This episode features Dave Temkin, Vice President of Platform Infrastructure and Critical Facilities at Walmart. Dave discusses the complexity of managing large-scale networks, the strategic adoption of AI and multi-cloud environments, and how technology innovation can drive both operational efficiency and improved customer experience.
This episode features Dave Temkin, Vice President of Platform Infrastructure and Critical Facilities at Walmart. Dave shares insights from his remarkable career journey from building the world’s largest content delivery network at Netflix to leading the technology infrastructure that powers Walmart’s global operations. He discusses the complexity of managing large-scale networks, the strategic adoption of AI and multi-cloud environments, and how technology innovation can drive both operational efficiency and improved customer experience. Throughout the conversation, Dave emphasizes the importance of resilient infrastructure and thoughtful technology leadership in enabling business transformation.
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Guest Bio:
Dave manages Walmart’s networks, data centers, and the foundational platforms for its private cloud infrastructure as vice president of Platform Infrastructure and Critical Facilities.
Previously, he was the SVP of Infrastructure and Cloud at Imperva, where he rebuilt an industry-leading cloud cybersecurity infrastructure that protects thousands of companies globally. Before that, he assembled and led the team that built the world's largest Content Delivery Network for Netflix, as well as its global studio technical infrastructure including systems and storage.
He is a Founder and Board Member of Community IX FL-IX, the largest member-run Internet Exchange Platform in the Eastern U.S., and the NY Network Operator's Group (NYNOG). He previously served on the boards of NANOG and Children of Bellevue.
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Guest Quote
“ When we think about the customer experience in many, many places, especially here in America, when there's something like a natural disaster, right? If there's a series of fires or hurricanes or tornadoes, one of the first places people turn to is Walmart. We need to make sure that our stores are available to serve the communities that they're in at all times. And so that whole network needs to be survivable, right? We need to be able to make sure that they've got connectivity at all times, and we've invested heavily in that as well.”
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[00:00:00] Voiceover: In the ever evolving world of business Revolution is underway. Welcome to Hyperconnected Journeys, where the future of success begins right now.
[00:00:12] Raj: Welcome to the fifth edition of Hyperconnected Journeys, today, I'm joined by a very senior executive who has been in this industry for long, has seen lot of things, and has worked in companies that I love and admire. Dave, thank you for coming in and I really am excited to hear from you and learn from your experiences today. Few questions, Dave, you know, what brought you to technology and what brought you to telecommunications in the first place?
[00:00:51] Dave: Sure. And it's, it's great to be here and it's, it's great to talk to you, Raj.
I've been working in this space since I was roughly 15 years old. I always had kind of a, I was always curious about phones when I, you know, when living, even at my parents' house, I probably broke things more, broke more things than I fixed. But I was always very curious, like when I was a kid, like how does the phone network work?
How do I pick up a phone and how do I magically. Get connected to my relatives in Florida or California or wherever. And that kind of transferred into then, you know, curiosity around in the early, you know, pre-internet days, bullet and board systems, things like that. And then into the, the early internet days.
And then I actually managed to get an internship at a fairly young age at Bristol Myers Scripp, the pharmaceutical company doing desktop support type things. It was fixing people's printers, you know, that, that kind of stuff. Back in the, this, you know, this, this was, this was a long time ago. We were, uh, Nobel NetWare shop if that, if that gives it some time. And we still had a bunch of faxes. Wow. But I wasn't the best desktop support person. I was kind of more introverted, if you will, and really not the right person to be sent out to fix someone who wasn't a technologist's printer. And so my boss at the time kind of saw a shine in me and in that I was always very curious about network stock, where I was really, really kind of a translation from, from my, my early kind of childhood days.
And he set me up. With the network team instead. And really it just kind of, it built from there. You, you know, just completely was captivated at the time. You know, we were just replacing token ring with, you know, 10 and 100 meg ethernet and stuff like that. And then just, you know, starting to look in as.
