So the people of Qufa, Iraq, they started to send letters to Hussain ibn Ali ibn Abi Talib, Hussain ibn Ali ibn Abi Talib, in which they were saying to him, Hussain r.a. Inna bayi anak, we have given our pledge of allegiance to you. Walaa nuridu illa anat, we don't want no one except you. Walaisa fi'uniqina bayi atu liyazid, belil bayi atu lak. On our necks, there is no pledge of allegiance towards Yazid. Our pledge of allegiance is only to you. So these letters, they came so much in number to Hussain ibn Ali. Takatharatil kutub, they came so much in number. Until it reached more than 500 letters. And it reached him. All of them from the people of Qufa, and they were calling Hussain, come to us, don't let us down. We don't want Yazid. Yazid doesn't have no weight in our eyes, it's you or no one. So when the letters became too much, Hussain ibn Ali made the decision that he's going to send his own cousin, Muslim ibn Aqeel ibn Abi Talib, Ali ibn Abi Talib, Hussain ibn Ali ibn Abi Talib, and he's Muslim ibn Aqeel ibn Abi Talib, they're cousins. Aqeel ibn Abi Talib and Ali ibn Abi Talib, brothers. So he made his decision that he's going to send his own cousin, Muslim ibn Aqeel ibn Abi Talib. To do what? To go and look at the matter, revise the situation, and to see what is true or what is not. So Muslim ibn Aqeel took the request of his cousin and he made his way to Qufa. So now Muslim ibn Aqeel is going there to be the eye of Hussain ibn Ali, to check out Qufa, to see these people, their situation and how they're like. So when Muslim ibn Aqeel came to Qufa, he started to ask the people, what is it you guys want? What are you guys up for? The people were saying, we don't want Yazid ibn Muawiyah. We want you, sorry, we want Hussain ibn Ali to come. At that time, Muslim ibn Aqeel is checking out Qufa, seeing how the situation is like. He's residing in the house of Hani ibn Urwah. He's in the house of who? He's in the house of Hani ibn Urwah. And the people started to come to Muslim ibn Aqeel, to the house of Hani ibn Urwah. They were coming, in numbers, single individuals, they were coming to him. And they were saying this is the Pledge of Allegiance of Hussain ibn Ali. Our bay'ah is Hussain ibn Ali. We want no one else. At that current time, Yazid ibn Muawiyah, he placed as a governor and Nuhman ibn Bashir. This noble companion was the governor of Qufa. So Muslim ibn Aqeel, when he's coming to Qufa, when Muslim ibn Aqeel is coming to Qufa, and he's staying at the house of Hani ibn Urwah, who's the governor of Qufa and Nuhman ibn Bashir. Nuhman ibn Bashir, he heard, and he reached him, that Muslim ibn Aqeel is between the Zahranihim. That is in the midst of the people that Muslim ibn Aqeel came. And that the people are coming to him and they're giving him Pledge of Allegiance on behalf of Hussain ibn Ali. Things like that did reach him. But Nuhman ibn Bashir pretended and he acted like, Nuhman ibn Bashir pretended like he heard nothing. And he gave no consideration to the matter. Until some of the people of Iraq, they went to Yazid ibn Muawiyah. Sorry, they went to Yazid ibn Muawiyah, yes, they went to him in Sham. Some people left Iraq and they went to Sham. And they went to Yazid ibn Muawiyah in Sham and they told him the matter. They told him something is going on, fishy in Iraq. Nuhman ibn Bashir is not really taking the matter too serious. He's not dealing with it as he should. And that people are giving some form of Pledge of Allegiance to Muslim ibn Aqeel. So when this reached Yazid ibn Muawiyah's ears, Yazid ordered that Nuhman ibn Bashir to resign and get off the position. Amara bia azli Nuhman ibn Bashir, he told him to get out of the position. And Yazid ibn Muawiyah sent Ubaidullah ibn Ziyad as the leader of the people of Khufa. He made him, elected him. And Ubaidullah ibn Ziyad, he was previously the emir of Basra. He was previously the emir of Basra. Now what Yazid ibn Muawiyah did was he added Basra and Khufa together and made the leadership of Ubaidullah ibn Ziyad. Both of them were under his leadership. So he can do, why did he choose him for? So he can cure the matter. Ubaidullah ibn Ziyad, he reached night time. He came to what? He came to Khufa at night time. How did he enter Khufa?  When he went by a group of people, the people would say to him, When he said, As-salamu alaykum to them, the people would say to him, Wa alaykum as-salam, Yabla bintah Rasulillah, the son of the daughter of the prophet, Ya Dhul Nona, they were thinking it was what? Annal Hussain ibn Ali. They were thinking, Ubaidullah ibn Ziyad was Hussain ibn Ali. And that they thought that Hussain ibn Ali entered the city of Khufa, Mutahafiyan, Mutalatthiman Laylan. They were thinking Hussain was hiding, that's why he came in like that. And they made Allah ibn Ziyad that realized from there, Annal Amra jiddun, the mat is serious. Wa annal nasi an tazirun al Hussain ibn Ali. And the matter is that the people are waiting for Hussain ibn Ali to come. So he thought, I have to get to the bottom of this situation. I have to realize who's part of it, who's leading the matter, who's doing, I have to realize. So what did he do? He went back to his Qasr, his palace. When he went back to his palace, he sent a man by the name of Miakil. A man by the name of what? Miakil, who he sent him as a spy. He sent to this Miakil guy, go and look at the matter. Whatever you want to do, it's up to you. But I want you to bring me news of what's happening. This man, Miakil, he went out to the people of Hussain ibn Ali, or the Shi'a of Hussain ibn Ali, the supporters of Hussain ibn Ali, or the people of Kufr who were waiting for Hussain ibn Ali. He came out and pretended to be a man from Hims, a man from Hims. And that he came from Hims with how many money? With 3,000 dinar, 3,000 dinar that he has. Why he's got this money for? And this money is towards Hussain ibn Ali. And he said, this is my money. Anyone who can show me a place or a way I can aid, I'm more than happy. Here I am, I'm here. So as he asked around, he was shown the house of Hani ibn Uruwa. He was pointed towards the direction of who? Hani ibn Uruwa. Who's Hani ibn Uruwa? Hani ibn Uruwa is the man who Muslim ibn Uruwa is staying at, the house where he stays. So when he came, this man Miakil, he entered onto Hani ibn Uruwa. And who did he find there? He found Muslim ibn Aqeel. He gave him a pledge of allegiance. He gave him the 3,000 dinar that he had. And he kept repeating and saying anything you guys require, anything you guys need. I am supporter of Hussain ibn Ali. I am with Hussain ibn Ali. So what did he do? This individual, this Miakil who was a spy for Abdullah ibn Ziyad, he didn't just do it once. But he kept coming and kept coming. And he kept coming and he kept coming until they became very familiar with him and they could trust him. He wanted to build that trust with them. So when he comes, they don't change a story or what they're doing. So they can say anything they want in his presence. So he would sit there, he would listen to everything they talk about and he would go back to Abdullah ibn Ziyad and he would tell him what happened. And he would go the next morning and he would do the same and he would go back to Abdullah ibn Ziyad and tell him what's taking place. At this point, Muslim ibn Aqeel is not aware of this individual Miakil who's in the midst of theirs who's a spy for Abdullah ibn Ziyad. He doesn't know. So Muslim ibn Aqeel sends a letter after he realized that the people who gave him bay'a and the money that's coming through and how the people seem like. Muslim ibn Aqeel wrote a letter to Hussain ibn Ali and he told him an eqdim. Come forward. The matter is ready for you. All it requires is for you to take over. Doesn't need too much frustration or headache. You just need to come and that matter just take over. Khufa is ready for you. Ali, Hussain ibn Ali, sorry. Hussain ibn Ali, the day of Yawm al-Taruya. Yawm al-Taruya. Two days after the Hajj is going to take place. When Allah, Tabarak wa Ta'ala wants something to happen, Allah will bring the means in place. Allah is the one who does whatever he wills. Subhanahu wa Ta'ala. The day of Taruya, Hussain ibn Ali, when the letters reached him and he read what Muslim ibn Aqeel told him to do on the day of Taruya, Hussain ibn Ali. And the reason why it was called the day of Taruya. Taruya means the people are getting ready for Hajj. So what they do is they take their camels, they take their riding-beasts and they go out and they water their riding-beasts. Taruya comes watering their riding-beasts.  