Barry Becker, Kyndryl | Google Cloud Next ’24
[Savannah Peterson]
Welcome to Google Cloud Next
Good morning, CUBE community, and welcome back to fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada. We’re here on day three of Google Cloud Next. It’s been absolutely fantastic.
Introduction of Speakers
My name is Savannah Peterson, joined by the fabulous Rebecca Knight and John Furrier. Thank you both for being here, feeling great. Have you had anything interesting to eat here in Vegas?
Food in Las Vegas
We’re in a great food city.
[Rebecca Knight]
I went to a delicious restaurant last night called Carson Kitchen. It’s in Fremont. Highly recommend it. Oh yeah. What about you, John?
[John Furrier]
I’ve been eating some great steak and some food here in the hotel. You haven’t left Mandalay? I haven’t left my home for the past three days.
Google Cloud Next Audience
I mean, basically, the show here has got all the top executives here, all the developers. It really is a captive audience.
[Rebecca Knight]
There’s no reason to leave.
[John Furrier]
I mean, I’ve had conversations at the elevator base and talking to folks. It’s just really great to see the builders and all the top people here.
[Savannah Peterson]
I love that. Yeah, the elevator pitches back if you’re at Mandalay, especially if you’re on the right floor.
[00:01:00]
We have a wonderful guest from Kendrell Berry. Thank you so much for being here with us.
[Barry Becker]
How’s your week going? It’s going fantastic. I mean, the energy, you can feel the energy constantly. The announcements have been great. The collaborations. I didn’t get the chance to go eat. I’m kind of grazing and talking. Just grazing and talking.
[Savannah Peterson]
Just apps at various events. And in meeting rooms. I’m sure you’ve got a lot of that.
[Barry Becker]
Strategic Alliances
For sure.
[Savannah Peterson]
There’s been a lot of donuts on the floor. I don’t even know what’s going on anymore. I love that we’re talking strategic alliances today. One of the core themes of the show for us has been ecosystems and all the partner players that are here and how everyone’s doing.
AI and Partnerships
Do you think that AI is accelerating the velocity of some of these partnerships and collaborative plays?
[Barry Becker]
Oh, without question. I mean, it’s become a new fuel, a new energy into the engine of what we do as a business, obviously, in technology services. And the collaborations with partners. The clients expect us to show up together, to show up well-informed, integrated, having that point of view.
[00:02:04]
And so the velocity that we have to move at, we have to do it as a community. We have to drive that collaboration. And as I walk around here at Google Next, the amount of relationships is apparent, the amount of collaboration is infectious.
[John Furrier]
Gen AI and Ecosystem Partnerships
Yes. Barry, one of the things that you do at Kendra, you oversee, you’re the senior vice president of all the alliances, which means all the big clouds, all the big partners in the industry. Gen AI is changing everything, changing the growth strategies for the end-user customer, changing the configuration of the technology of the suppliers, okay, on large-scale cloud and then on-premise with GPUs and all that good stuff. But now the value proposition is changing and the ecosystem partnerships are critical because it’s a multi-vendor world and multi-cloud. So I want to get your thoughts on what you guys are seeing. You came out of IBM with a spin-out, we’ve been covering Kendra from day one, congratulations. But boy, did the tailwind just come in the direction of this kind of build-out, real advisory, people need help.
[00:03:04]
They got to build the new bridge to the future and then cross it. Yeah. This is a huge part of what you guys do. What are you seeing? What are the key success factors?
Key Success Factors for Partnerships
What’s the prerequisites to be successful?
[Barry Becker]
I think that’s a great question, John. I think a lot of what we’re seeing right now is if you look at the decades of experience that we’ve had managing the most critical systems in the industry, clients are now leaning into us and looking at us and say, okay, it’s the next chapter of a journey that we’re on. They’re having to show up in front of boards of directors, explain their AI strategy, explain their data strategy. And so a lot of what we’re doing is really compelling in terms of not only the collaboration that we’re doing with them, the co-creation, the co-innovation associated with it, but having that informed point of view. A lot of our clients have said, I’ve made a large investment. I don’t know if this moving to cloud journey is giving me the full ROI associated with it. And so they’re challenging us to work with the extended ecosystems, the platform providers, the hardware providers, the software providers, and come forward with what that transformational strategy is.
[00:04:11]
In the area of AI, it’s all around the data. And that’s someplace we’ve been very relevant. Data protection, data democratization, data privacy, data sovereignty, and helping them understand how to harness that as they move into this next chapter.
[John Furrier]
Data Governance
It’s interesting you mentioned data. If you look at, if you squint through some of the earnings and some of the indicators from the big players, yeah, they’ve got AI price, but the governance pieces are really the most hottest area. It’s not the most sexy area. Governance is like, what’s governance mean? But this is a key part of the AI strategy. It’s not your yesterday’s governance play. What is the data governance? Because that seems to be the key to unlock data to kind of be addressable, to be generated with, to be integrated with. What’s your view of that? What’s the outlook on the governance piece? Am I getting it right or is it?
