(upbeat music) >> Hi everyone. Welcome to theCUBE special presentation here in Palo Alto, California. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. We got two great guests, one for calling in from Germany, or videoing in from Germany, one from Maryland. We've got VMware and AWS. This is the customer successes with VMware Cloud on AWS Showcase: Accelerating Business Transformation. Here in the Showcase at Samir Kadoo, worldwide VMware strategic alliance solution architect leader with AWS. Samir, great to have you. And Daniel Rethmeier, principal architect global AWS synergy at VMware. Guys, you guys are working together, you're the key players in this relationship as it rolls out and continues to grow. So welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you, greatly appreciate it. >> Great to have you guys both on. As you know, we've been covering this since 2016 when Pat Gelsinger, then CEO, and then then CEO AWS at Andy Jassy did this. It kind of got people by surprise, but it really kind of cleaned out the positioning in the enterprise for the success of VM workloads in the cloud. VMware's had great success with it since and you guys have the great partnerships. So this has been like a really strategic, successful partnership. Where are we right now? You know, years later, we got this whole inflection point coming, you're starting to see this idea of higher level services, more performance are coming in at the infrastructure side, more automation, more serverless, I mean and AI. I mean, it's just getting better and better every year in the cloud. Kind of a whole 'nother level. Where are we? Samir, let's start with you on the relationship. >> Yeah, totally. So I mean, there's several things to keep in mind, right? So in 2016, right, that's when the partnership between AWS and VMware was announced. And then less than a year later, that's when we officially launched VMware Cloud on AWS. Years later, we've been driving innovation, working with our customers, jointly engineering this between AWS and VMware. Day in, day out, as far as advancing VMware Cloud on AWS. You know, even if you look at the innovation that takes place with the solution, things have modernized, things have changed, there's been advancements. You know, whether it's security focus, whether it's platform focus, whether it's networking focus, there's been modifications along the way, even storage, right, more recently. One of the things to keep in mind is we're looking to deliver value to our customers together. These are our joint customers. So there's hundreds of VMware and AWS engineers working together on this solution. And then factor in even our sales teams, right? We have VMware and AWS sales teams interacting with each other on a constant daily basis. We're working together with our customers at the end of the day too. Then we're looking to even offer and develop jointly engineered solutions specific to VMware Cloud on AWS. And even with VMware to other platforms as well. Then the other thing comes down to is where we have dedicated teams around this at both AWS and VMware. So even from solutions architects, even to our sales specialists, even to our account teams, even to specific engineering teams within the organizations, they all come together to drive this innovation forward with VMware Cloud on AWS and the jointly engineered solution partnership as well. And then I think one of the key things to keep in mind comes down to we have nearly 600 channel partners that have achieved VMware Cloud on AWS service competency. So think about it from the standpoint, there's 300 certified or validated technology solutions, they're now available to our customers. So that's even innovation right off the top as well. >> Great stuff. Daniel, I want to get to you in a second upon this principal architect position you have. In your title, you're the global AWS synergy person. Synergy means bringing things together, making it work. Take us through the architecture, because we heard a lot of folks at VMware explore this year, formerly VMworld, talking about how the workloads on IT has been completely transforming into cloud and hybrid, right? This is where the action is. Where are you? Is your customers taking advantage of that new shift? You got AIOps, you got ITOps changing a lot, you got a lot more automation, edges right around the corner. This is like a complete transformation from where we were just five years ago. What's your thoughts on the relationship? >> So at first, I would like to emphasize that our collaboration is not just that we have dedicated teams to help our customers get the most and the best benefits out of VMware Cloud and AWS, we are also enabling us mutually. So AWS learns from us about the VMware technology, where VMware people learn about the AWS technology. We are also enabling our channel partners and we are working together on customer projects. So we have regular assembles globally and also virtually on Slack and the usual suspect tools working together and listening to customers. That's very important. Asking our customers where are their needs? And we are driving the solution into the direction that our customers get the best benefits out of VMware Cloud on AWS. And over the time, we really have involved the solution. As Samir mentioned, we just added additional storage solutions to VMware Cloud on AWS. We now have three different instance types that cover a broad range of workloads. So for example, we just edited the I4i host, which is ideally for workloads that require a lot of CPU power, such as, you mentioned it, AI workloads. >> Yeah, so I want to get us just specifically on the customer journey and their transformation, you know, we've been reporting on Silicon angle in theCUBE in the past couple weeks in a big way that the ops teams are now the new devs, right? I mean that sounds a little bit weird, but IT operations is now part of a lot more DataOps, security, writing code, composing. You know, with open source, a lot of great things are changing. Can you share specifically what customers are looking for when you say, as you guys come in and assess their needs, what are they doing, what are some of the things that they're doing with VMware on AWS specifically that's a little bit different? Can you share some of and highlights there? >> That's a great point, because originally, VMware and AWS came from very different directions when it comes to speaking people and customers. So for example, AWS, very developer focused, whereas VMware has a very great footprint in the ITOps area. And usually these are very different teams, groups, different cultures, but it's getting together. However, we always try to address the customer needs, right? There are customers that want to build up a new application from the scratch and build resiliency, availability, recoverability, scalability into the application. But there are still a lot of customers that say, "Well, we don't have all of the skills to redevelop everything to refactor an application to make it highly available. So we want to have all of that as a service. Recoverability as a service, scalability as a service. We want to have this from the infrastructure." That was one of the unique selling points for VMware on-premise and now we are bringing this into the cloud. >> Samir, talk about your perspective. I want to get your thoughts, and not to take a tangent, but we had covered the AWS re:MARS, actually it was Amazon re:MARS, machine learning automation, robotics and space was really kind of the confluence of industrial IoT, software, physical. And so when you look at like the IT operations piece becoming more software, you're seeing things about automation, but the skill gap is huge. So you're seeing low code, no code, automation, you know, "Hey Alexa, deploy a Kubernetes cluster." Yeah, I mean that's coming, right? So we're seeing this kind of operating automation meets higher level services, meets workloads. Can you unpack that and share your opinion on what you see there from an Amazon perspective and how it relates to this? >> Yeah. Yeah, totally, right? And you know, look at it from the point of view where we said this is a jointly engineered solution, but it's not migrating to one option or the other option, right? It's more or less together. So even with VMware Cloud on AWS, yes it is utilizing AWS infrastructure, but your environment is connected to that AWS VPC in your AWS account. So if you want to leverage any of the native AWS services, so any of the 200 plus AWS services, you have that option to do so. So that's going to give you that power to do certain things, such as, for example, like how you mentioned with IoT, even with utilizing Alexa, or if there's any other service that you want to utilize, that's the joining point between both of the offerings right off the top. Though with digital transformation, right, you have to think about where it's not just about the technology, right? There's also where you want to drive growth in the underlying technology even in your business. Leaders are looking to reinvent their business, they're looking to take different steps as far as pursuing a new strategy, maybe it's a process, maybe it's with the people, the culture, like how you said before, where people are coming in from a different background, right? They may not be used to the cloud, they may not be used to AWS services, but now you have that capability to mesh them together. >> Okay. >> Then also- >> Oh, go ahead, finish your thought. >> No, no, no, I was going to say what it also comes down to is you need to think about the operating model too, where it is a shift, right? Especially for that vStor admin that's used to their on-premises environment. Now with VMware Cloud on AWS, you have that ability to leverage a cloud, but the investment that you made and certain things as far as automation, even with monitoring, even with logging, you still have that methodology where you can utilize that in VMware Cloud on AWS too. >> Daniel, I want to get your thoughts on this because at Explore and after the event, as we prep for CubeCon and re:Invent coming up, the big AWS show, I had a couple conversations with a lot of the VMware customers and operators, and it's like hundreds of thousands of users and millions of people talking about and peaked on VMware, interested in VMware. The common thread was one person said, "I'm trying to figure out where I'm going to put my career in the next 10 to 15 years." And they've been very comfortable with VMware in the past, very loyal, and they're kind of talking about, I'm going to be the next cloud, but there's no like role yet. Architects, is it solution architect, SRE? So you're starting to see the psychology of the operators who now are going to try to make these career decisions. Like what am I going to work on? And then it's kind of fuzzy, but I want to get your thoughts, how would you talk to that persona about the future of VMware on, say, cloud for instance? What should they be thinking about? What's the opportunity? And what's going to happen? >> So digital transformation definitely is a huge change for many organizations and leaders are perfectly aware of what that means. And that also means to some extent, concerns with your existing employees. Concerns about do I have to relearn everything? Do I have to acquire new skills and trainings? Is everything worthless I learned over the last 15 years of my career? And the answer is to make digital transformation a success, we need not just to talk about technology, but also about process, people, and culture. And this is where VMware really can help because if you are applying VMware Cloud on AWS to your infrastructure, to your existing on-premise infrastructure, you do not need to change many things. You can use the same tools and skills, you can manage your virtual machines as you did in your on-premise environment, you can use the same managing and monitoring tools, if you have written, and many customers did this, if you have developed hundreds of scripts that automate tasks and if you know how to troubleshoot things, then you can use all of that in VMware Cloud on AWS. And that gives not just leaders, but also the architects at customers, the operators at customers, the confidence in such a complex project. >> The consistency, very key point, gives them the confidence to go. And then now that once they're confident, they can start committing themselves to new things. Samir, you're reacting to this because on your side, you've got higher level services, you've got more performance at the hardware level. I mean, a lot improvements. So, okay, nothing's changed, I can still run my job, now I got goodness on the other side. What's the upside? What's in it for the customer there? >> Yeah, so I think what it comes down to is they've already been so used to or entrenched with that VMware admin mentality, right? But now extending that to the cloud, that's where now you have that bridge between VMware Cloud on AWS to bridge that VMware knowledge with that AWS knowledge. So I will look at it from the point of view where now one has that capability and that ability to just learn about the cloud. But if they're comfortable with certain aspects, no one's saying you have to change anything. You can still leverage that, right? But now if you want to utilize any other AWS service in conjunction with that VM that resides maybe on-premises or even in VMware Cloud on AWS, you have that option to do so. So think about it where you have that ability to be someone who's curious and wants to learn. And then if you want to expand on the skills, you certainly have that capability to do so. >> Great stuff, I love that. Now that we're peeking behind the curtain here, I'd love to have you guys explain, 'cause people want to know what's goes on behind the scenes. How does innovation get happen? How does it happen with the relationships? Can you take us through a day in the life of kind of what goes on to make innovation happen with the joint partnership? Do you guys just have a Zoom meeting, do you guys fly out, you write code, go do you ship things? I mean, I'm making it up, but you get the idea. How does it work? What's going on behind the scenes? >> So we hope to get more frequently together in-person, but of course we had some difficulties over the last two to three years. So we are very used to Zoom conferences and Slack meetings. You always have to have the time difference in mind if you are working globally together. But what we try, for example, we have regular assembles now also in-person, geo-based, so for AMEA, for the Americas, for APJ. And we are bringing up interesting customer situations, architectural bits and pieces together. We are discussing it always to share and to contribute to our community. >> What's interesting, you know, as events are coming back, Samir, before you weigh in this, I'll comment as theCUBE's been going back out to events, we're hearing comments like, "What pandemic? We were more productive in the pandemic." I mean, developers know how to work remotely and they've been on all the tools there, but then they get in-person, they're happy to see people, but no one's really missed the beat. I mean, it seems to be very productive, you know, workflow, not a lot of disruption. More, if anything, productivity gains. >> Agreed, right? I think one of the key things to keep in mind is even if you look at AWS's, and even Amazon's leadership principles, right? Customer obsession, that's key. VMware is carrying that forward as well. Where we are working with our customers, like how Daniel said and meant earlier, right? We might have meetings at different time zones, maybe it's in-person, maybe it's virtual, but together we're working to listen to our customers. You know, we're taking and capturing that feedback to drive innovation in VMware Cloud on AWS as well. But one of the key things to keep in mind is yes, there has been the pandemic, we might have been disconnected to a certain extent, but together through technology, we've been able to still communicate, work with our customers, even with VMware in between, with AWS and whatnot, we had that flexibility to innovate and continue that innovation. So even if you look at it from the point of view, right? VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts, that was something that customers have been asking for. We've been able to leverage the feedback and then continue to drive innovation even around VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts. So even with the on-premises environment, if you're looking to handle maybe data sovereignty or compliance needs, maybe you have low latency requirements, that's where certain advancements come into play, right? So the key thing is always to maintain that communication track. >> In our last segment we did here on this Showcase, we listed the accomplishments and they were pretty significant. I mean geo, you got the global rollouts of the relationship. It's just really been interesting and people can reference that, we won't get into it here. But I will ask you guys to comment on, as you guys continue to evolve the relationship, what's in it for the customer? What can they expect next? Because again, I think right now, we're at an inflection point more than ever. What can people expect from the relationship and what's coming up with re:Invent? Can you share a little bit of kind of what's coming down the pike? >> So one of the most important things we have announced this year, and we will continue to evolve into that direction, is independent scale of storage. That absolutely was one of the most important items customer asked for over the last years. Whenever you are requiring additional storage to host your virtual machines, you usually in VMware Cloud on AWS, you have to add additional nodes. Now we have three different node types with different ratios of compute, storage, and memory. But if you only require additional storage, you always have to get also additional compute and memory and you have to pay for it. And now with two solutions which offer choice for the customers, like FS6 wanted a ONTAP and VMware Cloud Flex Storage, you now have two cost effective opportunities to add storage to your virtual machines. And that offers opportunities for other instance types maybe that don't have local storage. We are also very, very keen looking forward to announcements, exciting announcements, at the upcoming events. >> Samir, what's your reaction take on what's coming down on your side? >> Yeah, I think one of the key things to keep in mind is we're looking to help our customers be agile and even scaled with their needs, right? So with VMware Cloud on AWS, that's one of the key things that comes to mind, right? There are going to be announcements, innovations, and whatnot with upcoming events. But together, we're able to leverage that to advance VMware cloud on AWS. To Daniel's point, storage for example, even with host offerings. And then even with decoupling storage from compute and memory, right? Now you have the flexibility where you can do all of that. So to look at it from the standpoint where now with 21 regions where we have VMware Cloud on AWS available as well, where customers can utilize that as needed when needed, right? So it comes down to, you know, transformation will be there. Yes, there's going to be maybe where workloads have to be adapted where they're utilizing certain AWS services, but you have that flexibility and option to do so. And I think with the continuing events, that's going to give us the options to even advance our own services together. >> Well you guys are in the middle of it, you're in the trenches, you're making things happen, you've got a team of people working together. My final question is really more of a kind of a current situation, kind of future evolutionary thing that you haven't seen this before. I want to get both of your reaction to it. And we've been bringing this up in the open conversations on theCUBE is in the old days, let's go back this generation, you had ecosystems, you had VMware had an ecosystem, AWS had an ecosystem. You know, we have a product, you have a product, biz dev deals happen, people sign relationships, and they do business together and they sell each other's products or do some stuff. Now it's more about architecture, 'cause we're now in a distributed large scale environment where the role of ecosystems are intertwining and you guys are in the middle of two big ecosystems. You mentioned channel partners, you both have a lot of partners on both sides, they come together. So you have this now almost a three dimensional or multidimensional ecosystem interplay. What's your thoughts on this? Because it's about the architecture, integration is a value, not so much innovations only. You got to do innovation, but when you do innovation, you got to integrate it, you got to connect it. So how do you guys see this as an architectural thing, start to see more technical business deals? >> So we are removing dependencies from individual ecosystems and from individual vendors. So a customer no longer has to decide for one vendor and then it is a very expensive and high effort project to move away from that vendor, which ties customers even closer to specific vendors. We are removing these obstacles. So with VMware Cloud on AWS, moving to the cloud, firstly it's not a dead end. If you decide at one point in time because of latency requirements or maybe some compliance requirements, you need to move back into on-premise, you can do this. If you decide you want to stay with some of your services on-premise and just run a couple of dedicated services in the cloud, you can do this and you can man manage it through a single pane of glass. That's quite important. So cloud is no longer a dead end, it's no longer a binary decision, whether it's on-premise or the cloud, it is the cloud. And the second thing is you can choose the best of both worlds, right? If you are migrating virtual machines that have been running in your on-premise environment to VMware Cloud on AWS either way in a very, very fast cost effective and safe way, then you can enrich, later on enrich these virtual machines with services that are offered by AWS, more than 200 different services ranging from object-based storage, load balancing, and so on. So it's an endless, endless possibility. >> We call that super cloud in the way that we generically defining it where everyone's innovating, but yet there's some common services. But the differentiation comes from innovation where the lock in is the value, not some spec, right? Samir, this is kind of where cloud is right now. You guys are not commodity, amazon's completely differentiating, but there's some commodity things happen. You got storage, you got compute, but then you got now advances in all areas. But partners innovate with you on their terms. >> Absolutely. >> And everybody wins. >> Yeah, I 100% agree with you. I think one of the key things, you know, as Daniel mentioned before, is where it's a cross education where there might be someone who's more proficient on the cloud side with AWS, maybe more proficient with the VMware's technology. But then for partners, right? They bridge that gap as well where they come in and they might have a specific niche or expertise where their background, where they can help our customers go through that transformation. So then that comes down to, hey, maybe I don't know how to connect to the cloud, maybe I don't know what the networking constructs are, maybe I can leverage that partner. That's one aspect to go about it. Now maybe you migrated that workload to VMware Cloud on AWS. Maybe you want to leverage any of the native AWS services or even just off the top, 200 plus AWS services, right? But it comes down to that skillset, right? So again, solutions architecture at the back of the day, end of the day, what it comes down to is being able to utilize the best of both worlds. That's what we're giving our customers at the end of the day. >> I mean, I just think it's a refactoring and innovation opportunity at all levels. I think now more than ever, you can take advantage of each other's ecosystems and partners and technologies and change how things get done with keeping the consistency. I mean, Daniel, you nailed that, right? I mean you don't have to do anything. You still run it. Just spear the way you're working on it and now do new things. This is kind of a cultural shift. >> Yeah, absolutely. And if you look, not every customer, not every organization has the resources to refactor and re-platform everything. And we give them a very simple and easy way to move workloads to the cloud. Simply run them and at the same time, they can free up resources to develop new innovations and grow their business. >> Awesome. Samir, thank you for coming on. Daniel, thank you for coming to Germany. >> Thank you. Oktoberfest, I know it's evening over there, weekend's here. And thank you for spending the time. Samir, give you the final word. AWS re:Invent's coming up. We're preparing, we're going to have an exclusive with Adam, with Fryer, we'd do a curtain raise, and do a little preview. What's coming down on your side with the relationship and what can we expect to hear about what you got going on at re:Invent this year? The big show? >> Yeah, so I think Daniel hit upon some of the key points, but what I will say is we do have, for example, specific sessions, both that VMware's driving and then also that AWS is driving. We do have even where we have what are called chalk talks. So I would say, and then even with workshops, right? So even with the customers, the attendees who are there, whatnot, if they're looking to sit and listen to a session, yes that's there, but if they want to be hands-on, that is also there too. So personally for me as an IT background, been in sysadmin world and whatnot, being hands-on, that's one of the key things that I personally am looking forward. But I think that's one of the key ways just to learn and get familiar with the technology. >> Yeah, and re:Invent's an amazing show for the in-person. You guys nail it every year. We'll have three sets this year at theCUBE and it's becoming popular. We have more and more content. You guys got live streams going on, a lot of content, a lot of media. So thanks for sharing that. Samir, Daniel, thank you for coming on on this part of the Showcase episode of really the customer successes with VMware Cloud on AWS, really accelerating business transformation with AWS and VMware. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE, thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Hi everyone. Welcome to theCUBE special presentation here in Palo Alto, California. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. We got two great guests, one for calling in from Germany, or videoing in from Germany, one from Maryland. We've got VMware and AWS. This is the customer successes with VMware Cloud on AWS Showcase: Accelerating Business Transformation. Here in the Showcase at Samir Kadoo, worldwide VMware strategic alliance solution architect leader with AWS. Samir, great to have you. And Daniel Rethmeier, principal architect global AWS synergy at VMware. Guys, you guys are working together, you're the key players in this relationship as it rolls out and continues to grow. So welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you, greatly appreciate it. >> Great to have you guys both on. As you know, we've been covering this since 2016 when Pat Gelsinger, then CEO, and then then CEO AWS at Andy Jassy did this. It kind of got people by surprise, but it really kind of cleaned out the positioning in the enterprise for the success of VM workloads in the cloud. VMware's had great success with it since and you guys have the great partnerships. So this has been like a really strategic, successful partnership. Where are we right now? You know, years later, we got this whole inflection point coming, you're starting to see this idea of higher level services, more performance are coming in at the infrastructure side, more automation, more serverless, I mean and AI. I mean, it's just getting better and better every year in the cloud. Kind of a whole 'nother level. Where are we? Samir, let's start with you on the relationship. >> Yeah, totally. So I mean, there's several things to keep in mind, right? So in 2016, right, that's when the partnership between AWS and VMware was announced. And then less than a year later, that's when we officially launched VMware Cloud on AWS. Years later, we've been driving innovation, working with our customers, jointly engineering this between AWS and VMware. You know, one of the key things... Together, day in, day out, as far as advancing VMware Cloud on AWS. You know, even if you look at the innovation that takes place with the solution, things have modernized, things have changed, there's been advancements. You know, whether it's security focus, whether it's platform focus, whether it's networking focus, there's been modifications along the way, even storage, right, more recently. One of the things to keep in mind is we're looking to deliver value to our customers together. These are our joint customers. So there's hundreds of VMware and AWS engineers working together on this solution. And then factor in even our sales teams, right? We have VMware and AWS sales teams interacting with each other on a constant daily basis. We're working together with our customers at the end of the day too. Then we're looking to even offer and develop jointly engineered solutions specific to VMware Cloud on AWS. And even with VMware to other platforms as well. Then the other thing comes down to is where we have dedicated teams around this at both AWS and VMware. So even from solutions architects, even to our sales specialists, even to our account teams, even to specific engineering teams within the organizations, they all come together to drive this innovation forward with VMware Cloud on AWS and the jointly engineered solution partnership as well. And then I think one of the key things to keep in mind comes down to we have nearly 600 channel partners that have achieved VMware Cloud on AWS service competency. So think about it from the standpoint, there's 300 certified or validated technology solutions, they're now available to our customers. So that's even innovation right off the top as well. >> Great stuff. Daniel, I want to get to you in a second upon this principal architect position you have. In your title, you're the global AWS synergy person. Synergy means bringing things together, making it work. Take us through the architecture, because we heard a lot of folks at VMware explore this year, formerly VMworld, talking about how the workloads on IT has been completely transforming into cloud and hybrid, right? This is where the action is. Where are you? Is your customers taking advantage of that new shift? You got AIOps, you got ITOps changing a lot, you got a lot more automation, edges right around the corner. This is like a complete transformation from where we were just five years ago. What's your thoughts on the relationship? >> So at first, I would like to emphasize that our collaboration is not just that we have dedicated teams to help our customers get the most and the best benefits out of VMware Cloud and AWS, we are also enabling us mutually. So AWS learns from us about the VMware technology, where VMware people learn about the AWS technology. We are also enabling our channel partners and we are working together on customer projects. So we have regular assembles globally and also virtually on Slack and the usual suspect tools working together and listening to customers. That's very important. Asking our customers where are their needs? And we are driving the solution into the direction that our customers get the best benefits out of VMware Cloud on AWS. And over the time, we really have involved the solution. As Samir mentioned, we just added additional storage solutions to VMware Cloud on AWS. We now have three different instance types that cover a broad range of workloads. So for example, we just edited the I4i host, which is ideally for workloads that require a lot of CPU power, such as, you mentioned it, AI workloads. >> Yeah, so I want to get us just specifically on the customer journey and their transformation, you know, we've been reporting on Silicon angle in theCUBE in the past couple weeks in a big way that the ops teams are now the new devs, right? I mean that sounds a little bit weird, but IT operations is now part of a lot more DataOps, security, writing code, composing. You know, with open source, a lot of great things are changing. Can you share specifically what customers are looking for when you say, as you guys come in and assess their needs, what are they doing, what are some of the things that they're doing with VMware on AWS specifically that's a little bit different? Can you share some of and highlights there? >> That's a great point, because originally, VMware and AWS came from very different directions when it comes to speaking people and customers. So for example, AWS, very developer focused, whereas VMware has a very great footprint in the ITOps area. And usually these are very different teams, groups, different cultures, but it's getting together. However, we always try to address the customer needs, right? There are customers that want to build up a new application from the scratch and build resiliency, availability, recoverability, scalability into the application. But there are still a lot of customers that say, "Well, we don't have all of the skills to redevelop everything to refactor an application to make it highly available. So we want to have all of that as a service. Recoverability as a service, scalability as a service. We want to have this from the infrastructure." That was one of the unique selling points for VMware on-premise and now we are bringing this into the cloud. >> Samir, talk about your perspective. I want to get your thoughts, and not to take a tangent, but we had covered the AWS re:MARS, actually it was Amazon re:MARS, machine learning automation, robotics and space was really kind of the confluence of industrial IoT, software, physical. And so when you look at like the IT operations piece becoming more software, you're seeing things about automation, but the skill gap is huge. So you're seeing low code, no code, automation, you know, "Hey Alexa, deploy a Kubernetes cluster." Yeah, I mean that's coming, right? So we're seeing this kind of operating automation meets higher level services, meets workloads. Can you unpack that and share your opinion on what you see there from an Amazon perspective and how it relates to this? >> Yeah. Yeah, totally, right? And you know, look at it from the point of view where we said this is a jointly engineered solution, but it's not migrating to one option or the other option, right? It's more or less together. So even with VMware Cloud on AWS, yes it is utilizing AWS infrastructure, but your environment is connected to that AWS VPC in your AWS account. So if you want to leverage any of the native AWS services, so any of the 200 plus AWS services, you have that option to do so. So that's going to give you that power to do certain things, such as, for example, like how you mentioned with IoT, even with utilizing Alexa, or if there's any other service that you want to utilize, that's the joining point between both of the offerings right off the top. Though with digital transformation, right, you have to think about where it's not just about the technology, right? There's also where you want to drive growth in the underlying technology even in your business. Leaders are looking to reinvent their business, they're looking to take different steps as far as pursuing a new strategy, maybe it's a process, maybe it's with the people, the culture, like how you said before, where people are coming in from a different background, right? They may not be used to the cloud, they may not be used to AWS services, but now you have that capability to mesh them together. >> Okay. >> Then also- >> Oh, go ahead, finish your thought. >> No, no, no, I was going to say what it also comes down to is you need to think about the operating model too, where it is a shift, right? Especially for that vStor admin that's used to their on-premises environment. Now with VMware Cloud on AWS, you have that ability to leverage a cloud, but the investment that you made and certain things as far as automation, even with monitoring, even with logging, you still have that methodology where you can utilize that in VMware Cloud on AWS too. >> Daniel, I want to get your thoughts on this because at Explore and after the event, as we prep for CubeCon and re:Invent coming up, the big AWS show, I had a couple conversations with a lot of the VMware customers and operators, and it's like hundreds of thousands of users and millions of people talking about and peaked on VMware, interested in VMware. The common thread was one person said, "I'm trying to figure out where I'm going to put my career in the next 10 to 15 years." And they've been very comfortable with VMware in the past, very loyal, and they're kind of talking about, I'm going to be the next cloud, but there's no like role yet. Architects, is it solution architect, SRE? So you're starting to see the psychology of the operators who now are going to try to make these career decisions. Like what am I going to work on? And then it's kind of fuzzy, but I want to get your thoughts, how would you talk to that persona about the future of VMware on, say, cloud for instance? What should they be thinking about? What's the opportunity? And what's going to happen? >> So digital transformation definitely is a huge change for many organizations and leaders are perfectly aware of what that means. And that also means to some extent, concerns with your existing employees. Concerns about do I have to relearn everything? Do I have to acquire new skills and trainings? Is everything worthless I learned over the last 15 years of my