1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:05,940 Well, hello, everybody. It's another episode of Pivotal Conversations with myself and Richard 2 00:00:05,940 --> 00:00:11,060 Siroter. We actually have a guest for the first time. And let me tell you, other than the guest 3 00:00:11,060 --> 00:00:15,080 being awesome, the reason this came up is I don't think we're going to be able to record next week. 4 00:00:15,120 --> 00:00:19,560 So I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to have a guest on. So we've got a little bit of 5 00:00:19,560 --> 00:00:24,680 news stuff to go over. But since it's actually recorded in the past, awesome things may have 6 00:00:24,680 --> 00:00:28,300 been happening by the time you listen to this that we missed. It's not because we missed them. 7 00:00:28,300 --> 00:00:33,540 It's just because we recorded this a while ago. That is at least the week before it was 8 00:00:33,540 --> 00:00:38,780 published. I'll publish a timeline so you can sort this out, you know, put it up on your crazy wall. 9 00:00:38,900 --> 00:00:43,240 Anyhow, as always, I'm Coté. You want to introduce yourself, Richard, and say hello? 10 00:00:44,140 --> 00:00:48,620 Yep, Richard. Good to have you here again, Coté. I'm excited to chat with our guest and put her 11 00:00:48,620 --> 00:00:53,660 through the ringer. And first guest effort on at least the new format of Pivotal Conversations. 12 00:00:53,660 --> 00:00:57,380 Why don't you introduce yourself? What an honor. I'm Rita Menachi, 13 00:00:57,600 --> 00:00:59,840 and I'm the head of analyst relations at Pivotal. 14 00:01:00,400 --> 00:01:06,060 Well, as a segue into our news stuff, like, so one thing I wanted to mention is speaking of 15 00:01:06,060 --> 00:01:12,720 analysts. So I wrote a column. I have a monthly column at the register on bimodal IT. And like, 16 00:01:12,840 --> 00:01:20,060 you know, I'm sure it's fabulous because I wrote it. So I was there. But I mean, you know, I get asked 17 00:01:20,060 --> 00:01:24,220 about this question a lot. And so it was a good opportunity to, we'll put a link to it in the show 18 00:01:24,220 --> 00:01:29,660 notes, of course. But I wanted to kind of put this sort of middle view that I have about it. And I'm 19 00:01:29,660 --> 00:01:33,980 curious, you know, this is, I wanted to bring this up because it's highly related to analyst stuff. 20 00:01:34,380 --> 00:01:39,480 You know, I basically wanted to point out that like, I've, because I have access beyond the paywall, 21 00:01:39,680 --> 00:01:45,820 and whatnot. Like, I can kind of read both sides of the story, the sort of the Gartner idea of what 22 00:01:45,820 --> 00:01:51,020 bimodal is, and then also all the free stuff about the people who kind of don't like bimodal. And I 23 00:01:51,020 --> 00:01:56,060 don't know, I mean, the summary, I try to, you tell me if you think it's fair, but I try to summarize 24 00:01:56,060 --> 00:02:01,400 both sides of the position and basically have the usual call of like, hey, these people should talk 25 00:02:01,400 --> 00:02:05,620 with each other and sort it out and have like a unimodal voice about this. 26 00:02:07,040 --> 00:02:12,500 Yeah, I like that. I mean, it's easy to have caricatures on both sides. Like, hey, here's the bimodal 27 00:02:12,500 --> 00:02:17,660 advocates who are just completely out of touch and lunatics. And here's the crazy mode two, or just 28 00:02:17,660 --> 00:02:22,240 whatever, the people who think that everybody should run fast and everyone else is dinosaurs. I thought 29 00:02:22,240 --> 00:02:26,880 your article hit a good middle ground. I mean, frankly, every Coté article, I'm more excited to read your 30 00:02:26,880 --> 00:02:32,780 comments, especially on the register, because they are always all over the place. So, but at the same 31 00:02:32,780 --> 00:02:38,420 time, I mean, almost to your point, that is the people that we interface with. And so it's easy to 32 00:02:38,420 --> 00:02:42,620 have these opinions, but you have to sometimes road test them, even with your most violent skeptics. So 33 00:02:42,620 --> 00:02:47,720 I thought it hit a good ground. As you say, you get to read both sides and, you know, bimodal can feel 34 00:02:47,720 --> 00:02:52,760 too simplistic. There may be other things, but I think you hit a good angle there that we have to figure out 35 00:02:52,760 --> 00:02:55,380 how we work in this model, creating factions. Is it going to help? 36 00:02:56,700 --> 00:03:02,160 Yeah. To add to Richard's comments, I think, I think you did a good job of saying perhaps bimodal is 37 00:03:02,160 --> 00:03:07,280 being misunderstood. That's what I got out of it. And I thought that was actually a nice sane 38 00:03:07,280 --> 00:03:08,640 way of looking at it. 39 00:03:09,000 --> 00:03:14,420 And, and, and I bring this up one, just to glorify myself, to further poke fun at myself in an indirect 40 00:03:14,420 --> 00:03:20,560 kind of ironic way. But like, I think it's a good example of, and there's many areas in, especially 41 00:03:20,560 --> 00:03:27,440 in working with you over the past seven months, Rita, where you sort of have to mediate and explain 42 00:03:27,440 --> 00:03:33,260 what analysts are saying to various constituencies. And, and I find that sort of having been a formal 43 00:03:33,260 --> 00:03:37,840 analyst myself, kind of ironically, analysts are not always the best people at explaining what it is 44 00:03:37,840 --> 00:03:43,540 they're saying. And, and, and I think, I think in an analyst relations role, uh, and tell me if you 45 00:03:43,540 --> 00:03:49,420 think this is wrong, but like you end up, uh, a large part of the job ends up being an explainer 46 00:03:49,420 --> 00:03:52,540 to all of the different audiences that, that you have involved. 47 00:03:53,820 --> 00:03:55,640 Exactly. Including the analyst sometimes. 48 00:03:57,320 --> 00:04:02,700 That's right. That's right. Yeah. No, I, I mean, I think, I think that's, uh, and, and that's, 49 00:04:02,760 --> 00:04:06,760 you know, I, I think, so I think the bimodal thing is a good example of that, right? Like 50 00:04:06,760 --> 00:04:13,260 the, there is a lot of material on bimodal it behind Gartner's firewall. And I, even I not even 51 00:04:13,260 --> 00:04:17,100 I, but I have to admit, I haven't read it all, but there's actually a pretty good, I forget if I 52 00:04:17,100 --> 00:04:21,300 linked to it in, in that piece, but there's a pretty good webcast that's recent, um, that kind 53 00:04:21,300 --> 00:04:26,140 of, I think goes over it quite nicely that explains it well. And I don't know, aside from like 54 00:04:26,140 --> 00:04:29,920 totally crazy comments that you get at their register, it'll be, it'll be fun to see if there's 55 00:04:29,920 --> 00:04:34,740 any conversation. So closing out our news thing, I keep jumping to the analyst thing and then 56 00:04:34,740 --> 00:04:38,940 pulling back from it. The other large thing that happened this week is, uh, I was surprised 57 00:04:38,940 --> 00:04:43,500 by this, but, uh, someone, someone bought joint. If I was being snarky, I would say finally, 58 00:04:43,500 --> 00:04:50,040 but, uh, Samsung of all people bought joint. And as far as I can tell, having, having worked 59 00:04:50,040 --> 00:04:55,420 on, uh, M and a stuff, like, like it's, I read these press releases pretty carefully. It was 60 00:04:55,420 --> 00:05:02,280 the CTO of the mobile division at Samsung who commented on it. So I guess it's driven 61 00:05:02,280 --> 00:05:08,340 by the mobile division. And it seems like the pretty legit deal rationale was, uh, we need 62 00:05:08,340 --> 00:05:13,080 some processing for all that stuff on the edge for mobile devices, which, you know, get you 63 00:05:13,080 --> 00:05:18,380 some interesting IOT things and stuff like that. But it's, uh, yeah, I mean, the rationale 64 00:05:18,380 --> 00:05:22,420 makes sense once you sit down and think about it, but man, I never would have thought of Samsung 65 00:05:22,420 --> 00:05:28,340 as an acquirer of, uh, anything, let alone of joint. 66 00:05:28,720 --> 00:05:33,260 Right. Yeah, no, it's definitely an interesting purchase for them, but, you know, joint's been 67 00:05:33,260 --> 00:05:37,920 known, I think in the industry is having a lot of good and really solid engineering, you know, 68 00:05:37,920 --> 00:05:41,240 and while they they're expensive because they've raised, I think it was well over a hundred million 69 00:05:41,240 --> 00:05:45,560 dollars. So it was going to be tough to acquire them, but at the same time, some great engineering 70 00:05:45,560 --> 00:05:49,740 talent, you know, they really innovate on some interesting things on containers, doing some things 71 00:05:49,740 --> 00:05:54,080 with storage. So I mean, it's a smart buy for Samsung, especially if they got a good price, 72 00:05:54,080 --> 00:05:58,020 but you know, it's like I tweeted out right afterwards. I think they're the last of the 73 00:05:58,020 --> 00:06:03,140 major Gartner recognized public clouds that was independent. There's other ones like Linode 74 00:06:03,140 --> 00:06:08,820 and DigitalOcean and others, but this was kind of the last stand of the, uh, the pure standalone 75 00:06:08,820 --> 00:06:10,660 public clouds, which probably tells you something. 76 00:06:10,660 --> 00:06:16,420 Yeah, definitely. I mean, I imagine versus DigitalOcean, their joints, probably a bit more 77 00:06:16,420 --> 00:06:21,940 affordable. I mean, DigitalOcean's become so huge that, uh, they, they must be pretty pricey, 78 00:06:21,940 --> 00:06:26,360 but yeah, that is interesting. Now, you know, you used to work at Sun, right, Rita? You know, 79 00:06:26,360 --> 00:06:27,500 some of these joint people. 80 00:06:28,380 --> 00:06:33,660 I do. And I remember Brian actually, and I remember him. They worked on D-Trace, I believe. 81 00:06:33,940 --> 00:06:38,880 Oh yeah. He's like one of, one of IT's most memorable people. He's, he's great. 82 00:06:38,880 --> 00:06:44,600 Yes, exactly. And, uh, there's a couple of other things that I remember from, but that's the most, 83 00:06:44,600 --> 00:06:53,300 um, most vivid. Um, and I actually, one of the funny, funny descriptions of, of joint as a sun 84 00:06:53,300 --> 00:06:59,620 refugee, refugee camp kind of made me chuckle. So temperatures. Yeah. There's a lot of former 85 00:06:59,620 --> 00:07:04,940 some folks there. And my thought was, I'm sure joint probably has a lot of really great technology. 