(bright upbeat music) >> Welcome to theCUBE's, continuous coverage of AWS re:Invent 2021. We're here live running one of the most important and largest technology events of the year. It's all about AWS and AWS's ecosystem partners. We are joined by Jay Mozo, Director of Transformation Services, TEKsystems Global Services, alumni of AWS, >> Yep. >> David: I got that, right? >> Yep. >> David: And Ted Swinyar, you're Director of Solutions 1Strategy. Who's going to tell me what the relationship is between 1Strategy and TEKsystems? Like I don't already know what it is since you came and essentially announced the magic, here on our stage in 2019. Ted, you want to start off with a little background since you were acquired. >> Ted: Yeah, I'll jump in. >> How did that go? >> So 1Strategy is a TEKsystems Global Services Company, and we're an AWS premier partner. We've got competencies and DevOps, migration, data and analytics, machine learning. And we're really excited this year to be focusing also on the security competency as well. >> So you've been laser focused on AWS forever? >> Ted: Day one. >> Day one. >> Ted: You know that's been our core focus, and together with TEKsystems Global Services, we're able to bring that dedicated and specialized focus on cloud transformation now at scale. And that's really exciting. >> So TEKsystems, you do it all? >> Yep. >> AWS laser-focused, sounds like a great combination. >> Ted And Jay: Yeah. >> And our focus is you know, how we bring that deep AWS specialized expertise together with proven methodologies, the proprietary deployment strategies to take the customer to the next step on their cloud journey. Whether they're just getting started, whether they're in a migration or whether they're already a veteran at AWS looking to take the next step. >> So Jay talk about the last two years. >> Jay: Yeah. >> You've been in this two years obviously very interesting times we've been living through. How has the combination gone? >> Oh it's been great again that expertise, that deep AWS expertise, that's what our customers (indistinct), they would expect from us, right? And we truly are passionate about accelerating business transformation for our customers, right? And our goal is really simple, we bring in real-world expertise, just like an AWS expertise that 1Strategy brought and we solve complex problems whether they're business, technology, or even just people talent, right? The whole talent around this whole ecosystem, we heard Adam talk about it even earlier today, right? Talent is a challenge. So we're very obsessed with technology, right? But we're even more than that we're obsessed with our customers, right? We're at 80% of the fortune 500, more than 6,000 customers, and that obviously grew with our 1Strategy partners here. And we really consider ourselves with 1Strategy as all in one kind of full stack integration partner, right? Well we meet our customers where they are and we work side by side with them to transform their business, again very passionate about that. >> So what do these engagements look like? Are you approaching the customer from an AWS perspective in partnership with AWS? So AWS services, AWS technology, bridging that divide specifically, or are you coming in from sort of a TEKsystems overall perspective and then identifying the areas where AWS is a fit and bringing in 1Strategy? Or is it a mixture of both? What does that look like? >> It's a mixture of both for sure. We do a lot of partnering with AWS, right? Especially with 1Strategy. And we come to the table a lot with AWS together and we have that kind of joint feeling with AWS. And when AWS isn't at the table in the beginning, if it makes sense to go on the AWS platform, we bring them to the table. But it's really around focusing on what you're bringing up, it's focusing on the customer and what they need. And again, we have our kind of business modernization framework that we lean on, that really drives that conversation, so we can figure out very quickly, you know, how to help them and which platform is going to help them. And obviously, you know, AWS more and more, right? They're coming out with all these services, even a higher level services. And the conversations with our customers are really along those lines, right? How do we kind of help them leverage these services, right? So they can really achieve the agility that they need. >> So in the last two years, aside from the pandemic, global economy, what are some of the things in cloud that maybe you didn't anticipate? Now you're coming in from a specialist perspective, Laser focused on AWS, more the generalist, let's take care of anything the customer might need. Are there areas where you are surprised by the pace or a lack of pace in terms of movement to cloud? What have the last two years looked like from that perspective? >> Well I'll say one of the big things has been the change in data. The data is a lifeblood of every organization and what looks like normal data today, would be alien for some businesses going back two years ago. And as the entire world has gone through a business transformation, there's been just more and more data coming at customers faster and faster, the acceleration there has been just tremendous. And one of the things we see, customers are just drowning in data, you know