Switching instead of hubs and all that other kind of fun stuff in the, in the, in those kinds of early days. And, and it's really kind of continued from there. And I've always had this kinda mixed interest. I'm still super interested in the telecom network, even though today it's, you know, very, very different than from when, from when I was a child.
[00:02:51] Raj: Wow. You must have seen a whole nother journey right from the early days when you're talk, talking about the token rings and now, you know, we are talking about 400 Gs on ethernet. So it's, it's, it's quite a journey that you've seen. Now listeners, I talked about two companies that I love and admire that Dave has worked in and is now working in.
Those two companies are Netflix and Walmart. Now, I love Netflix more than Walmart because my wife goes to Walmart and spends a lot of money, but in, in Netflix, I can control the money, right? When we think about both these companies, you know, I'm sure our listeners would want to know. That, you know, Netflix is a tech tech company.
You know, we can associate technology telecom with Netflix. When we think about Walmart, not a lot of people will associate technology and the complexity of, of telecom with Walmart. What you wanna talk about, you know, what's the complexity of technology in a company like Walmart?
[00:03:58] Dave: Yeah. You know, it's interesting when, when Walmart recruited me, you know, I had, I had people who asked me like, why would you go from Netflix to Walmart?
Like, what, what a what? A what a, what a kinda strange, strange transition shouldn't you be going to, to Disney or to maybe one of the content delivery networks. And the thing that that truly captivated me there is the scale. When we talk about the size of Walmart's network, we talk about the, the addressable market, right?
Netflix being the largest streaming provider in the world, and Walmart being the largest retailer in the world, right? We're talking about very different types of B2C businesses. But at the end of the day, these are brands that people associate with, you know, making their lives better, making their lives easier.
Right. And so really when I, when I thought about it, I was like, Hey, you know, Walmart has all these super interesting challenges, right? As we enter the age of, of AI and networking and all that other kind of fun stuff, you know, as I was leaving Netflix that really, we weren't really talking about that.
Sure. We had tools that kind of maybe touched around the edges of that. But as I'm coming into Walmart and we're really thinking about like, what does the next generation of, of a network need to look like at the scale of Walmart? Like, that's just a super, super interesting problem to, to, to be part of a team to solve.
[00:05:20] Raj: Yeah. So I was actually looking at some numbers and for our listeners, you know, Walmart has a massive network. It has more than 10,000 stores. And, and Dave, please correct me where I, wherever I'm going wrong, it has more than a hundred thousand supply chain locations. Two 40 million weekly customers. The infra has more than a hundred thousand routers and switches, and more than 450,000 wireless access points.
Now, this is truly a massive scale right now, Dave. The question for you is, when you think about building a global network, you know specifically to meet the performance and the security which is required for a company like Walmart. What comes to your mind first, you know, what is the biggest networking challenge that you have, and how are you solving for that?
[00:06:15] Dave: Yeah, that's a, that's a great question. You know, the, the, when, when we used to talk about, say, outages at Netflix, it was like, you know, it was a little cheeky, which is like, Hey, we're, we're not here curing cancer. We are curing boredom. But, but like, at the end of the day, if Netflix goes down for a few hours, like the world doesn't change in a, in a negative way.
You know, when we talk about Walmart, we have a network that we have to enable this omnichannel experience for our customers, right? We want our customers to be able to walk into our stores, have a great experience, both in person, but also be able to load up the app on their phone, whether they're in a store or they're at home, or they're, you know, out.
You know, at a, at a football game, we want them to have this amazing experience, and that needs to be available at all times, right? We're not, we're not just able to, to think about it in the context of, well, a store's open from 6:00 AM to midnight, and then we can do whatever we want outside of those times.
No. You know, customer wants to be able to, to set up a, a delivery order for the next morning at, you know. Two o'clock in the morning. We need to be available for them to do that. And so, you know what, what I really have to think about and, and what really are, are big part of the challenge is, is like, how do you scale?
