bunch of different ways that the user can come to it okay yep so that's a natural language processing then there is some state management there's some logic that you will have obviously behind it what if you told you about order me the pizza that I had last week right now by nature bots are supposed to be stateless like it's one turn-off you saying something and the bots getting back to you but how is it going to remember if you what pizza order last week so you can actually persist some state in your BOTS and that kind of goes back to wherever you want to store your data and how you want to authenticate and authorize the user but it's possible to maintain some state so the bot is more of a conversational and how do humans will interact sure yeah so these are the things that kind of make up the bots intelligence and then they're about frameworks because we don't want to do everything from scratch right difficult so there's Microsoft bought framework which which we'll talk about exclusively today I actually have not played a lot with others but there's there's a lot for sure there's Facebook what AI Amazon makes Lex IBM makes Watson and dialog flow from Google so there are lots of these frameworks they all are about the same and they have their SDKs they have their ways to kind of bring you on so all of this is kind of geared towards helping developers build BOTS ok that's it so let's kind of dive into Microsoft bot framework and then see what it can do for you before we do that to answer your initial question of what what can this do for enterprise apps mm-hmm so yeah all the skype bots are fun but when it comes down to what line of business apps can fit as bots it's a lot of little things that can be automated workflows and I'll give you two classic examples where we actually have customers doing this we have a hospital where people call in and they want to schedule an appointment it's a very basic task and yes somebody has a calendar open every doctors calendar is in sync and at that point you're really just choosing a bunch of things and click and you're done you have an appointment that's something that can be automated and we have in a hospital that actually has it sounds bad but they've been able to cut one human and kind of having two other things but over like six months they were able to train their BOTS enough that is good enough to schedule simple appointments it's all about like what can we automate before you have to talk to a human being right yeah another example is support systems if you have like an IT Help Desk that's trying to help you kind of go through problems and roadblocks maybe the initial things maybe your basic problems can be dealt with with a bot it just knows the basic things that can go wrong and then if you're having more problems than transfer to a human being okay so some some common examples so that's going to talk about the Microsoft side of the world because this is where we live and breathe so this is what such a kind of opened up a couple of years back conversation as a platform this is the next interface this kind of helps AB developers have ways new ways to interact with their system as an end user so it's it's a new frontier for us the benefits are obvious we get to have increased productivity we have to we we are able to reduce the time that a human has to spend over just trivial things things that can be automated and the big benefit is being able to reach customers where they are at so if you are already plugged into messenger or Twilio or slack then we'll meet you there you don't have to install a new app we just kind of have a part that's embedded into what you are that's where we stand that's the benefit of pause okay okay so now let's dive into what we can do with it what benefits we can get and how we can start building it so based on who you ask Microsoft bot framework is a big thing I think it's comprising of two fundamental things one is bought builder this is the SDK this is how you actually build your apps your bots you don't want to do it entirely online unless it's something super simple you want to have it locally and that's how you will have it in your IDE and you code it up and you make it work and you test and then he'll push it out to wherever you want to have it hosted and there is a developer portal which kind of helps you get started it's gets you the SDKs it's a place where you can actually host your apps as well a host your BOTS and then it has all of these little connections which help you get your app into slack into Skype into Facebook those things are really nice and then this is just a bot part of it and then we get into what's called cognitive services which I don't think it's really a part of the bot framework at all it's it's AI suite right but this is what really gives your body intelligence these integrations I think we are about maybe 30 or so restful api is right now you don't have to be a data scientist you don't have no AI you're literally making restful endpoint calls to use cognitive services but these things can be trained if you are into machine learning a little bit and then your bot starts getting smarter and smarter okay okay so that's where we are cognitive services these are Microsoft slides but we we know what they do it's a lot of things it's vision it's speech it's a big part of it is latch language Louis which is learning natural human interactions language and an azure is very very good at this so all of these api's are part of common e-services and this is what helps us make our BOTS smarter okay yep that's what we're going to integrate with I won't go too much in details but just to kind of give you a hint of where things are at and then there is a Shabbat service so you don't have to use this essentially a bot is a restful endpoint you can have it hosted anywhere you want but this comes bundled with a whole bunch of goodness that kind of helps you get started quickly helps you have your bot nice and hosted easily and then have all of these connections so you can put your bar anywhere you want okay yeah so that's the adabot service it has those SDKs that we talked about and it has templates it has integrated ways in which you can test your bot and then you can deploy our bots through the channels and then once you are successful building your bot and having a deployed then you kind of take it to the next level let's do see ICD pipelines let's do as you're functions that trigger other things based on what your bot is doing so all of those extra things can be built in and how you scale your part based remand and so okay so as you're Bob service is a very compelling offering when you have to get them get started with BOTS okay so that's enough slides I'm getting bored of slides altogether so let's let's look at some demo all right so the first place I will point anyone to go to is do a search on bot framework and you will end up land on dev bot framework comm this is the landing page for Microsoft offering work and it has a lot of goodness to it so take a look at to what it can offer and it talks about all of your audiences all of your channels and how you cannot get started with documentation this is actually really really well done this is a Shabbat service that you're looking at but some of it can be local so we're going to walk you walk through some of these things that you can do to get started so notice how right out of the gate you have different ways of getting started you can do bot service which is directly in Azure or you can be local in c-sharp and og okay so before we go in right now the Microsoft bot framework is at v3 mm-hmm we started about 2016 so we are at v3 right now v4 is what's coming next and we have a preview bit of it and v4 is substantially different actually in some ways but we will talk about v3 because that's the present stable production release but v4 is coming sometime this year are already next so in terms of languages and programming IDs and and tools that you can use to build your bot you are looking at C sharp and nodejs right now okay so pick your poison C sharp or JavaScript and then go at it in v4 you will be able to do Python and Java okay but we're not there yet okay so this is the best place to start and this is kind of guide you through let's look at the Azure side of the story so I'm going to go to portal - accom so this is a sure and if I make it a little bigger so we can see if you're going in here and say create a resource what you want to pick is a I in machine learning and then in there is a whole bunch of things but you want to pick web app BOTS mm-hmm once you select this it's gonna ask for a bunch of things what's your bot name where what subscription resource group you can create a new one if you have a whole bunch of bots maybe you kind of group them into one resource where do you want to have this hosted pricing and and so on templates we'll talk about that in a second it does use some address storage maybe the state management in particular does use Azure storage app insights and so on so you kind of set this up and then you here to create and it'll go ahead and create a bot for you so instead of having as you're kind of waiting waiting on Azure to spin this up let's kind of look at what we have so here's a simple bot that I have and I have not changed a word of this it's just purely what the template gives you but this thing is spun up it's called the the Sam echo bot so it's just a simple echo engine but this thing is spun up and it's hosted and hosted in a charade now so this is what you will get when you hit the create button so before we even look at anything else if you go do this test in a web chat so this is a bot that's ready and it's deployed so when you hit that test it's actually gonna bring up this little console it looks like a little web chat engine and this is where you can test so I can write things here like hello and it'll it's gonna come back and said you said hello right so we can say more things hi from Redmond it's gonna come back and say you you said - Redmond so this is literally a echo bot that kind of repeats what you said okay okay but it's a quick and easy way of you being able to deploy this and be able to test this right away so you know exactly how how your app is working so this is what's called the web chat and if you are using this and if you're using this from a web application you can just kind of plant this and embed this as is so this web chat can be taken and embedded in your verification so all of this chats functionality is available from your web app it's just one measure you don't need to know about it it's just a web chat okay okay so when I go into this thing called channels this is what makes apps interesting this is where you get a whole bunch of things that are easy to configure web chat is already running which is what we saw and then Skype this is another channel some of these channels are kind of featured and already configure for you like Cortana Skype they're very easy to get started same with teams if you are going to Facebook Messenger or slack or Twilio there are some extra like authorization and things that you have to do to make sure your app is registered with Facebook you're carrying acts like authentication tokens back and forth but it's not that difficult and when you kind of go through this Wizards they kind of step you through like go register your app bring back nap key and have it set up but essentially this is a restful endpoint that knows how to get an HTTP message from you and then echo back what it just said okay so you notice the Skype thing here which is also the same Bart running in Skype because I already went through this but what it does is let me pull up Skype show essentially that echo bot now becomes a contact in your skype list so this guy here once you configure it and open up skype it's gonna say hey you have a new contact so your bot now becomes a contact so you can talk your bought just like you talk to a human being so in here we can say hola it's gonna come back and say hopefully you said so same exact part that we saw on Azure through a web chat now it's not a venture it's part of Skype now and this is the big benefit that you get with all of these channels because you can deploy your functionality in a platform agnostic way through whatever channel your user is using okay yeah so that's just just a Skype app Skype channel there are other things you can do like obviously Skype for business and slack and Facebook Messenger so this is the nap that's running let's take a look at build and that'll show you what it's doing behind the scenes so it's saying hey we have an app a bot it's running in Azure but you have not made any code changes yet you literally haven't even seen your code you went from a template and you said give me a basic bot and this is what we spun up for you there is some code behind it how do you want to work with it so you can say I want to download the zip file which is your entire solution can download it a zip file you open it up in Visual Studio and then when you're done with your changes you push it back up - that's one way or you can say I actually do want to do continuous deployment engineers bills and deployments so this is where you say no I want to push my code to github or VST s team services and then when every time I do a push and I commit you do a build and even I should treasure so you can do CI city but if you are working with something super simple like this one you can do the online code editor and what that does it just opens up your solution inside of a browser and if you kind of recognize the look and feel of this visual studio code it's actually aware that right it's an electron app so you kind of see that shell you see the same code intellisense and some of the benefits