Boomi World 2024 | Thomas Lai | Boomi & Brett Wilson | Australian Red Cross

theCUBE.net

Clips
News
More from Boomi World 2024

Thomas Lai

Vice President of Global Accounts

Boomi

Brett Wilson

Chief Information Officer

Australian Red Cross

Inside the Australian Red Cross’ digital transformation with Boomi integration

The digital transformation landscape is rapidly evolving, with organizations worldwide recognizing the necessity of integrating advanced technologies to enhance operational efficiency and meet the ever-growing demands of modern society.The convergence of cloud computing, artificial intelligence and data management platforms has become a pivotal focus, driving innovations that promise to streamline processes and deliver real-time insights. This paradigm shift is particularly evident in sectors where timely and accurate data processing is crucial, such as disaster relief and community support services

play_circle_outline The Crucial Role of Data Management and Integration in Australian Red Cross: A Digital Transformation Journey with Emerging Technologies

play_circle_outline The Significance of User-Friendly Technology Solutions and Contrasting APJ and North American Markets

play_circle_outline Focus on cost optimization and maximizing efficiency with AI

play_circle_outline Importance of personalization and engaging with donors

Info

Thomas Lai | Boomi & Brett Wilson | Australian Red Cross

Thomas Lai

Vice President of Global Accounts Boomi

Brett Wilson

Chief Information Officer Australian Red Cross

search

>> Welcome back, everyone, to theCUBE's live coverage here in Denver, Colorado. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. Been here for three days. Winding down day three. You got two great guests. Thomas is here. He is the VP and GM of APJ for Boomi. Welcome to theCUBE.

Chris Thomas

>> Thank you

>> Brett is the CIO for the Australian Red Cross Customer Conversations. Brett, thanks for coming on.

Brett Roscoe

>> Thanks for having me.

>> All right, so first of all, let's set the context up. You guys are a customer at Boomi. What's going on? Give us an update on what you guys do. Red Cross, people can figure it out. But what your use case are and what you're trying to solve.

Brett Roscoe

>> Yeah, so great question. So Australian Red Cross operates across the workload against another 192 national societies. We provide emergency and disaster relief as also a community support as well. So really important focus around what we do. Australian Red Cross has been through a significant digital transformation over the last 12 to 18 months, and we've looked at and created that digital foundation. We did seven platforms in 12 months. And so quite an optimistic target, but we've achieved it and come out the other side now. We're really focusing around how do we leverage off emerging technologies that are coming through such as AI.

>> Ease of use has been probably one of the big things that we hear a lot in situations where tech's involved, especially in cultures where on the APJ market, it's not the same as North America is it? Or what are their needs? We've seen people doing things a little bit differently in North America versus APJ. Thomas, what's the market like for you guys out there?

Chris Thomas

>> It's a really phenomenal opportunity. I think most people in North America probably can sort of relate to what's happening in APJ, but not exactly. So if you take Australia for example, the COVID situation was much more amplified there and much more of an extended duration, and they even had rules where people couldn't travel between various counties and states. So you were literally landlocked. And then I think as you go broader into Southeast Asia, their digitization is non-existent back then. And so all of these organizations are in the quest to catch up, to not go through that ever again. And so it's a really exciting time for us.

>> And I don't want to relive COVID because I get triggered, but that highlights having your ducks lined up, so to speak. Get your data in order, understand the mechanisms you have at your disposal. Take us through your digital transformation journey. What was the catalyst? Was it a forcing function? Was COVID involved? Take us through your journey and from how it went down.

Brett Roscoe

>> Yeah, look, it was a mixture of all of them, to be honest. I think we're living in this digital world now and I think a lot of charities have not really recognized that you need to shift into that digital mode. And without doing it, you will still operate but you won't be as efficient as fast as you can be. And I guess where we need to look at is how do you create efficiency and how do we optimize the business as well? So we looked at creating that digital foundation, that digital spine. The data is a key piece for us. So data flows obviously in and out of different systems. So whilst we created this digital spinal foundation, we still have 243 legacy apps, and Boomi sits in between all those and is creating that conduit between legacy and modern technology and is doing a fantastic job around managing those data flows as well.

>> Expand more on the architecture or the topology of the systems across multiple geographies, data centers. Give us a little more color on the layout.

