Live from the Frederick P. Rose Hall, home of jazz at Lincoln Center in New York, New York. It's theCUBE at IBM Z Next, redefining digital business. Brought to you by headline sponsor IBM. New York City for theCUBE. This is our flagship program. We go out to the events and extract the citizen noise. I'm John Furrier. Show my co is Dave Vellante. We're here at Mike Pereira, VP of Z system software. Mike, welcome to theCUBE. All right, thanks for having me. So Z system's mainframe is modern platform. You guys, pretty impressive performance. David Floyd, a Wikibon analyst, is very impressed by it. We were on a production meeting this morning and last night. Really amazing performance. It's the Ferrari of cloud, whatever you want to call it, sports car. Skip the Model T for horses, right to Ferrari, as I said on my Twitter last night. But software needs to be a big part of it. So you have stuff that takes advantage of the in-processor stuff. So you got IBM software. But then there's also industry software. So could you talk about what is the software vision? What's out there? IBM software, external software. Just help us make sense of that. Sure, so everything that we do, we design for the stack, right? So in the stack obviously starts at the chips, the firmware, the operating system, and then the middleware as we go as well. So with the Z13, there's no exception there. And Java is one area that we've really focused on and really excelled at. So that Z now is my humble opinion, backed up by some data, the single most performant Java platform in the world. So you look at the performance that we've had more than six times improvement since we started on Java. You look at the increased throughput. You look at going from a 50% increase for SMT up to 200% increase if you're looking at security enabled applications. And then a lot of what we do and what's in the portfolio leverages Java. So we embed it in CICS. We embed it in IMS. Our operational decision management runs on top of it. The IBM mobile first platform runs on top of Java. So you get all the trickle down effect if you would by that single investment that we've been making in the core of Java throughout the rest of the stack. And again, that performance benefit is huge. Ironically it was a side report out on IBM earlier today, number one developer fan. Number one with developers with the Duke. Obviously an area where ETLs are looking to get important performance. But bigger than that though, this performance. So there's some controversy on Twitter just seeing right now. In the release it says Z13 is the first system able to process 2.5 billion transactions per day. Is that the number? Is it 30 billion? Is that a big number? I mean some people saying x86 has been doing as can do 2.9 billion transactions. Well I think the question is, is it real time or is it batch? And if you look at the integrity of the transactions start to finish that you guarantee what's gonna happen from the moment you hit enter all the way through to the two phase commit, et cetera, et cetera. There's nobody else in the world that can do that at the scale that we can do it. 2.5 billion is an interesting number. We've got countless number of clients who do more than a billion today. That 2.5 is on a single system. That's real time. That's not a benchmark number. That's a real number. Yeah, so you look at some of our products we can actually scale to a million transactions per second. Again, real time, which there's no x86 in the world that can do that at scale, at availability, at security, all the other illities. The press release really kind of gets loyered up and looks, but it's really. I can neither confirm nor deny. But you're talking real time but the difference is real time versus batch, right? And we do a combination of both, right? So the world continues to move more and more towards real time from batch, but we still have a lot of clients who run huge portions of their workload in batch because they don't need it real time. So Java is a big part of that. What are the software you guys powering on this thing? You see as big languages that people will be developing on that's going to be taking advantage of. Well, so an extension of Java, I mentioned the mobile first platform, right? So that's really our mobile platform where you take that in parallel to where the data resides, whether it runs on CICS or IMS or a website application server or wherever. And you look at the throughput ends up being 60% better. The response time ends up being 36% better if and when it runs on Z versus elsewhere. So mobile is a huge play for us as well as a scalability on the backend of whatever is driving mobile on the front end whether that front end lives on Z or lives somewhere else. The other big piece that I'm really excited about is the extension of Z, right? So the question is not does it run on Z but the question is how do you run it better with Z? And if you look at the paradigms, the as a service paradigm, right? Cloud paradigm, infrastructure, platform, our own offering around Bluemix, our clients have got hundreds of thousands if not millions of services that could have been built a day ago. It could have been built 40 years ago that have a huge amount of value. They're proven, they scale and they provide the function that an application developer needs to go develop whatever the latest and greatest application is. That to me is hugely powerful in getting folks to think about that paradigm of reuse and in some ways it's deja vu all over again with SOA 10 plus years ago now but now in a broader context and with other development paradigms. So Mike, a big theme of this announcement is bringing analytics and transaction systems together. What does that mean for your core transaction software and all the tools around it? How do you accommodate that? What sort of changes do you have to make? What should clients be thinking about? Well, so prior to this announcement we've done an awful lot again of optimization across the stack, right? So DB2 works extremely well with CICS, with IMS, with Webster application server, whatever's on the front end of that. With this announcement, you take the transaction, you take the analytics and then what can you do with those two things together? So being able to take a transaction that's in-flight in sub millisecond response time, do the analysis and take action on whatever it is that it could be fraud, it could be upsell, cross-sell, it could be just net new opportunity and then you take this world of mobile and these systems of engagement that now gives you context which you never had before as a standalone system of record and kind of this hybrid world. You can do a lot of really cool things, a lot of hugely valuable things to the business that you couldn't really do before. Like what? Give us some examples. Well, so imagine you're walking down the street here in New York City and you have your mobile device. That mobile device is connected to Zee on the back end.  