that you get so this is what as you created for you when we said file new project and then create a new bot this is what it did and it's gonna say hey you can change things here when you're done just hit build CMD we can build it and deploy it back for you so there's a whole bunch of things in here that are not important the only thing that's important here is this echo dialogue CS this is literally the one file that's controlling what your bot does so this is going to standard for any Microsoft bought framework bot so there is a message received this is fired when your bot receives a message from the user so the users say something it comes to us and you can actually reset it so you'll notice that we actually have a counter that counts how many times you say it and then if you say reset it's just gonna reset the counter so there's a prompt to make sure you're you're confirming it but otherwise it's just gonna say contacts start post async you said that okay so this is literally the one line of code that's echoing back what you're saying that's it that's the one so just one line that can echoes you back what you're saying so this is a bot that's deployed when you go to a sure and just do file new project give me about service ok so this is a bot because it's built on the bot framework but it's not a bot because it only does one thing yes ok so if this is all you wanted then wrapping it around a bot maybe a little bit of overkill yes but this is a nice template to give you some basic plumbing and then you can build on top of that but I mean this is a good starting point because not only are you creating a bot you're also hosting it in a sure and you already have those channels that are configured so you can put that bot in Skype and slack so again I would point people to the documentation which is really good if you go through the QuickStart here this is what we did creating a bot with the bot service but if you want to get the bot builder SDK then right now you have dotnet and nodejs so if you look at what the dotnet side of the story is you need vs 2017 and then you need the bot template c-sharp I mean it's a template extension that gives you this template simple echo bot mm-hmm so you'll get the bot framework and then you start with that and then it spits out the same code that you just but just in c-sharp and it's it's local to you and then you can test you about right now this simple bot is just web app so you can kind of fire this up now is Express and run it locally and then we'll talk about a different type of way in which you can test your bot that's the emulator so same exact idea you can do it with a dotnet and c-sharp what I like being on a Mac today is the node.js side of things because if you're in JavaScript you can do the exact same things the bot framework is time from agnostic that way so what this expects you to do is have NPM installed and then you get this part builder package essentially so it has all of the bits that bot builder can do for you so let me show you what that looks like so I'm gonna go in here into a folder and bring up my terminal alright hopefully this is big enough so I'm going to go into my folder here this thing is called the node echo bot and if I kind of fire this up if I say node fjs I'm firing up the app you don't see in it anything because it's just a console app but I can say the same exact things mm-hmm so it's just echoing back what I say so same exact idea it's just running locally in a console app so if you look at what this is essentially so I'm going to fire up vs code and look at the same folder essentially this being a node app we did a NPM in it so we have some package JSON we have the node modules in here but this is that one file that's making the bot work so essentially with node.js you have dependencies so we're depending on the bot builder and we're saying we are building a console connector and whenever you kind of fire off the message received thing we're going to take your text and kind of said you said that okay one line so this is no js' this is pure JavaScript running on the server side or wherever you have it hosted but it's it's your bot written in node.js now this is just local this is a console app they kind of step you through there are some extra packages called Resta Phi which kind of helped translate this console app into a end point because the bot has to be reasonable in mind so if I do an NPM install of rs.25 which is what the docs will actually walk you through so this is Resta phi is what we're using it's a very simple package that kind of helps you make restful endpoints out of your node.js code whatever your app is doing so we're using this and then once we have it we can change a little bit of code here this one is requiring Resta phi and same bot builder but we are creating a little server here so we can host it as a restful endpoint and then we can take into the cloud or whatever web endpoint it is that's our our port number and then we are creating a chatbot the app ID and password we'll talk about this so every part that's deployed to that robot service has to have a unique identifier okay and as your create that for you but otherwise it's just gonna say you said that so if we actually go back and run this now instead of app jeaious let's run node restful app dot j s this one said hey I'm not a console app I'm running at this port because you use Resta Phi so I'm running it as a restful service on 439 78 so how do you test this you can go to your browser or you can use this little thing which also comes with the bot framework this is called the bot framework emulator it looks kind of a little bland without having any inputs here but this is a local emulator that will help you test your BOTS locally before you're ready to deploy it to whatever service so in here I can actually go to that same port that we are on again it's going to ask for app ID password you can skip it for now you can test this locally but once you have to go to a show you do need the app ID so this is the exact same app and now you see that working here in the inside the emulator so this is the restful endpoint I don't have it hosted anywhere but I'm able to invoke it and the last thing is this one kinda shows you all of the JSON that's coming back and forth about service and and you so this is a super simple emulator but it does a lot of things and actually the emulator on Windows is a little more sophisticated than the emulator on Mac because one of the things that you get into with bought development is kind of conversations and you have to test your conversations and sometimes you have to kind of start midway in a conversation to start so it's like a little bit of template where you can pick up a conversation as just simple JSON and gonna start Midway and start testing so it'll let you do all of those things right yeah so that's the emulator that's one way of running it so let's let's close this that's just a quick example of doing it locally in no chairs let's kind of go back to Azure and I'll show you the other side of the story here so this was our echo bot so let's go home if I did a new resource again if I did a web app and then you look at these templates so it's not just the basic template which you can do it comes with five or so templates which kind of help you down the right path of building a bot first thing is formed this is one of the most commonly used templates this is where you have to order a pizza or you have to book a flight out and those repetitive things because essentially when you do this on your web applications today you are going through a wizard none of this is new right it's how you want to interact with your computer are you more comfortable doing a more natural conversation rather than just clicking around on your website okay so we can kind of walk you through that wizard in a bot so these are like a series of steps then language understanding this is where we're actually going to call into Louis in cognitive services because this is what actually understands what you mean when you say natural things okay so behind it it's going to be an azure Community Services app which has to have its own app ID and it's needed it needs to be registered and then that's when you're going to have to train your model so when you say booked a flight out of Seattle what are the 20 different ways in which you can say it so they're your bot understands okay and then passes it back to the bot so essentially what we are getting is from the bot framework you are pre-configured to call in to Azure cognitive services and then as your community services makes sense of what you are saying and brings it back to the bot and you can do this from C shop or no js' okay so just a quick example of the form thing which is very easy to look at I do have a form bot here which is called the sandwich bot because that's just a normal example so let's go ahead and look at this thing here we can test this in a web bot or web chat window so here if you notice the little messaging here I can say hi I'm up here and the bot knows that it's a specialized bot and says hey it looks like you're trying to order a sandwich because that's what I know what type of sandwich do you want so these are now Pickers okay so you get to pick what you want I would like a steak and cheese now it's gonna go through a list of things now you're getting two rules right so you said this then that then this then that so and you can kind of back-trace sometimes if your user does not give you the right response you can say oh I didn't understand that I wanted this from you so you can kind of go back and forth a little bit so 6-inch sub what bread you want that and then within breads with in Italian breads you have two types what do you want what type of cheese so these are all Pickers then you get to pick a whole bunch of things so these are like just numbers that you can pick cucumbers what type of sauce do you want let's do honey mustard and that's it so it's essentially said I went through these six steps with you and I made you choose things every step and you gave me this sandwich and once you are ready is this your selection you said yes and then said okay that's your sandwich I'm going to send it off to the shop and they're gonna deliver whatnot okay so just a super simple way of using the form template which actually kind of gets you quite a bit into these like flows okay how to ask the user and if you look at what this does for you I'll give it a second all right so now this one has a little more stuff to it so there's a model which is our sandwich this has all of your options like what type of sandwich what was it what type of bread what type of cheese it's all in here and then you have your dialogues as to how you actually control what you ask the user that's message controller so this is where your tasks and your your your post and you your awaiting the message from the user all of that is going to code it up here and then you kind of let bot kind of drive the conversation as to what exactly it needs to get all the information from the user so we can go about it so all of this is kind of bundled in and it's part of the template that you get it's really easy to call into most cognitive services like and good examples of this are like vision api's if you have to have a bot that knows how to understand or make sense of images from the user you hand it off you take the image you hand it off to the azure Community Services vision API we have another customer of ours who uses the vision API to do quality control on shipping so they have a little camera that's mounted on top of shipping containers mm-hmm and they do quality control as inside going out of their warehouses you can also do sentiment analysis with with common services so as you are talking to your bot you can kind of sense that the user is getting angry right and you can sense his sentiment and say oh maybe we can do other things to make you happy and so on so all of these things are intelligence that you're adding to your bot and this is what makes BOTS smarter and they kind of let you automate workflows so this is this is where we are this is where we start some things that I really like pointing out is the thorough documentation that the bot framework has there are tutorials on how to do just about everything let me show you some things that are really interesting the concepts here let's do Congress services language understanding let me do a how-to I thought it was really nicely done they talk about channels and the thing that I was trying to get to is how you can hook this up to language services that's something we'll do in part two yeah we could so essentially I mean just just start here essentially is what I'm saying okay and they have documentation on how to use vision API and language services all of these things that help you go from your bot to other places that give you about intelligence okay that's it so bots are nothing more than apps you can a restful endpoint but it's platform agnostic so you can put it in whichever channel that your user is using and start automating little things in your workflows that don't need human interaction very cool yeah yeah I mean if you look at some of the most common things that we do on most websites it's a bunch of steps that we follow wizards and this is where BOTS can come in and make it more conversational and more natural right yeah all right that was a good introduction we'll end it for here in this part and we'll come back in part two and and see more about how to build them absolutely so again this was all about BOTS you can find me at SMI div that's my social handle on Twitter and github in everywhere but thanks for watching all right and we will see you next time on visual studio toolbox [Music]