Al-Dilalika, one of the signs of the hour, because the people after that, they have to go to Mina and they're going to stay in Mina. So the Prophet, peace be upon him, told us the signs of the hour is when there's water present in Mina. When you find water, people having water, it's min al-Alamati sa'a. From the signs of that, the hour. That is from what? The signs of the hour. And now it's so prevalent is the foods there, everything's there. Whereas before, Yom Taruya used to be, where people would go, they would get themselves ready for Hajj, put everything on their riding-beasts, feed their camels, and then they would go, they're expecting to be out there for a very long time. That day where people were preparing for Hajj, Hussain ibn Ali was doing what? He left. Why was Hussain ibn Ali, or Hussain ibn Ali is making his way and wants to leave? Ubaidullah ibn Ziyad realized the story after Mi'aqa informed him of everything. But Hussain is unaware of what's taking place now. Hussain only knows the letter that reached him. He's preparing to leave. On the other side, in Khufa, Musa ibn Aqeel and Hani ibn U'ruwa, their issue became well-known to Ubaidullah ibn Ziyad. Ubaidullah ibn Ziyad, he requested the people of Khufa, why isn't Hani ibn U'ruwa, why is he not coming to me, he said? Why doesn't he not want to meet me? Why doesn't he not want to see me? And Hani, on the other hand, he is the leader of his tribe. He's people, he's the master, he's the leader, he's the chief of the tribe. He's the chief of the tribe. So the people of Hani ibn U'ruwa, he's tribe, they said, go to him, he wants to see you, don't make the matter seem fishy. If you don't go, he's going to realize we're up to something, just go give him greetings and leave. Hani said, I don't think good is going to come from this individual. I don't believe that this individual, Ubaidullah ibn Ziyad is going to bring any good. And I don't fear from him, except that he's going to physically cause me harm. And it became what Hani ibn U'ruwa said. So, Hani ibn U'ruwa came. When Hani came to Ubaidullah ibn Ziyad, he asked him about Muslim ibn Aqeel. So Ubaidullah ibn Ziyad knows, he knows everything now.  Hani replies by saying, I don't know. When Ubaidullah ibn Ziyad realized that Hani is hiding it and doesn't want to tell, he told me Aqeel to come out. Said me Aqeel, come out. When me Aqeel came out, Hani was gobsmacked. This is the man who spent days, nights, weeks in their gathering, listening to everything that they were going to do. Hani realized that everything is a flop now. So Ubaidullah ibn Ziyad, a Valim, looks at Hani ibn U'ruwa and he says to him, do you know this man? Do you have any understanding of who this individual is? He said, yes, I know him. Hani ibn U'ruwa realized now he has to talk. And he realized that the matter, and the matter, he was deceived. Me Aqeel deceived him. He said to Ubaidullah ibn Ziyad, you want me to give you Muslim Aqeel right? Ubaidullah ibn Ziyad said yes, I want you to give me Muslim Aqeel, pass him over to me. Hani ibn U'ruwa says, Wallahi, by Allah, if Muslim Aqeel was under my foot right now, I didn't even lift my leg up for you to take him. So he beat him so badly, and then ordered him to be imprisoned. He was going to learn what happened after Hani ibn U'ruwa was placed in prison. Hani is in prison now. Muslim Aqeel realized, what took place? And why Hani was imprisoned? Because Hani refused to pass over Muslim ibn Aqeel. So what did he do, Muslim ibn Aqeel did? He took an army of 4,000 men, and he sieged the building of who? Ubaidullah ibn Ziyad. He sieged him. Ubaidullah ibn Ziyad at that time was with him, he already had with him, Asharafunnaz, he had the leaders of the people. On his side, Ubaidullah ibn Ziyad were the chief leaders, were on his side. He already thought that this is going to get to this. He was kind of prepared for it. Ubaidullah ibn Ziyad. So he already took the hearts of who? The leaders of the tribe. And they have to compare two things. Muslim ibn Aqeel wants money in order to, for Hussain ibn Ali, and for everything. Umayya, are ready to pay. They're giving money. Now, this gave Ubaidullah ibn Ziyad the upper hand. So what did he do? Ubaidullah ibn Ziyad ordered the tribal leaders to take their people back from Muslim ibn Aqeel. He said, everyone who is a tribal leader, are you the leader of your tribe? Everyone of your tribe, take them out of the midst of the army. And every mother would come and she would take her child out. The father would come and would take his child out. The tribal leaders would come and they would take their people out. Muslim ibn Aqeel. And also, Ubaidullah ibn Ziyad, the other thing he did was, he promised them to listen to what he says, that there's going to come an army of Yazid ibn Muawiyah from Sham and that they're going to be all level to the ground. All of them will be done. So Muslim ibn Aqeel, Muslim ibn Aqeel at this point, he started to lose his army one after the other. He started to lose the army one after the other. The sun, the sun didn't set that day. Muslim ibn Aqeel was by himself. From 4,000, he came to 30 men. From 4,000, he turned out to be 30 men. And then that same, that night, those 30 walked away from him. And he remained by himself. Muslim ibn Aqeel started to walk inside the city of Kufa, thirsty, hungry, by himself. He doesn't know where to go. He was from the people of Minkinda. He said to her, I want water. She was amazed with his appearance and how he looked. She said to him, who are you? And he said, I'm Muslim ibn Aqeel. And he told her everything. And that the people of Kufa deceived him. And the Hussein is on his way and he's coming. Because he sent a letter to him, telling him to come. And he said, I don't believe that except Hussein is on his way. So the woman said, don't worry, sit here. She brought him into the house. She sat him down and she gave him food. She gave him things to water to drink. But her son, her son went and told ibn Ziyad that Muslim ibn Aqeel was in the house. So what did he do? Ibn Ziyad, he sent 70 horsemen. Quipped. And he sieged the house where Muslim ibn Aqeel was in. Muslim ibn Aqeel, by himself, he fought with them. But finally, he got tired. He gave surrender to them. And and then he was taken to where? He was taken to Ibn Ziyad. When he entered on to Ibn Ziyad, Ibn Ziyad asked him, why have you come out? Why have you done? Why did you come from where you were? You were in Mecca? Why did you come to Kufa? What brought you here? And he said, Bayatun Fi'anaqina, there was a pledge of allegiance on our neck with Hussain Al-Ali. And then Ibn Ziyad said, do you not have a pledge of allegiance towards Yazid Mahawiyah?   Muslim ibn Aqeel looked around and he said to him, Da'ani, then leave me. I'll see so I can give my final statements, my final words.  So he looked around, those who were sitting in the gathering of Ibn Ziyad. So who did he see? He saw Umar ibn Sa'ad ibn Abi Waqas. He saw in the gathering, he saw Umar ibn Sa'ad ibn Abi Waqas. He was sitting there. And then he went over to me, he said, You're the closest person to me. In terms of what? Rahi man, in terms of lineage. Ta'ala ul-sikah, let me give you my final words. Umar ibn Sa'ad ibn Abi Waqas was, as you all know, Ibn Ziyad was a tyrant, transgressive individual. Umar ibn Sa'ad ibn Abi Waqas looked at Ibn Ziyad for permission, if he could do that. He told him you can. He took him towards the corner of the house, or the place they were at. And he gave him a wasiyah. The wasiyah he said to him, Ta'a wa hussain to come back. Ta'a wa hussain to go back to where he came from. And that nothing awaits him here. And that the people of Kufa had deceived him. They deceived him. They're liars. Musb i'aqil said a statement which is very famous. Well known. He said, Irja, go back. Be ahlika your family. Wa la yawurranak ahlul Kufa. Do not let the people of Kufa deceive you. Fa inna ahlul Kufa kad kadabouka wa kadabouni wa laisa likadibirra'i. The people of Kufa, they lie to me. They lie to you. And they lie and they are liars. And for a liar, there is no opinion that you should take from him.  