career? And the answer is to make digital transformation a success, we need not just to talk about technology, but also about process, people, and culture. And this is where VMware really can help because if you are applying VMware Cloud on AWS to your infrastructure, to your existing on-premise infrastructure, you do not need to change many things. You can use the same tools and skills, you can manage your virtual machines as you did in your on-premise environment, you can use the same managing and monitoring tools, if you have written, and many customers did this, if you have developed hundreds of scripts that automate tasks and if you know how to troubleshoot things, then you can use all of that in VMware Cloud on AWS. And that gives not just leaders, but also the architects at customers, the operators at customers, the confidence in such a complex project. >> The consistency, very key point, gives them the confidence to go. And then now that once they're confident, they can start committing themselves to new things. Samir, you're reacting to this because on your side, you've got higher level services, you've got more performance at the hardware level. I mean, a lot improvements. So, okay, nothing's changed, I can still run my job, now I got goodness on the other side. What's the upside? What's in it for the customer there? >> Yeah, so I think what it comes down to is they've already been so used to or entrenched with that VMware admin mentality, right? But now extending that to the cloud, that's where now you have that bridge between VMware Cloud on AWS to bridge that VMware knowledge with that AWS knowledge. So I will look at it from the point of view where now one has that capability and that ability to just learn about the cloud. But if they're comfortable with certain aspects, no one's saying you have to change anything. You can still leverage that, right? But now if you want to utilize any other AWS service in conjunction with that VM that resides maybe on-premises or even in VMware Cloud on AWS, you have that option to do so. So think about it where you have that ability to be someone who's curious and wants to learn. And then if you want to expand on the skills, you certainly have that capability to do so. >> Great stuff, I love that. Now that we're peeking behind the curtain here, I'd love to have you guys explain, 'cause people want to know what's goes on behind the scenes. How does innovation get happen? How does it happen with the relationships? Can you take us through a day in the life of kind of what goes on to make innovation happen with the joint partnership? Do you guys just have a Zoom meeting, do you guys fly out, you write code, go do you ship things? I mean, I'm making it up, but you get the idea. How does it work? What's going on behind the scenes? >> So we hope to get more frequently together in-person, but of course we had some difficulties over the last two to three years. So we are very used to Zoom conferences and Slack meetings. You always have to have the time difference in mind if you are working globally together. But what we try, for example, we have regular assembles now also in-person, geo-based, so for AMEA, for the Americas, for APJ. And we are bringing up interesting customer situations, architectural bits and pieces together. We are discussing it always to share and to contribute to our community. >> What's interesting, you know, as events are coming back, Samir, before you weigh in this, I'll comment as theCUBE's been going back out to events, we're hearing comments like, "What pandemic? We were more productive in the pandemic." I mean, developers know how to work remotely and they've been on all the tools there, but then they get in-person, they're happy to see people, but no one's really missed the beat. I mean, it seems to be very productive, you know, workflow, not a lot of disruption. More, if anything, productivity gains. >> Agreed, right? I think one of the key things to keep in mind is even if you look at AWS's, and even Amazon's leadership principles, right? Customer obsession, that's key. VMware is carrying that forward as well. Where we are working with our customers, like how Daniel said and meant earlier, right? We might have meetings at different time zones, maybe it's in-person, maybe it's virtual, but together we're working to listen to our customers. You know, we're taking and capturing that feedback to drive innovation in VMware Cloud on AWS as well. But one of the key things to keep in mind is yes, there has been the pandemic, we might have been disconnected to a certain extent, but together through technology, we've been able to still communicate, work with our customers, even with VMware in between, with AWS and whatnot, we had that flexibility to innovate and continue that innovation. So even if you look at it from the point of view, right? VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts, that was something that customers have been asking for. We've been able to leverage the feedback and then continue to drive innovation even around VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts. So even with the on-premises environment, if you're looking to handle maybe data sovereignty or compliance needs, maybe you have low latency requirements, that's where certain advancements come into play, right? So the key thing is always to maintain that communication track. >> In our last segment we did here on this Showcase, we listed the accomplishments and they were pretty significant. I mean geo, you got the global rollouts of the relationship. It's just really been interesting and people can reference that, we won't get into it here. But I will ask you guys to comment on, as you guys continue to evolve the relationship, what's in it for the customer? What can they expect next? Because again, I think right now, we're at an inflection point more than ever. What can people expect from the relationship and what's coming up with re:Invent? Can you share a little bit of kind of what's coming down the pike? >> So one of the most important things we have announced this year, and we will continue to evolve into that direction, is independent scale of storage. That absolutely was one of the most important items customer asked for over the last years. Whenever you are requiring additional storage to host your virtual machines, you usually in VMware Cloud on AWS, you have to add additional nodes. Now we have three different node types with different ratios of compute, storage, and memory. But if you only require additional storage, you always have to get also additional compute and memory and you have to pay for it. And now with two solutions which offer choice for the customers, like FS6 wanted a ONTAP and VMware Cloud Flex Storage, you now have two cost effective opportunities to add storage to your virtual machines. And that offers opportunities for other instance types maybe that don't have local storage. We are also very, very keen looking forward to announcements, exciting announcements, at the upcoming events. >> Samir, what's your reaction take on what's coming down on your side? >> Yeah, I think one of the key things to keep in mind is we're looking to help our customers be agile and even scaled with their needs, right? So with VMware Cloud on AWS, that's one of the key things that comes to mind, right? There are going to be announcements, innovations, and whatnot with upcoming events. But together, we're able to leverage that to advance VMware cloud on AWS. To Daniel's point, storage for example, even with host offerings. And then even with decoupling storage from compute and memory, right? Now you have the flexibility where you can do all of that. So to look at it from the standpoint where now with 21 regions where we have VMware Cloud on AWS available as well, where customers can utilize that as needed when needed, right? So it comes down to, you know, transformation will be there. Yes, there's going to be maybe where workloads have to be adapted where they're utilizing certain AWS services, but you have that flexibility and option to do so. And I think with the continuing events, that's going to give us the options to even advance our own services together. >> Well you guys are in the middle of it, you're in the trenches, you're making things happen, you've got a team of people working together. My final question is really more of a kind of a current situation, kind of future evolutionary thing that you haven't seen this before. I want to get both of your reaction to it. And we've been bringing this up in the open conversations on theCUBE is in the old days, let's go back this generation, you had ecosystems, you had VMware had an ecosystem, AWS had an ecosystem. You know, we have a product, you have a product, biz dev deals happen, people sign relationships, and they do business together and they sell each other's products or do some stuff. Now it's more about architecture, 'cause we're now in a distributed large scale environment where the role of ecosystems are intertwining and you guys are in the middle of two big ecosystems. You mentioned channel partners, you both have a lot of partners on both sides, they come together. So you have this now almost a three dimensional or multidimensional ecosystem interplay. What's your thoughts on this? Because it's about the architecture, integration is a value, not so much innovations only. You got to do innovation, but when you do innovation, you got to integrate it, you got to connect it. So how do you guys see this as an architectural thing, start to see more technical business deals? >> So we are removing dependencies from individual ecosystems and from individual vendors. So a customer no longer has to decide for one vendor and then it is a very expensive and high effort project to move away from that vendor, which ties customers even closer to specific vendors. We are removing these obstacles. So with VMware Cloud on AWS, moving to the cloud, firstly it's not a dead end. If you decide at one point in time because of latency requirements or maybe some compliance requirements, you need to move back into on-premise, you can do this. If you decide you want to stay with some of your services on-premise and just run a couple of dedicated services in the cloud, you can do this and you can man manage it through a single pane of glass. That's quite important. So cloud is no longer a dead end, it's no longer a binary decision, whether it's on-premise or the cloud, it is the cloud. And the second thing is you can choose the best of both worlds, right? If you are migrating virtual machines that have been running in your on-premise environment to VMware Cloud on AWS either way in a very, very fast cost effective and safe way, then you can enrich, later on enrich these virtual machines with services that are offered by AWS, more than 200 different services ranging from object-based storage, load balancing, and so on. So it's an endless, endless possibility. >> We call that super cloud in the way that we generically defining it where everyone's innovating, but yet there's some common services. But the differentiation comes from innovation where the lock in is the value, not some spec, right? Samir, this is kind of where cloud is right now. You guys are not commodity, amazon's completely differentiating, but there's some commodity things happen. You got storage, you got compute, but then you got now advances in all areas. But partners innovate with you on their terms. >> Absolutely. >> And everybody wins. >> Yeah, I 100% agree with you. I think one of the key things, you know, as Daniel mentioned before, is where it's a cross education where there might be someone who's more proficient on the cloud side with AWS, maybe more proficient with the VMware's technology. But then for partners, right? They bridge that gap as well where they come in and they might have a specific niche or expertise where their background, where they can help our customers go through that transformation. So then that comes down to, hey, maybe I don't know how to connect to the cloud, maybe I don't know what the networking constructs are, maybe I can leverage that partner. That's one aspect to go about it. Now maybe you migrated that workload to VMware Cloud on AWS. Maybe you want to leverage any of the native AWS services or even just off the top, 200 plus AWS services, right? But it comes down to that skillset, right? So again, solutions architecture at the back of the day, end of the day, what it comes down to is being able to utilize the best of both worlds. That's what we're giving our customers at the end of the day. >> I mean, I just think it's a refactoring and innovation opportunity at all levels. I think now more than ever, you can take advantage of each other's ecosystems and partners and technologies and change how things get done with keeping the consistency. I mean, Daniel, you nailed that, right? I mean you don't have to do anything. You still run it. Just spear the way you're working on it and now do new things. This is kind of a cultural shift. >> Yeah, absolutely. And if you look, not every customer, not every organization has the resources to refactor and re-platform everything. And we give them a very simple and easy way to move workloads to the cloud. Simply run them and at the same time, they can free up resources to develop new innovations and grow their business. >> Awesome. Samir, thank you for coming on. Daniel, thank you for coming to Germany. >> Thank you. Oktoberfest, I know it's evening over there, weekend's here. And thank you for spending the time. Samir, give you the final word. AWS re:Invent's coming up. We're preparing, we're going to have an exclusive with Adam, with Fryer, we'd do a curtain raise, and do a little preview. What's coming down on your side with the relationship and what can we expect to hear about what you got going on at re:Invent this year? The big show? >> Yeah, so I think Daniel hit upon some of the key points, but what I will say is we do have, for example, specific sessions, both that VMware's driving and then also that AWS is driving. We do have even where we have what are called chalk talks. So I would say, and then even with workshops, right? So even with the customers, the attendees who are there, whatnot, if they're looking to sit and listen to a session, yes that's there, but if they want to be hands-on, that is also there too. So personally for me as an IT background, been in sysadmin world and whatnot, being hands-on, that's one of the key things that I personally am looking forward. But I think that's one of the key ways just to learn and get familiar with the technology. >> Yeah, and re:Invent's an amazing show for the in-person. You guys nail it every year. We'll have three sets this year at theCUBE and it's becoming popular. We have more and more content. You guys got live streams going on, a lot of content, a lot of media. So thanks for sharing that. Samir, Daniel, thank you for coming on on this part of the Showcase episode of really the customer successes with VMware Cloud on AWS, really accelerating business transformation with AWS and VMware. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE, thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Hello everyone. Welcome to the Special Cube presentation of Accelerating Business Transformation on VMC on AWS. I'm John Furrier, host of the Cube. We have Ashish Dhawan, Director of Global Sales and go to market for VMware Cloud on AWS. This is a great showcase and should be a lot of fun. Ashish, thanks for coming on. >> Hi, John. Thank you so much. >> So VMware Cloud on AWS has been well documented as this big success for VMware and AWS. As customers move their workloads into the cloud, IT operations of VMware customers has signaling a lot of change. This is changing the landscape globally on cloud migration and beyond. What's your take on this? Can you open this up with the most important story around VMC on AWS? >> Yes, John. The most important thing for our customers today is, how they can safely and swiftly move their ID infrastructure and applications to the cloud. Now, VMware Cloud AWS is a service that allows all vSphere based workloads to move the cloud safely, swiftly, and reliably. Banks can move their core banking platforms, insurance companies move their core insurance platforms, telcos move their GOSS, BSS platforms, government organizations are moving their citizen engagement platforms using VMC on AWS because this is one platform that allows you to move it, move their VMware based platforms very fast. Migrations can happen in a matter of days instead of months, extremely securely. It's a VMware managed service. It's very secure and highly reliably gets the reliability of the underlying AWS infrastructure along with it. So win-win from a customer's perspective. >> You know, we reported on this big news in 2016 with Andy Jassy and Pat Gelsinger at the time, a lot of people said it was a bad deal. It turned out to be a great deal because not only could VMware customers actually have a cloud, migrate to the cloud, do it safely, which was their number one concern. They didn't want to have disruption to their operations, but also position themselves for what's beyond just shifting to the cloud. So I have to ask you, since you got the finger on the pulse here. What are we seeing in the market when it comes to migrating and modernizing in the cloud? Because that's the next step. They go to the cloud, you guys have done that, doing it, then they go, "I got to modernize" which means kind of upgrading or refactoring. What's your take on that? >> Yeah, absolutely. Look, the first step is to help our customers assess their infrastructure and licensing and entire ID operations. Once we've done the assessment, we then create their migration plans. A lot of our customers are at that inflection point. They're, they're looking at their real estate, data center real estate. They're looking at their contracts with co-location vendors. They really want to exit their data centers, right? And VMware cloud or AWS is a perfect solution for customers who want to exit their data centers, migrate these applications onto the AWS platform using VMC on AWS, get rid of additional real estate overheads, power overheads, be socially and environmentally conscious by doing that as well. Right? So that's the migration story, but to your point, it doesn't end there, right? Modernization is a critical aspect of the entire customer journey as well. Customers, once they've migrated their ID applications and infrastructure on cloud, get access to all the modernization services that AWS has. They can connect easily to our data lake services, to our AIML services, to custom databases, right? They can decide which applications they want to keep and which applications they want to refactor. They want to take decisions on containerization, take decisions on service computing once they've come to the cloud. But the most important thing is to take that first step. You know, exit their data centers come to AWS using VMC on AWS, and then the whole host of modernization options are available to them. >> Yeah, I got to say, we had this right on this story because you just pointed out a big thing, which was first order of business is to make sure to leverage the on-prem investments that those customers made and then migrate to the cloud where they can maintain their applications, their data, their infrastructure operations that they're used to, and then be in position to start getting modern. So I have to ask you, how are you guys specifically, or how is VMware cloud on AWS, addressing these needs of the customers? Because what happens next is something that needs to happen faster, and sometimes the skills might not be there because if they're running old school IT ops now they got to come in and jump in. They're going to use data cloud, they're going to want to use all kinds of machine learning, and there's a lot of great goodness going on above the stack there. So as you move with a higher level services, you know, it's a no-brainer, obviously, but they're not, it's not yesterday's higher level services in the cloud. So how are, how is this being addressed? >> Absolutely. I think you hit upon a very important point, and that is skills, right? When our customers are operating some of the most critical applications I just mentioned, core banking, core insurance, et cetera, there, most of the core applications that our customers have across industries, like even large scale ERP systems, they're actually sitting on VMware's vSphere platform, right? Now, when the customer wants to migrate these to cloud, one of the key bottlenecks they face is skill sets. They have the trained manpower for these core applications, but for these high level services, they may not, right? So the first order of business is to help them ease this migration pain as much as possible by not wanting them to upscale immediately. And VMware cloud with AWS exactly does that. I mean, you don't have to do anything. You don't have to create new skill set for doing this, right? Their existing skill set suffice, but at the same time, it gives them that leeway to build that skills roadmap for their team. And AWS is invested in that, right? We want to help them build those skills in the high level services, be AML, be it, be it IoT, be it data lake and analytics. We want to invest in them and we help our customers through that. So that ultimately, the ultimate goal of making them draw data is, is, is front and center. >> I want to get into some of the use cases and success stories, but I want to just reiterate, hit back your point on the skill thing because, if you look at what you guys have done at AWS, you've essentially, and Andy Jassy used to talk about this all the time when I would interview him, and now last year Adam was saying the same thing. You guys do all the heavy lifting, but if you're a VMware customer, user or operator, you're used to things. You don't have to be relearn to be a cloud architect. Now, you're already in the game. So this is like almost like a instant path to cloud skills for the VMware, and there's hundreds of thousands of VMware architects and operators, that now instantly become cloud architects, literally overnight. Can you respond to that? Do you agree with that? And then, give an example. >> Yes, absolutely. You know, if you have skills on the VMware platform, you know, migrating to AWS using VMware cloud or AWS is absolutely possible. You don't have to really change the skills. The operations are exactly the same. The management systems are exactly the same. So you don't really have to change anything but, the advantages, that you get access to all the other AWS services. So you are instantly able to integrate with other AWS services, and you become a cloud architect immediately, right? You are able to solve some of the critical problems that your underlying IT infrastructure has immediately using this. And I think that's a great value proposition for our customers to use this service. >> And just one more point, I want to just get into something that's really kind of inside baseball or nuanced, VMC or VMware cloud on AWS means something. Could you take a minute to explain what "on AWS" means? Just because you're like hosting and using Amazon as a workload? Being on AWS means something specific in your world, what does being VMC on AWS mean? >> Yes. This is a great question, by the way. You know, on AWS means that, VMware's vSphere platform is an iconic enterprise virtualization software. It's, you know, a disproportionately high market share across industries. So when we wanted to create a cloud product along with them, obviously our aim was for them, for this platform, to have the goodness of the AWS underlying infrastructure, right? And therefore, when we created this VMware cloud solution, it literally used the AWS platform under the name, right? And that's why it's called VMware cloud on AWS, using the wide portfolio of our regions across the world and the strength of the underlying infrastructure, the reliability and sustainability that it offers. And therefore this product is called VMC on AWS. >> It's a distinction I think is worth noting, and it does reflect engineering and some levels of integration that go well beyond just having a SAS app and basically platform as a service or past services. So I just make sure that now Supercloud, we'll talk about that a little bit in another interview, but I got to get one more question in before we get into the use cases in customer success stories is in most of the VMware world, in that IT world, it used to, when you heard migration, people would go, oh my God, that's going to take months. And when I hear about moving stuff around and doing cloud native, the first reaction people might have is complexity. So two questions for you before we move on to the next talk track. Complexity, how you addressing the complexity issue and how long do these migrations take? Is it easy, is it hard? I mean, you know, the, the knee-jerk reaction is month very used to that. If they're dealing with Oracle or other old school vendors, they're like the old guard would be like, takes a year to move stuff around. So can you comment on complexity and speed? >> Yeah. So the first, first thing is complexity. And you know, what makes anything complex is if you're required to acquire new skill sets or you've got to, if you're required to manage something differently. And as far as VMware cloud and AWS, on both these aspects, you don't have to do anything, right? You don't have to acquire new skill sets. You existing ID operation skill sets on, VMware's platforms are absolutely fine, and you don't have to manage it any differently. Like, dang what you're managing your ID infrastructure today. So in both these aspects, it's exactly the same and therefore it is absolutely not complex as far as VMware cloud and AWS is concerned. And the other thing is speed. Now, this is where the huge differentiation is. You have seen that, you know, large banks and large telcos have now moved their workloads, you know, literally in days instead of months because of VMware cloud and AWS. A lot of times customers come to us with specific deadlines because they want to exit their data centers on a particular date. And what happens? VMware cloud and AWS is called upon to do that migration, right? Speed is absolutely critical. The reason is also exactly the same, because you are using the exactly the same platform, the same management systems, people are available to you, you're able to migrate quickly, right? I would just reference recently we got an award from President Zelinsky of Ukraine for, you know, migrating their entire ID digital infrastructure and that happened because they were using VMware cloud radar base and happened very swiftly. >> That's a great example. I mean, that's one political, but the economic advantage of getting out of the data center could be national security. You mentioned Ukraine, I mean obstacles, bombing and death over there. So clearly that's a critical crown jewel for their running their operations, which is, you know, world mission critical. So great stuff. I love the speed thing. I think that's a huge one. Let's get into some of the use cases. One of them is, the first one I wanted to talk about, was when you hit on data data center migration. It could be financial reasons on a downturn or market growth, people can make money by shifting to the cloud, either saving money or making money. You win on both sides. It's a, almost a recession proof, if you will, cloud is. So use case for number one data center migration. Take us through what that looks like. Give an example of a success. Take us through a day in the life of a data center migration in a couple minutes. >> Yeah. You know, I can give you an example of a large bank who decided to migrate all their data centers outside their existing interest. (static) And they had a set timeline, right? They had a set timeline to migrate the data, they were coming up on a review and they wanted to make sure that this set timeline is met. We did a complete assessment of their infrastructure. We did a complete assessment of their IT applications, more than 80 percent of their ID applications, (static) underlying vSphere platform. And we thought that the right solution for them in the timeline that they wanted, right, is VMware cloud and AWS. And obviously it was a large bank. It wanted to do it safely and securely. It wanted to have it completely managed and therefore VMware cloud and AWS, you know, ticked all the boxes as far as that is concerned. I'll be happy to report that the large bank has moved most of their applications on AWS exiting three of their data centers and they'll be exiting 12 more very soon. So that's a great example of the large bank exiting data centers. There's another corollary to that. Not only did they manage to manage to exit their data centers and of course use and be more agile, but they also met their sustainability goals. Their board of directors had given them goals to be carbon neutral by 2025. They found out that 35 percent of all their carbon footprint was in their data centers. And if they moved their ID infrastructure to cloud, they would severely reduce the carbon footprint, which is 35 percent down to 17 or 18 percent. Right? And that met their sustainability targets and their commitment to being carbon neutral as well. >> And that they, and they shift that to you guys. Which you guys take that burden, a heavy lifting there, and you guys have a sustainability story, which is a whole nother showcase in and of itself. >> Exactly. And, because of the scale of our operations, we are able to work on that really well as well. >> All right. So love the data migration. I think that's got real proof points. You got, I can save money and move and position my applications into the cloud for that reason and other reasons. There's a lot of other reasons to do that. But now it gets into what you mentioned earlier was, okay, data migration, clearly a use case and you laid out some successes. I'm sure there's a zillion others. But then the next step comes, now you got cloud architects becoming minted and you got managed services and higher level services. What happens next? Can you give us an example of the use case of the modernization around the next gen workloads, NextGen applications? We're starting to see, you know, things like data clouds, not data warehouses. We're not going to data clouds, it's going to be all kinds of clouds. These NextGen apps are pure digital transformation in action. Take us through a use case of how you guys make that happen with a success story. >> Yes, absolutely. And this is, this is an amazing success story and the customer here is S&P Global Ratings. As you know, S&P Global Ratings is the world leader as far as global ratings, global credit ratings is concerned. And for them, you know, the last couple of years have been tough as far as hardware procurement is concerned, right? The pandemic has really upended the supply chain. And it was taking a lot of time to procure hardware, you know, configure it in time, make sure that that's reliable. And then, you know, distributed in the wide variety of of offices and locations that they have. And they came to us. We did, again a very large comprehensive assessment of their ID infrastructure and their licensing contracts. And we also found out that VMware cloud and AWS is the right solution for them. So we worked there, migrated all their applications, and as soon as we migrated all their applications, they got access to, you know, our high level services. Be it our analytics services, our machine learning services, our artificial intelligence services that have been critical for them, for their growth. And that really is helping them, you know, get towards their next level of modern applications. Right? Now, obviously going forward, they will have, the choice to, you know, really think about which applications they want to, you know, refactor or which applications they want to go ahead with. That is really a choice in front of them. But you know, the VMware cloud and AWS really gave them the opportunity to first migrate and then, you know, move towards modernization with speed. >> The speed of a startup is always the kind of the Silicon Valley story where you know, people can make massive changes in 18 months, whether it's a pivot or a new product. You see that in the startup world. Now, in the enterprise, you can see the same thing. I noticed behind you on your whiteboard, you got a slogan that says, "are you thinking big?" I know Amazon likes to think big, but also you work back from the customers and I think this modern application thing's a big deal, because I think the mindset has always been constrained, because back before they moved to the cloud, most IT, and on-premise data center shops, it's slow. You got to get the hardware, you got to configure it, you got to stand it up, you got to make sure all the softwares validated on it, and loading and database and loading OSs, I mean, yeah, it got easier and with scripting and whatnot, but when you move to the cloud, you have more scale, which means more speed, which means it opens up their capability to think differently and build product. What are you seeing there? Can you share your opinion on that epiphany of, "wow, things are going fast, I got more time to actually think about maybe doing a cloud native app or transforming this or that." What's your reaction to that? Can you share your opinion? >> Well, ultimately we, we want our customers to utilize, you know, most of our modern services, you know, obligations should be microservices based. When desired, they should use serverless technology. They should not have monolithic, you know, relational database contracts. They should use custom databases. They should use containers when needed, right? So ultimately, we want our customers to use these modern technologies to make sure that their IT infrastructure, their licensing, their entire IT spend is completely native to cloud technologies that work for the speed of a startup. But it's important for them to get to the first step, right? So that's why we create this journey for our customers where you help them migrate, give them time to build the skills, they'll help them modernize, take our partners along with us to make sure that they can address the need for our customers. That's what our customers need today and that's what we are working backwards from. >> Yeah, and I think that opens up some big ideas. I'll just say that, you know, we're joking, I was joking the other night with someone here in Palo Alto around serverless, and I said, you know, soon you're going to hear words like architectureless. And that's a criticism on one hand, but you might say, hey, you know, if you don't really need an architecture, you know, storage list. I mean, at the end of the day, infrastructure is code means developers can do all the IT in the coding cycles and then make the operations cloud based. And I think this is kind of where I see the dots connecting. Final thought here, take us through what you're thinking around how this new world is evolving. I mean, architectural a joke, but the point is, you know, you have to some sort of architecture, but you don't have to overthink it. >> Totally. That's a great thought, by the way, I know it's a joke, but it's a great thought because at the end of the day, you know, what do your customers really want? They want outcomes, right? Why did service technology come? It was because there was an outcome that they needed. They didn't want to get stuck with, you know, the real estate of a server. They wanted to use computer when they needed to, right? Similarly, what you're talking about is, you know, outcome based, you know, desire of our customers and that's exactly where the world is going to, right? Cloud really enforces that, right? We are actually, you know, working backwards from a customer's outcome and using our area, the breadth and depth of our services to deliver those outcomes, right? And most of our services are in that path, right? When we use VMware cloud and AWS, the outcome is A. to migrate, then to modernize, but doesn't stop there, use our native services, you know, get the business outcomes using this. So I think that's, that's exactly what we are going through. >> Ashish Dhawan director of global sales and go to market for VMware cloud and AWS. I want to thank you for coming on, but I'll give you the final minute. Give a plug, explain what is the VMware cloud on AWS. Why is it great? Why should people engage with you and the team, and what ultimately is this path look like for them going forward? >> Yeah. At the end of the day, we want our customers to have the best path to the cloud, right? The best path to the cloud is making sure that they migrate safely, reliably, and securely as well as with speed, right? And then, you know, use that cloud platform to utilize AWS's native services to make sure that they modernize their IT infrastructure and applications, right? We want, ultimately that our customer's, customer's, customer get the best out of, you know, utilizing that whole application experience is enhanced tremendously by using our services. And I think that's exactly what we are working towards VMware cloud on AWS is helping our customers in that journey towards migrating, modernizing, whether they want to exit a data center or whether they want to modernize their applications. It's in this central first step that we want to help our customers with. >> Ashish Dhawan, director of global sales and go to market with VMware cloud on AWS. He's with AWS sharing his thoughts on accelerating business transformation on AWS. This is showcase. We're talking about the future path. We're talking about use cases with success stories from customers. Ashish, thank you for spending time today on this showcase. >> Thank you, John. I appreciate it. >> Okay. This is the cube, special coverage, special presentation of the AWS Showcase. I'm John Furrier. Thanks for watching. (techno tones)