British Airways– Visual Studio 2017 and Microsoft Azure Customer Story

British Airways it's one of the best-known brands in aviation we have about 40,000 employees there can be quite a difficult bunch of people to reach we had our new CEO come in Alex Cruz and he wanted to make sure he could get his message across to everyone wherever they were all the information was spread across multiple different sources they had to use a number of logins we had a number of senior employees do have British Airways issued equipment but the vast majority of them don't have those we wanted to make a level playing field in that sort of sense and creating the app is the platform to do that many of our apps in the recent past are being built on the iOS platform it's a default platform but we've had trouble moving it to other platforms we used Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 to developers Ameren forms app that gives us 95% code reuse across all of the platforms that we were targeting which was iOS Android and Windows Phone visual studio team services and summer in test cloud particularly allowed us to iterate quickly through several releases of the application because we were able to check as we went along that our tests were still passing and the product was still robust enough to deploy and we were able to add extra features quickly without worrying about lengthy regression tests for our back-end services we use as your application services and also as your sequel database to provide the data resources to the application and to provide integration with our other back-end systems to achieve single sign-in for the application we have federated across from Azure Active Directory to our Oracle access management and that was fantastic that was the equivalent of putting a very old car on the moon it feels like a great achievement to know that they're finding a better experience it's working really well for us and we hope that this is the beginning of a very fruitful relationship you

Brad Anderson's Lunch Break s9 e7 Mark Gregory, CIO & EVP, Premera Blue Cross (Part 2)

(upbeat music) - It's lunchtime, and this is Brad Anderson's Lunch Break. Here in Redmond, we're visited by some of the smartest people on the planet pretty much every day. Every chance I get, I meet up with them for lunch. In this week's episode, it's the second half of my conversation with Mark Gregory, the CIO of Premera Blue Cross. So in the next kind of three to four year horizon, if you think about healthcare in general, what do you think the biggest challenge is from a technology and digital disruption perspective you need to focus on? - From the healthcare system overall, there's a lot of fragmentation of data and information out there, and I think if we have a collective mission to make healthcare work better, and it is Premera's mission to make healthcare work better, but expand that across the whole healthcare industry. We've gotta do a better job of sharing information and sharing data, clearly, in a secure way. - Sure. - In a way that benefits, ultimately, the patient and the consumer. It comes down to how do you empower patients. Remember the four problems we talked about. How do we address those four problems, and we empower our customers to get the information they need in the most convenient way, not convenient for us, but convenient for them. Earlier this year, we brought a capability online, well it's kind of internal, but we signed a contract at the end of the year and the capability was up and running in six weeks. - Wow. - You know, when you do that stuff on premise, it's not only slower, but it carries more weight with it. - Yeah, sure. - And so we see a lot of options for us utilizing the Cloud. - I like how you describe that, weight, 'cause that weight often slows you down and it decreases your agility, and it's funny, you didn't mention once there about cost. The Cloud, really the benefits are agility, the flexibility, and speed. - So, we push costs, when we introduced Cloud to the organization, we did not introduce it as a cost play. We introduced it as a value play really. Right, so how quickly can I bring up the capabilities that move the organization forward. I don't see it as a cost play. - That's the way we look at it, too. - It's just, I wanna bring it up, lighter, quicker, faster, and then I want more options with it. I think my role is no different than any other Senior Executive role. I happen to be responsible for technology, but every other Senior Exec is responsible for driving the culture. From my standpoint, it's how do I make sure that technology is aligned to what we're doing on the business side, not only aligned, but pushing the business. You know, we like to say enabling the business, but if technology is doing its job, - It's pushing. - It's pushing the business. We're challenging business as much as business is challenging us. - Well, this has been awesome. Hey, thank you so much, Mark. - I appreciate it. - Yeah, we'll see ya, thanks again.

Brad Anderson's Lunch Break s9 e6 Mark Gregory, CIO & EVP, Premera Blue Cross

- It's lunch time and this is Brad Anderson's Lunch Break. Here in Redmond we're visited by some of the smartest people on the planet. Pretty much every day. Every chance I get I meet up with them for lunch. (upbeat music) Today I talked to a very smart guy who gets his hair cut at the same place I do. Mark Gregory the CIO of Premera Blue Cross. So you're here from Premara - Yeah - located right here in Seattle. You guys are the biggest provider of insurance in the Northwest. - Yeah. - I didn't realize this but Premera is 85 years old. So what's it like working for a company like that, has these incredibly old roots and history and culture going through the digital transformation. - The history is great. Companies that have been around a long time like Premera, our challenge is to take care of all the technology that got us where we are. - Mm-hmm. - But also advance it and get prepared for the future. There's four basic problems we see in health care. The first one is, I don't get the care I need. Second one is I get care I don't need. - Yeah. - Which is waste but also - Well it's time - Can be dangerous. - Sure exactly. - Right. The third one is really around value. I pay a lot, do I really get value for what I pay? And the fourth one, Brad, is experience right. So how many times have you had a bad experience with health care of some type? Part of what we try to do at Premera and how we leverage technology is to solve those four issues. - So how do you use some of the technology that address those four concerns? - We sit on large quantities of data. - Yeah. - Right? So, if I can or we collectively at Premera can engage the customer with tools that let them see their options right. Where can they get the best value for their healthcare dollar? Where can they go to get the best health care outcome? Right? And that all comes through data and engagement tools to help them solve that problem. Also on our side, how do we help lead them there? - Not only do we have the same haircut, (laughs) but we also share, you know we have names that are fairly common. So I did a search on LinkedIn and there were multiple Mark Gregorys that I found. - Right. - So let's play "Which one are you?" - Okay. (laughs) - Do you play keyboard in the band Hot Tub? - I do not. - Back in the early 2000 did you own a small chain of Pizza restaurants in Alaska? - I did not. - Did you have a role in the movie Adam and Eve, Meet the Cannibals? - Oh man, no. I wish I did though. Didn't that sound like a great experience? - Seriously right? - I'm tellin' you man, there is a lot more interesting Mark Gregorys out there than me clearly. - Next time on Brad Anderson's Lunch Break - When we introduced Cloud to the organization we did not introduce it as a cost play. We introduced it as a value play. - Yeah, yeah. - Really, right? So how quickly can I bring up the capabilities that move the organization forward. I wanna bring it up lighter, quicker, faster. And then I want more options with it.