After that, Musb i'aqil was killed. And also one of the things that Musb i'aqil requested from Umar ibn Sa'ad was that if this individual, Abdullah ibn Ziyad kills me, after he kills me, he won't treat my body with respect. So I ask from you that whenever he finishes with killing me, that you take my body and you bury it in the best way. Musb i'aqil, the day of Arafah, he was killed. And at that time, Hussain ibn Ali is already left. He left days before that. He left from the day of Tawiyah. Before Musb i'aqil was killed, one day before it, he left. The Sahabas, they disagreed with Hussain ibn Ali to leave. And a lot of them tried their best to stop Hussain ibn Ali from leaving. From those who stopped him and Abdullah ibn Umar, Abdullah ibn Abbas, Abdullah ibn Amr ibn Al-A'as, Abu Sa'id ibn Al-Khudri, Abdullah ibn Zubair, even his own brother, Muhammad ibn Al-Halafiyyah, tried to stop him. All of those I mentioned, when they realized that Hussain ibn Ali was trying to go, they stopped him. They said, stay away from the people of Khufa. They are not people you can trust. From them, insha'Allah, I'm going to read some of their statements. Abdullah ibn Abbas, for example, he said to Hussain ibn Ali, when he wanted to go, he said to him, lo la, if it wasn't, ayyuzriyabi wa bikannasu, la shabbath tu yadi fi raasika, fa lam atruqa ka tadhab. Abdullah ibn Abbas, said to Hussain ibn Ali, if it wasn't for the people, he said, if I knew, that if I grabbed your hair and your beard, and I stuck myself to you, and that the people would come out and it would result that you would stay and not go, I would have done that. And at that point, Abdullah ibn Abbas became blind. He was blind at that time. But he said, this is how much I would go to stop you from going. Abdullah ibn Omar, he also heard, that Hussain ibn Ali had left. And that he's already gone. He's already gone, he hit the road. Abdullah ibn Omar, he went after him. A distance Masirata, three nights, a distance of three nights. Abdullah ibn Omar, went after him. And when he caught up with him, he said to him, ayyuzriyabi wa bikannasu, and Hussain ibn Ali said, al-Iraq, al-Iraq. And Hussain ibn Ali brought out all of the papers, and all of the documents, and everything. And then he said to him, hadyu kutubuhum wa bayatuhum, this is their pledge of allegiance, this is their box, this is their papers, look at them, this is it. Abdullah ibn Omar, he said to him, la taqteem, don't go to them. Hussain refused, except to go.  I'm going to tell you information. I'm telling you a hadith from the prophet. Inna jibreela atan nabi, jibreel came to the prophet. Fa khayrahu bayilat dunya wa al-akhirah, and he gave the prophet the choice between this dunya and the hierafta. The prophet was given the choice of this dunya or the hierafta, the messenger. Fa khtaara al-akhirah, the prophet chose the hierafta. Wa lam yuri did dunya and the prophet didn't want this dunya. Wa inna ka ba dhaatun, wa inna ka ba dhaatun minuh.   Wa Allahi bayi Allah. La yaliha ahadun minkum abadan. No one who is from the prophet will ever gain this dunya. Never. Wa maa sarafahallahu Allah did not divert this dunya from you guys. Aankum illa lillahi wa khayru lakum, except that which good is in it for you guys. You're not going to gain it, Hussain. It is sunnah of Allah that you're not going to take over. Fa adah. Hussain refused. Abdullah ibn Omar hugged him and he cried and he said to him, astawdi'uqaa, I give you farewell minqateelin from death. And he whispered that to his hiera when he hugged him. And Hussain ibn Ali walked off. One of the people who spoke to him was Abdullah ibn Zumeir. Abdullah ibn Zumeir said, Aina, Tadhab, where are you going? Tadhabu ilaqum, are you going to go to a people? Qatalu abaq. They killed your father. Wa ta'anu aqaq. They also wounded your brother and slandered him. Don't go. Fa abal hussain illa ila ibn Hussain refused except to go. Abu Sa'idin al-Khudri, he also sent what? He said to him, Ya aba abdillah, ila ka nasuhun wa ilni alaika mushfiq. I am a sincere advisor for you and I'm very concerned for you. Qad balagani, it reached me, qad katabakum qawumun min shiaatikum.  From Khufa, ya du'unaka ila al-khuruj ilayhim and they're requesting from you to come to them. Fa la ta'khuruj ilayhim, don't go to them. Fa ilni, samaytu a'ihaad. Abaqa yufad, alibna bi-talib, a'ihaadim, insayni khufa. Wallahi, lakad malaltuhum, wa abghatuhum, wa maluhni wa abghatuhuni, wa ma yakunum minhum wa fa'un qattun. Wa man faza bihim, faza bi'ssahmi al-akhyaab. Wallahi maluhum niyatun, wa la'azmun ala amrin, wa la'asabrun ala saifin. He said by Allah, these people have tired me and they have angered me. Wallahi, these people are not a people who give me a promise and they stick to their words from it. Wallahi, anyone who succeeds in this person has reached a pinnacle. Wallahi, these people don't have an intention which is sincere. Wallahi, they don't have no conviction in any matter. Wallahi, they are not a patient people when it comes to battles and fighting. Also, when Hussein Ibn Ali was on his way to Iraq, on the road, he met the famous poet, the Arab famous poet, Farazdaq. Farazdaq, the poet. He's a poet. He met him on the way and they bumped into each other. And then he said to him, Hussein Ibn Ali said to Farazdaq. Hussein asked Farazdaq. He said Farazdaq. Sorry, Farazdaq said to Hussein, where are you heading? Where are you going? To Hussein Ibn Ali. Hussein said, Iraq. I'm heading towards Iraq. And then he said to him, Hussein then said to Farazdaq, how is the situation of the people of Iraq? And then he said, meaning referring to how are the people of Iraq towards me? If I go to them, are they ready for me? What's the situation like? Farazdaq told him a statement which really summarized everything for him. He said, Meaning they love you. Who can hate you? You're the son of the daughter of the prophet. Who's going to hate you? The reason is because Bani Umayyah have money they give. But status wise and in lineage wise and in righteousness and good is you. Hussein Ibn Ali. Like you don't have money. So people of Qufa are only with the person who's got the money.  Faaaba he refused to hear what Farazdaq has to say. Except he went out. Wallahu al-Musta'an. Wallahu al-Musta'an. That is what An Imam Ibn Qafir said. He said, Wallahu al-Musta'an. Hussein reaches a place called Qadisi, as he's moving forward. This time, Qadisi is dead. Hussein Ibn Ali reaches a place called Qadisiya. And when he reaches his place, this place Qadisiya. Qadisiya is a place which is very known. The Battle of Qadisiya took place. Hussein Ibn Ali, at that place it reaches him the news of the death, of the death, of the death, sorry, of his cousin, Muslim Ibn Akil. It reached him that Muslim Akil is dead. And he's at the place Qadisiya. From who? From Umar Ibn Sa'ad Ibn Abi Waqas. Because remember, when Muslim Akil was about to die, he asked if Umar, Ibn Sa'ad Ibn Abi Waqas, can convey the information of this Qadisiya. So the letter or the information reached him. At this point, Hussein Ibn Ali made the decision to go back. But before he turned back, he looked at the children of Muslim Akil, who he had with him. Hussein Ibn Ali made his family members with him, 70 of them, his own kids, his wives, the children of who? Muhammad al-Halafiyyah. Even when Muhammad al-Halafiyyah asked, Muhammad al-Halafiyyah is the brother of Hassan al-Hussein Ali. Both of their fathers were who? Ali ibn Abi Talib. Just they had different mothers. Muhammad al-Halafiyyah also to Hassan. Hussein, sorry, Hussein stay, don't go. Hussein said, look at him and he said, are you only telling me to stay because you're scared for your own kids?  I'm scared for you than my own, than my own children. Muhammad al-Halafiyyah's children, Muslim al-Aqil's children, Hussein's own children, all of the whole family are there. So Hussein Ibn Ali, he made the decision to go back and he didn't want to stay or didn't want to go forward into Iraq anymore. He realized that if Muslim al-Aqil was killed, that this was all a lie. So he sat with and discussed with the children of Muslim al-Aqil and he said, look, what do you think we should do? They said, no, don't go, let's not go back. We're not going to go back. Until we take back and we revenge for our father. We're not going to go back. Hussein Ibn Ali then said, okay, I'm with you guys. I'm with you. I made Allah Ibn Ziyad when he heard that Hussein Ibn Ali was making his way. He ordered al-Hur Ibn Yazid al-Tamimi. He went and ordered al-Hur Ibn Yazid al-Tamimi and said to him, go with a thousand men, al-Hur Ibn Yazid had and to meet Hussein in the part on the road. Al-Hur Ibn Yazid met Hussein on the way. He faced him face to face. A place that was very close to what? Qadisiyah. Al-Hur then said to Hussein Ibn Ali, he said to him, where are you going, my son? Where do you want to go? The son of the daughter of the messenger. Where are you heading? And then he said to Al-Araq. I'm going to go to Al-Araq. Al-Hur Ibn Yazid al-Tamimi said, I'm with you. I'm with you. And you're going back. And Allah doesn't test me with you. I don't want to harm you, Hussein. Go back. There's nothing here for you. Go back. Go back to where you came from. Or go to Sham. Go to Yazid. Go to Yazid, Ibn Muawiyah. Don't go forward to Al-Kufa. Hussein refused. Hussein started to move with his family forward towards Al-Araq. And Al-Hur Ibn Yazid, he would go and block him from it and he would push him back. Al-Hussein said to him, get away from me. Move away from me. Al-Hur Ibn Yazid al-Tamimi looked at Al-Hussein Ibn Ali and he said to him, if somebody other than you was to say that statement, from the Arabs, I would have taken blood money from him. From his mother. But what can I say? What can I say?


