Welcome to the Cloud Native in 15 Minutes podcast. It's been a while since we've had to post an episode, but here we are. I'm Derek Harris from VMware, and my guest today is Gautam Palapa, a global CTO at VMware. And Gautam is a specialist in business transformation, and that's what we talk about specifically. We're talking about business transformation in a post-COVID-19 world and what that's going to look like. Obviously, a lot of companies are going through some dialsides right now. It's been a tough few months, but Gautam has a take that this actually might end up being a net positive for some companies and employees and consumers in the long run as some of the innovations we've been forced to undertake during the past few months are going to stick with us, ranging from working from home to more empathy for the user experience or even the developer experience within companies. So I think it's a uplifting might not be the right word, but if you're looking for some source of optimism, I think Gautam is going to deliver that. So stick around. All right, Gautam, just to get started, can you talk through, give listeners a quick background on your history and your experience, like kind of your role and your experience in business transformation? Sure, love to. So I'm Gautam Palapa. I'm a global CTO at VMware, where I focus on business transformations. My goal and something that I've been doing throughout has been to work with different organizations, people, leaders, and try to transform their people, their people, processes, technology, and their cultures so that they can operate in a much more developer productive way and also to improve the quality of life of not only the organizations, but also the people working there. So that's kind of my motivation. I've led various business transformations in the past when I was working at large telecommunication and other organizations, and then decided to do it on a bigger scale, thanks to Privatel and now VMware and work with
2:02many people in different verticals. So just to level set, can we talk about, when you talk about business transformation, what does that mean exactly? And how does it compare with, I think, digital transformation, which is the term, I'll be honest, that I'm more familiar with? What's the connection? Yeah. So, no, that's a really good question. And thanks to media and other places, the words have been used interchangeably. So when you talk about digital transformation, data is at the core of all the transformation that occurs. The organization uses data, the analytics around it, the learnings that they get out of the data, and then try to transform their organization in different ways. A business transformation is a much more broader concept. It takes into account changes from a cultural perspective, from a business perspective, like the business models and so on, from an IT portfolio perspective, the space that they have to work in, and also the people and processes. So it encompasses digital transformation. It's much more a broader umbrella. And this is the definition that I've operated on. So at VMware, when we interact and work with various companies, and we talk about business transformation, it's not just about using data and capturing data and using that observability to get benefit out of it. But it's more about how do we holistically help the organization grow and move from whatever state they are in into a generative culture, where you have a growth mindset, you have a positive culture, you have safe spaces and psychological safety, and all those various things. All right. And why do you think there's such a push around this stuff now? I think a digital transformation specifically, we've had the internet for a long time, we've had smartphones, I mean, really ubiquitous for about a decade or so, like, what is it now? Why is it now that we're finally starting to see this discussion pick up so rampantly?
4:03The biggest driver, I feel that that is accelerating all of this, not only digital transformation, but also all the other aspects is moving to a cloud-native space. The barrier to entry for organizations is pretty low right now, especially in a cloud-native world. You have public and private IASs, you have, you don't have to worry about the infrastructure anymore, you have various technologies, you have abstraction layers such as VMware Tanzu that will help you spin up and VMware Spring Runtime that will help you spin up applications in minutes. And then you don't have to worry about the scalability or the security portion of things, because a lot of it is now taken care of. And so it's much more accelerated to get something onto the platform quickly and have people consume it. And then you have mobile applications that can be pushed quickly. There's a lot of transactions that go over there. So with a huge amount of data, with a huge amount of customer outreach, and the ease of deploying these applications, it becomes really imperative for organizations today to embrace this transformation and start moving and accelerating towards it. And with this pandemic, the global pandemic that we are suffering through right now, it becomes even more important because everyone's working remote, you need to have different collaboration tools, you need to have different applications, and you need to manage your infrastructure and your applications remotely, which is the definition of cloud-native abstraction. Yeah, that was going to be my next question. So I was like, okay, so why now? Well, because there's almost no, there's not an excuse not to, like you said, the technology aspect of it at least is there. And so if you're going to transform the pieces of the puzzle technologically, it seems like they are there to actually do that. But I don't want to ask me, it's always, I mean, for any number of