Let's say, some kind of food service. I happen to be walking by a restaurant. I end up getting a transaction or a notification that says, hey, here's a 50 cents or 50% off whatever, a cup of coffee or some kind of food. That's one example in the real time piece is now I'm going to go pay for that and in the middle of me paying for it I'm doing a check to see is it really Mike Pereira who's buying this cup of coffee based on the context, based on the history, based on other charges that have been made within the last minute and then being able to make a decision on do I let it go or do I reject it? So the industry generally has been sort of talking about that example and others, fraud detection, et cetera, for a while now and generally the experience has been not quite real time. Are you saying we're now at a tipping point where you can deliver that experience in real, real time? Yes, absolutely. Opens up a lot of opportunities, right? Are you unique in that aspect, do you think? People talk about doing it on other platforms. So we are when it comes to the performance and the response time, right? And again, by nature of having 80% of the world's enterprise data residing on the platform you can do a lot of things now with that data and to that data versus if the data is dispersed all over the place and you've got multiple copies and then there nested copies within the multiple copies and then you've got latency issues, you've got data consistency issues, all of that, those types of things. So you're saying within the system you've got this so-called single version of the truth and you don't have to move it around? Right. So I want to talk about the sentiment in the marketplace. So I got to ask you about the generational chasm that you're crossing with Mainframe.  So how do you talk to that generation? The young CIO who might be 35, you know, to them, Java consider an outdated language maybe to them or they want to be more cutting edge with data science. So how do you guys connect to that audience? So to me, the big thing is we're not different, right? And I think we've kind of had the stigma around Z for a long time that well, Z is different. And that's, you know, this other thing over here and you know, even if you take Linux, which Linux is Linux, there's a perception that well, Linux on Z is different. It's not different, right? So as we're going and looking at, you know, and talking to the next generation, quote unquote, the first message is it's not different. The second message is it's the only platform in the world that can do what it does at the scale with a performance that oh, by the way, runs the world's economies, right? So when you say not different, you mean from a tooling standpoint, from a... Sure, so you're going to go develop an application, let's call it a node.js application, right? You develop that application to deploy it on Z just as you would to deploy it anywhere else in the world. So develop wherever I want? Absolutely. Run it on Z. Right, and now you take this integration aspect that I started mentioning earlier today and somebody who wants to go create an application in Bluemix, leveraging services that run on Z, again, it's no different, right? They don't need to know, nor should they care where that service lives and where it actually gets executed. It's just that that service provides what they need it to provide. So would you say to the young, cool kids that this is essentially a Ferrari or a souped up sports car, Tesla, whatever? I mean, is that kind of positioning? Absolutely, and we do it today. So if you take my CICS development team, for instance, more than a third of that team has got less than five years of business experience, right? These are the exact same folks that are building applications somewhere else that, and by the way, most of those or many of those people never heard of Z before they started working on CICS, yet if they want to work on something that matters to the world, Z is what matters. A lot of older programmers my age say, oh, they're young generation, they haven't made these days. And then they call the entitlement generation. So why not market to that? Hey, you're driving a horse and buggy, go right to the sports car. I mean, that's almost kind of what you guys are positioning this as. Almost like, hey guys, if we can give you the God box, if you will, and now people don't like that term, but that's essentially, this is the killer box for what you want to do. In terms of overall performance, security, yeah, you can run some stuff on scale out, but just go right here. So is that correct? Absolutely. That would be a positioning statement? Yep, absolutely. Dave, what do you think about that? Well, I think that the point that you're making about that you shouldn't care where it's running. So if I'm developing an application, what I want is the system to say, okay, now you're ready to deploy it. Do you want the simple mental model is do you want the gold standard? Do you want the silver or the bronze? And the gold's going to be more expensive. And if your application and your business requirement justifies it, put it there. You might pay a little bit more, but it's valuable, it's driving business value. Is that the sort of model that we should be thinking? Well, it is, although I'd argue with you about it being more expensive, because certainly at scale, we've proven time and time again that it's not more expensive. So you get all those benefits, with actually the price point being less than or equal to running it somewhere else. I think that this point about... Well, you're not saying, wait a minute, hold on, I gotta ask you a question. Bring it on. You're not saying that the mainframe is the least lowest cost for any application, any workload. No, no, so I'm not saying that. What I am saying is... For mission critical workloads, so let's define that box. Okay, well, so the boxes go to depend on the application itself, right? But generally speaking, if you're running at a scale of 200 VMs or above, we've proven time and time again that the mainframe is more performant than running it anywhere else because of all the benefits you get from the virtualization and the parallel processing and the shared everything. So that's an example. But there's a cost to that performance as well, right? So if your application justifies that, but there's also the complexity aspect that presumably should favor you. Yep, absolutely. And the other thing that we're seeing, I talked about this heterogeneous or hypermodel with Bluemix and Z, there's another model that we see evolving out there which is based on the open standards, whether it's Java, whether it's OpenStack, et cetera, is choosing your deployment and where you deploy it at the time of deployment based on what's your capacity, what's the SLAs, et cetera. So what we've announced today around patterns and bringing to market 12 patterns which allow and enable clients to bring up the speed very, very quickly, our top dozen or so products, including the mobile first platform, for instance. And then we've got clients who decide, you know what, based on today and based on what's going on and based on the SLAs, I may deploy it on Z or I may deploy it somewhere else. It's where do I have capacity and how can I best use my entire infrastructure so it's not a religious debate that says, I'm going to put it here, I'm going to put it there and that's the end. So my final question is, what do you say to the folks out there in terms of honestly, you've got to have a serious business model to run the mainframe, you're not going to just be loading an app into the cloud as a developer but the development shop is there. What do you say to the folks around digital transformation because part of the messaging here is digital business, social business, which I'm a big believer and I see it happening.  