86 00:07:05,520 --> 00:07:12,440 Uh, one of our, one of our colleagues mentioned that they don't really get enterprise. So this was, 87 00:07:12,600 --> 00:07:15,220 uh, an interesting acquisition indeed. So. 88 00:07:16,080 --> 00:07:20,300 Yeah. And to the point, to the point of technology they have, I mean, they've got a lot of, I think 89 00:07:20,300 --> 00:07:24,340 they still have all of these things. I, I don't pay super close attention to them like I used to, 90 00:07:24,380 --> 00:07:28,980 but they have, they have a lot of like node people there. And they also have, uh, I mean, 91 00:07:28,980 --> 00:07:33,720 their, their, their cloud platform is, if I remember, is a variant of Solaris. I mean, 92 00:07:33,720 --> 00:07:39,040 it's long ago forked from it, but it has a lot of Solaris heritage to it. And so that brings in 93 00:07:39,040 --> 00:07:45,020 all the file system stuff and so forth and so on. So they have pretty solid technology, uh, behind 94 00:07:45,020 --> 00:07:45,740 their offerings. 95 00:07:46,420 --> 00:07:51,140 They do potentially tough to maintain when it's, it's forked and it's maintained uniquely, but 96 00:07:51,140 --> 00:07:54,820 there's no denying there's a lot of horsepower that Samsung just picked up. 97 00:07:55,360 --> 00:08:00,220 Yeah, exactly. I think, I think, I think that's the point. I think great technology and, uh, but 98 00:08:00,220 --> 00:08:06,820 don't really know how to market it, which was, I believe an issue at sun as well. So we'll see 99 00:08:06,820 --> 00:08:07,760 how that all works out. 100 00:08:08,100 --> 00:08:09,420 Go to market's always tricky. 101 00:08:10,100 --> 00:08:14,500 So let's welcome our guest. 102 00:08:17,080 --> 00:08:20,740 So, so I felt so unwelcome until just now. 103 00:08:21,840 --> 00:08:26,060 That's right. I'll, I'll have to, I'll have to make the guest introduction and transition a lot 104 00:08:26,060 --> 00:08:30,060 more smoother next time. So we don't bounce all around, but you know, it's good, it's good to, 105 00:08:30,180 --> 00:08:34,560 uh, it's good to have someone like yourself to help iron it out, but more, more, more, uh, 106 00:08:34,560 --> 00:08:40,360 more seriously. So like, uh, we kind of briefly went over what AR does analyst relations. Um, 107 00:08:40,420 --> 00:08:44,060 and like, like, like to build on that, why don't, why don't we start off? Like, 108 00:08:44,620 --> 00:08:49,720 I think one of the questions, uh, that one of our colleagues, um, or the several of our colleagues 109 00:08:49,720 --> 00:08:55,480 is all often asking you as we, as we bring in people from the, let's say non-vendor side who 110 00:08:55,480 --> 00:09:01,620 aren't used to dealing with analysts dealing with, who aren't used to working with analysts is there's 111 00:09:01,620 --> 00:09:06,040 often, and tell me if, if, if you think the cycle of learning about analysts is different, but I've 112 00:09:06,040 --> 00:09:11,380 noticed that one of the more common things is it's almost like some variation of the, how many stages 113 00:09:11,380 --> 00:09:16,180 of grief are there? The final one is like acceptance, but there's one of the first stages 114 00:09:16,180 --> 00:09:21,640 of figuring out analysts is like, who are these people and who invited them to the party? And, 115 00:09:21,640 --> 00:09:27,500 and like, like, how would you describe like the role that industry analysts to be specific play 116 00:09:27,500 --> 00:09:34,920 in, in our industry? Like what, what do they do? Well, ultimately they are supposed to be providing 117 00:09:34,920 --> 00:09:43,080 unbiased, um, counsel, if you will, to end user organizations. So our potential customers, 118 00:09:43,980 --> 00:09:49,800 that's ultimately what they want to do. That's the value they bring to the party. Um, our, uh, 119 00:09:49,800 --> 00:09:58,660 potential customers or existing customers, whatever, go to them and ask them for insight or direction on, 120 00:09:58,660 --> 00:10:05,480 um, technology purchase decisions, decision-making, um, architectural paradigms, 121 00:10:05,640 --> 00:10:10,480 sometimes even cultural implications of these things. For example, that's a, that's a hot topic 122 00:10:10,480 --> 00:10:16,360 right now, given, uh, digital transformation, DevOps, microservices, you know, we've all talked about, 123 00:10:16,360 --> 00:10:20,520 and I'm sure a lot of the listeners know that implementing these things internally require 124 00:10:20,520 --> 00:10:26,040 a huge cultural transformation. So they like to get feedback from the analysts on how, 125 00:10:26,220 --> 00:10:31,040 how to overcome these things. And if there are, you know, technology, you know, technology purchases 126 00:10:31,040 --> 00:10:36,180 they can make to help smooth those things out and to help them kind of, you know, address some of the 127 00:10:36,180 --> 00:10:40,660 issues they're having internally with, uh, in this case, let's talk about, you know, 128 00:10:41,440 --> 00:10:46,940 in their IT organizations. So they're sort of advisors. Yes. And, but, but it has to be 129 00:10:46,940 --> 00:10:54,680 right. Supposedly unbiased. That's the value they bring. Right. Right. So speaking of that, 130 00:10:54,680 --> 00:10:59,500 so, I mean, along those lines, I, from your experience, how do analysts keep up? I mean, 131 00:10:59,500 --> 00:11:03,620 obviously they're typically segmented by a discipline. You know, I'm, I'm in this area of 132 00:11:03,620 --> 00:11:07,360 cloud or I'm in this area of data or what have you, but you know, how is an analyst supposed 133 00:11:07,360 --> 00:11:12,300 to stay up on something? So when I'm a company coming to them saying, help me figure out what 134 00:11:12,300 --> 00:11:16,300 I should do with this, that they're actually getting the latest and greatest advice from, 135 00:11:16,520 --> 00:11:21,020 from what's going on in the market. Right. I think it's a combination of talking with vendors 136 00:11:21,020 --> 00:11:29,140 and listening to, listening to what vendors are doing, having insight onto, um, vendors strategies 137 00:11:29,140 --> 00:11:35,320 with products. Um, and then also technical briefings. It also is based on the conversations 138 00:11:35,320 --> 00:11:39,520 they have with the customers, right? So they can grok from the types of questions they're 139 00:11:39,520 --> 00:11:44,080 getting where the market is headed. And that's a value of course to the vendors, right? Cause 140 00:11:44,080 --> 00:11:47,260 they can come back and say, Hey, I'm getting a lot of questions on containers and container 141 00:11:47,260 --> 00:11:52,560 orchestration. I'm getting a lot of questions on, on-prem paths. So that helps us, right? 142 00:11:52,560 --> 00:11:59,100 The vendors, um, they also attend events. Um, that's another way for them to, to, to keep 143 00:11:59,100 --> 00:12:06,740 up. Uh, and, uh, I think I assume like the rest of us reading on the interwebs to quick 144 00:12:06,740 --> 00:12:11,060 follow up. No, I'll, I'll flip back to you. I just wanted to ask, you mentioned, I think 145 00:12:11,060 --> 00:12:15,300 Hote in your description, uh, unbiased. So, I mean, there's at least the, uh, the occasional 146 00:12:15,300 --> 00:12:19,480 snark you see about, Hey, it's pay for play, you know, like, Hey, the only reason you're 147 00:12:19,480 --> 00:12:24,640 in a magic quadrant or a wave or pick a geometric shape that's used by an analyst firm. The only 148 00:12:24,640 --> 00:12:28,060 reason you're in that is because you've paid your fee and therefore that's why you're in 149 00:12:28,060 --> 00:12:32,260 there. Uh, obviously, Hey, analyst firms are in the business of making money and there are 150 00:12:32,260 --> 00:12:36,600 subscription costs that vendors and customers all pay for. But I mean, how do you counter 151 00:12:36,600 --> 00:12:40,300 that? I mean, from my experience directly dealing with analysts, there's some fairly 152 00:12:40,300 --> 00:12:44,460 thorough people. And while they may have more exposure to some versus others versus who they 153 00:12:44,460 --> 00:12:48,600 do briefings with, there's a real concerted effort to not be in anyone's pocket there. 154 00:12:48,980 --> 00:12:52,580 You know, we get argued with all the time by analysts. They're not just trying to pump 155 00:12:52,580 --> 00:12:54,980 anyone's products, but how do you answer those sorts of concerns? 156 00:12:56,160 --> 00:13:01,900 So how I like to frame it is as a vendor, we're not buying their opinion. You know, 157 00:13:01,900 --> 00:13:05,660 people say you're buying their opinion. No, we're not. We're buying their time, right? 158 00:13:05,660 --> 00:13:09,860 That's what most of our spend is, is to have access to these analysts, right? It's buying 159 00:13:09,860 --> 00:13:16,100 their time. And then hopefully, um, the time we spend with them leads to, to informing them 160 00:13:16,100 --> 00:13:20,480 and hopefully, you know, liking us, but that's not always true. And I've worked with other, 161 00:13:20,480 --> 00:13:27,880 with other vendors, for other vendors and who spent a lot more money than we do on analysts. And it did 162 00:13:27,880 --> 00:13:34,060 not necessarily mean that they liked us more. So I, in my 10 years of working in analyst relations, 163 00:13:34,060 --> 00:13:40,940 I can say that it is not pay for play. There are some, you know, smaller firms that perhaps, 164 00:13:40,940 --> 00:13:46,520 you know, may feel that way. Uh, but the, the ones with the reputation to uphold, 165 00:13:46,680 --> 00:13:50,400 for sure, I think are unbiased and you cannot buy their opinion. 