That infrastructure for, to your point, 10,000 stores in a reliable fashion so that it's always available. So not only there are store networks, but then all of the networks that support our entire supply chain, right? Whether it's the supply chain that supplies our stores, or the supply chain that supplies our, our customer delivery at home, and you know, all of those kind of ancillary pieces that go along with that.
And all of the cloud services behind that, right? So we have to have this multi-layer network that is highly available, highly scalable, and, and is, you know, able to support this, this very, very kinda mixed use case.
[00:08:05] Raj: Right, and, and you know, I'll bring you one use case, which, which I think, uh, is very close to me because, you know, when my wife says that, find this in, in Walmart, you know, if you do not have the app and you do not, you know, search there, you may be walking around in circles for, for us not finding it.
Now, that's a very complex thing, right, where the app knows exactly which Bay of Walmart in 10,000 stores. That particular item is, whether it's a, you know, big piece of, of garden more or a small pin, you know, what is the role that an IT team plays in such kind of customer requirement or business need?
Convert them into technology and then played out, you know, how do you do it? You know, it's, it's amazing.
[00:08:55] Dave: Yeah, and, and you know, that app also needs to know, you know, if you search for something and you wanna know where it is, we wanna make sure that we have it in stock. Right? We're not sending you to an empty shelf, right?
So all these things need to happen in real time. And so you have that very kind of interconnectedness of the entire, kind of all the way from the digital experience to the in-person experience and to your point. You know, it's, it's even broader than just making sure that we tell you where it is in the store.
We wanna way find you through the store. Right, exactly. We're starting to get to that point where we can tell you in the app, like, turn left and, you know, we want to be able to, to to, to enable our customers to have that sort of experience and, and guide them through the store. And we wanna make sure they have a, a good experience and maybe you wanna search for multiple things.
We wanna make sure that you can find multiple things so you know, that piece of it. All the way through takes to your point earlier, you know, almost half a million wireless access points. It takes the other iot infrastructure that we have to build, you know, using technologies like BLE and and Halo and things like that to enable things like digital shelf labels so that when you do get to a a something on the shelf, we make sure that we're showing you the correct price for it at the correct tie, right?
All of these things are interconnected and we have to have that infrastructure available. 24 by seven by 365 to make sure that it's there and ready to go. And then, you know, on top of that. When we think about the customer experience in many, many places, especially here in America, when there's something like a natural disaster, right?
If there's a, you know, series of fires or hurricanes or tornadoes, one of the first places people turn to is Walmart. We need to make sure that our stores are available to serve the communities that they're in at all times. And so that whole network needs to be survivable, right? We need to be able to make sure that they've got connectivity at all times, and we've invested heavily in that as well.
[00:10:47] Raj: So now Dave, you know this, this brings me to the next question. You talked about a lot of things, which is application, which is data, which is, you know that you'll have many source codes. It'll be in your data centers, and I'm sure you are heavily invested in cloud. Also the hyperscalers, right? Do you wanna talk about, you know, what's your, you know, data center footprint look like?
Where are your applications and how do you bring everything together? Because, you know, if I, I'm a client, you know, which I am of Walmart and I'm in in New Jersey, if you have a cloud. You know, some application sitting somewhere in the West Coast, it's not gonna work for me. So how do you manage the whole complexity from a network perspective?
From a latency perspective? Ultimately ensuring that me as a user, you know, and I, I'm actually extremely happy using that app. Maybe not for a high price item for my wife, but for everything else I'm happy. So can do you want to talk about that?
[00:11:51] Dave: Sure. And you know, look, it's not only, it's not only you that we're concerned with.
We are concerned with you. We want you to have an amazing experience. But we've got, you know, nearly 2 million associates in our stores too, that are all walking around with one or more mobile devices that they need in order to do their job well. And you know, if you walk up to someone and you ask them a question, they don't immediately know the answer.