Jerry, you ready to go to work, man? All right, look, you play too much. It is time, it is time. That means that the black market is over, man. This bill attracts money to the business. Okay, I'll work green. Yeah, I see, man, look at this suit you got over, man. Man, I got this from ASOS, actually. Man, stand up.  I just want them to see it.   Nah, nah, nah, I'm a smart shopper. I know, man.  This is what I'm gonna call them, boy, them back. Little bit of that suit. Hey, that way, do you think? Suit. Your shoes bigger than your suit, man. Y'all got shoes, too. Somebody, somebody pick the camera up and get this suit.  I wouldn't have you on there like that.  I just squeezed this nigga out of a toothpaste, too.  He went right to just wearing little suits. Man, just got a little time to go with him. Yup, skin and tie. That's how I know you're not getting money, bro.  You crazy, man.  Nah. Just messing with you, though. You know, it's all in good fun. I'm a comedian down there. Oh, I do. Welcome to the black market slash trap. It's the black market in the daytime, then it's the trap at night. Okay. I heard you've been very successful over there. I got one of the number one electronics repair stores in Atlanta. Founder, CEO, level 10 repairs. My man, AJ Dewberry. Welcome, welcome. How you been? Been good, man. Been good. Grinding and been just continuously mentoring and trying to inspire us to do the same thing. Man, give him a brief rundown on how you got here to this point. It's crazy how it started. So at first I was a supervisor at UPS. I was a senior in college. What does the supervisor at UPS even do? At UPS, I was just watching other people telling them what to do, cause I used to load trucks. Oh, well. So then what I started doing, I was loading trucks and then I got promoted from there to be a supervisor. I don't know. And then AJ, you used to truckload them on the floor. Hey, we got something else for you. You too good at this truckloading thing. Hey, yeah, I had to get employed a month, like my third month down there. Hell no. Yeah, and then like two months after that, on the wall I had my certificate now. What'd they give you for that? Just a certificate? I had like a $20 sub, where you can get folks.  You know, they probably got a lot though. Right. Yeah, I only got two subs. But now, let me ask you this though, as a business owner, do you see like, how incentives like that can motivate the people that work for you? It can go a long way.  Yeah. For their hard work. Yeah. It make them go harder and then, you know, it just- It make them feel like they're a part of something. Yeah, it build the trust too. Yeah, yeah, yeah.  So, you know, I don't got no reason to even think about going to get you. Yeah, it bring the best out of people. Yeah. Okay, so you do that, and then what? What happens after you decide, I ain't an employee of the month, especially for no $20. After that, I was just talking to them, cause I had wanted to go corporate when I graduated. Cause at that time, by employee of the month, it was like the beginning of my senior year. At high school? No college. Oh, okay.  No, I wish though, hey. By the way, I was the youngest supervisor at the forest park hub. Okay, good. So, they did that. So, I say about two months after the employee of the month, you know, he would just talk to me about being supervisor. I'm like, yeah, I'll take the test or whatever, that way I can move on up. Cause you gotta be a supervisor, so you can get in the hub to go corporate. Okay. So, I took all the tests and everything, and it came out pretty good. So a month later, that's when it started. But I'm thinking I'm gonna have less stuff to do, but that would really give me more stuff to do. Like, yeah, I was watching everybody else be interested in what they had to do too. But then I have to go inside, and I gotta do computer work. I'm like, I gotta do computer work now. So I gotta, you know, I gotta pick up my people's slack and stuff like that. But it really was a learning lesson for me. Cause it taught me everything that I use in my business now as far as my employees and how I move, do things for my style. Right. When did you establish your business, and what was the driving force behind this? So, three months after I was a supervisor, came spring break. So it was like March, I'm not saying year. Me and my cousin, we had went to LA, been out there and made me dream. I'm like, damn, I want to live like these people. I said, I want to just ride in my car and not, you know, care, or at the clock in and nobody, I just want to build my own terms. I literally came back. And I just said, I'm refund check too. That's how I ever go. Exactly. Cali and all that. So that was my last refund check. So I'm like, I need to sum up with this money. So I just, this short work, they were calling me, blowing me up. No calling, no. You know, UPS, they got like counseling. They got like a whole bunch of different stuff for you. They like, do you need to see one of our counselors? Nah, I'm like, nah, I'm like, hey, I'm all good. They like, I don't know what's wrong with him, man. He the young supervisor. He about to go corporate. He just quit. Like, what's wrong with him? So they really thought something wrong. But I just had a vision that only I had at that time.  He was like, you got a good job. You know, stuff like that. I should have stayed with it. My mom, she always trusted me. She was like, I know you gonna do what you gotta do. Cause I'd never been a type to call home and need something. So that's why she felt that she was like, well, she know I'm gonna handle my business. So that's when I just went home and I was struggling on Instagram. Now I'm like, hmm, I wanna do something innovative. And I said, I can either do a short print business, a photography business, or I can do self on repair. Cause I had some way of experiencing all of those things. So I'm like, I know if I, you know, put my all in one of those, I can get it to work. When did you get your experience and, you know, your experience in preparing for it? I had tried to fix my, my first phone was iPhone 4. This was my freshman, the sophomore year of college. I had worked screened off Amazon and I tried to fix it and it didn't work. Yeah, I just started smoking. Yeah, I started smoking and then from that, I just had a nose cream. I got to get this phone work. So then it worked. So from there, that was like my, you know, it's a little experience that I had, but I was like, I knew if I can get that one. You just went out like, I fix it myself. Yeah, I quit my job before I knew what I was gonna do. Like it really was like, it's a blessing for real. Yeah. So yeah, so once I actually figured out what I was gonna do, I just started doing like a lot of research on Instagram, on YouTube and stuff. YouTube University taught me everything. Shout out to YouTube University. YouTube University taught me everything. No excuses, no excuses. And it crazed because I graduated that same semester, but yeah, YouTube taught me everything. So yeah, I literally was on YouTube for about 45 hours a day and I'll get like everybody, old cell phones, all my friends, old phones, iPhone 5, 6's and now I'll just be taking them apart and putting them back together. I didn't have my screens yet. I had ordered the screens off eBay. I went on doing the command bed and in the meantime, you know, I found like some glasses toolkit. So I was just using that to open and just build my own experience until everything came I needed. With me doing everything by myself without a mentor, I ended up spending too much money on stuff I didn't eat. So I ended up spending about 5,500 for everything, but I only need to spend like 2,000. Damn. But you know, I still had everything I needed anyway. So I just kept perfecting my crowd, kept working, kept building. So I would spend like I said, 45 hours a day on YouTube and just hands-on learning. After that, I would get on Craigslist and Instagram post ads for like an hour consistently. On Instagram, I was running up my followers. I had got up to 7,500 because they wouldn't let me follow more than 7,500 people at the time.  So I posted that picture and I was just following people.  So, you know, they saw some stuff by my bio, but I didn't say it was me. I didn't pick my name and then, then, I just had them think it was a random person. Because at first I was thinking like, I just want to, you know, build my brand. Because that was something I mainly focused on. So I ended up coming up with a brand called Level 10. And today, Level 10 consists of, you know, repairs. Level 10 in France, which is my non-profit. Level 10 music, which is a music group that I have. So at that time, like I was like, I wanted to get started something because I was engineering at that time too. I had arts I was engineering for. So at that time, I'm thinking, somewhat. So at that time I'm thinking like, I'm gonna have a phone shop and I'm gonna have a studio in the back. I'm gonna draw it on a sheet of paper. I'm in my apartment still. This is before I even went out of my first ball. I'm already just drawing everything. Got just really envisioning what I want to be. And I'm setting deadlines to get stuff done so I can get that too. Because you got to set goals. You're just pursuing it like you already got it, just even in the building phase. Oh, I had Watch Wolf Wall Street too. I saw that movie literally like two weeks before I quit my job. And that helped inspire me too. Yeah. So yeah, I'm just, like I said, it's really with a time management for me because I had to adapt to being on my own time too. You know, it's not like I can just go in the building and I gotta be here at this time, here at this time, here at this time.  