166 00:13:51,280 --> 00:13:56,480 Yeah. I think, I think that's a good categorization that you buy the opportunity to influence them 167 00:13:56,480 --> 00:14:02,340 at, at worst, so to speak. Um, and, and, you know, at best, it's what you're saying is just like, 168 00:14:02,340 --> 00:14:07,820 you're, you're buying time with them consultative or otherwise, uh, to do things. And, and, and, 169 00:14:07,820 --> 00:14:12,160 you know, to add to, to, to be a little bit of the interviewed myself, since I've been an analyst 170 00:14:12,160 --> 00:14:18,380 several times, there are instances where you do hire analysts to do things for you, whether it's, 171 00:14:18,380 --> 00:14:24,500 uh, consultative things or straight up, like generating content for you. And it might be, 172 00:14:24,600 --> 00:14:30,920 it might be as, um, transactional, so to speak, as having them ghost write something, 173 00:14:30,920 --> 00:14:37,460 or it could be a little like, uh, a little, not weird, but a little more direct. Like, 174 00:14:37,520 --> 00:14:41,760 like we have some papers that we've licensed from various analysts and I've worked on papers like 175 00:14:41,760 --> 00:14:47,380 that before. And generally like, uh, as a consumer of analyst stuff, you have a pretty good sense of 176 00:14:47,380 --> 00:14:52,500 sniffing out when an analyst has done the work of, uh, fighting back and yet getting paid. 177 00:14:53,080 --> 00:14:57,980 So, so that, so that what they're writing is very genuine and helpful and, and, and words aren't 178 00:14:57,980 --> 00:15:03,860 being, um, you know, uh, suggest changes that into their mouths or anything like that. 179 00:15:04,380 --> 00:15:10,020 Mm-hmm. But even that practice isn't that prevalent. I mean, generally also like analysts 180 00:15:10,020 --> 00:15:16,980 charge a lot of money to like write a paper for you. And so it's a very, it's cost prohibitive to 181 00:15:16,980 --> 00:15:17,660 do that a lot. 182 00:15:19,140 --> 00:15:23,460 No, that's fair. Do you think that definition of an analyst has changed a bit? I mean, Coté, 183 00:15:23,600 --> 00:15:27,340 your, your days and Rita, we deal with, with different ones, but as you say, there's smaller 184 00:15:27,340 --> 00:15:33,160 boutique firms, there's people who are bloggers slash analysts that kind of definition of someone 185 00:15:33,160 --> 00:15:37,840 who's trying to be unbiased and analyze an industry sometimes differs from the person who works for a 186 00:15:37,840 --> 00:15:42,160 firm. How do you read it when you're figuring out who you want to interact with, differentiate 187 00:15:42,160 --> 00:15:47,580 between sometimes what almost feels like press versus what feels like independent thinker versus 188 00:15:47,580 --> 00:15:52,380 an actual analyst? Do you just stick with the analyst firms, the above the line, bigger ones 189 00:15:52,380 --> 00:15:52,980 that we think of? 190 00:15:53,800 --> 00:15:57,720 You know, that's a good question. I think it depends on the AR program and I hate to bring 191 00:15:57,720 --> 00:16:02,400 it all back to, well, I guess it's all about me anyway. So it depends on what you try and 192 00:16:02,400 --> 00:16:10,080 achieve with your analyst relations program, right? If you are needing content and you are 193 00:16:10,080 --> 00:16:18,300 needing kind of the more, the more public advocates, like the bloggers, bloggers slash analysts, then 194 00:16:18,300 --> 00:16:26,300 you can invest in those. But if you are looking to raise your visibility or, uh, or impact purchasing 195 00:16:26,300 --> 00:16:30,920 decisions, decisions of large enterprises, you're going to be going with the traditional, you 196 00:16:30,920 --> 00:16:36,980 know, Gartner and Forrester's of the world, right? Well, there's an Obama and four, five 197 00:16:36,980 --> 00:16:40,920 everyone as well. But, uh, I think it depends what you're trying to achieve with the program. 198 00:16:42,520 --> 00:16:42,920 Truly. 199 00:16:45,040 --> 00:16:50,000 So, so if, if, if you're in sort of like the market to, to work with analysts, let's, let's 200 00:16:50,000 --> 00:16:55,940 start with like the, uh, the buy side. So not, not vendors like us enterprises or organizations 201 00:16:55,940 --> 00:17:00,680 like, and you haven't really like interacted with analysts before, like, like what would 202 00:17:00,680 --> 00:17:06,020 be your advice about how do I, cause you know, analysts aren't cheap unless you talk with 203 00:17:06,020 --> 00:17:10,960 them only in Twitter, but like, how do I, how do I kind of like come up with the framing 204 00:17:10,960 --> 00:17:15,460 or the requirements or the buyer's guide for like analysts I want to talk with? I mean, I 205 00:17:15,460 --> 00:17:19,600 mean kind of narrowed down to the area we care about, like, you know, infrastructure software 206 00:17:19,600 --> 00:17:23,880 and development and kind of all that stuff. Like how would I figure out who I would even 207 00:17:23,880 --> 00:17:27,580 talk to and what, what kind of, what kind of questions I would ask them and what, what 208 00:17:27,580 --> 00:17:28,260 I would expect. 209 00:17:28,700 --> 00:17:33,340 Right. So do you mean which firms or do you mean which analysts, which individual analyst 210 00:17:33,340 --> 00:17:33,980 at a firm? 211 00:17:34,260 --> 00:17:38,540 Uh, well, well both, right? Like, like if, if, if I didn't really know anything, if I 212 00:17:38,540 --> 00:17:43,600 was just like, I was told I need to go talk to some analysts, right? Like, and you're, and 213 00:17:43,600 --> 00:17:44,700 you're an IT manager. 214 00:17:45,080 --> 00:17:49,920 Yeah. And, and, and I, I went to Google and I searched for like cloud strategy industry 215 00:17:49,920 --> 00:17:55,520 analysts. Right. And like, that's where I am. Like, like what, like how, what kind of advice 216 00:17:55,520 --> 00:18:00,060 could you give people to kind of handhold them to not, I mean, to accelerate having success 217 00:18:00,060 --> 00:18:01,540 talking with analysts basically? 218 00:18:02,340 --> 00:18:10,280 Right. So if you have, if your company has access or has given you specifically access 219 00:18:10,280 --> 00:18:15,320 or one of your close colleagues access to research, I think I would start reading research 220 00:18:15,320 --> 00:18:21,780 first. And then based on that, see who, you know, if there's an analyst that comes up 221 00:18:21,780 --> 00:18:27,620 regularly, you would set up an inquiry with that analyst, which are 30 minutes asking them 222 00:18:27,620 --> 00:18:34,540 questions. That's basically how I would start. Um, if you don't have access to, uh, research 223 00:18:34,540 --> 00:18:40,840 from, you know, Gartner, Forrester, Ovum, IDC, four or five, one, uh, Twitter is a great 224 00:18:40,840 --> 00:18:45,240 place, but even there you're going to get limited, right? A lot of the, um, for example, there 225 00:18:45,240 --> 00:18:48,720 aren't a lot of Gartner analysts that tweet. That's just how it is. Right. Forrester does 226 00:18:48,720 --> 00:18:53,180 a little bit more. Of course there's Red Monk and those folks that I would, that I would 227 00:18:53,180 --> 00:18:59,140 go to the Twitter and then follow up from there, either engage in, um, conversations with 228 00:18:59,140 --> 00:19:03,900 them there publicly, which isn't ideal. But if you are lucky enough to have that your 229 00:19:03,900 --> 00:19:08,740 company has paid for you to be able to talk to the analysts or read their research, then 230 00:19:08,740 --> 00:19:13,280 start with reading research and then do inquiries with the analyst who comes up the most in that 231 00:19:13,280 --> 00:19:15,800 research that you're reading on the topic you're interested in. 232 00:19:16,240 --> 00:19:20,860 And then, and then how, how, how would you frame up like the expectations of what you get 233 00:19:20,860 --> 00:19:26,600 like in, in an inquiry? Like, um, like let me back up a little bit too. There's also events. 234 00:19:26,600 --> 00:19:30,720 There's also events, right? I know Gartner does a whole few events. Forrester does some of, 235 00:19:30,820 --> 00:19:36,740 there's a lot of events as well. Uh, so does the four or five one where you can, and if 236 00:19:36,740 --> 00:19:40,060 you don't, and you can go to these events, even if you're not a customer of theirs or a 237 00:19:40,060 --> 00:19:44,400 client of theirs, you buy a ticket, it's a couple of grand, you sit in on a bunch of sessions. 238 00:19:44,900 --> 00:19:50,140 The sessions are often informative, but, um, you also get accessed one-on-one access to 239 00:19:50,140 --> 00:19:53,340 analysts. You could do like 30 minutes. It's almost like, like a speed dating setup is how 240 00:19:53,340 --> 00:19:56,180 I like to describe it. And you've been to one of these events with me. So, you know, 241 00:19:56,180 --> 00:20:03,100 you get a 30 minute inquiry. So if you are not a customer or client of Forrester or Gartner, 242 00:20:03,540 --> 00:20:08,820 go to their events, go to the sessions. That'll also give you a good sense of which analysts are 243 00:20:08,820 --> 00:20:11,820 writing about the topics you care about. And then you can also do inquiry with them 244 00:20:11,820 --> 00:20:18,500 at the conference or, you know, uh, across them after the session and ask them questions on the fly. 245 00:20:18,740 --> 00:20:24,800 Yeah. It's, it's like, uh, if you're not sure what your feelings on like Tex-Mex are, go to a buffet 246 00:20:24,800 --> 00:20:33,280 and you can figure it out. Exactly. So, so that's one thing. So, sorry, I cut you off. 247 00:20:33,460 --> 00:20:35,600 Oh, no, no, no, no. So in terms of what's just... 248 00:20:35,600 --> 00:20:38,760 I wouldn't have thought of the conference angle, but that's good. That's a good point of like how to 249 00:20:38,760 --> 00:20:44,800 get a very, uh, uh, affordable, wide exposure and kind of figure out how to, how to match up. 250 00:20:45,260 --> 00:20:50,100 Yeah. Yeah. Um, and then, so to your question, what to expect in an inquiry, you know, I always 251 00:20:50,100 --> 00:20:57,940 find that if you can, whether you're a vendor and end user, if you can give the analyst three to five 252 00:20:57,940 --> 00:21:02,840 questions, you want to go over specific questions that helps them be better prepared. Um, you can 253 00:21:02,840 --> 00:21:08,560 expect basically, you know, if you give them those questions, then you can just go right into it. 254 00:21:09,160 --> 00:21:14,560 Um, otherwise, you know, just expect them to give you, again, hopefully unbiased, you know, 255 00:21:14,560 --> 00:21:20,220 they can also give you, if they've talked into it, if they've talked to enough customers of a 256 00:21:20,220 --> 00:21:26,000 particular vendor, uh, they might share some feedback they get on a, on a specific vendor or 257 00:21:26,000 --> 00:21:31,880 technology like, Oh yes, you know, uh, I spoke to a company that was in a similar position as yours and 258 00:21:31,880 --> 00:21:38,740 they used Pivotal solution to achieve this by doing this. So, uh, that's the kind of stuff you 259 00:21:38,740 --> 00:21:42,840 can, you can expect, but as always, you know, the more information you can give them beforehand, 260 00:21:42,840 --> 00:21:45,620 the better, then we'll be better prepared to answer your questions. 