NetApp, Inc. (NTAP) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

[Presentation] Hi, and welcome to Courageous Leadership in Times of Global Crisis and Uncertainty, an HMG Live! virtual briefing covering what matters most to drive a winning agenda and make the future a better place. A warm welcome to today's host, Lead Principal and CEO of HMG Strategy, Hunter Muller.

Good afternoon. Good afternoon, and welcome. Welcome to the 2020 Charlotte Virtual Summit. I'm Hunter Muller, Lead Principal of HMG Strategy. My team and I are delighted to be here with you today. I think an exciting agenda, reimagining the business and the future of work, what you need to know now, a brilliant agenda, and let's get on with it. Big thanks to our partners today. Our virtual summit partners are Darktrace, Duo, Moveworks and Pure Storage. Thanks for your support. And of course, our association partners, SIM Charlotte, and we have a spokesperson from SIM to join us. Are you here? Okay. We've got a long relationship with SIM across the country and SIM Charlotte. We'll hear from Raja here later. Nick, if you could advance the slides. Excellent. So we've been busy over the past 3 months. I know you all have. What an exciting time. What a challenging time. What a scary time, right? But what this crisis has done and will uncover are the future leaders of business, the future leaders in our world. And those leaders that leaned in courageously and passionately and authentically are the ones that are leading us out of this incredible situation, the global pandemic. So pleased to be part of our digital journey. We'll do probably 3 summits this week alone in the U.K., here in Charlotte as well as St. Louis. And please dial in and follow us on social media. Pretty active on social media, over 100,000 impressions a week and over 1 million impressions of our research agenda worldwide every week. So again, a full slate of summits through the summer into the fall, all virtual, all digital as well as our webinars with partners Darktrace, Ivanti and Okta coming up in the near future. So again, thanks for Zooming in. Let's bring in our first presentation, a company that we've been working together, collaborating with now for over 3 years out of Silicon Valley. Bhavin Shah, the CEO and Founder of Moveworks, a fascinating company out of the Valley. Bhavin, congratulations on the recent recognition by Forbes Magazine as Moveworks being one of the Next Billion-Dollar Startup List. Wow, what an incredible recognition.

Thank you, Hunter. Thanks for having us today.

Yes. It's a pleasure. And you guys -- you have such a unique company. Automation is so critical across the board these days, but a lot of AI solutions just really don't measure up. So what's unique about Moveworks? And take us on a journey here for the next 10 minutes about what really matters when we look at AI and the enterprise, saving money and repurposing people and resources via AI.

Yes. Well, thank you, Hunter, and a pleasure to be here. It's nice to speak to all of you. As Hunter pointed out, there's a lot of changes happening in our environment throughout the country and throughout the world. And it turns out that AI is actually having a big moment. It is having a direct impact on the changes, specifically in the world that we think about, which is IT support and this transition to work-from-home. So let me tell you a little bit more about that and talk about specifically where it's having an impact and how it's doing that. Just a little bit about Moveworks. We're a machine-learning company, headquartered in Mountain View, California, in Silicon Valley. Of course, we're all working from home these days. We've raised about $105 million. But essentially, what we've been doing for the last 4 years is looking at how to take the shape of an IT ticket as it comes in through a natural language and how do we process it end to end so that all the work can be done using machine learning. We have backgrounds in places like Google and Facebook and academics [indiscernible] like Stanford, where we've been building and also studying this problem for quite some time. So I want to walk you through a few things. First of all, a couple of months ago, the industry was surveyed by Business Insider, about 500 IT professionals. And 3/4, almost 3/4 said that they were seeing an increase in ticket volume across their help desks, and we've been measuring that ourselves. We see the number sort of between 20% and 80% of ticket volume increase across our customer base of just employees needing more help, demanding more softwares, more hardware, et cetera. We also found that while the demand has increased, the tickets were getting resolved slower and slower. So -- and not only did we have more work, but we weren't doing it as fast as we once were. And even before COVID and this work-from-home, what we saw was that IT tickets were taking on average 3 days to get resolved. This is both across incidence and requests. And it's because things are changing rapidly. Employees are requesting more applications. You're rolling out more systems. And also, people are less familiar with these tools, and therefore, they have more apps and more help. And so as a company and as a company interested in using AI to help transform and to help accelerate IT, we looked at this problem and started with the assumption that, hey, this would be pretty straightforward. Use one of those libraries out there to understand the intent and the entity of every piece of tech that comes in every ticket, every e-mail, every form and you can solve this. And well, it turns out that this is a much harder problem. And employees are writing to IT in a very natural way, which is intuitive to them, not like how they would talk to a Alexa or Siri in a robotic way but kind of conversational. And so what we looked at and what we've partnered with a lot of enterprises like yours on was to help reframe the world of AI as it relates to solving IT tickets. And what you see on the screen here is the way to think about how to organize tickets in terms of language patterns. On the left, you have typical IT intent. And then across the top, IT entities. And there's a million entities in IT. And so it takes a very focused effort to understand every intent and entity pairing that exists to build a machine learning model that can ultimately understand the types of sentences you see here on the screen and to be able to take the actions end to end completely autonomously. And so we've been working on this over time, and we've been tracking that success. And what we saw is today, we're now resolving about 40% of all IT tickets completely autonomously. The rest will go to the agents. The rest will go to the IT help desk. But it's been able to -- we've been able to do this because we're increasing our understanding by looking at more and more tickets across customers, across the industry and learning from those and building very quickly the ability to take these things in and then act on them. Now how is this all working as we now are working from home? And how is this having an impact? Well, we'll talk a little bit more specifically, but what we've been able to do is to train on these new use cases that are emerging. Ones that are probably showing up in your environment right now as people are asking for updates on company policies. People are asking for access to more tools. People wanting to order more devices and more pieces of hardware, replace things. All these things are starting to evolve. And it's a great use case to have AI and machine learning come in and be able to understand what your employees are asking and then be able to take action on that. Now here's one of the challenges that we've seen for the last several decades in the world of IT support. Your employees on average only submit about 1 ticket a month. And so even if you train them, you put posters on the wall, you educate them, they go here for this, go there for that, the challenge is, the first month, they may have an account issue. So do they go to Okta, do they go to AD. The next month they may have a question about how to file a ticket. So did they go straight to your ticketing system? Do they go to another service? Maybe the next month, they have an issue about a distribution list. So on and so forth. So the behavior change is actually really central and really key to ensuring that you can leverage AI to resolve your employees' issues in a very efficient way. And so when we set out to do this, one of the things that we worked with our customers on was sort of how do you get in front of employees proactively. When employees writing e-mail like this have some contracts in the digital client signature, I don't have the right license for DocuSign. So can you fix this for me? A system that is built on AI can actually interpret that completely autonomously. You don't have to train on these things. This is stuff we've seen before, and the system will then practically reach out and ping the user and complete the task, or in this case, confirm that the task is completed using the enterprise collaboration hub that you're building out, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Google Chat, Facebook Workplace, either RingCentral Glip, et cetera. These are all the tools that we're seeing emerge now rapidly across the nation and across the world. For us, this has been an interesting journey, too. And I'm sure these numbers probably also mirror some of your own data. We've seen about an 8% increase month-over-month as a company. That equates to about a 2x increase over 9 months. But in just the month of March, we saw a 50% spike. And in April, it's spiked again, and we're going to publish Q2 numbers very shortly. But what we're seeing is that companies are embracing autonomous IT support and they're getting more and more value out of it each and every day. Now let's talk about specifically how some of these impacts are showing up inside of large enterprises. And we've worked with some of the ones that are part of the HMG network and many more across the country. Specifically, as I mentioned before, we're solving about 20% to 40% of IT issues completely autonomously, companies like Unity, Western Digital, Autodesk. And each of these customers, the employees love the bot so much that they have given it a unique name, a unique icon, ninja unicorn or digibot or help bot. And here's what the impact has been. At a place like Unity, when work from home began, we saw a 5x increase in people requesting video conference apps, a almost doubling of IT tickets coming in and then a lot of questions about company policy. All this demand, while it's skyrocketing, was being addressed through the AI system, either through e-mail, chats or through chatbots themselves. At Autodesk, their surge in demand was actually handled by the bot. And this change in the surge is not something that's gone back down. It's actually continuing to rise. So this is a lasting change. And you can see here is AI systems are able to keep up and to resolve more issues and answer more questions as they come in. Lastly, let's talk about Western Digital. There are about 70,000 employees. And their change has also been lasting, but very interesting to see a couple of things. First of all, the walk-up bar is dead, right? There's no one going into offices. And even if you start to transition people back now, it's still going to be slow coming. And so they saw -- I mean the Y axis is percent changed. They saw almost a complete zeroing out of the walk-up bar. But then you think about e-mail, self-service and [ zone ]. And maybe those would be on the rise. Well, At Western Digital, those numbers have been relatively flat, if not slightly negative. And where has all that demand gone? Well, it's a zero-sum game. So it all went to the AI chatbot, which was very powerful because it was able to sort of meet the employees and give them the same high-quality experience that they were looking for from a walk-up bar, but here directly through natural conversation. So this is something that we're seeing happen and evolve, but not just for a blip in time, but really in a sustained way that are going to be long-lasting and impactful throughout our industry. So coming back to this slide again. I think what we're seeing is many key needs that can be addressed through AI and things which you can communicate, you could broadcast. People can use the collaboration tools that they're checking thousands of times a day or a week in terms of working with their colleagues, all now being done here on their phones, on their tablets, on their laptops and now interfacing with IT and getting sort of best-in-class IT support. So hopefully, that's informative, giving you sort of concrete examples and ideas of where to focus your time and energy. I think this transformation has been fascinating to watch and really critical as we all have the responsibility of supporting our teams in so many unique locations now that everyone is working from home or in different settings. So thank you all for your time.