Like be like, well, I'm waking up at nine, like I would go and work my job and I need to do this and this time, this and that time. And the whole time I started my business, I'm still in college. I'm still in school trying to do homework, riding to campus, knock knock classes, all of that. And then, so summer, that's when I finished school. I ended up grinding up enough to, from my business, to pay my own tuition. So it was just me, like really just trying to just complete everything I was starting, honestly. So that's the inception, the beginning, like. Yeah. What was the next step, taking it to the next level? So at three weeks after I quit my job, I'm just training, training, training. That's when I first launched the business. So April 26th, 2015, that was the very first day I was mobile. And I made a mistake, and it was a blessing at the same time because I learned the experience. So I did 50% off everything. My first two days in business, but I was booked, open and closed. But that's why I was doing 50% off. I ain't made no money. But I built word of mouth, and because I was young and I was trying to do something with myself, people, they love to see it.  Yeah. What's your IG and all that now? Like, how can they get in touch with you? You can follow the business page at level 10 repairs. That's number 10, L-E-V-E-L-1-0-R-E-P-A-I-R-S. Or me at AJ underscore doobarry. Okay, you gotta tell me some more about your other businesses that you got also. Yo, yo, yo. So you got music group. What else? Is serial investor? Basically, yeah. Yeah, I do a little real estate. Now, right? What's your educational background?   We're seeing it in motion. So it's like. What's crazy is I come from a family where my father didn't graduate high school. My mom, all she did was graduate. So I don't really come from, you know what I'm saying, too much education. Like when I was in high school, getting ready to go to college, it would just mean my counselors. I didn't have no help. You know what I'm saying? I really, I just tried to really change where I was at. I went to Albion State at first. At first? Yeah, and then when I moved to Atlanta, I had to finish at Clean State. Okay, Clean State. And I moved to Atlanta because I wanted to start a business. I didn't know where I was gonna start. I was thinking I'm probably gonna do some real estate or something like that. But my vision was different. I mean, yeah, I'll do it. Here and now. You know what I was about to tell you though, I was asking about your educational background. It's like, bro, it's something about you. You got to like, man, don't stop.  Bro, you got unlimited potential. Especially if you keep your same outlook and don't get jaded by the world, bro. You know how hard it is to do anything, especially something about yourself. And from the ground up, and you having to know how and, you know, the intuition to put this with this and to make that happen. Bro, I can't do nothing but salute that, man. Thank you. Great, great, great, great. Yeah, man. So let them know what they can get in touch with you, how they can come spend some money with you. Oh, yeah. Signed to the music group. Okay. Do some investment or whatever it is that you might be doing at the moment. All right. We have three store locations. We have one downtown Atlanta at Two-Swell Pride Street, right by the courthouse. Everybody know what the jail in Atlanta at. We literally walk in this, it's right across the street. We have a location in Tire Boulevard in Jonesboro, Georgia, right on the south side and one down in Griffith, Georgia, my hometown. And we do things like fit cell phones, fits the back glasses of the phones, cameras, batteries, everything. We sell phones, buy phones, tablets, computers. So if you got all the old iPads and MacBooks sitting around at the crib, you don't know what to do with them. How about this young man right here, he can put that back together for you. I'm about to take him my, I got the Apple with the big back. Uh-oh. The see-through joint now. Yeah. Now man, we're gonna make sure that we, that we blow your business up and we know people know exactly how to get in touch with you. My dog, his phone broke right now. I'm gonna see what you give us an estimate at least. Got to come see him. I got you. Nah, I ain't bad, man. I know everybody want to upgrade to the iPhone 14 too. So we doing special right now. We doing a hundred dollars to fix the back glass over your current phone if it broke. You got a 13 or 12 that's broke. You want to trade in? We doing special for a hundred dollars. My man, AJ Doolittle, 11-10 repairs. The black market is open. Here you come out.


The open source research company and Mark Milford is the VP of BizDev at SAP, John. You're not going to believe it.  SAP OEMs at software. I don't know if you knew that. I didn't know it. Yeah, I think, are we going to announce that SiliconANGLE is going to be distributing OEM software? No, this is like a big business for SAP. We're talking about hundreds of millions of order of magnitude. But growing, Bill McDermott said, what, Mark, do you have to grow it? He wants to grow it five times in four years. OK. So they've got the right idea for the job or what? That's pretty interesting. You're new with SAP. I joined SAP four months ago. So after a long career at Hewlett Packard Company and with CA Technologies, in which I managed their indirect channels, including the OEM business, I was asked to come here and take this business over in North America and drive that kind of business. How long were you at HP for? 27 years. It was a long time. I was there from 1988 to 1997. Well, you're really? Yeah. I worked there from 1973 to 2000. I was involved with the computer products organization, which is an indirect channel there, back in the growth years. I was mostly in the enterprise business. Those were the good years when the stock was splitting. Every couple of years. Exactly. Exactly. Tell us about your focus. I mean, I did not know that SAP, sounds like a great strategy. Let me give you three facts about the OEM business at SAP. This is the first time that it's been told, so you get the exclusive on this. Number one, SAP has been in this business for 15 years. So we've been an OEM of our products for 15 years in the business intelligence space. The second thing I tell you is that we have over 800 OEM partners around the world. So it's a sizable ecosystem of OEM partners. And the third thing I tell you is that in the business intelligence space, we are the largest OEM software provider. So Mark, to help us understand the difference between OEMing software and redistributing reselling software. Okay. So in an OEM model, a company, let's pick somebody like Cerner. Cerner is one of the largest healthcare ISVs around the world. So they provide applications to hospitals for clinical intensive care, all the different things, pharmacy that you see in a hospital. So they actually take our software and embed our business object software, which is all around business intelligence and business analytics into their clinical applications. And they provide reporting, dashboarding, analysis, all the things that the business object is all about in their applications. And in the case of Cerner, they make it very clear that it is SAP software. So they actually leverage our brand as they sell into the hospitals. And they use that to enhance their offering to their customers, to their end customer. And then they wrap their requisite value around it. So their value is all the solutions around it? Not just the distribution deal. It is not. So a reseller will actually sell our product as is to an end user and the actual end user then owns that software. In our case, we sell to the OEM and the license is actually owned by the OEM, who then sells it to the end user, in this case a hospital. So the big advantage to the OEM partner is that they don't have to bear the brunt of the R&D. Right? That's you guys. You get to distribute that R&D cost over many, many thousands, hundreds of thousands of customers. Right? Exactly. So time to market. So it's all about how quickly can they enhance their product and take it to market. And it's all about core competency. Their core competency is in his hospital management systems. It's not business intelligence. So they're leveraging our core competency and business intelligence to integrate that into their product and accelerate their product to market. And that makes revenue for them. It's faster revenue for the company, better products, and using their resources in the best way possible. And then you get the advantages of that sales channel now. So obviously that's a very efficient distribution model, but you've also got to do some hand holding presumably, right? Especially if they're doing a lot of wrapping around their value and maybe even customization. So how do you manage that? So we have a dedicated technical team, which we call our OEM enablement team. So they'll go and sit down with the software developers within those companies to teach them and show them how to integrate our software into their software all under the auspices of accelerating time to market. The benefit to SAP is this is a customer typically we would not sell to. So we get our software into a customer which we typically would not sell to. And then our large enterprise or direct sales force can go in there and actually sell on top of that a bigger footprint of business intelligence and business analytics. So it's a small license that's sold by the OEM and our direct sales force can go in there and sell on top of that and sell a bigger footprint. Are those OEM customers, would you characterize them as sort of leading edge ahead of the curve, sort of early adopters? Are they more sort of mid adopters? Are they laggers? Where are they on that adoption curve? You know, it's interesting. When you have 800, it's going