Which if you think about it, it's the first time in the history of business that's possible, you could literally measure everything. So what does that mean? What does that digital business challenge mean and how do you guys, what do you talk to, you guys obviously do your research on this, but like, what's the big hot buttons there for the digital business points? Well, so I think one is the uncertainty that you don't know what's going to happen these days until it happens, in some cases you're prepared, in some cases you're not. Number two, it's the volatility that comes with the uncertainty. Number three, it's the scale, because you're now getting hit more than ever by all these different places that some you have control over and some you have no control over. And then on top of that, the simplicity point that you mentioned earlier today about your infrastructure overall and how much time are you spending managing however many thousands of servers that you've got versus managing a platform where it's self-contained, you get all those performance benefits and you can still choose to extend it if and when you need. So what's your opinion, if the thesis is all businesses are looking at their value chains and their business configurations and rewiring their business for digital. What rooms of the house are they working on first? Is it supply chain, is it infrastructure, is it sales? What do you see the low hanging fruit where your top clients are working on? All over the map, it's the answer. It depends on the vertical. It also depends on where does that client believe their differentiation is. And some clients major in supply chain. Some clients major in customer experience and differentiation and the unique one-on-one type of interactions. Other clients may major on other things. It kind of depends on what their core value is. Exactly. It's their customer service organization. Right, and the beauty is that we can serve all of those and bring all these capabilities to all of them regardless of what their priority is. Mike, thanks for coming on theCUBE. Really appreciate you. Congratulations, great announcement. We like this whole in-processor memory. I mean the in-memory versus the in-processor really interesting analytics thing. So looking forward to seeing the software. Thanks for coming on theCUBE. This is theCUBE. I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante. We'll be right back with our next guest right after this short break live in New York City. We'll be right back. Thank you.


And now on Entertainment News, Nigerian music superstar David Adelike, aka David Doe, has fulfilled his promise by disbursing 250 million Naira gift money to selected often-ages across the country. The singer, in a statement released through his official Twitter account, thanked the committee he had set up to actualize the project for a job well done, saying it is a committee of high-caliber and principled people who dedicated their time to ensure the job was done. Recall that in November 2021, the singer, who had asked his friends to gift him 1 million Naira each ahead of his birthday, was gifted 200 million Naira in less than 48 hours and in turn decided to donate the money to often-ages across the country, having added 50 million Naira from his personnel purse. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.


Can we live? Yeah. Recording. Good evening. Good evening sir. How are you? How's your day been? What can I get for you? Ah, so Mr Barber, thank you very much. I'll have one of your finest ciders please. It's a lucky day today. Well, hey. Lucky day. So I've got, yeah, so I haven't chosen my dream yet. I've got to, I'm going to hold this up on the camera. I've got a big box. Obviously now we're, now only allowed to, well, we're only getting, getting a lot of deliveries. I've got the only thing I could get a delivery of a cider. Can't get Sainsbury's in the ring but I've got cider in the ring. Currently unopened. Yeah. I'm now going to open it and I'm going to pick a cider at random. These were from the Bristol Cider Shop. I feel like I'm doing a sales pick now. This is from the Bristol Cider Shop. We were doing online delivery and it was 12 ideal, they called it ideal ciders or something like that. The 12 ciders that you have to have and they're all kind of West Country based. All right. So you don't know what's in there at all? I don't know what's in here. I'm opening the box now. Have you ever had anything from them before? No, never had anything from the Bristol Cider Shop. Apparently, I think it's right in the middle of Bristol. Some are like sitting next to Mark or something like that. Okay. And so they've gone completely online now. And I, so I'm not going to look in the box. I'm going to pull one out. God knows what's in here. And there could be like rocket fuel strength cider in here for all I know. Don't just spit. I'm going to dip into this box without looking. You can testify that I'm not looking. Right. I've got a bottle. Okay. You ready? Yeah. This is Perry's Somerset Cider. Oh my God. 6.7%. Yeah. Okay. Vintage. Yeah. Vintage. Collectors card number five from Ilmins to Somerset. There we go. I'm going to crack this one. I'm going to close the box again now. We'll do another mystery one next time. There you go. That's the end. I'll just take a sticker with it as well. I love so-you-goers. There we go. This is cider number one. Your sounds a lot safer than mine. We're going to leave it with you. Well, I'll hold this up, but it won't make much difference because it's almost completely white. But it's an ice cream pale ale. That probably sounds quite nice, but is it sweet? I don't know. It just smells like beer to be honest, but I don't know. I'm going to pour my last. I don't know if it's picking out the audio now. It should be. Very fizzy. Very fizzy. Cheers, mate. Cheers, Matt. Nice one. Yeah, mine's very, it's a very orangey, orange cider. Oh, I've got bits in mine. Oh, it's, yeah. It's kind of a, quite a harsh taste, mine is. You've got a bit of sediment in the bottom. Well, it's not in the bottom, it's just sort of suspended. Mine's got a bit of a different aftertale kind of, it was going to say, it says yeast in here. Quite a yeasty aftertaste. It's spent a lot of time on wooden barrels. There we are. Full bodied. I'm just reading the label now. Yeah, that's quite strong. I'll just be having one of these, Geoff. Orangey, yeah. Is it a pint? It is, well, yes. It's a big bottle, so it's a 500ml bottle, so it's pretty much a whole pint. This is a 500ml can as well. But to be honest, I'm surprised. It's nice. Excuse it? It's only got a really subtle ice cream aftertaste. Well, you can taste vanilla. Yeah, just sort of vanilla notes. Otherwise, it just tastes like a paleo, which is, and it's 5.6%. It's quite strong for a paleo. I'd say that it's off-putting to the eye, because the sediment's not sinking. It's like suspended. So just little bits throughout. It's almost like a slow-motion movie, you know? Yeah. It's a slow-motion movie, where everything's suspended. Very odd. But, yeah, I don't even know where it's from. I don't know how I came across it. It was just in my fridge. Just one of them. The mystery. Apollo, Buxton. It looks, so it's got a corona, like a Norwegian or some Scandinavian currency.  