(upbeat music) >> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of AWS re:Invent 2021. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. You're watching CUBE's worldwide leader in tech coverage. We're in person on the show floor. It's also a hybrid event, online as well. CUBE coverage online with Amazon re:Invent site. Great content all around, amazing announcements, transformation in all areas are exploding and in innovation, of course, we have innovation here with Sandy Carter, the worldwide public sector vice-president of partners and programs for Amazon Web Services. Sandy, welcome back, CUBE alumni. Great to see you. Thanks for coming on theCUBE. >> Great to see you and great to see you in person again. It's so exciting. The energy level, oh my God. >> Oh my God. It's so much. Thanks, great keynote. Good to see you again in person. A lot of action, give us the top announcements. What's going on? What are the top 10 AWS announcements? >> Yeah, so we, this year for 2022, as we frame it out, we decided on a 3D strategy, a three-dimensional strategy. So we started with destination then data and then delivery. So if I could do them in that order, does that sound good? >> Yeah. Destination. >> So let's start with destination. So I got this from one of the customers and he said to me, "look, Sandy, I thought it was all going to be about getting to the cloud. But when I got to the cloud, I realized it wasn't about just in the cloud, it was about what you do in the cloud." And so we made some announcements this morning, especially around migration, modernization, and optimization. So for migration, we have the mainframe announcement that Adam made, and then we also echoed it. Cause most of the mainframes today sit in public sector. So this is a managed service, it's working with Micro Focus, one of our partners. And Lockheed Martin one of our partners is one of the first into the mainframe migration, which is a service and services to help customers transform their business with the mainframe. And then as we compliment them, we look at that we also have modernization occurring. So for example, IoT. IDC tells us that IoT and that data has increased four times since COVID because now devices and sensors are tracking a lot of data. So we made an announcement around smart cities and we now have badging for our partners. We have 18 partners solutions now in smart cities. So working backwards from the partners they were talking about given now COVID is kind of in the midst of where it is smart cities and making those cities work better in public transportation and utility, it's just all where it's at. And then the final announcement in that category is containers. So 60% of our customers said that they're going to be using containers. So we announced a Rapid Adoption Assistance program for our partners to be able to help our customers move to containers overall. >> So mainframe migration, I saw that on stage, but Micro Focus, that was a good job. Get that legacy out of the way, move to the cloud. You've got smart cities, which is basically IoT, which brings cloud to the edge. And then containerization for the cloud native, either development or compatibility, interoperability kind of sets that table. That's the destination. >> That's right. That's right. Because all of those things, you know, you've got to get the mainframe to the cloud, but then it's about modernizing, right? Getting rid of all that COBOL code and then, you know, IoT and then making sure that you are ready to go with containers. It's the newest- >> So you've got the 3D, destination, data and delivery. >> That's right. >> Okay. Destination, check. Cloud. Cloud destination. >> Yeah. >> I'm putting dots together in real time. >> Destination cloud. There you go. You've got it. >> I'm still with it after all these interviews. >> Yeah, there you go. >> Data, I'll say killer Swami's onstage today, whole new data, multiple databases. What's the data focus in this area? >> So for our partners, first it's about getting the data to the cloud, which means that we need a way to really migrate it. So we announced an initiative to help get that data to the cloud. We had a set of partners that came on with us early on in this initiative to move that data to the cloud, it's called a Rapid Adoption Assistance, which helps you envision where you want to go with your data. Do you want to put it in a data lake? Do you want data stored as it is? What do you want to visualize? What do you want to do with analytics? So envision that and then get enablement. So all the new announcements, all the new services get enablement and then to pilot it. And then the second announcement in this area is a set of private offers in the marketplace. Our customers told us that they love to go after data, but that there's too many pieces and moving parts. So they need the assessment bundled with the managed service and everything bundled together so it's a solution for them. So those were our two announcements in the data area. >> So take me through the private marketplace thing, because this came up when I was talking with Stephen Orban who's now running the marketplace. What does that mean? So you're saying that this private offer is being enabling the suppliers and in government? >> Yeah. So available in the marketplace, a lot of our government agencies can buy from the marketplace. So if they have a contract, they can come and buy. But instead of having to go and say, okay, here's an assessment to tell me what I should do, now here's the offering, and now here's the managed service, they want it bundled together. So we have a set of offerings that have that bundled together today with the set of our great public sector partners. >> So tons of data action, where's the delivery fit in? >> So delivery. This one is very interesting because our customers are telling us that they no longer want just technology skills, they also need industry skills too. So they're looking for that total package. For example, you know, the state of New Jersey when hurricane Ida hit, category four storm, they wanted someone who obviously could leverage all the data, but they wanted someone who understood disaster response. And so Maxar fits that bill. They have that industry specialty along with the technology specialty. And so for our announcements here, we announced a new competency, which is an industry competency for energy. So think about renewables and sustainability and low carbon. These are the partners that do that. We have 32 different partners who met the needs of that energy competency. So we were able to GA that here today. The other really exciting announcement that we made was for small businesses to get extra training, it's called Think Big for Small Business communities. So we announced last year virtually, Think Big for Small Business. We now have about 200 companies who are part of that program, really getting extra help as diverse companies. Women owned, black owned, brown owned, veteran owned businesses, right? But now what they told us was in addition to the AWS help, what they loved is how we connected them together and we almost just stumbled upon it. I was hosting some meetings and I had Tia from Bellflower, I had Lisa from DLZP together and they got a lot of value just being connected. And we kept hearing that over and over and over again. So now we've programmatized that so it's more scalable than me introducing people to each other. We now have a program to introduce those small business leaders to each other. And then the last one that we announced is our AWS government competency is now the largest competency at AWS. So the government competency, which is pretty powerful. So now we're going to do a focus enhancement for federal. So all of our federal partners with all that opportunity can now take advantage of some private advisory council, some additional training that will go on there, additional go-to market support that they can use to help them. >> Okay. I feel like my brain is going to explode. Those are just the announcements here. There's a lot going. >> Yeah. There's a lot going on. >> I mean it's so much you've got to put them into buckets. Okay. What's the rationale around 3D? Delivery, data... I mean, destination, delivery, data. Destination, meaning cloud. Data, meeting data. And delivery meaning just new ways to get up and running- >> Skills. >> To get this delivery for the services. >> Yep. >> Okay. So is there a pattern emerging? What can you say? Cause remember we talked about this before a year ago, as well as in person at your public sector summit with your partners. Is there a pattern emerging that you're seeing here? Cause lots of the announcements are coming, done with the mainframes. Connect on your watch has been a big explosion. Adam Slansky told me personally, it's on fire. And public sector, we saw a lot of that. >> Well, in fact, you know, if you look at public sector, three factoids that we shared this morning in the keynote. Our public sector partners grew 54% this year, this is after last year we grew 45%. They grew the number of certifications that they had by 40% and the number of new customers by 32%. I mean, those are unreal numbers. Last year we did 28% new customers and we thought that was the cat's meow, now we're at 32%. So our partners are just exploding in this public sector space right now. >> It's almost as if they have an advantage because they dragged their feet for so long. >> It's true. It's true. COVID accelerated their movement to the cloud. >> A lot of slow moving verticals because of the legacy and whether it's regulation or government funding or skills- >> Or mainframes. >> All had to basically move fast, they had no excuses. And then the cloud kind of changes everyone's mindset. How about the culture? I want to ask you about the culture in the public sector, because this is coming up a lot. Again, a lot of your customers that I'm interviewing all talk... and I try to get them to talk about horizontally scalable and machine learning, and they're always, no, it's culture. >> Yeah. It's true. >> Culture is the number one thing. >> It is true. You know, culture eats strategy for lunch. So even if you have a great strategy around the cloud, if you don't have that right culture, you won't win in the marketplace. So we are seeing this a lot. In fact, one of our most popular programs is PTP, Partner Transformation Program. And it lays out a hundred day program on cloud best practices. And guess what's the number one topic? Culture. Culture, governance, technology, all of those things are so important right now. And I think because, you know, a lot of the agencies and governments and countries, they had moved to the cloud now that they're in the cloud, they went through that pain during COVID, now they're seeing all the impact of artificial intelligence and containers and blockchain and all of that, right? It's just crazy. >> That's a great insight. And I'll add to that because I think one of the things I've observed, especially with your partners is the fear of getting eliminated by technology or the fear of having a job change or fear of change in general went away once they started using it because they saw the criticality of the cloud and how it impacted their job, but then what it offered them as new opportunities. In fact, it actually increases more areas to innovate on and do more, whether it's job advancement or cross training or lateral moves, promotion, that's a huge retention piece. >> It really is. And I will tell you that the movement to the cloud enabled people to see it wasn't as scary as they thought it was going to be, and that they could still leverage a lot of the skills that they had and learn new ones. So I think it is. And this is one of the reasons why, I was just talking with Maureen launching that 29 million training program for the cloud, that really touches public sector because there is so many agencies, countries, governments that need to have that training. >> You're talking about Maureen Lonergan, she does the training. She's been working on that for years. >> Yeah. >> That's the only getting better and better. >> Yeah. >> Well Sandy, I've got to ask you, since you have a few minutes left, I want to ask you about your journey. >> Yeah. >> We've interviewed you going back a long time look where we are now. >> I know. It's incredible. >> Look at these two sets going on at CUBE. >> You've been an incredible voice on theCUBE. We really appreciate having you on because you're innovative. You're always moving like a shark. You can't sit still. You're always innovating. Still going on, you had the great women's luncheon from 20 to 200. >> Yeah, we grew. So we started out with 20 people back five years ago and now we had about 200 women and it was incredible because we do different topics. Our topic was around empathy and empathetic leadership. And you know how you can really leverage that today, back with the skills and your people. You know, given that Amazon just announced our new leadership principle about wanting to be the Earth's most employee centric company. It fits right in, empathetic leadership. And we had amazing women at that luncheon that told some great stories about empathy that I think will live in our hearts forever. >> And the other thing I want to point out, we had some of the guests on sitting on theCUBE. We had Linda Jojo from United airlines. >> Oh yeah. >> And a little factoid, yesterday in the keynote, 50% of the speakers were women. >> I know. The first time I did a blog post on it, like we had two amazing women in STEM and we had, you know, the black pilot that was highlighted. So it's showing more diversity. So I was just so excited. Thank you Adam, for doing that because I think that was an amazing, amazing focus here at the conference. >> I wanted to bring up a point. I had a note here to bring up to you. Public sector, you guys doubled the number of partners, large migrations this year. That's a big statoid. You've had 575,000 individuals hold active certifications. Okay. That grew 40% from August 2021, clearly a pandemic impact. A lot of people jumping back in getting their certs, migrating so if they're not... They're in between transitions where they have a tailwind or a headwind, whether you're United Airlines or whether you're Zoom, you got some companies were benefiting from the pandemic and some were retooling. That's something that we talked about actually at the beginning. >> That's right. Absolutely. And I do think that those certifications also demonstrate that customers have raised the bar on what they expect from a partner. It's no longer just like that technology input, it's also that industry side. And so you see the number of certifications going up because customers are demanding higher skill level. And by the way, for the partners we conducted a study with ESG and ESG said that more skilled partners, you drive more margin, profit margin, 42% more profit margin for a higher skilled partner. And we're seeing that really come to fruition with some of these really intense focus on getting more certifications and more training. >> I want to get your thoughts on the healthcare and life science. I just got a note here that tells me that the vertical is one of the fastest growing verticals with 105% year on year growth. Healthcare and life sciences, another important... Again, a lot of legacy, a lot of old silos, forced to expand and innovate with the pandemic growing. >> Yes. You know, government is our largest segment today, our largest competency. Healthcare is our fastest growing segment. So we have a big focus there. And like you said, it's not just around, you know, seeing things stay the same. It's about digital transformation. It's one of the reasons we're also seeing such an increase in our authority to operate program both on the government side and the healthcare side. So we do, you know, FedRAMP and IL5. We had six companies that got IL5, five of them in 2021, which is an amazing achievement. And then, you know, if you think about the healthcare side, our fastest growing compliance is HIPAA and HITRUST. And that ATO program really brings best practices and templates and stronger go to market for those partners too. >> Yeah. I mean, I think it's opportunity recognition and then capture during the pandemic with the cloud. More agility, more speed. >> That's right. >> Sandy, always great to have you on. In the last couple of seconds we have left, summarize the top 10 announcements in a bumper sticker. If you had to kind of put that bumper sticker on the car as it drives away from re:Invent this year, what's on that bumper sticker? What's it say? >> Partners that focus on destination, data and delivery will grow faster and add more value to their customers. >> There it is. The three dimension, DDD. Delivery... Destination, data and delivery. >> There you go. >> Here on theCUBE, bringing you all the data live on the ground here, CUBE studios, two sets wall-to-wall coverage. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in global tech coverage. I'm John Furrier your host. Thanks for watching. (soft techno music)

(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)

(pensive music) >> Thank you, Jenna, it's great to see you guys and thank you for watching theCUBE's continuous coverage of AWS Storage Day. We're here at The Spheres, it's amazing venue. My name is Dave Vellante. I'm here with Mai-Lan Tomsen Bukovec who's Vice President of Block and Object Storage. Mai-Lan, always a pleasure to see you. Thanks for coming on. >> Nice to see you, Dave. >> It's pretty crazy, you know, this is kind of a hybrid event. We were in Barcelona a while ago, big hybrid event. And now it's, you know, it's hard to tell. It's almost like day-to-day what's happening with COVID and some things are permanent. I think a lot of things are becoming permanent. What are you seeing out there in terms of when you talk to customers, how are they thinking about their business, building resiliency and agility into their business in the context of COVID and beyond? >> Well, Dave, I think what we've learned today is that this is a new normal. These fluctuations that companies are having and supply and demand, in all industries all over the world. That's the new normal. And that has what, is what has driven so much more adoption of cloud in the last 12 to 18 months. And we're going to continue to see that rapid migration to the cloud because companies now know that in the course of days and months, you're, the whole world of your expectations of where your business is going and where, what your customers are going to do, that can change. And that can change not just for a year, but maybe longer than that. That's the new normal. And I think companies are realizing it and our AWS customers are seeing how important it is to accelerate moving everything to the cloud, to continue to adapt to this new normal. >> So storage historically has been, I'm going to drop a box off at the loading dock and, you know, have a nice day. And then maybe the services team is involved in, in a more intimate way, but you're involved every day. So I'm curious as to what that permanence, that new normal, some people call it the new abnormal, but it's the new normal now, what does that mean for storage? >> Dave, in the course of us sitting here over the next few minutes, we're going to have dozens of deployments go out all across our AWS storage services. That means our customers that are using our file services, our transfer services, block and object services, they're all getting improvements as we sit here and talk. That is such a fundamentally different model than the one that you talked about, which is the appliance gets dropped off at the loading dock. It takes a couple months for it to get scheduled for setup and then you have to do data migration to get the data on the new appliance. Meanwhile, we're sitting here and customers storage is just improving, under the hood and in major announcements, like what we're doing today. >> So take us through the sort of, let's go back, 'cause I remember vividly when, when S3 was announced that launched this cloud era and people would, you know, they would do a lot of experimentation of, we were storing, you know, maybe gigabytes, maybe even some terabytes back then. And, and that's evolved. What are you seeing in terms of how people are using data? What are the patterns that you're seeing today? How is that different than maybe 10 years ago? >> I think what's really unique about AWS is that we are the only provider that has been operating at scale for 15 years. And what that means is that we have customers of all sizes, terabytes, petabytes, exabytes, that are running their storage on AWS and running their applications using that storage. And so we have this really unique position of being able to observe and work with customers to develop what they need for storage. And it really breaks down to three main patterns. The first one is what I call the crown jewels, the crown jewels in the cloud. And that pattern is adopted by customers who are looking at the core mission of their business and they're saying to themselves, I actually can't scale this core mission on on-premises. And they're choosing to go to the cloud on the most important thing that their business does because they must, they have to. And so, a great example of that is FINRA, the regulatory body of the US stock exchanges, where, you know, a number of years ago, they took a look at all the data silos that were popping up across their data centers. They were looking at the rate of stock transactions going up and they're saying, we just can't keep up. Not if we want to follow the mission of being the watchdog for consumers, for transactions, for stock transactions. And so they moved that crown jewel of their application to AWS. And what's really interesting Dave, is, as you know, 'cause you've talked to many different companies, it's not technology that stops people from moving to the cloud as quick as they want to, it's culture, it's people, it's processes, it's how businesses work. And when you move the crown jewels into the cloud, you are accelerating that cultural change and that's certainly what FINRA saw. Second thing we see, is where a company will pick a few cloud pilots. We'll take a couple of applications, maybe one or a several across the organization and they'll move that as sort of a reference implementation to the cloud. And then the goal is to try to get the people who did that to generalize all the learning across the company. That is actually a really slow way to change culture. Because, as many of us know, in large organizations, you know, you have, you have some resistance to other organizations changing culture. And so that cloud pilot, while it seems like it would work, it seems logical, it's actually counter-productive to a lot of companies that want to move quickly to the cloud. And the third example is what I think of as new applications or cloud first, net new. And that pattern is where a company or a startup says all new technology initiatives are on the cloud. And we see that for companies like McDonald's, which has transformed their drive up experience by dynamically looking at location orders and providing recommendations. And we see it for the Digital Athlete, which is what the NFL has put together to dynamically take data sources and build these models that help them programmatically simulate risks to player health and put in place some ways to predict and prevent that. But those are the three patterns that we see so many customers falling into depending on what their business wants. >> I like that term, Digital Athlete, my business partner, John Furrier, coined the term tech athlete, you know, years ago on theCUBE. That third pattern seems to me, because you're right, you almost have to shock the system. If you just put your toe in the water, it's going to take too long. But it seems like that third pattern really actually de-risks it in a lot of cases, it's so it's said, people, who's going to argue, oh, the new stuff should be in the cloud. And so, that seems to me to be a very sensible way to approach that, that blocker, if you will, what are your thoughts on that? >> I think you're right, Dave. I think what it does is it allows a company to be able to see the ideas and the technology and the cultural change of cloud in different parts of the organization. And so rather than having a, one group that's supposed to generalize it across an organization, you get it decentralized and adopted by different groups and the culture change just goes faster. >> So you, you bring up decentralization and there's a, there's an emerging trend referred to as a data mesh. It was, it was coined, the term coined by Zhamak Dehghani, a very thought-provoking individual. And the concept is basically the, you know, data is decentralized, and yet we have this tendency to sort of shove it all into, you know, one box or one container, or you could say one cloud, well, the cloud is expanding, it's the cloud is, is decentralizing in many ways. So how do you see data mesh fitting in to those patterns? >> We have customers today that are taking the data mesh architectures and implementing them with AWS services. And Dave, I want to go back to the start of Amazon, when Amazon first began, we grew because the Amazon technologies were built in microservices. Fundamentally, a data mesh is about separation or abstraction of what individual components do. And so if I look at data mesh, really, you're talking about two things, you're talking about separating the data storage and the characteristics of data from the data services that interact and operate on that storage. And with data mesh, it's all about making sure that the businesses, the decentralized business model can work with that data. Now our AWS customers are putting their storage in a centralized place because it's easier to track, it's easier to view compliance and it's easier to predict growth and control costs. But, we started with building blocks and we deliberately built our storage services separate from our data services. So we have data services like Lake Formation and Glue. We have a number of these data services that our customers are using to build that customized data mesh on top of that centralized storage. So really, it's about at the end of the day, speed, it's about innovation. It's about making sure that you can decentralize and separate your data services from your storage so businesses can go faster. >> But that centralized storage is logically centralized. It might not be physically centralized, I mean, we put storage all over the world, >> Mai-Lan: That's correct. >> right? But, but we, to the developer, it looks like it's in one place. >> Mai-Lan: That's right. >> Right? And so, so that's not antithetical to the concept of a data mesh. In fact, it fits in perfectly to the point you were making. I wonder if we could talk a little bit about AWS's storage strategy and it started of course, with, with S3, and that was the focus for years and now of course EBS as well. But now we're seeing, we heard from Wayne this morning, the portfolio is expanding. The innovation is, is accelerating that flywheel that we always talk about. How would you characterize and how do you think about AWS's storage strategy per se? >> We are a dynamically and constantly evolving our AWS storage services based on what the application and the customer want. That is fundamentally what we do every day. We talked a little bit about those deployments that are happening right now, Dave. That is something, that idea of constant dynamic evolution just can't be replicated by on-premises where you buy a box and it sits in your data center for three or more years. And what's unique about us among the cloud services, is again that perspective of the 15 years where we are building applications in ways that are unique because we have more customers and we have more customers doing more things. So, you know, I've said this before. It's all about speed of innovation Dave, time and change wait for no one. And if you're a business and you're trying to transform your business and base it on a set of technologies that change rapidly, you have to use AWS services. Let's, I mean, if you look at some of the launches that we talk about today, and you think about S3's multi-region access points, that's a fundamental change for customers that want to store copies of their data in any number of different regions and get a 60% performance improvement by leveraging the technology that we've built up over, over time, leveraging the, the ability for us to route, to intelligently route a request across our network. That, and FSx for NetApp ONTAP, nobody else has these capabilities today. And it's because we are at the forefront of talking to different customers and that dynamic evolution of storage, that's the core of our strategy. >> So Andy Jassy used to say, oftentimes, AWS is misunderstood and you, you comfortable with that. So help me square this circle 'cause you talked about things you couldn't do on on-prem, and yet you mentioned the relationship with NetApp. You think, look at things like Outposts and Local Zones. So you're actually moving the cloud out to the edge, including on-prem data centers. So, so how do you think about hybrid in that context? >> For us, Dave, it always comes back to what the customer's asking for. And we were talking to customers and they were talking about their edge and what they wanted to do with it. We said, how are we going to help? And so if I just take S3 for Outposts, as an example, or EBS and Outposts, you know, we have customers like Morningstar and Morningstar wants Outposts because they are using it as a step in their journey to being on the cloud. If you take a customer like First Abu Dhabi Bank, they're using Outposts because they need data residency for their compliance requirements. And then we have other customers that are using Outposts to help, like Dish, Dish Networks, as an example, to place the storage as close as account to the applications for low latency. All of those are customer driven requirements for their architecture. For us, Dave, we think in the fullness of time, every customer and all applications are going to be on the cloud, because it makes sense and those businesses need that speed of innovation. But when we build things like our announcement today of FSx for NetApp ONTAP, we build them because customers asked us to help them with their journey to the cloud, just like we built S3 and EBS for Outposts for the same reason. >> Well, when you say over time, you're, you believe that all workloads will be on the cloud, but the cloud is, it's like the universe. I mean, it's expanding. So what's not cloud in the future? When you say on the cloud, you mean wherever you meet customers with that cloud, that includes Outposts, just the programming, it's the programmability of that model, is that correct? That's it, >> That's right. that's what you're talking about? >> In fact, our S3 and EBS Outposts customers, the way that they look at how they use Outposts, it's either as part of developing applications where they'll eventually go the cloud or taking applications that are in the cloud today in AWS regions and running them locally. And so, as you say, this definition of the cloud, you know, it, it's going to evolve over time. But the one thing that we know for sure, is that AWS storage and AWS in general is going to be there one or two steps ahead of where customers are, and deliver on what they need. >> I want to talk about block storage for a moment, if I can, you know, you guys are making some moves in that space. We heard some announcements earlier today. Some of the hardest stuff to move, whether it's cultural or maybe it's just hardened tops, maybe it's, you know, governance edicts, or those really hardcore mission critical apps and workloads, whether it's SAP stuff, Oracle, Microsoft, et cetera. You're clearly seeing that as an opportunity for your customers and in storage in some respects was a blocker previously because of whatever, latency, et cetera, then there's still some, some considerations there. How do you see those workloads eventually moving to the cloud? >> Well, they can move now. With io2 Block Express, we have the performance that those high-end applications need and it's available today. We have customers using them and they're very excited about that technology. And, you know, again, it goes back to what I just said, Dave, we had customers saying, I would like to move my highest performing applications to the cloud and this is what I need from the, from the, the storage underneath them. And that's why we built io2 Block Express and that's how we'll continue to evolve io2 Block Express. It is the first SAN technology in the cloud, but it's built on those core principles that we talked about a few minutes ago, which is dynamically evolving and capabilities that we can add on the fly and customers just get the benefit of it without the cost of migration. >> I want to ask you about, about just the storage, how you think about storage in general, because typically it's been a bucket, you know, it's a container, but it seems, I always say the next 10 years aren't going to be like the last, it seems like, you're really in the data business and you're bringing in machine intelligence, you're bringing in other database technology, this rich set of other services to apply to the data. That's now, there's a lot of data in the cloud and so we can now, whether it's build data products, build data services. So how do you think about the business in that sense? It's no longer just a place to store stuff. It's actually a place to accelerate innovation and build and monetize for your customers. How do you think about that? >> Our customers use the word foundational. Every time they talk about storage, they say for us, it's foundational, and Dave, that's because every business is a data business. Every business is making decisions now on this changing landscape in a world where the new normal means you cannot predict what's going to happen in six months, in a year. And the way that they're making those smart decisions is through data. And so they're taking the data that they have in our storage services and they're using SageMaker to build models. They're, they're using all kinds of different applications like Lake Formation and Glue to build some of the services that you're talking about around authorization and data discovery, to sit on top of the data. And they're able to leverage the data in a way that they have never been able to do before, because they have to. That's what the business world demands today, and that's what we need in the new normal. We need the flexibility and the dynamic foundational storage that we provide in AWS. >> And you think about the great data companies, those were the, you know, trillions in the market cap, their data companies, they put data at their core, but that doesn't mean they shove all the data into a centralized location. It means they have the identity access capabilities, the governance capabilities to, to enable data to be used wherever it needs to be used and, and build that future. That, exciting times we're entering here, Mai-Lan. >> We're just set the start, Dave, we're just at the start. >> Really, what ending do you think we have? So, how do you think about Amazon? It was, it's not a baby anymore. It's not even an adolescent, right? You guys are obviously major player, early adulthood, day one, day zero? (chuckles) >> Dave, we don't age ourself. I think if I look at where we're going for AWS, we are just at the start. So many companies are moving to the cloud, but we're really just at the start. And what's really exciting for us who work on AWS storage, is that when we build these storage services and these data services, we are seeing customers do things that they never thought they could do before. And it's just the beginning. >> I think the potential is unlimited. You mentioned Dish before, I mean, I see what they're doing in the cloud for Telco. I mean, Telco Transformation, that's an industry, every industry, there's a transformation scenario, a disruption scenario. Healthcare has been so reluctant for years and that's happening so quickly, I mean, COVID's certainly accelerating that. Obviously financial services have been super tech savvy, but they're looking at the Fintech saying, okay, how do we play? I mean, there isn't manufacturing with EV. >> Mai-Lan: Government. >> Government, totally. >> It's everywhere, oil and gas. >> There isn't a single industry that's not a digital industry. >> That's right. >> And there's implications for everyone. And it's not just bits and atoms anymore, the old Negroponte, although Nicholas, I think was prescient because he's, he saw this coming, it really is fundamental. Data is fundamental to every business. >> And I think you want, for all of those in different industries, you want to pick the provider where innovation and invention is in our DNA. And that is true, not just for storage, but AWS, and that is driving a lot of the changes you have today, but really what's coming in the future. >> You're right. It's the common editorial factors. It's not just the, the storage of the data. It's the ability to apply other technologies that map into your business process, that map into your organizational skill sets that drive innovation in whatever industry you're in. It's great Mai-Lan, awesome to see you. Thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. >> Great seeing you Dave, take care. >> All right, you too. And keep it right there for more action. We're going to now toss it back to Jenna, Canal and Darko in the studio. Guys, over to you. (pensive music)