to be all over the map, right? I would say for the most part they're early adopters because we've been under the business for 15 years. So by definition, they adopted the technology very, very early and put it in there. If you look at the different markets we operate in, we operate in the ISV market. We're very, very strong there. But we also operate in a couple of other interesting markets like appliance manufacturers. We have an appliance manufacturer based up on the Pacific Northwest called ITRON. They actually make a smart meter which they sell to the energy companies. So the energy companies deploy these meters and then they have our business intelligence software that collects the data from the meters and actually provides back to the energy companies energy consumption information. How can you optimize your energy distribution so they provided more value and more service to their end users by providing this business intelligence software from SAP? So your software resides in the smart meter? It actually sits in, it's actually hosted by them within their cloud and then they actually collect the data from the smart meter. So it actually sits in their site. So it's a little data feeding big data. Exactly. We had John, we had somebody on last week at EMC World. It was at Silver Spring Networks. They had these smart meters, very cool demo. They showed RF, they showed energy from cloud, great data visualization. We talked with George Matthew just recently about the visualization side of the data. Right. Mark, my question is obviously OEM is a great business model. Is there any perspective or information you can share around new OEM models based on the vision we heard today showing this real-time analytics? Because OEM seems to be obviously ISV, the normal usual suspects, right? You can go in there and they have integration opportunities. What we're hearing today with this real-time business intelligence, that seems to me that might open up more doors for new scenarios for OEMs. Are there new scenarios or is it all the usual suspects that you're normally seeing out there? No, there are definitely new scenarios. I talked about the appliance manufacturers, I mean that's a whole new scenario and in fact we have a number of appliance manufacturers besides the one I just mentioned and every one of them has come to us and asked about HANA, so in-memory computing. So that's, to them that's the next generation of being able to collect all this information from these millions of meters and providing even more intelligence to the energy companies. We're also very large, we're very big providers to the SaaS and ASP market. So even separate from the ASP market, our SaaS providers or ASP providers like a Calidus or a Teleo that are in the business of providing service to an end user but off-premise and from the cloud, we also see a whole new business model emerging where in-memory computing would be a tremendous value add. So we've got our OEMs clamoring for that technology. Is it like an Intel model where there's very few customers or can you handle a volume of customers? Question one, question two is for folks out there that may want to OEM, how do they know if they're a prospect? Is it going to be volume funnel? Is it like a handful of suspects? And how do you communicate to do BizDev? Is it like, hey, we got a new tool in the bag or hey, here's a platform? Part of our challenge, in fact, one of the major reasons that I'm here is that people don't know we're in the OEM business and they don't know, hence they can even call SAP and say, I'd like to be an OEM. The fact of the matter is if you look at our target market segments, there are tens of thousands of potential OEMs out there. So one of the investments we've made. Tens of thousands. Absolutely. Can you say you got 800? We have 800. So you got, okay, cool. Well, let's talk about those. There's a big addressable market. What do they look like? What do they look like? What does one of those 10,000 look like? So we can, if they're watching and we can communicate that, help you guys. Like I said, there are what I call horizontal ISVs. These are ISVs across industry like a CA or a BMC. They're industry specific ISVs, healthcare, financial services, energy like a Cerner or an Eitron. They're appliance and hardware manufacturers like Eitron again, but we've also working with one of the larger server manufacturers here in the US to build a VI appliance that they want to sell to the SMB space. So hardware and appliance manufacturers, I've mentioned ASP and SAS providers, and lastly are content providers. We have a very, very large financial services content provider here in the US who provides, who actually services three million customers using our software and providing financial services information to their end users. That's what they look like. So they're in those different market segments and there are many, many, many of them. How about SIs, defense contractors, are they potential OEMs or not necessarily? Is that a different sort of sales channel? Most of the time they're more resellers, so they'll bundle a product with their services and sell it. We do have a systems integrator in the public sector who just signed an OEM agreement and is now selling business intelligence software to DOD primarily. So they are moving, some are moving into the OEM. We talked about this off camera a little bit. What percent actually keep the SAP branding versus their own private label? That's changing. I would say the vast preponderance now, 80% plus are letting the ASP brand stand and want to leverage the brand equity of an SAP. It used to be they wanted to bury it in their application. Now they want to have it front and center as SAP has a very, very strong brand equity. Okay. So that's escalating. Absolutely. This is interesting. A business that is quite large and growing. It's got to be 5X in, would you say, four or five years? Four years.  So here in North America, we've got about 55 or 56 people working on the business and globally we're about two-thirds of the business here in North America. So we're the biggest piece of the business. Well, she's a flip from SAP's normal business. Exactly. So there's huge opportunities out there. Exactly. So you can do planes a lot. A lot of planes. Absolutely. A lot of airplanes. We're here with Mark Milford with SAP, Vice President of Business Development, talking about the OEM opportunity, an unknown, apparently unknown, soon to be known business model for SAP and the tens of thousands of prospects. I'm John Furrier from SiliconANGLE.com. And I'm Dave Vellante, wikibon.org, and Mark, it was great to have you on, hear your perspectives, and we'll be watching. This is a new area for us. We weren't aware of this, and please keep in touch. Keep us updated. I appreciate it very much. Thanks for your time. Good to see you. Mark Milford with SAP.


So we're here live in San Francisco for Citrix Synergy where the world is kind of spinning in their direction. They're a tech company that's changing the game. We heard graphics, expect some games to come out of them. I think that's what he's basically saying. What's not really an announcement, but we're reading the tea leaves. And I can guarantee you that HDX will be one of those core technologies that allows us to have better graphics at the edge on any device. Love the vision. I hope that product can come out faster. We all want big data visualization. We want better graphics. Doctors want better visualization of their stuff. So the iPad and the iPhone are changing the game. Wendy, thanks for coming on theCUBE, VP of Global Marketing of Beqoo. Abaco. Abaco. It's okay. It's okay. It's the company that has a hard name to say. There you go. So tell us a little bit about what's going on. Honestly, we've known each other on Twitter and we have mutual friends. Talk about what you're doing right now, but you were at VMware. Now you're at a company that actually spans across, not just VMware, a lot of the virtualization players. Right now, absolutely, absolutely. So Abaco, let me start with yes, you're right. I was at VMware for about three years. I was actually part of a Kimby acquisition that they did, so familiar with the Lab Manager product, which became the Redwood product. And so coming to Abaco made a lot of sense because it's a very similar offering in that it's offering infrastructure as a service for the enterprise. And what I really love about being at Abaco is, you're right, it doesn't just work on VMware. It works across six hypervisors, including Zen server and Zen and KVM and VMware and all of those. And so it truly does release you from the lock-in of the hypervisor. Vendor lock-in has been a big issue with tech. I mean, I see we talk about Oracle all the time, but you have openness with Citrix, SAP's open companies. You have these open initiatives. So building these data centers, it's a multi-vendor environment. So they have to deal with multiple technologies. And maybe some division has something else. So are you seeing the same thing with your company? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, whether it's a service provider or it's an enterprise, we're definitely seeing people that you'd assume would be 100% VMware environments. We're starting to see them say, no, I've got different areas that are a Zen server or just even Zen. And they're trying to figure out ways to manage that and not have different virtualization platform management elements on top. And so Abaco, essentially that's one of the key features is it allows you to manage all of these different hypervisors across different data centers as well. So you've been in the cloud business and virtualization business for many years. And just in the past 18 years, I mean, 18 months, 18 years, damn. 18 years, there was no cloud. Get a little tired, day three.  