6:04reasons, including organizational and cultural reasons, this is always a challenging and complex task. But then, what I wanted to ask was, how was COVID-19 and this whole coronavirus pandemic added to that, right? I mean, it must have complicated things markedly. Definitely. And there are a lot of organizations who were thinking of starting their own transformation, but didn't have that compelling event to actually go into it full bore. And now with the pandemic, they are forced to do it because all of a sudden overnight, you have 100% off your workforce working remote, and you don't have the concept of coming in and working together, collaborating physically in the same co-located space. You need to adapt to different ways. And especially if you're in verticals, such as the essentials, like retail and so on, you don't have the luxury of customers coming into your stores. And having that physical and tactile interaction that they would have taken for granted, it suddenly goes away. Everything is now digital. So these organizations have to quickly reinvent themselves and discover how they can have that digital twin of the physical interaction that they have and implement it. And that's what COVID is actually bringing. It also, a funny byproduct of this is that it has levered the playing field. So for example, all the startups, they had a huge advantage because they could move really fast. They were extremely nimble and they could deploy applications quickly, do penetrate the market, and then start getting revenue out of it. While the other incumbent companies used to take much more of a deliberate approach around it because they had existing technologies, have these big incumbents who actually have the money to invest in innovation strategies that can help them. So it's reduced the gap between startups and incumbents. And so it's all fair game right now.
8:08So it's almost like, I mean, if you look past the obvious financial disaster that has been a lot of this, like this, the silver line, one of the silver linings might be if you're a large company, this kind of forced your hand. And like you said, level the playing field in the sense that you see, you see why now it's very, it should be very clear why you need to look at making a change in some of these areas, invest in innovation, because you know, whatever, it was something that seemed like maybe a, a decades out or a long-term thing became immediate very quickly. Yeah. Are there other silver linings that you're saying? I hate to use that term because it's like, I mean, again, like just given the gravity of everything, but I mean, for example, I look at working from home, you know, the idea of enabling people to work from home as a, as a, as a thing that maybe should have been looked at earlier or, or like, you know, like, like you mentioned, adopting some advanced collaboration tools and, and just generally making the, the workplace, not this thing where you go to the office and you're face to face all the time. And that's the only way that work can ever get done. Like that's, that seems like something in the longterm, that's going to be a benefit. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And, and I can understand we as humans always try to look for something hopeful, even in the face of adversity. So I understand us all struggling through these very stressful times and trying to find positive things that we can hold onto and start embracing and, and driving. One of the things that I feel that that has come out of it is there's going to be a new way of working, right? You mentioned about remote workforce and how it's going to stay for a while. And I, I fundamentally believe that we're going to change and we're going to elevate the way that we, collaborate, execute and communicate and even enable our folks. When right now we're all working from home and while we're working at home, we also have life happening around us. And that is seeping into
10:09our work. So while it might be considered as working from home, it's not, it's not truly that it's actually existence at home while we are trying to be productive and trying to help interact with the our personal and professional lives. That is going to fundamentally the change, change the way we work, especially from agile teams. Agile teams always used to stress upon co-location, making sure that you are exchanging information quickly through organic methodologies. And now in a remote workforce, all those are going to be challenged because you don't have the concept of co-location. You have to have that virtual collaboration space and try to find new ways of interacting with people. So I think the ways of agile working is going to change, which is extremely interesting. It's also very exciting. I think the ways we collaborate is going to improve. I mean, there are a ton of apps that have just popped out over the last few months, which try to recreate hallway conversations, team chats, virtual coffees, virtual happy hours, water cooler talk, those kinds of