(upbeat music) >> (Narrator) From around the globe, it's theCUBE. With digital coverage of IBM Think 2021. Brought to you by IBM. >> Hello, welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of IBM Think 2021 virtual. Soon we'll be back in person in real life, but this year again it's a virtual conference. I'm John Furrier, your host of the cube for more cube coverage. We've got a great guest here, Debbie Vavangas, Global Garage Lead for IBM Services. Global Garage, great program. Debbie, great to see you. Thanks for coming on theCUBE. >> Thanks for having me. >> So, we've covered the Garage a lot on theCUBE in the past, and a success, everyone loves the Garage. Things are born in the Garage, entrepreneurship, innovation, has been kind of categorically known for, kind of, the Garage startup. >> Absolutely. >> But also, it's become known for, really, agility, which has been a cloud phenomenon, DevOps. Now we're seeing dev SecOps as a big trend this year with hybrid cloud. So, I've got to ask you, how is Garage doing with the pandemic? Obviously, I can almost imagine people at home kind of disrupted from the office, but maybe more creativity, maybe more energy online? What's going on with the Garage? How has your transformation journey been with COVID? >> Well, John, COVID has been the leveler for us all, right? There isn't a person who hasn't had some challenge or some complexity to And that includes our clients. And I'm incredibly proud to be able to say that IBM Garage, because it is so digitally native, when the COVID pandemic has struck around the world every single one of our Garages was able to switch to being virtual without fail, without a single days lost productivity. And that's hugely beneficial to clients who are on an incredibly time-sensitive journey. And so, we've seen as a result of COVID actually there are a huge acceleration in Garages, for two reasons. So, number one, from a virtualization perspective, actually it's much easier when everybodies together in the same space. So everybody's together virtually in the same space, and we've seen, you know, acceleration in our velocity, in our collaboration, because everybody is really learning how to work in that same space. But two, because of the pandemic, because of the pressure on our client's needs to make decisions fast, know not guess, really be focused on their outcomes, not just doing stuff, the Garage really plays to that objective for them. And so we've seen a huge rise, you know, we've gone from in 2019 to just a few hundred garages, to finishing 2020 with over two and a half thousand garages. And it being embedded across services and with the goal of being the primary way our clients experience it. So COVID has been a big accelerator. >> Sorry, Debbie, can you repeat the numbers again? I just want to capture that, I missed that. >> Sure, sure. >> I did a double take on the numbers. (Debbie laughs) >> So then, we finished 2019 with just under 300 garages, and we finished 2020 with just over two and a half thousand. So, we've had a huge growth, and it isn't just the number of garages, it's the range of garages and what we're serving with our clients, and how we're collaborating with our clients, and the topics we're unpacking that has really broadened. >> Yeah, I mean I covered, and we've reported on the Garage on theCUBE and also on www.siliconangle.com in the past things and through your news coverage, but that's amazing growth. I got to believe the tailwind from COVID and just the energy around it has energized you. I want to get your thoughts on that because, you know, what we've reported on in the past has been about design thinking, human-centered design, all of those beautiful things that come with cloud-scale, right? You know, you're moving faster, you're innovating, and so that's been kind of there. But what you're getting at with this growth is, and with COVID has proven, and again, we've been pointing this out, you're seeing the pattern, it's clear. Companies are either retrenching, okay, which is refactoring, redesigning, doing those things to kind of get ready to come out of COVID with a growth strategy, and you're seeing other companies build net new innovations. So, they're building new capabilities, because COVID's shown them, kind of pulled back the curtain if you will on where the action is. So, this means there's two threads going on. You've got, "Okay, I've got to transform my business, and I got to refactor', or 'Hey, we got net new business models'. These are kind of two different things and not mutually exclusive. What's your comment on that? >> And I think that my comment on it is that is the sweet spot that Garage comes into its own, right? You mentioned lots of things in there. You talked about design thinking, and agility, and, you know, these other buzzwords that are used all the time, and Garage of course is synonymous with those. Of course, Garage uses the best design thinking, and AGILE practices, and all of those things that absolutely call to what we do. DevOps, even through down to DesignOps. You know, we have the whole range depending on what the client objective is. But, I think what is really happening now is that innovation being something separate is no longer how to accelerate your outcomes, and your business outcomes. Regardless of whether that is in refactoring and modernizing your existing estate, or diversifying, creating new ecosystems, new platforms, new offerings. Regardless of what that is, you can't do it separate to your core business. I mean, it's a well known fact, John, right? Like 75% of transformation programs fail to deliver an impact to the business performance, right? And in the same period of time there's been huge cuts in innovation funding, and that's because for the same reason, because they don't deliver the impact to the business performance. And that's why Garage is unique, because it is entirely focused on the outcome, right? We're using user research, through design thinking of course, using agile to deliver it at speed, and all of those other things. But, it's focused on value, on benefits realization and driving to your outcome. And we do that by putting that innovation at the heart of your enterprise in order to drive that transformation, rather than it being something separate. >> Debbie, I saw you gave a talk called 'Innovation is Dead'. Obviously, that's a provocative title, that's an attention-getter. Tell me what you mean by that. Because it seems to be a setup. >> I mean, if the innovation is dead, >> Of course. was it with a question mark? Were you, kind of, trying to highlight that innovation is transformation? >> So, the full title was 'Innovation is dead and transformation is pointless'. And, of course, it's meant to be an eye-catching title so people show up and listen to my pitch rather than somebody else's. But, the reality is I mean it most sincerely, it's back to that stat. 75% of these transformation programs fail to deliver the impact, and I speculate that that is for a few reasons. Because, the idea itself wasn't a good one, or wasn't at the right time. Because, you were unable to understand what the measure of good looked like, and therefore just being able to create that path. And, in order to transform a company, you must transform the individuals within a company. And so that way of working becomes incredibly holistic. And it's those three things, that I think amongst the whole myriad of others, that are the primary reasons why those programs fail. And what Garage does, is it breaks that. By putting innovation at the heart of your enterprise, and by using data-driven value orchestration, that means that we don't guess where the value to be gained is, we know. It's no longer chucking ideas at the wall to see what sticks, it's meaningful research. This is my favorite quote from my dear friend, Courtney Noll, who says, "It's not about searching for the innovation needle in the proverbial haystack, it's using your research in order to de-risk your investment, and drive your innovation to enable your outcomes." And so, if you do innovation without a view to how it's going to yield your business outcomes, I agree, I fundamentally agree that it's pointless. >> Yeah, exactly. And, you know, of course we're on the writing side, we love titles like, 'Innovation is dead, long live innovation'. So, it's classic, you know, to get your attention. >> Exactly, exactly. And of course, what I really mean is that innovation is a separate entity. >> Totally. >> There's no longer relevance for a company to make sure they achieve their business outcomes. >> Well, this is what I wanted to just double-click on that with you on is that you look at transformation. You guys are essentially saying transformation meets innovation with the Garage philosophy, if I get that right. >> Yep >> And it's interesting, and we've experienced this here with theCUBE, we're theCUBE virtual, we're not at IBM Think, there is no physical game day like some of us normally do. >> Well, as you can see, I'm at my house. (Debbie laughs) And so, I was talking to a CEO and I said, "Hey, you guys are doing really, really good. We had to pivot with the cube", and he goes, "You guys did a good pivot yourself". He goes, "No, John, we did not pivot. We actually put our business on hold because of the pandemic. We actually created a line extension, so, technically, we're going to bring that business back when COVID has gone and come back to real life, so it's technically not a pivot, we're not pivoting our business, we've created new functionality." Through the innovations that they were doing. So, this is kind of like, this is the real deal here. Share your thoughts on that. >> To me, it's about people get so focused on the output that they lose track of the outcome, right? And so, be really clear on what you're doing, and why. And the outcomes can be really broad, so instead of saying, "We're all going to implement a new ERP, or build a new mobile app". That's not an outcome, right? What we should be saying is, "What we're trying to achieve is a 10 percent growth in net promoter score in China, right? In this group." Or whatever it is we were trying to achieve, right? Or, "We want to make a 25% reduction in our operating cost base by simplifying our estate". Whatever those outcomes are, that's the starting point, and then driving that to use as the vehicle for what is the right innovation, what is going to deliver that value, and fast, right? Garage delivers three to five times faster than other models and at a reduced delivery cost, and so it's all about that speed. Speed of decision, speed of insight, speed of culture and training, speed of new skills, and speed to outcomes. >> Well, Debbie, you did a great job, love what you're doing, and Garage has got a great model. Congratulations on the growth, love this intersection, or transformation meets innovation because innovation is transformation, and vice versa, this interplay going on there. >> Exactly. >> I think COVID has proven that. Let me dig into a little bit more about the garage, what's going on. How many practitioners do you guys have there now at IBM? You've got growth, are you adding more people in? Obviously, Virtual First, COVID, is there still centers of design? Take us through what's going on at Garage. >> Certainly, so like, I think I mentioned it right up front. Our goal is to make IBM Garage the primary way our clients experience us. We've proven in that it delivers higher value to our clients and they get a really rich and broad set of outcomes. And so, in order for us to deliver on that promise we have to be enabled across IBM to deliver to it, right? So, over the last 18 months or so we've had a whole range of training programs in Enable, we've had a whole badging and certification program, we have all the skills, and the pathways, and the career pathways to find. But Garage is for everybody, right? And so, it isn't about creating a select group that can do this across IBM. This is about making all of services capable. So, in 2020 we trained over 28,000 people, in all the different skills that are needed, from selling, to execution, to QA, to user research, whatever it is. And this year we're launching our Garage Skills Academy, which will take that across all of services and make it easily available. So, you know, we've got hundreds of thousands. >> And talk about the footprint on the global side, because, again, not to bring up global, but global is what is in your title. >> Yep. >> Companies need to be global, because now with virtual workforces you're seeing much more tapped creativity and ability to execute from global teams. How does that impact you? >> Well, so it's global in two perspectives, right? So, number one, we have Garages all around the world, right? It isn't just the market of, you know, our most developed nations in Americas and Europe, it is everywhere, we see it in all emerging markets. From Latin America, through to all parts of eastern Europe, which are really beginning to come into their own. So, we see all these different Garages at different scales and opportunities. So, definitely global from that image. But, what virtualization has also enabled is truly global teams. Because, it's really easy to go, "Oh, I need one of those. Okay, I need a supply chain expert, and I need an AI expert, and I need somebody who's got industry experience in whatever it is." And you can quickly gather them around the virtual table, you know, faster than you can in a physical table. But, we still leverage the global communities with those physical. >> It's an expert network. You have an expert network there at IBM. >> We have a huge network, yeah. And both within IBM, and of course a growing network of ecosystem partners that we continue to work with. >> Well, Debbie, I'm really excited. Congratulations on the growth. I'm looking forward to partnering with you on your ecosystem as that develops. I can almost imagine you must be getting a lot of outside IBM practitioners and experts coming in to collaborate in a social construct. >> Absolutely. >> It's a great program, thanks for sharing. >> My pleasure, it's been great to be here, thank you. >> Okay, IBM's Global Garage Lead, Debbie Vavangas, who's here on theCUBE with IBM Services. A phenomenon, it's a social construct that's helping companies with digital transformation. Intersecting, with innovation. I'm John Furrier, your host. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>>from around the globe, it's the >>Cube with digital coverage of IBM think 2020 >>one brought to you >>by IBM. Hello, welcome back to the cubes coverage of IBM Think 2021 virtual soon we'll be back in person in real life. But this year again it's a virtual conference. I'm john for your host of the cube for more cube coverage. You got a great guest here Debbie Viviendas Global garage lead for IBM Services Global garage great program. Ah Debbie, great to see you. Thanks for coming on the cube. >>Thanks for having me. >>So we've covered the garage a lot on the cube in the past and the success, Everyone loves the garage things are born in the garage, entrepreneurship innovation has been kind of categorically known for kind of the garage start up um but also it's become um known for really agile agility and which has been a cloud phenomenon, devops and now we're seeing Deb sec apps as a big trend this year with hybrid cloud. So I gotta ask you, how is garage doing with the pandemic? I was I can almost imagine people at home kind of disrupted from the office, but maybe more creativity, maybe more energy online. What's going on with the garage? How has your transformation journey been with Covid? >>Well, don't I mean it's Covid has been the level of for us. All right, there isn't a person who hasn't had some challenge or some complexity to Yeah, and that includes our clients and I'm incredibly proud to be able to say that IBM garage because it is so digitally native. When the covid pandemic has struck around the world, every single one of our garages was able to switch to being virtual without fail without a single days lost productivity. And that I mean that's hugely beneficial to clients who are on an incredible time sensitive journey. And so we've seen as a result of Covid actually there are a huge acceleration in garages from two reasons. The number one from a virtualization perspective. Actually it's much easier when everybody's together in the same space, everybody's together virtually in the same space. And we've seen acceleration in our velocity and our collaboration because everybody is really learning how to work in that century. But to because of the pandemic, because of the pressure on our client's needs to make decisions fast. No, not guess really, be focused on their outcomes, not just doing stuff, the garage really plays to that objective for them. And so we've seen a huge rise. We've gone from 2019 to just a few 100 garages to finishing 2020 with over 2.5 1000 garages and being embedded across services and the goal of being the primary way our clients experiencing COVID has been a big accelerator. >>Sorry Debbie, can you repeat the numbers again? I just want to capture that. I missed that. >>Sure. Sure. So we finished >>training on the numbers. >>Yeah. So that we finished 2019 with just under 300 garages and we finished 2020 with just over 2.5 1000. So we've had a huge growth in the in the rain and it isn't just the number of garages, it's the range of garages and what we're what we're serving with our clients and how we're collaborating with our clients and the topics were unpacking. That is is really broadened. >>Yeah. I mean I I covered and we've reported on the garage on the Cuban also in silicon angle dot com. And the past thinks and through your your news coverage. That's amazing growth. Um I gotta believe the tailwind from Covid and just the energy around it has energized. You wanna get your thoughts on that because you know what we've reported the past, it's been about design, thinking human centered design, all those beautiful things that come with cloud, cloud scale, right? You know, you're moving faster, you're innovating. Um and so that's been kind of there, but what you're getting at with this growth is with and what Covid has proven. And again, we've been pointing this out, you're seeing the pattern, It's clear companies are either retrenching okay. Which is re factoring, redesigning, doing those things to kind of get ready to come out to cope with a growth strategy and you're seeing other companies um build net new innovations so they're building new capabilities because Covid shown them kind of pulled back the curtain if you will on where the action is. So this means there's two threads going on. You got okay, I got to transform my business and I gotta re factor and then, or hey, we got net new business models, these are kind of two different things and not mutually exclusive. What's your comment on that? >>Uh, and I think that my comment on is that is the sweet spot that garage comes into its own right. You mentioned lots of things in that, you talked about design thinking and agility and you know, these other buzzwords that are used all the time and garage of course is synonymous with those of course, you know, it's Gap uses the best design thinking and agile practices and all of those things that absolutely core to what we do, devops, even through down to design up, we have the whole range depending on what the client objective is, but I think what is really happening now is the innovation, you know, being something separate. It is no longer how to accelerate your outcomes and your business outcomes regardless of whether that is in re factoring and modernizing your existing estate or diversifying creating new ecosystems and new platforms and new offerings. Regardless of what that is, you can't do it separate to your, To your core business. I mean it's a well known fact John right, like 75 of transformation programmes failed to deliver an impact on the business performance. Right? And in the same period of time there's been huge cuts in innovation funding and that's because for the same reason because they don't deliver the impact of the business performance and that's why garage is unique because it is entirely focused on the outcome, right? But using user research through design thinking of course using agile to deliver it at speed and all of those other things, but it's focused on value, on benefits, realization and driving to your outcome. And we do that by putting that innovation at the heart of your enterprise in order to drive that transformation rather than it being something separate. >>Debbie, I saw you gave a talk uh called Innovation Is Dead. Um obviously that's a provocative title. That's an attention getter. Um tell me what you mean by that because it seems to be a setup. I mean many mentions dead. Was it with a question mark? What you're kind of trying to highlight that innovation is transformation? Or were you trying >>to do the full title? The full title was Innovation is Dead and transformation is pointless. And of course, it's meant to be an eye catching title. So people show up and listen to my pitch rather than somebody else's. But But the reality is I mean that most sincerely it's back to that step, 75 of these transformation programmes failed to deliver the impact. And I and I speculate that that is for a few reasons because the idea itself wasn't a good one or wasn't at the right time because you were unable to understand what the measure of good looked like and therefore him just be able to create that path. And in order to transform a company, you must transform the individuals within a company. And so that way of working becomes incredibly holistic and it's those three things, I think amongst the whole myriad of others are the primary reasons why those programs fail. And what garage does is it breaks this by putting innovation at the heart of your enterprise and by using data driven value orchestration. That means that we don't no, we don't guess where the value to be gained is. We know it's no longer checking ideas at the wall to see what sticks it's meaningful research. It's not searching. This is my favorite quote from my dear friend Courtney, know, who says it's not about searching for the innovation needle in the proverbial haystack. It's using your research in order to de risk your investment and drive your innovation to enable your outcomes. So if you do innovation without a view to how it's going to yield your business outcomes, I agree. I fundamentally agree that it's pointless. >>Exactly. Of course, we're on the writing side. We love titles like innovation is dead long live innovation, so that's classic. Get your attention. But I think >>Exactly, and of course what I really mean is that innovation is a separate entity, >>totally. >>There is no longer relevant for company to make sure they achieve their business >>outcome. Well, this is what I wanted to just double click on that with you on is that you look at transformation, you guys essentially saying transformation meets innovation with the garage philosophy if I get that right. Um, and, and, and it's interesting I had, and we've experienced here with the cube where the cube virtual, we're not at IBM think there is no physical game day, like >>my house. >>And, and so I was talking to a Ceo and he said, I said, hey you guys are doing really, really good. You know, we had to pivot with the cube and he goes, you guys did a good pivot yourself because no, john we did not pivot, we actually put our business on hold because of the pandemic. We actually created a line extension. So technically we're going to bring that business back when Covid is gone and we come back to real life. So it's technically not a pivot. We're not pivoting our business. We've created new functionality through the innovations that they were doing. So this is kind of like, this is the real deal here. This is like depends proven what's your share your thoughts on that? >>Well, it's just to me it's about people get so focused on the output that they lose track of the outcome, right? And so being really clear on what you're doing and why and the outcomes can be really broad that, you know, so instead of saying, you know, we're all going to implement the new E. R. P. Or build a new mobile app. That's that's that's not an outcome, right? What we should be saying is what we're trying to achieve is a 10% growth in net promoter score in china, Right in this group or whatever it is we were trying to achieve right, we want to make a 25 reduction in our operating cost base by simplifying our estate whatever those outcomes are. I mean that's the starting point and then driving that use to use as the vehicle for what is the right innovation, what is going to deliver that value and fast right garage delivers 3-5 times faster than other models and reduced delivery costs. And so it's all about that speed, speed of decision, speed of insight, speed of culture and training, speed of new skills and speed to outcomes. >>You got a great job, love what you're doing in Karaj got a great model, congratulations on the growth. Love this intersection or transformation meets innovation because innovation is transformation advice versus interplay going on there I think has proven that. Let me dig into a little bit more about the garage. What's going on? How many practitioners you guys have there now at IBM? Um, you've got growth. Are you adding more people in? I'll see virtual first. Covid. Is there still centers of design take us through what's going on at garage? >>Certainly. So I think I mentioned it right up front. Right. So our goal is to make IBM guards the primary way our clients experiences. We've proven that it delivers higher value to our clients and they get really rich and broad set of outcomes. And so in order for us to deliver on that promise, we have to be unable to cross IBM to deliver to it. Right? So over the last 18 months or so we've had a whole range of training programs and enable we have a whole badging and certification program. We have all the skills and the pathways and the career pathways to find. But garages for everybody. Right? And so it isn't about creating a selected group that can do this across IBM, this is about making all of services capable. So in 2020 we we trained over 28,000 people right? In in all the different skills that are needed from selling to execution to QA to use a research, whatever it is. And this year we're launching our garage skills academy which will take that across all of services and make it easily available. So we will, you've got to >>talk about the footprint of the global side because again, not to bring up global, but global is what yours in your title companies need to be global because now with virtual workforce is you're seeing much more tapped creativity and execution ability to execute from global teams. How does that impact you? >>Well, so garages as in its global in two perspectives. Right, So number one, we have garages all around the world. Right? It isn't it isn't just the market of you are most developed nations in the Americas and europe. It is everywhere. We see it in all emerging markets, from latin America through to you all parts of eastern europe which are really beginning to come into their own. So we see all these different garages of different different scales and opportunity. So definitely global from that image. But what what what virtualization has also enabled these truly global teams because it's really easy to go, I need one of those. Okay, I need a supply chain expert and I need an Ai expert and I need somebody who's got industry experience in whatever it is and you can quickly gather them around the virtual table faster than you can in a physical table. But we still leverage the global community >>for the network. You have an expert network there at IBM. >>You have a huge network. Yeah. And both both within IBM and of course a growing network of ecosystem partners that we continue to work >>with. Debbie. I'm really excited. Congratulations. Growth. I'm looking forward to partnering with you on your ecosystem as that develops. I can almost imagine you must be getting a lot of outside IBM practitioners and experts coming in to collaborate. It is a social construct. It's a great program. Thanks for sharing >>my pleasure. It's been great to be here. Thank >>you. Okay, IBM's global garage. Lee Debbie Vegas who's here on the queue with IBM services, a phenomenon. This is social construct is helping companies with digital transformation intersecting with innovation. I'm john for your host. Thanks for watching

>>From around the globe. It's the cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent executive summit 2020, sponsored by Accenture and AWS. >>Welcome to cube three 60 fives coverage of the Accenture executive summit. Part of AWS reinvent. I'm your host Rebecca Knight. Today we are joined by a cube alum Karthik NurAin. He is Accenture senior managing director and lead Accenture cloud. First, welcome back to the show Karthik. >>Thank you. Thanks for having me here. >>Always a pleasure. So I want to talk to you. You are an industry veteran, you've been in Silicon Valley for decades. Um, I want to hear from your perspective what the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been, what are you hearing from clients? What are they struggling with? What are their challenges that they're facing day to day? >>I think, um, COVID-19 is being a eye-opener from, you know, various facets, you know, um, first and foremost, it's a, it's a head, um, situation that everybody's facing, which is not just, uh, highest economic bearings to it. It has enterprise, um, an organization with bedding to it. And most importantly, it's very personal to people, um, because they themselves and their friends, family near and dear ones are going to this challenge, uh, from various different dimension. But putting that aside, when you come to it from an organization enterprise standpoint, it has changed everything well, the behavior of organizations coming together, working in their campuses, working with each other as friends, family, and, uh, um, near and dear colleagues, all of them are operating differently. So that's what big change to get things done in a completely different way, from how they used to get things done. >>Number two, a lot of things that were planned for normal scenarios, like their global supply chain, how they interact with their client customers, how they coordinate with their partners on how that employees contribute to the success of an organization at all changed. And there are no data models that give them a hint of something like this for them to be prepared for this. So we are seeing organizations, um, that have adapted to this reasonably okay, and are, you know, launching to innovate faster in this. And there are organizations that have started with struggling, but are continuing to struggle. And the gap, uh, between the leaders and legs are widening. So this is creating opportunities in a different way for the leaders, um, with a lot of pivot their business, but it's also creating significant challenge for the lag guides, uh, as we defined in our future systems research that we did a year ago, uh, and those organizations are struggling further. So the gap is actually whitening. >>So you've just talked about the widening gap. I've talked about the tremendous uncertainty that so many companies, even the ones who have adapted reasonably well, uh, in this, in this time, talk a little bit about Accenture cloud first and why, why now? >>I think it's a great question. Um, we believe that for many of our clients COVID-19 has turned, uh, cloud from an experimentation aspiration to an origin mandate. What I mean by that is everybody has been doing something on the other end cloud. There's no company that says we don't believe in cloud. Uh, our, we don't want to do cloud. It was how much they did in cloud. And they were experimenting. They were doing the new things in cloud. Um, but they were operating a lot of their core business outside the cloud or not in the cloud. Those organizations have struggled to operate in this new normal, in a remote fashion as with us, uh, that ability to pivot to all the changes the pandemic has brought to them. But on the other hand, the organizations that had a solid foundation in cloud were able to collect faster and not actually gone into the stage of innovating faster and driving a new behavior in the market, new behavior within their organization. >>So we are seeing that spend to make is actually fast-forwarded something that we always believed was going to happen. This, uh, uh, moving to cloud over the next decade is fast, forwarded it to, uh, happen in the next three to five years. And it's created this moment where it's a once in an era, really replatforming of businesses in the cloud that we are going to see. And we see this moment as a cloud first moment where organizations will use cloud as the, the canvas and the foundation with which they're going to reimagine their business after they were born in the cloud. Uh, and this requires a whole new strategy. Uh, and as Accenture, we are getting a lot in cloud, but we thought that this is the moment where we bring all of that capabilities together because we need a strategy for addressing, moving to cloud are embracing cloud in a holistic fashion. And that's what Accenture cloud first brings together a holistic strategy, a team that's 70,000 plus people that's coming together with rich cloud skills, but investing to tie in all the various capabilities of cloud to Delaware, that holistic strategy to our clients. So I want you to >>Delve into a little bit more about what this strategy actually entails. I mean, it's clearly about embracing change and being willing to experiment and, and having capabilities to innovate. Can you tell us a little bit more about what this strategy entails? >>Yeah. The reason why we say that there's a need for the strategy is, like I said, COVID is not new. There's almost every customer client is doing something with the cloud, but all of them have taken different approaches to cloud and different boundaries to cloud. Some organizations say, I just need to consolidate my multiple data centers to a small data center footprint and move the nest to cloud. Certain other organizations say that well, I'm going to move certain workloads to cloud. Certain other organizations said, well, I'm going to build this Greenfield application or workload in cloud. Certain other said, um, I'm going to use the power of AI ML in the cloud to analyze my data and drive insights. But a cloud first strategy is all of this tied with the corporate strategy of the organization with an industry specific cloud journey to say, if in this current industry, if I were to be reborn in the cloud, would I do it in the exact same passion that I did in the past, which means that the products and services that they offer need to be the matching, how they interact with that customers and partners need to be revisited, how they bird and operate their IP systems need to be the, imagine how they unearthed the data from all the systems under which they attract need to be liberated so that you could drive insights of cloud. >>First strategy. Hans is a corporate wide strategy, and it's a C-suite responsibility. It doesn't take the ownership away from the CIO or CIO, but the CIO is, and CDI was felt that it was just their problem and they were to solve it. And everyone as being a customer, now, the center of gravity is elevated to it becoming a C-suite agenda on everybody's agenda, where probably the CDI is the instrument to execute that that's a holistic cloud-first strategy >>And it, and it's a strategy, but the way you're describing it, it sounds like it's also a mindset and an approach, as you were saying, this idea of being reborn in the cloud. So now how do I think about things? How do I communicate? How do I collaborate? How do I get done? What I need to get done. Talk a little bit about how this has changed, the way you support your clients and how Accenture cloud first is changing your approach to cloud services. >>Wonderful. Um, you know, I did not color one very important aspect in my previous question, but that's exactly what you just asked me now, which is to do all of this. I talked about all of the vehicles, uh, an organization or an enterprise is going to go to, but the good part is they have one constant. And what is that? That is their employees, uh, because you do, the employees are able to embrace this change. If they are able to, uh, change them, says, pivot them says retool and train themselves to be able to operate in this new cloud. First one, the ability to reimagine every function of the business would be happening at speed. And cloud first approach is to do all of this at speed, because innovation is deadly proposed there, do the rate of probability on experimentation. You need to experiment a lot for any kind of experimentation. >>There's a probability of success. Organizations need to have an ability and a mechanism for them to be able to innovate faster for which they need to experiment a lot. The more the experiment and the lower cost at which they experiment is going to help them experiment a lot and experiment demic speed, fail fast, succeed more. And hence, they're going to be able to operate this at speed. So the cloud-first mindset is all about speed. I'm helping the clients fast track that innovation journey, and this is going to happen. Like I said, across the enterprise and every function across every department, I'm the agent of this change is going to be the employee's weapon, race, this change through new skills and new grueling and new mindset that they need to adapt to. >>So Karthik what you're describing it, it sounds so exciting. And yet for a pandemic wary workforce, that's been working remotely that may be dealing with uncertainty if for their kid's school and for so many other aspects of their life, it sounds hard. So how are you helping your clients, employees get onboard with this? And because the change management is, is often the hardest part. >>Yeah, I think it's, again, a great question. A bottle has only so much capacity. Something got to come off for something else to