commercetools Elevate 2024 | Tarek Nseir | EPAM

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Tarek Nseir

Head of Digital

EPAM

The future of enterprise: Driving innovation in digital transformation

In today’s rapidly changing environment, both businesses and individuals continually encounter emerging technologies and business agility solutions.EPAM Systems Inc. is a digital transformation company that has been working with commercetools GmbH for over a decade, with a strong focus on engineering and software. EPAM partnered with commercetools in 2020 to co-found the MACH Alliance to build understanding and appreciation for the MACH paradigm and drive business transformation, according to Tarek Nseir (pictured), head of digital, EMEA, at EPAM.“The M stands for microservices

play_circle_outline Creation and goals of the MACH Alliance

play_circle_outline How MACH architecture enables AI projects and innovation

play_circle_outline Future opportunities and growth of composable architectures in various industries

play_circle_outline EPAM's Partnership with Commerce Tools: Driving Digital Transformation and Empowering AI Innovation

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Tarek Nseir | EPAM

Tarek Nseir

Head of Digital EPAM

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Rebecca Knight

>> Hello everyone, and welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of Commerce Tools Elevate. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. I'm sitting here with my co-host and analyst, Shelly Kramer. Shelly, our next guest is right up your alley.

Shelly Kramer

>> Well, I would say that what he focuses on and what his company focuses on is all things digital transformation and speeding that, and that is very much up my alley.

Rebecca Knight

>> Near and dear to your heart.

Shelly Kramer

>> Near and dear to my heart.

Rebecca Knight

>> Exactly.

Shelly Kramer

>> we're thrilled to have you.

Rebecca Knight

>> I'm here to welcome Tarek Nseir. He is the head of digital at EPAM. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Tarek Nseir

>> Hey, good to meet you.

Rebecca Knight

>> So tell our viewers, for the a little bit about EPAM and what you're is a digital transformation company. We help our customers build digital products, and we help businesses transform through engineering and software.

Shelly Kramer

>> So your job is never done?

Tarek Nseir

>> No, it's continuous.

Rebecca Knight

>> I love that about digital transformation.

Tarek Nseir

>> Indeed.

Rebecca Knight

>> Yes. So what to start working with Commerce Tools?

Tarek Nseir

>> Yeah, we've been working with Commerce Tools for over a decade now.

Rebecca Knight

>> And that's about as old as they are

Tarek Nseir

>> Nearly. Exactly. So not far from the beginning. There's been a really strong executive connect from the outset. And EPAM really prides itself in it's engineering. It's where we built our reputation. And so with the paradigm that Commerce tools were working towards, it's inevitable that our paths would cross and we'd start doing business together. So we worked on some of the earliest implementations of Commerce Tools. In fact, we even partnered with commerce tools to co-found the Alliance. We were from the very beginning of it all.

Shelly Kramer

>> Speaking of Alliance, that's exactly what I want to talk about now. So I know that EPAM is a founding member. Talk with us a little bit about why this alliance was created, what the goal was, and what you

Tarek Nseir

>> Yeah. Sure, no problem. The MACH paradigm, both the architectural paradigm, but then also the execution paradigm that comes with it, was ill understood at the time, and we needed to make sure it became mainstream that we were building education in the marketplace. And when it became apparent that there was an ecosystem of software vendors and who were all really pushing for this, we clubbed together to build broad understanding and appreciation for the movement that has now become MACH. And it's been exceptionally successful, starting really with a lot of education around the technical paradigm, but more recently, so much so in terms of the business transformation paradigm and what it takes to truly transform leveraging these architectures.

Shelly Kramer

>> Can you tell us a little bit about what makes up the MACH technologies? I know it's swappable, composable, but walk us through a little bit about kind of the pieces there, if you would.clue is in the name.

Shelly Kramer

>> Right.

Tarek Nseir

>> So the M stands for

Shelly Kramer

>> Okay.