things. And it's very interesting to see how that happens. I think it's really interesting to see how that works. It's very interesting to see how that works. It's really interesting to see how that works. It's very interesting to see how that works. We've had one large co-located team and then the distributed members were invited into that co-location space. And now with that being 100% distributed, it's going to be very interesting. I feel we're going to evolve much more from a collaboration perspective. And now it helps us empathize with all the distributed teams as well, because every one of us are in the same state and it helps us connect more as humanity. And I think that will, that, that is another silver lining that comes out of this. Yeah, for sure. I, as I worked from home since I think 2006, and it's been various experiences depending on the team, how distributed the team was,
12:13would you get how much of an, sometimes, sometimes it was how much of an outsider. I mean, that might be too strong of a word, but yeah, there are definitely situations where it felt like you're part of a team because everything was distributed. And then there were situations where it felt like you're this person who kind of jumps in and people are forced to do a zoom meeting or hang out or whatever, because you're on the call. Right. And you just, you're kind of inserted unnaturally into, into the process. Yeah. I think this, so this definitely seems to be a silver lining. And the other thing too, when you talked about existing from home, like, I mean, just, just before I was starting to record this podcast, I had to, you know, kind of scoop my daughter away from, away from my office door. Um, and I think, and the idea of empathy, I'm curious if you think like what your sense is for how organizations are going to. So as, as, as they start to readjust and recalibrate things after, after things kind of level out here, like this idea of maybe it's work life balance or something. But when you, when you're starting to redesign application workflows or when you're starting to redesign whatever, like this idea that, or, or how teams work together is like your employees are also people. And we're starting to realize that now everyone's like CEOs and celebrities, everyone, their kids are at home. There's no school. And you start to realize that people at the, at the end of the day, everyone is kind of going through the same thing. Maybe, you know, maybe that's also shifts the way we think about work or the way we think about technology. Definitely. And, and so COVID-19 challenged everything that we took for granted, right? If you, if you think about Maslow's hierarchy of needs at the beginning of this pandemic, when the lockdown started, we had a serious problem with food and, and other essentials logistics. And so the pandemic actually challenged our physiological needs. And that is something that hasn't happened for a very long time in society. So the very foundation of our hierarchy of needs was shaken. And then in addition to that, with the lockdown and with the shelter in place, our safety has been challenged.
14:16Then we've not been able to interact with our loved ones. And so the sense of love and belonging is lost. And that is accelerated or rather amplified by the fact that we're all working remotely as well. And we don't have, we don't get to interact physically with our coworkers. And that happened overnight. And so as part of all those things being eroded, definitely there's going to be a hit on the self-esteem for a lot of people. And then self-actualization. People are very scared. It's a very stressful time. And, and like you mentioned, there's life happening all around us. And organizational leaders, I believe have started realizing that, you know, we had this comfort level of different physical locations, satellite locations that were spread out separately. We had different contexts. We had different norms, rules of engagements in each of these physical locations. And all of a sudden, these satellite locations have collapsed into one single environment that is consistent and is permeating throughout. And so, you know, I think that's a lot of people that are in the world. And I think that's a lot of people that are in the world. And I think that's a lot of people that are in the world. And I think that's a lot of people that are in the world. And I think that's a lot of people that are in the world. And I think that's a lot of people that are in the world. And I think that's a lot of people that are in the world. And I think that's a lot of people that are in the world. And I think that's a lot of people that are in the world. And I think that's a lot of people that are in the world. And I think that's a lot of people that are in the world. And quietness to a six-year-old boy who's cooped up for over a couple of months. And it's really hard. The same thing with pets, right? So what I've found very encouraging is that good organizational leaders have started embracing this and understanding and empathizing with the employees and realizing that, like I said, it's not an experiment in working from home. But instead, this is existing from home with a focus and a purpose. And so they have started acknowledging that the developer productivity is going to reduce. And so they're slowing things down a bit. They understand that you need to have a productive, safe space to work in.