go in. That's what you're saying is absolutely right. And that is again, the power of cloud. The reason why cloud is such a fundamental breakthrough technology and capability for us to succeed in this era, because it helps in various forms. What we talked so far is the power of innovation that could create, but cloud can also simplify the life of the employees in an enterprise. There are several activities and tasks that people do in managing their complex infrastructure, complex ID landscape. They used to do certain jobs and activities in a very difficult, uh, underground about with cloud has simplified. And democratised a lot of these activities. So that things which had to be done in the past, like managing the complexity of the infrastructure, keeping them up all the time, managing the, um, the obsolescence of the capabilities and technologies and infrastructure, all of that could be offloaded to the cloud. >>So that the time that is available for all of these employees can be used to further innovate. Every organization is good to spend almost the same amount of money, but rather than spending activities, by looking at the rear view mirror on keeping the lights on, they're going to spend more money, more time, more energy, and spend their skills on things that are going to add value to their organization. Because you, every innovation that an enterprise can give to their end customer need not come from that enterprise. The word of platform economy is about democratising innovation. And the power of cloud is to get all of these capabilities from outside the four walls of the enterprise, >>It will add value to the organization, but I would imagine also add value to that employee's life because that employee, the employee will be more engaged in his or her job and therefore bring more excitement and energy into her, his or her day-to-day activities too. >>Absolutely. Absolutely. And this is, this is a normal evolution we would have seen everybody would have seen in their lives, that they keep moving up the value chain of what activities that, uh, gets performed buying by those individuals. And there's this, um, you know, no more true than how the United States, uh, as an economy has operated where, um, this is the power of a powerhouse of innovation, where the work that's done inside the country keeps moving up to that. You change. And, um, us leverages the global economy for a lot of things that is required to power the United States and that global economic, uh, phenomenon is very proof for an enterprise as well. There are things that an enterprise needs to do them soon. There are things an employee needs to do themselves. Um, but there are things that they could leverage from the external innovation and the power of innovation that is coming from technologies like cloud. >>So at Accenture, you have long, long, deep Stan, sorry, you have deep and long standing relationships with many cloud service providers, including AWS. How does the Accenture cloud first strategy, how does it affect your relationships with those providers? >>Yeah, we have great relationships with cloud providers like AWS. And in fact, in the cloud world, it was one of the first, um, capability that we started about years ago, uh, when we started developing these capabilities. But five years ago, we hit a very important milestone where the two organizations came together and said that we are forging a pharma partnership with joint investments to build this partnership. And we named that as a Accenture, AWS business group ABG, uh, where we co-invest and brought skills together and develop solutions. And we will continue to do that. And through that investment, we've also made several acquisitions that you would have seen in the recent times, like, uh, an invoice and gecko that we made acquisitions in in Europe. But now we're taking this to the next level. What we are saying is two cloud first and the $3 billion investment that we are bringing in, uh, through cloud first, we are going to make specific investment to create unique joint solution and landing zones foundation, um, cloud packs with which clients can accelerate their innovation or their journey to cloud first. >>And one great example is what we are doing with Takeda, uh, billable, pharmaceutical giant, um, between we've signed a five-year partnership. And it was out in the media just a month ago or so, where we are, the two organizations are coming together. We have created a partnership as a power of three partnership where the three organizations are jointly hoarding hats and taking responsibility for the innovation and the leadership position that Decatur wants to get to with this. We are going to simplify their operating model and organization by providing it flexibility. We're going to provide a lot more insights. Tequila has a 230 year old organization. Imagine the amount of trapped data and intelligence that is there. How about bringing all of that together with the power of AWS and Accenture and Takeda to drive more customer insights, um, come up with breakthrough, uh, R and D uh, accelerate clinical trials and improve the patient experience using AI ML and edge technologies. So all of these things that we will do through this partnership with joint investment from Accenture cloud first, as well as partner like AWS, so that Takeda can realize their gain. And, uh, they're seeing you actually made a statement that five years from now, every ticket an employee will have an AI assistant. That's going to make that beginner employee move up the value chain on how they contribute and add value to the future of tequila with the AI assistant, making them even more equipped and smarter than what they could be otherwise. >>So, one last question to close this out here. What is your future vision for, for Accenture cloud first? What are we going to be talking about at next year's Accenture executive summit? Yeah, the future >>Is going to be, um, evolving, but the part that is exciting to me, and this is, uh, uh, a fundamental belief that we are entering a new era of industrial revolution from industry first, second, and third industry. The third happened probably 20 years ago with the advent of Silicon and computers and all of that stuff that happened here in the Silicon Valley. I think the fourth industrial revolution is going to be in the cross section of, uh, physical, digital and biological boundaries. And there's a great article, um, in what economic forum that, that people, uh, your audience can Google and read about it. Uh, but the reason why this is very, very important is we are seeing a disturbing phenomenon that over the last 10 years, they are seeing a Blackwing of the, um, labor productivity and innovation, which has dropped to about 2.1%. When you see that kind of phenomenon over that longer period of time, there has to be breakthrough innovation that needs to happen to come out of this barrier and get to the next base camp, as I would call it to further this productivity, um, lack that we are seeing, and that is going to happen in the intersection of the physical, digital and biological boundaries. >>And I think cloud is going to be the connective tissue between all of these three, to be able to provide that where it's the edge, especially is going to come closer to the human lives. It's going to come from cloud pick totally in your mind, you can think about cloud as central, either in a private cloud, in a data center or in a public cloud, you know, everywhere. But when you think about edge, it's going to be far reaching and coming close to where we live and maybe work and very, um, get entertained and so on and so forth. And there's going to be, uh, intervention in a positive way in the field of medicine, in the field of entertainment, in the field of, um, manufacturing in the field of, um, uh, you know, mobility. When I say mobility, human mobility, people, transportation, and so on and so forth with all of this stuff, cloud is going to be the connective tissue and the vision of cloud first is going to be, uh, you know, blowing through this big change that is going to happen. And the evolution that is going to happen where, you know, the human grace of mankind, um, our person kind of being very gender neutral in today's world. Um, go first needs to be that beacon of, uh, creating the next generation vision for enterprises to take advantage of that kind of an exciting future. And that's why it, Accenture. We say, let there be change as our, as a purpose. >>I genuinely believe that cloud first is going to be in the forefront of that change agenda, both for Accenture as well as for the rest of the world. Excellent. Let there be change, indeed. Thank you so much for joining us Karthik. A pleasure I'm Rebecca night's stay tuned for more of Q3 60 fives coverage of the Accenture executive summit >>From around the globe. It's the cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent executive summit 2020, sponsored by Accenture and AWS >>Welcome everyone to the Q virtual and our coverage of the Accenture executive summit, which is part of AWS reinvent 2020. I'm your host Rebecca Knight. Today, we are talking about the green, the cloud and joining me is Kishor Dirk. He is Accenture senior managing director cloud first global services lead. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Kishor nice to meet you. So I want to start by asking you what it is that we mean when we say green cloud, we know that sustainability is a business imperative. So many organizations around the world are committing to responsible innovation, lowering carbon emissions, but what's this, what is it? What does it mean when they talk about cloud from a sustainability perspective? I think it's about responsible innovation being cloud is a cloud first approach that has profits and benefit the clients by helping reduce carbon emissions. >>Think about it this way. You have a large number of data centers. Each of these data centers are increasing by 14% every year. And this double digit growth. What you're seeing is these data centers and the consumption is nearly coolant to the kind of them should have a country like Spain. So the magnitude of the problem that is out there and how do we pursue a green approach. If you look at this, our Accenture analysis, in terms of the migration to public cloud, we've seen that we can reduce that by 59 million tons of CO2 per year with just the 5.9% reduction in total ID emissions and equates this to 22 million cars off the road. And the magnitude of reduction can go a long way in meeting climate change commitments, particularly for data sensitive. >>Wow, that's incredible. What the numbers that you're putting forward are, are absolutely mind blowing. So how does it work? Is it a simple cloud migration? So, you know, when companies begin their cloud journey and then they confront, uh, with them a lot of questions, the decision to make, uh, this particular, uh, element sustainable in the solution and benefits they drive and they have to make wise choices, and then they will be unprecedented level of innovation leading to both a greener planet, as well as, uh, a greener balance sheet, I would say, uh, so effectively it's all about ambition data, the ambition, greater the reduction in carbon emissions. So from a cloud migration perspective, we look at it as a, as a simple solution with approaches and sustainability benefits, uh, that vary based on things it's about selecting the right cloud provider, a very carbon thoughtful provider and the first step towards a sustainable cloud journey. >>And here we're looking at cloud operators, obviously they have different corporate commitments towards sustainability, and that determines how they plan, how they build, uh, their, uh, uh, the data centers, how they are consumed and assumptions that operate there and how they, or they retire their data centers. Then, uh, the next element that you want to do is how do you build it ambition, you know, for some of the companies, uh, and average on-prem, uh, drives about 65% energy reduction and the carbon emissions and reduction number was 84%, which is kind of good, I would say. But then if you could go up to 98% by configuring applications to the cloud, that is significant benefit for, uh, for the board. And obviously it's a, a greener cloud that we're talking about. And then the question is, how far can you go? And, uh, you know, the, obviously the companies have to unlock greater financial societal environmental benefits, and Accenture has this cloud based circular operations and sustainable products and services that we bring into play. So it's a, it's a very thoughtful, broader approach that w bringing in, in terms of, uh, just a simple concept of cloud migration, >>We know that in the COVID era, shifting to the cloud has really become a business imperative. How is Accenture working with its clients at a time when all of this movement has been accelerated? How do you partner and what is your approach in terms of helping them with their migration? >>Yeah, I mean, let, let me talk a little bit about the pandemic and the crisis that is there today. And if you really look at that in terms of how we partnered with a lot of our clients in terms of the cloud first approach, I'll give you a couple of examples. We worked with rolls Royce, McLaren, DHL, and others, as part of the ventilator challenge consortium, again, to, uh, coordinate production of medical ventilator surgically needed for the UK health service. Many of these farms I've taken similar initiatives in, in terms of, uh, you know, from a few manufacturers hand sanitizers and to hand sanitizers, and again, leading passionate labels, making PPE, and again, at the UN general assembly, we launched the end-to-end integration guide that helps company essentially to have a sustainable development goals. And that's how we have parking at a very large scale. >>Uh, and, and if you really look at how we work with our clients and what is Accenture's role there, uh, you know, from, in terms of our clients, you know, there are multiple steps that we look at. One is about, uh, planning, building, deploying, and managing an optimal green cloud solution. And Accenture has this concept of, uh, helping clients with a platform to kind of achieve that goal. And here we are having, we are having a platform or a mine app, which has a module called BGR advisor. And this is a capability that helps you provide optimal green cloud, uh, you know, a business case, and obviously a blueprint for each of our clients and right from the start in terms of how do we complete cloud migration recommendation to an improved solution, accurate accuracy to obviously bringing in the end to end perspective, uh, you know, with this green card advisor capability, we're helping our clients capture what we call as a carbon footprint for existing data centers and provide, uh, I would say the current cloud CO2 emission score that, you know, obviously helps them, uh, with carbon credits that can further that green agenda. >>So essentially this is about recommending a green index score, reducing carbon footprint for migration migrating for green cloud. And if we look at how Accenture itself is practicing what we preach, 95% of our applications are in the cloud. And this migration has helped us, uh, to lead to about $14.5 million in benefit. And in the third year and another 3 million analytics costs that are saved through right-sizing a service consumption. So it's a very broad umbrella and a footprint in terms of how we engage societaly with the UN or our clients. And what is it that we exactly bring to our clients in solving a specific problem? >>Accenture isn't is walking the walk, as you say yes. >>So that's that instead of it, we practice what we preach, and that is something that we take it to heart. We want to have a responsible business and we want to practice it. And we want to advise our clients around that >>You are your own use case. And so they can, they know they can take your advice. So talk a little bit about, um, the global, the cooperation that's needed. We know that conquering this pandemic is going to take a coordinated global effort and talk a little bit about the great reset initiative. First of all, what is that? Why don't we, why don't we start there and then we can delve into it a little bit more. >>Okay. So before we get to how we are cooperating, the great reset, uh, initiative is about improving the state of the world. And it's about a group of global stakeholders cooperating to simultaneously manage the direct consequences of their COVID-19 crisis. Uh, and in spirit of this cooperation that we're seeing during COVID-19, uh, which will obviously either to post pandemic, to tackle the world's pressing issues. As I say, uh, we are increasing companies to realize a combined potential of technology and sustainable impact to use enterprise solutions, to address with urgency and scale, and, um, obviously, uh, multiple challenges that are facing our world. One of the ways that you're increasing, uh, companies to reach their readiness cloud with Accenture's cloud core strategy is to build a solid foundation that is resilient and will be able to faster to the current, as well as future times. Now, when you think of cloud as the foundation, uh, that drives the digital transformation, it's about scale speed, streamlining your operations, and obviously reducing costs. >>And as these businesses seize the construct of cloud first, they must remain obviously responsible and trusted. Now think about this, right, as part of our analysis, uh, that profitability can co-exist with responsible and sustainable practices. Let's say that all the data centers, uh, migrated from on-prem to cloud based, we estimate that would reduce carbon emissions globally by 60 million tons per year. Uh, and think about it this way, right? Easier metric would be taking out 22 million cars off the road. Um, the other examples that you've seen, right, in terms of the NHS work that they're doing, uh, in, in UK to build, uh, uh, you know, uh, Microsoft teams in based integration. And, uh, the platform rolled out for 1.2 million in interest users, uh, and got 16,000 users that we were able to secure, uh, instant messages, obviously complete audio video calls and host virtual meetings across India. So, uh, this, this work that we did with NHS is something that we have are collaborating with a lot of tools and powering businesses. >>Well, you're vividly describing the business case for sustainability. What do you see as the future of cloud when thinking about it from this lens of sustainability, and also going back to what you were talking about in terms of how you are helping your, your fostering cooperation within these organizations. >>Yeah, that's a very good question. So if you look at today, right, businesses are obviously environmentally aware and they are expanding efforts to decrease power consumption, carbon emissions, and they want to run a sustainable operational efficiency across all elements of their business. And this is an increasing trend, and there is that option of energy efficient infrastructure in the global market. And this trend is the cloud first thinking. And with the right cloud migration that we've been discussing is about unlocking new opportunity, like clean energy foundations enable enabled by cloud based geographic analysis, material, waste reductions, and better data insights. And this is something that, uh, uh, we'll we'll drive, uh, with obviously faster analytics platform that is out there. Now, the sustainability is actually the future of business, which is companies that are historically different, the financial security or agility benefits to cloud. Now sustainability becomes an imperative for them. And I would on expedience Accenture's experience with cloud migrations, we have seen 30 to 40% total cost of ownership savings. And it's driving a greater workload, flexibility, better service, your obligation, and obviously more energy efficient, uh, public clouds that cost we'll see that, that drive a lot of these enterprise own data centers. So in our view, what we are seeing is that this, this, uh, sustainable cloud position helps, uh, helps companies to, uh, drive a lot of the goals in addition to their financial and other goods. >>So what should organizations who are, who are watching this interview and saying, Hey, I need to know more, what, what do you recommend to them? And what, where should they go to get more information on Greenplum? >>No, if you you're, if you are a business leader and you're thinking about which cloud provider is good, or how, how should applications be modernized to meet our day-to-day needs, which cloud driven innovations should be priorities. Uh, you know, that's why Accenture, uh, formed up the cloud first organization and essentially to provide the full stack of cloud services to help our clients become a cloud first business. Um, you know, it's all about excavation, uh, the digital transformation innovating faster, creating differentiated, uh, and sustainable value for our clients. And we're powering it up at 70,000 cloud professionals, $3 billion investment, and, uh, bringing together and services for our clients in terms of cloud solutions. And obviously the ecosystem partnership that we have that we are seeing today, uh, and the assets that help our clients realize their goals. Um, and again, to do reach out to us, uh, we can help them determine obviously, an optimal, sustainable cloud for solution that meets the business needs and being unprecedented levels of innovation. Our experience will be our advantage. And now more than ever, Rebecca, >>Just closing us out here. Do you have any advice for these companies who are navigating a great deal of uncertainty? We, what, what do you think the next 12 to 24 months? What do you think that should be on the minds of CEOs as they go through? >>So, as CEO's are thinking about rapidly leveraging cloud, migrating to cloud, uh, one of the elements that we want them to be thoughtful about is can they do that, uh, with unprecedent level of innovation, but also build a greener planet and a greener balance sheet, if we can achieve this balance and kind of, uh, have a, have a world which is greener, I think the world will win. And we all along with Accenture clients will win. That's what I would say, uh, >>Optimistic outlook. And I will take it. Thank you so much. Kishor for coming on the show >>That was >>Accenture's Kishor Dirk, I'm Rebecca Knight stay tuned for more of the cube virtuals coverage of the Accenture executive summit >>Around the globe. >>It's the cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent executive summit 2020, sponsored by Accenture and AWS. >>Welcome everyone to the cube virtual and our coverage of the Accenture executive summit. Part of AWS reinvent 2020. I'm your host Rebecca Knight. Today, we are talking about the power of three. And what happens when you bring together the scientific know-how of a global bias biopharmaceutical powerhouse in Takeda, a leading cloud services provider in AWS, and Accenture's ability to innovate, execute, and deliver innovation. Joining me to talk about these things. We have Aaron, sorry, Arjun, baby. He is the senior managing director and chairman of Accenture's diamond leadership council. Welcome Arjun Karl hick. He is the chief digital and information officer at Takeda. >>What is your bigger, thank you, Rebecca >>And Brian bowhead, global director, and head of the Accenture AWS business group at Amazon web services. Thanks so much for coming on. Thank you. So, as I said, we're talking today about this relationship between, uh, your three organizations. Carl, I want to talk with you. I know you're at the beginning of your cloud journey. What was the compelling reason? What, what, why, why move to the cloud and why now? >>Yeah, no, thank you for the question. So, you know, as a biopharmaceutical leader, we're committed to bringing better health and a brighter future to our patients. We're doing that by translating science into some really innovative and life transporting therapies, but throughout, you know, we believe that there's a responsible use of technology, of data and of innovation. And those three ingredients are really key to helping us deliver on that promise. And so, you know, while I think, uh, I'll call it, this cloud journey is already always been a part of our strategy. Um, and we've made some pretty steady progress over the last years with a number of I'll call it diverse approaches to the digital and AI. We just weren't seeing the impact at scale that we wanted to see. Um, and I think that, you know, there's a, there's a need ultimately to, you know, accelerate and, uh, broaden that shift. >>And, you know, we were commenting on this earlier, but there's, you know, it's been highlighted by a number of factors. One of those has been certainly a number of the large acquisitions we've made Shire, uh, being the most pressing example, uh, but also the global pandemic, both of those highlight the need for us to move faster, um, at the speed of cloud, ultimately. Uh, and so we started thinking outside of the box because it was taking us too long and we decided to leverage this strategic partner model. Uh, and it's giving us a chance to think about our challenges very differently. We call this the power of three, uh, and ultimately our focus is singularly on our patients. I mean, they're waiting for us. We need to get there faster. It can take years. And so I think that there is a focus on innovation, um, at a rapid speed, so we can move ultimately from treating conditions to keeping people healthy. >>So as you are embarking on this journey, what are some of the insights you want to share about, about what you're seeing so far? >>Yeah, no, it's a great question. So, I mean, look, maybe right before I highlight some of the key insights, uh, I would say that, you know, with cloud now as the, as the launchpad for innovation, you know, our vision all along has been that in less than 10 years, we want every single to kid, uh, associate we're employed to be empowered by an AI assistant. And I think that, you know, that's going to help us make faster, better decisions. That'll help us, uh, fundamentally deliver transformative therapies and better experiences to, to that ecosystem, to our patients, to physicians, to payers, et cetera, much faster than we previously thought possible. Um, and I think that technologies like cloud and edge computing together with a very powerful I'll call it data fabric is going to help us to create this, this real-time, uh, I'll call it the digital ecosystem. >>The data has to flow ultimately seamlessly between our patients and providers or partners or researchers, et cetera. Uh, and so we've been thinking about this, uh, I'll call it legal, hold up, sort of this pyramid, um, that helps us describe our vision. Uh, and a lot of it has to do with ultimately modernizing the foundation, modernizing and rearchitecting, the platforms that drive the company, uh, heightening our focus on data, which means that there's an accelerated shift towards enterprise data platforms and digital products. And then ultimately, uh, uh, P you know, really an engine for innovation sitting at the very top. Um, and so I think with that, you know, there's a few different, uh, I'll call it insights that, you know, are quickly kind of come zooming into focus. I would say one is this need to collaborate very differently. Um, you know, not only internally, but you know, how do we define ultimately, and build a connected digital ecosystem with the right partners and technologies externally? >>I think the second, uh, component that maybe people don't think as much about, but, you know, I find critically important is for us to find ways of really transforming our culture. We have to unlock talent and shift the culture certainly as a large biopharmaceutical very differently. And then lastly, you've touched on it already, which is, you know, innovation at the speed of cloud. How do we re-imagine that, you know, how do ideas go from getting tested and months to kind of getting tested in days? You know, how do we collaborate very differently? Uh, and so I think those are three, uh, perhaps of the larger I'll call it, uh, insights that, you know, the three of us are spending a lot of time thinking about right now. >>So Arjun, I want to bring you into this conversation a little bit. Let's, let's delve into those a bit. Talk first about the collaboration, uh, that Carl was referencing there. How, how have you seen that it is enabling, uh, colleagues and teams to communicate differently and interact in new and different ways? Uh, both internally and externally, as Carl said, >>No, th thank you for that. And, um, I've got to give call a lot of credit, because as we started to think about this journey, it was clear, it was a bold ambition. It was, uh, something that, you know, we had all to do differently. And so the, the concept of the power of three that Carl has constructed has become a label for us as a way to think about what are we going to do to collectively drive this journey forward. And to me, the unique ways of collaboration means three things. The first one is that, um, what is expected is that the three parties are going to come together and it's more than just the sum of our resources. And by that, I mean that we have to bring all of ourselves, all of our collective capabilities, as an example, Amazon has amazing supply chain capabilities. >>They're one of the best at supply chain. So in addition to resources, when we have supply chain innovations, uh, that's something that they're bringing in addition to just, uh, talent and assets, similarly for Accenture, right? We do a lot, uh, in the talent space. So how do we bring our thinking as to how we apply best practices for talent to this partnership? So, um, as we think about this, so that's, that's the first one, the second one is about shared success very early on in this partnership, we started to build some foundations and actually develop seven principles that all of us would look at as the basis for this success shared success model. And we continue to hold that sort of in the forefront, as we think about this collaboration. And maybe the third thing I would say is this one team mindset. So whether it's the three of our CEOs that get together every couple of months to think about, uh, this partnership, or it is the governance model that Carl has put together, which has all three parties in the governance and every level of leadership, we always think about this as a collective group, so that we can keep that front and center. >>And what I think ultimately has enabled us to do is it allowed us to move at speed, be more flexible. And ultimately all we're looking at the target the same way, the North side, the same way. >>Brian, what about you? What have you observed and what are you thinking about in terms of how this is helping teams collaborate differently? >>Yeah, absolutely. And RJ made some, some great points there. And I think if you really think about what he's talking about, it's that, that diversity of talent, diversity of skill and viewpoint and even culture, right? And so we see that in the power of three. And then I think if we drill down into what we see at Takeda, and frankly, Takeda was, was really, I think, pretty visionary and on their way here, right. And taking this kind of cross-functional approach and applying it to how they operate day to day. So moving from a more functional view of the world to more of a product oriented view of the world, right? So when you think about we're going to be organized around a product or a service or a capability that we're going to provide to our customers or our patients or donors in this case, it implies a different structure, although altogether, and a different way of thinking, right? >>Because now you've got technical people and business experts and marketing experts, all working together in this is sort of cross collaboration. And what's great about that is it's really the only way to succeed with cloud, right? Because the old ways of thinking where you've got application people and infrastructure, people in business, people is suboptimal, right? Because we can all access this tool was, and these capabilities and the best way to do that, isn't across kind of a cross collaborative way. And so this is product oriented mindset. It's a keto was already on. I think it's allowed us to move faster in those areas. >>Carl, I want to go back to this idea of unlocking talent and culture. And this is something that both Brian and Arjun have talked about too. People are, are an essential part of their, at the heart of your organization. How will their experience of work change and how are you helping re-imagine and reinforce a strong organizational culture, particularly at this time when so many people are working remotely. >>Yeah. It's a great question. And it's something that, you know, I think we all have to think a lot about, I mean, I think, um, you know, driving this, this call it, this, this digital and data kind of capability building, uh, takes a lot of, a lot of thinking. So, I mean, there's a few different elements in terms of how we're tackling this one is we're recognizing, and it's not just for the technology organization or for those actors that, that we're innovating with, but it's really across all of the Cato where we're working through ways of raising what I'll call the overall digital leaders literacy of the organization, you know, what are the, you know, what are the skills that are needed almost at a baseline level, even for a global bio-pharmaceutical company and how do we deploy, I'll call it those learning resources very broadly. >>And then secondly, I think that, you know, we're, we're very clear that there's a number of areas where there are very specialized skills that are needed. Uh, my organization is one of those. And so, you know, we're fostering ways in which, you know, we're very kind of quickly kind of creating, uh, avenues excitement for, for associates in that space. So one example specifically, as we use, you know, during these very much sort of remote, uh, sort of days, we, we use what we call global it days, and we set a day aside every single month and this last Friday, um, you know, we, we create during that time, it's time for personal development. Um, and we provide active seminars and training on things like, you know, robotic process automation, data analytics cloud, uh, in this last month we've been doing this for months and months now, but in his last month, more than 50% of my organization participated, and there's this huge positive shift, both in terms of access and excitement about really harnessing those new skills and being able to apply them. >>Uh, and so I think that that's, you know, one, one element that, uh, can be considered. And then thirdly, um, of course, every organization to work on, how do you prioritize talent, acquisition and management and competencies that you can't rescale? I mean, there are just some new capabilities that we don't have. And so there's a large focus that I have with our executive team and our CEO and thinking through those critical roles that we need to activate in order to kind of, to, to build on this, uh, this business led cloud transformation. And lastly, probably the hardest one, but the one that I'm most jazzed about is really this focus on changing the mindsets and behaviors. Um, and I think there, you know, this is where the power of three is, is really, uh, kind of coming together nicely. I mean, we're working on things like, you know, how do we create this patient obsessed curiosity, um, and really kind of unlock innovation with a real, kind of a growth mindset. >>Uh, and the level of curiosity that's needed, not to just continue to do the same things, but to really challenge the status quo. So that's one big area of focus we're having the agility to act just faster. I mean, to worry less, I guess I would say about kind of the standard chain of command, but how do you make more speedy, more courageous decisions? And this is places where we can emulate the way that a partner like AWS works, or how do we collaborate across the number of boundaries, you know, and I think, uh, Arjun spoke eloquently to a number of partnerships that we can build. So we can break down some of these barriers and use these networks, um, whether it's within our own internal ecosystem or externally to help, to create value faster. So a lot of energy around ways of working and we'll have to check back in, but I mean, we're early in on this mindset and behavioral shift, um, but a lot of good early momentum. >>Carl you've given me a good segue to talk to Brian about innovation, because you said a lot of the things that I was the customer obsession and this idea of innovating much more quickly. Obviously now the world has its eyes on drug development, and we've all learned a lot about it, uh, in the past few months and accelerating drug development is all, uh, is of great interest to all of us. Brian, how does a transformation like this help a company's, uh, ability to become more agile and more innovative and at a quicker speed to, >>Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think some of the things that Carl talked about just now are critical to that, right? I think where sometimes folks fall short is they think, you know, we're going to roll out the technology and the technology is going to be the silver bullet where we're, in fact it is the culture. It is, is the talent. And it's the focus on that. That's going to be, you know, the determinant of success. And I will say, you know, in this power of three arrangement and Carl talked a little bit about the pyramid, um, talent and culture and that change, and the kind of thinking about that has been a first-class citizen since the very beginning, right. That absolutely is critical for, for being there. Um, and, and so that's been, that's been key. And so we think about innovation at Amazon and AWS, and Carl