how they're able to leverage AWS from a technology standpoint to build a data strategy, has to be married with that data-driven culture. And we're seeing more and more customers really getting that. I thought Adam made an incredible point this morning, he called out 85% of the workers surveyed, in the past couple of years are saying, I need to understand technology more. And that's absolutely something we're seeing in the marketplace. That investment in your team, enablement training as well as having the solid foundation and an ability to move toward an agile approach is becoming more and more critical for our customers. >> So you mentioned Adam's keynote, one of the things that was called out, was the idea that there are 475 different kinds of instances available from AWS. So let's get tactical for a minute, pretend like I'm a CEO at a customer site. I know that I want to be in the cloud, I know I want to leverage what the cloud has to offer. How do you guys figure out which ones of these 475 instances I'm going to be leveraging? Do you have like multisided dungeons and dragons dice that you throw, (murmuring) or is there some science behind it? >> Oh man that and the dart board definitely the way to go. No, the idea for every engagement is always focused on what the outcome for the customer is at the end of the day and work backwards from that. So depending on whether they're focused on an ML workload, or whether they're focused on a more, business line application, working backwards to understand what is the outcome they're trying to drive and then building the right technology stack, working backwards to support that. Whether it's taking advantage of any number of the instance types, taking advantage of serverless or any of the really incredible container options that are available in the marketplace today. >> So we're obviously here at AWS re:Invent, 1Strategy is an AWS specialist, TEKsystems multicloud? >> Jay: Yep. >> Fair to say? >> Jay: Yep. >> The world is a multicloud place, I think it's okay to acknowledge that. So if I'm looking to engage with TEKsystems, I can count on AWS being brought in and AWS expertise being brought in when it's appropriate, because it's not the only thing you do? >> Jay: Right, that's right. >> How do you manage that? Who decides whether a workload is better suited for AWS and the 1Strategy folks versus say GCP or Azure? >> Yeah, definitely again, (indistinct) right on it, right? We start with what the customer needs and their outcomes, right. We take an approach around really helping them understand their value stream, right? So if we get our customers to understand their value stream, that really serves as a context, as I mentioned before for business and delivery agility, right? And when we focus there and work backwards from there, we can really figure out all the different pieces. And like you said, it's a multicloud world now, right? For with many of our customers demand their value streams and some of their value stream components or systems or processes, they might live on different things. But, we don't jump to those right out of the gate, right? We jump to understanding where they are in their journey, where they're at with their value stream. We do a lot of dive deep and aligned to really understand where they're at. And then we craft those things actually in partnership with our customer, right? Because they might have things going on in their organization that might lean towards, GCP for some things and AWS for some other things. So we take all of that in as we start to figure out, which platform really is best for them. But again, like Ted mentioned, we with that working backwards mentality. >> So how do you see the change that's happened over time, in I would call it the AWS posture or attitude towards the concept of hybrid cloud technology? I think there was a time when AWS would have said, you know what everything that matters, everything that's born now will be born in the cloud, all net new things will be in the cloud. All the legacy stuff, we'll just sort of let it wither on the vine. It was mentioned in the keynote today that maybe five to 15% of I.T spend is in the cloud today, that's 85% or so leftover. Do you find yourself working in more of an increasingly hybrid environment these days? What's your perspective on hybridity? I think I may have just made that word up. (chuckles) >> Yeah it's absolutely the reality, and it reflects where every customer is in their cloud journey. You know you've got some customers that are just born in the cloud startups, getting you know everything Greenfield, brand new in the cloud. Whereas you've got others, one of our customers just celebrated recently their hundredth birthday. Obviously they have a significant legacy domain and we always need to focus on meeting a customers where they're at. There's no exact match between customer and customer, it's all about understanding where they are, how we can help them get to the next step, whether that's taking advantage of something like outpost, you know the really cool 5G, the private 5G that was announced this morning. Really exciting. >> David: Very interesting. >> Ted And Jay: Yeah. >> We were talking about that beforehand, how that might support industry 4.0 and some of the really interesting opportunities in