S&P Global Inc at Deutsche Bank Technology Conference (Virtual) Transcript

The following is excerpted from the question-and-answer section of the transcript.

Question: Sameer Kalucha - Deutsche Bank AG, Research Division - Analyst : So to start with, S&P doesn't need any introduction. I mean everybody who's here is S&P 500. They live that name and number forever. But maybe for the technology audience here, maybe we can start quickly with a short by about yourself and a little history about S&P. There's a lot more to S&P that people know from the index side, from the rating side, but there's so much happening on the technology front. So it will be great to get a little bit of an overview to set this context, please.

Question: Sameer Kalucha - Deutsche Bank AG, Research Division - Analyst : So maybe to set the context of the journey as well, just to get an idea of the scale of the infrastructure. I mean the data and analytics side of things is roughly, say, $4 billion in revenue. And although we would not get into details of the info merger and whatnot, but we have a large organization that will potentially be a part of S&P as well. So with that scale, with that large organization, can you get a sense of the idea of the scale of the infrastructure you have prior to moving to cloud and then we'll get into how you're transitioning that over to the cloud.

Question: Sameer Kalucha - Deutsche Bank AG, Research Division - Analyst : Yes, that would be great. To start from -- moving from data centers to cloud, you obviously would start with the players, the offerings that are out there. If you can describe that phase of the transition, who are the players you looked at? What were their key attributes? Who did you decide to go with? And what was the key decision parameters that favored that particular provider?

Question: Sameer Kalucha - Deutsche Bank AG, Research Division - Analyst : So you mentioned AWS was the only mature solution, but a lot of others have been showed over time as well. And you mentioned Azure and Alibaba. What are the key things that drove you to, say, Azure and Alibaba?

Question: Sameer Kalucha - Deutsche Bank AG, Research Division - Analyst : That makes sense. So you have a very kind of a seamless, hybrid, multi-cloud architecture, and that is pretty much the state of the art for a large company. So that makes perfect sense. To get a little bit more color on the infrastructure side of things. So you have the cloud and -- around the database side of things. But then you also have the peripherals like security and monitoring. Any color you can share on how they have changed in your journey? For example, you could have on-prem, certain firewalls? Now as you transition to cloud, how has that architecture changed? And those providers, have they changed? And what are the key decision factors there?

Question: Sameer Kalucha - Deutsche Bank AG, Research Division - Analyst : Got it. And similar thing for monitoring and observability in terms of what infrastructure you put together for that?

Question: Sameer Kalucha - Deutsche Bank AG, Research Division - Analyst : Got it. And then you mentioned you took an approach of lift and shift and then transforming. Any color you can provide on how many applications you had when you lift and shift everything to cloud? And how many of those have been kind of transformed or rearchitected or refactored into MSA modern architectures? Any color you can provide in terms of your -- how far you are along that path?

Question: Sameer Kalucha - Deutsche Bank AG, Research Division - Analyst : Oh, that makes sense. So you're quite far along in terms of -- on your journey. What are the key challenges or surprises you kind of like came across on the way in terms of things you didn't expect to be there or things that you found there, which kind of made the transition better than what you thought or made you a little bit -- do a little bit more work than you thought. Would love to get your thoughts in terms of what are the things you encountered along the way in terms of your journey in terms of challenges.

Question: Sameer Kalucha - Deutsche Bank AG, Research Division - Analyst : Great. So it seems like things -- a lot of lessons learned along the way, things are moving a lot faster and then catalysts like COVID come along, where your existing posture probably does not work anymore and you have to rearchitect things really fast. And one of the things we are hearing is, is COVID accelerating these digital transformations. So how did COVID impact you in the IT side of things? And how do you see it evolving forward in terms of acceleration of the spend? Any dollars or time lines? What are the things that are in your mind when you think about impact from COVID going forward?