Brett Roscoe

>> We've shifted away from actually having in data centers, so we're 100% in the cloud now. But I think one of the key things for us is we went a platform approach. So for us it was around how do we get more out of a platform rather than best of breed? And that's worked really well for us because what that means is we can leverage off data that sits across multiple platforms but obviously surface it to staff and end users, especially when they're out on the field as well.

>> So you went cloud for agility?

Brett Roscoe

>> Agility, speed and efficiency.

>> And you're happy with that move?

Brett Roscoe

>> Yeah, I think but it's also managing cloud costs. It's one of the key things that I think we're seeing at the moment around that sprawl around cloud. So it's making sure that you do manage those costs, because it's so easy to spin up another service or something else like that and you don't see the cost till the end of the month.

>> It's like leaving the faucet on, you don't want to-

Brett Roscoe

>> Correct.

>> That's happened to us many times. We're a small company. We're like, "Whoa." But this is a good point. Cost optimization has been a big driver, but now with AI, you start to see that it's not so much repatriation or thinking, "Let's cut costs." It's more of, "I want to maximize the efficiency of the spend and make sure I'm investing in other areas." Like gen AI's one hot area. We see people taking from one budget, it's going to the other. How are you guys looking at that now next generation task? Because gen AI has opportunities but also risks. Talk about cost optimization. You solve the cloud problem, the AI could be a gigantic sinkhole for cash if you don't get it right. So again, another challenge with AI is the cost side on that too.

Brett Roscoe

>> And I think it's about picking the right use cases that are really going to offer the most amount of benefits. And we do a fairly stringent cost/benefit analysis start of everything we do. We only have a limited amount of funding. So for us it's really important that we redirect those funds into the right areas that are going to give us some really great outcomes. In looking at the keynote yesterday from Steve is some of the pieces in there which is around the gen AI, around being able to look at obviously agents and data flows, is a really interesting point from us because it removes the requirement for having a really technical resources to more of a business analyst who can help us along those ways as well.

>> Yeah, I think one of the things that's come out of the Boomi World here is the clear validation that data and workflows for a company is their intellectual property.

Chris Thomas

>> That's right.

>> And you don't want to ... I won't say poison that. Integrate that with the hallucinogen, AKA a model that might not be 100% accurate. Because if you're running operations and you've got relief on the line, you major critical system to deliver.

Chris Thomas

>> Undoing that ... Right, sorry.

Brett Roscoe

>> No, you go ahead.

Chris Thomas

>> I was going to say, undoing the bad learnings, unlearning, the toughest part right now.

>> Yeah.

Chris Thomas

>> And I think the second part to that is that it's not a batch process, it's a continuous process which has a lot different load on the whole infrastructure.

Brett Roscoe

>> And just in addition to that, I think is if we're out in the field making decisions on the fly with real-time data and the data being fed in is wrong or AI decides to make a slightly different tweak to it, it could impact what we're actually doing on the ground.

>> I think you guys ... Not to go in the rabbit hole, you guys are a great example of what I call a tactical edge execution. You have to be tactical, real-time with data. Everything's got to be perfect. That's hard. That's not easy. Where's the synchronization of the data? Is it highly available or high availability? Those words mean something in tech. Where's the data being stored? Is it updated? Is the app working? What's the latency?

Brett Roscoe

>> And who has access to that information really is important, because we move around a lot of data, obviously every time we activate and even when we're not activated. And it's making sure that we don't potentially put the wrong data of say donors or someone we're helping as well in the wrong spot that then someone has access to it as well.

>> All right, so I got to ask you. So you kind of jumped ahead on me a little bit on this one, because you said you went right to the cloud, which I was all excited about. I love to hear the success. I'm liking that too. It's great. We're all cloud-native too. We were born in the cloud so we didn't really have any legacy. Take us through the transmission with Boomi. What actually went down? You had to go to the cloud as part of the digital transmission. What went down? We used sunsetting existing apps? Were there data centers? Were there not data centers? Were there net new as a cloud? Take us through what happened.