But it's product of the United Kingdom. So, Suxton Brewery, whatever Suxton is. Oh, no, Buxton. Buxton. Where's Buxton? Is that Midlands? Oh, feeling that's Midlands. Anyway, enough of that. It was quite nice. Yeah, good stuff. How's your week been? You know, it's not too bad, really. Kind of getting used to this kind of routine now. I was talking about this to Sabrina today. The kids are off school. The kids, to be fair, the kids, you know, they have their moments, but they're looking after themselves. But it's kind of a, it's a strange sensation of safety within your own four walls that you kind of, because we've been isolated, I know we've seen people on conference calls on Zoom and stuff like that, but you do feel like you're kind of, you're batting down the hatch now. You go out once a week to get the food that we need and we kind of then hunger down and just look after ourselves. And it's kind of that, that sense of safety, I think, from your own four walls that you get that you'll get through it if you can be, if you've got that kind of safety at home. So, but yeah, we kind of got into a bit of a routine now and, yeah, washed the car today. Well, washed my car today as well, actually. I don't see the point of using it, but... But I've just been doing, you know, I've just been doing things that I would perhaps never normally think about dedicating the time to doing, but now that I have the time, I'm doing more of those things, it's like, you know, just little odd jobs, fixing things. Interesting choice of shirt, if you don't mind me saying. Can you see what it is? Scrum Alliance. Yeah, I am wearing the colours today. I'm wearing my Scrum Alliance EUGT t-shirts. Yeah, we'll roll that on. You've just done the washing for a while. Hey. You've just done the washing for a while? Well, I've got a cycle ride today, so I wore this on top of my lycra. Oh, God. Yeah. We cycled like eight miles today, me and the kids. Is that allowed? It's about an hour. We had an hour's cycle. Okay. I don't see why it shouldn't be, but here's people getting told off for all sorts of things these days, don't you? Yeah, the fine's been handed out left by the centre. Some police forces are taking it a bit more seriously than others, I think. Yeah, yeah. How about you? Good day? Yeah, it's alright. Nice day. The sun's out. It's a nice day. Generally more pleasurable, isn't it? Our household seems to be getting back to full health, which is good. Yeah. It's all fun and games, still. Someone loses a lot, isn't it? Everything's okay, but if you know you can't get medical help very easily and you think you need it, we would have taken our kids to see a doctor. Would you? Yeah, but just can't, can you? Yeah. I happen to know a friendly doctor who, with some photographs, can give us a bit of a diagnosis in the middle of the night, but it's a bit, I can't really, you know? Yeah. So, and it's not nice when you've got someone down, you know, not well and feeling bad. So, yeah, we're all getting back to full fitness now, I think, which is how much helps. It's good for the kids. It's a Monday, so they've been doing some schoolwork, even though it's Easter holidays. We're not letting them off. Being mean parents, that we are. We're doing a similar thing. We're starting to say it's kind of a relaxed school week, so we're not being as timetabled about it, but if we see an opportunity. So, they're doing like regular reading and stuff like that and spellings and stuff, just to keep their eyes in. So, we're trying to intersperse it. They've got some entrepreneurial experience today with being paid to help me wash the car. So, each child got £2 each for inside. What can they do with that money? What can they do with that money? Yeah, they'll put it in their piggybacks. So, buying online lottery tickets. But did you bet on the virtual Grand National? No, I wouldn't bet on the normal Grand National. I wouldn't trust it. I wondered though, if that's the way that a lot of these sporting events will inevitably go now, because they've proved that they can do it and a virtual Grand National happens. Who can get excited about that? It's just a computer, nothing, it's not real. I can't see how people can get excited about that. It's pretty good. If you watched it on the TV, it was very well designed. It's pretty realistic, but obviously it's not real, but it looks pretty good. We had a good round of the social distance in, didn't we, last week? We did. Yeah, it was, again, just a bit of a free-form chat, wasn't it? It was an open microphone, some people just... What a mixture of people, didn't we? But Andy, he was on his treadmill. Yeah. And Karina, who had her glass of wine. We had Craig, who had a little baby strapped to his front, and he was walking around the house to get her to sleep. Yeah, we had a mixture of people. What did we talk about? We were mainly talking about the how effective online training is, generally, I think. I don't know about whether the whole is virtual training here to stay, as opposed to, well, it's eventually surpassed the in-person training element. I think that's largely what it's about. Me, too. I also remember having asked permission, so I won't say who it was. One of our... What do you call them? Patrons, I suppose, per attendees, they were telling us how they had a very pleasant experience as a result of this change in circumstances. And one of the most negative people in their team, anti-agile people in their team, since everybody's been working from home, has almost undergone a complete personality bypass and has become the most positive, optimistic, helpful team player they've seen. And it's gone from one extreme to the other. It reminded me of a few people that we've worked with in the past, and you've probably worked with other people similar to this, where they were the most cynical, negative, don't want to do this, this is wrong, don't like it. And then something happens, something, and it will be different for different people, but then they just become the most bought-in, supportive, evangelical, you know, agilist you can find. There's certainly one at BT, I can't remember who it was, and I probably shouldn't know if I didn't know. You could call him Dave, couldn't we? There was a senior manager, wasn't there, who I remember, Alvaro Bosch, to tell the story, and these are the things, the organizational narratives that we ended up telling ourselves over and over again, and telling people that if this person can change, and then we got that person to tell their story, and they told them how they were originally, and they're quite senior, so they had a lot of gravitas, and they attached their name to, we post their name all over the events, and they'd tell their story. So it doesn't, yeah, just, I wonder, what makes you wonder what would have happened during this type of lockdown, or this type of change of circumstances that would convert someone to that way of working? In fact, do you think, if anything, it would actually back up that this isn't how we should work? You know what I mean? Well, we were hypothesizing, weren't we, about the introversion, extraversion, flip, in that now everybody's in their own homes, and there isn't everybody looking at you, and there's spotlight on you as such, that it's a little bit more comfortable for the introverts, and a lot less comfortable for the extraverts. And this person, we were told, was quite introverted by nature, and so it's, perhaps they were more in their comfort zone, and they felt that almost they had a, almost an advantage, if you like, over the rest of the team, and so once they were in their comfort zone, perhaps there was a sense of obligation to step up, or freedom to step up, and the, I mean, I was with the opinion, don't worry too much about why, don't try