I mean, go back to our cloud club days when people were coming together, a lot of startups, a lot of developers, a lot of Ruby and Aruku was around. Spring wasn't even, it was just developing. Lots changed. Where are we now? And just compare it to like 14, 18 months ago. Oh, well gosh, that's a really good question. You know, I guess, at least from my perspective, I definitely feel like there's, there was a lot of people trying to figure out what it was and every day there was a new analyst who was trying to figure out their definition and modifying their definition. Changing their market size. Exactly. Understanding who the vendors are. Cloud washing. Yes, yes, there's a, and I think cloud washing still exists today. Private cloud. Yes. But I definitely think that we've come a long way, like you've said, there's been a change in people understanding not just, okay, what is cloud? But I get conceptually what it is. Now I need to figure out how do I do it? What do I do about it? And so I definitely think the market's at that point right now. There's a big boom in consultancies, whether it's boutiques that are growing, and we know mutual friends have started out with consultancies. One guy, two guys, now 18, 20 growing, like crazy, name a few or off top of my head. But also in the big guys, CSC, and you see the big consultancies, it's not about outsourcing anymore, it's about just construction or advice. Is that what you're seeing on the services side? Yeah, well I definitely see that, they're offering advice and we've got, to your point, big agencies who are coming out and creating entire practices around this to help folks. I think one of the interesting pieces is, if you talk to an analyst today, they'll say the reason why cloud isn't adopting faster is because of lack of standards. And in some cases lack of understanding truly what all the pieces are that need to be handled. And I think another reason why I joined Abacoa was part of their offering is they have a business policy engine inside the software that allows you to go and set business policy and set rules, and so by users, you can determine what type of service level you're going to get, what type of experience will you get. So it takes some of that standardization of those business policies and automates those. What are you seeing right now for your business? I mean, first of all, just tell everyone about the company, how old it is, how many people there are, funding, status, product status. Okay. Because none of the people know about it, so we're just going to plug in for you. Okay, thank you. So Abacoa was founded in 2006 actually as an open source product, and we just still do have an open source version. In 2009, we started to develop against our enterprise and we've had a lot of additional features including feature rich GUI. And so the company's roughly about 50 people. We were founded in Barcelona, Spain. We do have headquarters right down the street at Redwood Shores, we share a campus with Oracle. And the product is currently shipping. I mean, we have customers that are both service providers and enterprises using the offering. So it's a good place. How many employees? There's roughly about 50 employees. So a small company, you guys are growing. What are the biggest things driving your growth? So that's a good question. I think some of the things that are driving our growth are obviously, as I mentioned before, the market momentum has moved from what is a cloud to okay, what am I supposed to do about this? Like how do I start to implement this? I've got the challenge of virtual sprawl on one hand and managing my day-to-day operations. And on the other hand, I've got my CIO telling me, go do something cloud like the business units are complaining, we need services right now. And so having that platform in between that allows you to manage it, but also deliver self-service provisioning, I think is what's feeling our interest in the market. So Citrix's big competitor is VMware. And Citrix is trying to water that down a little bit by saying, no, we're not so much competitors anymore. We got this whole surging iPad, business, end user collaboration thing going on. They're trying to kind of distance the conversation or at least if they do come up, they say choice. You've been at VMware in the past. How much has VMware changed in the past four years? I mean, go back four years, VMware was a completely different company. Yeah, no, absolutely. It's your perspective on that. Feel free to share. Open the kimono. Maybe I should have you share, John. We've been around the virtualization slash cloud space for some time. Yeah, I feel like an analyst. Yeah, absolutely. Blogger, but I'm also a blogger. So no, but virtualization in VMware locked in on the enterprise. The cloud kind of took them by storm. And I was on record, I forget what event I said it, but basically, no, VMC world, VMware missed the cloud. I mean, they missed the public cloud because they were so locked into their enterprise licensing stuff. I mean, that's a true statement, right? Well, you know, I have to say, I don't know if they, you know, I don't know if they missed the cloud and I don't know if the public cloud is truly the place where they're going to grow. I mean, obviously the relationship that Citrix has with Amazon having the Zen platform in it as well as our rack space, you know, the public cloud may be the battle where, you know, Citrix gets the upper hand and VMware longs for it. On the flip side, though, it really comes back down to what will the cloud look like five to seven years from now? Will it be a private cloud? Will it be a hybrid cloud? Will it be a public cloud? Certainly VMware moved mountains in their strategy chains with Merits. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you see that at last year at VMworld. It was just a massive, okay, this is a platform. They're going after the operating system of cloud. They owned by EMC, they got the disk. So you got, you know, then Marchion, Citrix over here laying out, in essence, a cloud operating system. Right. So I mean, you're in a good spot. Your company's in a good spot because there's also other versions of stuff. Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think what we see is, you know, again, going back to the comment I made before, you know, we used to think that, especially from VMware, we used to think that all enterprises were 100% virtualized on VMware. And, you know, whether or not it's the shift in strategy of VMware moving to offering platform as a service, storage as a service, getting into the as-a-service market or diversifying their overall portfolio, we're starting to see enterprises say, okay, do I truly need to be 100% VMware virtualized or can I have diversification of different platforms and then manage them holistically using something like Abacoil? You know, it gives them the option to go in and say maybe a high-performing group like finance or whatever needs to be on a VMware environment, but I can take my marketing group and put them on a Zen environment and the cost structure is different.  I'm sorry, can you read? What's the top challenges of your customers and describe the environment that they're in? Well, you know, again, I think the top challenges are, we talk to people who are at this point where they need to come up with something that's associated with cloud and they've got business units that are saying you're not being responsive to me, I'm just going to go externally and IT is, you know, they're concerned, like what is the future of what IT is going to look like and so, you know, their day-to-day concerns of dealing with VM sprawl on one hand and new data centers and everyday demands and on the other hand they've got, you know, business units who, they're not being served and they've got CIOs who've just been to a new conference and they've heard the newest cloud thing and they want the newest cloud thing. So, you know, how do you deal with bridging those two gaps? Let me ask you a question then. So, hypervisor, you know, is commoditized, giving away for free, that was great, great trend there. Now you're seeing past, giving away for free by VMware, giving away platform as a service. What's the direction of the management of the hypervisor? We had one storage vendor come in and say that, you know, storage functionality, like thin provisioning and tiering is going to move up to the hypervisor. So, hypervisor's going to get more robust. So, what are the challenges you see in the management space of the hypervisor? So, that's a great question. And I think, you know, what's interesting is the management, I think, is going to get richer and smarter in general, right, and it's not going to be just tied to the hypervisor, it's going to start to span across the entire data center. So, for example, you know, we work really closely with partners like NetApp to look at their storage and allow us to tier their storage and serve that to the users as different, you know, whether it's the business class of storage or the coach class of storage. So, you know, as more people want to move to as a service internal environments, they're going to have to figure out what, you know, is it going to be, they're going to deliver storage as a service, computer as a service. Great, we're here in SiliconANGLE.com's extensive coverage of Citrix Synergy Live from Moscone Center. We've been broadcasting for over 12 hours of programming on SiliconANGLE.com, SiliconANGLE.tv and our research partner, wikibon.org, has got all the free research. We're with Wendy Pirelli with Abaco. Thank you for coming on Inside the Cube. We really appreciate it. Thanks for sharing. Management of the hypervisor is going to be big. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Okay.


from Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco. It's theCUBE, covering IBM Chief Data Officer Strategy Summit, Spring 2017. Brought to you by IBM. Welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here at theCUBE. We're in Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco at the IBM Chief Data Officer Strategy Summit Spring 2017. It's a mouthful, but it's an ongoing series. You know, it's not just one show, they're doing them East Coast, West Coast, they're starting to take it all over the world. Really, a community of Chief Data Officers coming together with the likes of their own, talking about common issues, best practices, and of course, IBM's got something to offer as well. So we're excited to have our next guest, Ken Jack here. He's the Information Governance Practice from IBM. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you. So what have you been hearing in the hallways outside of the sessions? What's kind of the hot buzz topping? Well actually, everybody's pretty much talking about what came up in the sessions. It's all about the talent. How do these Chief Data Officers get the talent that they need to meet the mandate they've been given? It's not just all automatically, just like connect the data via some APIs and the magic happens. Sometimes the people part is the hardest part, right? The technology's important, the machine learning is great, the algorithms are amazing, but it does come down to people. And there's some new skill sets that these Chief Data Officers need in their people. So that's what they're talking about. So when you think about the talent, where do you, what kinds of jobs are people talking about? You know the CDO job, what kind of jobs are now underneath the CDO that are going to help the CDO get their job done? Yeah, absolutely. So you've got the classic data scientist role that we're all talking about, we're all excited about, because that can monetize the data. That's what gets the board's attention. So there's a lot of focus there. But a term that came up in the last session that I was in that I really liked was the data translator. And the point there was data scientists can be schooled in certain things, understand their algorithms, understand machine learning. But this really important skill set they're looking for is the data translator. So the business is looking to drive outcomes. The Chief Marketing Officer may have an objective, the Vice President of Sales has an objective, supply chain needs to optimize. Who is the data translator that can get from this deep, difficult, often dirty data and translate it into what the business is trying to accomplish? It's a really cool role. Yeah, we've actually heard about this role pretty frequently, this concept very frequently. Going to come right down to it. And a lot of it pertains to who is in a position to understand data quality, how data transformation works, so that the outcome in fact is what's expected as opposed to just a consequence of using data work. Exactly. Two examples of that that I've heard today in the initial keynote session, it came up that in this renaissance of data, we're going to look for people to bring the left side of their brain together and the right side of their brain together. And the last session, one of the ladies at a large international bank, the Chief Data Officer there, she said, for me honestly, even though this is difficult, it's not about IQ, it's about EQ. I've got to have the people that can collaborate. I've got to have the people that can communicate both with the business and with the IT side. I mean, we all know that story, right? So it's a challenge to pull IT and business together, but data is really forcing individually talented people to actually do that wherever they reside in the org chart. And then if you're, as I said, if you're the embed, you know, you're the embed person from the CDO office working with that business unit, you know, you've got to listen, you've got to convince them that you can help them. So it is really a soft skill. You know, the DaVinci word has come up a couple of times and what made DaVinci so amazing is he had the science, but he has the art and the two are very, very connected. Exactly what we were talking about. Exactly. And the listening skill is incredibly important as well, right?  A lot of times in these situations, you're trying to express your view way under estimated skill, listening, how important that is for the stuff to work. So your formal title is Information Governance Practice. Now, governance is, means a lot of things to a lot of people and I don't want to put words in your mouth, but from my perspective it means how are you going to ensure, you know, put in place rules and mechanisms and methods to ensure that work gets done around a particular set of issues. So when we talk about talent, when we talk about creativity, you also have to talk about governance so that we do, in fact, get the right set of practices put in place so that it doesn't, not that it runs by itself, but it runs at a high quality. So what are the things that you're doing with clients try to take talent and rules and turn it into an actual function that does the great business value? Yeah, that's a great question. So again, and you know, if anybody's listening to this and they're thinking about careers or they're thinking about work coming up or you're coming out of college and you're like, what would I want to do? Think about this conversation we're having and the opportunity here. So you just described, I've got to drive business agility and I've got to mitigate risk. Those sound like conflicting objectives. They can't be anything. The talent has to come in and what we're trying to help companies with is how do you build both a culture but then also how do you bring in talent that can be excited and creative and innovative to drive that business agility but respects the fact that if we don't take care of this data, important people can get in trouble. If we don't take care of this data, our clients can be in trouble and our credibility can be damaged but that has to be handled in tandem. It can't be two separate functions. In the past, a lot of times we did have maybe an EIM organization that did the institutional keep the data quality clean and then there were innovation teams over here playing around building the new business model acquiring companies. In this new world, all this data is coming together and you've got to be able to do both. So the word we like to use nowadays with our clients is the appropriate governance. With your financial data, you're still going to have that lockdown. You're still going to have all those policies, all those business rules. That's got to be in place but then there's certain data that we can maybe not manage quite as tightly. We can create a landing zone where we brought in external data or third party data and we can let marketing have a little more freedom with that. We can be a little more creative and innovative and I don't think they have to be opposite perspectives. You have the right architecture and the right processes and the right governance. You can do both. So as I say, is it easy for someone who's had the lockdown governance for so long to start to open up their mind and think about ways that they can open it or does it almost have to come from an external point of view that looks at it through a different lens and isn't kind of locked down by the old paradigm? It's a great question and there were three hours that came up in the meeting today in terms of talent, it was recruit. So to your point, to some degree, we're going to have to recruit new folks with new paradigms. There are a lot of conversations in there about what an incredible opportunity for the millennials and the newer folks in the workforce because they don't have those paradigms. On the other hand, we have to still retain deep institutional knowledge of our data. So that might mean retraining existing skill sets, people that really know our databases, that really know where the most important data lives, but retrain them a little bit for this new environment and then the third hour was retained. So as we build these hybrid skill sets that we need, people that are good on the business side, good on the IT side, we make that investment. How does an organization, how does a company retrain them? And for the HR professionals out there, for the senior VP's of HR, that's where you come in, right? You need to help these companies, write job descriptions, build career paths, show people that they can work in these environments and still grow both financially, professionally and career-wise, yeah. Does that make sense? That makes a ton of interesting challenge. Just interviewed a millennial speaker at the Professional Business Women's Conference, and he just flat-out said, the new paradigm from his point of view as a 26-year-old is most people aren't staying on a job for more than six years. It's almost built-in, life sabbatical every couple, three or four years. So the retention challenge is very difficult, and for that generation, so much of the purposefulness, and if you can get the purposefulness in big, big motivator behavior. Purposefulness, being a part of something bigger, right? So that's where this balance can come in. If I'm working to appropriately govern my financial data, but I'm also given an opportunity to work with the acquisitions team that's bringing an international flavor into my company, that can give that younger person a little bit of both and help with that retention. One of the challenges, though, when we think about governance, is to ensure, as you said, that the rules are appropriate. One of the other things we've heard here, and we certainly know about it, is data as an asset is different than other assets, in that it's not following the economics of scarcity, because it's so easily copied, shared, combined, recombined, everything else. As you think about combining those two things, that appropriateness of data governance for financial data is different from the appropriateness of data governance for marketing data, when you combine them, which appropriateness wins? It's a good question. So ultimately that- Do we have an answer? Is that something we're discovering? Is that one of the things that we need to better understand over time? What do you think? Yeah, I do. And you used the keyword understanding. So a very old terminology in our space is data profiling, of truly understanding your data and understanding where everything lives. That's never been more important than it is today. The right amount of tagging in your data list. So to do what you just described, the answer lies within truly understanding and inventorying what you have. And then you have at least an opportunity to strike that balance. But a lot of folks are skipping that stuff. They're just moving data, they're replicating data, they're populating their data lists and their Hadoopico systems. You've got to have governance, even in that environment. Absolutely, and we're seeing that being one of the greatest challenges as people try to put together these analytic pipelines is to ensure that there's appropriate governance at each stage in the pipeline to ensure that the outcomes are both what they expected. I mean, they could be surprised, but I mean, but at least it's relevant. And that they themselves are not breaking any laws or rules or ethical or otherwise associated with how the data gets used. I liked your economic analogy because I think that's what customers need to do and that's what I try to help them with. Depending on what their business model is, they're going to understand some concept of a supply chain. But likely they don't understand what you just said, the concept of an information supply chain. So rather than try to explain it in geek speak or in with IBM tooling or all the things we typically do, I encourage customers to think about their perception of a supply chain. How does something move from a raw material to a sold product in their industry, whether it's finance or whether they're building airplanes or whatever they're doing. And then the customer can start to relate, okay, my data's doing the same thing, isn't it? And oh, I need to start thinking, I get that. My engineering brain and my process and I have rules in the company. I have black belts that their job is to work on my supply chain out in the factory. You're saying apply those types of approaches to a supply chain for data, which is what you just described. And once that light bulb starts to go off, there's an opportunity to do what you just said. Absolutely. In fact, we specifically talked to our clients about the notion first of the role of data, first of all, data as an asset. In other words, something that has a consequential impact on a set of activities. So you put it into, with other things, a supply chain. We also talked about the value chain, the role of data placed in the value chain. Whatever metaphor, both of those concepts are not broadly understood. Because data is so shareable, is so easily copied, too frequently people say, it's really not an asset. Until they start making the wrong decision reliably and repeatedly. So they have to think about it as an asset, they have to think about it as a value chain and that's where the governance becomes so crucial. It's because if you're not putting in place good governance for your value chains, then you're not creating any value completely. And it's interesting if we think about it. So data's an asset, right? Marketing people, software companies have been using that term for a long time. But now that we're at this stage and we have chief data officers, at the C level, folks reporting into the board that have this responsibility. So now the concept's a little better understood. So now the next step is, what does that mean? What do I do with my typical assets? What do I do with my human resources asset? If I manage a fleet, what do I do with that fleet? So if something's truly an asset, what do I do? What do I do with it on the general ledger? What do I do it from a staffing perspective? Where does it fit into my overall operating model? And that's kind of where we're sitting unfold here in an event like this. That's the level of conversation that's starting to happen. Not that it's a marketing buzzword anymore, but if it's true, what organizationally, what have I done with other assets? Does that apply to my data as well, if I'm using that statement? All right, Ken, we're going to have to leave it there. I know you got to run off to a session, but thanks for taking a few minutes out of your day. Thanks, gentlemen. All right, he's Ken, Peter, Jeff, you're watching theCUBE. It's the IBM Chief Data Officer Strategy Summit 2017. Thanks for watching.