Tarek Nseir

>> So that's about making sure that all the capability is componentized and available through these microservices, so that you can create interoperability in different ways. The API first, meaning that you can connect to everything both at the front and at the back to achieve anything that you need to from a flexibility perspective. The C is about being cloud native.

Shelly Kramer

>> Of

Tarek Nseir

>> the H, of course is headless.

Shelly Kramer

>> Okay.

Tarek Nseir

>> And with headless, of course, it gives businesses absolute freedom to innovate in the CX layer without being tied down to one of those more tightly coupled architectures.

Shelly Kramer

>> Okay, perfect.

Shelly Kramer

>> That

Rebecca Knight

>> MACH is the way into AI?

Tarek Nseir

>> That's a really good question. I love this topic. Well, in reality, because of the paradigm that I've just described, operating in a MACH architecture effectively means that both the data and the services are available for you to consume within an AI project. You don't have to do any further work. Your data's already in the right places. The interoperability is already in place. So you have a ready-made box of tools from which you can start innovating on top of leveraging GenAI. And so if we weren't working in a MACH architecture, we might be working with some customers with some more legacy stacks where we have to go and make those things available before we can really start innovating with GenAI. So it's a perfect precursor because these set of best practices are an accelerant. Basically, you can get going with the innovation quickly.

Rebecca Knight

>> Yeah. You're starting from a further point ahead. So one of the things we love on is customer stories.

Tarek Nseir

>> Sure.

Rebecca Knight

>> Can you share any examples of customers that were able to use the Alliance and really further and drive their accelerated innovation?

Tarek Nseir

>> Yeah, sure. I'll take an example of Primark, for example. So with Primark, who... Do you guys know Primark? Yes? It's a-

Rebecca Knight

>> But you can tell our viewers.

Tarek Nseir

>> Yeah, it's fast fashion global retailer. And what's really interesting about Primark was since they were formed, and especially in the recent years or so, they were always saying they would never get into e-commerce, that they were a pure bricks and mortar business, and that was their focus. And then of course, COVID came along and they started to rethink their way through. But for Primark, which is really a fast fashion retailer, to think about how it would be able to deliver a e-commerce business at a margin, when you consider the average order value, they really to have a really best-spoke strategy. And they needed the ability to start somewhere, learn, and evolve. And we actually launched with them using click and collect, so your ability to browse local stock, and then collect from store. And we were even able to range from products that weren't necessarily ranged inside that local store. And since then, we've iterated and evolved at breakneck pace. This is what MACH architectures and working with Commerce Tools enables. It gives you the agility. It gives you the pace. And so if you know you're working at an enterprise scale and you need that agility, it's incredibly well suited.

Rebecca Knight

>> Again, so I hadn't heard of think that must be-

Tarek Nseir

>> Click and collect.

Rebecca Knight

>> Click and collect. Yes. Yes. That must be something that you're talking about in Europe, but not yet in

Rebecca Knight

>> store. I know. We're so boring. Click and collect so much better.

Tarek Nseir

>> It's a very British way of saying

Shelly Kramer

>> One thing though that I think is so cool is that... And as we were talking about the Alliance and educating ourselves, I love this language. This is from the Alliance website, but it's the composable and swappable architecture means that enterprises are essentially facing their last major replatforming effort. That's music to many people's ears, right? And then you just touched on this, but being able to continuously evolve their ecosystems, because again, in these times and digital transformation journey, one of the things that I've spent the last decade educating customers about is that I know this seems like a big undertaking, and it is, but here's the thing, we're never going to be finished. And I don't mean to burst any bubbles or anything else, but understand that this now, today-

Tarek Nseir

>> The world

Shelly Kramer

>> we're in a process of continuous evolution and measuring, monitoring, tweaking, pivoting, changing, and it meets the customer desires, it meets our vendor partner's desires and all that. So I really love this whole... I love the last major replatforming effort because that's wonderful. And then positioning your company to be able to continually evolve in a way that is seamless, I think that's really, really important, and that's what I couldn't agree more with that. And obviously, the ability to swap components in and out of the architecture means you can focus component at a time or capability at a time so that you don't have these major replatforming programs, as you said. The other point though is the enterprise agility that it creates. Actually, we've seen our customers radically shift some of their business models, trial entirely different, new routes to market. And if you were working in a more legacy estate, being able to pivot like that, it's becoming a necessity in business today. And I think that's often the unspoken hero of MACH architecture, is the true business agility that's created at a time when we need it most.