and analyze why it's happened, just take it, just run with it, just accept it, because sometimes you can overanalyze something and kill the patient. But yeah, that's been something that's been talked about, a lot isn't it, the difference between introversion and extraversion, and how it's always been an extravert's world, especially from an agile perspective, but now perhaps it's an introvert's turn to shine. Yeah, but certainly, I think you mentioned on that call, as well, is that not having, you know, almost like people can't see your monitor, they can't see what you're working on, it's very much take, you take, you have to have, survive a lot more in trust, you have to deliver on your commitments, probably even more so when people aren't there to look over your shoulder, but maybe looking over your shoulder is, for some people it's a, it slows people down. The first thing I've always had a, a sort of split opinion, if you like, in that, yeah, agile is built on trust, but in a way, it's kind of the opposite in that there's only so long I can go before anybody's going to really see what I'm capable of. And so there's a fear of, well, at the end of this sprint, I'm going to get judged. Yeah. And so, do you need more trust here? I mean, regardless of, whether I can see what's on your screen, at the end of the sprint, if you haven't got anything, I don't need to be micromanaging you or looking over your shoulder to see it. I just come on to the sprint review. I suppose it's, I wonder as well, if it's harder to ask for help, and I mean, from an overhead point of view, if it's more disruptive to phone, stroke, message, stroke, voice call someone, is there more of an illness to knuckle down and just get on with yourself and to, perhaps that more individual way of working. So I imagine, not impossible, but obviously you can still pair, you can still pair pro over remote links. But maybe that's, again, more of an effort, more of an overhead, so people tend to work more. I'd love to hear if people are still managed to do that as much now, whether it's becoming too much of an overhead that they're more working by themselves, I don't know. Honestly, I reckon I'm not, it might surprise you, but I'm not that technical. I don't do a lot of pair programming these days. I would imagine it's even easier remote. You get, because you can have your own big screen as close as you want, you don't have to share that screen as it were. Yeah. Physically two people sitting next to each other, bumping elbows, smelling each other's shirts and perfumes. So I think it's probably easier, I mean Google Docs is something that we, Google, it's not just Docs is it, but the Google Suite is something that people have been pairing on, we've been pairing on, to see what's going on. So I would say it's even easier to do. The only issue I think is around security of systems with things like access and firewalls, but if you've got, you know, if you've got your secure access, then it shouldn't be an issue. And if government, if the UK government are chairing cabinet meetings through Zoom, I think the hackers have got bigger things to be, focusing on. They are in a bit of a scoot, they're scooting though aren't they, they're zooming at the press. And I know some companies, I had one guy that refused to come to our linked, sorry, our social distancing on Friday, because it was on Zoom, and he was quite nervous. Not from a company mandate point of view, but from his own personal reasons, didn't want to use Zoom due to the lack of security or the holes in their security system. So I know it's not, it's not perfect world at the moment, but yeah, it's certainly, it's probably the most widely useful, I think. This is a bit of an insight into my personality. I suppose all of these episodes are insight into my personality, but you know, I was a big fan of Zoom, I was using it for my coaching calls and things, you know, for the last 18 months or so. I used it to collaborate with the people when I wrote my book. So I'm familiar with it, I like it. A lot of love for it. But as soon as I realized how popular it was, my instinct is, I want to find a new tool. Really? Because I don't like being with the majority. Part of how I define my self is presiding with the underdog. That's my thing. One of my things. And so I'm instinctively thinking, alright, now it's time to find out. What else is there? Yeah, and that was a thing with Apple a long time ago, and now Apple is so famous, I start thinking, well, really, but I can't bring myself to go back to Microsoft. But yeah, that sense of, oh, there's an element of, I like to be different, I like to be alternative, and I like the idea of supporting the underdog. But also there is a sense of, well, if someone was going to target a tool, they would target the one with the most users on. Of course they would, yeah. And so I would feel safer with a less established platform, which is in some ways perverse, isn't it? Because if anyone, they've got the funds and the incentive to be, to invest in their security. But not sure that's very related to agile. No. So it's a completely different theme, but on a sort of agile theme, we were searching through Netflix, I started trying to find something to watch, and we ended up watching Moneyball, which I think would, you described, if anyone hasn't seen it, has a pretty much a, it's not brilliant. There was a great speech at the end of it. Am I going to spoil it? Is this a massive spoiler alert on this, if I go straight? I've seen the film, I couldn't quote you anything from it. But about change, it's largely about change management, and changing the culture. I'm interested in where you're going with this, because I'm not immediately seeing the link, but I'm with you. Really? Yeah. You've seen the film there? I've seen the film, I know what it's about, I know the premise. So, so building a team based on data, rather than personalities and chemistry and fit and talent, and coaches or a scout's eye, it's just looking at numbers and data. Yes. So at the end of the film, so this guy who built a team, the Oakland Athletics, around that, Bill James, I think it was Bill James, the guy who wrote a book on statistics and doing it by numbers, about changing one team, but his goal wasn't to change his team. It was to change baseball, it was to open people's eyes to, there's a different way. This is that we're looking at this the wrong way. You can win championships, you can win games, if you look at the data, instead of going by what your scouts are saying. But they didn't, did they? Who didn't? They didn't win, did they? No, they didn't win, no. But at the end of the film, again, massive spoiler alert, if you don't want to know what happens at the end of the film, jump to the end of the podcast now. But at the end of the film, he gets interviewed by, he gets called to Boston to the Red Sox. The Red Sox in Boston, isn't he? That's right. And he gets offered a job at the end of the season where he, the first season he did it, where he went on the 20-game winning streak with his team. The general manager of the Oakland Athletics was offered a job by the Boston Red Sox who just employed the guy who wrote the book on this statistical way of analyzing results and players. And they wanted him to go and work for them, but he turned it down. Two years later, the Red Sox won the World Series. So I think his point was, he wanted to wake people up to, and at the end of this film, this guy makes the owner