261 00:21:46,040 --> 00:21:52,040 Right. And to summarize the last point, I mean, I, I, I think of analysts a lot as aggregators of 262 00:21:52,040 --> 00:21:58,180 anecdotes to some point, which, which sounds demeaning, but it's actually not. It's like they, 263 00:21:58,180 --> 00:22:03,960 they talk with so many vendors and as you say, end users or, or people, organizations who run this 264 00:22:03,960 --> 00:22:09,140 stuff that they start to pick up on all that undocumented stuff in the sky and they can, 265 00:22:09,140 --> 00:22:14,700 and, and once you aggregate anecdotes, use the old joke, that becomes data or data. And, uh, so they 266 00:22:14,700 --> 00:22:20,000 can start reporting on like what people, your peers are doing and what, what's working and not working, 267 00:22:20,000 --> 00:22:22,400 uh, in, in the kind of area that you're looking for. 268 00:22:23,480 --> 00:22:29,080 Exactly. Right. I mean, I was thinking, I don't even think about, I hadn't thought as much about 269 00:22:29,080 --> 00:22:33,400 the stories and the anecdotes. I often think of it just the strategy and the product information, 270 00:22:33,400 --> 00:22:37,020 but you're right. That's such an awesome source of information. If I'm just trying to find out 271 00:22:37,020 --> 00:22:41,580 does someone look like me, that they must've heard tons of stories that they can relate to that. 272 00:22:42,260 --> 00:22:50,120 You know, I like to tell by executives that, uh, customer references are the, um, currency 273 00:22:50,120 --> 00:22:57,080 of analyst relations. So, and that you can brief your analysts about your product and your strategy 274 00:22:57,080 --> 00:23:02,300 every month for a year and nothing changes. But once you have your customers talking to them and 275 00:23:02,300 --> 00:23:06,040 telling them what they've done, what they've achieved, what problems they've overcome, or even 276 00:23:06,040 --> 00:23:13,500 problems they still have, you know, it's all roses and chocolate, right? Um, they have a better idea of, 277 00:23:13,580 --> 00:23:20,060 of what, of our products. And as they aggregate these anecdotes, they can kind of see where 278 00:23:20,060 --> 00:23:23,160 trends are going, right? Right. So that's the value. 279 00:23:24,240 --> 00:23:29,860 So sticking with the end user, like what are some other, so there's sort of like inquiries and 280 00:23:29,860 --> 00:23:33,320 finding out stuff and kind of what's working, getting the lay land, but what are some of the 281 00:23:33,320 --> 00:23:37,560 other services that, that end users or things they could go to analysts for? 282 00:23:40,640 --> 00:23:48,440 You know, I hate to bring it down to, uh, brass tacks. I think it helps give them peace of mind, 283 00:23:48,440 --> 00:23:53,760 right? That they are making the right decision if it's on a specific vendor or a specific direction, 284 00:23:53,860 --> 00:23:58,500 like our architectural direction, like, Hey, is micros, should I care about microservices yet? 285 00:23:59,260 --> 00:24:06,840 Right. Or, uh, should I try and build my architecture on containers? And what is that? What are the 286 00:24:06,840 --> 00:24:07,780 implications of that? 287 00:24:09,060 --> 00:24:13,260 Sort of like a, uh, tastemaker validation, executive security blanket. 288 00:24:13,660 --> 00:24:17,660 Exactly. Well, exactly. You know, I, you know, I, so I talked to one of our, one of our customers 289 00:24:17,660 --> 00:24:22,660 about how they use Gartner and Forrester and they're like, it's often just, and I've actually 290 00:24:22,660 --> 00:24:27,520 asked, I've been at events and I've asked the attendees, what do you use them for? And a lot of 291 00:24:27,520 --> 00:24:33,620 them just say, so I can go to my manager and say, Gartner said it was okay. You know, it's like the 292 00:24:33,620 --> 00:24:39,480 whole, no one gets fired for buying IBM. It's, uh, you know, if you could say Gartner, Gartner says 293 00:24:39,480 --> 00:24:44,000 it's okay to spend this money on that, or Gartner says this is the better solution or, or, you know, 294 00:24:44,380 --> 00:24:46,240 it's kind of like insurance a little bit. 295 00:24:46,240 --> 00:24:50,880 But vendors do that too, right? I mean, we might say, Hey, we briefed the vendor before you launch 296 00:24:50,880 --> 00:24:54,460 a product or any company may, and then they can go back like, Hey, you know, Gartner, Forrester 297 00:24:54,460 --> 00:24:58,340 thought this was an awesome product or Red Monk was totally into it. So if it does crash and burn, 298 00:24:58,400 --> 00:24:59,940 you think you have to get out of jail free card. 299 00:25:00,660 --> 00:25:06,220 Yeah, definitely. Yeah. To, to, I think to use a technical term, it's third party validation, 300 00:25:06,220 --> 00:25:10,780 uh, that, that, that you can have on something, but it's sort of peer review in a non-scientific 301 00:25:10,780 --> 00:25:14,820 sense, which makes sense. And good point. I mean, I mean, you know, the, the, the other things 302 00:25:14,820 --> 00:25:20,440 I've noticed, uh, analysts doing is like, I, I've, uh, now that I go on sales calls every now and 303 00:25:20,440 --> 00:25:24,640 then, every now and then there's been like the weird spooky analysts in the back of the corner, 304 00:25:24,640 --> 00:25:29,920 helping evaluate like, like a big gigantic strategic purchase that some large organization 305 00:25:29,920 --> 00:25:34,820 is doing. So I, and, and tell me, I don't know what percentage of time analysts do this, but it 306 00:25:34,820 --> 00:25:42,300 seems like they get involved, um, in a more active consultative way, or they can get involved in an 307 00:25:42,300 --> 00:25:48,200 active consultative way in large strategy and purchasing decisions that, that, that a company's 308 00:25:48,200 --> 00:25:53,540 doing. And then, um, I think in addition to that, the other kind of input that they, they can kind 309 00:25:53,540 --> 00:25:58,260 of get, I mean, it's basically revolves around that is like, do something that's a little more 310 00:25:58,260 --> 00:26:03,740 consultative that builds on the research that you do and give me some pretty active yet third 311 00:26:03,740 --> 00:26:08,660 party input on these decisions that we're making. Not just, not just being like a bookshelf 312 00:26:08,660 --> 00:26:10,540 of encyclopedias that I'm accessing. 313 00:26:11,060 --> 00:26:17,200 Right. You know, well, some of them also publish actual spreadsheets that help you evaluate 314 00:26:17,200 --> 00:26:23,220 criteria for, for making purchasing decisions on, on products, uh, or playbooks. You know, 315 00:26:23,220 --> 00:26:28,200 I've seen play, you know, Forster does a whole playbook series. Right. So, um, they do offer 316 00:26:28,200 --> 00:26:32,940 that as well. And, and there are firms that have a whole consulting arm and as somebody put 317 00:26:32,940 --> 00:26:37,720 it, they implement the research that we write, you know? So that's probably the end. That's 318 00:26:37,720 --> 00:26:41,340 probably who you saw in the back of the room is the consultant saying, okay, this is how we 319 00:26:41,340 --> 00:26:45,860 would implement this based on Gartner's research, for example. 320 00:26:46,340 --> 00:26:49,260 Right. Yeah. I mean, is that common? I mean, cause as you look at it, you know, as you 321 00:26:49,260 --> 00:26:52,700 think about all this research, some of it is fairly hyper segmented, like, Hey, here's 322 00:26:52,700 --> 00:26:57,440 the best providers in, you know, mobile backend as a service. All right. How does that fit 323 00:26:57,440 --> 00:27:01,780 in my actual, you know, ecosystem of things I have here? Is that something you'd expect 324 00:27:01,780 --> 00:27:05,620 the analyst to be able to help these customers with? Or is that where these consulting arms 325 00:27:05,620 --> 00:27:09,920 come in and say, here's three or four areas that will impact you. Maybe it's research from 326 00:27:09,920 --> 00:27:14,560 multiple analysts. Let us help you realize that in an actionable way or do analysts, are 327 00:27:14,560 --> 00:27:18,180 they expected to be able to put their discipline in context of something else? 328 00:27:18,720 --> 00:27:23,940 You know, I think it's the consultants, honestly. And I believe that the analysts will say that 329 00:27:23,940 --> 00:27:31,620 as well. Cause the, the analysts are just aggregating the information and giving, giving the more 330 00:27:31,620 --> 00:27:35,540 intellectual, I hate to say the more intellectual perspective, the higher level perspective. 331 00:27:35,540 --> 00:27:38,060 And then the consultants are the one who are going to go in there and like, okay, this is 332 00:27:38,060 --> 00:27:40,440 how you're going to make it work. Right. 333 00:27:40,520 --> 00:27:46,980 So the analysts, yeah. That makes sense. So, so then the hope is as a, as an end user is you have 334 00:27:46,980 --> 00:27:55,880 the internal, um, expertise to, to make that, to, to bring to life this, uh, this, to put it into 335 00:27:55,880 --> 00:28:01,460 practice. Like, like they won't sit down and like pair program with you, for example, that's, 336 00:28:01,460 --> 00:28:07,740 that's another type of industry or, or even pair strategy presentation, PowerPoint deck with you 337 00:28:07,740 --> 00:28:12,960 so much, those, how you put it into practice is a bit different. So, so to close out the end user 338 00:28:12,960 --> 00:28:17,300 stuff, I mean, I'm estimates like this are always wild, but just to give people a sense. So if I'm 339 00:28:17,300 --> 00:28:22,240 like an end user, like how much would I expect to spend with analysts? Like, what's this going to 340 00:28:22,240 --> 00:28:29,380 cost me? Like, is this just like a $20 payment on PayPal or take out like a second mortgage on my 341 00:28:29,380 --> 00:28:37,780 house? Uh, it's going to be tens of thousands of dollars per seat, I think. So per individual person 342 00:28:37,780 --> 00:28:45,060 that you have, uh, accessing research and who has inquiry access. So, um, sometimes up to a hundred 343 00:28:45,060 --> 00:28:48,460 thousand dollars, depending on how much, what the research that they want to read. 344 00:28:48,600 --> 00:28:56,440 Right. So, so I would imagine for a very large organizations spending mid to high level six 345 00:28:56,440 --> 00:29:01,160 figures is probably not unheard of for, for, for analysts. Now there's not a lot of those 346 00:29:01,160 --> 00:29:07,700 organizations around, but you know, if, if you're spanning, you know, hundreds or low thousands of 347 00:29:07,700 --> 00:29:12,500 people, you're, you're talking a fair amount of a big chunk of change to get access to, to analysts. 