Rebecca Knight

>> And the business agility, I'm imagining that not 100of those pivots are immediately successful.

Tarek Nseir

>> Sure.

Rebecca Knight

>> So they often fail, and that's the importance too, of failing fast, understanding, okay, what went wrong here? How do we readjust? How do we try something else?

Tarek Nseir

>> Exactly.

Rebecca Knight

>> So what other opportunities do you foresee in using composable architecture with customers?

Tarek Nseir

>> Well, I think that composable architectures up till now have really hinged predominantly around commerce, but increasingly so what we're seeing is the paradigm extending in many. We're starting to see composable ERP players come into the market. The MACH ecosystem and the composable ecosystem is getting larger and larger to the point really where you're starting to see many more traditional ISVs in all corners of the market starting to move towards the paradigm. Sometimes they may over-claim that, but in reality, there is an absolute movement to this paradigm. Kind of means that in most ways, I can imagine a future where significant proportion of the overall technology capability could be driven through these composable architectures. I think that's pretty exciting.

Shelly Kramer

>> Yeah, no, absolutely. To your I see that today, there are a hundred participating members, and 65 of those are ISVs. to your point, that's an important part of this ecosystem.

Tarek Nseir

>> And the waiting list actually is growing. And with MACH Alliance itself, we've just actually extended the way in which we'll be introducing new members to the alliance to also allow us to welcome specific products within a larger business, so not just the business as a whole. And this has become important because we are actually starting to see specific products in different ecosystems, really starting to fulfill the ambition of MACH. And I think that's going to give the industry much more access. I think it's a really smart

Rebecca Knight

>> You started this conversation talking about the deep partnership that you have with Commerce Tools.

Tarek Nseir

>> I

Rebecca Knight

>> Can you describe a little bit about the cultural connection that you have? Because you've been together now for about 10 years, and it seems like you get each other and you have a similar customer-centric approach to solving problems. Can you talk about how you work together? Because collaborating with another company is not always seamless.

Tarek Nseir

>> No, it's not always seamless. And I think with Commerce Tools in particular, they really do value their partnerships, and we are not an insignificantly sized partner, having just one partner of the year and other points. But I think what's quite interesting is I think we've been on a fairly similar journey, which is what makes the partnership so interesting. When Commerce Tools first entered the market, it was really very well-informed CIOs who would understand the value of the paradigm and what it would do for the business. Today, it's a much more business-focused discussion, or an increasingly business-focused discussion. And the truth is, it's exactly the same where EPAM came from. Our roots were in engineering, and increasingly so much more industry-focused, and we've kind of gone through that evolution together. And I think now in the era of AI, the need to be much more focused and tuned to the business goal and the value that can be created off the back of it is really very present. And when we work together with Commerce Tools, we are leaning into unique customer problems, and we're actually solving it together. It's a real partnership effort.I think in today's challenging macroeconomic times, I think that shortening time to value, all of that being able to measurable ROI, all of those things are incredibly, incredibly... Those are the first things we're talking about, so I think it has to be around business problems as a whole and the goals and that sort of thing.

Tarek Nseir

>> I think that's to focus more towards the upper end of the market, where many of our clients are multinational, multi-brand, often multi-divisional within those brands as well. That's an awful lot of business to take with you as you're going through this change. And again, that's another part of this agility point I was making, is it's not just the agility of the business as a whole, but the ability to iterate in specific markets or specific objectives in key markets. It's really important in these times to allow you to kind of push you're doing from a business perspective as things are changing so quickly.