Brad Anderson's Lunch Break s9 e5 Kurt DelBene, EVP, Microsoft (Part 2)

- It's lunchtime, and this is Brad Anderson's Lunch Break. (bouncy music) Here in Redmond, we're visited by some of the smartest people on the planet. Pretty much every day. Every chance I get, I meet up with them for lunch. (bouncy music) Today I'm meeting up with Microsoft veteran and industry icon, Kurt DelBene, Executive Vice President of Strategy and Operations at Microsoft. (jazzy piano) okay, now tell me about you coming to Microsoft. - Yeah? - 1991, 1992. - Yeah. - This was early days Microsoft. I worked for a woman named Karen Hargrove, at the time, in this advanced technology group. And what we were doing at the time was putting a version of Windows into fax machines, copiers, phones, literally had to install. - (laughing) The original embedded. - Yeah, the story I remember most from there was, you know, I did the analytic things, what's the market telling us, etc., and I presented all of this to Nathan Myhrvold, the CTO at the time-- - Oh yeah, I remember Nathan. - Who was my boss's boss, and I said, "You know, Nathan, it seems that people don't want "a fax machine with a touchscreen on it. "They just wanna hit 10 digits and hit send." And his response was, well at Microsoft, we don't look at market research, we just know. - (laughing) Contrast that now-- - Yeah, contrast that deeply now. We have learned, we have come a long way since those points, just night and day in terms of that, you know. There's not that arrogance of, you know, we know all the answers, let us just tell you the answers. It's about, you know, we think we have, we believe we know the answers, let's talk to you and figure out how the technology works for you, what can you tell us about where it doesn't fit. - So you started in 1991, you left for a few years as you went and worked on healthcare.gov, and you came back. What's the difference you saw in Microsoft from when you left till you came back? - Oh I think it's night and day. I think one, Satya's driving a culture where it's about the customer, it's about learning what we need to learn, it's about adapting over a period of time. When he talks about the growth mindset, he actually, he really means that. - [Brad] Oh yeah, he embodies it. - You know, the other thing is the bets that we made, we started making ten years ago, they're really coming into their fold, so you know, Office 365, we used to see Google a bunch in terms of, you know, what are enterprise customers considering Google or not, we don't see that as much any more because the value proposition is so strong with 365-- - It's just the default. - Yeah, it is. I hate to ever say it's just the default, but it is the first, it's absolutely the thing that people would think of, and then, the stitching together of those. Like what does it mean if I'm on Office 365 and now I wanna move my estate to the Cloud? What, you know, things like the Office Graph, working against the LinkedIn Graph, being able to do ML against in the Cloud, those scenarios are really popular. - [Brad] I tell you, we are so happy you're back. - Well, thank you, I'm happy to be back. - All right, it's good to see you, Kurt. - Thanks, Brad. - All right, let's make sure we do this more regularly. - All right, see you later. - All right, bye. - Next time on Brad Anderson's Lunch Break-- - Part of what we try to do at Premera, and how we leverage technology is to solve those four issues. - I did a search on LinkedIn and there were multiple Mark Gregory's that I found. - Right. - So let's play, which one are you. - Okay. (laughing) - Back in the early 2000, did you own a small chain of pizza restaurants in Alaska? - [Mark] I did not. - Did you have a role in the movie Adam and Eve Meet the Cannibals? - Oh, man, no. I wish I did though! Didn't that sound like the greatest script? - No, seriously, right? (bouncy music)

Brad Anderson's Lunch Break s9 e4 Kurt DelBene, EVP, Microsoft

It's lunchtime, and this is Brad Anderson's lunch break. Here in Redmond we're visited by some of the smartest people on the planet, pretty much every day. And every chance I get, I meet up with them for lunch. (upbeat cheery music) Today I am meeting up with Microsoft veteran and industry icon Kurt DelBene, the Executive Vice-President of Strategy and Operations at Microsoft. (light jazz piano music) I know you're a big car guy, you build cars, - [Kurt] I am a big car guy. - [Brad] You raise cars, - [Kurt] I do. - I don't know why I'm driving, I should have you drive. - Well, you should. - [Brad] So do you drive something like this every day to work? - [Kurt] I gotta tell ya, I drive a Prius. (both laugh) - I don't know if everyone knows this, but we all know you, my kids know your last name because they have seen all the commercials of your wife, you know, who's one of our Congresswomen. - [Kurt] Hey, it was my name first, that's what I tell people. You know the benefit of that is now people know how to pronounce it. - [Brad] Yeah, you know, your wife is obviously in the game but you're no stranger to politics either, I'm sure you're probably too humble to say this but what was it like to get that phone call that says, 'hey you know Kurt we need to come and save healthcare.gov'. - [Kurt] It came actually at the breakfast room table. I saw the New York Times article kind of going through the issues and I said to Suzan, this looks all completely preventable. And she then asked the magic question: 'well would you be willing to help?' And I said, well... - That's where the question came? - That's where the question came originally. And then literally just a couple of weeks later I'm sitting in the Oval Office and the President said 'I unabashedly beg you to do this' and I learned later you don't even go into the Oval Office unless you are planning on saying yes, so I guess I gave the right answer but it was an incredibly rewarding experience. I love building software but the ability to kind of get people healthcare and know that the system that you're building is helping people in that direct way was just, it was great. - [Brad] You know, so you've had Obama as a boss and you know you have Satya as a boss right now, who was better at playing basketball? - Oh that's an easy one. I don't know, I thought you were going to ask me a tougher question than that one, that's got to be President Obama. - Who's better at cricket? - Well that's got to be Satya I suppose. I don't know, the styles of those two leaders is different, I mean I briefed the President about every week when I was doing the work, - [Brad] Wow. - [Kurt] He's a funny guy, and probably one of the biggest differentiators, obviously Satya's highly deeply technical and the President was learning. He kind of got a crash course with healthcare.gov, no pun intended. But I was sitting in the Roosevelt Room, we're getting ready for the final push, and I'm describing to him how we're looking at dashboards every day, we're looking at all the indicators, seeing when they'll tip over, and he says 'oh so Kurt, it's just like Star Trek isn't it, we need more power'. And he actually says it, and I didn't know what to say, I finally just said 'Yup Mr. President, it's just like that.' (Brad laughs) Yeah, it was a fantastic experience. The thing that's amazing about him is one: after this, and I think it's true of government forevermore, these IT systems are going to be absolutely critical to the success of their agendas and that this was a turning point in our industry where that got learned. - [Kurt] And I said, you know Nathan it seems that people don't want a fax machine with a touch screen on it they just want to hit ten digits and hit send. And his response was, well at Microsoft we don't look at market research, we just know. - And contrast that now... - Yeah contrast that deeply now, we have come a long way since those points.

Brad Anderson's Lunch Break s9 e3 Anil Cheriyan, EVPCIO, SunTrust Banks

- It's lunchtime, and this is Brad Anderson's Lunch Break. Here in Redmond, we're visited by some of the smartest people on the planet, Pretty much everyday. Every chance I get, I meet up with them for lunch. (upbeat music) In today's episode, I meet up with Anil Cheriyan, the CIO of SunTrust Banks. (light piano music) Alright, so people who don't live in the Eastern United States, well, SunTrust, you guys are a huge bank. - We're about 220 billion in assets. So you got the top four banks, guys like B of A and JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, and Citi. And then you got the six of us who are like the next set, and we're one of the next set of banks. - Yeah, you're spread across 11 states, 1,400 different locations if I remember right. 24,000 employees, I mean you guys are big. So, one of the things that I recently learned about SunTrust, is that your name is on the new stadium in Atlanta. - That is true. - But you also have a long-term relationship with Coca-Cola. - Yup, yup. - In 1919, the president of the bank bought Coca-Cola for 25 million dollars. So the original secret formula of Coca-Cola was kept in SunTrust vaults from 1925 to 2011. What did you think when you realized that the formula was gone? (laughs) - So great organizations have become great because they have found ways to get the best ideas out of their people. So, how do you use creativity at SunTrust to really get the best out of your workforce? - It's a really a big culture change that we have to go through. - When I first got there, it was about five or six years ago. Everyone worked in their silos and they did their jobs. They did them pretty well, in fact, one had a lot of these town hall meetings and lunch and learns and conversations with teammates. And they'd say, hey, can you help us with that other team, 'cause they're not doing what we're supposed to be doing. - Yeah, I've never had this conversation at Microsoft. - But do you realize guys, you guys are on the same floor, and you literally can just walk across the floor and have those conversations. - As Satya has driven kind of the same exact culture change that you're describing. Breaking down the silos, everybody working together. This growth mindset, one of the biggest challenges we had was our review model had basically made people nervous to ever fail. And in a growth mindset, you want to be able to identify a hypothesis, test it quickly, and if you're doing it right, 70% or 80% of your hypothesis are not gonna be right or correct. And so, getting the cultural change to understand that it's okay to not be right, but we're on this learning journey. That was actually one of the biggest changes that we had to do at Microsoft. - I really like that. Moving from, what's it, know-it-all to learn-it-all. That's just a phenomenal, that's just a great idea. - Okay, I'm gonna give you three product ideas, and you're gonna tell me if you would want to invest in them, if you want to compete against them, or sue because it's too close to something you're already working on. - Okay. - Alright, first, a mobile banking app that bricks your phone for three hours if you go over that day's budget. - I would... invest. (bell dings) While that's interesting, that whole premise is interesting, the very fact that they are looking at budget and planning - Is a good thing - That is a good thing. Now, I wouldn't shut down the phone But I'd certainly use that-- - That is a little harsh. - But I'd certainly use that as-- - Maybe shock 'em a little bit. - A little buzz. (laughs) - Alright, next one. An ATM that saves users embarrassment by making it sound like money is coming out, even if there's insufficient funds. - No that's not (laughs) I wouldn't invest in that one either. (buzzer sound) - An app that monitors your checking account, and only suggests restaurants that are in your price range. - That's a good one. That's budgeting and planning. - That'd be an investment. - That's an investment. (bell dings) - As a banker, what's your stance on the two dollar bill? (laughs) - Another fraudulent thing. - Next time on Brad Anderson's Lunch Break, - You're part of the change, and if you can't articulate where that change is gonna mean, what that change is gonna mean from a business standpoint, you really don't belong on it, on the team. - You have three degrees from Imperial College in London. - I know I have spent a long time in college. - So one of those is in philosophy. So, here's my question for you. Why are we all here? - I have no idea. (laughs)

