From Las Vegas, extracting the signal from the noise, it's theCUBE covering InterConnect 2016, brought to you by IBM. Now your host, John Furrier and Dave Vellante. Hey, welcome back everyone. We are here live in Las Vegas for exclusive coverage of IBM InterConnect 2016. This is Silicon Angle Media's theCUBE, our flagship program. We go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise. I'm John Furrier with my co-host Dave Vellante, our next guest is Sandy Carter, who's the general manager of the developer ecosystem and startups at IBM, Cube alum, social media maven, great guest, welcome back to theCUBE. Great to see you. Thank you so much. It's my honor to be here. Thanks for having me. Thanks for coming on. You're also a great beacon of data on Twitter. You're always tweeting great stuff and highlighting great links. But in your new role with Developer, this is front and center for IBM. I mean, every session, developer going in early, Spark certainly a big initiative, San Francisco, Bay Area, Silicon Valley, a lot of stuff. Give us the update. A lot of stuff happening. Well, I think here at InterConnect, we've had so many developer announcements that are just breathtaking, I would say. For instance, we partnered with GitHub on GitHub Enterprise. And you know, GitHub is like Mecca for developers. And so this is going to be phenomenal, being able to take GitHub into your private enterprise and be able to use it with the developers. I also love, we announced Bitly. And Bitly's got 25 billion clicks and data that developers can now use and leverage. And they're switching all their workloads over to IBM Cloud, which provides a huge playground of data for our developers. WISC, you know, I was just in San Francisco at Developer Week, 4,000 developers there and microservices was the buzz, the hip of the show. And it was pretty incredible to see what we're doing with WISC to help with microservices. And then who can forget Watson APIs, right? It's the catnip for all developers out there. We announced new Watson services like Tone and Analyzer, just amazing things. So this is the best time to be a developer. And I think it's why everybody says developers are the new king makers or I like to say queen makers of the world today. And the microservices trend, all these assets are DevOps concept, infrastructure as code, big theme of APIs. A lot of the startups want to get the foundational stuff from you guys. I mean, we were talking about if you're gonna build a building why being the concrete business, a lot of leverage. So what has been the pattern or the leaderboard, if you will, from a developer standpoint of what they like? If you, based on your experience, could be anecdotal, could be quantitative? Is it more cognitive they're leaning to? Is it the APIs for the Watson? Is it just the cloud itself? So what's your take on that? Well, we actually do have a leaderboard from our hackathons. So we do hackathons now for enterprises as well as societal like for NASA with space apps or we just did a coding hackathon. Love hackathons. And the top of the board for the hackathons that developers love to use are the Watson APIs. Sentiment analysis, right? Taking text in and analyzing what personality this user has or visualizations. So being able to recognize that I got this beautiful jean jacket at Nordstroms and being able to find that same jean jacket somewhere. We also, though, see tremendous use of the IoT assets that we have. We set up a recipe bank for IoT, Internet of Things, and we are seeing tremendous use. IDC says that 2016 is the year of the IoT developer and we are seeing in spades and everywhere we go. And Node.js was the top trend, too. I saw on one of the OTS on Sunday. I saw a chart that said Node was a big thing. You got microservices and you got...  If Watson's catnip, what is Swift? Yeah, what was Swift? I don't know, maybe it's, but yeah, I mean, it is very interesting and it's a phenomenal language, easy to use. You know, one of the trends that I've seen that I think is really interesting is, you know, it used to be that you'd run hackathons, which are, you know, you could go to one every hour now and we would have developers and developer contests. Now we're seeing composing contests.  You could actually create an app and compose it together. So it's really fine. The trend is, you know, blocking and tackling developer. You can actually get more artistry. Yeah, yeah, do more like they do in India. You know, in India it's not about STEM, it's about STEAM. So they do science, technology, engineering, art and math. And so they do have a lot of creativity and they focus on the design. And I think it's really, I think it's an interesting way to go. The last hackathon I did in India, they actually had art students come in and draw the design, which made the applications user interface is very powerful. So there's an art to sort of attracting and partnering with the developer community. You know, I don't know if you could talk about the sort of IBM's transformation in terms of its relationship with developers.  Talk about that transformation. How did that come about? What was the strategy and take us through that story? Well, you know, we like to focus on value to clients. And what we started to see is that the developer themselves started influencing so many CIOs, CTOs, CMOs. And so we always reach out to those who add value into a company and the developers are adding tremendous value today. And so we decided we wanted to help the developers. We didn't want to market to them because the last thing developers want is marketing. And so we wanted to, you know, really engage them where they live. So we have a great site. I know Kevin Egan mentioned it as well, called DeveloperWorks. So my team manages that site and it is, you know, food for developers. It has, in fact today, you know, at this conference, we announced the DeveloperWorks Architecture Center. 40 different architectural patterns with sample code. I mean, it's just going crazy here. And then we also do things like the hackathons. We do meetups. We do office hours to really engage developers where they are. So we listen to them. We want to make sure that we're delivering the value that they need.  But then you've got these really enticing services. You can't get anywhere else. That's right. Talk about that as part of the strategy. Well, like I said, we use Watson and IoT as kind of the catnip because they are differentiated and they are competitive. So if you think about it, there are more developers today that sit in the enterprise account. There's about 9.4 million developers in enterprise. And they are leveraging Watson to try to do new things that are creative with their new apps inside of an organization.  