Hey, Bhavin, you've really blown me away on how you've grown and scaled your company and you have some amazing referenceable clients in the Valley. What makes -- what is the Moveworks' difference? And why were you able to secure such amazing logos in the Valley and work with some of the top CIOs in our industry.

Yes. We've been at this for now 4 years. And our approach from the get-go was to really think of this as an industry problem, not as an individual problem. There are thousands of getting starting kits out there and build this yourself or do it yourself. And what it turns out is that machine learning needs a lot of data, and no one company has enough of that data. So you have to build systems that are learning and that are training. There's things that we do, collective learning, transferred learning and meta learning across the industry to be able to provide day 0 value impact because they don't have time anymore. I think a lot of the assumption was going into this is that people would have droves of engineers and folks who could build bots, who can build these workflows and sort of design all this stuff. The truth of the matter is people don't even follow workflows when they're chatting with bots. They just kind of go all over the place. You have to build and engineer a system that could handle this, not just for an individual use case, but across the industry. And if you can do that and you do that at scale, you really start to have impact. And for us, word-of-mouth has been largely how we market. And I think, Hunter, you've heard us at various HMG physical events that it's been a real sort of highlight for a lot of IT leaders who've been trying to get AI really operationalized in their environment.

Bhavin, great to have you on the program here today. And really, truly, it's innovation, but it's also cost cutting, right, or cost savings, too, right?

That's right. That's right. Yes. I think speeding up and improving employee support and experience but also making IT more efficient. A lot of our customers are able to scale and grow their companies without having to add a lot more people to their help desk or to their IT team because the AI is itself getting better, and we're obviously as a company responsible with them of improving that. So thank you.

Awesome job, Bhavin. Thanks for coming on the program today. Check out Moveworks, one of HMG top picks, definitely an amazing company on the rise and definitely worth reaching out to them. Next up, Sheila Jordan. Sheila is the Chief Digital Technology Officer at Honeywell, Sheila, welcome to the program.

Hi, Hunter. Hello, everyone.

Hello, everyone from North Carolina, right?

Yes, now Charlotte. Yes. I'm transitioning.

Awesome. Great to see you and great to be with you and go out. Now I think back, we've probably been collaborating for over a decade now.

I think so, yes. I was one of your founding members, I believe.

In the valley. That's right, Sheila, and thanks for speaking -- being engaged today. So Sheila, let's talk about leadership, leading in a crisis, leading now, what's different today than just, say, 4 months ago?

Yes. I'll tell you almost everything is different. So first is I would say that IT has always had this mark that it was back office or the necessary evil. And I believe when you think about work from home, where every company has had to really make sure that they're enabling their workforce working from home. I mean everybody, every function of the company from the CEO, all the way to the workers are now working from home. And so IT has become even more relevant to the actual experience of working from home. So it's all really about the technology and of course, the policy and process. So one was, and I'll just share my example at Honeywell. I've been here a couple of months, less than 60 days in the organization, a very global company, made a decision to work from home. And so we had to think about how are we going to do this for 110,000 employees in 83 countries fast. So we had to redesign the VPN network. We had to get laptops distributed in 83 different countries. So when we had to mobilize and the team did that working with a couple of our partners in 8 days. So one I would say that what's so different about today is technology is even more relevant than it ever was before. And that's, of course, from the employee experience what we just heard about, but it's also customers and partners. I mean everybody is interacting with your company vis-à-vis the technology. So it's really important is the reach to customers, partners and customers -- customers, partners and employees. But also, I'd say, it really is -- it reinforces for me is the speed of activity. We've learned a long time ago that perfection is the evil of speed, and I would say, or the antithesis of speed. And I would say that's changing. I mean we've got to really move fast, even if it's not perfect because you can iterate and you can change and you can modify and you can adjust. So the speed of which we have to react to the conditions, being able to pivot another example, and I'm super proud about in Honeywell, is we actually took 2 of our manufacturing labs and made them available that they could produce the N95 masks that we're all becoming very familiar with and very comfortable wearing. And that was taking a normally a 5-month exercise or activity, and we did that in 8 weeks to pivot a manufacturing lab to produce the N95 mask, which is now serving the world. So I just think it's -- as leaders during this time, you have to not overthink things but begin to take advantage of the assets that are in your company and really pivot them to the new things you can produce or make and/or communicate effectively to your customers, partners and employees.

So when you think about the role of a CDO, there are different nuances in driving massive change across a global company. You're really part of the go-to-market solution, right?

Yes. And I think more forward-thinking companies really do see and understand that this notion of digital transformation is really as much as it is for the employee base, but as it is for customers and partners. In fact, all of us think about how we consume and interact with customers. I mean it really is all about online. And they know my profile and they know what -- they recommend things to me based upon past experiences. And so that's becoming, I think, even more important as we are in this unprecedented times is that I think digital is going to be here to stay. It's not going anywhere, and I just think it's the opportunity for IT professionals and chief data technology officers or even digital officers that you're really beginning to understand the importance and the reach. And one of the things I think is so important is, and we don't often talk about as much as we should, is data is really the currency for digital. When you think about a digital experience, basically, my example I use a lot is I can actually book like when I could travel, I could book my family of 4 on an international trip using an airline app in 6 minutes or less without pulling out a credit card, without pulling out any loyalty identification. They know my loyalty number. They know my preferences. And actually, the most ironic part of that exchange is the longest part of that exchange is seat assignment because the airlines haven't quite figured out that I like the window seat versus the aisle seat or automated that. Maybe they could use Bhavin's product, right? So the point is that, that's all done in 6 minutes or less, and that's a transaction that typically would have taken hours before because of the data. And when you think about the data that's transacting, it's about me, my profile, my credit card information, my family's profile, their loyalty, their travel schedules, et cetera, that's traversing 6 or 7 different functions in the company. So the one thing I'd say all the time is that a digital transformation is really a horizontal customer journey that's delivered in a really streamlined, seamless, frictionless experience for the customer, but you have to know that to get that delivery requires you to have massive coordination around 5 or 6 or 7 different functions within the organization. And that, I think in the past, has been the part that's hard for digital because if one function is moving faster than another function and it's not listed horizontally, and I mean process, policy, technology, it gets out of sync. So I think it's -- we're now right to look at these different experiences that we can deliver to our customers and partners in a much more horizontal way, and the reason I love IT is that we have systematically always seen horizontally, looked across the organization. And now we can take that to the next level by thinking of that data transition across the many different functions to deliver that customer journey for our customers.

Well, Honeywell is lucky to have you, Sheila. I can't think of a better person in that role. So when you think about that front end, we've been talking about leading and reimagining the customer journey, really reimagining the go-to-market, what are the skill sets that you look for from your senior IT leaders to help accelerate your goals on the agenda?

So again, a couple of things. I think we have to -- the one thing I would say about IT is we sometimes get super insular. We think about the applications and we think about the technology and we think about all the things that we have to do from an inside-out perspective. And I think digital gives us the opportunity to really change that and go outside in. I mean really put yourself in the customers' and the partners' experience. How do you want to make sure that you're reducing the friction and really enabling a better, easier experience for our customers and partners? So one is put your head in the customer or partners. Go on the website, go on the apps, go play with them, go see what the experience really is from a customer and partner perspective. So that -- so outside-in has to be brought into the actual design and implementation of the work that IT is delivering. The other one I can't -- again, I just talked about a lot is you've got to make sure that you're understanding how the data, what data is critical during each part of that transaction. And how do we make that seamless and easy. You can't have any one part of it slow you down. You always go -- you always design from what is the longest pole in the tent. What is the area that has policies or controls that are typically normal and great in a normal work when you're not doing a transaction in minutes, in seconds versus a 30-minute exchange. So understanding where those policy rules are that slow the transaction down, I think, is also really important. And then I'd say, again, and go back to the earlier point I made, speed and getting it as close to perfect as possible, having and identifying a subset of customers and partners that you can work with as your advisory board to test it and work with you and have an availability to iterate on the fly. So the whole notion of DevOps, Scrums, Agile, all that is just like conducive to how we have to deliver these solutions.

Hey, Sheila, just a minute on what this crisis has afforded you and letting you do. And people say -- there's that saying, "Don't let crisis go to waste." What have you been able to do in the past 3 months that you would not have been able to do it?