We wanna make sure that they've got the tools at their fingertips. To get them that answer. Right? And so when we think about that, we wanna make sure it's your exact point that we've got, you know, local, highly available compute that gives them the ability to work the applications that they need to work on.
And so, yes, we, we operate a multi cloud strategy. You know, it, it's no, no surprise that we use things like GCP and Azure. We have our own very large private cloud implementation that is also geographically diverse. And we balance our applications between that to your, you know, to, to your point about whether it's we need, you know, low latency, high bandwidth, high availability combination of all three.
You know, we're, we're thoughtful in how we, we place those applications within those clouds.
[00:12:56] Raj: Excellent. Now, no discussion in this present moment with executives is over without talking about AI. Right. And I'm sure you are building or bringing in whole lot of ai, specifically in the complexity that we talked about, whether it's complexity from a network perspective, from a multi-cloud perspective, or you know, using gen AI in in manner which maybe nobody else has thought about, right?
So if I can get your thought first about how you're using AI specifically from your network, you know, optimization, operations, you know, self-healing, et cetera, and where do you want to take it? And then I can come to the gene AI perspective.
[00:13:43] Dave: Of course. Yeah. You know, I, I think it would be a disservice to say, oh, we're only using AI in the network.
We're only using AI here. The, there are, there are all sorts of facets of the business where AI is touching. Obviously, you know, what's, what's closest to my heart at this point is how we think about that in the network space and, and how we can accomplish a lot of these goals that I've talked about with ai.
And so yeah, absolutely. Things like whether it's proactive or, you know, predictive fault analysis. Or detection and analysis, I should say, all the way through to self-healing and, and stuff like that. There have been tools available for many, many years that have called themselves like, you know, AI style network tools.
At the end of the day, most of those are, are fairly rudimentary and they always have been. Right? If you look at like DGP optimizers from 20 years ago, you know, in some way you could call that ai, right? But at the end of the day, really the way that we're thinking about AI now. Quite, quite different than, than, than in those days.
And so, you know, I would, I would say we're still fairly early in our journey. We do have some tools that are kind of in-house related to kind of that predictive fault detection, fault analysis, when you're talking about the number of network elements that we have. You can't just, you can't just take syslog from, you know, almost a million network elements and, and parse that in a meaningful manner with just, you know, RegX or Scripts.
Right? That's something where you need to really, really intelligently look at that, especially as you've got your device landscape changing, right? We use the, the normal commercial network vendors. We also have a lot of sonic in our network and other open source tools, right? And those things evolve. Quite quickly.
We wanna make sure that we're thinking about that and that we are, we're taking the data that we can get from those and, and gleaning meaningful insights into our networks so that we can ensure, hey, you know, we're keeping a close eye on capacity, keeping a close eye on resiliency, and we're making sure that we're in a spot where if we do have some sort of outage, which is going to happen, it's a network networks break, that we're able to recover from it quickly and that we're able to understand why it broke so that maybe we can do better next time.
[00:15:51] Raj: Brilliant. And, and Dave, I want to share something with you. Two weeks back I was with a few, you know, senior execs in the West Coast and I heard absolutely similar, you know, mind share and, and, and, you know, thought process from their side. Also, incidentally and data communications have a platform which we have built from, from Grounds up, which can solve a whole lot of things in terms of bringing a lot of network elements together, because today's network is not a singular OEM, right?
You will have multi OEM architecture where it may be 20 different OEMs, different of, you know, network elements also coming in. So the complexity is huge, and you are absolutely right. Nobody has the golden answer out here. Everybody has some bit of answers, but we are going to reach there at one point of time, right?
That's the programmable network all about, and everybody wants to reach there one point, point of time. The other point, you know, Dave, which I wanted to know from you, and I'm sure our listeners would also want to understand, is multi-cloud network, and how complex is it for you? How are you solving that?