Brad Anderson's Lunch Break s8 e8 Jay Emery, Anheuser-Busch InBev (Part 2)

- It's lunchtime, and this is Brad Anderson's Lunch Break. (bouncy music) Here in Redmond, we're visited by some of, the smartest people on the planet, pretty much every day. Every chance I get, I meet up with them for lunch. (bouncy music) Today I finished talking with Jay Emery, the senior director of Global Enterprise Architecture at Anheuser-Busch-InBev. (bouncy music) Anheuser-Busch is really a case study about market domination through cost innovation. You're the first to use pasteurization, first to use refrigeration, first to do mass bottling, the first refrigerator railroad cars, and then the 1870's when you're already big, you went back to Europe to even learn more, and you came back with Budweiser. How does this history of innovation and this growth mindset, you know from the history impact the work, that you do today? - Innovation, like you said it is kind of in our bloodline. The couple things we really look at one is, you know how do we innovate technology wise right, so we're really focus at least in the beer garage at, how do we leap frog right? Get rid of the incremental thought, cause everybody's doing incremental updates, but how do we jump from on premise data centers, directly to cloud right, versus this phase approach right? How do we really leap frog in terms of a, technology road map, to help create a bit of that competitive advantage. We also look at how do we lead from a social responsibility, perspective, and then we also wanna make sure that, we're really driving the change on consumption right, so really focus on spending almost a billion dollars over the next several years on communicating the responsible drinking message because we want people to enjoy our products, but we wanna do it responsibly. - I gotta tell you, I hear that you guys got the best products on the planet, but I could honestly say I've actually never tasted one. (laughs) - We will find a way for you to do that. Right I'd tell ya. You know believe it or not we, a big part of what we've been doing, and we do a lot, being in the alcohol industry we really, focus on social responsibility. - Oh yeah. - Environmental. - I've seen that in your messaging. - Yeah, we're actually made kind of an internal, pledge really by 2025. 20 percent of our volume is gonna come from, low alcohol or no alcohol. - You know I was gonna ask you about that, that's huge change, tell me what you're doing there. - So what we're finding is that with the new generation of, drinkers that come into the world, they're more focused on health right, and kind of less loyalty in terms of single brands, so they like to experiment, we wanna kind of to take the stigma away from that, and say why can't you have a non alcohol beer, - Yep - Right, with lunch. - Sure. - Right or if you don't have a, you know where to get Coke or Pepsi, or whatever, why can't you have a non alcohol product right? And so we're really seeing some good growth in that marketplace right as people. - It's probably safe to say that, that kind, of like starts after the kids graduate from college. - Exactly, exactly, exactly. No absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. So next time we'll I'll have some non alcohol for you. (bouncy music) I read and article where you were talking about, the balance of working with service vendors, and software vendors versus doing as much as, you can do in house. - Yep. - And you know the way you're describing about it is you know you want to leverage the skills of the world, but you want to keep the architecture internally. What results have you seen from that? - Very positive results. I think we look back, and I think what we realized was that, we didn't have as much in house technical knowledge, that we needed to really set the strategy right. Where in many cases we're dependent on, and sometimes our vendors to set the strategy for us right. And that's great we love our vendors and our partners, but a lot of times there's that they maybe, don't understand as deeply as the business needs, and where we're going as a company, so we really made a concerted effort to bring those, enterprise architects back in house right, And we're starting to see big big benefits from it right, we're much more quickly able to push, and kind of leap frog technologies right. - Nice. - So, we're not having to get stuck with that technology, where we just look at minor upgrades, and we're able to really sell the thing in, because we're coming up. - Be much more bold and impactful. - Exactly, exactly. - A few months ago we brought even more, of our solutions together in Microsoft 365. As you think about that vision from Microsoft, what from that is gonna help you with your future workspace? - What we try to do and I think this is where that, this fits into kind of our strategic road map, is we really sit down and really to understand, technology profiles right? What are the tools that our users need to do their jobs? So we really go through and we really try to figure out, what's the right profile for the right roles, we don't look at people, we look more at the roles. - Yep. - Right? And then, make sure that we've got the right security, and technologies for those individuals to be productive. So, one of the things that we're looking at, I like the Windows 10 S product, specially for, that security component. - That's right. - Where we have a mix of corporate laptops, BYOD, we also have kind of thin client infrastructure, how does that fit into that kind of that profile. I think it's very interesting conversation. - One of the teams that I run here, is a team that is actually out doing pilots right now, and you know roughly a hundred customers, where they're all piloting S mode to understand, you know which roles, exactly your point, does configuring Windows to be in S mode, as oppose to being in pro mode. And it's pretty remarkable the benefits, that they are seeing, you know in terms of the security, but the simplicity and costs, I mean it really is great experience. Alright thanks Jay. - Thank you so much Brad. - No, thank you for doing that. - That was painless, I liked the questions too. - [Brad] Yeah alright. - [Jay] Thank you. - [Brad] Thank you.

Brad Anderson's Lunch Break s8 e6 Terry Myerson, EVP, Windows (Part 2)

(car zooms) - It's lunch time and this is Brad Anderson's Lunch Break. (happy music) (cars driving) Here at Redmond, we're visited by some of the smartest people on the planet, pretty much every day. Every chance I get, I meet up with them for lunch. (happy upbeat music) In this episode I wrap up my in depth conversation with Terry Myerson, Executive Vice President of the Windows and Devices Group. We were talking yesterday and you were describing how you see the role of the CIO really change into one who focuses on the culture of creativity and teamwork in an organization. - Well, certainly the modern workplace CIO's for sure. - Yeah Yeah those who are kinda ahead of the game and thinking about it, I think it's gonna be all about that culture, it's gonna be all about, You got millennials entering the work force with different expectations than you know, I guess we're not millennials, huh? (laughs) - We try to be. - Yeah so they have different expectations than people that've been in the workforce for 20 years, different tools but you want everyone to work together. To me that's a culture of question of how you want your company to work. - You were one of the pioneers on taking us to the cloud. I mean, go back to when we were working together when you were running exchange and I mean I was running systems center, you know saw this opportunity, this vision to take change to the cloud, and that's really kinda the foundation of what became Office three 65, what were you seeing then that led you to say, hey we need to go deliver this as a cloud service, that was very early. - Oh what happened there was some amazing customers began to scale of what they wanted to do with exchange. Number of devices they wanted to support, number of remotes sites they want to support, the amount of storage they wanted to manage on behalf of those users, and then compliance came in, it was complex. And it got to this place where there were just repeatable patterns across customers, and just got to this place where some, especially with medium sized businesses, there was this sort of you know, customers in this 500 to a couple thousand seats that weren't able to hire big teams with the expertise, it was like let us do it for you. We did get started with you know these few customers and then it was about learning, about listening and learning and then understanding what it would take so we could offer the same capabilities to customers all over the world. - And now you look at that and that really has been the foundation that Office three 65 was built on, which is the most commonly used cloud service enterprise period. - Yeah. I mean it's amazing. It's, - And then you did something similar when you took over Windows, I can remember hearing you for the first time describing delivering Windows as a service, you know so what patterns were you seeing there? - I think it's the same pattern of, you're listening to the customer, and you're looking for where the challenges were happening, in terms of serving these customers best, in the case of Windows we were on a three yearly cycle, and we had this disconnect where customers were asking for, they wanted to have more influence over the, more transparency more open development model, but they also just wanted be able to get bite size value. And you know that's quite a challenge, 'cause Windows is an enormous codebase. - Oh my word. - It's it might be the single biggest software project in the world of course we don't know the size of every other software project, but it's certainly the biggest software project we have at Microsoft and that we know of and the, so thinking about how do we now develop it more incrementally such that we can still go after these bold and ambitious goals, but also deliver it you know, what's now twice a year, allows us to have this ability to listen learn react to what customers want. - I think it was you look at it kinda like the history of the software industry, I think what you guys pulled off in a single release, really is one of the most amazing things that I've ever seen done in software. - I mean that's nice to say but we built on top of the work done before us in all cases. You know if you look back in Windows history, Windows seven was a fantastic release that built on some great work in Windows Vista that didn't land very well, and I think we'll look back on Windows 10 and say it really did build on some great work in Windows eight. Which you know we didn't land as well as we would've liked. You know these big platform releases with hundreds and hundreds of millions of lines of code, you got backward compatibility, you've got security you got everyone from militaries around the world to consumers depending on it to work and, - The thing's that you set that vision up that gave you the most trepidation as the leader in finally changing how Windows (laughing) I mean what were the things that gave you the most concern? - The biggest challenge is always the ecosystem. You know with Windows you're not building a product, you're building an ingredient that really encompasses the work of so many companies. (lighthearted music) - Well you know we should make this like a regular occurrence (laughter) - Alright man see you around - Thanks Terry - There are a lot of cameras in here - Alright thanks Terry - Next time on Brad Anderson's lunch break, How much seniority do you need at ABI in order to ride one of the Clydesdales? (laughter) - Let's not talk about technology - Yeah - Let's talk about capabilities and that really helps you get that seat at the table and then you can use that to innovate.