[Barry Becker]
I think you’re saying it really, really well. I think what we’re seeing a lot of is, first, there’s massive, massive amounts, we know this, of structured and unstructured data.
[00:05:07]
So beginning, understanding how to harness that, understanding how to make it AI ready to be able to be consumed, either at the application or at the data store, at the data lake level. But what clients are really saying is, help us unlock the predictive insights so that we can intelligently make decisions with this. If you’re going to be training models, if you’re going to be embracing these technology sets, you got to really be smart on what you actually have within your business.
[John Furrier]
Google’s Ecosystem
One more question I want to get in while we’re on this, and then I’ll let Savannah dig in too. The stack that they have, they’ve got the full package. All three layers of the stack, I’m going to generically lay it out, looking really good from Google. The ecosystem piece, undeniable, people are standing tall. Ecosystem is a key piece of the puzzle. I see it not yet complete yet, but it’s getting there. What do you see as the criteria for Google or any other partner, from an ecosystem perspective, to be successful?
[00:06:05]
Criteria for Ecosystem Success
Obviously, there’s a business model tie-in to Google. They make money with partners, partners make money with Google. This is a symbiotic relationship they have to get right. What’s your view of how does that, what is the key to making that formula work?
[Barry Becker]
You used one of my favorite words, that symbiotic relationship. It’s exactly. Shortly before we came out on our own, so much of that ecosystem, the Alliance ecosystem, reached out very proactively, embraced us, because they recognized that we are the ones that are there day-to-day. We’re running these mission-critical systems. We have day-to-day visibility into the challenges clients are facing. They need us. Google, Microsoft, AWS, ServiceNow, the entire ecosystem recognizes that not only are clients looking at us to design, implement, modernize, integrate, and ultimately run, manage these ecosystems, but they’re also looking at us to give them feedback on, hey, Barry, how’s it going?
[00:07:06]
How does the client really feel about AI? One of the worst things that we keep hearing is when a client says, hey, I’ve bought this technology stack, but I don’t know if I’m getting the most out of it. And they don’t, our ecosystem partners are like, Kendrell, help ensure clients are getting the most out of what they’re buying from us as well. It’s a wonderful position to be in, wonderful position. What else are customers saying?
Customer Feedback
It’s interesting. I think customers are saying, I need a point of view to bring to my business. My kids are on chat GPT, and immediately everyone’s wondering, how do you bring AI, but from a business sense into the business? How are we providing an informed point of view? One of the things that we’re very keen on when we talk to clients is we never say at Kendrell that we’re agnostic. We’re never agnostic. We have that informed point of view, and that’s what we have to be bringing to the table.
[00:08:01]
And so what we’re hearing is, bring that informed point of view, help me on my journey, grab me by the back of my shirt if you look like I’m going to fall to the left or to the right, and ensure that I’m starting small, I’m taking balanced risk, and I’m understanding what I should be doing with the experiences that we have in the enterprise space.
[Rebecca Knight]
Leadership Challenges
Barry, one of the things I’m really hearing from you is that these are not necessarily technology issues, they are people issues, they’re leadership challenges, and change management challenges. I was interested in what you said about how the clients expect us to show up together and be aligned and make sure we’re all working and rowing in the same direction. You have an MBA, which is not necessarily so common in the tech industry. How do you think about these challenges from a real leadership perspective?
[Barry Becker]
I think that’s a wonderful question. I think some of the things that the business leaders are saying is, obviously everyone still has cost challenges, there’s financial challenges, there’s a level of financial insight.
[00:09:06]
Technology is an enabler, I think you said it well, technology is an enabler, but what business use case am I solving? How does it directly correlate to my end clients, or frankly, even my employees? We’re at a show where the predominant theme has been AI, and a lot of folks tend to think about AI for the use with our clients, but a lot of us are bringing that technology in and trying to change the culture in our own businesses. Those elements, financial insights, cultural impacts, relevancy to items such as sustainability, so all of these things are elements that go well beyond the boundaries of just the technology. I love the question because the technology is something, though, is there. Our conversations always start with those business use cases and the desired business outcome because that’s a path you can drive towards.
[Savannah Peterson]
Kendryl’s Enterprise Customers
You’ve got 4,000 enterprise customers across 60 different countries, very, very impressive.
[00:10:03]
I noticed on your blog that your CEO just met with the Japanese Prime Minister to talk about standardization. We’ve talked about strategic alliances within partners in the enterprise sense.
Strategic Alliances with Governments
What about strategic alliances between governments and nations? What sort of conversations are you having? What did your CEO chat to the Japanese Prime Minister about?
[Barry Becker]
I think in the public space, in the government space, they’re facing the similar challenges. Just because they don’t necessarily have shareholders or bottom lines, they have citizens that they have to answer to. They have to, there’s questions about data privacy. There’s questions about the ability to ensure that I, as a citizen of whatever country, have the ability to engage with my government, but we have established boundaries. Those conversations, those forums that we participate in, Martin is an amazing advocate to show that there’s a level of social responsibility that we have as we bring together technology and its application in the world, as we drive what we need as citizens and, frankly, as humankind.
[00:11:11]
[John Furrier]
Right? Yeah. You guys got a lot of stories that are going, really good stories at Kindrel.