Rebecca Knight

>> Well, so many businesses are so eager to experiment with AI and make sure that they're getting some return on investment with those experiments. This is the year that AI becomes real, apparently, we're told. So how are you working together with Commerce Tools to help customers make their AI dreams turn into a reality?

Tarek Nseir

>> Well, what's very interesting is that Commerce Tools are very clear about what they they fundamentally provide a platform and the core capability specifically so that their customers can start innovating and customize and focus on their differentiation and not on the commodity. And so really, Commerce Tools are the fundamental enabler. And then when EPAM is working with its customers, we have some clients who are indeed experimenting and are happily experimenting at this stage, but we have others who are truly industrializing what they're trying to do. And with some real differentiation and competitive advantage... And it's really to the point I made earlier, when you have all of these microservices available and all of the data in the right place, the question is about figuring out where you're going to start proving it, iterating it, and going from there. And that's why I think the combination of Commerce Tools and this kind of AI experimentation is so powerful.

Shelly Kramer

>> Yeah. The path of figuring out what the best use case is, because in those early use cases, you always want to pick something that you are pretty confident is going to deliver on the ROI front because that's how we get more buy-in. That's how we make it happen. So I think that's really an important part of the equation.

Tarek Nseir

>> Absolutely.

Rebecca Knight

>> So what are you getting out of this conference here in Miami? I know you're spending time with some colleagues, the sun

Rebecca Knight

>> get Vitamin D. Exactly. But what kinds of conversations are you having? And what do you hope to bring back with you to London?

Tarek Nseir

>> Well, I think it's a great way of bringing together even all of EPAM's team who in this space. Actually, it's been really fun for us to all connect here. And there are so many partners here that we work with and day out, so to kind of build those relationships has been amazing. We have 20 of our clients here at the conference. We've had a lot of catching up to do with clients, new and old. And in some ways, this feels like a bit of a celebration for all that we've achieved together, and that kind of makes it quite fun.

Rebecca Knight

>> Yeah, that is awesome. And as you said before the camera started rolling, colleagues need to get together and break bread, and-Miami is not a bad place to do that.

Tarek Nseir

>> Far from it.

Rebecca Knight

>> Tarek, a pleasure having you on theCUBE. Thank you so much for joining us.

Tarek Nseir

>> Pleasure.

Rebecca Knight

>> I'm Rebecca Knight for Shelly Kramer. Stay tuned for more of theCUBE's coverage of Commerce Tools Elevate. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in enterprise tech news.

Tarek Nseir | EPAM

search

Rebecca Knight

>> Hello everyone, and welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of Commerce Tools Elevate. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. I'm sitting here with my co-host and analyst, Shelly Kramer. Shelly, our next guest is right up your alley.

Shelly Kramer

>> Well, I would say that what he focuses on and what his company focuses on is all things digital transformation and speeding that, and that is very much up my alley.

Rebecca Knight

>> Near and dear to your heart.

Shelly Kramer

>> Near and dear to my heart.

Rebecca Knight

>> Exactly.

Shelly Kramer

>> we're thrilled to have you.

Rebecca Knight

>> I'm here to welcome Tarek Nseir. He is the head of digital at EPAM. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Tarek Nseir

>> Hey, good to meet you.

Rebecca Knight

>> So tell our viewers, for the a little bit about EPAM and what you're is a digital transformation company. We help our customers build digital products, and we help businesses transform through engineering and software.

Shelly Kramer

>> So your job is never done?

Tarek Nseir

>> No, it's continuous.

Rebecca Knight

>> I love that about digital transformation.

Tarek Nseir

>> Indeed.

Rebecca Knight

>> Yes. So what to start working with Commerce Tools?

Tarek Nseir

>> Yeah, we've been working with Commerce Tools for over a decade now.