348 00:29:12,940 --> 00:29:16,920 Yeah. I mean, and then, but then there's, you know, companies like RedMonk that make it way more 349 00:29:16,920 --> 00:29:21,420 accessible for companies to engage, right? They have different price points also. I mean, also for 350 00:29:21,420 --> 00:29:25,540 on the vendor side, you know, if you're a startup, you get a special pricing, but also I think they're, 351 00:29:25,620 --> 00:29:30,880 they're like their minimum, um, they have like a minimum amount you to engage with them. And then 352 00:29:30,880 --> 00:29:35,100 that gives you inquiry access to their analysts. So there's, there's that as well. And those guys are 353 00:29:35,100 --> 00:29:40,180 smart and know what's up. So there's, uh, what I say in a hundreds of thousands of dollars is that 354 00:29:40,180 --> 00:29:45,240 we're talking about, um, Forrester and Gartner. Right. Really. Um, but they're smaller firms that 355 00:29:45,240 --> 00:29:50,920 are, that are a little less expensive than that. Um, they're not, and, and, and who can afford 356 00:29:50,920 --> 00:29:57,300 Forrester and Gartner? It's going to be, you know, large enterprises, you know, um, fortune 100, 357 00:29:57,440 --> 00:30:03,560 fortune 500 companies. So, so then shifting to the vendor side and, and I'll, I'll do a little 358 00:30:03,560 --> 00:30:08,540 awkward segue to that as there's a third category that I discovered back when I worked on strategy. So 359 00:30:08,540 --> 00:30:13,460 it is usually a vendor ish side, but I've also noticed that analysts are helpful for, 360 00:30:13,600 --> 00:30:19,340 let's call them like investment banker types and not all of the stuff that analysts produce is useful 361 00:30:19,340 --> 00:30:25,660 to this, but their traditional definition of an industry analyst is on that first word is they 362 00:30:25,660 --> 00:30:31,040 cover and tell you about the state of the industry and how various companies are interacting and 363 00:30:31,040 --> 00:30:34,920 competing with each other. And analysts generally do this as well, but a lot of how people think tech 364 00:30:34,920 --> 00:30:39,560 industry analysts work is what we've been talking about. They are, uh, expert advisors on how a 365 00:30:39,560 --> 00:30:45,460 technology is used. Not always. I mean, you don't always primarily think of them as covering the 366 00:30:45,460 --> 00:30:50,540 companies in that area. Now, again, industry tech industry analysts do this a fair amount as well. 367 00:30:50,540 --> 00:30:55,280 But back when I was working on MNA and strategy, we would use analysts a lot in this way. And this is 368 00:30:55,280 --> 00:30:59,920 where people like IDC are extremely useful because you get like market sizing and forecasts 369 00:30:59,920 --> 00:31:04,740 consistently in, in pivot tables and stuff from them. So there's that other category that we probably 370 00:31:04,740 --> 00:31:08,920 won't talk about very much, but it is an interesting aspect to think about analysts being involved in 371 00:31:08,920 --> 00:31:14,960 sort of helping inform people like corporate strategists who are interested in how an industry 372 00:31:14,960 --> 00:31:20,720 is operating, not so much in acquiring software products and services, but that's another type of 373 00:31:20,720 --> 00:31:21,440 input that they can. 374 00:31:21,440 --> 00:31:25,540 Exactly. It's true. You're right. Thank you for bringing that up. They do do forecasts, 375 00:31:25,540 --> 00:31:32,320 uh, and usually about five years out. So they do that kind of stuff and market sizing. So yes, 376 00:31:32,320 --> 00:31:38,720 good point. And I believe Gartner has a Gartner invest group that is, uh, that's more tailored to, 377 00:31:38,720 --> 00:31:39,580 uh, investment. 378 00:31:40,140 --> 00:31:44,380 Right. And then four, four, five, one has a good specialty in that. Just, uh, I only say, 379 00:31:44,440 --> 00:31:47,440 cause I was there, so I know, but they've got an interesting specialty. If you're a, 380 00:31:47,440 --> 00:31:51,820 if you're an iBank or an MNA person, they, they, they know how to speak your speak and 381 00:31:51,820 --> 00:31:53,920 dry clean their shirts when they talk to them and all that. 382 00:31:54,700 --> 00:31:57,500 Actually, yes. I mean, I think, I think the four or five, one, when they came, 383 00:31:57,820 --> 00:32:02,340 when they came on board, we're really known as, oh, they're, they're, they're for the VC 384 00:32:02,340 --> 00:32:07,920 community. So they do have a reputation there and, and a good, uh, good presence there for sure. 385 00:32:08,240 --> 00:32:12,800 Indeed. So then, then as, as the final thing, before we get a little bit to a little bit 386 00:32:12,800 --> 00:32:16,160 about like, so what do analysts think about Pivotal and Cloud Foundry and on that? So 387 00:32:16,160 --> 00:32:21,800 if, if, if you're on the vendor side as we are, so, so what's, what's your sort of like little pitch 388 00:32:21,800 --> 00:32:27,060 on, uh, and by little, I mean, you know, brief introductory what's, what's, what's sort of like 389 00:32:27,060 --> 00:32:31,800 your overview of how vendors should best interact with the analyst community and what they should 390 00:32:31,800 --> 00:32:35,080 expect and kind of how they deal with them. 391 00:32:36,340 --> 00:32:44,380 So I like to think about my analyst program as a, as a continuity of conversation is what I like to 392 00:32:44,380 --> 00:32:51,340 call it, which sounds so fancy. I know, but it's really about an ongoing dialogue and it's, 393 00:32:51,580 --> 00:32:56,380 can't just be us talking to them or at them, right? We can't, like I said earlier, you're not going to 394 00:32:56,380 --> 00:33:03,040 be briefing your analysts every month and hoping to see something valuable happen. Um, you do, 395 00:33:03,200 --> 00:33:07,680 you do, yes, you brief them, you keep them up to date on your, your strategy, what you're doing, 396 00:33:07,840 --> 00:33:13,320 get them, talk to them early, get their input right via inquiry. So we get inquiries to get their 397 00:33:13,320 --> 00:33:19,580 input via inquiry on our direction, our vision, our strategy, and whether it makes sense. Um, find out 398 00:33:19,580 --> 00:33:25,080 what customers are asking them about or for what are customer concerns? Cause the value they bring is 399 00:33:25,080 --> 00:33:30,440 our customers and prospects are talking to them sometimes before they're even talking to us or 400 00:33:30,440 --> 00:33:35,360 instead of us. So that's, that's what I like to tell my, when, when, when I get pushed back from, 401 00:33:35,620 --> 00:33:40,400 from my constituents is, you know what, our customers are talking to them. So we need to be talking to 402 00:33:40,400 --> 00:33:45,720 them as well. Right. So that's, that's how I like to look at it. And like I said, it can't just be 403 00:33:45,720 --> 00:33:50,400 us talking at the analysts. We have to ask them for input as well. And that's why inquiry is important. 404 00:33:50,520 --> 00:33:56,480 And FaceTime is important and going to their events is important and reading their research is important. 405 00:33:56,480 --> 00:33:59,460 Right. It's, it's sort of like, this is the R of AR. 406 00:34:00,340 --> 00:34:05,960 Right. Yeah. Cause I mean, it sounds like, you know, really you, you've seen probably the opposite 407 00:34:05,960 --> 00:34:11,640 of those where people are either just, you know, drive by AR stuff like, Hey, I'm just going to 408 00:34:11,640 --> 00:34:15,460 shoot you a note and let you know there's a product update or we sync up every six months or 12 months 409 00:34:15,460 --> 00:34:20,660 where the analyst has no chance of remembering anything from six or 12 months ago. So I'm assuming 410 00:34:20,660 --> 00:34:22,060 you've seen all ends of the spectrum. 411 00:34:22,440 --> 00:34:26,320 Yes. And as a matter of fact, I remember talking to somebody saying, well, how often did you brief 412 00:34:26,320 --> 00:34:30,920 them? And he's like, Oh, I know pretty frequently twice a year. Like, no, it is not frequently. 413 00:34:31,700 --> 00:34:35,900 And I've also had analysts say, Hey, you know, before you came along, we talked to you guys 414 00:34:35,900 --> 00:34:41,120 once a year around the MQ time, which I, my jaw dropped, you know, that's, it can't be that way. 415 00:34:41,120 --> 00:34:46,320 And you can't expect them to really, I mean, they talk, they're talking to hundreds of, of, of vendors 416 00:34:46,320 --> 00:34:50,500 and customers. And so you can't expect them to remember everything. So you often have to, 417 00:34:50,640 --> 00:34:54,920 you know, sometimes you have to have the same conversation with them, but that's okay. Right. 418 00:34:55,100 --> 00:35:00,020 So, um, yeah, I mean, I'm assuming Coté you as well. I mean, I would assume a good portion of an 419 00:35:00,020 --> 00:35:04,900 analyst week is spent talking to vendors and doing briefings and maybe they carve out their Friday to 420 00:35:04,900 --> 00:35:09,000 write stuff, but I'm assuming if you're constantly inundated with information, it's not like you're 421 00:35:09,000 --> 00:35:14,860 keeping it all straight easily. Yep. Yeah. I mean, I mean, speaking as a former analyst. Yeah. I mean, 422 00:35:14,860 --> 00:35:22,640 that's, that's a, uh, I wouldn't say it's, well, it's one of the primary skills is figuring out how 423 00:35:22,640 --> 00:35:28,680 to turn off the fire hose or focus on the little raindrops you care about in it to be all metaphoric. 