mentioned some of the things that, you know, partner like AWS can bring to the table is we talk a lot about builders, right? >>So kind of obsessive about builders. Um, and, and we meet what we mean by that is we at Amazon, we hire for builders, we cultivate builders and we like to talk to our customers about it as well. And it also implies a different mindset, right? When you're a builder, you have that, that curiosity, you have that ownership, you have that stake in whatever I'm creating, I'm going to be a co-owner of this product or this service, right. Getting back to that kind of product oriented mindset. And it's not just the technical people or the it people who are builders. It is also the business people as, as Carl talked about. Right. So when we start thinking about, um, innovation again, where we see folks kind of get into a little bit of a innovation pilot paralysis, is that you can focus on the technology, but if you're not focusing on the talent and the culture and the processes and the mechanisms, you're going to be putting out technology, but you're not going to have an organization that's ready to take it and scale it and accelerate it. >>Right. And so that's, that's been absolutely critical. So just a couple of things we've been doing with, with Takeda and Decatur has really been leading the way is, think about a mechanism and a process. And it's really been working backward from the customer, right? In this case, again, the patient and the donor. And that was an easy one because the key value of Decatur is to be a patient focused bio-pharmaceutical right. So that was embedded in their DNA. So that working back from that, that patient, that donor was a key part of that process. And that's really deep in our DNA as well. And Accenture's, and so we were able to bring that together. The other one is, is, is getting used to experimenting and even perhaps failing, right. And being able to iterate and fail fast and experiment and understanding that, you know, some decisions, what we call it at Amazon or two-way doors, meaning you can go through that door, not like what you see and turn around and go back. And cloud really helps there because the costs of experimenting and the cost of failure is so much lower than it's ever been. You can do it much faster and the implications are so much less. So just a couple of things that we've been really driving, uh, with the cadence around innovation, that's been really critical. Carl, where are you already seeing signs of success? >>Yeah, no, it's a great question. And so we chose, you know, uh, with our focus on innovation to try to unleash maybe the power of data digital in, uh, in focusing on what I call sort of a Maven. And so we chose our, our, our plasma derived therapy business, um, and you know, the plasma-derived therapy business unit, it develops critical life-saving therapies for patients with rare and complex diseases. Um, but what we're doing is by bringing kind of our energy together, we're focusing on creating, I'll call it state of the art digitally connected donation centers. And we're really modernizing, you know, the, the, the donor experience right now, we're trying to, uh, improve also I'll call it the overall plasma collection process. And so we've, uh, selected a number of alcohol at a very high speed pilots that we're working through right now, specifically in this, in this area. And we're seeing >>Really great results already. Um, and so that's, that's one specific area of focus are Jen, I want you to close this out here. Any ideas, any best practices advice you would have for other pharmaceutical companies that are, that are at the early stage of their cloud journey? Yes. Sorry. Arjun. >>Yeah, no, I was breaking up a bit. No, I think they, um, the key is what what's sort of been great for me to see is that when people think about cloud, you know, you always think about infrastructure technology. The reality is that the cloud is really the true enabler for innovation and innovating at scale. And, and if you think about that, right, in all the components that you need, uh, ultimately that's where the value is for the company, right? Because yes, you're going to get some cost synergies and that's great, but the true value is in how do we transform the organization in the case of the Qaeda and the life sciences clients, right. We're trying to take a 14 year process of research and development that takes billions of dollars and compress that right. Tremendous amounts of innovation opportunity. You think about the commercial aspect, lots of innovation can come there. The plasma derived therapy is a great example of how we're going to really innovate to change the trajectory of that business. So I think innovation is at the heart of what most organizations need to do. And the formula, the cocktail that Takeda has constructed with this Fuji program really has all the ingredients, um, that are required for that success. >>Great. Well, thank you so much. Arjun, Brian and Carl was really an enlightening conversation. >>Thank you. Yeah, it's been fun. Thanks Rebecca. >>And thank you for tuning into the cube. Virtual is coverage of the Accenture executive summit >>From around the globe. It's the cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent executive summit 2020, sponsored by Accenture and AWS. >>Welcome everyone to the cubes coverage of Accenture executive summit here at AWS reinvent. I'm your host Rebecca Knight for this segment? We have two guests. First. We have Helen Davis. She is the senior director of cloud platform services, assistant director for it and digital for the West Midlands police. Thanks so much for coming on the show, Helen, and we also have Matthew lb. He is Accenture health and public service associate director and West Midlands police account lead. Thanks so much for coming on the show. Matthew, thank you for joining us. So we are going to be talking about delivering data-driven insights to the West Midlands police force. Helen, I want to start with >>You. Can you tell us a little bit about the West Midlands police force? How big is the force and also what were some of the challenges that you were grappling with prior to this initiative? >>Yeah, certainly. So Westerners police is the second largest police force in the UK, outside of the metropolitan police in London. Um, we have an excessive, um, 11,000 people work at Westman ins police serving communities, um, through, across the Midlands region. So geographically, we're quite a big area as well, as well as, um, being population, um, density, having that as a, at a high level. Um, so the reason we sort of embarked on the data-driven insights platform and it, which was a huge change for us was for a number of reasons. Um, namely we had a lot of disparate data, um, which was spread across a range of legacy systems that were many, many years old, um, with some duplication of what was being captured and no single view for offices or, um, support staff. Um, some of the access was limited. You have to be in a, in an actual police building on a desktop computer to access it. Um, other information could only reach the offices on the front line, through a telephone call back to one of our enabling services where they would do a manual checkup, um, look at the information, then call the offices back, um, and tell them what they needed to know. So it was a very long laborious, um, process and not very efficient. Um, and we certainly weren't exploiting the data that we had in a very productive way. >>So it sounds like as you're describing, and I'm old clunky system that needed a technological, uh, reimagination. So what was the main motivation for, for doing, for making this shift? >>It was really, um, about making us more efficient and more effective in how we do how we do business. So, um, you know, certainly as a, as an it leader and some of my operational colleagues, we recognize the benefits, um, that data analytics could bring in, uh, in a policing environment, not something that was, um, really done in the UK at the time. You know, we have a lot of data, so we're very data rich and the information that we have, but we needed to turn it into information that was actionable. So that's where we started looking for, um, technology partners and suppliers to help us and sort of help us really with what's the art of the possible, you know, this hasn't been done before. So what could we do in this space? That's appropriate, >>Helen. I love that idea. What is the art of the possible, can you tell us a little bit about why you chose AWS? >>I think really, you know, as with all things and when we're procuring a partner in the public sector that, you know, there are many rules and regulations quite rightly as you would expect that to be because we're spending public money. So we have to be very, very careful and, um, it's, it's a long process and we have to be open to public scrutiny. So, um, we sort of look to everything, everything that was available as part of that process, but we recognize the benefits that Clyde would provide in this space because, you know, we're like moving to a cloud environment. We would literally be replacing something that was legacy with something that was a bit more modern. Um, that's not what we wanted to do. Our ambition was far greater than that. So I think, um, in terms of AWS, really, it was around scalability, interoperability, you know, just us things like the disaster recovery service, the fact that we can scale up and down quickly, we call it dialing up and dialing back. Um, you know, it's it's page go. So it just sort of ticked all the boxes for us. And then we went through the full procurement process, fortunately, um, it came out on top for us. So we were, we were able to move forward, but it just sort of had everything that we were looking for in that space. >>Matthew, I want to bring you into the conversation a little bit here. How are you working with a wet with the West Midlands police, sorry. And helping them implement this cloud-first >>Yeah, so I guess, um, by January the West Midlands police started, um, favorite five years ago now. So, um, we set up a partnership with the fools. I wanted to operate in a way that was very different to a traditional supplier relationship. Um, secretary that the data difference insights program is, is one of many that we've been working with last on, um, over the last five years, um, as having said already, um, cloud gave a number of, uh, advantages certainly from a big data perspective and things that, that enabled us today. Um, I'm from an Accenture perspective that allowed us to bring in a number of the different teams that we have say, cloud teams, security teams, um, and drafted from an insurance perspective, as well as the more traditional services that people would associate with the country. >>I mean, so much of this is about embracing comprehensive change to experiment and innovate and try different things. Matthew, how, how do you help, uh, an entity like West Midlands police think differently when they are, there are these ways of doing things that people are used to, how do you help them think about what is the art of the possible, as Helen said, >>There's a few things to that enable those being critical is trying to co-create solutions together. Yeah. There's no point just turning up with, um, what we think is the right answer, try and say, um, collectively work three, um, the issues that the fullest is seeing and the outcomes they're looking to achieve rather than simply focusing on a long list of requirements, I think was critical and then being really open to working together to create the right solution. Um, rather than just, you know, trying to pick something off the shelf that maybe doesn't fit the forces requirements in the way that it should too, >>Right. It's not always a one size fits all. >>Obviously, you know, today what we believe is critical is making sure that we're creating something that met the forces needs, um, in terms of the outcomes they're looking to achieve the financial envelopes that were available, um, and how we can deliver those in a, uh, iterative agile way, um, rather than spending years and years, um, working towards an outcome, um, that is gonna update before you even get that. >>So Helen, how, how are things different? What kinds of business functions and processes have been re-imagined in, in light of this change and this shift >>It's, it's actually unrecognizable now, um, in certain areas of the business as it was before. So to give you a little bit of, of context, when we, um, started working with essentially an AWS on the data driven insights program, it was very much around providing, um, what was called locally, a wizzy tool for our intelligence analyst to interrogate data, look at data, you know, decide whether they could do anything predictive with it. And it was very much sort of a back office function to sort of tidy things up for us and make us a bit better in that, in that area or a lot better in that area. And it was rolled out to a number of offices, a small number on the front line. Um, and really it was, um, in line with a mobility strategy that we, hardware officers were getting new smartphones for the first time, um, to do sort of a lot of things on, on, um, policing apps and things like that to again, to avoid them, having to keep driving back to police stations, et cetera. >>And the pilot was so successful. Every officer now has access to this data, um, on their mobile devices. So it literally went from a handful of people in an office somewhere using it to do sort of clever whizzbang things to, um, every officer in the force, being able to access that level of data at their fingertips. Literally. So what they were touched we've done before is if they needed to check and address or check details of an individual, um, just as one example, they would either have to, in many cases, go back to a police station to look it up themselves on a desktop computer. Well, they would have to make a call back to a centralized function and speak to an operator, relay the questions, either, wait for the answer or wait for a call back with the answer when those people are doing the data interrogation manually. >>So the biggest change for us is the self-service nature of the data we now have available. So officers can do it themselves on their phone, wherever they might be. So the efficiency savings from that point of view are immense. And I think just parallel to that is the quality of our, because we had a lot of data, but just because you've got a lot of data and a lot of information doesn't mean it's big data and it's valuable necessarily. Um, so again, it was having the single source of truth as we, as we call it. So you know that when you are completing those safe searches and getting the responses back, that it is the most accurate information we hold. And also you're getting it back within minutes, as opposed to, you know, half an hour, an hour or a drive back to a station. So it's making officers more efficient and it's also making them safer. The more efficient they are, the more time they have to spend out with the public doing what they, you know, we all should be doing, >>Seen that kind of return on investment, because what you were just describing with all the steps that we needed to be taken in prior to this, to verify an address say, and those are precious seconds when someone's life is on the line in, in sort of in the course of everyday police work. >>Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. It's difficult to put a price on it. It's difficult to quantify. Um, but all the, you know, the minutes here and that certainly add up to a significant amount of efficiency savings, and we've certainly been able to demonstrate the officers are spending less time up police stations as a result or more time out on the front frontline also they're safer because they can get information about what may or may not be and address what may or may not have occurred in an area before very, very quickly without having to wait. >>Thank you. I want to hear your observations of working so closely with this West Midlands police. Have you noticed anything about changes in its culture and its operating model in how police officers interact with one another? Have you seen any changes since this technology change? >>What's unique about the Western new misplaces, the buy-in from the top down, the chief and his exact team and Helen as the leader from an IOT perspective, um, the entire force is bought in. So what is a significant change program? Uh, I'm not trickles three. Um, everyone in the organization, um, change is difficult. Um, and there's a lot of time effort. That's been put into both the technical delivery and the business change and adoption aspects around each of the projects. Um, but you can see the step change that is making in each aspect to the organization, uh, and where that's putting West Midlands police as a leader in, um, technology I'm policing in the UK. And I think globally, >>And this is a question for both of you because Matthew, as you said, change is difficult and there is always a certain intransigence in workplaces about this is just the way we've always done things and we're used to this and don't try us to get us. Don't try to get us to do anything new here. It works. How do you get the buy-in that you need to do this kind of digital transformation? >>I think it, it would be wrong to say it was easy. Um, um, we also have to bear in mind that this was one program in a five-year program. So there was a lot of change going on, um, both internally for some of our back office functions, as well as front Tai, uh, frontline offices. So with DDI in particular, I think the stat change occurred when people could see what it could do for them. You know, we had lots of workshops and seminars where we all talk about, you know, big data and it's going to be great and it's data analytics and it's transformational, you know, and quite rightly people that are very busy doing a day job that not necessarily technologists in the main and, you know, are particularly interested quite rightly so in what we are not dealing with the cloud, you know? >>And it was like, yeah, okay. It's one more thing. And then when they started to see on that, on their phones and what teams could do, that's when it started to sell itself. And I think that's when we started to see, you know, to see the stat change, you know, and, and if we, if we have any issues now it's literally, you know, our help desks in meltdown. Cause everyone's like, well, we call it manage without this anymore. And I think that speaks for itself. So it doesn't happen overnight. It's sort of incremental changes and then that's a step change in attitude. And when they see it working and they see the benefits, they want to use it more. And that's how it's become fundamental to all policing by itself, really, without much selling >>You, Helen just made a compelling case for how to get buy in. Have you discovered any other best practices when you are trying to get everyone on board for this kind of thing? >>We've um, we've used a lot of the traditional techniques, things around comms and engagement. We've also used things like, um, the 30 day challenge and nudge theory around how can we gradually encourage people to use things? Um, I think there's a point where all of this around, how do we just keep it simple and keep it user centric from an end user perspective? I think DDI is a great example of where the, the technology is incredibly complex. The solution itself is, um, you know, extremely large and, um, has been very difficult to, um, get delivered. But at the heart of it is a very simple front end for the user to encourage it and take that complexity away from them. Uh, I think that's been critical through the whole piece of DDR. >>One final word from Helen. I want to hear, where do you go from here? What is the longterm vision? I know that this has made productivity, um, productivity savings equivalent to 154 full-time officers. Uh, what's next, >>I think really it's around, um, exploiting what we've got. Um, I use the phrase quite a lot, dialing it up, which drives my technical architects crazy. But so, because it's apparently not that simple, but, um, you know, we've, we've been through significant change in the last five years and we are still continuing to batch all of those changes into everyday, um, operational policing. But what we need to see is we need to exploit and build on the investments that we've made in terms of data and claims specifically, the next step really is about expanding our pool of data and our functions. Um, so that, you know, we keep getting better and better at this. And the more we do, the more data we have, the more refined we can be, the more precise we are with all of our actions. Um, you know, we're always being expected to, again, look after the public purse and do more for less. >>And I think this is certainly an and our cloud journey and, and cloud first by design, which is where we are now, um, is helping us to be future-proofed. So for us, it's very much an investment. And I see now that we have good at embedded in operational policing for me, this is the start of our journey, not the end. So it's really exciting to see where we can go from here. Exciting times. Indeed. Thank you so much. Lily, Helen and Matthew for joining us. I really appreciate it. Thank you. And you are watching the cube stay tuned for more of the cubes coverage of the AWS reinvent Accenture executive summit. I'm Rebecca Knight from around the globe. It's the cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent executive summit 2020, sponsored by Accenture and AWS. >>Welcome to the cube virtual coverage of the executive summit at AWS reinvent 2020 virtual. This is the cube virtual. We can't be there in person like we are every year we have to be remote. This executive summit is with special programming supported by Accenture where the cube virtual I'm your host John for a year, we had a great panel here called uncloud first digital transformation from some experts, Stuart driver, the director of it and infrastructure and operates at lion Australia, Douglas Regan, managing director, client account lead at lion for Accenture as a deep Islam associate director application development lead for Centure gentlemen, thanks for coming on the cube virtual that's a mouthful, all that digital, but the bottom line it's cloud transformation. This is a journey that you guys have been on together for over 10 years to be really a digital company. Now, some things have happened in the past year that kind of brings all this together. This is about the next generation organization. So I want to ask Stuart you first, if you can talk about this transformation at lion has undertaken some of the challenges and opportunities and how this year in particular has brought it together because you know, COVID has been the accelerant of digital transformation. Well, if you're 10 years in, I'm sure you're there. You're in the, uh, on that wave right now. Take a minute to explain this transformation journey. >>Yeah, sure. So a number of years back, we, we looked at kind of our infrastructure in our landscape trying to figure out where we >>Wanted to go next. And we were very analog based and stuck in the old it groove of, you know, Capitol reef rash, um, struggling to transform, struggling to get to a digital platform and we needed to change it up so that we could become very different business to the one that we were back then obviously cloud is an accelerant to that. And we had a number of initiatives that needed a platform to build on. And a cloud infrastructure was the way that we started to do that. So we went through a number of transformation programs that we didn't want to do that in the old world. We wanted to do it in a new world. So for us, it was partnering up with a dried organizations that can take you on the journey and, uh, you know, start to deliver bit by bit incremental progress, uh, to get to the, uh, I guess the promise land. >>Um, we're not, not all the way there, but to where we're on the way along. And then when you get to some of the challenges like we've had this year, um, it makes all of the hard work worthwhile because you can actually change pretty quickly, um, provide capacity and, uh, and increase your environments and, you know, do the things that you need to do in a much more dynamic way than we would have been able to previously where we might've been waiting for the hardware vendors, et cetera, to deliver capacity. So for us this year, it's been a pretty strong year from an it perspective and delivering for the business needs >>Before I hit the Douglas. I want to just real quick, a redirect to you and say, you know, if all the people said, Oh yeah, you got to jump on cloud, get in early, you know, a lot of naysayers like, well, wait till to mature a little bit, really, if you got in early and you, you know, paying your dues, if you will taking that medicine with the cloud, you're really kind of peaking at the right time. Is that true? Is that one of the benefits that comes out of this getting in the cloud? Yeah, >>John, this has been an unprecedented year, right. And, um, you know, Australia, we had to live through Bush fires and then we had covert and, and then we actually had to deliver a, um, a project on very nice transformational project, completely remote. And then we also had had some, some cyber challenges, which is public as well. And I don't think if we weren't moved into and enabled through the cloud, we would have been able to achieve that this year. It would have been much different and would have been very difficult to do the backing. We're able to work and partner with Amazon through this year, which is unprecedented and actually come out the other end and we've delivered a brand new digital capability across the entire business. Um, in many, you know, wouldn't have been impossible if we could, I guess, stayed in the old world. The fact that we were moved into the new Naval by the new allowed us to work in this unprecedented year. >>Just quilt. What's your personal view on this? Because I've been saying on the Cuban reporting necessity is the mother of all invention and the word agility has been kicked around as kind of a cliche, Oh, it'd be agile. You know, we're going to get the city, you get a minute on specifically, but from your perspective, uh, Douglas, what does that mean to you? Because there is benefits there for being agile. And >>I mean, I think as Stuart mentioned, right, in a lot of these things we try to do and, you know, typically, you know, hardware and, uh, the last >>To be told and, and, and always on the critical path to be done, we really didn't have that in this case, what we were doing with our projects in our deployments, right. We were able to move quickly able to make decisions in line with the business and really get things going. Right. So you see a lot of times in a traditional world, you have these inhibitors, you have these critical path, it takes weeks and months to get things done as opposed to hours and days, and, and truly allowed us to, we had to, you know, VJ things, move things. And, you know, we were able to do that in this environment with AWS to support and the fact that they can kind of turn things off and on as quickly as we needed. >>Yeah. Cloud-scale is great for speed. So DECA, Gardez get your thoughts on this cloud first mission, you know, it, you know, the dev ops world, they saw this early, that jumping in there, they saw the, the, the agility. Now the theme this year is modern applications with the COVID pandemic pressure, there's real business pressure to make that happen. How did you guys learn to get there fast? And what specifically did you guys do at Accenture and how did it all come together? Can you take us inside kind of how it played out? >>Right. So, yeah, we started off with, as we do in most cases with a much more bigger group, and we worked with lions functional experts and, uh, the lost knowledge that allowed the infrastructure had. Um, we then applied our journey to cloud strategy, which basically revolves around the seminars and, and, uh, you know, the deep three steps from our perspective, uh, assessing the current and bottom and setting up the new cloud environment. And as we go modernizing and, and migrating these applications to the cloud now, you know, one of the key things that, uh, you know, we learned along this journey was that, you know, you can have the best plans, but bottom line that we were dealing with, we often than not have to make changes, uh, what a lot of agility and also work with a lot of collaboration with the, uh, lion team, as well as, uh, uh, AWS. I think the key thing for me was being able to really bring it all together. It's not just, uh, you know, we want to hear it's all of us working together to make this happen. >>What were some of the learnings real quick journey there? >>So I think perspective, the key learnings were that, you know, uh, you know, work, when you look back at, uh, the, the infrastructure that was that we were trying to migrate over to the cloud. A lot of the documentation, et cetera, was not, uh, available. We were having to, uh, figure out a lot of things on the fly. Now that really required us to have, uh, uh, people with deep expertise who could go into those environments and, and work out, uh, you know, the best ways to, to migrate the workloads to the cloud. Uh, I think, you know, the, the biggest thing for me was making sure all the had on that real SMEs across the board globally, that we could leverage across the various technologies, uh, uh, and, and, and, you know, that would really work in our collaborative and agile environment with line. >>Let's do what I got to ask you. How did you address your approach to the cloud and what was your experience? >>Yeah, for me, it's around getting the foundations right. To start with and then building on them. Um, so, you know, you've got to have your, your, your process and you've got to have your, your kind of your infrastructure there and your blueprints ready. Um, AWS do a great job of that, right. Getting the foundations right. And then building upon it, and then, you know, partnering with Accenture allows you to do that very successfully. Um, I think, um, you know, the one thing that was probably surprising to us when we started down this journey and kind of after we got a long way down the track and looking backwards is actually how much you can just turn off. Right? So a lot of stuff that you, uh, you get electric with a legacy in your environment, and when you start to work through it with the types of people that civic just mentioned, you know, the technical expertise working with the business, um, you can really rationalize your environment and, uh, you know, cloud is a good opportunity to do that, to drive that legacy out. >>Um, so you know, a few things there, the other thing is, um, you've got to try and figure out the benefits that you're going to get out of moving here. So there's no point in just taking something that is not delivering a huge amount of value in the traditional world, moving it into the cloud, and guess what is going to deliver the same limited amount of value. So you've got to transform it, and you've got to make sure that you build it for the future and understand exactly what you're trying to gain out of it. So again, you need a strong collaboration. You need a good partners to work with, and you need good engagement from the business as well, because the kind of, uh, you know, digital transformation, cloud transformation, isn't really an it project, I guess, fundamentally it is at the core, but it's a business project that you've got to get the whole business aligned on. You've got to make sure that your investment streams are appropriate and that's, uh, you're able to understand the benefits and the value that say, you're going to drive back towards the business. >>Let's do it. If you don't mind me asking, what was some of the obstacles you encountered or learnings, um, that might different from the expectation we all been there, Hey, you know, we're going to change the world. Here's the sales pitch, here's the outcome. And then obviously things happen, you know, you learn legacy, okay. Let's put some containerization around that cloud native, um, all that rational. You're talking about what are, and you're going to have obstacles. That's how you learn. That's how perfection has developed. How, what obstacles did you come up with and how are they different from your expectations going in? >>Yeah, they're probably no different from other people that have gone down the same journey. If I'm totally honest, the, you know, 70 or 80% of what you do is relatively easy of the known quantity. It's relatively modern architectures and infrastructures, and you can upgrade, migrate, move them into the cloud, whatever it is, rehost, replatform, rearchitect, whatever it is you want to do, it's the other stuff, right? It's the stuff that always gets left behind. And that's the challenge. It's, it's getting that last bit over the line and making sure that you haven't been invested in the future while still carrying all of your legacy costs and complexity within your environment. So, um, to be quite honest, that's probably taken longer and has been more of a challenge than we thought it would be. Um, the other piece I touched on earlier on in terms of what was surprising was actually how much of, uh, your environment is actually not needed anymore. >>When you start to put a critical eye across it and understand, um, uh, ask the tough questions and start to understand exactly what, what it is you're trying to achieve. So if you ask a part of a business, do they still need this application or this service a hundred percent of the time, they will say yes until you start to lay out to them, okay, now I'm going to cost you this to migrate it or this, to run it in the future. And, you know, here's your ongoing costs and, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And then, uh, for a significant amount of those answers, you get a different response when you start to layer on the true value of it. So you start to flush out those hidden costs within the business, and you start to make some critical decisions as a company based on, uh, based on that. So that was a little tougher than we first thought and probably broader than we thought there was more of that than we anticipated, um, which actually results in a much cleaner environment, post post migration, >>You know, the old expression, if it moves automated, you know, it's kind of a joke on government, how they want to tax everything, you know, you want to automate, that's a key thing in cloud, and you've got to discover those opportunities to create value Stuart and Siddique. Mainly if you can weigh in on this love to know the percentage of total cloud that you have now, versus when you started, because as you start to uncover whether it's by design for purpose, or you discover opportunity to innovate, like you guys have, I'm sure it kind of, you took on some territory inside Lyon, what percentage of cloud now versus start? >>Yeah. And at the start it was minimal, right. You know, close to zero, right. Single and single digits. Right. It was mainly SAS environments that we had, uh, sitting in clouds when we, uh, when we started, um, Doug mentioned earlier on a really significant transformation project, um, that we've undertaken and recently gone live on a multi-year one. Um, you know, that's all stood up on AWS and is a significant portion of our environment, um, in terms of what we can move to cloud. Uh, we're probably at about 80 or 90% now. And the balance bit is, um, legacy infrastructure that is just going to retire as we go through the cycle rather than migrate to the cloud. Um, so we are significantly cloud-based and, uh, you know, we're reaping the benefits of it in a year, like 2020, and makes you glad that you did all of the hard yards in the previous years when you started that business challenges thrown out as, >>So do you any common reaction still the cloud percentage penetration? >>Sorry, I didn't, I didn't guys don't, but I, I was going to say it was, I think it's like the 80 20 rule, right? We, we, we worked really hard in the, you know, I think 2018, 19 to get any person off, uh, after getting onto the cloud and, or the last year is the 20% that we have been migrating. And Stuart said like a non-athlete that is also, that's going to be the diet. And I think our next big step is going to be obviously, you know, the icing on the cake, which is to decommission all these apps as well. Right. So, you know, to get the real benefits out of, uh, the whole conservation program from a, uh, from a >>Douglas and Stewart, can you guys talk about the decision around the cloud because you guys have had success with AWS, why AWS how's that decision made? Can you guys give some insight into some of those thoughts? >>I can, I can start, start off. I think back when the decision was made and it was, Oh, it was a while back, um, you know, there's some clear advantages of moving relay, Ws, a lot of alignment with some of the significant projects and, uh, the trend, that particular one big transformation project that we've alluded to as well. Um, you know, we needed some, um, some very robust and, um, just future proof and, um, proven technology. And AWS gave that to us. We needed a lot of those blueprints to help us move down the path. We didn't want to reinvent everything. So, um, you know, having a lot of that legwork done for us and an AWS gives you that, right. And particularly when you partner up with, uh, with a company like Accenture as well, you get combinations of the technology and the skills and the knowledge to, to move you forward in that direction. >>So, um, you know, for us, it was a, uh, uh, it was a decision based on, you know, best of breed, um, you know, looking forward and, and trying to predict the future needs and, and, and kind of the