of the Red Sox, makes this speech about, this isn't about this team, this is about changing people's perception of baseball and how baseball works and how to win games rather than just looking at how to buy players. And I think it's about changing people's perception. There's an argument halfway through the film between his chief scout saying you're basically undermining my 29 years of experience based on your theory, on your vision. Yeah, but he said he was willing to lose his job for it. He was willing to, he believed in it that much that he was willing to, and it was either all in or we don't bother. There was kind of no halfway house. We either have to live or die by this or we can just give up now. Yeah, so I'm, I am a fan of data and we had a couple of good episodes, not that long ago. Actually one was in when we were in Dublin around experiments and actually using good experiments to find good data and listening to that and getting past your cognitive biases and being more objective. And I think that's something we need to do a lot more of. But when it comes to creating a team, I am still a little bit more in the old school of you'll know a good team member. You'll know a good person when you see them rather than show me the data. But maybe there are proxy metrics that you could use and think, all right, well, you know, how many times a month does this person ask for help or offer help? Maybe when it's above. There was no interest. So on that line, there was a point in the film where they hired a guy who was statistically good, you know, in terms of he he ticked all the boxes in terms of the right numbers.  Yeah. And he had a problem with gambling and, you know, creating a bad vibe in the changing room and not taking things seriously. So they basically cut him even though the guy said, no, you've got to keep that because on paper he's great and he's got to be great for this team.  So they just they just cut him. But they obviously they replaced him with someone that they thought was as good on paper if not if not better. So we're going to have data points you can extrapolate it, right? So it's about now it's about first of all finding out well, what are the patterns? What are the metrics that indicate greatness? And baseball I think is a lot of it. It's much of an easier sport. Never played it. It's even easier sport to look at data because there are it's not that complex of sport.  It's pretty much. Yeah. It's not like a full 11, 11, 11 on 11 or 15 or 15 on contact. Yeah. Lots of complicated rules and things. And so I think finding out well, you know, people who hit this percentage do better than this percentage. You know, that data is a lot easier to find. But if you can find, and I think they've been trying to do that a lot more with more complex sports. So soccer, football, they started tracking a lot of things now. Yeah. Like meters covered, passes complete in various parts of the pitch and so on. I think with with enough data points and with enough software, then you can do that. I'm not sure whether that applies to office based teams. Do you? No, I don't think it does. I don't think you're right. It's an inherently much more complex system. The main, the thing I'm trying to latch onto here is that I think it's the whole scrum thing. It's about if you've been doing something for that long, you believe that's the only way you can do it. True. Yeah. It's very hard. So these scouts would not accept this an alternative, would not accept that there is no other better way to build a team than to just listen. You have to shut up and listen to what we're saying because we know what to do. We've done this before and it was that awareness that, you know, well maybe there is another way. It may not be the perfect way, but there is another way that you can win games. And that was that was the interesting aside for me was about changing that entrenched expertise. Yeah. And also about persistence and believing in a change enough that you're willing to, you know, willing to go all the way with it rather than dip out halfway through. Anyway, that was just again, one of those interesting things that we stumbled, it's a film I've seen before. The wife hasn't seen it before, but we sat down and watched it last night and really enjoyed it. I think it's a very good film. I thoroughly recommend it. Good. Good. It's a few years since I've seen it. I think I've watched it on your recommendation actually. Hmm. Didn't let me down there. Good. So it's a nice nice change. The world has definitely gone wrong when you said, have you seen this film and Jeff says yes. Everything's gone wrong. Everything came up on Friday as well. You suggested a film and you said no, haven't seen it. And it was something fairly obvious. Like Jaws or something like that. Somebody mentioned it on Friday. I can't remember what it was though. But yeah, it was there. But it was something everyone on the call was expecting you to have known. It was a metaphorical kind of comparison. You have to say, sorry I'm going to have to stop you there, I don't know what you're talking about. Well, I think I knew where he was going, but I hadn't seen it. Yeah, that's kind of how that's kind of how things are. That was a great time Jeff, you should be catching up. You should be looking at the top 100 films of the time. If I love my little baby but if I didn't have a one-year-old this would be brilliant because I absolutely would. I would be watching all sorts. I'd be reading, I've got seven books I want to read. Yeah. But when you've got a one-year-old who's just attention, attention, attention. You've got sort of two nap times during the day, but those times are when me and my wife go ohhhh. Yeah. We see all these posts about people doing all this stuff. And today was a treat because I washed the car. Yeah. So that was an hour while he was asleep. But yeah, you see all these people saying oh, I'm getting to do all this stuff, do the gardening and do this DIY and read these books and watch this Netflix series. Wow. Yeah, to be you. Sorry to rub it in, mate. That's all right. No, I don't begrudge anybody else. I don't begrudge anybody else for taking advantage of it. I think it's brilliant for a lot of people. Absolutely brilliant. So any other news? Do you think the cond will have me and him at the end of this much more than we would normally have? Of course we will, yeah, yeah. You won't remember it, but... Some will. You said he will. You can ask me else something then. Yeah, is there anything else going on? The actual world we can talk about. I know we're locked in our little houses, but... Well, I'm not sure if I'll go with this because I haven't experienced it, but I've got something through in my inbox today for Howard Sublett's office hours. Yeah, I saw that, yeah. Go on. It's a calendar invite. So he's set aside... Howard Sublett, the chief product owner of the Scrum rights, has set aside a couple of hours each day where anybody from the Guide Level Certification, so CST, CSE, I think CEC can just log on and either ask him questions or listen to what's going on, almost like an open open session. And I think that's something that we were talking about at the social distance in where we may be. Well, sure. Definitely had a conversation on Zoom about it at some point, but these things do emerge into one where, you know, as a team making use of having a common team space, that you can all come back to. So the Zoom call is open all day. Other conference call facilities are available, but you can slip into your little breakout rooms for your pairing or your little conversations, or even just your own breakout room, just for some focused quiet time.  