Brad Anderson's Lunch Break s8 e5 Terry Myerson, EVP, Windows

- It's lunchtime, and this is Brad Anderson's Lunch Break. Here in Redmond, we're visited by some of the smartest people on the planet, pretty much every day. Every chance I get, I meet up with them for lunch. (bright upbeat music) This week, I meet up with my new boss, the one and only Terry Myerson, the Executive Vice President of the Windows and Devices Group. So, Terry, you've had an incredibly long and storied career at Microsoft, like a real long. - Well, long is probably a good adjective, sure. - And so I think all of that leads to this question. What's it like to be my new boss? - Well, so far I'm impressed by the cars you rent. You know, we've always been partners, but actually just even just the last few days, to have these rich dialogues about whether it be specific customers, or what is our vision for what we want to bring to people in three years. - [Brad] So let's talk about your start of your career, and how you came to Microsoft. - How I got to Microsoft? - Yeah, so you graduated Duke. - From there, I went from the US EPA to the North Carolina Supercomputing Center, but I was basically doing scientific visualization data models. And then from there I was recruited to go be a sales engineer in the Washington, DC area for a startup selling computer graphics workstations. - I did not know that. - Yeah, from there I was actually so excited about what I saw. I was selling to NASA Ames, NASA Langley, Naval Research Lab, National Institute of Health, all these high-end government labs. They really got excited about the internet. They were excited about this NCSA Mosaic, and I went to my bosses and said, "We need a website." And they were like, "Nope. We don't know what that is." So we started a company, and two and half years later at the Gartner Symposium, I met Bill Gates. Next thing I know, Microsoft bought us, and we were in Seattle. - So, what's that like, to go from college, startup, bought by Bill? - I joined Microsoft thinking I was not going to be here very long, just to be honest. I think that was the-- - My wife and I had a deal. It was come up for a year and see how it goes. - I just somehow moved to Seattle, and just fell in love with the people I was working with, the area of Seattle, and then in fact, then I did meet my wife. I did-- - Yeah, takes local. - You marry a local girl, and then over the course of 20 years you have some kids, buy a house, and you make friends, and it's just been a great experience. - So you built and sold your startup in the 1990's, which is like the golden era of rock bands. It's also the golden age of interesting software company names, so I'm going to give you a name. - All right. - I want to see if you can guess. Is it a rock band from the '90's, or the name of a startup? How about Dr. Koop? - [Terry] Dr. Ku? - Right. K-O-O-P. Dr. Koop. - Oh, Koop. I was going to say, Dr. Ku I think works at Microsoft. But Dr. Koop, I'm going to have to say a rock band. (bell rings) - Okay, how about Dr. Madd Vibe? - Dr. Madd Vibe sounds like a bad company name. (bell rings) - [Brad] How about Pixelon? - Pixelon, I'm going to guess that's a tech startup, too. (bell rings) But I don't know. I'm waiting for Rush, or Metallica, or-- - No, no, these are like offbeat names. - Oh, okay. - I'm not going to give you any easy ones. - Okay. - [Brad] Prodigy. - Prodigy was, of course, the, I remember, back when I was trying to get a website built by my company, they were like, "You can do a Prodigy or a CompuServe forum, or a Prodigy site." - Boy, those were the days. - I'm like, "No, no, it's the internet," and my VP of Marketing had no interest in this internet thing. And I'm like, okay, I'm going to go start my own company and go after this. - But Prodigy was actually both, believe it or not. (two bells ring) [Brad] A startup and a band. You talk about why we exist, and why we do what we do at Microsoft. I don't know about you, but one of the most common questions I get right now is I meet with senior leaders across synergies. They all want to know, what has Microsoft done to change the way that we have? People say, this is not the company that I knew three or four years ago. So as you think about that, what has happened, and what have you as a part of the senior leadership team, how have we driven this kind of change? - I think, like all teams, it starts with the leader. I think Satya is a, you know I once heard Steve describe Satya as a beautiful person. It's one of those comments I heard years ago, and it was registered away as my peer is a beautiful person, cool. But then actually seeing him work, and seeing him work with communities, employees, all the stakeholders, it just resonated me. He really is just a beautiful person. It's someone who I've learned from in that regard quite a bit, and I think it's reflected in our approach to so many things. - As I come in and get a chance to interact with you and all the members of the senior leadership team, it's unbelievable to see how that team works together. - (laughs) Like all teams, I'm not going to describe it as a marriage, but I'll certainly describe it as we're a team, and teams, you're in the, I think Satya described writing his book during the fog of war. It's a very complex, very interesting but very complex, unclear environment when you consider all of the stakeholders that we're trying to direct. - Live for. - Yeah. - Next time, on Brad Anderson's Lunch Break. You saw this opportunity and this vision to take Exchange to the cloud, and that's actually kind of the foundation of what became Office 365. What were you seeing then, that led you to say, hey, we need to look at this as a cloud service? - We look back in Windows history. Windows 7 was a fantastic release that built on some great work in Windows Vista that didn't land very well.

Brad Anderson's Lunch Break s8 e4 Raja Ukil, SVP & CIO, Wipro (Part 2)

- [Brad] It's lunchtime, and this is Brad Anderson's Lunch Break. Here in Redmond, we're visited by some of the smartest people on the planet pretty much every day. Every chance I get, I meet up with them for lunch. (cheerful music) Today I wrap up my conversation with Raja Ukil, the Senior Vice President and CIO at the massive Indian IT company Wipro. I saw a story about how there was a big change in the tax structure in India. How did you leverage technology and the skills of your organization to help lead your company through that? - [Raja] If you had followed what the Indian government was doing, they pushed the change through very quickly, even though they were not ready. So it was very well our time. We as an organization sat down, let's put all hands on the deck, let's all assemble and do it like a workshop more. And I don't want anybody to clarify things on email or phone calls or anything else. Right, it has to be then and there. And it was learning for us, right, it was not a thing which existed in the past. - You have to innovate to adjust. - [Raja] We just finished the project, start to finish, all in nineteen days, and we were compliant on day one. - Wow, so what did you personally, what was the biggest challenge you as the leader had to go drive or change in the company? Do it in nineteen days? - I think you will get the technology. My team over the years, because we do things fast, have reoriented to think that way, right? The only thing is, in an organization, minds are changed. There is something coming in, think of the group which does invoicing for our customers. It's a change for them. They do invoicing globally for all our customers. And you're talking about thirty-first, you are doing it in a particular way, and on first, you are doing it in a particular way, and you had all of nineteen days when the solution was not ready to train them. I think the leadership and all the team members cross, put their hands up, but I have never seen that happen in many projects in many organizations. I think that was the key to success. Obviously, all people like us, our CFO, et cetera, was to come in and motivate them every one hour, and say, "The team did a good job." - [Brad] We're gonna play a game called This or That. - [Raja] Okay. - [Brad] I'm gonna give you two topics and I'm gonna read you some descriptions, and then you tell me which one of the two things I'm describing, is it explaining cricket to somebody in the U.S., or trying to teach a dog calculus? You can tell they want to understand what you're saying but it's obvious they have no idea what's going on. - It's teaching a dog calculus. - It could actually be both. (both laughing) Using food as a motivator doesn't help very much. - This is probably cricket, explaining. - The only part of the conversation they really care about is the ball. - This is cricket, yeah. - Okay, they have no idea what to do with the information once the conversation's over. - This is definitely cricket. - [Brad] One of the things I read one time that you had said is you talked about your migration to Office 365 was done just in this incredibly smooth way that your users didn't even recognize that there had been a change even though they saw the new functionality. What advice would you give anyone who's looking at that move to Office 365, but they're hesitating? What advice would you give them? - Technically, it's not a big deal. It's super simple. Things like this, the new wave solutions, the ones from Microsoft are easy to remove. If you do planning well and focus on user adoption, because the users are getting more than what they used to get, and how do you handle that is the most critical piece. I advise my peers that if this is what your business wants, if this is what your users do, then try it out. It's okay to fail on a small scale. - That's a growth mindset as well. - Experiment with one or two people, you can experiment with five, ten thousand people, and once you're satisfied, fine-tune it, and then go boom. - Just go do it, experiment, learn, and then see how you roll it out broadly. - And, in that recess, wear a hat off an end user, and see what disruption it is causing him or her. - Yeah, get your hands into it. - If you can eliminate that disruption, then you're home. - One thing I've heard you say is, there's a million things that IT could do, but IT has to focus on things that matter. What are those things that matter right now, to you? - Honestly, I think all the million things matter. So what are trying to do, IT should not become a bottle-neck for doing things and achieving things faster. If you talk to any CIO around the world, they will say that they is stock in the API problem correction. That's one of the things which is critical to us. Our businesses typically are anywhere between one and a half billion to two billion, and "one size fits all" will not work across acquisitions who have different processes, et cetera. But the second thing we believe, the future of work, IT work, will be crowdsourced. So my job as a CIO is to enable the large organization to participate in a structured way and solve their own problems. Today, that's my priority. - [ Brad] One thing that really stands out about your company is this commitment to be a good citizen on the planet. I mean, you guys are listed as one of the world's most ethical companies, you're rated number one in India in sustainability, you've been honored for ethical corporate governance, you're recognized all over the world for diversity and disability hiring. It's a long list. What is the corporate culture that enabled you to be so incredibly strong in these areas? - It essentially stems from our core value system, which was articulated by our Chairman when he started the company, and it flows through down from the CEO to all the employees. We have always tried to be diverse, inclusive, give back to society, and today I'm proud to say that every dollar we own, of all descents, goes back to charity. - Wow, I did not know that. - Our Chairman, who is the majority share holder, has pledged forty percent of-- - Imagine how different the world would be if others followed your example. - For our vision of the company, we were more Indian in our mindset, as we started growing, we recognized the need to be more global and more inclusive. So if you look at, we include diversity, our definition is gender diversity, nationality, underprivileged. - Diversity in its broadest terms. - Yeah, and also people with disabilities. So we hire across the spectrum. Leaders are measured on how diverse they are in their team. Because honestly, it's not a question of, you go to press, you get recognized, which is why you do it. - But it is imperative. - It's a business imperative. Secondly, I think you get very inclusive views. - If you're trying to design products for the world, how can you do it if you don't have the world as broadly represented internally as you can? - Yeah, absolutely. Honestly, whatever we do, ultimately we are in business, we are responsible towards society, and we do our best to live up to it. - [Brad] That's awesome. Great to talk with you. - [Raja] Absolutely, same to you. - I look forward to this continued partnership. Let's do this again, right? Thanks, Raja. Next time on Brad Anderson's Lunch Break. So Terry, you've had an incredibly long, historic career at Microsoft. - Long's probably a good adjective, sure. - So I think all of that leads to this question. What's it like to be my new boss? (both laughing) - [Terry] I went to my bosses and said, "We need a website," and they're like, "No. We don't know what that is." And so we started a company. (cheerful music)