424 00:35:28,740 --> 00:35:35,640 That was silly, but, but it is, I mean, what you point it is, uh, you, uh, after you've been known 425 00:35:35,640 --> 00:35:41,440 well enough, you could spend all day on the phone and, and all day getting information and no time 426 00:35:41,440 --> 00:35:48,100 producing. Yeah. You know, and I, some of my closest analysts that I work with and who I've 427 00:35:48,100 --> 00:35:53,200 worked with for a long time, I've said, you know, I no longer, like I bet they turned off the, uh, 428 00:35:53,540 --> 00:35:58,400 ability for any vendor to set up briefings with them, which a lot of them, you know, automated the 429 00:35:58,400 --> 00:36:02,520 process. And now they just basically block out swatches time and they're, they're taking back control 430 00:36:02,520 --> 00:36:07,600 of their schedule so they can have inquiries and they can, you know, talk to the, to the people 431 00:36:07,600 --> 00:36:12,300 they care about. Like your said, your raindrops, you know, maybe, maybe do two vendor briefings a 432 00:36:12,300 --> 00:36:18,660 week as opposed to a 17 or some ridiculous number. So I'm assuming, Oh, please go ahead. I was just 433 00:36:18,660 --> 00:36:24,820 going to ask me, I'm assuming there's a writing output that's expected from most. So when I read 434 00:36:24,820 --> 00:36:29,500 them, those are comprehensive pieces. Like I like writing. And to me, these feel like, you know, 435 00:36:29,500 --> 00:36:32,860 I'm spending a week or two on these things. I can't just be on the phone all the time. So 436 00:36:32,860 --> 00:36:36,860 I guess there's that balance of, I need to constantly be absorbing information, but I'm 437 00:36:36,860 --> 00:36:40,700 getting paid on the fact of, am I also disseminating information back out? 438 00:36:41,200 --> 00:36:43,800 Yeah, exactly. There's the writing. There's also, I mean, the fact that they also have to 439 00:36:43,800 --> 00:36:49,240 do inquiry. A lot of them are actually reviewed on how much, how much inquiry they take 440 00:36:49,240 --> 00:36:53,200 more so than briefing. So if you think of it from their perspective, right, if they're being 441 00:36:53,200 --> 00:36:59,100 judged on internally, if they're being judged on how many inquiries, how much they write, 442 00:36:59,680 --> 00:37:03,880 what's the incentive to take a briefing, right? It's, it's, of course, briefings inform those 443 00:37:03,880 --> 00:37:08,280 two things, but they really have to be very choosy about the briefings they take. 444 00:37:08,840 --> 00:37:12,140 Yeah. You know, you know, as, as you're saying that Richard, it brought to mind, like, I remember, 445 00:37:12,140 --> 00:37:17,040 um, uh, I was reading, I was at Forrester. I was reading Lauren's report on the Cloud Foundry 446 00:37:17,040 --> 00:37:21,000 summit, which we talked about a few episodes ago and thinking like, Holy crap, this is comprehensive. 447 00:37:21,560 --> 00:37:25,780 Like, this is, this is like the lengthiest conference report I think I've ever read, 448 00:37:26,480 --> 00:37:32,600 but, but, and, and she, she did a good job at, you know, my opinion of, of pulling in, uh, all of 449 00:37:32,600 --> 00:37:37,520 the interesting things, good and bad that happened at that conference. And even in so much as you 450 00:37:37,520 --> 00:37:42,120 have in a conference report, a little bit of like, how should you think about this, right? Like as, 451 00:37:42,540 --> 00:37:48,800 as a user of, of this technology, what do you make of all this stuff? And, and it is, um, you can, 452 00:37:48,800 --> 00:37:55,380 you can kind of detect people who have a skill at, uh, very rapidly typing up well-organized 453 00:37:55,380 --> 00:38:00,680 thinking, which is, which is another good skill to have as, as a, uh, as an analyst. 454 00:38:00,680 --> 00:38:05,420 Right. That's just what you're making me think of is again, you know, Lauren's piece or others. 455 00:38:05,420 --> 00:38:09,980 I mean, you're expecting to get insight. I just don't want a regurgitation of session summaries 456 00:38:09,980 --> 00:38:15,100 or, Hey, here's, here's the 20 vendors in the past space. Nobody wants to read that. I want to read 457 00:38:15,100 --> 00:38:20,120 where you think it matters or who you think is up and down. And that takes synthesizing a ton of 458 00:38:20,120 --> 00:38:24,860 information and actually finding insight in there. I think that's what you pay analysts for as they're 459 00:38:24,860 --> 00:38:29,940 trying to take a 50,000 foot view, even though they often stay at a hundred feet, they also have to 460 00:38:29,940 --> 00:38:34,760 quick airlift out and say, these are things you should care about or not. But do you see that? 461 00:38:34,820 --> 00:38:38,740 I mean, Rita, and obviously Coté, you did this too, but that seems like that's what you really pay 462 00:38:38,740 --> 00:38:42,420 for. Yeah. And that's what I, and what I liked about her report is like you said, it's not like, 463 00:38:42,500 --> 00:38:46,600 well, they've been on this and this, and these are the, it's, it's about, she wrote a lot about the 464 00:38:46,600 --> 00:38:52,540 customer sessions, which I thought was great. And that's what her readers want to read. We want to 465 00:38:52,540 --> 00:38:57,960 hear. They want to know what did somebody who has the same problems that I do, who are trying to 466 00:38:57,960 --> 00:39:02,720 accomplish the same things I am, what did they do? What did they have to say? So I think she did a good 467 00:39:02,720 --> 00:39:09,360 job of pulling that stuff out. And exactly. And I was talking to, again, I was talking to an analyst 468 00:39:09,360 --> 00:39:16,980 contact of mine today about our own event, actually. And, you know, if it's just, and about 469 00:39:16,980 --> 00:39:22,120 what research comes out of that, right. And it's, it's balancing the big announcements. You know, 470 00:39:22,160 --> 00:39:24,800 someone said to me, well, you know, we're not information week. We don't have a deadline. 471 00:39:24,900 --> 00:39:28,280 We don't want to be pre-briefed and then briefed a bunch of times to write something about it. 472 00:39:28,280 --> 00:39:35,620 Right. So it's, as you said, it's not about product features and this and that when a lot, 473 00:39:35,700 --> 00:39:38,880 I mean, there is that aspect and that's what they can do. Agree. And that's when they can look at 474 00:39:38,880 --> 00:39:43,080 some of the more technical write-ups, you know, for example, the Gartner for Technology professionals 475 00:39:43,080 --> 00:39:48,600 folks do a lot of deep thinking and deep running on, on, on the technological, technological 476 00:39:48,600 --> 00:39:55,720 components. But it's, it's, it's all about how are, how are businesses putting these things 477 00:39:55,720 --> 00:40:01,060 into practice and what can I expect and, and how can I achieve my goals? 478 00:40:01,400 --> 00:40:05,740 Yeah, no, I think, I think that brings up a good point. Like the, the other thing to, 479 00:40:05,800 --> 00:40:11,100 to, to put it, to put into more words, what you're just saying there, Rita, that when people ask me 480 00:40:11,100 --> 00:40:14,960 about as a vendor dealing with analysts, the first thing I usually like to tell them is like, 481 00:40:14,960 --> 00:40:19,680 they're not press, right? Like, so, so they don't, and, and, and if you, 482 00:40:20,320 --> 00:40:27,960 if you think about how you work with analysts of how you think about press, you won't one at best, 483 00:40:27,960 --> 00:40:32,640 you won't get the maximum value out of an analyst. And at worst you'll insult them and they'll think 484 00:40:32,640 --> 00:40:39,460 poorly of you. Right. So, and, and in general, like there's reason, like small startups, like 485 00:40:39,460 --> 00:40:43,920 they have this problem and it's understandable, but like, you can always tell when they're, 486 00:40:44,120 --> 00:40:49,600 they hire like an agency and they're basically asking the PR person to also do AR and like, 487 00:40:50,020 --> 00:40:54,860 and, and it's a little dodgy and you have to rely on an analyst being very understanding, but 488 00:40:54,860 --> 00:41:00,180 you want to make sure that like, like even, even with pre-briefing is a little weird. I hadn't 489 00:41:00,180 --> 00:41:06,040 thought about it until you mentioned it, it, Rita, but it's almost like you want to be, uh, mindful of 490 00:41:06,040 --> 00:41:11,700 the analyst's time. And like, you don't really need, like they need to have the facts straight, 491 00:41:11,820 --> 00:41:15,500 but you don't have to work with them like reporters to like get them the facts and all this stuff. 492 00:41:15,500 --> 00:41:20,780 Like, it's more like the analyst is interesting, interested, uh, as, as we were talking about in, 493 00:41:20,780 --> 00:41:26,440 I only need as much information either as I have time and entertainment value for, 494 00:41:26,640 --> 00:41:32,480 but I only need enough information to form an opinion about this and, and, and therefore state that 495 00:41:32,480 --> 00:41:36,680 opinion. Well, the fact is they should already know what's going to, what you're going to be 496 00:41:36,680 --> 00:41:43,040 announcing months before, right? If you are doing a good job, right? Like they know where your 497 00:41:43,040 --> 00:41:48,580 product is headed or what your strategy is. They know what you want to be introducing or what's 498 00:41:48,580 --> 00:41:51,920 going to change or partnerships or whatever. They know this stuff. So they don't have to, 499 00:41:52,160 --> 00:41:56,960 you know, I will do just reminder emails, refresher emails. Okay. We talked to you about this. 500 00:41:57,620 --> 00:42:02,460 Just FYI. Let me know if you want a refresher, right? But it's not like, okay. And I 501 00:42:02,460 --> 00:42:07,840 work, I come from a PR background and I have had to do AR and PR and it was a two weeks before, 502 00:42:08,000 --> 00:42:13,100 Hey, can we pre-review on this thing we're announcing in two weeks? You know, and now I just 503 00:42:13,100 --> 00:42:17,520 like shudder at the thought of, of doing that. Right. No. And that brings up another good point 504 00:42:17,520 --> 00:42:24,080 about how, how vendors work with analyst is, uh, I don't know, this isn't entirely accurate, 505 00:42:24,080 --> 00:42:29,340 but it's almost like having them on retainer as the peanut gallery to your long-term strategy. 