And, you know, almost as a manager, as a leader, as a team having that space where anybody can join and open door policy, basically. It's an online open door policy, isn't it? Yes. And that is the, there's some clever tricks you can do with Zoom. I don't know, we're not in any way affiliated to Zoom, it's just that we use it more than anyone else, or more than any other. Well, I used Whereby the other day. Who buys it? There's a knock, you know, you can metaphorically knock a door. Oh, okay. But the, so I, the idea, but you can get ways around it by making everyone a co-host of the same court, you can literally set up your own breakouts, I think. Yeah. And you can, like you say, you can create as many breakout rooms as you like, really. You can rename breakout rooms, so it could be Paul's office, Jeff's office. You can step in, you can step out, and yeah, that kind of, you can almost create a lot, an office environment, online, which you just opened throughout the day. It's not, I mean, that's not a bad thing to do. The virtue you could call one breakout room, the water cooler, or, you know, the kitchen. It's the second life still going. I haven't heard about it for ages. I haven't heard about it for ages, but it seems like a perfect opportunity.   I think it could be quite chaotic with a lot of people. I think scrum team size it would work really well. But anything could be chaotic with a lot of people. A co-located team could be chaotic with a lot of people. Yeah, true. But I like the idea that Howard's opening up his office to for other people to come and work in it and to ask questions. Yeah. He definitely models the value of openness. Yeah, exactly, yeah. Encourage. Yeah, because a lot of people have a lot of questions and there's a lot of people who already know how it's going to pan out. But then you can argue nobody does. But yeah, at least trying to keep people talking is a good thing in my view. How are your clients getting on? The people that you're normally coaching? Okay. Well, again, I spoke to a couple who said one person who's just said it's just like normal really. They've retreated and they're working at home remotely and it's all they're fairly mature as a team and they're fairly mature as an organization. They're just kind of carried on. And they've got good levels of communication anyway. They're quite open about chatting with each other online or hangouts or whatever. They use their thing. But then some of others are completely kind of they're just starting out. They're a bit more, they've been sidelined by this. They don't really know how to cope with it and how to scrum masters have felt the need to going quite heavy handed on this and mandate how we should work and how we should, the process I think has become a bit more important to them. Yeah. I think these types of events they really show, this is going to sound a little bit too judgmental I think, but show people true colours in terms of what our defaults are and I can say that I believe in teams and self-organization and I trust people but when the pressures are perhaps I'm not even thinking, I'm almost in panic mode. What I do when I'm in panic mode tells people a lot about what I really think. And so if I revert or resort to a little bit of micro management, then that is quite revealing for me as well as the people that I'm working with and it's not necessarily, I'm not meaning it to be a judgmental thing but it takes things like this to help people really see where we are, who we are and then we can do something with it once we've got that awareness we can then manage ourselves better, definitely. I think we won't mention who mentioned this on the call last week but somebody said, it's amazing how many people on LinkedIn now all of a sudden become experts in remote working and they've changed their job titles or they've changed their job descriptions to remote agile coach or remote trainer or whatever this time I'd be but I think it does fill a lot of people with nerves and it's about for me I think it plays quite well into my locus of control I think because I've always been very aware that some things I've just got completely, I haven't got any control over this. So it's about establishing what I can control and what I can't and what I've got to trust and what I can deal with myself or what I have to let go out to trust of other people so in terms of the overall management of the situation and the spread of this virus and the lockdown constraints those are really things that I don't have any control over I've just got to kind of roll with those punches as I get there but what I can do is I can control how I approach my work and how I how much time I spend with the family and how we go out and get our shopping and those types of things that you can control and I think there's a matter to be said for ScrumMath is offered for agile team members is to try and establish that so let's just talk about what is that right now within our control and what what can we do and what do we need to perhaps put in place extra things to put in place as to how we work ourselves but what if we just going to let happen and let those things emerge rather than trying to clamp down too many things too soon and try to establish too much process too soon is let's better practices emerge that we don't even know about yet and there will be alternatives there will be alternatives yeah it's definitely a healthy a healthy mindset to take is you know control the controllables and let go of what you can't I'm always tempted to sort of take the other side to that as well in that you know if you just accept things as they are and think well I can't control that then nothing really change and you know change agents ScrumMasters even leaders need to at some point say maybe I didn't catch that maybe they need to say that they're saying maybe what if I could change that what if I have more control than I thought more influenced than I thought what would it take for me to get more influence yeah I know and I do so this is I think this is an interesting one because I think I know you said this and I know this is a big belief of yours about this locus of control and that I think you said before certainly the agile coaches need to have a stronger sense of internal locus of control that you feel you can make make a difference you can change something now this is for me personally I don't think maybe this makes me a good agile coach or bad I don't know but I don't feel that I feel that's quite strong and there are things that I don't have control over and I'm quite and I feel personally that helps me manage my stress better yeah absolutely so I think there is a there's a sweet spot here between just you care just enough that you want to try and make things better but equally you're not going to kill yourself or stress yourself out by knowing that this thing you're trying to think change things that can't change and you and I have come from two ends of the spectrum in our lives you know you've come from very calm classes just whatever happens happens kind of world and you know eventually you got to a point where you think I'm going to shake things up a bit and whereas I came from I'm going to change everything now just calm down a bit Jeff just think how they are a little