Rebecca Knight

>> And that's about as old as they are

Tarek Nseir

>> Nearly. Exactly. So not far from the beginning. There's been a really strong executive connect from the outset. And EPAM really prides itself in it's engineering. It's where we built our reputation. And so with the paradigm that Commerce tools were working towards, it's inevitable that our paths would cross and we'd start doing business together. So we worked on some of the earliest implementations of Commerce Tools. In fact, we even partnered with commerce tools to co-found the Alliance. We were from the very beginning of it all.

Shelly Kramer

>> Speaking of Alliance, that's exactly what I want to talk about now. So I know that EPAM is a founding member. Talk with us a little bit about why this alliance was created, what the goal was, and what you

Tarek Nseir

>> Yeah. Sure, no problem. The MACH paradigm, both the architectural paradigm, but then also the execution paradigm that comes with it, was ill understood at the time, and we needed to make sure it became mainstream that we were building education in the marketplace. And when it became apparent that there was an ecosystem of software vendors and who were all really pushing for this, we clubbed together to build broad understanding and appreciation for the movement that has now become MACH. And it's been exceptionally successful, starting really with a lot of education around the technical paradigm, but more recently, so much so in terms of the business transformation paradigm and what it takes to truly transform leveraging these architectures.

Shelly Kramer

>> Can you tell us a little bit about what makes up the MACH technologies? I know it's swappable, composable, but walk us through a little bit about kind of the pieces there, if you would.clue is in the name.

Shelly Kramer

>> Right.

Tarek Nseir

>> So the M stands for

Shelly Kramer

>> Okay.

Tarek Nseir

>> So that's about making sure that all the capability is componentized and available through these microservices, so that you can create interoperability in different ways. The API first, meaning that you can connect to everything both at the front and at the back to achieve anything that you need to from a flexibility perspective. The C is about being cloud native.

Shelly Kramer

>> Of

Tarek Nseir

>> the H, of course is headless.

Shelly Kramer

>> Okay.

Tarek Nseir

>> And with headless, of course, it gives businesses absolute freedom to innovate in the CX layer without being tied down to one of those more tightly coupled architectures.

Shelly Kramer

>> Okay, perfect.

Shelly Kramer

>> That

Rebecca Knight

>> MACH is the way into AI?

Tarek Nseir

>> That's a really good question. I love this topic. Well, in reality, because of the paradigm that I've just described, operating in a MACH architecture effectively means that both the data and the services are available for you to consume within an AI project. You don't have to do any further work. Your data's already in the right places. The interoperability is already in place. So you have a ready-made box of tools from which you can start innovating on top of leveraging GenAI. And so if we weren't working in a MACH architecture, we might be working with some customers with some more legacy stacks where we have to go and make those things available before we can really start innovating with GenAI. So it's a perfect precursor because these set of best practices are an accelerant. Basically, you can get going with the innovation quickly.

Rebecca Knight

>> Yeah. You're starting from a further point ahead. So one of the things we love on is customer stories.

Tarek Nseir

>> Sure.

Rebecca Knight

>> Can you share any examples of customers that were able to use the Alliance and really further and drive their accelerated innovation?

Tarek Nseir

>> Yeah, sure. I'll take an example of Primark, for example. So with Primark, who... Do you guys know Primark? Yes? It's a-

Rebecca Knight

>> But you can tell our viewers.

Tarek Nseir

>> Yeah, it's fast fashion global retailer. And what's really interesting about Primark was since they were formed, and especially in the recent years or so, they were always saying they would never get into e-commerce, that they were a pure bricks and mortar business, and that was their focus. And then of course, COVID came along and they started to rethink their way through. But for Primark, which is really a fast fashion retailer, to think about how it would be able to deliver a e-commerce business at a margin, when you consider the average order value, they really to have a really best-spoke strategy. And they needed the ability to start somewhere, learn, and evolve. And we actually launched with them using click and collect, so your ability to browse local stock, and then collect from store. And we were even able to range from products that weren't necessarily ranged inside that local store. And since then, we've iterated and evolved at breakneck pace. This is what MACH architectures and working with Commerce Tools enables. It gives you the agility. It gives you the pace. And so if you know you're working at an enterprise scale and you need that agility, it's incredibly well suited.