Well, in addition to being able to really provide the whole work-from-home technology and capabilities to the 110,000 employees globally in 8 days, I mean that was just a remarkable effort from my team and the partners that we worked with. We also supported the opening of these manufacturing sites in 5 weeks versus 8 months, so that was also really important. But I'll also say that it's not giving us one of the things that I came in at Honeywell is that was pretty significantly outsourced. We used a lot of partners and suppliers across the globe. In my view, given our CEO, Darius, has a very, very aggressive digital transformation agenda. And we have 10, 20, 30 or 30 programs where every function in the organization, whether it's a function, whether it's in business unit, one of our -- all of our business units all have a digital agenda that we've been marching towards over the last couple of years. And so given the mass of the digital transformation agenda and the amount of work that has to get done, you have to evaluate the IT team and the capabilities and are we ready or not. And I came in and realized that a big large percentage of the IT organization was outsourced. And so -- and I'm not opposed to outsourcing at any level. I just -- for you to build internal technical depth to be able to not only deploy and stay up with the business on their transformation agenda, but also to have the team to make sure we're here for the iterations and the enhancements and running those new platforms after the, say, consultants are gone. So we had an opportunity to really strategically put together an in-sourcing strategy for not everything, but a large percentage of the staff on those critical initiatives. So yes, I am hiring. I think we're posting a couple of hundred positions that are out on LinkedIn. And if you're interested, we'd love to have you join the Honeywell team.

Sheila, how can people get in touch with you?

It's all on LinkedIn. So go find me on LinkedIn, and the jobs are posted. We're on phase 2. We got one more phase, but there's several hundred jobs posted on LinkedIn.

Awesome, Sheila. Great to see you. Thanks so much for all your support and engagement. Great to see you. You'll be joining the panel here in just a minute. We're going to -- before we go right to the panel, we're going to bring in Raja to talk about Charlotte SIM. Raja, good afternoon. Great to have you here.

Good afternoon, everyone. Most of you know SIM Charlotte is a all-volunteer organization made up of technology leaders from the Charlotte area. Our mission is to advance the practice of IT leadership, and we do that by doing essentially 3 things. One is we bring technology leaders together in a safe environment to share lessons learned, knowledge sharing. We also help grow IT leaders, future IT leaders through national and regional development programs. And finally, we also support local, other nonprofits in the areas that are focused on growing the STEM talent pool. Actually, if you guys can advance to the next couple of slides, that would be good. So again, we are about 200 members. Go to the next one. We have supported over 20-plus organizations in the Charlotte area under the leadership of Elizabeth Austin. Over the past few years, we raised more than $0.5 million, and we provided that funding to some of the organizations listed here, anything from community groups to K-12 to higher education, again, trying to grow that talent in technology in the Charlotte region, which explains the reason why we work. And some of you are already members of SIM Charlotte and enthusiastic supporters of these causes, so thank you for that. Anybody who is not yet a member, I would welcome an opportunity to welcome you to SIM Charlotte as a member. One of the things we actually have coming up is our annual fundraiser, which we call it STEM Golf Tourny, which is coming up on October 26 right here in the Ballantyne Country Club. Even if you're not a member, we'd love to have you as an executive golfer for half a day. Come spend time with us and in the process, raise -- help raise some funds for some of these great organizations that are doing amazing work in the Charlotte community. Again, thank you for your time, Hunter and the HMG team. You always do such a great job putting these events, and today is no exception. Thanks again for the partnership.

Thanks, Raja. Great to see you. SIM's a great organization. I'm a member as well for 20 years. It's a great way to stay connected regionally. Thank you. Next up, reimagining the business and the future of work, Joe Topinka. Everyone loves and knows Joe in the Carolinas across North America. A CIO, some 30 years in the making. He's now the founder and CEO of CIO Mentor. Joe, welcome to the program.

Hey, it's great to be here, Hunter, and thanks for having me today.

Hey, look, why don't we bring up Kim Stevenson first, right? Let's get Kim on the program, Joe, and let's start the interview process. Go for it.

Hey, Kim. Thanks for being on the program today.

Hi, Joe. Hi, Hunter.

For all of you out there who don't know Kim, she's the SVP and General Manager at NetApp. I think a recent -- you moved to Charlotte just recently. I think that was maybe a year or so ago. I can't remember exactly.

It's been about 3 years now. Time flies. Yes.

Well, I'm older. So that's how it goes. Let's keep the dialogue going on from the conversation that Hunter and Sheila started. One of the questions that I think I'm really curious about from your perspective is what leadership traits do you believe are needed to thrive in the environment that we're in right now.

Yes. So let me start with empathy and courage. So we are really in an unusual time right now between the pandemic and the racial issues that are happening in the U.S. that I really think that corporations and leaders have to lean into this in ways that we haven't had to do before. I sort of grew up in an environment that was sort of, don't step into those politically charged topics. But today's environment, if you don't, and you and your company don't take a stand on some of the injustices that we see, I think what you're going to see is talent is going to flee, and customers are going to flee because people want to do business with people that they actually believe in. And we've seen that start with climate change, where the younger generation really has a strong view on what you're doing to be environmentally and socially responsible. And this is sort of the next wave. And so I think there really has got to be a lot of empathy and courage to take on some of these really difficult and systemic issues that are societal-based, not just your -- inside your company. Then the other thing I would say, I'd just echo Sheila. I always say, be a builder of velocity in your company. Speed and direction is the definition of velocity. And we're going through so much as an economy, as companies that we really have to set good direction for the company as the IT leaders because it is about digital transformation. And then we've got to be quick -- quick, quick quick about it. And then the last thing is I think it really is about building teams that can act, right, that are empowered, and they can break through barriers, they can question all those norms that we have, right, and drive change throughout the company. And that's -- the beauty of IT is that it's the one part of any company that can see all of the process execution that happens in the company, and therefore, the responsibility comes that you drive the changes needed, so you can do things like flip the manufacturing line in 8 weeks to make N95 masks.

Yes, that's great. I think kind of a follow-up question to that. I think if you have advice for companies during this time not to just survive but to come out even stronger, and I know a lot of companies make investments. Some companies that make investments during difficult times like this actually come out stronger. What advice do you have for leaders on that?

Yes. In fact, Joe, we saw that happen in the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009. And so those companies who acted fast really came out stronger, and I think the same will be true here. There will be winners and losers in every industry, and you're already starting to see that happen with bankruptcy filings and warnings to the SEC that they may not be viable entities going forward. But I think there's 3 phases that any sort of major disruption happens. The first is you're disrupted, right? And we saw that in March and April, and it was get everyone to work from home, shut down stores, reconfigure restaurants for carryout service and all those disruptive things. And most companies are now in sort of the second step, which is survival, right? Do they have enough cash to survive, right? When will the economy reopen? What are the new rules that every state is putting in place that we have to operate, and they have to survive. And then the next phase will be the revitalization and growth, right? We are not going to go back to business the way it was conducted. And I think our job as IT leaders is to get the company to that revitalization and growth phase as quick as possible, and you're going to have to build that plan while you're still in the survival state. So it's tricky, right, to go through. But I think that, that's really, I'll say, the definition of what IT leadership is going to be in this next wave of rebuilding the economy.

That's fantastic. I appreciate that. Continuing on, Hunter and team, I'm not sure if it's going to have the other panelists join us or if we just continue down this thread with Kim, which I'm delighted to do. While we're waiting for that answer, let's talk about data. We had a brief conversation earlier at the outset of our discussion. But what things would you consider a company should do to accelerate their data and digital and IT transformation?

Yes. So look, I think the digital -- as Sheila said it well, right, digital transformation is really based on the data, having the right data foundation and building it up so that you can get the value from that data. And when I think about what's the dynamic nature, just boil it down to 3 simple points. What most companies need to do is redefine their customer experience, right, into like contactless, right? We're going to be virtual. So how do you have that digital customer experience? And then you have to really think about -- so that's one. And two is what are the business operations that you need to change internally for the safety of your employees but also to make sure that you get the deliverables that your company is in business for done. And that can be redoing manufacturing lines, if you're in school systems, I have a friend that runs a transportation and food service for a big school system. And they've done amazing things in very short amount of time, but had it not been a crisis, they would have never done them, right? And so now we have to think about our business operating at that speed with that level of automation when we're not in crisis, right? And those are great AI opportunities like Moveworks has talked about. And then the last part is how are your employees going to work and work safely in the environment. Is it where we maintain social distancing for inevitably, for some indefinite period of time? Or is it going to be a short-lived thing? How are you going to redefine the office space, even things like -- I'm working on our return-to-office plans, right? And it's cafeterias and bathrooms and stairwells and elevators and how do we continue to operate effectively but safely in that -- those environments. And I think these are all things that technology can help us with without losing that all-important relationship aspect that we need. We need a great relationship with our employees. We need great relationships with customers and our suppliers. And so I just think that we're going to learn to operate quite differently, and having that data foundation that you can build on and then leverage, find the patterns, find the inconsistencies in your business will help you act more quickly, which will help you survive, get to the revitalization phase. So...