Question: Sameer Kalucha - Deutsche Bank AG, Research Division - Analyst : Got it. And it seems like there will be acceleration in those investments going forward as well. And it will be a positive trend for IT spend. REFINITIV STREETEVENTS | www.refinitiv.com | Contact Us consent of Refinitiv. 'Refinitiv' and the Refinitiv logo are registered trademarks of Refinitiv and its affiliated companies. SEPTEMBER 09, 2021 / 8:30PM, SPGI.N - S&P Global Inc at Deutsche Bank Technology Conference (Virtual)

Question: Sameer Kalucha - Deutsche Bank AG, Research Division - Analyst : That's a very profound thought. That's a very profound thought in terms of how it's going to happen. But yes, that's a great way to think about it. So switching gears a little from the infrastructure -- or the IT infrastructure to more data and distribution because that's a key thing going forward as well. What is the data infrastructure right now in terms of databases and whatnot? And how are they being migrated to cloud? Are they already in cloud? Are you using structured or unstructured data providers that are already in cloud? How is the -- what are the considerations there? And how is the landscape there right now in terms of S&P?

Question: Sameer Kalucha - Deutsche Bank AG, Research Division - Analyst : Got it. And that kind of like ties into the next point where you mentioned distribution is a key technology. And the -- on distribution side, a lot of things are happening. You have things like Snowflake and Databricks coming in, data lakes, warehouses, data warehouses, lake houses. A lot of words being thrown around. How is that driving a change in data consumption from a customer side of things versus APIs versus plain, old FTP versus the new? Any color on the mix you can provide? And how is that changing? And how is the new technology enabling that? REFINITIV STREETEVENTS | www.refinitiv.com | Contact Us consent of Refinitiv. 'Refinitiv' and the Refinitiv logo are registered trademarks of Refinitiv and its affiliated companies. SEPTEMBER 09, 2021 / 8:30PM, SPGI.N - S&P Global Inc at Deutsche Bank Technology Conference (Virtual)

Question: Sameer Kalucha - Deutsche Bank AG, Research Division - Analyst : And any mix you can provide on how is Snowflake versus APIs versus FTP right now? And how is it trending? And where do you see it evolving in the near future?

Question: Sameer Kalucha - Deutsche Bank AG, Research Division - Analyst : Got it. And then that's a nice segue into my next question. You mentioned your new technologies allow you to get the data to customers faster. What are the -- some new capabilities or new products or new things customers are able to do now with access to cloud that they were not able to do prior? Any examples you can share that really kind of exemplify the power of cloud.

Question: Sameer Kalucha - Deutsche Bank AG, Research Division - Analyst : Got it. That's fantastic. And new customers are able to use your data, and there are more use cases that are enabled. So as you become more cloud-enabled, more tech-focused, how does that drive business growth going forward? How -- does it give you new geographies, new customers, new capabilities, upsell, cross-sell? What are the growth drivers that you factor into -- that you factor in when you are thinking about your cloud investments?

Question: Sameer Kalucha - Deutsche Bank AG, Research Division - Analyst : Makes sense. And any -- so what are going to be your focus investment areas going forward? As you I wouldn't say complete a journey because the journeys are never complete. They're always in progress. But what are your focus areas of investment going forward as you think about being a mature cloud company. And second thing is, how are the economics different going forward when you're serving everything from the cloud versus your original data center things? And that would be pretty much my last question, and then we'll wrap up there.

Question: Sameer Kalucha - Deutsche Bank AG, Research Division - Analyst : Great. I have one last question from a client. And tying into cloud and migration as well. With the IHS technology being ingrained into S&P, how does that -- what are the time lines of integrating that into S&P? And will you be keeping those around for redundancy for a long time? Or you'd be able to integrate those real quickly? How soon would you be able to do that? Any color you can provide that given the power of cloud? REFINITIV STREETEVENTS | www.refinitiv.com | Contact Us consent of Refinitiv. 'Refinitiv' and the Refinitiv logo are registered trademarks of Refinitiv and its affiliated companies. SEPTEMBER 09, 2021 / 8:30PM, SPGI.N - S&P Global Inc at Deutsche Bank Technology Conference (Virtual)

Question: Sameer Kalucha - Deutsche Bank AG, Research Division - Analyst : Great. Thank you so much for your time today, Swamy. It was a pleasure having you here. Thanks for your time.