Rebecca Knight

>> Again, so I hadn't heard of think that must be-

Tarek Nseir

>> Click and collect.

Rebecca Knight

>> Click and collect. Yes. Yes. That must be something that you're talking about in Europe, but not yet in

Rebecca Knight

>> store. I know. We're so boring. Click and collect so much better.

Tarek Nseir

>> It's a very British way of saying

Shelly Kramer

>> One thing though that I think is so cool is that... And as we were talking about the Alliance and educating ourselves, I love this language. This is from the Alliance website, but it's the composable and swappable architecture means that enterprises are essentially facing their last major replatforming effort. That's music to many people's ears, right? And then you just touched on this, but being able to continuously evolve their ecosystems, because again, in these times and digital transformation journey, one of the things that I've spent the last decade educating customers about is that I know this seems like a big undertaking, and it is, but here's the thing, we're never going to be finished. And I don't mean to burst any bubbles or anything else, but understand that this now, today-

Tarek Nseir

>> The world

Shelly Kramer

>> we're in a process of continuous evolution and measuring, monitoring, tweaking, pivoting, changing, and it meets the customer desires, it meets our vendor partner's desires and all that. So I really love this whole... I love the last major replatforming effort because that's wonderful. And then positioning your company to be able to continually evolve in a way that is seamless, I think that's really, really important, and that's what I couldn't agree more with that. And obviously, the ability to swap components in and out of the architecture means you can focus component at a time or capability at a time so that you don't have these major replatforming programs, as you said. The other point though is the enterprise agility that it creates. Actually, we've seen our customers radically shift some of their business models, trial entirely different, new routes to market. And if you were working in a more legacy estate, being able to pivot like that, it's becoming a necessity in business today. And I think that's often the unspoken hero of MACH architecture, is the true business agility that's created at a time when we need it most.

Rebecca Knight

>> And the business agility, I'm imagining that not 100of those pivots are immediately successful.

Tarek Nseir

>> Sure.

Rebecca Knight

>> So they often fail, and that's the importance too, of failing fast, understanding, okay, what went wrong here? How do we readjust? How do we try something else?

Tarek Nseir

>> Exactly.

Rebecca Knight

>> So what other opportunities do you foresee in using composable architecture with customers?

Tarek Nseir

>> Well, I think that composable architectures up till now have really hinged predominantly around commerce, but increasingly so what we're seeing is the paradigm extending in many. We're starting to see composable ERP players come into the market. The MACH ecosystem and the composable ecosystem is getting larger and larger to the point really where you're starting to see many more traditional ISVs in all corners of the market starting to move towards the paradigm. Sometimes they may over-claim that, but in reality, there is an absolute movement to this paradigm. Kind of means that in most ways, I can imagine a future where significant proportion of the overall technology capability could be driven through these composable architectures. I think that's pretty exciting.

Shelly Kramer

>> Yeah, no, absolutely. To your I see that today, there are a hundred participating members, and 65 of those are ISVs. to your point, that's an important part of this ecosystem.

Tarek Nseir

>> And the waiting list actually is growing. And with MACH Alliance itself, we've just actually extended the way in which we'll be introducing new members to the alliance to also allow us to welcome specific products within a larger business, so not just the business as a whole. And this has become important because we are actually starting to see specific products in different ecosystems, really starting to fulfill the ambition of MACH. And I think that's going to give the industry much more access. I think it's a really smart

Rebecca Knight

>> You started this conversation talking about the deep partnership that you have with Commerce Tools.

Tarek Nseir

>> I

Rebecca Knight

>> Can you describe a little bit about the cultural connection that you have? Because you've been together now for about 10 years, and it seems like you get each other and you have a similar customer-centric approach to solving problems. Can you talk about how you work together? Because collaborating with another company is not always seamless.