Kim, brilliant. Joe, why don't we go over to Jack Hogan from Pure? Jack, just a little bit on Pure and what you're seeing out there.

Yes. Well, listen this conversation is [ a warrant to ] big data which seems to be the central theme today. And as we kind of looked about what's happening with this new pandemic, I think from our side, where Pure looks at this and that -- and Sheila talked about it earlier, about the ability to really democratize the access to data, which will speed up the transformations during this timeframe. We recognize at Pure that legacy applications are one of the most challenging things to bring forward in a cloud-like access to democratization. So we recognize that you've got to both take a look at the past and where things are moving. When we start to think about the cloud and cloud not being a destination but an operating business model. And so where we focus is that ability to have that cloud experience and access to the data, allow that fast transformation and agile movement around how the data becomes [indiscernible] the central point of decision-making. But that's not just in the way the data is accessed and which venues it's being accessed. It's ultimately how you pay for the storage and the access to that data. So having capabilities to access data in really a cloud-like manner is really critical to that strategy around how you create that democratization across where the data lies. Most companies end up with silos of information in legacy systems or failed cloud projects. And reconciling between the 2 of those, you need to have a platform that allows you to create that access. And if you really looked at that, the most important part, as we think about people and access to data, making that really simple operationally, access-wise, the machine aspect of connecting to that data. We heard Bhavin earlier talk about the information that these AI systems need access to. So that's really a system that needs access to your data across all environments and all venues. And of course, that ability to continually innovate. I mean Pure has been in the market now for -- we're approaching our 11th year, first decade, completely transformed what it was like to access data in the data center by introducing all-flash. And we're extending that capability now into all venues, public hyperscaler clouds, publication data centers, everything in between. So from Pure's side and this kind of conversation around what's going to permanently change, I think we're going to see a rapid acceleration around the access and democratization of data, and you need to have platforms that allow you to do that in that simple, cloud-like, really fast and transformed model. Yes, that's where we kind of see the changes going on today.

Great, Jack. I appreciate that. And I think picking up on that, IT infrastructure has traditionally been a very capital-intensive cycle of planning and reinvesting every few years or every 5 years. With cloud being a viable alternative for many companies, what are you seeing in terms of how companies look to take advantage of those cloud offerings today?

Yes, a great question. I think when we start to look at the advantages of cloud, it's not always -- really, that economic advantage is not usually the first thing that ultimately you achieve. You achieve really that agility and the speed to access of the data and operating in a cloud-like manner. And so we look at the access of systems that use APIs, cloud-like fashion to operate systems and eliminating a lot of the legacy capital-intensive planning that happens and Pure has our evergreen model that allows you to take the same data platform, never reinvest and having to buy data again and allow that subscription to innovation to grow with your data as it grows and our platforms improve over time. But I think you also talk about the economic aspect of that being able to only pay for the data that you're creating rather than having to lock up capital into long-term financial models that kind of -- that cycle of every 3 to 6 years having to reinvest in the platforms, having that ability to pay as you go, our Pure-as-a-Service business model is the true -- the first true operation -- OpEx model, utility model that allows you to only pay for the data that you're using at the time you're using it and take advantage of all those other benefits like access across all the venues that you would be accessing that data from.

Thanks, Jack. Joe, we should move over to Doug.

Great. Doug Krieger is Director of Global Strategic Sourcing at Herbalife. Welcome to the panel, Doug. Great to have you here.

Thanks, Joe. Nice to be here. Nice to be here.

Yes. If you could talk a little bit about the impact that full-time remote environments will have on culture and leaders. How do we overcome those challenges? And what kind of an experience have you seen at Herbalife?

Sure. So I think to me, that's the crux of this pandemic, this challenge. How do we build the culture? So Herbalife has been a great environment for building a culture, building a collaborative environment, really bringing people in. Now we're all remote, so we're not seeing each other regularly other than through Zoom and things like this. How do you bring new people into the environment and have them get the feel for the company so that they move in that same way, so that they have that openness, that they have that collaboration. And I think that's what becomes incumbent upon the leaders to really try to figure out how do you reach out. I think Kim mentioned it, and Kim talked about empathy. And when I look at what it takes to be successful within this environment, to me, that is the #1 thing, is really figuring out how to be a person first. How do you make sure that you're thinking about your teams, you're thinking about the people that you work with every day, you're really being interactive with them, not just in a way that is, "Let me get the job done." Yes, that's important. That's what we're paid for. That's why we come to the job every day. But how do I let them know that I care about them as people? So I'll just give you some things that we've done, which I thought have been pretty fun. And one of them says a lot about our organization and the culture that we do have. So we did a virtual treasure hunt. Or we had everybody kind of get on the call and it was, "Find a rock and find a shirt that says Herbalife on it," and we had a lot of fun with it. And the last thing we did actually we stole it from ESPN. So they had a bunch of their colleagues get together and see who could get the most famous person that they knew, get on a call impromptu. So I threw this out there to the team, and we did the same thing. One of the women on our team who hadn't worked with him before sent an e-mail to our CEO. Lo and behold, 3 minutes later, there is our CEO on this call talking to us and being part of the fun and the entertainment that we were doing, which says a lot about the individual, says a lot about the culture of the company. And that's why I think it's so important for us to continue to maintain it and make sure that we're doing those things, all of us. We have to get the work done. With this whole environment, people are working harder. They're working longer hours now than they probably did before, and they're probably being more productive than they were before. There's less distractions, but we've got to keep them going. We've got to keep their spirits up and their morale up and our spirits and morale up as well. And I think those are some of the things that can be the difference between succeeding and just getting by in this environment.

Yes. The online world has -- the Zoom world has -- and Microsoft Teams have really changed the landscape. I've had more conversations with people where I've met their kids, their pets during Zoom meetings. Sometimes planned, sometimes unplanned. So [indiscernible] a lot of fun, it becomes a little more human in a way that you...

I'm going to steal Doug's virtual treasure hunt idea. So that's a good one. I love it. Yes.

It was great. We had a blast with that one. It was great.

Yes. It's a good one.

Joe, for Sathish, this is really a time of potential innovation and acceleration. What are you doing differently at Ally to make that happen, Sathish? What's the senior leadership asking of you?

Hunter, how are you?

Good.

You're asking me how does Zoom work? No, really, this is unprecedented time from an economic standpoint, unprecedented time from a business standpoint and unpredictable on how our customers are reacting to our products. So what we are learning and doing as an IT organization is how can you be overprepared but yet be scrappy. When you think about being overprepared, you have this nice gift that has a bow on it, and then you deliver to your customer, having taken care of all the options, but you don't have the luxury now. How can you move fast to react to what is happening in the market? How can you react fast to how your customers are reacting to what is happening in the market? So what we have declared is we become the proxy, whether we are rolling out internal changes or external changes. We roll up our sleeves, and everybody in the organization tests [ this up ]. As an example, right before we moved everybody to be working from home, we quadrupled our VPN capacity. And how would we test, we just hosted an all-hands call and asked my employees to see they'll come and test it past midnight that day. Over 900 people dialed in to test it, of the 1,600. That is the power of bringing the teamwork and then rolling up our sleeves. Two is how do we communicate and communicate with speed. That has become very critical because we're all behind the screen, in communication whether when you're writing it becomes extremely difficult, and it gets lost in the beginning of the day. So how do you communicate creatively to both your internal and external customers and with speed. The third is how can we do what supply chains are doing. They've gone from just-in-time to just-in-case. And our thinking has entirely changed to what do we do just in case if this doesn't work. That is the overprepared part of what we are doing. But along with that, however, where you prepare, you cannot prepare for the reality. So things are changing. So how do you become scrappy and evolve what you're doing and what you launch. And those are the type of questions that we are helping answer to the business and my leaders. And along -- across all of this is a thin line of data that we are collecting and showcasing what is working and what is not working. So we're using data, but we are using execution to show how things have to work in the new normal.

Excellent. Sathish, I would just say that one of the things you mentioned that really resonates with me is we have to be much more resilient, I would say, overall, than we have been in the past because we're going to have hurdles and roadblocks that have come our way. We've all experienced it. And I think one measure of our success is how well we overcome them. Hunter, if you don't mind, I'd love to ask Sheila that question, bring her back into the conversation. If you can talk a little bit about the makeup of the workforce that you see or even how work might change over the next several years, what are your thoughts around that concept?

