00:00Speed is the name of the game. This deal has completed swiftly and indeed Confluent is all about
00:04speed and data analysis. How is that important in this age of AI?
00:09Yeah, so Karan, it's great to be here with you and on Bloomberg. So just look at what Confluent does,
00:16moving data in real time so that it gets available both for the enterprise, for analytics, but more
00:23importantly for AI agents. And doing that in a way that is the most capable product in the world
00:30is why it is so exciting to get it done. And your point on speed, I think the regulatory environment
00:36is definitely friendlier, where we got this done in just under four months, whereas it used to take
00:43a lot longer a few years back. If regulatory environment is friendlier, should you be doing
00:50more of it? Should there be more M&A, particularly with some beaten up overall valuations of software
00:54companies at the moment? I'll just say, watch the space. Oh, watch the space. Okay, but where would
01:00you want to add on in this moment? I mean, what would make sense to be adding to your portfolio?
01:04So we are very focused, hybrid cloud and AI and the intersection. So if you look at Confluent,
01:11some of the data is in cloud, some of the data is in SaaS properties, some of the data is
01:16on premise,
01:16an AI agent needs to get hold of it wherever. So that's the hybrid piece combined with the AI piece.
01:23Our sweet spot is going to be hybrid cloud, AI, automation, other areas where we are very,
01:30very focused on M&A activities, as well as organic development. If you look at what we have done
01:35around our WatsonX products, what we have done around mainframe modernization, these are all things
01:42that we have built organically, but then we supplement it with targeted acquisitions where the
01:48multiple makes sense, where it fits our strategy, and where we can normally increase the growth rate
01:54of the target property, which we certainly hope to do in the Confluent case.
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