Gen AI Use Cases
What’s your favorite customer story or use case that kind of would illustrate the obvious gen AI example for the doubters or anyone who’s scared of AI? You got some skeptics out there, what’s real AI washing? What’s in a use case that you like that says, here’s an example of gen AI?
[Barry Becker]
DMV Use Case
Yeah. So, I’ll give you a great example. I won’t name the state, but it’s one of the states in the United States.
[John Furrier]
Is it big? It’s a big one.
[Barry Becker]
Bigger than a bread box. Exactly. And their ability to really modernize something that we’ve all done before, and that is the DMV. Right? The Department of Motor Vehicles.
[Savannah Peterson]
My favorite place to go hang out.
[Barry Becker]
It’s mine.
[Savannah Peterson]
Yeah.
[Barry Becker]
I’m surprised we haven’t seen each other there.
[Savannah Peterson]
Exactly.
[00:12:00]
[Barry Becker]
But in those particular instances, that is a very legacy antiquated system, and you factor in that we’re comfortable with the process. We’re seeing more and more states, one that we’ve executed a large, where they’ve said, hey, we have to change the citizen experience. We need to be able to find the ability that when they show up, have access to their data in real time, create a user experience that’s AI-informed, a lot of the decision-making. Things that you can do that, A, removes the human in the loop to some degree, but still gives the personalization that, hey, as the citizen of the state that I’m a part of, this DMV process, my ability to register a vehicle, my ability to renew a driver’s license, those from a video and image perspective, a data perspective, all of those things in terms of qualifications, taking your DMV test, it’s all very well-said, very, very multimodal,
[00:13:02]
[John Furrier]
Cross-Modality Reasoning
for sure. Can I change my picture? That’s one of my favorite examples of… But… Can I change my picture? We can change my picture and my license. Everyone hates their picture on the driver’s license.
[Rebecca Knight]
Yeah. Can you use AI to make me look better?
[John Furrier]
Yeah. It’s a little… We did that at the OctoAI booth. No, but this is good. This is a public sector, all these processes that pay contracts, procurement, huge stacks of data on paper or databases that could be ingested and reasoned, cross-modality reasoning is a hot trend.
AI Hype and the DMV
We’ve been talking about it on theCUBE.
[Savannah Peterson]
I love the DMV example, because I think when we have a lot of conversations around Doomers and folks who are afraid of the AI hype, and I keep saying, I’ve always been saying, and AI’s not going to take your job, it’s just going to make it suck less, beyond the job part of this. It’s stuff like that. Every single one of us who operates a motor vehicle, which is a significant portion of the United States of America, has had a horrible experience. No one’s ever been like, wow, that was a breeze. Can’t wait to go back.
[John Furrier]
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Can’t wait to renew my license. Says no one.
[Savannah Peterson]
It’s such an efficient process.
[00:14:01]
I think that’s awesome.
Other Use Cases
Because that was so excellent. Do you have any other examples you could share? That was great.
[Barry Becker]
Now you’ve got my attention. No, I’m kidding. You had it. We have many, many examples. We have another client right now that is very much in the traditional retail space. But don’t think of traditional retail as, and I’m going to go shop for pants and those sorts of things. Think more of, in the technology realm, still have a retail presence and have recognized that they want to have the ability to support their in-store employees with basically a virtual assistant so that they can increase the amount of client engagement. One of the challenges in the retail sector is increasing the one-to-many even within the physical store. Think about it. You’re in a store. You want to get help on a particular item. One person can help you at a time. But if one person can help many people at a time and augment their capabilities through generative AI, it’s a very powerful value proposition.
[00:15:00]
[Savannah Peterson]
Custom Customer Experience
It is, and it affords a custom experience for that customer or those many customers as well. All right, Barry, last question for you because time has flown.
Future Plans
What do you hope to be able to say the next time we have you on the show that you can’t say yet today?
[Barry Becker]
Oh, that’s a wonderful, wonderful question. I think the next time you have me on the show, I want to be able to share with you that we have driven some strategic collaborations that have caught the attention of the market beyond what we’ve already said. We’ve got some amazing things in the work, the ecosystem that I collaborate in. You may find this interesting. When I come to shows like this, I meet with a lot of clients, I meet with a lot of partners, but the amount of multi-partner ecosystem meetings we have, no, we’re not in dark rooms, hidden away from others, but talking about joint problems that we’re solving and collectively bringing those to the market, I think we’re going to impress you with some more cross-collaborative ecosystem solutions.
[00:16:05]
Looking Forward to Future Stories
Very cool, very cool.
[John Furrier]
Can’t wait to get those stories on theCUBE. Yeah, I am here for it, Barry.
[Savannah Peterson]
I’m ready to be impressed. This is already impressive. Thank you so much for being on the show.
[Barry Becker]
Thanks for having me.
[Savannah Peterson]
Absolutely. Rebecca, John, always a pleasure. And thank all of you for tuning in to day three of our coverage here in Las Vegas, Nevada, Google Cloud Next, you’re watching theCUBE, the leading source for enterprise tech news.