Tarek Nseir

>> No, it's not always seamless. And I think with Commerce Tools in particular, they really do value their partnerships, and we are not an insignificantly sized partner, having just one partner of the year and other points. But I think what's quite interesting is I think we've been on a fairly similar journey, which is what makes the partnership so interesting. When Commerce Tools first entered the market, it was really very well-informed CIOs who would understand the value of the paradigm and what it would do for the business. Today, it's a much more business-focused discussion, or an increasingly business-focused discussion. And the truth is, it's exactly the same where EPAM came from. Our roots were in engineering, and increasingly so much more industry-focused, and we've kind of gone through that evolution together. And I think now in the era of AI, the need to be much more focused and tuned to the business goal and the value that can be created off the back of it is really very present. And when we work together with Commerce Tools, we are leaning into unique customer problems, and we're actually solving it together. It's a real partnership effort.I think in today's challenging macroeconomic times, I think that shortening time to value, all of that being able to measurable ROI, all of those things are incredibly, incredibly... Those are the first things we're talking about, so I think it has to be around business problems as a whole and the goals and that sort of thing.

Tarek Nseir

>> I think that's to focus more towards the upper end of the market, where many of our clients are multinational, multi-brand, often multi-divisional within those brands as well. That's an awful lot of business to take with you as you're going through this change. And again, that's another part of this agility point I was making, is it's not just the agility of the business as a whole, but the ability to iterate in specific markets or specific objectives in key markets. It's really important in these times to allow you to kind of push you're doing from a business perspective as things are changing so quickly.

Rebecca Knight

>> Well, so many businesses are so eager to experiment with AI and make sure that they're getting some return on investment with those experiments. This is the year that AI becomes real, apparently, we're told. So how are you working together with Commerce Tools to help customers make their AI dreams turn into a reality?

Tarek Nseir

>> Well, what's very interesting is that Commerce Tools are very clear about what they they fundamentally provide a platform and the core capability specifically so that their customers can start innovating and customize and focus on their differentiation and not on the commodity. And so really, Commerce Tools are the fundamental enabler. And then when EPAM is working with its customers, we have some clients who are indeed experimenting and are happily experimenting at this stage, but we have others who are truly industrializing what they're trying to do. And with some real differentiation and competitive advantage... And it's really to the point I made earlier, when you have all of these microservices available and all of the data in the right place, the question is about figuring out where you're going to start proving it, iterating it, and going from there. And that's why I think the combination of Commerce Tools and this kind of AI experimentation is so powerful.

Shelly Kramer

>> Yeah. The path of figuring out what the best use case is, because in those early use cases, you always want to pick something that you are pretty confident is going to deliver on the ROI front because that's how we get more buy-in. That's how we make it happen. So I think that's really an important part of the equation.

Tarek Nseir

>> Absolutely.

Rebecca Knight

>> So what are you getting out of this conference here in Miami? I know you're spending time with some colleagues, the sun

Rebecca Knight

>> get Vitamin D. Exactly. But what kinds of conversations are you having? And what do you hope to bring back with you to London?

Tarek Nseir

>> Well, I think it's a great way of bringing together even all of EPAM's team who in this space. Actually, it's been really fun for us to all connect here. And there are so many partners here that we work with and day out, so to kind of build those relationships has been amazing. We have 20 of our clients here at the conference. We've had a lot of catching up to do with clients, new and old. And in some ways, this feels like a bit of a celebration for all that we've achieved together, and that kind of makes it quite fun.

Rebecca Knight

>> Yeah, that is awesome. And as you said before the camera started rolling, colleagues need to get together and break bread, and-Miami is not a bad place to do that.

Tarek Nseir

>> Far from it.

Rebecca Knight

>> Tarek, a pleasure having you on theCUBE. Thank you so much for joining us.

Tarek Nseir

>> Pleasure.

Rebecca Knight

>> I'm Rebecca Knight for Shelly Kramer. Stay tuned for more of theCUBE's coverage of Commerce Tools Elevate. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in enterprise tech news.