But then the most influential developers sit in the startups where I live in California, right? There's 2.6 million of those, but they're more influential. You know, since I've been out in California, I've had 40 clients, enterprise clients, Fortune 2000 come out to California and say, just let me spend a day with the startups.  And so those startup developers were also courting both with our entrepreneur program, as well as providing them quick and fast and easy help. So the hackathons in the enterprise, these are big name brands who want to have hackathons that reach out to those 2.6 million, learn from them. Absolutely, in fact, you know, we did a hackathon with Citibank that we talked about last, Interconnect. And this time we had AT&T on stage featuring their hackathons with three and others. Citibank had a great comment just the last year's keynote. They came to the realization that people need banking and not banks, and then she talked about the developer hackathon they had. So yeah, you're seeing these big brands, these big established companies say, hey, we've got to jump in too. And you know, I think the essential thing, going back to why developers are so important is that everybody today wants to act like a startup, right? We heard it from Richard on stage with Westpac. I'm a 200-year-old startup. You heard it from Siemens. And of course, you heard it from Alphamodez, who is a startup. And so I think the energy, the passion, and the innovation that you're seeing, I think is really awesome. And one of the things, see that we've observed, obviously we've been following you guys for many years now, but in particular, Amazon has had that developer focus. Bluemix has been racing and catching up and winning developers. But you guys bring a lot to the table for entrepreneurs and developers who are either developers or part of a big company or they're entrepreneurial. They need to go to market. They need other things that may or may not be available on Amazon. So I want to get your thoughts on that a little bit further.  Give us the update. Developers path to monetization because we all see the unicorn stories out there, some of them are not making them there and not unicorns anymore. Big pressure on making money. Big pressure on monetization. Not from a greed perspective, but like get there faster. Cloud is an enabler, thoughts there. So I think it's really, when we crafted our entrepreneur program, we really crafted it with a couple of things in mind. One, we provide to the startup developers free access to our cloud services because they look for money. They need the money. But also they want support outside of just the technology. And so think about it. Who's acquired more startups than anyone else? We have, right? Look at Aspera. The CEO of Aspera, she can teach the startups things about how to have a successful exit, how to look at your accounting package. So there's some great things that we're doing there to help startups and mentor them. But also we connect them up with enterprise clients. So our smart camps that we run, kind of like a shark tank. What we do is we bring CIOs in and they're part of the judging team. And how exciting is that for startups? They're sitting there in front of their potential clients and they're giving them feedback and putting into their business plan. And it's just an amazing way to engage them. We had over 7,000 startups move to our platform last year, innovating from tons of things. In fact, today I'm going to be talking to some ones that are doing things for social good, like simple C for all timers. I mean, just amazing start. This is why I have the best job at IBM, I have to say. It's fun. That's for sure. So you talked about startups trying to reach the enterprise. John, you've made the observation, I think you're right on, is that it used to be really, really hard to sell to the enterprise. And then for a while it got easier. Any kind of new shiny toy, the enterprise absorbed and now it's getting really hard again. And so, how are you helping startups get to the enterprise? Just because you're IBM, is it a go to market? Is it a combination of those? I think it's access in our smart camps, having them present to top CIOs. Other companies can't deliver that.  And we had our IBV study on the future of retail. And we had dinner, we mixed and mingled, we talked and it was just an amazing gathering. Now we don't do the work, the startup has to do their own pitch, but we make the connections for them in that network, right? So I think it's an incredible program that IBM has and you see the fruits of it here with many, many startups highlighted. Contrast it to last year, you really saw enterprises. This year, I mean you can't walk around without running into a startup that's here that's telling their story. Talk about the community you guys have because one of the big things is, and we thought that Kevin Egan earlier, obviously personalization and getting down on the content side is truly key. You got developer works, it's great track record. But as the community grows, IBM wants to get in early on these trends. Spark was a great example. We heard that that was one of the big learnings from the previous open source generations. Let's get in early and get behind it big. Yes. How's the community going? Can you share some anecdotal cool things going on and updates and things around the corner? Yeah, so our developer works has a lot of digital community but we also do outreach as well in person. We have new Swift communities that we're doing. I was just in India with the world's largest Swift community of developers. We've been working to nurture cognitive developer communities. This is brand new, getting in early and really helping to bring the community together so they can learn from each other. I mean think about things like design. Designing an application is so different from the cognitive error than in the non-cognitive error. So getting folks together and allowing them to grow. Blockchain is another big community that we're growing. So we're really big on community. We have community managers. We listen to the community. Community runs a lot of these areas. And then of course we've got tremendous traction with our Bluemix user groups. I think the largest one today is in India. 