So I think what's going to happen, my prediction is one is we already have 4 generations in the workplace today. And prior to COVID and prior to this, it's always presented a bit of a challenge. You got the baby boomers that are in there and have traditionally wanted to work that way that it works. And then you get the millennials coming in that have a very different philosophy of working. How do those 4 generations could collide? And now you've got COVID, and now everyone on technology and on using that technology on a daily basis. So one is, I think what everyone repeated earlier is that some of this is going to stick. What we're finding at Honeywell is some of the roles that we have inside the organization are actually more productive working from home than they were in the office. And so we're doing this with a laser precision and analysis to show that this is actually could be permanent and could be something that we continue evolving. But I also think it's super important because now you've got the entire workforce, regardless of the generation that is now becoming experts on the technology. And so with that comes, all of a sudden, you've got executives that may or may not have been using the technology frequently. And now they're beginning to tie the experience of working from home to, wow, how can I extend this to my customers and partners and how do I evolve the digital transformation even faster to other avenues and to other opportunities. So I actually think that -- I think Kim said it earlier that, going back to work, we might physically go back to the office. In fact, I'm sure we will, at some point, go back to the office, but I don't think, and I hope, that the lessons we've learned in this time in the way that we're working, the productivity areas of how we're working should change and should go back. And I think, unfortunately, it's going to be on IT to help the organization understand where we see those elements of productivity, where are we pulling together groups of people that otherwise wouldn't have "time" to collaborate and get together. How -- where have there been the effective areas that we've actually been able to -- like, one of the things we've got as a big initiative going on at Honeywell is our ERP consolidation road map. And so what we've been able to do is to deploy ERPs using some of Honeywell product. We have this RealWear eyeglass video and all that, that we're able to deploy an ERP instance by using -- having someone with video at that site but not without any travel that historically would have been everyone traveling for UAT and testing and everyone in the room together. And I think we're on our fifth or sixth ERP deployment with no travel all virtually. So there are so many lessons learned that we're learning of how to work differently, leveraging the technology that I think is up to the CIO, CEOs, the head of IT -- leaders of IT that ensure that the goodness of this comes out and stays versus it going back and retreating back to the way we had traditionally were working.

Joe, we have like a couple of minutes, kind of like a final question for the group. Culture matters. Culture, leadership -- leading in a tough environment matters, and leading in this -- with these new collaborative tools that are now the new standard matters. I think most organizations are 90% virtual and digital and leveraging Teams and Zoom and RingCentral. What's changed for you all? And where is the opportunity? What have you learned, Kim? And just managing a group digitally and virtually, you've probably done it for years, but for many folks, this is new, and there's new levers that you can push and more objectivity that you can push a team with off a virtual platform, right?

Yes. So Hunter, having spent my entire career at technology companies, so we did work virtually not quite as diligently. It was more sporadic. But I also stood on the Boards of smaller companies, and that was very much in the office kind of culture. And one -- my lesson is people are really resilient that the amount of change that people have gone through in the last 3 months has been amazing, and most of them are really adapting well. But I like to say we're not all in the same boat. Not every company is in the same boat. Not every person is in the same boat. We are in the same storm. But some boats are yachts with big motors and powering right through, and other boats are little leaky dinghies. And so what I've learned is to really not be judgmental, that there are some people that are suffering greatly in this because it's a very stressful environment. Others think that this is the best thing that's ever happened to them. And so just know that we're in the same storm. We're not in the same boat. And that will help you be a better leader to navigate the waters as we go through this.

Excellent. Jack, final comment?

Yes. Well, listen, I think the humanity aspect of being able to connect digitally now is really starting to come forth. I think we've now got an entire generation of people that have been trained to connect this way. And we're seeing this play out really interestingly, both internally and externally, where we can recognize that we can see people's bedrooms. We can see people's housing -- living circumstances and create a much more personal connection with them but while also achieving and getting work done. And so I think that, that ability to leverage technology to reach out and have that personal connection but allow things like remote installs and touchless installations, I mean those sort of things didn't exist before. People didn't have their own stresses bleeding directly into their daily work but also didn't have limitations around what they could do. And so we've looked to introduce digital touch points, reduce the human interaction down to the point that, of course, when you got simple platforms to implement that ability to leverage this connected technology to make people's lives easier and better and do things that used to -- and others are more challenging and require days of work in the field now can be done this way. So I think that this is -- I think it's really improving the ability -- speed to outcome for businesses, and we're seeing it as a net positive. I think a lot of it is really going to stick in both business processes and interactions with customers.

Excellent, Jack. Thanks so much for being here and your support. Doug, final word?

Yes. I think it's empowerment, I think empowering people to make decisions, empowering people through technology, through these type of platforms and really being there to support them, letting them know that they have a shoulder to -- bend an ear to, to really have someone to listen to. And I think that's what's going to separate the strong leaders from the good leaders.

Excellent, Doug. Thanks. Sathish, a good time to be an IT leader?

Fantastic time. For those of us that complain that technology never gets the limelight for all things that we deliver, now is the time, right? You are centrally in the spotlight. For me, to answer your question, would be how do we create the connection despite the technology. My goal coming into this role was how do I have at least one interaction with every employee in -- technology employee within the company, which is 1,600. I was going to do that through skip levels and stuff like that. Now I can't. What I've adopted is to send a note on their anniversary, so that way I have a one-to-one connection with every employee and enjoy exchanging e-mails with them and getting to know them personally.

Excellent. Sheila, final word?

To me, it's all about video. I studied this quite extensively at Cisco when I was with collaboration, and I wanted to tie this back to culture. Culture works, especially in today's world, and I do agree with Kim. This is a really, really trying time for a lot of people. And the only way to really stand up the culture is to make sure that you're embedding a culture of trust. And when you think about video, it does a couple of things. One is if you're not on video, it's proven -- and again, I studied this for years at Cisco. 80% or 85% of the people on audio only will be multitasking, which means they're not paying attention. They're not engaged. They're not really listening. They're not -- you're not having a direct conversation with them. And the other thing I learned is that 54% of your communication is nonverbal, and video fixes both of that. So what I'm encouraging all of Honeywell across the globe is turn your video on. It ties to everything everyone mentioned earlier, Sathish and others, is that it really drives that connection. You can really see people. You get a glimpse into their personal home, meet the kids and dogs. But the reality is it does much more than just that. It begins to build trust inside the organization. So what I say to Honeywell employees is, "Turn your video on."

Sheila, genius insight. Thanks so much. Joe, final word?

Just fascinating to be an observer now that I'm retired and still doing a little consulting, but I think there's some real interesting challenges ahead with companies deploying contact tracing applications and all the privacy and security issues surrounding that. I think it's going to be great, and I think, Hunter, that might be a good topic for another session where we talk about the implications of some of the proposed contact tracing applications that companies are considering.

Love it. Joe, thanks so much for your help on this. Kim, great to see you. Thank you so much for your engagement. Sheila, great to see you. Sathish, thanks. Jack, Doug, really appreciate your engagement. Please, if you can stay with us, we're on to our next panel.

Next up, our industry search executive update, one of the hallmarks and keystones of HMG Strategy. My good friend and longtime supporter, Shoukat Ali Bhamani will be leading the session. Shoukat's the VP and CIO and CDO of the Schaeffler Group. Thanks, Shoukat. Great to see you. One of the best facilitators that we've ever come across on stage, let's see how you pull this off here digitally.

Thank you. Thank you so much, Hunter. Thank you. And you also have John online.

Hey there.

Perfect, John. So thank you so much, Hunter. Again, good afternoon, everybody. Again, it's -- we all heard, it's a very unusual time, a special situation. And our IT executives in that current situation may also be looking for some special advice, some special guidance. So we are very fortunate to have a very experienced panel with us, executive search partners who have so many years of experience in different situations. And they are the right people to guide us, all of our IT executives on call today, to see how do they look at their future [ deck here ] in the current circumstances. So again, welcome, our panel here, starting with Tony Leng from Diversified Search. Then we have John Murdock from Executive Search Partners, and we have Mark Polansky from Korn Ferry. Okay. Good afternoon you all.

Good afternoon.

So let me start. I think the one question probably everybody has on their mind, so let me start with that question for all 3 of you, is what is the impact of this current global pandemic on executive IT recruiting. Maybe starting with Mark.

Yes, and thank you. Appreciate the opportunity to be here, Hunter and his team and all of you out there in virtual Zoom land. The impact has been pretty obvious. We've experienced a drop in our front-end revenue by about 20%, 25%. Some of the verticals are down as much as 50%. That would be typically consumer. Certainly, a large part of that is travel, hospitality and leisure, although consumer came back 18% last month, and the market is up big time today on that expectation that the consumer will reengage. Not sure about travel, hospitality and leisure. That said, it's not doom and gloom. In fact, it's quite the opposite. I've not had the opportunity to speak to John about this, but Tony and I had discussed how our expectation is that this is going to come roaring back sometime later this year, let's say, starting in and around the beginning of fourth quarter because these searches have not been canceled. They've been postponed. They've been pushed off by clients telling us that they don't have the bandwidth to focus on the search at this moment because they're so tied up in survival, in cash preservation, in making sure everybody can work from home and everybody is safe and healthy and doing the right thing. And so it's just a question of the attention that they can get. Those few searches that did go forward during the lockdown, I've had a couple of candidates hired that never were on-premise at the client's offices and never met anybody face to face. But in one case, 12 Zooms did it, and both sides were very, very comfortable [ hiring ] forward. So we think it's going to be pretty busy come later this year.

Tony, your thoughts?