506 00:42:29,860 --> 00:42:35,320 Right. And, and, and have, having them come in and do, do strategy days with you or, you know, 507 00:42:35,320 --> 00:42:41,800 every analyst shop has their own name for this, but it's essentially under, under NDA and that, 508 00:42:41,800 --> 00:42:46,840 that, and analysts are generally pretty, even beyond pretty. They're generally very good at keeping 509 00:42:46,840 --> 00:42:51,140 secrets. It's as, as we used to say at Red Monk, we would go out of business if we couldn't keep 510 00:42:51,140 --> 00:42:57,500 secrets. Uh, but generally you, you have them, as you were saying, Rita, like months, if not quarters, 511 00:42:57,500 --> 00:43:02,160 ahead of time involved in what you're thinking and what you're doing. And in the same way that on the 512 00:43:02,160 --> 00:43:08,100 end user side, on the buy side, people want input into what they should be doing. If you, if as a 513 00:43:08,100 --> 00:43:11,980 vendor, you establish a good relationship with an analyst, you can get long-term input and product 514 00:43:11,980 --> 00:43:17,360 direction and all sorts of stuff from analysts. Exactly. Can I riff on that a little bit though? 515 00:43:17,380 --> 00:43:22,320 Cause I mean, at the same time, you know, let's not kid ourselves. Our job at Pivotal is to help 516 00:43:22,320 --> 00:43:26,140 influence analyst thinking or not. It's not altruistic here. I'm not trying to help them 517 00:43:26,140 --> 00:43:30,440 understand, you know, Hey, everybody's awesome. We want them to also believe that Pivotal is doing 518 00:43:30,440 --> 00:43:34,780 the right things, right. And our customers are doing impactful things. So, you know, is there that 519 00:43:34,780 --> 00:43:39,880 balance between look, our job and Pivotal, like many companies employs smart people to try to keep 520 00:43:39,880 --> 00:43:43,560 track of the industry and have very strong opinions about where the trends are going. 521 00:43:43,780 --> 00:43:48,060 So, I mean, analysts know that I would think when they deal with any vendor is that vendor's job 522 00:43:48,060 --> 00:43:50,960 is to make them think they're awesome and that they're going to write about them and they're 523 00:43:50,960 --> 00:43:55,900 going to name drop them and every other related sort of piece. How does an analyst balance that 524 00:43:55,900 --> 00:43:59,700 when they know they're being pitched, even though we're trying to have conversations and talk about 525 00:43:59,700 --> 00:44:03,740 strategy and I'm not trying to, you know, mind, you know, do a Jedi mind trick on them, 526 00:44:03,820 --> 00:44:08,240 but at the same time, you know, our job is to help them see that Pivotal is doing transformational 527 00:44:08,240 --> 00:44:13,680 stuff. Right. I think it's a combination of some of these guys have put them on the block. 528 00:44:13,780 --> 00:44:23,080 Right. So they've seen, they know when a vendor is BSing them. Am I allowed to swear on this 529 00:44:23,080 --> 00:44:27,140 podcast? I don't know. They can tell. BS is fine, but don't expand it out. 530 00:44:28,900 --> 00:44:35,440 Great. So they have, they can tell. I think they can tell. But the critical, back to like 531 00:44:35,440 --> 00:44:39,280 why customers are important, that's where it comes down to, right? If they're, if we're telling them 532 00:44:39,280 --> 00:44:43,380 we have tons of customers, we're doing great work and they're getting no inquiries from customers 533 00:44:43,380 --> 00:44:50,620 on our products or solutions or us, then there's a disconnect and they see that. 534 00:44:51,080 --> 00:44:54,600 And I've grown into that kind of situation of previous companies where they're like, 535 00:44:55,000 --> 00:44:58,160 sure, you're telling us you're doing all this stuff, but we get zero inquiries about this solution. 536 00:44:58,580 --> 00:45:04,540 Yeah. So, um, that's, that's, that's how they figure out what's, what's real and what's 537 00:45:04,540 --> 00:45:10,360 not. So, or I had one customer, one analyst say, you know, we don't want to not, not at 538 00:45:10,360 --> 00:45:13,840 Pivotal. I won't say that at Pivotal. We are not running into any of your customers in 539 00:45:13,840 --> 00:45:18,760 the wild, you know, as in like, they're not getting, you know, um, unsolicited inquiries 540 00:45:18,760 --> 00:45:20,960 about, about that solution. So. 541 00:45:22,520 --> 00:45:27,260 Yeah. And, and, and I, and I think playing my further gonzo thing of the interviewer 542 00:45:27,260 --> 00:45:31,640 becoming the interviewee, like, I think, uh, to answer your question, Richard, like, uh, 543 00:45:31,680 --> 00:45:36,480 sure. I mean, I mean, in, in my interaction, uh, with analysts at a vendor, whether I was 544 00:45:36,480 --> 00:45:42,820 at Dell or here, like I am always trying to influence them and, and, but, but the influencing 545 00:45:42,820 --> 00:45:46,580 is not so much like I was talking about earlier, putting words in their mouth. It's more having 546 00:45:46,580 --> 00:45:52,760 them understand the worldview that I'm representing. Right. So this is a good transition into the 547 00:45:52,760 --> 00:45:57,140 last thing I wanted to ask Rita about. And like, for example, at Pivotal, right? Like 548 00:45:57,140 --> 00:46:02,720 we, we have a certain view about how, if you're an organization and you're writing your own 549 00:46:02,720 --> 00:46:06,940 software and running it, we have this view that some of our Cloud Foundry friend, most 550 00:46:06,940 --> 00:46:11,080 of our Cloud Foundry ecosystem friends share, but like, this is how you should think about 551 00:46:11,080 --> 00:46:15,400 designing, writing, and running your software. And this is how you should manage the process. 552 00:46:15,920 --> 00:46:20,600 And so if an analyst doesn't already think like that, I'm going to do a lot of work. In addition 553 00:46:20,600 --> 00:46:24,500 to just telling them the facts and all this kind of stuff we've been talking about, about 554 00:46:24,500 --> 00:46:30,620 trying to persuade them that this is a better way of doing software in this context. And, 555 00:46:30,700 --> 00:46:35,760 you know, to a certain extent, I don't like bulldog them and argue them and use all those 556 00:46:35,760 --> 00:46:40,540 methods of rhetoric to like make them see things my way, but I'll definitely like just get on 557 00:46:40,540 --> 00:46:45,260 them to kind of be like, well, I think this is the best way of doing it. What do you think? And just 558 00:46:45,260 --> 00:46:48,980 kind of go over it with them. So there is that amount as a vendor, definitely trying to influence 559 00:46:48,980 --> 00:46:56,460 them to, to put it in the soft pedaliest way as possible, make them understand and at least 560 00:46:56,460 --> 00:47:01,380 mildly agree with like, Oh, the problem you're solving is legit. And the way you're going about 561 00:47:01,380 --> 00:47:03,560 solving, it seems like a good idea. 562 00:47:03,940 --> 00:47:08,700 Mm-hmm. Well, it seems like evidence matters there. I mean, Rita, you can chime in, but just 563 00:47:08,700 --> 00:47:12,940 like you said, influencing without the backing evidence is worthless. If they're not getting 564 00:47:12,940 --> 00:47:17,460 inquiries, if we're not showing customer evidence, if we're not showing that we're enlightening them 565 00:47:17,460 --> 00:47:21,320 with some idea they hadn't thought of before, you know, then we're just talking heads. We're not 566 00:47:21,320 --> 00:47:29,120 helping. Exactly. Exactly. I mean, it's, it's, it's, we have to have the evidence to back it up and the 567 00:47:29,120 --> 00:47:34,660 evidence is customers. Yeah, exactly. And that, that's what, you know, that's why, uh, we're, we're, 568 00:47:34,660 --> 00:47:39,780 uh, not to be all horn tootie, but like, I, I always, if people have seen the way that I do 569 00:47:39,780 --> 00:47:45,180 presentations, I always have lots of footnotes because as, as a former analyst, like that's where 570 00:47:45,180 --> 00:47:51,220 I spent a lot of my time is actually chasing down all these claims, right? So it's all, it's all, 571 00:47:51,280 --> 00:47:56,460 it's always important to have, make it really easy to access that evidence to back up all of the, uh, 572 00:47:56,460 --> 00:48:01,040 the wonderful claims that are all true, of course, that we at Pivotal make, but all, all the, all the 573 00:48:01,040 --> 00:48:05,700 wonderful claims that we have. So, so to that end, um, you know, with the, the, the time that we have 574 00:48:05,700 --> 00:48:11,140 left, so how, so, I mean, what's your take Rita? And, and we were thinking about like having you back 575 00:48:11,140 --> 00:48:17,080 every month or quarter or something to kind of, um, uh, give us a check-in on what's going on in 576 00:48:17,080 --> 00:48:21,440 the analyst world and what they're thinking about, like cloud native and platform and all the stuff 577 00:48:21,440 --> 00:48:26,820 that people that listen to this would care about. But to kind of start that process out, like what 578 00:48:26,820 --> 00:48:31,800 in aggregate, and then if you want to be specific to different firms, like, what do they think about 579 00:48:31,800 --> 00:48:38,520 like Cloud Foundry and a platform as a service and kind of like cloud native and DevOps, like where, 580 00:48:38,520 --> 00:48:41,820 where's the analyst community at the moment on all of that stuff? 