environmental that we might need. Um, and, you know, partnering up with organizations that can take you on the journey. Yeah. And just to build on it. So obviously, you know, lion's like an NWS, but, you know, we knew it was a very good choice given that, um, uh, the skills and the capability that we had, as well as the assets and tools we had to get the most out of, um, out of AWS. And obviously our, our CEO globally is just spending, you know, announcement about a huge investment that we're making in cloud. Um, but you know, we've, we've worked very well. AWS, we've done some joint workshops and joint investments, um, some joint POC. So yeah, w we have a very good working relationship, AWS, and I think, um, one incident to reflect upon whether it's cyber it's and again, where we actually jointly, you know, dove in with, um, with Amazon and some of their security experts and our experts. And we're able to actually work through that with mine quite successful. So, um, you know, really good behaviors as an organization, but also really good capabilities. >>Yeah. As you guys, you're essential cloud outcomes, research shown, it's the cycle of innovation with the cloud. That's creating a lot of benefits, knowing what you guys know now, looking back certainly COVID is impacted a lot of people kind of going through the same process, knowing what you guys know now, would you advocate people to jump on this transformation journey? If so, how, and what tweaks they make, which changes, what would you advise? >>Uh, I might take that one to start with. Um, I hate to think where we would have been when, uh, COVID kicked off here in Australia and, you know, we were all sent home, literally were at work on the Friday, and then over the weekend. And then Monday, we were told not to come back into the office and all of a sudden, um, our capacity in terms of remote access and I quadrupled, or more four, five X, what we had on the Friday we needed on the Monday. And we were able to stand that up during the day Monday into Tuesday, because we were cloud-based and, uh, you know, we just spun up your instances and, uh, you know, sort of our licensing, et cetera. And we had all of our people working remotely, um, within, uh, you know, effectively one business day. Um, I know peers of mine in other organizations and industries that are relying on kind of a traditional wise and getting hardware, et cetera, that were weeks and months before they could get there the right hardware to be able to deliver to their user base. >>So, um, you know, one example where you're able to scale and, uh, um, get, uh, get value out of this platform beyond probably what was anticipated at the time you talk about, um, you know, less the, in all of these kinds of things. And you can also think of a few scenarios, but real world ones where you're getting your business back up and running in that period of time is, is just phenomenal. There's other stuff, right? There's these programs that we've rolled out, you do your sizing, um, and in the traditional world, you would just go out and buy more servers than you need. And, you know, probably never realize the full value of those, you know, the capability of those servers over the life cycle of them. Whereas, you know, in a cloud world, you put in what you think is right. And if it's not right, you pump it up a little bit when, when all of your metrics and so on, tell you that you need to bump it up. And conversely you scale it down at the same rate. So for us, with the types of challenges and programs and, uh, uh, and just business need, that's come at as this year, uh, we wouldn't have been able to do it without a strong cloud base, uh, to, uh, to move forward. >>You know, Douglas, one of the things I talked to, a lot of people on the right side of history who have been on the right wave with cloud, with the pandemic, and they're happy, they're like, and they're humble. Like, well, we're just lucky, you know, luck is preparation meets opportunity. And this is really about you guys getting in early and being prepared and readiness. This is kind of important as people realize, then you gotta be ready. I mean, it's not just, you don't get lucky by being in the right place, the right time. And there were a lot of companies were on the wrong side of history here who might get washed away. This is a super important, I think, >>To echo and kind of building on what Stewart said. I think that the reason that we've had success and I guess the momentum is we didn't just do it in isolation within it and technology. It was actually linked to broader business changes, you know, creating basically a digital platform for the entire business, moving the business, where are they going to be able to come back stronger after COVID, when they're actually set up for growth, um, and actually allows, you know, a line to achievements growth objectives, and also its ambitions as far as what it wants to do, uh, with growth in whatever they make, do with acquiring other companies and moving into different markets and launching new products. So we've actually done it in a way that is, you know, real and direct business benefit, uh, that actually enables line to grow >>General. I really appreciate you coming. I have one final question. If you can wrap up here, uh, Stuart and Douglas, you don't mind weighing in what's the priorities for the future. What's next for lion in a century >>Christmas holidays, I'll start Christmas holidays. I spent a good year and then a, and then a reset, obviously, right? So, um, you know, it's, it's figuring out, uh, transform what we've already transformed, if that makes sense. So God, a huge proportion of our services sitting in the cloud. Um, but we know we're not done even with the stuff that is in there. We need to take those next steps. We need more and more automation and orchestration. We need to, um, our environment is more future proof. We need to be able to work with the business and understand what's coming at them so that we can, um, you know, build that into, into our environment. So again, it's really transformation on top of transformation is the way that I'll describe it. And it's really an open book, right? Once you get it in and you've got the capabilities and the evolving tool sets that AWS continue to bring to the market based, um, you know, working with the partners to, to figure out how we unlock that value, um, you know, drive our costs down efficiency, uh, all of those kind of, you know, standard metrics. >>Um, but you know, we're looking for the next things to transform and showed value back out to our customer base, um, that, uh, that we continue to, you know, sell our products to and work with and understand how we can better meet their needs. Yeah, I think just to echo that, I think it's really leveraging this and then did you capability they have and getting the most out of that investment. And then I think it's also moving to, uh, and adopting more new ways of working as far as, you know, the speed of the business, um, is getting up to speed in the market is changing. So being able to launch and do things quickly and also, um, competitive and efficient operating costs, uh, now that they're in the cloud, right? So I think it's really leveraging the most out of the platform and then, you know, being efficient in launching things. So putting them with >>Siddique, any word from you on your priorities by you see this year in folding, >>There's got to say like e-learning squares, right, for me around, you know, just journey. This is a journey to the cloud, right? >>And, uh, you know, as well dug into sort of Saturday, it's getting all, you know, different parts of the organization along the journey business to it, to your, uh, product lenders, et cetera. Right. And it takes time. It is tough, but, uh, uh, you know, you got to get started on it. And, you know, once we, once we finish off, uh, it's the realization of the benefits now that, you know, looking forward, I think for, from Alliance perspective, it is, uh, you know, once we migrate all the workloads to the cloud, it is leveraging, uh, all stack drive. And as I think Stewart said earlier, uh, with, uh, you know, the latest and greatest stuff that AWS it's basically working to see how we can really, uh, achieve more better operational excellence, uh, from a, uh, from a cloud perspective. >>Well, Stewart, thanks for coming on with a and sharing your environment and what's going on and your journey you're on the right wave. Did the work you're in, it's all coming together with faster, congratulations for your success, and, uh, really appreciate Douglas with Steve for coming on as well from essential. Thank you for coming on. Thanks, John. Okay. Just the cubes coverage of executive summit at AWS reinvent. This is where all the thought leaders share their best practices, their journeys, and of course, special programming with Accenture and the cube. I'm Sean ferry, your host, thanks for watching from around the globe. It's the cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent executive summit 2020, sponsored by Accenture and AWS. >>Welcome everyone to the cube virtuals coverage of the Accenture executive summit. Part of AWS reinvent 2020. I'm your host Rebecca Knight. We are talking today about reinventing the energy data platform. We have two guests joining us. First. We have Johan Krebbers. He is the GM digital emerging technologies and VP of it. Innovation at shell. Thank you so much for coming on the show, Johan you're welcome. And next we have Liz Dennett. She is the lead solution architect for O S D U on AWS. Thank you so much, Liz, maybe here. So I want to start our conversation by talking about OSD. You like so many great innovations. It started with a problem. Johann, what was the problem you were trying to solve at shell? We go back a couple of years, we started summer 2017, where we had a meeting with the guys from exploration in shell, and the main problem they had, of course, they got lots of lots of data, but are unable to find the right data. They need to work from all over the place and told him >>To, and we'll probably try to solve is how that person working exploration could find their proper date, not just a day, but also the date you really needed that we did probably talked about is summer 2017. And we said, okay, the only way ABC is moving forward is to start pulling that data into a single data platform. And that, that was at the time that we called it as the, you, the subsurface data universe in there was about the shell name was so in, in January, 2018, we started a project with Amazon to start grating a co fricking that building, that Stu environment, that the, the universe, so that single data level to put all your exploration and Wells data into that single environment that was intent. And every cent, um, already in March of that same year, we said, well, from Michele point of view, we will be far better off if we could make this an industry solution and not just a shelf solution, because Shelby, Shelby, if you can make an industry solution, but people are developing applications for it. >>It also is far better than for shell to say we haven't shell special solution because we don't make money out of how we start a day that we can make money out of it. We have access to the data, we can explore the data. So storing the data we should do as efficiently possibly can. So we monitor, we reach out to about eight or nine other last, uh, or I guess operators like the economics, like the tutorials, like the shepherds of this world and say, Hey, we inshallah doing this. Do you want to join this effort? And to our surprise, they all said, yes. And then in September, 2018, we had our kickoff meeting with your open group where we said, we said, okay, if you want to work together and lots of other companies, we also need to look at, okay, how, how we organize that. >>Or if you started working with lots of large companies, you need to have some legal framework around some framework around it. So that's why we went to the open group and say, okay, let's, let's form the old forum as we call it at the time. So it's September, 2080, where I did a Galleria in Houston, but the kickoff meeting for the OT four with about 10 members at the time. So that's just over two years ago, we started an exercise for me called ODU. They kicked it off. Uh, and so that's really them will be coming from and how we've got there. Also >>The origin story. Um, what, so what digging a little deeper there? What were some of the things you were trying to achieve with the OSU? >>Well, a couple of things we've tried to achieve with you, um, first is really separating data from applications for what is, what is the biggest problem we have in the subsurface space that the data and applications are all interlinked or tied together. And if, if you have them and a new company coming along and say, I have this new application and he's access to the data that is not possible because the data often interlinked with the application. So the first thing we did is really breaking the link between the application, the data as those levels, the first thing we did, secondly, put all the data to a single data platform, take the silos out what was happening in the sub-service space. They got all the data in what we call silos in small little islands out there. So what we're trying to do is first break the link to great, great. >>They put the data single day, the bathroom, and the third part, put a standard layer on top of that, it's an API layer on top to equate a platform. So we could create an ecosystem out of companies to start a valving Schoff application on top of dev data platform across you might have a data platform, but you're only successful if have a rich ecosystem of people start developing applications on top of that. And then you can export the data like small companies, last company, university, you name it, we're getting after create an ecosystem out here. So the three things were first break the link between application data, just break it and put data at the center and also make sure that data, this data structure would not be managed by one company, but it would only be met. It would be managed the data structures by the ODI forum. Secondly, then put a, the data, a single data platform certainly then has an API layer on top and then create an ecosystem. Really go for people, say, please start developing applications, because now you had access to the data. I've got the data no longer linked to somebody whose application was all freely available, but an API layer that was, that was all September, 2018, more or less. >>And hear a little bit. Can you talk a little bit about some of the imperatives from the AWS standpoint in terms of what you were trying to achieve with this? Yeah, absolutely. And this whole thing is Johann said started with a challenge that was really brought out at shell. The challenges that geoscientists spend up to 70% of their time looking for data. I'm a geologist I've spent more than 70% of my time trying to find data in these silos. And from there, instead of just figuring out how we could address that one problem, we worked together to really understand the root cause of these challenges and working backwards from that use case OSU and OSU on AWS has really enabled customers to create solutions that span, not just this in particular problem, but can really scale to be inclusive of the entire energy value chain and deliver value from these use cases to the energy industry and beyond. Thank you, Lee, uh, Johann. So talk a little bit about Accenture's cloud first approach and how it has, uh, helped shell work faster and better with speed. >>Well, of course, access a cloud first approach only works together. It's been an Amazon environment, AWS environment. So we're really looking at, uh, at, at Accenture and others altogether helping shell in this space. Now the combination of the two is what we're really looking at, uh, where access of course can be recent knowledge student to that environment operates support knowledge, do an environment. And of course, Amazon will be doing that to today's environment that underpinning their services, et cetera. So, uh, we would expect a combination, a lot of goods when we started rolling out and put in production, the old you are three and bug because we are anus. Then when the release feed comes to the market in Q1, next year of ODU have already started going to Audi production inside shell. But as the first release, which is ready for prime time production across an enterprise will be released just before Christmas, last year when he's still in may of this year. But really three is the first release we want to use for full scale production deployment inside shell, and also the operators around the world. And there is one Amazon, sorry, at that one. Um, extensive can play a role in the ongoing, in the, in deployment building up, but also support environment. >>So one of the other things that we talk a lot about here on the cube is sustainability. And this is a big imperative at so many organizations around the world in particular energy companies. How does this move to OSD you, uh, help organizations become, how is this a greener solution for companies? >>Well, first we make it's a greatest solution because you start making a much more efficient use of your resources, which is already an important one. The second thing we're doing is also, we started ODU in framers, in the oil and gas space in the expert development space. We've grown, uh, OTU in our strategy of growth. I was, you know, also do an alternative energy sociology. We'll all start supporting next year. Things like solar farms, wind farms, uh, the, the dermatomal environment hydration. So it becomes an and an open energy data platform, not just what I want to get into sleep. That's what new industry, any type of energy industry. So our focus is to create, bring the data of all those various energy data sources to get me to a single data platform you can to use AI and other technologies on top of that, to exploit the data, to meet again into a single data platform. >>Liz, I want to ask you about security because security is, is, is such a big concern when it comes to data. How secure is the data on OSD? You, um, actually, can I talk, can I do a follow up on this sustainability talking? Oh, absolutely. By all means. I mean, I want to interject though security is absolutely our top priority. I don't mean to move away from that, but with sustainability, in addition to the benefits of the OSU data platform, when a company moves from on-prem to the cloud, they're also able to leverage the benefits of scale. Now, AWS is committed to running our business in the most environmentally friendly way possible. And our scale allows us to achieve higher resource utilization and energy efficiency than a typical data center. >>Now, a recent study by four 51 research found that AWS is infrastructure is 3.6 times more energy efficient than the median of surveyed enterprise data centers. Two thirds of that advantage is due to higher, um, server utilization and a more energy efficient server population. But when you factor in the carbon intensity of consumed electricity and renewable energy purchases for 51 found that AWS performs the same task with an 88% lower carbon footprint. Now that's just another way that AWS and OSU are working to support our customers is they seek to better understand their workflows and make their legacy businesses less carbon intensive. >>That's that's incorrect. Those are those statistics are incredible. Do you want to talk a little bit now about security? Absolutely. And security will always be AWS is top priority. In fact, AWS has been architected to be the most flexible and secure cloud computing environment available today. Our core infrastructure is built to satisfy. There are the security requirements for the military, local banks and other high sensitivity organizations. And in fact, AWS uses the same secure hardware and software to build and operate each of our regions. So that customers benefit from the only commercial cloud that's hat hits service offerings and associated supply chain vetted and deemed secure enough for top secret workloads. That's backed by a deep set of cloud security tools with more than 200 security compliance and governmental service and key features as well as an ecosystem of partners like Accenture, that can really help our customers to make sure that their environments for their data meet and or exceed their security requirements. Johann, I want you to talk a little bit about how OSD you can be used today. Does it only handle subsurface data? >>Uh, today it's Honda's subserves or Wells data, we go to add to that production around the middle of next year. That means that the whole upstate business. So we've got goes from exploration all the way to production. You've made it together into a single data platform. So production will be added around Q3 of next year. Then a principal. We have a difficult, the elder data that single environment, and we want to extend them to other data sources or energy sources like solar farms, wind farms, uh, hydrogen, hydro, et cetera. So we're going to add a whore, a whole list of audit day energy source to them and be all the data together into a single data club. So we move from a falling guest data platform to an aniseed data platform. That's really what our objective is because the whole industry, if you look it over, look at our companies are all moving in. That same two acts of quantity of course, are very strong in oil and gas, but also increased the, got into the other energy sources like, like solar, like wind, like th like highly attended, et cetera. So we would be moving exactly. But that same method that, that, that the whole OSU can't really support at home. And as a spectrum of energy sources, >>Of course, and Liz and Johan. I want you to close us out here by just giving us a look into your crystal balls and talking about the five and 10 year plan for OSD. You we'll start with you, Liz. What do you, what do you see as the future holding for this platform? Um, honestly, the incredibly cool thing about working at AWS is you never know where the innovation and the journey is going to take you. I personally am looking forward to work with our customers, wherever their OSU journeys, take them, whether it's enabling new energy solutions or continuing to expand, to support use cases throughout the energy value chain and beyond, but really looking forward to continuing to partner as we innovate to slay tomorrow's challenges, Johann first, nobody can look at any more nowadays, especially 10 years own objective is really in the next five years, you will become the key backbone for energy companies for storing your data. You are efficient intelligence and optimize the whole supply energy supply chain in this world down here, you'll uncovers Liz Dennett. Thank you so much for coming on the cube virtual I'm Rebecca Knight stay tuned for more of our coverage of the Accenture executive summit >>From around the globe. It's the cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent executive summit 2020, sponsored by Accenture and AWS. >>Welcome everyone to the cubes coverage of the Accenture executive summit. Part of AWS reinvent. I'm your host Rebecca Knight today we're welcoming back to Kubila. We have Kishor Dirk. He is the Accenture senior managing director cloud first global services lead. Welcome back to the show Kishore. Thank you very much. Nice to meet again. And, uh, Tristan moral horse set. He is the managing director, Accenture cloud first North America growth. Welcome back to you to trust and great to be back in grapes here again, Rebecca. Exactly. Even in this virtual format, it is good to see your faces. Um, today we're going to be talking about my nav and green cloud advisor capability. Kishor I want to start with you. So my nav is a platform that is really celebrating its first year in existence. Uh, November, 2019 is when Accenture introduced it. Uh, but it's, it has new relevance in light of this global pandemic that we are all enduring and suffering through. Tell us a little bit about the lineup platform, what it is that cloud platform to help our clients navigate the complexity of cloud and cloud decisions to make it faster. And obviously, you know, we have in the cloud, uh, you know, with >>The increased relevance and all the, especially over the last few months with the impact of COVID crisis and exhibition of digital transformation, you know, we are seeing the transformation or the acceleration to cloud much faster. This platform that you're talking about has enabled and 40 clients globally across different industries. You identify the right cloud solution, navigate the complexity, provide a cloud specific solution simulate for our clients to meet the strategy business needs, and the clients are loving it. >>I want to go to you now trust and tell us a little bit about how mine nav works and how it helps companies make good cloud choice. >>Yeah, so Rebecca, we we've talked about cloud is, is more than just infrastructure and that's what mine app tries to solve for it. It really looks at a variety of variables, including infrastructure operating model and fundamentally what client's business outcomes, um, uh, our clients are, are looking for and, and identifies the optimal solution for what they need. And we assign this to accelerate and we mentioned the pandemic. One of the big focus now is to accelerate. And so we worked through a three-step process. The first is scanning and assessing our client's infrastructure, their data landscape, their application. Second, we use our automated artificial intelligence engine to interact with. We have a wide variety and library of a collective plot expertise. And we look to recommend what is the enterprise architecture and solution. And then third, before we aligned with our clients, we look to simulate and test this scaled up model. And the simulation gives our clients a way to see what cloud is going to look like, feel like and how it's going to transform their business before they go there. >>Tell us a little bit about that in real life. Now as a company, so many of people are working remotely having to collaborate, uh, not in real life. How is that helping them right now? >>So, um, the, the pandemic has put a tremendous strain on systems, uh, because of the demand on those systems. And so we talk about resiliency. We also now need to collaborate across data across people. Um, I think all of us are calling from a variety of different places where our last year we were all at the VA cube itself. Um, and, and cloud technologies such as teams, zoom that we're we're leveraging now has fundamentally accelerated and clients are looking to onboard this for their capabilities. They're trying to accelerate their journey. They realize that now the cloud is what is going to become important for them to differentiate. Once we come out of the pandemic and the ability to collaborate with their employees, their partners, and their clients through these systems is becoming a true business differentiator for our clients. >>Keisha, I want to talk with you now about my navs multiple capabilities, um, and helping clients design and navigate their cloud journeys. Tell us a little bit about the green cloud advisor capability and its significance, particularly as so many companies are thinking more deeply and thoughtfully about sustainability. >>Yes. So since the launch of my lab, we continue to enhance, uh, capabilities for our clients. One of the significant, uh, capabilities that we have enabled is the being taught advisor today. You know, Rebecca, a lot of the businesses are more environmentally aware and are expanding efforts to decrease power consumption, uh, and obviously carbon emissions and, uh, and run a sustainable operations across every aspect of the enterprise. Uh, as a result, you're seeing an increasing trend in adoption of energy, efficient infrastructure in the global market. And one of the things that we did a lot of research we found out is that there's an ability to influence our client's carbon footprint through a better cloud solution. And that's what the internet brings to us, uh, in, in terms of a lot of the client connotation that you're seeing in Europe, North America and others, lot of our clients are accelerating to a green cloud strategy to unlock beta financial, societal and environmental benefit, uh, through obviously cloud-based circular, operational, sustainable products and services. That is something that we are enhancing my now, and we are having active client discussions at this point of time. >>So Tristan, tell us a little bit about how this capability helps clients make greener decisions. >>Yeah. Um, well, let's start about the investments from the cloud providers in renewable and sustainable energy. Um, they have most of the hyperscalers today, um, have been investing significantly on data centers that are run on renewable energy, some incredibly creative constructs on the how to do that. And sustainability is there for a key, um, key item of importance for the hyperscalers and also for our clients who now are looking for sustainable energy. And it turns out this marriage is now possible. I can, we marry the, the green capabilities of the comm providers with a sustainability agenda of our clients. And so what we look into the way the mine EF works is it looks at industry benchmarks and evaluates our current clients, um, capabilities and carpet footprint leveraging their existing data centers. We then look to model from an end-to-end perspective, how the, their journey to the cloud leveraging sustainable and, um, and data centers with renewable energy. We look at how their solution will look like and, and quantify carbon tax credits, um, improve a green index score and provide quantifiable, um, green cloud capabilities and measurable outcomes to our clients, shareholders, stakeholders, clients, and customers. Um, and our green plot advisers sustainability solutions already been implemented at three clients. And in many cases in two cases has helped them reduce the carbon footprint by up to 400% through migration from their existing data center to green cloud. Very, very, >>That is remarkable. Now tell us a little bit about the kinds of clients. Is this, is this more interesting to clients in Europe? Would you say that it's catching on in the United States? Where, what is the breakdown that you're seeing right now? >>Sustainability is becoming such a global agenda and we're seeing our clients, um, uh, tie this and put this at board level, um, uh, agenda and requirements across the globe. Um, Europe has specific constraints around data sovereignty, right, where they need their data in country, but from a green, a sustainability agenda, we see clients across all our markets, North America, Europe, and our growth markets adopt this. And we have seen case studies and all three months. >>Keisha, I want to bring you back into the conversation. Talk a little bit about how MindUP ties into Accenture's cloud first strategy, your Accenture's CEO, Julie Sweet has talked about post COVID leadership requiring every business to become a cloud first business. Tell us a little bit about how this ethos is in Accenture and how you're sort of looking outward with it too. >>So Rebecca mine is the launch pad, uh, to a cloud first transformation for our clients. Uh, Accenture, see your jewelry suite, uh, you know, shared the Accenture cloud first and our substantial investment demonstrate our commitment and is delivering greater value for our clients when they need it the most. And with the digital transformation requiring cloud at scale, you know, we're seeing that in the post COVID leadership, it requires that every business should become a cloud business. And my nap helps them get there by evaluating the cloud landscape, navigating the complexity, modeling architecting and simulating an optimal cloud solution for our clients. And as Justin was sharing a greener cloud. >>So Tristan, talk a little bit more about some of the real life use cases in terms of what are we, what are clients seeing? What are the results that they're having? >>Yes. Thank you, Rebecca. I would say two key things right around my neck. The first is the iterative process. Clients don't want to wait, um, until they get started, they want to get started and see what their journey is going to look like. And the second is fundamental acceleration, dependent make, as we talked about, has accelerated the need to move to cloud very quickly. And my nav is there to do that. So how do we do that? First is generating the business cases. Clients need to know in many cases that they have a business case by business case, we talk about the financial benefits, as well as the business outcomes, the green, green clot impact sustainability impacts with minus. We can build initial recommendations using a basic understanding of their environment and benchmarks in weeks versus months with indicative value savings in the millions of dollars arranges. >>So for example, very recently, we worked with a global oil and gas company, and in only two weeks, we're able to provide an indicative savings for $27 million over five years. This enabled the client to get started, knowing that there is a business case benefit and then iterate on it. And this iteration is, I would say the second point that is particularly important with my nav that we've seen in bank, the clients, which is, um, any journey starts with an understanding of what is the application landscape and what are we trying to do with those, these initial assessments that used to take six to eight weeks are now taking anywhere from two to four weeks. So we're seeing a 40 to 50% reduction in the initial assessment, which gets clients started in their journey. And then finally we've had discussions with all of the hyperscalers to help partner with Accenture and leverage mine after prepared their detailed business case module as they're going to clients. And as they're accelerating the client's journey, so real results, real acceleration. And is there a journey? Do I have a business case and furthermore accelerating the journey once we are by giving the ability to work in iterative approach. >>I mean, it sounds as though that the company that clients and and employees are sort of saying, this is an amazing time savings look at what I can do here in, in so much in a condensed amount of time, but in terms of getting everyone on board, one of the things we talked about last time we met, uh, Tristan was just how much, uh, how one of the obstacles is getting people to sign on and the new technologies and new platforms. Those are often the obstacles and struggles that companies face. Have you found that at all? Or what is sort of the feedback that you're getting from employers? >>Sorry. Yes. We clearly, there are always obstacles to a cloud journey. If there were an obstacles, all our clients would be, uh, already fully in the cloud. What man I gives the ability is to navigate through those, to start quickly. And then as we identify obstacles, we can simulate what things are going to look like. We can continue with certain parts of the journey while we deal with that obstacle. And it's a fundamental accelerator. Whereas in the past one, obstacle would prevent a class from starting. We can now start to address the obstacles one at a time while continuing and accelerating the contrary. That is the fundamental difference. >>Kishor I want to give you the final word here. Tell us a little bit about what is next for Accenture might have and what we'll be discussing next year at the Accenture executive summit >>Sort of echo, we are continuously evolving with our client needs and reinventing, reinventing for the future. For mine, as I've been taught advisor, our plan is to help our clients reduce carbon footprint and again, migrate to a green cloud. Uh, and additionally, we're looking at, you know, two capabilities, uh, which include sovereign cloud advisor, uh, with clients, especially in, in Europe and others are under pressure to meet, uh, stringent data norms that Kristen was talking about. And the sovereign cloud advisor health organization to create an architecture cloud architecture that complies with the green. Uh, I would say the data sovereignty norms that is out there. The other element is around data to cloud. We are seeing massive migration, uh, for, uh, for a lot of the data to cloud. And there's a lot of migration hurdles that come within that. Uh, we have expanded mine app to support assessment capabilities, uh, for, uh, assessing applications, infrastructure, but also covering the entire state, including data and the code level to determine the right cloud solution. So we are, we are pushing the boundaries on what mine app can do with mine. Have you created the ability to take the guesswork out of cloud navigate the complexity? We are roaring risks costs, and we are, you know, achieving client's static business objectives while building a sustainable alerts with being cloud >>Any platform that can take some of the guesswork out of the future. I'm I'm onboard with. Thank you so much, Tristin and Kishore. This has been a great conversation. >>Thank you. >>Stay tuned for more of the cubes coverage of the Accenture executive summit. I'm Rebecca Knight from around the globe. It's the cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent executive summit 2020, sponsored by Accenture and AWS. >>Hey, welcome back to the cubes coverage of 80 us reinvent 2020 virtual centric executive summit. The two great guests here to break down the analysis of the relationship with cloud and essential Brian bowhead director ahead of a century 80. It was business group at Amazon web services. And Andy T a B G the M is essentially Amazon business group lead managing director at Accenture. Uh, I'm sure you're super busy and dealing with all the action, Brian. Great to see you. Thanks for coming on. So thank you. You guys essentially has