Yes. I would agree with Mark 100%. And we -- as you mentioned, we've discussed this before. I would add one other piece. Part of the slowdown is because the internal recruiting departments have less to do, and so they've been deployed more at higher levels. So that adds to it. But as Mark said, when we talk about leadership and we talk about, what I call, the heroes and the villains, the people have done really well. And the people who have not done well, the heroes will be further empowered, and the villains will be replaced. So it'll come roaring back soon.

John, thoughts [ on that ]?

Yes. Yes. I would add to that as well. So Mark started out basically saying the customers, our clients are deferring, and that's the feedback we get, particularly that marker on the fourth quarter seems to be appropriate for a lot of the discussion that we have. Some of them are simply saying, "We're making do with what we have." Early on in the pandemic, it was -- we're too darn busy. We're going to focus on what we have to do. I did take a quick look at some stats, and not to be -- getting into the details here, but NC Tech Association and others have given some feedback on the environment for technology in the Carolina area, and it's down from about 1/3. The first quarter was just fantastic in this area, but every month, it's come down. So it's very challenging. Then the other stat I would throw out, I got a hold of a survey that was done by Morgan Stanley talking to COOs and CFOS, where the majority of them are still holding on and expect to make investments in technology. So the CapEx monies are sitting back there and certainly expect them to be deployed as we go through the year.

So in that current situation where we all understand now that the whole -- that the business, the revenues are down, and the situation is such that they can't focus on new recruiting or especially the executive recruiting, but still, do you see there are some segments, some sectors, some regions that they are still positive in terms of executive recruiting? Any insight in that?

Yes. Shoukat, I think health care is probably leading the field. Anything that an entrepreneur can dream of to encourage better outcomes in patient situations or reduce costs or increase velocity and treatment, anything that can make our world a healthier, happier world is getting funded, and a lot of those small companies are becoming medium-sized and bigger companies. So health care, in general, I think is leading the space. Technology is not that far behind. And for the first time in a long time, our industrial sector has turned hot in all manners of technology, including what we would expect from IoT and RPA. Lastly, a general thought about what's going on in the market today. If you get approached from one of our colleagues or a client of ours in this time, you don't have to worry about the company because that's a company that's doing well if they can pay attention and afford to hire now.

That's true.

I would add to that a couple of thoughts to what Mark said. Certainly, the health care is high. There's a lot of activity, I think, was mentioned early on about telehealth and talking to Novant and some others, the numbers of telehealth sessions that they've had this year so far is something like 100,000. What they had last year was less than 1,000, and we're only a little over 1/4 into the year. So you can see that. The other thing I would comment on is while leisure and hospitality, transportation, even government have been just hit very, very hard, if you're forecasting out 3 to 6 months, you can see that leisure and hospitality are bound to start up, evidence of what's taking place in Las Vegas and certainly here on the shores of the Atlantic and South Carolina and so forth. So there's a lot of focus on that, and transportation utilities are just waiting. And last point, automotive, automotive, while it has just has been terribly depressed, and my partner evidenced that the last call, they're going back to work. They're making Ford F-150s and others, and you're going to see that arena come back hot as the year goes along, too. So some positivity with respect to forecasting here.

And Shoukat, let me add, I agree completely with what Mark and John have said. Let me add this. I think that we all need to be sensitive to the social trends, and Kim mentioned this. We've had COVID. We've had sort of Amy Cooper, George [ Floyd ] and then the riots and there we think -- and what I think this has done is it's made people really focus on the makeup of their teams. And I think that diversity hires and the inclusion of different groups and people has really shot to the top of everyone's agenda. And I think we all need to be sensitive of that overlay with respect to everything that John and Mark have said.

I think those are great points. Absolutely right about that. So in that situation, now let's say we talk about not post-COVID-19 environment. What do you think the business executives now will be looking something different in IT executives than what they would have looked before COVID-19 situation?

Well, let me start on this point. I think we all look at what happened, and there's really 3 big things that everybody is focusing on: kind of what is our corporate strategy and transformation, what is our tech strategy, and what is our people strategy. So previously, the IT executive was focused just on IT stuff, but everything has sped up. IT was, frankly, the rescuer of many organizations, the hero, and the voice of IT leadership is now magnified dramatically. So really, what people are looking for is how were you positioned; what did you do; how did you execute; how did you communicate; what were the, let's call it, the hard skills around making tough decisions, doing type of things; but then what are the kind of the soft skills that went around that. I kind of -- I've got a word that I use with respect to that, which is called kind of adaptive resilience, which you need to be resilient, but you need to be adaptive in and around that. So imagine a flame. If you aren't adaptive, the flame is blown out. If you're too adaptive, you didn't -- this almost didn't impact you. But if you were adaptively resilient, you probably did all the right kind of things. You had your coherent long-term strategy, short-term fixes. But the soft side of that came through. You were empathetic. You listened. You were vulnerable. You asked for help. Nobody knows how to solve this problem because we were never in it before. How did -- had you built the following? Had you built the credibility? Were you authentic in solving these problems? It's okay to ask for help and empower and trust the outcomes. And then you had to have some strategic patience in my mind as well because you needed to do things, but you needed to plant seeds, water seeds and then harvest at the right time. And I think senior executives now hiring top talent are going to look at the overall perspective of how did you do, what did you do and how did you accomplish your tasks and this communication and all that I've mentioned. So while leadership remains the overall skill set people look for, I think there are subtle changes to how leaders led and the way they led.

So could I say that in the past, historically, in these kind of panels, we normally hear that one of the skills that the executive -- business executives are looking for in IT executive is proactiveness, okay? And this was probably the time that nobody would have expected anybody to know the scope of this pandemic. So maybe the reaction skills are now under consideration to see how you reacted to this situation. Is that right?

I think that's right. And the reaction skill was, yes, you could do something. But frankly, if you hadn't started 2 or 3 years ago, everybody knew this was going to happen. The timeframe just got massively compressed, and you probably needed to start 2, 3, 4, 5 years ago on this journey. And if you had, then you were able to react more efficiently. But frankly, if you were caught swimming naked, you're probably out of a job.

That's good point. So let me ask another situation. So now putting yourself on a CIO situation, and I'm sure CIO has demonstrated or acquired some special skills in this unfortunate situation. So the question, maybe Mark or John could help me, to see how they could leverage the skills that they have acquired or demonstrated in this unfortunate situation. How could they leverage either to grow within their current organization or look for opportunity outside?

So Shoukat, I certainly agree with all of the list of attributes and competencies that Tony has listed. We've pretty much known that list for a while. But there's an amplifier, and the amplifier is courage, courage to do things that may or may not work because, as Tony said, as we all know, we're in unchartered waters. And so we're not sure what would work or what won't work, and what works for me may not work for John or may not work for Tony, vice versa. So there's a great deal of courage that's needed to try things, to do things, to accelerate things, to push the envelope, to go get allies in the business to get it done, and we're all experiencing new opportunities to do things differently. If only just doing them in an accelerated way, but to do things differently, including speed and trying things and encourages the multiplier. So the definition of courage that I'll leave you with is going outside your comfort zone. That's all it is. If I stay in my comfort zone, not very courageous. If I'll step out of my comfort zone and do things I haven't done before and try things and say things that I haven't done before, then I'm being courageous. And that's the multiplier effect.

Hey, Mark -- that's brilliant, Mark. We have a poll, I think, [ Nicky ], the -- you have a poll, Mark, that you want to...

Yes. We were talking before about the demand, meaning the client side looking for talent. There's also, of course, the supply side. How would you guys out there in Zoom land feel about changing jobs given the COVID-19 situation? So compared to your current plans pre-COVID, are you more likely, somewhat more likely, about the same, somewhat less likely or much less likely to change jobs than before? And I think you're going to be pleasantly surprised by the numbers. So please vote now and poll.

Excellent. Hey, Shoukat, great job. We're about out of time. Final comment, Shoukat?

Yes. So I had maybe one final question, I think, that's very important for all IT executives. So I have one final question for each one of you, starting with Tony. What would be your advice to those IT executives who are in transition in the current situation?

So keep in contact with search people. Work your network. Don't drift away. It's so easy. You're working from home. You're all alone. Join these kind of conferences. Be involved on an online setup. And then get a list of companies you'd love to work for, and find a way to network in, in the short term because, as I mentioned, the internal recruiting departments are doing work there. Sheila just said she's posting a bunch of stuff on LinkedIn. So kind of figure out where do I want to work and how do I find my way into those organizations. The search executives will get searches over time, so stay in contact with us, but that's my short-term advice.

So John, final question for you. I think we still have those IT executives that they are employed, but maybe they are at higher risk right now. What is your advice to them?