that regard. Wavelength, another great example, the reality is AWS has gone into the data center now with things like outposts. It's even gone into space with things like ground station, so it's everywhere that our customers are. >> You mentioned 5G from a TEKsystems perspective, what do you do? Do you spin up a 5G practice? Do you scour universities for 5G graduates? How do you keep up with the pace of developments that are coming from AWS let alone the rest of the tech sector? >> Yeah, and again that 5G is a good example, right? And we're going to kind of follow again where our customer are and where the trends going. But we instantly see with these higher level services, where some of these used cases, some of these solutions are going to go, right? We were even talking again that conversation about, the things we can do from an industry perspective, right? And really align all of these technologies to again be very innovative, right? Adam talked about pathfinders and again, we're going to seek out those pathfinders. And now with all of these services coming out of AWS, we're going to be able to do some incredible things in the future with them. >> Yeah it's amazing to see the things that have been unlocked and unshackled by advances in technology. Were there any things that surprised you Ted, coming out of the keynote today, announcements, some of these things are sort of telegraphed in advance. But hardware advances, we talked about 5G, anything that kind of took you off guard a bit or... >> I was really excited by all the move to serverless analytics, Redshift server lists, EMR with serverless MSK serverless, democratization of data. Again coming back to the pathfinders theme, going all the way back to the very beginning, how we can bring that data forward and lowering those bars. Whether you're focused on ML with the SageMaker announcements, and SageMaker canvas, being able to bring all these people together and empower them with data. I see that as again, a lifeblood of every organization and the more that you can bring that out and make it available, the more powerful and the more flexible every company is going to be. >> When you're an AWS services partner, it's a bit like being at a buffet, an endless buffet where new treats are piled on the table each year. I thought it was amazing that one of the important points had to do with the development of Silicon. There are a lot of folks who would say that the underlying hardware no longer matters, nobody cares. AWS realizes that as a foundation it is really important, it's up to folks like you to translate that technical value into business value obviously. If this whole tech thing doesn't work out for us, what if we opened a nightclub here in Vegas and we called it hybridity? >> (Jay laughing) I like >> Love it. >> I like the sound of it, I'm going to look it up and see if it's actually a word. >> Lets patent it. (murmuring) >> We got it all three of us. So anytime organizations come together, there are cultural issues. So you've got AWS specialist, more of a generalist organization and you're going out and you're engaging customers that are having their own cultural issues. What are some of the bigger obstacles that are in the way of leveraging technology? 'Cause you've mentioned it's all about the customer perspective it's not just the technology. What are the things that are still getting in the way now that might surprise people who think that everyone's already in cloud? >> Yeah, I can go first, Ted you can jump in. Yeah culture is, again, it's a big thing, that's why it's built into our business modernization program, culture, continuous learning and Adam mentioned that too. We see challenges obviously from a learning perspective. We really, really need to key in on, not just the technologies they have to learn, but also modern practices, right? And that's going to be a big part of all these things. And definitely these higher level services are going to abstract a lot of those issues for our customers which is great. But it's still not going to displace just the constant you brought up, the constant change and all these services that come out. So I think we focus on a culture and really understanding how to move an organization to the right mindsets and the right practices, right? And that's really the key in terms of their overall business transformation. >> So I think the headline for this segment is going to be awesome two years for TEKsystems and 1Strategy. Jay and Ted, thank you so much for being here on theCUBE with us. I hope you have a great rest of the week here in Las Vegas, it's amazing to be here in person, fantastic. They've done a really good job of keeping us all safe with the protocols in place. Hope to see you again, I guess we'll be shooting for a 2022 update to see how you guys are doing. With that I'd like to thank all of you for joining us on theCUBE here at AWS re:Invent 2021. I'm Dave Nicholson and again thanks for joining us on theCUBE. We are the leader in hybrid technology event coverage. (bright music)