Because today's network, when we look at it from say, a store to the cloud, you know, it's simpler to understand, right? You can have internet MPLS, point of point things simpler to understand, but when it comes. Multicloud, you know where you have, you talked about GCP, you talked about Azure. Uh, you have your own data center.
Between the clouds and from the location to the cloud. It's not a very simple network. How do you solve for that?
[00:17:38] Dave: It is, it is a very, very complex network. When you're talking about stores that are located, you know, not necessarily in technology hubs, right? When you, especially here in, in the US where, you know, we've got over 5,000 stores in, in many cases we are right, the the largest.
Retailer in the community that we're operating in, and maybe there's not a whole bunch of enterprise business in that area that also would, would, would draw telcos to building significant infrastructure in those areas. But at the same time, we've got these connected digital experiences that we wanna make sure consistent across our entire portfolio of stores.
And this is ranging everything from, to the point earlier around. You know, devices that associates have to making sure that you can hop on guest wifi if you need to get, uh, and wanna look up something that maybe, you know, you're unable to from the cellular network. And so we wanna make sure that we've got a, a, a consistent network across that.
And that means that we have to work with a lot of different vendors to, to deliver that, right? We have fiber to every single store. In our fleet. That then comes back to a larger Walmart backbone that connects together to your, to, to kind of your question, connects together the stores con, connects together our supply chain networks and brings all that together to then interconnect both the, the private cloud locations that we have as well as the public cloud.
And so we generally manage that connectivity through our own. Thrown geographically distributed backbone, and that backbone stretches not only, you know, here in in the US but elsewhere in North America and elsewhere in the world. Wow. Wow.
[00:19:13] Raj: You know, more and more you're sharing, you know, I can, I can understand the complexity you're dealing with, and I'm sure you are also looking, looking at gene AI to solve few of them.
Right? So, you know, for gene ai, there are lot of different things that you can drive, but at the end of the day, you need to look at projects, which really makes sense from a business perspective. Right. So when you think about gen ai, how do you know that, you know. A project or a stream will work out for you.
And Walmart, you know, specifically when it comes to adoption or return of investments and so on and so forth, how do you approach that?
[00:19:58] Dave: You know, we have gen AI in all sorts of areas in our business, right? And so coming back again to associate experience, right? We've got the ability for an associate in a store to go ask a question in natural language.
To try to understand whether it's something related to products in our store or it's related to, you know, an HR matter or things like that. We want people to be able to ask those questions in natural language format, which just makes everyone's life better, right? It makes everyone's life easier, less clicking around an apps, trying to find things that are, that may maybe not be that intuitive.
You can go in. Ask something in natural language, you know, ask a question about a product, ask a question about all sorts of things in that environment. And so, you know, we've deployed that all the way down to, to our associates, in our stores, and even in our campus locations, to give them the ability to interact with the Walmart systems in that way.
That is, uh, you know, the, the, the user facing side of things. And then obviously. There's a whole bunch of that on the backend when we talk about what developer experience of developer productivity look like. Right. And so, you know, we wanna make sure that, that our developers have the best of breed tools available to them to make sure that they are able to, you know, it, it's, it's tough sometimes to measure directly what the ROI is of, of things like gen AI and what we talk about.
What that would look like for a developer. But we, you know, we know that those tools can unlock significant productivity right within the developer community. And, you know, we've seen business impact from, from doing that in a, in a very, very positive manner.
[00:21:35] Raj: Dave, you talked about an assistant for your associates.
I'm sure the listeners, at least me, I want to know how I can use something like that for myself. Can you throw some light on that? Where is it coming?
[00:21:49] Dave: Sure. You know, we're already in beta testing with that. Right. It's something I'm super excited about. I know that, that, you know, clearly you're super excited about it.
We want customers to be able to ask in natural language, like, Hey, where can I find something? Hey, what's the price on something? Hey, what's a similar product to something? And so that type of stuff we're, we're absolutely very, very much so interested in providing to our customers. And we do have that tool in beta now.