It's -- it goes along with some of the comments that Tony made. So I consider it the -- multi-focused here certainly taking a look at your professional development activities. Things are -- you're more efficient at this point, although you -- at the start, you were working significant hours. You probably still are. But you need to carve out a piece on your own professional development as well as taking a look at the accomplishments that you've had and who you've worked with in the organization and make sure those relationships are firm. And take a look -- I'm not sure if it was Kim or who, but talking about what's going to happen postcrisis and working to get that strategy in place. Certainly, update your career documents. Take a look at your personal brand. Engaging in your network is important. Virtual events like these are plentiful. This happens to be the 5 star out of everything that I think we've experienced. One last comment, there are a number of situations here in the Carolinas, Charlotte with respect to NC Tech Association, Apparo, some others, certainly SIM Charlotte, where you can still engage your network and build your personal brand as you go forward here. I'd like to say that you need to stay engaged with this. If you're in a situation that you're not satisfied with, you think it could be better, then you got to put on your sales hat and focus on selling your product and your services. I think, as Tony mentioned it, identifying who your prospects are, what companies you want to pursue, who's in your network that you want to talk to and start working that funnel and make sure that you are able to come out of this, anticipating a change that may not be what you focused on today.

Thank you, John. And Mark, maybe for you, those IT executives, they're employed, but they are just looking for opportunities. What would be your advice to them right now?

Shoukat, I'm going to give the same advice to active lookers, passive lookers and nonlookers. And it bounces off some of the things that John and Tony both said, and that is get your resume in great shape. Get your physical resume as well as your electronic resume, principally LinkedIn, in great shape because you never know when the right call is going to come. And lastly, be very, very careful about what you post, what you like and what you comment on. It's all trackable, and most possibly, all my clients do pretty exhaustive searches online to understand what you think and what you say and what you like and what you don't like. So make sure that you are putting yourself out there in as polished and professional way as you can. Lastly, [ Nicky ], could we see the results of that last poll? So 38% would be about the same in terms of likelihood to look for a new opportunity, 17% more, somewhat more and 8% much more. So we've got something like almost 2/3, 60-odd percent, are at least as likely, if not, somewhat more or more likely to change. And that's a very, very positive statement. That is consumer optimism where it counts the most.

Shoukat, thank you very much. Really appreciate it. Tony, great job. Mark, good to see you. John, excellent job.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks, guys.

Take care. Bye.

So next up, securing the future of work. Karl Hightower, CDO of Novant Health. Karl is going to lead the panel. Karl, welcome to the program.

Thank you, Hunter. Really appreciate being here. I have a fantastic panel of people here to answer about how are we coping with COVID-19 and all of the challenges that it's brought around securing that future of work with people not being necessarily in the office and starting to look at the work-from-anywhere environment. What we're really looking at is how do we secure it, what are the challenges going to be and how are we adapting around the security role and that leadership role that it brings.

So first, let me start with Erik Wille. He's CISO of Penske Automotive Group. He's been there for quite a while. He's grown up through the ranks, and he's building out a world-class CISO and security department. So Erik, how do you feel that your role has changed now given that you are within the automobile industry and also starting to look at the new dynamic of that work environment?

Yes. Thanks, Karl. First and foremost, great group of speakers here. It's -- I really appreciate you guys inviting me to this. It's a lot of great information. As I look at the changing dynamics, I think it was great, what Sheila said, that we got to talk about the speed to pivot. And then Kim kind of later on said we're not going to be back doing business as usual. And as security leaders, I think we've got to acknowledge that, that is really true, that business, as we used to do it, is not what we're going to be doing tomorrow, which means we have 1 of 3 choices, right? The business is about to go on a drive, and we have a choice. Number one, we could stay at home. We can let the business go where it's going to go anyways, the decisions be made, and then we'll -- reactive. Then we come back with controls, try to bolt it on, kind of harkening back to what security used to be. A lot of people said it was the department of no, not very agile. It was very inflexible to what's going on. Number two, take the back seat, that we're there at the table. We're going along for the ride. Kind of we're understanding the direction, the map, where we're going, and we're offering little suggestions along the way that, depending on the direction that we can build kind of controls in here. It's still somewhat reactive, but we're along having the conversations with key executives as the business morphs. And number three, the one that I prefer would be that we're sitting in the passenger seat. Now the analogy of a car, right, there's typically 2 seats unless we go back to some older cars where it's kind of a race to how many people can we put in the front seat, not safe anymore. But for the -- the thought here, let's say, there's multiple seats in the front seat. And we need to be running along the way along the team, helping the business become what it is going to become tomorrow. It's going to happen regardless if we're there or not. But why not, as security leaders, kind of adapt to different SaaS-based applications, moving our controls, getting away from being kind of -- security being combined within 4 walls and moving towards identity centric, cloud centric, understanding real-time security and building that as an intrinsic value into the components of where the business is going so that instead of trying to be that retroactive bolt-on, where it's not really going to fit, it's kind of kludgy in the way it plays out. We're a key contributor and at some point, bringing technology to the forefront, right? I think you hear a lot of great CIOs speak about the technical innovations, and a lot of that can help come from the security group as well. There are some great -- if you look at -- just looking at my team and as part of the overall IT team, some of the best [ tinkers ], ideas, some of the most in-touch people with where the business is going come from the security team, and they have a lot to add to being able to, again, build in that intrinsic security into the solutions that we create.

Thanks. That's great, Erik. Christine (sic) [ Christina ] Quaine is CISO of AvidXchange. And Christine has held many roles up through audit, the privacy, all the way to that leading of fintech, security and technology. Christine, how do you feel that things are going now with your role? And also, what are the challenges that you're going to be facing? And also, what do you think you need to be doing about it?

A little bit what Erik said as far as thinking differently and not necessarily thinking about the security within the 4 walls. Yes, that's the easy way, but that's not the way we need to evolve, and I think this pandemic has really just shown us that we need to change with the times. If I think about it, I know I read quite a few articles, and fraud has been up 20% since the pandemic. We all know these phishing campaigns that happen, where people are really trying to get stimulus checks and really dupe people into clicking that link. And so if I think about just the landscape and how things are evolving and changing, it's really thinking about what your core competencies are as an organization, what you should be doing internally, what maybe you should have a trusted third party to support you in. If you don't have a large staff, maybe you need to outsource your security operations center, just things like that, really kind of understanding the risk that we're dealing with today and how that's evolved and constantly reevaluating that risk.

Perfect. Thank you. Mike Hillhouse. So Mike is CISO of Cadrillion Capital, also a very broad background, Mike, that you bring me to the table on this from a lot of different industries, a lot of different roles within there. Mike, what are some of the things, as you look at, that are going to come out of the challenges of, one, working remote; two, we're dealing with a pandemic, where we're having to deal with essentially a balance of who's gotten the illness versus protecting the overall security of just your individual rights? So Mike, what are your concerns? And what do you think that we should be looking at as we go forward?

Thanks, Karl. I appreciate being invited to this panel. So one of the things we run into -- we've been back to work already for probably 6 or 7 weeks now. And so one of the challenges that we've been discussing is, as an environment and a company, if somebody was to get sick, we have a right -- from HIPAA perspective, we have to protect their identity. So we can't just go to a division or even a portion of our company and say, "Hey, look, Mary Jo got COVID, and you guys all have been in contact with her, and so you need to go get tested and quarantine and whatnot," right? So we have to somehow figure out how to get around that because, at the end of the day, we do have to tell those people to go get tested and to go get quarantined until they find out their test results, yet we still have to protect Mary Jo and what happened with her. And so that makes it a little bit difficult when you're trying to deal with that across a company. In larger companies, perhaps you could do it from, say, a division, depending on how the people are broke up in the environment, in the office environment, what kind of contact they have with other people. Maybe you could just send a blanket statement to the entire department and say, "Look, all of you have possibly been exposed to COVID. You need to go get tested, quarantine, et cetera." With us, we're a smaller company, it's a little harder to do that because we have roughly 18 people here in 2 separate areas, so we have about 9 in each area. And so -- but we still interact all the way across. So for us, we would probably have to deal with that as far as we would just send something out to everybody and just tell everybody to go home and get tested. But it's a challenge. How do you do that, right? You have to protect people's privacy, yet you still have to make sure the other people are aware of the situation that they've been put into.

Thank you, Mike. Our last panelist, Wolfgang Goerlich, is Advisory CISO at Duo Security. So I wanted to ask you specifically, how are you going about looking at the challenges protecting people's identity. I know that this is kind of some of the background as you look at it, is that identity and the access, as we talked about financial possibilities with fraud. We start to look at increasing of the executive presence within the security. And now we're looking at balancing out privacy rights of the individual. So Wolfgang, welcome, and I wanted to throw that kind of over to you on the balance of that identity.

Great. Thank you, Karl. So good to be here on this chat today. That's a really good point. Fundamentally, bad guys profit off of bad times, right? Some times go bad, the bad guys line up, and that's when you get a fraud. You get identity attacks and everything else. So one, that's a headwind we're heading into. Two, I think Erik brought up a really good point in terms of a lot of security is moving towards an identity-centric model. Makes sense. What's the commonality if you're working from home or working in the office? What's the commonality if you're working off a internally provided client server app or these SaaS apps that we all use? I think the latest statistic is over 1,300 SaaS apps per organization. The commonality is that identity. So we've got the need for strong identity controls and the very growing, very real risk of fraud and bad guys taking advantage of bad times. With that, I think organizations that were already down the journey of de-premierization, already down the journey of zero trust, already down the journey of saying, "Okay, we're going to put in place strong authentication. We're going to put in place identity proofing. We're going to establish our perimeter -- our security perimeter not as a network perimeter but as a perimeter based on whenever we're making an access control decision." And with those things come certain degrees of flexibility, right? We're able to have visibility into our user population. We're able to have visibility into devices that we may or may not own, applications that we may or may not have authorized and be able to enforce controls around that model. So I think some organizations, of course, were already on that journey, and we've seen when this massive shift to work from home happened that they were well poised to adjust. And some, of course, have, through a degree of business continuity, through a degree of IT craftsmanship, through a degree of hustle, been able to rapidly provision technology. Fundamentally, though, I think moving forward, we need to keep an eye on protecting that identity. And again, those are things like strong identity authentication, multifactor step-up, contextual and conditional access policies. The bread and butter are protecting that person and their credentials.