>>law from Las Vegas. It's the Q covering A ws re invent 2019. Brought to you by Amazon Web service is and in along with its ecosystem partners. >>Welcome back to Vegas. It's the Cube, live from AWS reinvent 19. Lisa Martin here with John Walls and John. We've been hanging out with about 65,000 folks, or so >>just are best friends. But Wade talked about this just a little bit ago, but I really have impressed again with kind of discontinued energy and focus, and you know it's gonna go well beyond the show. But three days of back to back to back Great presentations, Great programming obviously show for still jam packed a really good show. Hats off Day W s >>absolutely right. The energy has not wavered one bit. And oftentimes, by day three, that challenge. There's so much excitement >>not out here, >>not in Vegas. Don and I are pleased to welcome a couple of guests to the Cube. To my left, we've got Jen Doyle, the VP of operations from one strategy, and Ricardo Madan, VP of technology products and service is from Texas is I got all right, give me carte Blanche on how to pronounce that, By the way. So guys, one strategy and Techsystems general store with you give her audience and understanding of one strategy. What you guys are way you deliver. Yeah, so we >>are a eight of us. Born in the cloud, dedicated partner of our Amazon Web service is we're premier consulting partner who focuses exclusively on delivering to our customers high quality. Eight of US expertise across industries. Yeah, so because we're exclusively in aid of us, it's a cost industries and pretty agnostics for customer size scale. So we have that unique capability to really dive deep on being the experts on the eight of us when our customers are the experts of their own business >>and tech systems. >>So tech systems Global Service is we are a full stack technology consulting professional service is GS I global system integrator on. We really pay attention to that term full stack because we cover every facet of the software systems operation have life cycle. But increasingly, in the last couple of years, what has been the heart and soul of our ecosystem of confidences and practices and capabilities has been cloud and even more so has been a W s, which is one of the reasons that we're super excited about coming together with one strategy. >>Cloud. Obviously, it's not. It's not a thing. It's the thing, right? So So we kind of moved that passed that when people come to your clients come to you and they will understand that this cloud experience, especially if they're if they're native cloud right there. Not not a legacy, not bringing stuff over. But they're gonna want to launch what's kind of the checklist that the preliminary of that elementary looked at you do to assess what their needs are, what they're like. It's what their opportunities are and kind of how you get them to start faking about exactly what they want to get done, because I assume it's It's a big shoulder hunch and a lot of questions about where do we go from here? So how do you get them to, I guess, oriented toward that conversation in that discussion, >>Yeah, so a lot of the way good place to start is just a really understand their business right now. It's no longer just a IittIe side of the house kind of discussion it's a whole business. So our first step is really to dive deep and understand their business schools, their culture and what their actual end goal is going to be. And so we have a really great part program that we partner with eight of us called the eight of US Well-architected Review program, which we were really fortunate to be one of the top initial partners selected for the beta program a few years ago and then a launch partner for them when they went public last year to really dive deep in, be able to figure out exactly what are they doing? What do they want to be doing and how to get there both on scale, vertically and horizontally, howto costs save and how to really make sure when they're doing it they're doing in a year fashion. >>And where are those conversations happening? Are they happening at the White Sea level, or is it really up, as Andy Jassy was talking about Tuesday? These types of transformations have to come from the executive senior level. Are you having these conversations with the heads of business? We've really been >>seeing that kind of transformation, and it's been phenomenal. Where that change in culture is no longer just the I t side of the house, it is senior leadership. Like Andy, Jassy said. It's now a holistic business approach where you need that alignment in the senior leadership down and that inclusivity in that kind of far and a lot of our conversations, you're getting everybody really buying into the eight of us cloud initiatives that are going on and keep me honest. I know on your side as well. Tech is experiencing a lot of that same thing >>indeed, in the wayto kind of, I guess, divide and conquer the vectors from where we lean in tow, handle those conversations and prioritize the needs and even deal with the different audiences Lisa, like you're talking about because, like Enterprise, I T owners and business owners, ultimately they care about making the business better, but they're approaching it from different lenses and a W s language. There is a methodology in a mindset called working backwards, and it really is the process of beginning with those goals those business goals that Jen talked about in framing them up just super tight. Before we talk about how many lines of code or how many servers are gonna be preventing. We don't want to even