16:18And so a lot of companies are helping people who are working from home set up their comfortable environment so that they feel at ease. And then they have some sense of isolation if they're working from home for long hours. They also have introduced wellness programs and then ways to help people move around, be healthy, not just stuck at a computer, those kind of things. Those are positive benefits that would not have happened if not for this pandemic. And so it's very encouraging to see these organizational leaders elevate and empathize with employees. And I think it's going to be better for everyone overall. Our productivity is going to shoot up because once we start becoming comfortable and feeling much more safer, you are more prone to innovation and creativity and then collaboration and happiness overall. And so everyone's quality of life is going to improve. Right. And maybe, I mean, maybe it's exactly the stuff we've been talking about, but I'm curious what like what kind of questions, what kind of work you've been in discussions you've been having with clients during this time and what they're what they're concerned about or how this is affecting their plans or I mean, and again, like I said, maybe it's exactly what we've been talking about. But I'd be curious to get that sense. Yeah. So I work with clients in different verticals and the most hard hit ones are the hospitality sector and the food industry. Right. So and then the next ones are the essential workers. Those people are are still continuing to support the entire our entire society in putting themselves at risk at each time. So when I work with these kinds of people, the I feel extremely positive with the way that they are valuing the heroism of the essential workers and the people who are on the front lines, they're taking steps to protect them.
18:18They're taking steps to make them feel much more safer. And it's not just monetary, it's more psychological as well. And a lot of leaders are actually stepping forward and rolling up their sleeves and helping working in the trenches, so to speak, in order to make things better. So I think that the general shift within the IT organizations to help the supply chain logistics and the back end back end systems is is tremendous. So there are there are there are some clients that I've worked with who were who felt that deploying applications are making improvements or making adjustments to their existing application stack once a quarter. And they thought that that was pretty aggressive and now deploying like multiple times a week just so that they can push new features that help the customers that protect their supply chain folks and the store store employees. So it's it's it's phenomenal seeing how we as humans have started to coalesce together and try to fight back and and protect each other. It's it's it's great. Yes. So finally, Gautam, I want to ask you, is that the lasting impact of this maybe is, you know, from a technological perspective to like IT teams are hopefully are going to improve for the better as well as innovation. Right. As companies start to pick up the pace of pushing out features and adopting cloud native technologies and doing all this like like maybe in the end for at least from an IT perspective, from a technology perspective. This was a this was a jumpstart to getting almost to that that that place where where companies needed to be. Oh, definitely. So it's existential crisis crises always drive technology innovation by leaps and bounds, right? Right. It's adversity that actually helps us or the desire to overcome adversity that actually helps us progress forward.
20:18I I personally feel that there are a couple of things that are going to hugely get improved upon. The first one is the organizational culture, the definition of it and what it actually means means for a large predominant group of people who are working remotely, what the definition of that and is is going to change. Next, from a process perspective, there's going to be a huge amount of push towards automation. We want to get things faster and quicker and we want to do it with with lesser manual intervention and also reduced risk. And so automation is going to be a big push. From a people perspective, there's going to be more empathy and leaders are going to be more open. And we've already seen a lot of these with with several leaders in the IT community stepping forward and releasing statements, supporting various causes. And from a from a from a technology perspective, for sure, we're going to we're going to fundamentally improve our abstraction, our ability to deliver quickly. The speak to market process of things is going to improve the security of things is going to be hugely improved in my mind, especially because of the different ways in which you can now deploy applications and the various points of entry. And then from a scalability and stability perspective, we're going to be going to jump in leaps and bounds because now it's more existential. It is a necessity. It is not a nice to have anymore. So fundamentally, we are going to change and improve and grow as a culture and a society. All right. Well, that seems a good place to end. And I hope you're right. And thank you so much. Thank you. OK, there you have it. I hope you learned something. If you want to follow Gautham online, you can follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn at his username is G Palapa, G P A L L A P A. So you can find him on Twitter and or LinkedIn.
22:19You can also find some of his blog posts on business transformation at on the intersect site, which is Tonsu dot VMware dot com slash intersect. And of course, to find out more about all things cloud native and and VMware space in that world, you can check out the Tonsu portfolio of products at Tonsu dot VMware dot com. That's T-A-N-Z-U. T-A-N-Z-U. Tonsu. Tonsu. Thank you.