You may be able to see. See it in your app if, if you're lucky enough, and if not, hopefully it'll come soon to you and, and to the listeners.
[00:22:21] Raj: Dave, I'm going to follow up with you on that and I'm sure our listeners will also look it up. Thank you for that. That brings me to the next segment, which is innovation, right?
So I. While talking to you, I'm thinking, wow, Dave must be looking at lot of projects, which is, which is kind of, you know, cutting edge innovation. Right? So when it comes to innovation, Dave, you know, how do you do it? What's, what's your process? What's your secret sauce?
[00:22:48] Dave: You know, Walmart Global Tech. I think we've, we've invested very, very heavily over the years.
In, in all of these experiences, right. And we put really think about what does the customer experience look like? That is the most important thing, right? And on top of that, we think about, you know, there, there's, there's the challenges of we also want to keep, I. The prices in our store is low, right? We talk about, you know, it's very, very kinda old saying every EDLP, everyday low price.
And that is very, very important to us. So as we've invested in these things, we've really looked at like, what are the most important things, what are the most impactful things we can invest in that will make sure that, you know, we stay on the cutting edge from an, from an innovation perspective, and that we also continue to make sure that our customers have, you know, both the great experience but also.
The prices that are very, very important to 'em. And so, you know, I don't know though that there's a specific, one thing I can point to that would say, here's Walmart's, you know, Walmart, global tech, special sauce. But, you know, at the end of the day, I think it's a great combination that they've brought together of the right talent, the right motivations, and the right technology to, to really deliver a world class experience.
[00:24:02] Raj: So, you know, Dave, we talked about gen ai. You know, one other thing which is in the horizon and just coming in is quantum right? And quantum, not only from compute perspective, but also from network perspective, right? So any views on quantum, anything that you're looking at from a quantum perspective at this point of time?
[00:24:22] Dave: I mean, at this point, right, everyone's still talking about to, to kind of the, the early discussion 400 gig and like that's, that's still seeming, seeming like a lot in some cases, although in many other cases, I. It's not enough, right? Because we're also still seeing people deploy plenty of InfiniBand for AI cases.
And so there's definitely has to be what's next in this space. And I'll be honest, I'm not an expert in Quantum and what is coming in the network space there. I probably read the same press releases that you have and talked to some of the same vendors who, you know, have some kind of early read on what they think they can deliver and you know.
3, 5, 7 years. But I, at the same time, it's unclear what the real, practical use cases that'll be. Where, when I'm still talking about, you know, delivering circuits to stores right. Versus what I have to then deliver to build an AI fabric in my data center. You know, where does that fit in, in, in between the two?
That I think is something that's gonna develop over the next few years.
[00:25:21] Raj: Cool. Thank you. Thanks, Steve. My next question is specifically our listeners, you know, who would like to look at some of the advice, either from a innovation perspective or, you know, looking at how to make it and telecom successful, right?
From a business angle. Also, you know. Where Dave was not successful. Some of the failures, if you can share.
[00:25:47] Dave: Yeah, I mean I, I think, you know, if we, if I take that up a level, not specific to Walmart, but you know, just kind of in general, when I think about building networks at scale, right? There's, there's definitely kind of a, a world in which, you know, you can build a network based off of press releases and what people think is the right way to build a network.
And then there's kind of reality and I think back to the Netflix days where. We have a lot of people telling us, you can't do this. You're gonna break the internet. You're gonna, you know, this just will never work. You're investing hundreds of millions or billions of dollars into this and it's gonna be a total flop.
And I think obviously history has proved those folks wrong and that's been people all the way from, you know, whether it was Cisco telling us, we don't think that, that, you know, this is gonna work in this way. To, you know, stock market analysts saying, you know, sell Netflix, it's a bear. It's never gonna do anything.