get into that. So we've got that really good flowing understanding of the quantified needs and howto really kind of celebrate what that is and then work backwards from there. That the conference Because it's such an all encompassing conversation, especially with enterprises that air nascent to the cloud, they've only dip their toe in the water. Kind of like what What Andy was talking about during his keynote a couple days ago uh, are specific methodology. Under working backwards, we break it up into two pieces. One is called Think big and one is called Act Now and act Now. Starting from there is usually for the folks, and that's like the technology solution there. Fluent enough, they're lucid enough and what their business is going to get out of cloud and out of a migration and out of native development. All that good stuff so we can kind of go right surgically in tow. Hey, how did we just make you better? Based on our combined expertise and our experience? Think big is a little bit more involved, kind where the question was going because you're thinking about O C M. Organizational change management. And how does that culture really In Stan? She ate itself to move fast and be agile and think in a lean way. And, oh, repurpose lots of skills and lots of roles that kind of go extinct after a while. So how do we take in all this? Great talents unorganised ation and UPS killed him. And next gen them to really operate inside of this new cloud ecosystem. >>So you're talking about really organizationally this leadership holster change or shift, if you will, Taking ownership of it from the very top. How do you characterized maybe what that mindset looks like today, as opposed to maybe 45 years ago? It's so easy to put it over. You know, just throw it over the I t guys and developers, and we're gonna focus on our marketing and our sales that we're going to know that you know that the C suite is there, right? Much more president, These kind of discussions. Yeah, you have to have that. Do you know >>how >>to drive that kind of fundamental change? >>For sure. I think a lot of it has to do with the accessibility that AWS Cloud is really bringing to the industry where it's now in such a easily integrating way and your entire business. It's sea level. As you say, down to the interns can have that same accessibility using that tool box. The eight of us allows for them to really jump in hands first and start making things right away. You could be spinning up instances within seconds. It's so simple for people at all levels of knowledge. It's not just the 20 years of I t. That could be the only ones to understand what's going on anymore. >>What are some of the barriers that AWS and Cloud are have removed that 5 10 years ago, customers were concerned with ABC that now those barriers have been mitigated, not be new barriers. But what about the evolution that you've seen A W s really sort of fuel, >>so that way could even think back to some of what What John you were talking about? The kind of erstwhile mindset was a very big iron one. You didn't really look ATT technology and I t as anything more than a utility. Now it's a competitive advantage. Not now you have. That's why you know, you have this whole concept of being a digital native and digital transformation. All these big words. They get so much air time. But that's really been an acceptance in an adoption that technology has gotten to the point where we're moving quicker, better faster is a function of celebrating CX customer experience and enhancing it and using technology to really make organizations move quicker, move faster, adopt new features into whatever their products that is, whether it's online or whether it's packaged whatever. And it's so I think those barriers that AWS has really kind of bubbled up to the surface and then sifted off has been that integration into the business. And that, that is, that's been a transformation that no other company has really enabled outside of AWS for years. Think about like Gartner and forced or an I. D. C. They would talk about the number one objective right is to be aligned with the business, but always in like a subservient role that was more of a foot forward in a leadership role that you see inside of these organizations >>used to be all those of the I t guys. >>Yeah, that's >>what the I t. Guys. Right? I mean, home on the whole thing. Saved. Go. If you look forward, then when you sit down with whomever and you're trying to walk them through their process and get evaluated, What their needs aren't so on so forth. What's the biggest hurdle you gotta get over with down somebody to say, You've got to be You've got to be totally present. This is your your i t offering should be. You should be cloud or your hybrid multi whatever you might be. But you got to be cloud What's the big challenge there? You think you really get somebody jumping in the deep end? >>Honestly, I would really say it's the culture change right now. It's been such a huge digital transformation. You can't deny that. But the culture transformation that's going along with that has really been phenomenal. And that's a lot of people who are at that point of starting their cloud journey, are starting to realize they have to change the way that they look at everything it, as you mentioned several times. It's not