Brett Roscoe

>> So the journey probably started way back in 2021. There was an audit risk around aging infrastructure, so we shifted most things to a cloud environment at that time so that we went to more infrastructure as a service. But it was a costly exercise and was to address a tactical issue that we had. We then thought about, "Okay, what is that longer-term view?" Put together a plan around, "How do we get the most out of obviously the funding we have, but how do we make sure that we understand our finances?" So from an ERM perspective, and then, "How do we make sure that we actively engage with our donors?" And that's through marketing and CRM and market automation as well, and that customer data platform as well. Where Boomi sat is kind of the brain between everything. So we could migrate data from a legacy system to a new platform through Boomi, which was just fantastic because then data migration was relatively straightforward. And for us it was the ability to clean it up as it came through. And so weren't putting not great data that we had into a really modern platform as well.

>> You didn't have to build much anything.

Brett Roscoe

>> No, because we already had that there, and that was probably the key benefit.

>> Well this is, Thomas, one of the big nuances that's coming out on stage. Steve said it directly, but it's still not obvious to some people that you already built all this stuff.

Chris Thomas

>> Well yes.

>> Vishal Sikka, he's a legend in the web services community. He's using Boomi. He's like, "Why would I want to build that? I just can go with Boomi." So again, you're starting to see this composite model of partnering to solve the problem. Do you really care that Boomi does this? It's worth it. The value you get justifies the alternative, which is do it on your own. I got to hire developers. It's almost a no-brainer.

Chris Thomas

>> That's right. I think this notion of ready to go and a whole roadmap now of how you go from raw material to wherever you want to be on your digital transformation. And we have all the componentry to do that cloud-native, hybrid, however you want.

>> Well, I want to come back to what you guys , but I want to hit my question earlier. I want to bring back the North America versus APGA. That's where you're at.

Chris Thomas

>> Yes.

>> In my conversation with that market, those customers there, they're smaller businesses. There's not a lot of mega businesses. The cloud adoption, at least from my audit and our research shows that it's the bigger multinationals in America that have the big data centers and cloud plays. There's a lot of small medium-sized businesses in that market. Well big, but medium compared to the large super enterprises. So when you have this kind of makeup, you got a lot of family businesses ... Just there's a different culture.

Chris Thomas

>> That's right.

>> And they want speed. They don't want bureaucracy, they don't want silos, they want something that's going to click in and work.

Chris Thomas

>> That's right.

>> Is that the way it's going down? Am I accurate or what am I missing?

Chris Thomas

>> No, I think that's a fair statement for where we're at, which is whether it's a big business or a medium business, if you're early in your digital transformation, they don't want to go all-in out of the gate. Whereas in America you actually find that they'll go enterprise wide out of the gate. And so we've been successful, to your point, in both contexts, either figuring out a phased approach, or in the mid-sized business, making it so shrink-wrapped in nature and package that it's easy for them to say yes to.

>> Got it.

Chris Thomas

>> Yes. The positioning is somewhat different. Absolutely.

>> So Brett, now back to. You mentioned a little bit about the databases and stuff in the cloud. I imagine that the way you make money is you raise money, you get funding.

Brett Roscoe

>> Correct.

>> So that's a process. And you got to go ... donors, they're, I guess your money customers. You got to go nurture them, and that's a process. Is that innovation there? What are the core use cases for you? Is that one of them?

Brett Roscoe

>> So I think if you looked at previously before the transformation, we would send out an EDM to 250,000 supporters or donors. It would be the same EDM and it would pretty much say, "Would you like to re-donate to us?" Now I think post-transformation is we've got some really great tools in there which is about hyper-personalizing that experience. And so it was similar to what was obviously shown yesterday without the video where you can say, "Hi, how are you doing today? We've noticed you've been really interested around these specific topics. We're thinking you might be interested in donating to these specific appeals." So it becomes more connected to the brand and what we do rather than just a standard EDM that gets sent out. And the video piece that we saw yesterday within Boomi with the ability to create the hyper personalized video, that was amazing.

>> Everyone asked me what the killer app for AI is, my answer to personalization.

Chris Thomas

>> Exactly.

>> And additive things you could deliver on top of that, net new services. You guys could even be in the media business, serving them content to keep them engaged during the entire ... I just made that up. But if you have that kind of level of personalization, you get great speed cycles-

Brett Roscoe

>> And you connect ... Yeah....

>> of connecting feedback and understanding what people might need. Really interesting use case. So where are you guys taking it? But that's a good next question. Okay, what's next?