What really I think was, was instrumental there was thinking about things from a first principle's perspective. Like what is actually possible, not what will someone pay for, but what is possible. Mm-hmm. And you know, not only what is possible today, but what is possible in three years. Right. What, what is Quantum gonna do in this space?
We don't know, but we know we all, we all know we need to keep our eye on it. We need to make sure that we. Are are knowledgeable about what it's going to look like and, you know, maybe what our potential use cases are so that when we do sit in that room and we think about, okay, well how can we solve for this next big AI problem, whatever that might be, you know, what are the potential technologies we can think about doing that with?
There's been, you know, and plenty of, plenty of failures in that space. Like I, you know. I would say, you can look back in my own presentations back from the day when I used to speak at Nano and things like that, where I got up and talked about, you know, I remember very, very vividly I had this presentation that I gave that was said literally called Help.
My big expensive router is very expensive. And so like, you know, I got up there and like Cisco was not thrilled, but I gave that presentation. But at the end of the day, it was talking about, hey, we kind of invested in the wrong direction here. I've got some ideas of what. We can do, but also, hey, industry, what do you have here?
And we actually invited industry to the stage to say, well, what would you do in this case? Because this clearly is not scaling in that way. And so being able to bring in those outside perspectives and being able to be humble in those ways is, is very, very important. And, you know, being able to, to pivot and not just dig your heels in and go, oh look, this is the right way to do it because so-and-so technologist told me, or so-and-so vendor told me.
You know, there's a lot of opinions out there, and being able to sift through that and make something meaningful from them is, is in some ways a superpower. And some of the best folks that I've worked with are really able to dig in and really understand, not only just like at a very surface level, but be able to dig into the technology and at the same time dig into the business impacts of that technology.
[00:28:47] Raj: So Dave, you, you shared a few very important insights and, and I also said wise out here, right? In today's date, you know, if you Google, you'll get, you know, billions of, you know, answers for one question. So a lot of the CIOs and, and the, the teams are confused, if I may use that word. You know, please do not take me wrong listeners, but they are confused, right?
What to do, how to do it. Because, you know, there are so many different things for one specific problem, which can be solved from a tech perspective. And in that tech there are so many OEMs, so many different options that are there. Many a times they do not know what is the best for them. Right. And therefore maybe they'll go with, you know, the last OEM that they heard from, or the last telco that they've talked to.
Right. And they may be missing out the best or the best that is there. Right. So any advice from, from you on how to avoid that pitfall? Because I've seen that happening a lot. So how did you do it and, and advice to our listeners on how to avoid that.
[00:30:04] Dave: Yeah, that's, that's something, it's one of those things that's just as much art as it is science, right?
Where you can't really directly say, oh, well, the trick is you need to talk to exactly three vendors in this space, and you know you're going to be able to triangulate an answer from that. Like, that's never a reality. The reality is, is that. You know, if I think about my experience at Walmart, I think about my experience at Netflix.
Think about experiences elsewhere. Quite often I have vendors who come to me who, you know, they're, they're coming to me with a solution to a problem they don't quite understand, and there's kind of two roads you can take with that as, as being on the other side of that one is. I can invest my time with that vendor and help them understand my problems, or I can walk away and, you know, I'll say earlier in my career, I was more apt to walk away from most of those because it was just, it felt like a waste of time.
It felt like, you know, hey, if you don't understand my problem and you're gonna come in and sit down and. Say you do and try to pitch me on something like you've, you've maybe not really used my time very well to begin with. Like, why would I invest more here? What I've found over time is like there's a much finer balance to be struck in that space, which is, hey, maybe they don't understand it, but they were trying to make a good faith effort to, to do so because otherwise coming in blind would even be a worse use of time.
And so helping people understand like, Hey, when, when you're walking into, in, into somewhere like Walmart. You really, it's really hard to understand what our use cases are for things because we just operate this incredibly unique business. Right. It is. At the scale that we're at, it just operates very, very differently than any other retail, and there's so much history there.