bit and I think we've been a good foal for each other over the years in that respect then that's not to say that we don't flip because there are times certainly within some of our training courses and sometimes the clients where you'll be pushing people more because you can see more potential for change and I'll be saying just need to get a little bit meet them where they are they're not quite ready for it yet so I think my you're right I do have a big strong belief about this but equally I think there's a sense of being able to play to the situation be able to read the situation right now is probably not the right time to be pushing that particular button and if I've matured in any sense over the years I think it's possibly that yeah I wonder so on that theme about co-facilitation and co-coaching whatever you want to call it co-working I wonder if now is it actually a better time than any to reinforce that because we've got a class coming up where we've redesigned and we're going to rework to imagine it would be online but it's going to be online and we're going to have to work out a way that we can co-facilitate that but I part of me thinks that that will actually benefit not just me and you at the time but it will also make for a better class that you can kind of one of you can be monitoring a chat window or one of you could be drawing on an iPad wherever it might be while the other one is talking and while the other one is delivering content so I wonder if this is a good time for other scrum masters out there or other facilitators to ask for help or to ask for remote facilitation help or even it's just monitoring a chat window or monitoring observing a workshop or a meeting that they're running online to give them some feedback or to help them manage the breakouts wherever it might be perhaps maybe this is a good opportunity for anyone to try that if they haven't because I know that's kind of how we've always done it and how we've been brought up to do it. Well yeah we were talking with me on Friday at the social distancing about the upsides to online and yeah there will be some downsides perhaps you can't replicate some of the advantages of being able to shake hands and have a little small talk with the coffee shop or the coffee station or something but there are some upsides that you can't get there as well and what you've hinted at there is that if we were teaching in a room you and I in a room with 10 and 12 other people and you're talking some absolute nonsense as may happen as usual Jack and someone in the class thinking what's Paul talking about I don't understand what he's talking about and they want to ask you but if there's 9, 10 other people listening to you trying to understand what you're saying they don't want they'll probably let more likely to say nothing whereas if there was a little separate chat window which only I saw nobody else knew they were asking the question you didn't know they were questioning what you were saying they might be more open to doing that and get the help they need without even disrupting the flow and that sort of reminded me of something you were talking about in this episode earlier on this sort of remote pairing type thing not being together is it harder because you can't just see Nigel over there oh Nigel, Nigel, Nigel give us some help on this but again I think if I'm an introvert in the office I probably don't want to do that but if I'm at home I've got a little chat window over here that I know nobody can see or I can have a voice call that I know nobody else can hear I'm more willing to ask for help I'm more willing to collaborate because my shyness isn't going to be a spotlight on it there are definitely advantages to this we've just got to learn to make use of them while trying to keep some of the good stuff that we had before yeah like Andy said last week is that people still look to see trainers drawing I know what he's saying and I know that a lot of that visual facilitation movement that happened a few years ago has kind of stayed certainly with us and a lot of other trainers that people enjoy watching and looking at visual creations but I think even some of those don't work online or don't work as well as perhaps we want to think that they do what's the the sort of graphic of going from Neanderthal to human beings different stages I should really know who made that I've got a name I don't know but everyone knows what I'm talking about and there's been a few stages of trainer evolution certainly in the scrum space from the days where you just had Ken's slides which he made in Word I think Portrait landscape to being able to do training from the back of the room to including actual full simulations exercises using abstract media through the visual facilitation these are all massive revolutions that started somewhere small and then sort of yeah that was great and it's become almost a not necessarily a best practice but certainly a very very good practice and I think this could be another one this could be the next stage of online trainer stage of scrum training to have a great online offering as well and at the moment it's scary I might not be anywhere near as good as somebody else but I've got to start but it does have that has its advantages like we talked about is that it opens the likes of you and me up to a wider audience a global audience that would never be able to fly to a training session that you're running so we have every course we have someone that's flown quite a long way to come to our course equally for every one person that is able to do that we've got 15-20 maybe more people who just can't it's too expensive and globally irresponsible some might say so yeah it opens it opens up that it breaks down barriers doesn't it yeah so mate it's getting out of that time where my glass is empty yeah I've quite enjoyed my very strong Peres vintage this is an interesting choice of name for a cider given that Peri is a pear drink yeah that's definitely made from apples right I think so yeah it's taste like apples and I can't work out why again it's got a picture of a line on the front I can't work out why there's a picture of a line but maybe I'm missing something it's alright though it's quite rough rough around the edges I couldn't drink it all day long just try out it alright mate drink responsibly yeah so might we be opening the social this week's good Friday isn't it is it good Friday this week I believe it probably is so maybe we well we might end this out or we might not but we might try and open up on Thursday instead of Friday feels like we shouldn't you know open up the pub on a bank holiday it's not a bank holiday it's just Friday is any of the names at the end of the day isn't it you wouldn't have would you have a day off on Friday yeah I wouldn't ever leave would you in the UK do good Friday is a UK bank holiday okay well I'll leave it up to you mate you're the landlord at the moment but if anybody does come then we might we might have a pub quiz oh if I put together a little pub quiz if we get enough people coming who can access it oh that would be hard a few agile related questions and a few questions well not agile related I'll just leave it like that little teaser keep an eye out for the on Twitter follow us at the agile podcast or follow me or Jeff on LinkedIn and you'll see an invite to the next edition of the social distancing our virtual pub during lockdown so we shall see you stay safe everybody watch your hands cheers mate