No, great answer. Love it. Totally agree with you. One of the challenges I want to give out there is the CapEx versus the OpEx and that discussion that goes in there. Erik, I want to go to you on this one because I know that this is a tough one. How are you having that conversation with executive leaders on, as was pointed out here, going to all of these SaaS applications, strengthening security? So how are you going about having that conversation? Also, how are you going about building out the need to expand your team as the challenges become tougher and tougher?

Yes. The team expansion, I'll start there. That's a question I wish we were having, but unfortunately, given the times, that's not even one we can bring to the table. But from a control change standpoint, it's helping understand, so we're in the middle of an Office 365 journey and helping understand that if we look back to the traditional security controls that we had, take a given file server that's sitting on-site at a given dealership, you've got somewhat -- you've got some physical controls around it that the likelihood of somebody getting into the room, taking that server, walking out with it, not likely to happen. But now you shift that into a cloud perspective, you're one click away, one click from a phishing link, one click from a number of different things that -- the ease to gaining access to that data is much, much quicker, which means we have to be quicker in our response. We have to be better in the analytics, the visibility that we have into that. And I'd like to use the analogy of moving from security at a stadium. When we used to -- back in the day, when we used to be able to go to stadiums, that you've got the security guard, right, standing outside. And I think we've seen the animated gif or the video of a security guard doesn't even touch the person, just kind of wipes his hands and then waves him bye. Once you're in, you're kind of already in a trusted state. And we've got to get past that in the cloud environment, where it's real-time security focused on creating attributes and norms for given individuals and being able to trigger off of when we deviate from those norms, whether it be work hours, location, a number of different attributions that we can use, that we're able to trigger those security points and trigger -- Wolfgang was talking about strong authentication, getting into MFA, trigger an MFA prompt, trigger a password change. So getting into that real-time security to protect data that is much more portable than it ever once was.

That's actually a really good idea as you talk about the pattern recognition in there. So Christine, let me throw it to you since you're in the financial sector, and I know that they've used for a long period of time the pattern and the AI to be able to do that. Are you having challenges educating your executive team or hiring into making this even stronger now that we're seeing things spread out?

Yes. I guess I wouldn't say it's so much the executive team. I think they get it. I think we talked about IT finally having the limelight and that we were the heroes of the pandemic and being able to shift that work remote. What I would say probably the Board and the other executives really want to hear about is what are -- how are we protecting that data. Erik was talking about the Office 365 migration. What are our vulnerabilities look like? It even goes back to the work from home and people's networks. How are they protecting that data? That's -- we are entrusted with people's information, and we have to take that seriously. We have to protect that data. That is our most important job. And so for me, it always goes back to the human elements, our people being the weakest link and constantly training them as things are evolving. Inherently, people want to be helpful. And so I put my risk management hat back on. They don't understand what the risk is of disclosing some information, and so you really have to educate them on what those downstream impacts could mean to the organization. So for me, training is really important for us to talk about and maybe just the increases in the attempts on our network, showing the Board and executives how well we are doing. It is layers of security and so oftentimes, they think those are table stakes. But showing the change from pre-COVID within our 4 walls to work from home is a good story to tell, I think.

So from that, it sounds like the working from home isn't as much of a challenge. Has anyone seen the increase in cyber attacks or denial of service or other things that would make you nervous come about since this began in February within the country? Mike, I'll throw it out to you.

Yes. We haven't seen anything additional on our end. We always have small attacks that people are trying to do things, but we haven't seen an increase.

I would say the same is true for us. I mean you always see some attempts. If you don't make it really easy for you to be, I guess, attacked, people move on to the next organization. So as long as you have the right controls in place, it -- if it becomes too difficult, they move on, in my experience.

Right. And I'll take a little bit different perspective on it. From a pure volume standpoint, we haven't seen as many attacks, but it's on a percentage basis. Whether it be a percentage of e-mails coming in, a percentage of web activity percentage, those are all up. If you look at ticket accounts, the number of alerts that we're seeing, we've been drawing those [ metrics ] that while sales, while employees being furloughed, while those metrics might be down, our tickets and what we're working on have been through the roof.

I would agree. I think the idea of the e-mail compromise is definitely something that we just have our eye on.

Are any of you facing a challenge with, as you have people working from home, using their own devices, whether it be BYOD policy and being able to secure those properly and being able to teach people how to leverage and use those?

We -- no. We were fortunate that all of our employees already had laptops, and we already had enough VPN licenses for everyone to be able to work from home. That's just part of our standard business continuity plan that we have. So we haven't had this issue.

I will say there have been some clients of Duo Security where you had to run out and provision equipment. You had to make the shift, and of course, trying to get the right kit and get everything through supply chain wasn't happening. So in those scenarios, one of the aspects of good frontline security bread and butter is device health, device management. So we've been looking at those types of agents to allow for expanding BYOD very quickly in the interim while the supply chain catches up.

Perfect. So I guess we're the only ones who are at desktops, that we had to kind of account for that. All right. So that's fine. A little bit different world when you have positions and you have to start either provisioning laptops at the speed of light or figure out how to remotely connect all of those things. Very interesting. All right. So...

Karl, just so you don't feel bad. We also were in the same boat. So we did have some individuals that had desktops. Thankfully, we have a great relationship with Microsoft, and we were able to procure that and get people out the door in a couple of days. And this was pre, I guess, the big wave of the pandemic. So we were able to satisfy the need.

Right. [indiscernible] Great job here. And we're about -- we need to wrap up here. Do you want to give any final statements?

Does anyone want to -- Christine, let's start with you. Any advice you might have for leaders out there?

Keep doing what you're doing. Keep asking for those dollars. Keep showing the metrics that -- and tell the story that allows the organization to really understand the importance of security.

Erik?

The key takeaway, make sure security is at the table. Make sure that they're there to run alongside and help develop what the future is going to be so that we're not in a reactive state trying to fix, how to build a breach or fix a solution [ that we produce ].

Mike?

Yes. Keep up with the training. Modify your training. Make sure you keep it current, but definitely stay on top of the training.

Wolfgang, we'll wrap up with you.

I like what Mike said about investing in your people. I would also say that the future-proofing way of IT and IT security is flexibility. So always look for controls, especially as we're addressing the situation, that are incredibly flexible and can fit a variety of different future use cases because, certainly, no one in January could have predicted where we are today in June. And likewise, I think it's very difficult to predict where we're going to be in December.

Hey, Karl, thanks so much. Christina, great to see you. Thank you, Wolfgang. Great job, Mike; and Erik, awesome. Hey, the rest of the panelists that are still on the program, if you can turn your video on, it would be great for you to come back to the main program here. Big thanks. I got to tell you, when we pivoted 90 days ago to a virtual summit model, we created this 1.5-hour format. We thought it would work, and right out of the park, 12 days later, the -- [ some of ] America, 500 people, 400 in-person -- went to 400 that signed up and 300 that showed up, the timing, the cadence seem -- the flow seems to work, I think, brilliantly and seamlessly. Interested in any feedback or builds, but I think I'd be really open with you. In Charlotte, this is our best summit ever in 5 years of being there. A big thanks, a shout out to Charlotte SIM, Raja, John and Daidre. You did a great job. Love the partnership. Another amazing summit, thought leadership, brilliant, pure driven nonanalyst insights, truly world-class insights shared by all -- by the speakers, panelists and moderators. So really, a big thanks. And thanks to our partners, Moveworks, Duo, Darktrace and Pure Storage. We couldn't do it without you. Jack, thanks so much for being here. And Wolfgang.

Thanks, Hunter, another great event. Really appreciate the ability to have such great conversations, really some smart folks on the line and I think a great forum for it.

We're hitting out of the park guys, and we're doing about 2 to 3 a week. We were in London yesterday. We're in St. Louis later this week. But for the partners and for our tech leaders, we've invested heavily in a digital platform, a marketplace that we'll be launching in the next week or so. Would love for you guys to bring it back to organizations on the vendor partner side. It's a great way to go to market, where people will go right into the marketplace and be able to see quotes from other testimonials from other people in the network, request a meeting, see a video from your CEO or thought leader like you, Jack, or you, Wolfgang. More to come later. Thanks, Raja.

Thank you, Hunter.

Thank you.

Thank you so much. Thank you.

Well done, everybody.