581 00:48:42,820 --> 00:48:47,820 I think they're quite bullish, especially on Cloud Foundry. Uh, you mentioned Lauren's report 582 00:48:47,820 --> 00:48:55,540 and there was, uh, also an IVC report and, uh, uh, Fenton Ryan of Brandon Monk also wrote a piece 583 00:48:55,540 --> 00:49:01,720 on the Cloud Foundry summit from last month. Um, it's, it's, they're really seeing a lot of momentum 584 00:49:01,720 --> 00:49:07,620 and customer momentum there. Uh, and this is becoming a popular open source project and a popular 585 00:49:07,620 --> 00:49:14,000 community. So they're, they're quite bullish on that. I think that, uh, some firms are really 586 00:49:14,000 --> 00:49:20,220 perhaps looking a little too far ahead and thinking only about, or were only thinking about public 587 00:49:20,220 --> 00:49:26,000 paths, but from conversations I've had with them, they're getting a lot more inquiries and questions 588 00:49:26,000 --> 00:49:32,580 from customers on on-prem, um, paths, right? Like people at Cloud Foundry. And so they're figuring out 589 00:49:32,580 --> 00:49:38,360 what research to be writing that'll help answer a lot of those questions. So a lot of times, 590 00:49:38,360 --> 00:49:41,160 and this is something I've sort of brought up a lot of times what they try and do with their research 591 00:49:41,160 --> 00:49:45,540 is answer the questions that you're going to have during inquiry. Sometimes they bring up more 592 00:49:45,540 --> 00:49:50,340 questions and that's fine, but they like to answer the big questions you might have. And then you can 593 00:49:50,340 --> 00:49:54,420 get into kind of the more specific ones during inquiry. So that's what I'm hearing. I'm hearing 594 00:49:54,420 --> 00:50:00,120 there's a lot more interest in on-prem paths. Uh, and, uh, a lot of the folks focus specifically on 595 00:50:00,120 --> 00:50:05,800 Cloud Foundry. Um, I've heard that from a couple of different firms. So that's been pretty cool. Uh, 596 00:50:05,800 --> 00:50:12,060 in terms of DevOps, um, you know, the one thing that I noticed was interesting is when you talk about 597 00:50:12,060 --> 00:50:21,500 DevOps, agile microservices, all this stuff is whether you go the route of, uh, um, a paths, um, or 598 00:50:21,500 --> 00:50:26,860 building your own using containers and container orchestration, there's a cultural shift that needs 599 00:50:26,860 --> 00:50:33,220 to happen. And a lot of organizations struggle with that more than just buying a thing to get them, 600 00:50:33,220 --> 00:50:37,500 the DevOps if you will right you have to change mindsets and that's something companies are 601 00:50:37,500 --> 00:50:42,200 struggling with so those are some of the trends that i'm noticing there and of course there's a 602 00:50:42,200 --> 00:50:49,260 lot of you know a lot of writing on the containers but we'll see how that pans out yeah that's that's 603 00:50:49,260 --> 00:50:55,740 an interesting topic that or distinction that you bring up there like do you uh you know you know 604 00:50:55,740 --> 00:51:01,480 of of the analysts that you and and we we share a lot of the same favorite analysts and stuff but 605 00:51:01,480 --> 00:51:08,040 do you think they're handling balancing let's say culture and technology well like how's that kind 606 00:51:08,040 --> 00:51:14,000 of playing out because stereotypically and i say that as in this is not really very accurate but 607 00:51:14,000 --> 00:51:20,740 stereotypically like analysts cover like a category of technologies um but a lot of the kind of stuff 608 00:51:20,740 --> 00:51:25,940 that we're dealing with nowadays is sort of like more horizontal than vertical and so like how are 609 00:51:25,940 --> 00:51:32,840 you finding the analyst community is kind of like going multi-vertical like like how how's that 610 00:51:32,840 --> 00:51:40,760 panning out for them so do you mean talking about like the human component right what they're trying 611 00:51:40,760 --> 00:51:45,040 to achieve or specific yeah exactly specifically like what you're saying is like well you can you 612 00:51:45,040 --> 00:51:50,720 can't really like install the DevOps right it doesn't come on it doesn't come on five dvds and 613 00:51:50,720 --> 00:51:56,080 there's a wizard to use to put it on your server right like there's like a lot of other stuff that 614 00:51:56,080 --> 00:52:01,320 comes with it and so are you are you finding i don't know maybe i'm making a false distinction 615 00:52:01,320 --> 00:52:06,280 here but are analysts is that something that like analysts have to add in or they've always covered 616 00:52:06,280 --> 00:52:10,600 that kind of stuff or how does that figure into they haven't their stuff they have they're having 617 00:52:10,600 --> 00:52:16,620 this is a new thing for them as well and i think it's challenging for some of them actually i think 618 00:52:16,620 --> 00:52:20,440 are really excited about it some of them actually we've been thinking about it for a while i know 619 00:52:20,440 --> 00:52:28,100 uh jeffrey haban of forrester has been writing about application development and culture of such 620 00:52:28,100 --> 00:52:34,200 for a long time and um he's had a couple of reports uh he he's published some and he has more coming out 621 00:52:34,200 --> 00:52:39,360 you know how to build really good teams right good development teams how to get the most out of your 622 00:52:39,360 --> 00:52:45,820 developers and they're not and you know i don't mean that in a you know make them work till they're 623 00:52:45,820 --> 00:52:50,300 sweating blood for you but how to get the most out of your developers right that makes everybody happy 624 00:52:50,300 --> 00:52:55,360 it's not like a spice miner in dune that works to the last minute to extract all the spice before 625 00:52:55,360 --> 00:53:02,280 the world yeah exactly so i think you know i think some of them um have been probably the guys uh who 626 00:53:02,280 --> 00:53:07,680 cover and the gals who cover who covered app uh application development programs and things like 627 00:53:07,680 --> 00:53:15,320 that but it's becoming more of an issue right uh and more analysts who have only been focusing on 628 00:53:15,320 --> 00:53:22,900 technology and platforms and purchasing purchasing the the thing um are having to think about oh wow 629 00:53:22,900 --> 00:53:27,420 you know these customers can't just buy this this path and install it and everything is is great you 630 00:53:27,420 --> 00:53:31,040 know people have to change the way they work and how do we advise our clients and how to do that 631 00:53:31,040 --> 00:53:36,380 yeah that makes sense well before we wrap up do you have anything else uh i mean we'll definitely uh 632 00:53:36,380 --> 00:53:43,140 have you back to kind of go over uh field notes from analyst land yeah that'd be great but but is there 633 00:53:43,140 --> 00:53:47,560 anything else that like if for people who wanted to figure out like whether they're vendors or end 634 00:53:47,560 --> 00:53:52,120 users or wherever like when it comes to like what analysts do and how to best work with them that you 635 00:53:52,120 --> 00:53:58,600 would want to go over no i think we said it all i think it's think of it as a think of your 636 00:53:58,600 --> 00:54:06,660 the relations part of what we do right think of the the long-term implications um they and think of 637 00:54:06,660 --> 00:54:10,500 them as they're they're they're humans on the other end of that phone call or either the side of that 638 00:54:10,500 --> 00:54:15,140 table who you know like it's not like okay so here's this thing now go tell everybody how wonderful 639 00:54:15,140 --> 00:54:21,000 my thing is in the world so um it's it's it's really about a long-term conversation and a dialogue 640 00:54:21,000 --> 00:54:26,660 and you have to be willing to listen to them as well that's right that's thus far siri cortana and alexa 641 00:54:26,660 --> 00:54:32,240 can't really uh give you good advice about enterprise architecture at least at least that i've encountered 642 00:54:32,240 --> 00:54:37,980 yet i don't i don't know what google's version is maybe google has it it'll be you remember when uh 643 00:54:37,980 --> 00:54:43,800 i think i'm remembering this correctly but like some facebook ai people said they'd finally solved like 644 00:54:43,800 --> 00:54:49,220 the go like not the go language of playing the game go and then like a couple days later some google 645 00:54:49,220 --> 00:54:53,060 research person was like oh yeah we figured that out a few years ago we just didn't really think we 646 00:54:53,060 --> 00:54:59,520 needed to tell anyone but so i don't know who knows what's going on over there in the uh the chocolate 647 00:54:59,520 --> 00:55:05,460 factory as our uk press friends like to call it maybe they got it sorted out well uh if anyone wanted 648 00:55:05,460 --> 00:55:09,180 to uh follow up with you i don't know what do you got uh you got a twitter handle there or something 649 00:55:09,180 --> 00:55:19,520 it's rita m as in mary at yeah that's my twitter handle right there rita m go there perfect i was on 650 00:55:19,520 --> 00:55:25,980 i was on early i was on twitter early well just as a small admin note i think we've mentioned this 651 00:55:25,980 --> 00:55:32,760 previously but we we got ourselves all transitioned and set up in soundcloud uh if you go to find the 652 00:55:32,760 --> 00:55:37,820 show notes which i'll tell you you can get a url to it but if you go to soundcloud.com slash 653 00:55:37,820 --> 00:55:44,560 you might want to get a pencil and write this down Pivotal conversations just all one word you can 654 00:55:44,560 --> 00:55:50,180 find the direct uh soundcloud thing that we have now that said all of the full show notes and the 655 00:55:50,180 --> 00:55:56,860 kind of like official stuff as always is posted at uh pivotal.io slash podcast and you know we we put 656 00:55:56,860 --> 00:56:00,220 pretty extensive show notes in there and links to things and you can find those as well and we're 657 00:56:00,220 --> 00:56:05,960 also now i finally did the legwork of putting us in itunes so you can just search for Pivotal or Pivotal 658 00:56:05,960 --> 00:56:11,440 conversations in itunes and find us and subscribe there and if you want to like uh leave a review or 659 00:56:11,440 --> 00:56:17,020 something that would make me feel good but the the best way to uh if you're interested in this topics 660 00:56:17,020 --> 00:56:21,780 other than talking with rita at the twitter name that she gave is as always you can email us at 661 00:56:21,780 --> 00:56:28,600 podcast at pivotal.io or you can reach me in twitter and i'm just Coté c-o-t-e and how how would 662 00:56:28,600 --> 00:56:34,900 people find you richard yep i'm just r seroder s-e-r-o-t-e-r i'm not as as cool as Coté i'm not 663 00:56:34,900 --> 00:56:41,640 as short as rita m well we've got to cover the spectrum there's just a full gradient of awesomeness 664 00:56:41,640 --> 00:56:46,380 that we have we don't want to limit ourselves to any particular type of excellence so that's true 665 00:56:46,380 --> 00:56:51,540 to that end uh this has been another episode of Pivotal conversations and thanks for listening 666 00:56:51,540 --> 00:56:52,980 we'll see everyone next time