Brett Roscoe

>> I think what's next for us is we've got some great foundations in that digital spine. So we're building on top of that. So how do we make sure that we leverage off obviously the investment that we made, but also looking at rationalizing those 250 odd applications that are legacy that are still out there as well. And so for us it's about rationalizing apps but obviously building on top. But how do we make sure that we're looking at what's on the horizon for emerging technologies? And so for us, AI is really exciting, but we've got to make sure we are actually going to get, I guess a use case and a benefits analysis around making sure we're going to get something out of it as well.

>> You mentioned digital spine, that word. Okay, what do you mean by that? Because this word spine and leaf has been around in networking. We know what that is when it comes to networking. NVIDIA uses that word a lot. It implies knowledge graphs, neural networks. Is that where it is? Or is that your backbone between apps? What is the digital spine?

Brett Roscoe

>> I think it's more of that, what was that core foundation that you work from? And it's kind of like in a human spine where you can't operate without a human spine. So for us it's that digital spine that runs across the organization with those different platforms that we've got, and it effectively runs the whole organization. So it's kind of like that neural network that everything runs through.

>> So you use a knowledge graph, a connective tissue between systems like that?

Brett Roscoe

>> Exactly.

>> Yeah. That's awesome. That's set up perfectly for AI. That's where it's all going. All right. What's next? Next year when we're here, what are we going to talk about? What's the conversation going to be like next year? If we're at Boomi World 2025, what would be the conversation?

Brett Roscoe

>> I think it's around how we've leveraged off more of the investment, but also around how do we leverage off AI. So AI is a very broad topic at the moment. And so for us it is around that hyper personalization, making sure we're engaging, but also how do we use AI to start looking as predictive analysis out in the field where we're seeing really vulnerable people and identifying areas earlier and quicker as well? Or in the event of say a fire or a flood, we might be able to then leverage off other datasets and bring it together and give an idea where we should really focus our efforts.

>> Yeah, technology for good is a great use case. You have a tactical edge, use case, to put the tech parlance on it, but the impact is significant. Getting the right data at the right time, putting things in the right place is all about that digital spine. And again, that term is probably going to be more used as people realize that ... Like NVIDIA used it at their big event showing how they bring in all their clusters together. And what it is, is essentially the backbone of a new system architecture. And that's going to be fundamental for making sure data's moving fast and everyone's connected. I try to keep my spine nice and straight, all the muscles working in together. It's like being in shape.

Brett Roscoe

>> It is. It is, definitely. And that's where we're hoping to get to as well.

>> Brett, thanks so much for coming. Thomas, congratulations.

Chris Thomas

>> Thank you.

>> You got a great territory there, a great customer.

Brett Roscoe

>> Thank you.

>> Thanks for sharing the story.

Brett Roscoe

>> Thank you.

Chris Thomas

>> Thanks so much.

Brett Roscoe

>> Thanks for having us.

>> Okay, this is theCUBE live here at Boomi World. Thanks for watching. I'm John Furrier. We'll be right back after this short break.

Chris Thomas

>> Thanks.

Thomas Lai | Boomi & Brett Wilson | Australian Red Cross

search

>> Welcome back, everyone, to theCUBE's live coverage here in Denver, Colorado. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. Been here for three days. Winding down day three. You got two great guests. Thomas is here. He is the VP and GM of APJ for Boomi. Welcome to theCUBE.

Chris Thomas

>> Thank you

>> Brett is the CIO for the Australian Red Cross Customer Conversations. Brett, thanks for coming on.

Brett Roscoe

>> Thanks for having me.

>> All right, so first of all, let's set the context up. You guys are a customer at Boomi. What's going on? Give us an update on what you guys do. Red Cross, people can figure it out. But what your use case are and what you're trying to solve.

Brett Roscoe

>> Yeah, so great question. So Australian Red Cross operates across the workload against another 192 national societies. We provide emergency and disaster relief as also a community support as well. So really important focus around what we do. Australian Red Cross has been through a significant digital transformation over the last 12 to 18 months, and we've looked at and created that digital foundation. We did seven platforms in 12 months. And so quite an optimistic target, but we've achieved it and come out the other side now. We're really focusing around how do we leverage off emerging technologies that are coming through such as AI.

>> Ease of use has been probably one of the big things that we hear a lot in situations where tech's involved, especially in cultures where on the APJ market, it's not the same as North America is it? Or what are their needs? We've seen people doing things a little bit differently in North America versus APJ. Thomas, what's the market like for you guys out there?