10, 15,000 members already. Are people happy with the progress of Bluemix? Absolutely. I mean I think that especially with the services on top of it that no one else has. The IoT services, the Watson services, the Catnip. I love that. It's totally true. It really is. It's a great value. I mean people can do stuff. And it's not just that. I'm just starting a series on my blog. And I'm trying out five or six of the Watson services.  I grew up a developer but I've done marketing and sales in between. And so now I'm trying to bring that back to just show how easy it is. I got to ask about the Apple guy who kind of diss C developers. I'm a C guy back in the day. So he said C, C++, kind of highlighting Swift. I mean, I'm not insulting but it was kind of making a good point. You can actually take the computer science out of the computer science and make it much more easier. That's the trend. You can, but yesterday we had a developer panel. We had some folks on from TopCoder and everybody agreed on the panel that background and C actually helps you become a better developer today because you really understand what's happening in the background. So don't get your feelings about it. Well, so I was gonna ask you about this whole, the whole meme about low code, no code developers which is great, you know, opens up the market for people. But I mean, obviously you're seeing that trend. Are you guys approaching it?  You just mentioned having a deep developer background is advantageous. What are you seeing with that low code, no code trend? You know, Gardner says that by 2020, 60% of all apps will be built by what they call citizen developers and non-professional developers. So we definitely want to embrace that breed of composer is what we call the composer, not a coder and match them up. I mean, this is one of the things that we do. You know, designers are really someone who is very much in demand out there. So we're trying to match people up because you can compose like that front end but when you want to build a $100 million company in five years, you're going to need some hardcore developers. They're not usually exclusive. It's actually a team effort. You can be a composer and you've got the shell stuff but then at the right time, being agile is really the opportunity, right? Yeah, I think it's like, you know, the diamond team. We talk about this in marketing at IBM but diamond team where you've got the right designer, you've got the right coder, the composer. You've got all those people coming together to form a perfect team. And I think that's what makes some of these startups great. So I got to ask you the IBM question because we've been talking about this and it's been really fun to watch the transformation just in the past few years and certainly with BlueMix is really accelerating things and the Watson kind of now coming in, getting plugged in via APIs. Everything's right online with what we saw last year on terms of progress. How's that going internally? Because IBM's got 400,000 employees. It's like, it is the aircraft carrier. You know, it's hard to be agile. How does IBM stay agile? You're out in the agile world. You're out on the DevOps side. When you come back to the East Coast, back to our Monk, what's the vibe like there? I mean, how does it, is it translating? Is it moving faster? Give us some color behind. It is. I mean, IBM is wanting to move faster and faster and faster. Experiment fail, not quickly, but fail wisely. And I think IBM's doing some really great things to bring that agileness inside like starting this campus in the West Coast, right? So I'm now out there, you know, we've got offices in Howard Street and Market Street recovering Silicon Valley, because really there's a couple different ecosystems there. And I think, you know, that brings that spirit to not just our Monk, but to India and Israel comes back. I mean, there's just such a meshing of great ideas and great agility that I think the transformation is moving quickly. And I think has really changed. I mean, today's IBM is not one year ago IBM even. It's very, very different, right? And look at Kevin Egan. Kevin came in from Microsoft. I get folks on my team from Amazon, from Google, from Microsoft as well. I mean, it's just a big- This is smart people at the helm. The management team is very strong, no doubt about it. And it's a big, you know, it's a big coming together of lots of ideas. We hired last year, you know, just from my developer evangelist team, 55 folks from outside IBM who came in to join forces with the great IBMers we have to kind of mix it up and come up with some of those new great ideas. And you can see it in the results.  You know, what's happening with Watson and the APIs.  I mean, we are back. Developers are the new king makers and queen makers. And we're gonna be their new BFF. Congratulations. One, everything at the show here is developers. It's not just talking points. It's really clear that some wood behind the arrow, so to speak. Final thoughts. Share with the folks who are watching, who aren't here, who don't get to mingle in all the VIP areas. You get a lot of touch points to the show. Normally you do it, but this more than ever. Now, what's the vibe here this year that you can share with folks watching? Oh, wow. The vibe here this year is probably the most energetic and exciting that I've ever seen. And there are so many touch points that you can take home. On developer works, we have a Swift sandbox. You can play with WISC there. You can watch the live streams and get a catch and a glimpse of the energy that's right here in the show. And I think what you said is really important. This is not just speaking points. It's not just words. There is a real commitment in delivery. You know, think about GitHub and WISC and Bitly and Apple and VMware. I mean, it's real stuff with real companies. It's going to make a big impact. Well, we've got our cognition on. We want to jump into the sandbox and play with all the other developers. Looking forward to continuing the following. We'll track you up in the Bay Area when I get back to the ranch. Good to see you again. Congratulations. This is theCUBE. Don't forget, we have SiliconANGLE.TV. All the coverage is out there. Check out CubeGems. Go to Twitter and search the hashtag CubeGems. You'll probably see Sandy on there right now because she's got so many CubeGems. She's like a content jewelry store. So, well, we'll be right back after this short break.