Right. But I've spent a lot of my early time here learning that history in that context. Because it is super complicated and it really frames what our problems are and how we can solve 'em. And so I think investing in that and helping bring the folks who you need from a resource perspective along for that journey is super important.
And you know, look at, at the end of the day, you can't talk to everyone. We only have so many hours in the day, and you're gonna talk to the people who can potentially bring the most to the table for you. But you know, you, you should. Bring what you can to help them along in that journey with you.
[00:32:17] Raj: Brilliant. Thank you, Dave. My last question to you for this episode. And this culminates, you know, a lot of things that you already talked about, but you know, this will also give, give a view to our listeners. You know, I'll put it from a user perspective first, and then from a CIO's perspective as a user, you know, both you and my life has become better from a tech perspective, right?
Technology has made our lives easier. We can get things done faster, and so on and so forth. But that also means that, you know, for a CIO on the other hand, for a, you know, tech leader in a company, things are becoming more and more complex, right? As technology comes in, makes easy, makes it easier for your associates.
Me, as a, as a buyer, it means that it's becoming more and more complicated for you, correct? So there's a balance between both of them, right? Tech, tech as an enabler for users tech as something that is continuing to grow. Now, there has to be a balance, right? Uh, how do you know that you've reached that balance in terms of deploying the right technology in a company like Netflix?
In a company like Walmart? Right.
[00:33:37] Dave: You know, I, I, it's being, having been in the infrastructure space for basically my entire career. Where, you know, here at Walmart specifically, most of my customers are, are folks in the business, right? Uh, my, my, I have fewer of my customers are technologists, right? More of them are in the business because I'm, I'm helping store leadership.
I'm helping supply chain leadership really achieve the goals they need to achieve, and I'm enabling technology and technologists with the infrastructure we build for all of them. The thing about that is, is having been doing this for a very, very long time. You know, you're being successful in some ways when you're invisible.
Right. And that's not always the, the best way to think about it for sure. And maybe not the best way to sell a career in this space. But it is definitely one of those things where, you know, if people don't necessarily know what you're up to, but they feel like the business is successful because of it.
You're doing the right things right, and some people just maybe don't, don't have time to learn more about it. Maybe that's just not the focus. They, they've hired you to make sure that they don't have to think about it. And if they don't have to think about it, you're doing your job. And that could be unnerving for some people.
I know it was very unnerving for me earlier in my career where she's like, whoa, does, does no one really understand the complexity of this like this? This was a lot of work and this was very, very complicated. Like, why am I not getting pats on the back? And he'll be like, you getting paid? Oh yeah, I'm getting paid.
Okay, cool. There's your pat on the back. You know, enjoy it and enjoy the business. You know, the success that the business is seeing thanks to you and know that like, yes, they know you exist. They know that you're, you're there and you're making a difference, but you've done such a great job that they're able to focus on what their priorities are in the business versus worrying about whether or not the technology is gonna be ready for them.
Right. The technology's there, technology's ready to go. They're the ones who then get to play catch up with you and not the other way around. That's like, that's success and that's where, where you want to be.
[00:35:35] Raj: Cool. Dave, thank you for sharing your thoughts. Now, listeners, you know today I've learned a lot of things.
I'm hoping that you have also picked up a whole lot of things. It's always a pleasure to talk to somebody like Dave, who is not only a very senior exec, but also somebody who can share lot of his thoughts. A lot of his experiences in a manner which is very, very simple. You know, that's, that's, that's what I got from you, Dave, today.
So Dave, thank you once again for coming and joining us and, you know, looking forward to our next meeting. I'm sure it can be a good one.
[00:36:11] Dave: Absolutely. Thanks. It is a, it is a real pleasure and I had a really good time. So, so thanks for having me off. Thank you.
[00:36:19] Voiceover: Thank you for joining us on Hyperconnected Journeys, where we explore the minds of technology innovators, future proofing their digital infrastructure.
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