Chris Thomas

>> It's a really phenomenal opportunity. I think most people in North America probably can sort of relate to what's happening in APJ, but not exactly. So if you take Australia for example, the COVID situation was much more amplified there and much more of an extended duration, and they even had rules where people couldn't travel between various counties and states. So you were literally landlocked. And then I think as you go broader into Southeast Asia, their digitization is non-existent back then. And so all of these organizations are in the quest to catch up, to not go through that ever again. And so it's a really exciting time for us.

>> And I don't want to relive COVID because I get triggered, but that highlights having your ducks lined up, so to speak. Get your data in order, understand the mechanisms you have at your disposal. Take us through your digital transformation journey. What was the catalyst? Was it a forcing function? Was COVID involved? Take us through your journey and from how it went down.

Brett Roscoe

>> Yeah, look, it was a mixture of all of them, to be honest. I think we're living in this digital world now and I think a lot of charities have not really recognized that you need to shift into that digital mode. And without doing it, you will still operate but you won't be as efficient as fast as you can be. And I guess where we need to look at is how do you create efficiency and how do we optimize the business as well? So we looked at creating that digital foundation, that digital spine. The data is a key piece for us. So data flows obviously in and out of different systems. So whilst we created this digital spinal foundation, we still have 243 legacy apps, and Boomi sits in between all those and is creating that conduit between legacy and modern technology and is doing a fantastic job around managing those data flows as well.

>> Expand more on the architecture or the topology of the systems across multiple geographies, data centers. Give us a little more color on the layout.

Brett Roscoe

>> We've shifted away from actually having in data centers, so we're 100% in the cloud now. But I think one of the key things for us is we went a platform approach. So for us it was around how do we get more out of a platform rather than best of breed? And that's worked really well for us because what that means is we can leverage off data that sits across multiple platforms but obviously surface it to staff and end users, especially when they're out on the field as well.

>> So you went cloud for agility?

Brett Roscoe

>> Agility, speed and efficiency.

>> And you're happy with that move?

Brett Roscoe

>> Yeah, I think but it's also managing cloud costs. It's one of the key things that I think we're seeing at the moment around that sprawl around cloud. So it's making sure that you do manage those costs, because it's so easy to spin up another service or something else like that and you don't see the cost till the end of the month.

>> It's like leaving the faucet on, you don't want to-

Brett Roscoe

>> Correct.

>> That's happened to us many times. We're a small company. We're like, "Whoa." But this is a good point. Cost optimization has been a big driver, but now with AI, you start to see that it's not so much repatriation or thinking, "Let's cut costs." It's more of, "I want to maximize the efficiency of the spend and make sure I'm investing in other areas." Like gen AI's one hot area. We see people taking from one budget, it's going to the other. How are you guys looking at that now next generation task? Because gen AI has opportunities but also risks. Talk about cost optimization. You solve the cloud problem, the AI could be a gigantic sinkhole for cash if you don't get it right. So again, another challenge with AI is the cost side on that too.

Brett Roscoe

>> And I think it's about picking the right use cases that are really going to offer the most amount of benefits. And we do a fairly stringent cost/benefit analysis start of everything we do. We only have a limited amount of funding. So for us it's really important that we redirect those funds into the right areas that are going to give us some really great outcomes. In looking at the keynote yesterday from Steve is some of the pieces in there which is around the gen AI, around being able to look at obviously agents and data flows, is a really interesting point from us because it removes the requirement for having a really technical resources to more of a business analyst who can help us along those ways as well.

>> Yeah, I think one of the things that's come out of the Boomi World here is the clear validation that data and workflows for a company is their intellectual property.

Chris Thomas

>> That's right.

>> And you don't want to ... I won't say poison that. Integrate that with the hallucinogen, AKA a model that might not be 100% accurate. Because if you're running operations and you've got relief on the line, you major critical system to deliver.

Chris Thomas

>> Undoing that ... Right, sorry.

Brett Roscoe

>> No, you go ahead.

Chris Thomas

>> I was going to say, undoing the bad learnings, unlearning, the toughest part right now.

>> Yeah.

Chris Thomas

>> And I think the second part to that is that it's not a batch process, it's a continuous process which has a lot different load on the whole infrastructure.

Brett Roscoe

>> And just in addition to that, I think is if we're out in the field making decisions on the fly with real-time data and the data being fed in is wrong or AI decides to make a slightly different tweak to it, it could impact what we're actually doing on the ground.