Brad Anderson's Lunch Break s8 e3 Raja Ukil, SVP & CIO, Wipro

- It's lunch time, and this is Brad Anderson's Lunch Break. (chipper music) Here in Redmond, we're visited by some of the smartest people on the planet, pretty much every day. Every chance I get, I meet up with them for lunch. (chipper music) This week I'm talking with Raja Ukil, the Senior Vice President and CIO of the massive Indian IT company Wipro. (piano lounge music) Wipro, you guys are massive, 175,000 employees. I don't think there's very many companies in the world that have been in IT for that long. - [Raja] We started off in the vegetable aisles and then there were market opportunities. We diversified, and in the 70s, we took that opportunity, went into hardware and just grew from there. I think the industry was coming into shape and, you know, those are good old days. I would like to look at security more comprehensively around identity, around data protection, and privacy. We are all getting ready for the GDPR, which is coming in May in Europe. So your strategy is very comprehensive, right? And if you look at some of the things which are happening of late, it's essentially somebody falling prey to identity theft. It starts from there, right? - That's where it starts. And then, just by protecting identity will not be enough. You have to have a comprehensive protection strategy, but which doesn't kill user experience, and that is where I think your strategy is what I love. You're protecting all of this, but not killing the user experience. We had pieces of this, not comprehensively, in traditionalized research solutions and they were infringing into user experience into privacy. - In college, you played cricket for your university. - Yes sir. - As Americans, we kind of struggle to grasp the rules and the concepts of cricket. So, we're gonna play a little game here where I'm gonna give you some cricket terms, - Yeah, okay. - and have you explain it for those of us who don't understand. - Okay. - The slog sweep. - Oh, the slog sweep, yes. So the slog sweep, there is a reverse sweep and a slog sweep. - Of course. - When you can't figure out what the bowler is going to do and you're desperate, you just bend down on your knees and just sweep it. - Among all the possible sweeps, is that the best one? - Yeah, I have seen many batsmen close their eyes and just play it in my day. - OMG, close your eyes? - The silly mid off. - The mid off is a position, how do I explain it? It's like, you know, when you are batting? It is like at an angle of, maybe 30 degrees. - That makes sense to me. How about the golden snitch? - Golden snitch, I think is a golden duck. (laughter) - I played a trick on you. That's a Harry Potter game. (laughter) - You need to ask my daughter. - Oh, OK. Alright. The dibbly-dobbly. - Well... (laughter) I need to get back to you. - Gotcha, okay. - The Duckworth-Lewis. - The Duckworth-Lewis, this one I can do. It is one of the most illogical things to happen in cricket. When you have a disruption in a game, the team batting second actually gets a limited number of overs. And, for some strange reason, gets a target which is steeper than the original target. So, this is a thing which is prevalent now. Nobody wants it, but they have never been able to find out a better alternative. - OK. The pace of innovation that we are delivering for you, are we meeting your expectations with Microsoft 365? - Yeah, absolutely. Every time, Brad, I come here, I just come here to learn. It's a different Microsoft. You are incredibly fast today. You think of it, and it is there. I know we have spoken for so many years. You have explained your strategy and what you are trying to do in a few days. I can't believe that the product is ready with millions and millions of customers today around the world. It's just incredible. Coming from the days where you used to have releases once every year. - Yeah. - So, this is fascinating. Another thing I must compliment you and your colleagues, is that you are listening to customers. Obviously, there are different use cases all of us will have, and you are focusing on creating those use cases for all of us part of a common platform, and that is fascinating. - Wow. That just makes, that just makes my day. You're one of the largest Windows 10 customers in the world. You know, with 170,000+ employees, you're one of the largest Office 365 customers in the world. Help me understand, as you think about, as you embrace these new technologies, even if you just talk about Microsoft early on. What are the benefits that your community, your employees see, and what is the benefit that IT sees? - Employees simply love it. Right? It's ... today's world, if you look at the employees' average age, we have a lot of millennials, right? These employees don't engage in the way, possibly, I engage. And so, - They're digital natives. You and I are a little bit older. - I wasn't going to say that specifically. (laughter) So, what happens is you need new tool sets, you need applications which are intuitive, re-imagined, simple, and essentially, you know, you empower every front line employee so that they don't waste time, and they can do things very simply. Now, to do all of this, it was not possible previously. The experience was broken because of the technology was not there. Today, thanks to Microsoft, you have a complete end-to-end story. It was the right strategic direction. And mobility - 50,000 of our people are not in any Wipro office. So, erstwhile, deployment architectures are a thing of the past. You can't manage such explosion with that kind of a thing. I'm happy Microsoft has focused and brought it to a shape where it's a real blessing. (light music) - Next time, on Brad Anderson's Lunch Break - I'm proud to say that every dollar we earn, 40 cents goes back to charity. - Wow! - Yes - I did not know that. - Is it explaining cricket someone in the US, or trying to teach a dog Calculus? (laughter) (chipper music)

Brad Anderson's Lunch Break s8 e2 Rhonda Vetere, CTO, Estée Lauder Co. (Part 2)