just the technical side anymore. It is the business side, and that's the big culture shift of getting over that. There's a lot of technical debt in there, with all the on creme in different areas that people have invested in. And honestly, right now, the day of lift and shift is gonna is kind of going away. It's all of the new cloud. Benefits, like surveillance and containers is really going to be revolutionary, but that education and enabling it really needs to be more prevalent in everybody's vocabulary. And not just the I t. Guy who could tell you about it. It needs to be the sea level, the enablers, the stakeholders in the middle that really understand what's going on. >>So could you talk to us about one strategy and tech systems coming together tell us a little bit about that, what you're doing together and how you might be an eight, an enabler of that cultural transformation that is absolutely linchpin. >>So there's that that enabler on that accelerator t kind of that that change and not to overuse the word accelerator. But that's just kind of one vector that we can talk about a little bit, and it's really what we're encouraging our customers to look at because they've got a broad choice of size of system integrators like us. But if you're not coming to the table with really depth of expertise, depth of expertise, that can help mute a lot of the complexity that were alluding to. Because even even though we've got so many benefits and so much growth happening inside the Ws world, there's 175 service is today. There have been 2500 feature updates releases across that portfolio Just this year alone, there's 5 to 10 new announcement today and then outside of the Ws stack, you've got hundreds and hundreds of other members of the Dev Ops Tool chain. They get bolted into that so that you know the way that we're kind of getting customers to overcome. Some of that reticence is by muting a lot of that, simplifying it and coming to the table with real accelerators, where we've invested collectively hundreds of thousands of lines of code that we've built and put together for AWS proprietary tools for better adoption, whether it's database freedom and getting like kick started off of your legacy oppressed database environments and into the the purpose built platforms inside of a W s, whether it's micro service's libraries and frameworks that we built for customers to help them start to decompose. Some of those those big, expensive, you know, high technical debt applications that General was talking about into micro service is to containerized to make him run faster in the cloud. So that's, you know, that's where we're leaning in from, Uh, not just with the expertise and the combined resume of hundreds of awesome engagements that we've moved customers to the cloud in and hundreds and hundreds of terabytes that we've moved. But it's it's doing it in a way where the customer knows that they've got a real leader here with them, side by side in the journey. And it doesn't happen in one or two conversations. I mean, this is going on across many different settings and demos and think big sessions like like we were talking about. It takes, it takes some time. >>Yeah, I mean that I think the combined family of Texas one strategy will really be phenomenal for our customers. 48% of the market right now is using AWS cloud and to keep up with that scale of innovation and growth. Just to be able to do that, businesses need eight of US experts and that's who we are. It's in our name our. We have one focus, one strategy and that's eight of us. We are developed based on the same agile, lean leadership principles the eight of us has and with the several competencies that we have. Such a Czar Data and Analytics Machine Learning Dev. Ops Migration Way have a proven track record of not only being the AWS experts but being able to be agile and grow with that same speed that eight of us ours to keep up with the training our teams on that expertise. And I think with tech systems, global footprint and ability to find these amazing talent combined with our skill set, we will be able to create a larger geographical footprint to deliver to our customers in a way that they will not only see our ability to deliver what they're doing but exceed their expectations. >>I imagine the amount of engagement that you're gonna have after an event like this three days you mentioned there after 175 service is that AWS is delivery the volume of announcements. It's incredibly challenging to keep up with that. Plus, there's 2500 sessions. You know, customers can't go to that many. So imagine there's gonna be a lot of leaning on one started Genentech systems to say, Help us deconstruct, deconstruct this digest all the opportunities here. So you guys air. I'm sure going to be very busy after this event. But we thank you for joining John and me today and telling us what you guys were doing individually and collectively together. We appreciate it. Thank you so much for our pleasure. For John. Walls were out. Vegas, baby, this has been the Cube. This is the end of our third day of continuous coverage of lots of stuff going on aws reinvent John. It's been a blast hosting a few segments with you >>as always. >>Nice job. See you next time. >>Thanks for having >>All right. I will see you next time. Thanks for watching