>> I think you guys ... Not to go in the rabbit hole, you guys are a great example of what I call a tactical edge execution. You have to be tactical, real-time with data. Everything's got to be perfect. That's hard. That's not easy. Where's the synchronization of the data? Is it highly available or high availability? Those words mean something in tech. Where's the data being stored? Is it updated? Is the app working? What's the latency?

Brett Roscoe

>> And who has access to that information really is important, because we move around a lot of data, obviously every time we activate and even when we're not activated. And it's making sure that we don't potentially put the wrong data of say donors or someone we're helping as well in the wrong spot that then someone has access to it as well.

>> All right, so I got to ask you. So you kind of jumped ahead on me a little bit on this one, because you said you went right to the cloud, which I was all excited about. I love to hear the success. I'm liking that too. It's great. We're all cloud-native too. We were born in the cloud so we didn't really have any legacy. Take us through the transmission with Boomi. What actually went down? You had to go to the cloud as part of the digital transmission. What went down? We used sunsetting existing apps? Were there data centers? Were there not data centers? Were there net new as a cloud? Take us through what happened.

Brett Roscoe

>> So the journey probably started way back in 2021. There was an audit risk around aging infrastructure, so we shifted most things to a cloud environment at that time so that we went to more infrastructure as a service. But it was a costly exercise and was to address a tactical issue that we had. We then thought about, "Okay, what is that longer-term view?" Put together a plan around, "How do we get the most out of obviously the funding we have, but how do we make sure that we understand our finances?" So from an ERM perspective, and then, "How do we make sure that we actively engage with our donors?" And that's through marketing and CRM and market automation as well, and that customer data platform as well. Where Boomi sat is kind of the brain between everything. So we could migrate data from a legacy system to a new platform through Boomi, which was just fantastic because then data migration was relatively straightforward. And for us it was the ability to clean it up as it came through. And so weren't putting not great data that we had into a really modern platform as well.

>> You didn't have to build much anything.

Brett Roscoe

>> No, because we already had that there, and that was probably the key benefit.

>> Well this is, Thomas, one of the big nuances that's coming out on stage. Steve said it directly, but it's still not obvious to some people that you already built all this stuff.

Chris Thomas

>> Well yes.

>> Vishal Sikka, he's a legend in the web services community. He's using Boomi. He's like, "Why would I want to build that? I just can go with Boomi." So again, you're starting to see this composite model of partnering to solve the problem. Do you really care that Boomi does this? It's worth it. The value you get justifies the alternative, which is do it on your own. I got to hire developers. It's almost a no-brainer.

Chris Thomas

>> That's right. I think this notion of ready to go and a whole roadmap now of how you go from raw material to wherever you want to be on your digital transformation. And we have all the componentry to do that cloud-native, hybrid, however you want.

>> Well, I want to come back to what you guys , but I want to hit my question earlier. I want to bring back the North America versus APGA. That's where you're at.

Chris Thomas

>> Yes.

>> In my conversation with that market, those customers there, they're smaller businesses. There's not a lot of mega businesses. The cloud adoption, at least from my audit and our research shows that it's the bigger multinationals in America that have the big data centers and cloud plays. There's a lot of small medium-sized businesses in that market. Well big, but medium compared to the large super enterprises. So when you have this kind of makeup, you got a lot of family businesses ... Just there's a different culture.

Chris Thomas

>> That's right.

>> And they want speed. They don't want bureaucracy, they don't want silos, they want something that's going to click in and work.

Chris Thomas

>> That's right.

>> Is that the way it's going down? Am I accurate or what am I missing?

Chris Thomas

>> No, I think that's a fair statement for where we're at, which is whether it's a big business or a medium business, if you're early in your digital transformation, they don't want to go all-in out of the gate. Whereas in America you actually find that they'll go enterprise wide out of the gate. And so we've been successful, to your point, in both contexts, either figuring out a phased approach, or in the mid-sized business, making it so shrink-wrapped in nature and package that it's easy for them to say yes to.

>> Got it.

Chris Thomas

>> Yes. The positioning is somewhat different. Absolutely.

>> So Brett, now back to. You mentioned a little bit about the databases and stuff in the cloud. I imagine that the way you make money is you raise money, you get funding.

Brett Roscoe

>> Correct.