- [Narrator] It's lunch time, and this is Bard Anderson's lunch break. Here in Redmond, we're visited by some of the smartest people on the planet pretty much everyday. Every chance I get, I meet up with them for lunch. Today I finish talking with the CTO of Estee Lauder, a very smart and always fabulous Rhonda Vetere. So now let's take a look at your team itself. And, you now, the IT department. How has the morale gone now that you've moved so much to the cloud, how has that morale gone up? Do people say that their jobs are more impactful, or have they this, this fear that they have, well maybe my job gets eliminated? What's been that impact? - That's been an interesting transition. And really worked with a team on the mental model shift. Their mental model on growing and spring boarding into what we call the new technology world. The morale is up. At first you have what I call going the valley of despair. And then it goes back up, just like things in life. But as you lead and show them how things come more productive, how they're giving back, how they can free up their time, quite frankly, and work on more fun things. And not so fingers on the keyboard on operational issues. Their morale goes up. And we're proud of that. And there's a lot of rock stars that have developed out of that. - So that topic of staying relevant is really important. You know, during your career, you spent time at CompuServe and WorldCom and MCI. You've had a front row seat at companies who were at the pinnacle of driving different portions of the industry, and then kind of fell away, right? What can technology leaders learn from that? What did you take away from those experiences? - Being relevant and that you become obsolete overnight. And not realize it. No matter what field that you're in. Being in technology, you can be merged, acquisitions, everything happens. And things are coming at you from all angles and you need to be able to manage that change. So I took that as a learning experience, and stayed through all the different merges and acquisitions to be that constant denominator to drive that change in making the companies more relevant as the world changed. - I read an article where you listed your top ten list of business standards. And there were three of them that just like really hit home with me because I value these three as much as you do. One of them is what you called managerial courage. - Very good. - Recognize your team. And then know your metrics. - Yes. Recognize your team. So I'm always about it's the team. And recognizing them. It's celebrating success as most people forget to celebrate. - It can be little successes that you celebrate. That have a tremendous impact on the culture. - Absolutely. - Give me an example. You talk about leadership courage. - Leadership courage is the ability to step up and say the power of no in a nice way. I don't agree with this, this is what it means, we're doing the wrong thing, and even on a team and partners I look for that. Someone who has a challenging spirit that can tell you you're going down a wrong way. - All too often, people are afraid to say no. And most times, you know, who you're talking to, they just wanna know what the answer is, and no is okay. But it takes courage, and for many people, that's a courage that has to be developed. That's actually one of the interview questions that I asked when I'm interviewing senior leaders. Tell me about a time when you had to say no and were convicted that the right answer was no. And you knew it was gonna be a challenge to get the rest of the organization aligned. I'll tell you, if people cannot come back and give me an example of exactly when they've done that, they haven't had enough leadership time. They haven't had enough leadership experience. - Great point. That's great. - It has been a pleasure. - It's been a pleasure. Thank you. All right. Thank you. - Thank you so much. Bye. - [Brad] Next time on Brad Anderson's lunch break. Duckworth-Lewis. - The Duckworth-Lewis say, I can give a, it says one of the most illogical things to happen in that regard. Erstwhile, deployment architectures, you know are a thing of the past. You can't manage such explosion with that kind of a thing.

Brad Anderson's Lunch Break s7 e9 Dr. Nicole Forsgren, CEO, DORA

- [Brad] It's lunch time, and this is Brad Anderson's Lunch Break. Two of my favorite things about Microsoft are the smart people that constantly visit campus and the great fleet of shuttles. Whenever I can I try to take advantage of both of these things, and grab lunch with some of the tech industry's best and brightest. Today I'm driving around with Dr. Nicole Forsgren, a researcher, DevOps expert, and CEO and Chief Scientist at DORA. (jaunty music) - Hey - [Brad] How's it goin', Nicole? - I'm good. Sweet minivan. - You know, I wanted to harken back to the early days when we needed to have a minivan in order to put our kids in it. It's like a walk down memory lane here for me. In software, we're all about data and we all use data to make decisions, and you've brought this uncanny academic rigor to how you use data. In fact, you have so much passion you formed your own company. So tell us a little bit about the company, your background and this passion on data. - Sure. So DORA is DevOps Research and Assessment. We've been doing research looking at how organizations can use so many fantastic capabilities to drive improvement in their ability to make software with both speed and stability. That's really the key central component in helping organizations perform amazingly well. And I say perform, so that's profitability, productivity, market share. - Yeah so it's both internal and external because a big part of performing is employee satisfaction, employee passion. - Also, decreasing employee pain, decreasing burnout. - Because we talk about this in-depth DevOps approach to IT and to Dev. How does that impact morale? - When we study DevOps or technology transformation we take kind of a holistic approach and it includes culture, it includes technology, it includes Agile in measurements, and the piece in Agile includes how you develop software and team experimentation. And so the way it affects morale and team culture is we see greater communication, greater information flow, risks are shared, novelty is encouraged and implemented, morale is improved, and that ends up feeding through and having a positive impact on the entire organization's performance. For so long, have you heard before, 'IT's a cost center, IT's a cost center,' - That's definitely transitioned but that's the way it's been talked about for years. I'm tired of it. - Right? Seriously. But what we find is that it's really an investment. If you see it and if you view it as an investment it pays back dividends tenfold, because it makes your technology better. It makes your employees better. It makes your employees happier. It delivers value to your business. Again, profitability, productivity, market share. - [Brad] What's the most common pitfall organizations fall into in this area? - So there, I think there are a couple. So one is not measuring the things that matter. Right, so we have, sometimes it's just local optimizations. Right, sometimes people are like 'I'm gonna do CI, Continuous Integration, or I'm gonna do Continuous Delivery, because Continuous Delivery,' and then they just get spun up on something. Right? Or they'll measure something because it's convenient, or easy, and then it shows up on a report and that's all they pay attention to. And I'm sure you've seen that. - Oh, a hundred times, and then there are even things that I've asked to be measured and then realized it was the wrong things. - Which is fine, because it's continuous improvement, continuous learning, so then you could still keep it if you want, but at least pull it off the report. - Yeah, but start measuring, and then you're gonna realize that you're gonna get better. Just the numbers, when you first start doing the measurement the numbers are gonna be dirty, they're not gonna be clean. - Realize the power of an honest baseline. If it's bad, that's even better because you have nowhere to go but up. - At least you got a place to start from. That has been this journey, I think, that many of us have gone through. That it is all about getting started and then constantly learning, constantly getting better, constantly refining, but you gotta start. - And it gives you something to talk about and communicate about. Suddenly, if you're on a different team, I can talk to you about it. And, if I think your performance or your metrics or something sucks, that's okay because I have something to talk about instead of yelling at you, we can yell about the thing. - That makes it tangible and real. You can have a conversation and then say 'Okay, now how are we gonna go get better on this?' - Exactly - Next time on Brad Anderson's Lunch Break: - If you wanna be super capitalistic about it, we find so much research everywhere showing that diversity of background, diversity of thought, diversity of gender, diversity of race, diversity of all the things leads to better outcomes. You make better products, you build better software, you get better outcomes. It's worth the investment. (jaunty music)

Brad Anderson's Lunch Break s7 e8 Mauricio Guerra, CISO, Dow Chemical (Part 2)

- It's lunch time, and this is Brad Anderson's Lunch Break. Two of my favorite things about Microsoft are the smart people that constantly visit campus, and the great fleet of shuttles. Wherever I can, I try to take advantage of both of these things, and grab lunch with some of the tech industry's best and brightest. (sunny music) This week, I'll wrap up my conversation with Mauricio Guerra, the chief Information Security Officer at Dow Chemical. (sunny music) So I heard this amazing story about the founder of Dow Chemical, Henry Dow. - Mm-hmm. - He came with this idea to use electrolysis to basically separate chemicals, but the financial backers thought that was a crazy idea, and actually fired him! - Mm-hmm. - So, he turned around and used that technology to create Dow Chemical, and the rest is history. So what technology do you think organizations are not using enough of, to keep their company safe? - I don't want to say that it's a particular technology but that will be different, say, pointing to technology A, or B, or C. What I would like to stress, is the need to have a comprehensive cyber security program. Understanding that cyber security is not installing, implementing a couple of firewalls here, and this, and that, and that. It's making sure that from the executive level down, the companies understand, and properly manage the risk. And it sounds obvious, or too simplistic, what I'm saying, but what I'm seeing, the industries, that there might be a better opportunity for companies to take a more, more, more structured approach into cyber. - Kind of a footnote in history, you know, Henry Dow actually went back and bought the company that fired him. So, words of wisdom, be Henry Dow. - Oh, okay. (laughing) (jazzy music) When we see winning innovation, that will bring big challenges for people that are in like we will be dealing with way more automation, we'll be dealing with more data, more devices, more connectivity - it's more complex - More clouds, more complexity, huge complexity. And normally when you drive innovation is when you bring risk. And I'm not implying that's a negative, that's the way it is. - That's reality. - That the reality. New stuff, new challenges then we either need to adjust our security poster or figure it out how to mitigate risk. To summarize my point, yes it's a bigger challenge. Not only managing the well known threats, but also enabling those capabilities that companies like Dow will be using to drive innovation and being more and more and more competitive. I mean better leveraging IT tools. (sunny music) - A big part of Mauricio's job is evaluating the security aspects of what IT wants to deploy. - Mmhm. - So how do you challenge the partners that you're working with to make sure that they're delivering the right balance of value and security? - At the end of the day, there is not a perfect solution. They need judgment, different perspective. So it is all about helping businesses making educated decisions. By educate I mean informed decisions - Yeah, sure. - Personally, I spent a lot of time on visiting companies, participating in industry forums that gives me good feel on where the industry is going. But, at the end of the day, there is judgment. Judgment, but then, you need to establish a strong network and be credible with the businesses. - Yeah, so you have to have all this signal coming into you so that you're constantly being aware of what the innovations are, what the attacks are, and then you have to help synthesize that and share it with all the leadership. - Exactly. (light upbeat music) - This has been awesome. - For so long, I mean have you heard before: You know I'd use a cost center, who's heard that? - It's definitely transitioning but I've heard that - And there's been so many times right? If you see it and if you view it as an investment it pays back dividends ten fold. (light upbeat music)