>> So that's a process. And you got to go ... donors, they're, I guess your money customers. You got to go nurture them, and that's a process. Is that innovation there? What are the core use cases for you? Is that one of them?

Brett Roscoe

>> So I think if you looked at previously before the transformation, we would send out an EDM to 250,000 supporters or donors. It would be the same EDM and it would pretty much say, "Would you like to re-donate to us?" Now I think post-transformation is we've got some really great tools in there which is about hyper-personalizing that experience. And so it was similar to what was obviously shown yesterday without the video where you can say, "Hi, how are you doing today? We've noticed you've been really interested around these specific topics. We're thinking you might be interested in donating to these specific appeals." So it becomes more connected to the brand and what we do rather than just a standard EDM that gets sent out. And the video piece that we saw yesterday within Boomi with the ability to create the hyper personalized video, that was amazing.

>> Everyone asked me what the killer app for AI is, my answer to personalization.

Chris Thomas

>> Exactly.

>> And additive things you could deliver on top of that, net new services. You guys could even be in the media business, serving them content to keep them engaged during the entire ... I just made that up. But if you have that kind of level of personalization, you get great speed cycles-

Brett Roscoe

>> And you connect ... Yeah....

>> of connecting feedback and understanding what people might need. Really interesting use case. So where are you guys taking it? But that's a good next question. Okay, what's next?

Brett Roscoe

>> I think what's next for us is we've got some great foundations in that digital spine. So we're building on top of that. So how do we make sure that we leverage off obviously the investment that we made, but also looking at rationalizing those 250 odd applications that are legacy that are still out there as well. And so for us it's about rationalizing apps but obviously building on top. But how do we make sure that we're looking at what's on the horizon for emerging technologies? And so for us, AI is really exciting, but we've got to make sure we are actually going to get, I guess a use case and a benefits analysis around making sure we're going to get something out of it as well.

>> You mentioned digital spine, that word. Okay, what do you mean by that? Because this word spine and leaf has been around in networking. We know what that is when it comes to networking. NVIDIA uses that word a lot. It implies knowledge graphs, neural networks. Is that where it is? Or is that your backbone between apps? What is the digital spine?

Brett Roscoe

>> I think it's more of that, what was that core foundation that you work from? And it's kind of like in a human spine where you can't operate without a human spine. So for us it's that digital spine that runs across the organization with those different platforms that we've got, and it effectively runs the whole organization. So it's kind of like that neural network that everything runs through.

>> So you use a knowledge graph, a connective tissue between systems like that?

Brett Roscoe

>> Exactly.

>> Yeah. That's awesome. That's set up perfectly for AI. That's where it's all going. All right. What's next? Next year when we're here, what are we going to talk about? What's the conversation going to be like next year? If we're at Boomi World 2025, what would be the conversation?

Brett Roscoe

>> I think it's around how we've leveraged off more of the investment, but also around how do we leverage off AI. So AI is a very broad topic at the moment. And so for us it is around that hyper personalization, making sure we're engaging, but also how do we use AI to start looking as predictive analysis out in the field where we're seeing really vulnerable people and identifying areas earlier and quicker as well? Or in the event of say a fire or a flood, we might be able to then leverage off other datasets and bring it together and give an idea where we should really focus our efforts.

>> Yeah, technology for good is a great use case. You have a tactical edge, use case, to put the tech parlance on it, but the impact is significant. Getting the right data at the right time, putting things in the right place is all about that digital spine. And again, that term is probably going to be more used as people realize that ... Like NVIDIA used it at their big event showing how they bring in all their clusters together. And what it is, is essentially the backbone of a new system architecture. And that's going to be fundamental for making sure data's moving fast and everyone's connected. I try to keep my spine nice and straight, all the muscles working in together. It's like being in shape.

Brett Roscoe

>> It is. It is, definitely. And that's where we're hoping to get to as well.

>> Brett, thanks so much for coming. Thomas, congratulations.

Chris Thomas

>> Thank you.

>> You got a great territory there, a great customer.

Brett Roscoe

>> Thank you.

>> Thanks for sharing the story.

Brett Roscoe

>> Thank you.

Chris Thomas

>> Thanks so much.

Brett Roscoe

>> Thanks for having us.

>> Okay, this is theCUBE live here at Boomi World. Thanks for watching. I'm John Furrier. We'll be right back after this short break.

Chris Thomas

>> Thanks.