been in the spotlight this week and all through the conference around this whole digital transformation, essentially as business group is celebrating its fifth anniversary. What's new, obviously the emphasis of next gen post COVID generation, highly digital transformation, a lot happening. You got your five-year anniversary, what's new. >>Yeah, it, you know, so if you look back, it's exciting. Um, you know, so it was five years ago. Uh, it was actually October where we, where we launched the Accenture AWS business group. And if we think back five years, I think we're still at the point where a lot of customers were making that transition from, you know, should I move to cloud to how do I move to cloud? Right? And so that was one of the reasons why we launched the business group. And since, since then, certainly we've seen that transition, right? Our conversations today are very much around how do I move to cloud, help me move, help me figure out the business case and then pull together all the different pieces so I can move more quickly, uh, you know, with less risk and really achieve my business outcomes. And I would say, you know, one of the things too, that's, that's really changed over the five years. >>And what we're seeing now is when we started, right, we were focused on migration data and IOT as the big three pillars that we launched with. And those are still incredibly important to us, but just the breadth of capability and frankly, the, the, the breadth of need that we're seeing from customers. And obviously as AWS has matured over the years and launched our new capabilities, we're Eva with Accenture and in the business group, we've broadened our capabilities and deepened our capabilities over the, over the last five years as well. For instance, this year with, with COVID, especially, it's really forced our customers to think differently about their own customers or their citizens, and how do they service those citizens? So we've seen a huge acceleration around customer engagement, right? And we powered that with Accenture customer engagement platform powered by ADA, Amazon connect. And so that's been a really big trend this year. And then, you know, that broadens our capability from just a technical discussion to one where we're now really reaching out and, and, um, and helping transform and modernize that customer and citizen experience as well, which has been exciting to see. >>Yeah, Andy, I want to get your thoughts here. We've been reporting and covering essentially for years. It's not like it's new to you guys. I mean, five years is a great anniversary. You know, check is good relationship, but you guys have been doing the work you've been on the trend line. And then this hits and Andy said on his keynote and I thought he said it beautifully. And he even said it to me in my one-on-one interview with them was it's on full display right now, the whole digital transformation, everything about it is on full display and you're either were prepared for it or you kind of word, and you can see who's there. You guys have been prepared. This is not new. So give us the update from your perspective, how you're taking advantage of this, of this massive shift, highly accelerated digital transformation. >>Well, I think, I think you can be prepared, but you've also got to be prepared to always sort of, I think what we're seeing in, in, um, in, in, in, in recent times and particularly 20 w what is it I think today there are, um, full sense of the enterprise workloads, the cloud, um, you know, that leaves 96 percentile now for him. Um, and I, over the next four to >>Five years, um, we're going to see that sort of, uh, acceleration to the, to the cloud pick up, um, this year is, as Andy touched on, I think, uh, uh, on Tuesday in his, I think the pandemic is a forcing function, uh, for companies to, to really pause and think about everything from, from, you know, how they, um, manage that technology to infrastructure, to just to carotenoids where the data sets to what insights and intelligence that getting from that data. And then eventually even to, to the talent, the talent they have in the organization and how they can be competitive, um, their culture, their culture of innovation, of invention and reinvention. And so I think, I think, you know, when you, when you think of companies out there faced with these challenges, it, it forces us, it forces AWS, it forces AEG to come together and think through how can we help create value for them? How can we help help them move from sort of just causing and rethinking to having real plans in an action and that taking them, uh, into, into implementation. And so that's, that's what we're working on. Um, I think over the next five years, we're looking to just continue to come together and help these, these companies get to the cloud and get the value from the cloud because it's beyond just getting to the cloud attached to them and living in the cloud and, and getting the value from it. >>It's interesting. Andy was saying, don't just put your toe in the water. You got to go beyond the toe in the water kind of approach. Um, I want to get to that large scale cause that's the big pickup this week that I kind of walked away with was it's large scale. Acceleration's not just toe in the water experimentation. Can you guys share, what's causing this large scale end to end enterprise transformation? And what are some of the success criteria have you seen for the folks who have done that? >>Yeah. And I'll, I'll, I'll start. And at the end you can buy a lawn. So, you know, it's interesting if I look back a year ago at re-invent and when I did the cube interview, then we were talking about how the ABG, we were starting to see this shift of customers. You know, we've been working with customers for years on a single of what I'll call a single-threaded programs, right. We can do a migration, we could do SAP, we can do a data program. And then even last year, we were really starting to see customers ask. The question is like, what kind of synergies and what kind of economies of scale do I get when I start bringing these different threads together, and also realizing that it's, you know, to innovate for the business and build new applications, new capabilities. Well, that then is going to inform what data you need to, to hydrate those applications, right? Which then informs your data strategy while a lot of that data is then also embedded in your underlying applications that sit on premises. So you should be thinking through how do you get those applications into the cloud? So you need to draw that line through all of those layers. And that was already starting last year. And so last year we launched the joint transformation program with AEG. And then, so we were ready when this year happened and then it was just an acceleration. So things have been happening faster than we anticipated, >>But we knew this was going to be happening. And luckily we've been in a really good position to help some of our customers really think through all those different layers of kind of pyramid as we've been calling it along with the talent and change pieces, which are also so important as you make this transformation to cloud >>Andy, what's the success factors. Andy Jassy came on stage during the partner day, a surprise fireside chat with Doug Hume and talking about this is really an opportunity for partners to, to change the business landscape with enablement from Amazon. You guys are in a pole position to do that in the marketplace. What's the success factors that you see, >>Um, really from three, three fronts, I'd say, um, w one is the people. Um, and, and I, I, again, I think Andy touched on sort of eight, uh, success factors, uh, early in the week. And for me, it's these three areas that it sort of boils down to these three areas. Um, one is the, the, the, the people, uh, from the leaders that it's really important to set those big, bold visions point the way. And then, and then, you know, set top down goals. How are we going to measure Z almost do get what you measure, um, to be, you know, beyond the leaders, to, to the right people in the right position across the company. We we're finding a key success factor for these end to end transformations is not just the leaders, but you haven't poached across the company, working in a, in a collaborative, shared, shared success model, um, and people who are not afraid to, to invent and fail. >>And so that takes me to perhaps the second point, which is the culture, um, it's important, uh, with finding for the right conditions to be set in the company that enabled, uh, people to move at pace, move at speed, be able to fail fast, um, keep things very, very simple and just keep iterating and that sort of culture of iteration and improvement versus seeking perfection is, is super important for, for success. And then the third part of maybe touch on is, is partners. Um, I think, you know, as we move forward over the next five years, we're going to see an increasing number of players in the ecosystem in the enterprise and state. Um, you're going to see more and more SAS providers. And so it's important for companies and our joint clients out there to pick partners like, um, like AWS or, or Accenture or others, but to pick partners who have all worked together and you have built solutions together, and that allows them to get speed to value quicker. It allows them to bring in pre-assembled solutions, um, and really just drive that transformation in a quicker, it sorts of manner. >>Yeah, that's a great point worth calling out, having that partnership model that's additive and has synergy in the cloud, because one of the things that came out of this this week, this year is reinvented, is there's new things going on in the public cloud, even though hybrid is an operating model, outpost and super relevant. There, there are benefits for being in the cloud and you've got partners API, for instance, and have microservices working together. This is all new, but I got, I got to ask that on that thread, Andy, where did you see your customers going? Because I think, you know, as you work backwards from the customers, you guys do, what's their needs, how do you see them? W you know, where's the puck going? Where can they skate where the puck's going, because you can almost look forward and say, okay, I've got to build modern apps. I got to do the digital transformation. Everything is a service. I get that, but what are they, what solutions are you building for them right now to get there? >>Yeah. And, and of course, with, with, you know, industries blurring and multiple companies, it's always hard to boil down to the exact situations, but you could probably look at it from a sort of a thematic lens. And what we're seeing is as the cloud transformation journey picks up, um, from us perspective, we've seen a material shift in the solutions and problems that we're trying to address with clients that they are asking for us, uh, to, to help, uh, address is no longer just the back office, where you're sort of looking at cost and efficiency and, um, uh, driving gains from that perspective. It's beyond that, it's now materially the top line. It's, how'd you get the driving to the, you know, speed to insights, how'd you get them decomposing, uh, their application set in order to derive those insights. Um, how'd you get them, um, to, to, um, uh, sort of adopt leading edge industry solutions that give them that jump start, uh, and that accelerant to winning the customers, winning the eyeballs. >>Um, and then, and then how'd, you help drive the customer experience. We're seeing a lot of push from clients, um, or ask for help on how do I optimize my customer experience in order to retain my eyeballs. And then how do I make sure I've got a soft self-learning ecosystem of play, um, where, uh, you know, it's not just a practical experience that I can sort of keep learning and iterating, um, how I treat my, my customers, um, and a lot of that, um, that still self-learning, that comes from, you know, putting in intelligence into your, into your systems, getting an AI and ML in there. And so, as a result of that work, we're seeing a lot of push and a lot of what we're doing, uh, is pouring investment into those areas. And then finally, maybe beyond the bottom line, and the top line is how do you harden that and protect that with, um, security and resilience? So I'll probably say those are the three areas. John, >>You know, the business model side, obviously the enablement is what Amazon has. Um, we see things like SAS factory coming on board and the partner network, obviously a century is a big, huge partner of you guys. Um, the business models there, you've got I, as, as doing great with chips, you have this data modeling this data opportunity to enable these modern apps. We heard about the partner strategy for me and D um, talking to me now about how can partners within even Accenture, w w what's the business model, um, side on your side that you're enabling this. Can you just share your thoughts on that? >>Yeah, yeah. And so it's, it's interesting. I think I'm going to build it and then build a little bit on some of the things that Andy really talked about there, right? And that we, if you think of that from the partnership, we are absolutely helping our customers with kind of that it modernization piece. And we're investing a lot and there's hard work that needs to get done there. And we're investing a lot as a partnership around the tools, the assets and the methodology. So in AWS and Accenture show up together as AEG, we are executing office single blueprint with a single set of assets, so we can move fast. So we're going to continue to do that with all the hybrid announcements from this past week, those get baked into that, that migration modernization theme, but the other really important piece here as we go up the stack, Andy mentioned it, right? >>The data piece, like so much of what we're talking about here is around data and insights. Right? I did a cube interview last week with, uh, Carl hick. Um, who's the CIO from Takeda. And if you hear Christophe Weber from Takeda talk, he talks about Takeda being a data company, data and insights company. So how do we, as a partnership, again, build the capabilities and the platforms like with Accenture's applied insights platform so that we can bootstrap and really accelerate our client's journey. And then finally, on the innovation on the business front, and Andy was touching on some of these, we are investing in industry solutions and accelerators, right? Because we know that at the end of the day, a lot of these are very similar. We're talking about ingesting data, using machine learning to provide insights and then taking action. So for instance, the cognitive insurance platform that we're working together on with Accenture, if they give out property and casualty claims and think about how do we enable touchless claims using machine learning and computer vision that can assess based on an image damage, and then be able to triage that and process it accordingly, right? >>Using all the latest machine learning capabilities from AWS with that deep, um, AI machine learning data science capability from Accenture, who knows all those algorithms that need to get built and build that library by doing that, we can really help these insurance companies accelerate their transformation around how they think about claims and how they can speed those claims on behalf of their policy holder. So that's an example of a, kind of like a bottom to top, uh, view of what we're doing in the partnership to address these new needs. >>That's awesome. Andy, I want to get back to your point about culture. You mentioned it twice now. Um, talent is a big part of the game here. Andy Jassy referenced Lambda. The next generation developers were using Lambda. He talked about CIO stories around, they didn't move fast enough. They lost three years. A new person came in and made it go faster. This is a new, this is a time for a certain kind of, um, uh, professional and individual, um, to, to be part of, um, this next generation. What's the talent strategy you guys have to attract and attain the best and retain the people. How do you do it? >>Um, you know, it's, it's, um, it's an interesting one. It's, it's, it's oftentimes a, it's, it's a significant point and often overlooked. Um, you know, people, people really matter and getting the right people, um, in not just in AWS or it, but then in our customers is super important. We often find that much of our discussions with, with our clients is centered around that. And it's really a key ingredient. As you touched on, you need people who are willing to embrace change, but also people who are willing to create new, um, to invent new, to reinvent, um, and to, to keep it very simple. Um, w we're we're we're seeing increasingly that you need people that have a sort of deep learning and a deep, uh, or deep desire to keep learning and to be very curious as, as they go along. Most of all, though, I find that, um, having people who are not willing or not afraid to fail is critical, absolutely critical. Um, and I think that that's, that's, uh, a necessary ingredient that we're seeing, um, our clients needing more off, um, because if you can't start and, and, and you can't iterate, um, you know, for fear of failure, you're in trouble. And, and I think Andy touched on that you, you know, where that CIO, that you referred to last three years, um, and so you really do need people who are willing to start not afraid to start, uh, and, uh, and not afraid to lead >>Was a gut check there. I just say, you guys have a great team over there. Everyone at the center I've interviewed strong, talented, and not afraid to lean in and, and into the trends. Um, I got to ask on that front cloud first was something that was a big strategic focus for Accenture. How does that fit into your business group? That's an Amazon focused, obviously they're cloud, and now hybrid everywhere, as I say, um, how does that all work it out? >>We're super excited about our cloud first initiative, and I think it fits it, um, really, uh, perfectly it's it's, it's what we needed. It's, it's, it's a, it's another accelerant. Um, if you think of count first, what we're doing is we're, we're putting together, um, uh, you know, capability set that will help enable him to and transformations as Brian touched on, you know, help companies move from just, you know, migrating to, to, to modernizing, to driving insights, to bringing in change, um, and, and, and helping on that, on that talent side. So that's sort of component number one is how does Accenture bring the best, uh, end to end transformation capabilities to our clients? Number two is perhaps, you know, how do we, um, uh, bring together pre-assembled as Brian touched on pre-assembled industry offerings to help as an accelerant, uh, for our, for our customers three years, as we touched on earlier is, is that sort of partnership with the ecosystem. >>We're going to see an increasing number of SAS providers in an estate, in the enterprise of snakes out there. And so, you know, panto wild cloud first, and our ABG strategy is to increase our touch points in our integrations and our solutions and our offerings with the ecosystem partners out there, the ISP partners out, then the SAS providers out there. And then number four is really about, you know, how do we, um, extend the definition of the cloud? I think oftentimes people thought of the cloud just as sort of on-prem and prem. Um, but, but as Andy touched on earlier this week, you know, you've, you've got this concept of hybrid cloud and that in itself, um, uh, is, is, is, you know, being redefined as well. You know, when you've got the intelligent edge and you've got various forms of the edge. Um, so that's the fourth part of, of, uh, of occupied for strategy. And for us was super excited because all of that is highly relevant for ABG, as we look to build those capabilities as industry solutions and others, and as when to enable our customers, but also how we, you know, as we, as we look to extend how we go to market, I'll join tele PS, uh, in, uh, in our respective skews and products. >>Well, what's clear now is that people now realize that if you contain that complexity, the upside is massive. And that's great opportunity for you guys. We got to get to the final question for you guys to weigh in on, as we wrap up next five years, Brian, Andy weigh in, how do you see that playing out? What do you see this exciting, um, for the partnership and the cloud first cloud, everywhere cloud opportunities share some perspective. >>Yeah, I, I think, you know, just kinda building on that cloud first, right? What cloud first, and we were super excited when cloud first was announced and you know, what it signals to the market and what we're seeing in our customers, which has cloud really permeates everything that we're doing now. Um, and so all aspects of the business will get infused with cloud in some ways, you know, it, it touches on, on all pieces. And I think what we're going to see is just a continued acceleration and getting much more efficient about pulling together the disparate, what had been disparate pieces of these transformations, and then using automation using machine learning to go faster. Right? And so, as we started thinking about the stack, right, well, we're going to get, I know we are, as a partnership is we're already investing there and getting better and more efficient every day as the migration pieces and the moving the assets to the cloud are just going to continue to get more automated, more efficient. And those will become the economic engines that allow us to fund the differentiated, innovative activities up the stack. So I'm excited to see us kind of invest to make those, those, um, those bets accelerated for customers so that we can free up capital and resources to invest where it's going to drive the most outcome for their end customers. And I think that's going to be a big focus and that's going to have the industry, um, you know, focus. It's going to be making sure that we can >>Consume the latest and greatest of AWS as capabilities and, you know, in the areas of machine learning and analytics, but then Andy's also touched on it bringing in ecosystem partners, right? I mean, one of the most exciting wins we had this year, and this year of COVID is looking at the universe, looking at Massachusetts, the COVID track and trace solution that we put in place is a partnership between Accenture, AWS, and Salesforce, right? So again, bringing together three really leading partners who can deliver value for our customers. I think we're going to see a lot more of that as customers look to partnerships like this, to help them figure out how to bring together the best of the ecosystem to drive solutions. So I think we're going to see more of that as well. >>All right, Andy final word, your take >>Thinks of innovation is, is picking up, um, dismiss things are just going faster and faster. I'm just super excited and looking forward to the next five years as, as you know, the technology invention, um, comes out and continues to sort of set new standards from AWS. Um, and as we, as Accenture wringing, our industry capabilities, we marry the two. We, we go and help our customers super exciting time. >>Well, congratulations on the partnership. I want to say thank you to you guys, because I've reported a few times some stories around real successes around this COVID pandemic that you guys worked together on with Amazon that really changed people's lives. Uh, so congratulations on that too as well. I want to call that out. Thanks for coming >>Up. Thank you. Thanks for coming on. >>Okay. This is the cubes coverage, essentially. AWS partnership, part of a century executive summit at Atrius reinvent 2020 I'm John for your host. Thanks. >>You're watching from around the globe. It's the cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent executive summit 2020, sponsored by Accenture and AWS. >>Hello, and welcome back to the cubes coverage of AWS reinvent 2020. This is special programming for the century executive summit, where all the thought leaders going to extract the signal from the nose to share with you their perspective of this year's reinvent conference, as it respects the customers' digital transformation. Brian Bohan is the director and head of a center. ADA was business group at Amazon web services. Brian, great to see you. And Chris Wegman is the, uh, center, uh, Amazon business group technology lead at Accenture. Um, guys, this is about technology vision, this, this conversation, um, Chris, I want to start with you because you, Andy Jackson's keynote, you heard about the strategy of digital transformation, how you gotta lean into it. You gotta have the guts to go for it, and you got to decompose. He went everywhere. So what, what did you hear? What was striking about the keynote? Because he covered a lot of topics. Yeah. You know, it >>Was Epic, uh, as always for Mandy, a lot of topics, a lot to cover in the three hours. Uh, there was a couple of things that stood out for me, first of all, hybrid, uh, the concept, the new concept of hybrid and how Andy talked about it, you know, uh, bringing the compute and the power to all parts of the enterprise, uh, whether it be at the edge or are in the big public cloud, uh, whether it be in an outpost or wherever it might be right with containerization now, uh, you know, being able to do, uh, Amazon containerization in my data center and that that's, that's awesome. I think that's gonna make a big difference, all that being underneath the Amazon, uh, console and billing and things like that, which is great. Uh, I'll also say the, the chips, right. And I know compute is always something that, you know, we always kind of take for granted, but I think again, this year, uh, Amazon and Andy really focused on what they're doing with the chips and PR and compute, and the compute is still at the heart of everything in cloud. And that continued advancement is, is making an impact and will make a continue to make a big impact. >>Yeah, I would agree. I think one of the things that really, I mean, the container thing was, I think really kind of a nuanced point when you got Deepak sing on the opening day with Andy Jassy and he's, he runs a container group over there, you know, small little team he's on the front and front stage. That really is the key to the hybrid. And I think this showcases this new layer and taking advantage of the graviton two chips that, which I thought was huge. Brian, this is really a key part of the platform change, not change, but the continuation of AWS higher level servers building blocks that provide more capabilities, heavy lifting as they say, but the new services that are coming on top really speaks to hybrid and speaks to the edge. >>It does. Yeah. And it, it, you know, I think like Andy talks about, and we talk about, I, you know, we really want to provide choice to our customers, uh, first and foremost, and you can see that and they re uh, services. We have, we can see it in the, the hybrid options that Chris talked about, being able to run your containers through ECS or EKS anywhere I just get to the customer's choice. And one of the things that I'm excited about as you talk about going up the stack and on the edge are things will certainly outpost. Um, right. So now I'll post those launched last year, but then with the new form factors, uh, and then you look at services like Panorama, right? Being able to take computer vision and embed machine learning and computer vision, and do that as a managed capability at the edge, um, for customers. >>And so we see this across a number of industries. And so what we're really thinking about is customers no longer have to make trade-offs and have to think about those, those choices that they can really deploy, uh, natively in the cloud. And then they can take those capabilities, train those models, and then deploy them where they need to, whether that's on premises or at the edge, you know, whether it be in a factory or retail environment. When we start, I think we're really well positioned when, um, you know, hopefully next year we started seeing the travel industry rebound, um, and the, the need, you know, more than ever really to, uh, to kind of rethink about how we kind of monitor and make those environments safe. Having this kind of capability at the edge is really going to help our customers as, as we come out of this year and hopefully rebound next year. >>Yeah. Chris, I want to go back to you for a second. It's hard to hard to pick your favorite innovation from the keynote, because, you know, just reminded me that Brian just reminded me of some things I forgot happened. It was like a buffet of innovation. Some keynotes have one or two, it was like 20, you got the industrial piece that was huge. Computer vision machine learning. That's just a game changer. The connect thing came out of nowhere, in my opinion, I mean, it's a call center technology. This is boring as hell. What are you gonna do with that? It turns out it's a game changer. It's not about the calls with the contact and that's discern intermediating, um, in the stack as well. So again, a feature that looks old is actually new and relevant. What's your, what was your favorite, um, innovation? >>Uh, it it's, it's, it's hard to say. I will say my personal favorite was the, the maca last. I, I just, I think that is a phenomenal, um, uh, just addition, right? And the fact that AWS is, has worked with Apple to integrate the Nitra chip into, into, uh, you know, the iMac and offer that out. Um, you know, a lot of people are doing development, uh, on for ILS and that stuff. And that there's just gonna be a huge benefit, uh, for the development teams. But, you know, I will say, I'll come back to connect you. You mentioned it. Um, you know, but you're right. It was a, it's a boring area, but it's an area that we've seen huge success with since, since connect was launched and the additional features and the Amazon continues to bring, you know, um, obviously with, with the pandemic and now that, you know, customer engagement through the phone, uh, through omni-channel has just been critical for companies, right. >>And to be able to have those agents at home, working from home versus being in the office, it was a huge, huge advantage for, for several customers that are using connect. You know, we, we did some great stuff with some different customers, but the continue technology, like you said, the, you know, the call translation and during a call to be able to pop up those key words and have a, have a supervisor, listen is awesome. And a lot of that was some of that was already being done, but we were stitching multiple services together. Now that's right out of the box. Um, and that Google's location is only going to make that go faster and make us to be able to innovate faster for that piece of the business. >>It's interesting, you know, not to get all nerdy and, and business school life, but you've got systems of records, systems of engagement. If you look at the call center and the connect thing, what got my attention was not only the model of disintermediating, that part of the engagement in the stack, but what actually cloud does to something that's a feature or something that could be an element, like say, call center, you old days of, you know, calling an 800 number, getting some support you got in chip, you have machine learning, you actually have stuff in the, in the stack that actually makes that different now. So you w you know, the thing that impressed me was Andy was saying, you could have machine learning, detect pauses, voice inflections. So now you have technology making that more relevant and better and different. So a lot going on, this is just one example of many things that are happening from a disruption innovation standpoint. W what do you guys, what do you guys think about that? And is that like getting it right? Can you share it? >>I think, I think, I think you are right. And I think what's implied there and what you're saying, and even in the, you know, the macro S example is the ability if we're talking about features, right. Which by themselves, you're saying, Oh, wow, what's, what's so unique about that, but because it's on AWS and now, because whether you're a developer working on, you know, w with Mac iOS and you have access to the 175 plus services, that you can then weave into your new applications, talk about the connect scenario. Now we're embedding that kind of inference and machine learning to do what you say, but then your data Lake is also most likely running in AWS, right? And then the other channels, whether they be mobile channels or web channels, or in store physical channels, that data can be captured in that same machine learning could be applied there to get that full picture across the spectrum. Right? So that's the, that's the power of bringing together on AWS to access to all those different capabilities of services, and then also the where the data is, and pulling all that together, that for that end to end view, okay, >>You guys give some examples of work you've done together. I know this stuff we've reported on. Um, in the last session we talked about some of the connect stuff, but that kind of encapsulates where this, where this is all going with respect to the tech. >>Yeah. I think one of the, you know, it was called out on Doug's partner summit was, you know, is there a, uh, an SAP data Lake accelerator, right? Almost every enterprise has SAP, right. And SAP getting data out of SAP has always been a challenge, right. Um, whether it be through, you know, data warehouses and AWS, sorry, SAP BW, you know, what we've focused on is, is getting that data when you're on have SAP on AWS getting that data into the data Lake, right. And getting it into, into a model that you can pull the value out of the customers can pull the value out, use those AI models. Um, so that was one thing we worked on in the last 12 months, super excited about seeing great success with customers. Um, you know, a lot of customers had ideas. They want to do this. They had different models. What we've done is, is made it very, uh, simplified, uh, framework that allows customers to do it very quickly, get the data out there and start getting value out of it and iterating on that data. Um, we saw customers are spending way too much time trying to stitch it all together and trying to get it to work technically. Uh, and we've now cut all that out and they can immediately start getting down to, to the data and taking advantage of those, those different, um, services are out there by AWS. >>Brian, you want to weigh in as things you see as relevant, um, builds that you guys done together that kind of tease out the future and connect the dots to what's coming. >>Uh, I, you know, I'm going to use a customer example. Uh, we worked with, um, and it just came out with, with Unilever around their blue air connected, smart air purifier. And what I think is interesting about that, I think it touches on some of the themes we're talking about, as well as some of the themes we talked about in the last session, which is we started that program before the pandemic. Um, and, but, you know, Unilever recognized that they needed to differentiate their product in the marketplace, move to more of a services oriented business, which we're seeing as a trend. We, uh, we enabled this capability. So now it's a smart air purifier that can be remote manage. And now in the pandemic head, they are in a really good position, obviously with a very relevant product and capability, um, to be used. And so that data then, as we were talking about is going to reside on the cloud. And so the learning that can now happen about usage and about, you know, filter changes, et cetera, can find its way back into future iterations of that valve, that product. And I think that's, that's keeping with, you know, uh, Chris was talking about where we might be systems of record, like in SAP, how do we bring those in and then start learning from that data so that we can get better on our future iterations? >>Hey, Chris, on the last segment we did on the business mission, um, session, Andy Taylor from your team, uh, talked about partnerships within a century and working with other folks. I want to take that now on the technical side, because one of the things that we heard from, um, Doug's, um, keynote and that during the partner day was integrations and data were two big themes. When you're in the cloud, technically the integrations are different. You're going to get unique things in the public cloud that you're just not going to get on premise access to other cloud native technologies and companies. How has that, how do you see the partnering of Accenture with people within your ecosystem and how the data and the integration play together? What's your vision? >>Yeah, I think there's two parts of it. You know, one there's from a commercial standpoint, right? So marketplace, you know, you, you heard Dave talk about that in the, in the partner summit, right? That marketplace is now bringing together this ecosystem, uh, in a very easy way to consume by the customers, uh, and by the users and bringing multiple partners together. And we're working with our ecosystem to put more products out in the marketplace that are integrated together, uh, already. Um, you know, I think one from a technical perspective though, you know, if you look at Salesforce, you know, we talked a little earlier about connect another good example, technically underneath the covers, how we've integrated connect and Salesforce, some of it being prebuilt by AWS and Salesforce, other things that we've added on top of it, um, I think are good examples. And I think as these ecosystems, these IFCs put their products out there and start exposing more and more API APIs, uh, on the Amazon platform, make opening it up, having those, those prebuilt network connections there between, you know, the different VPCs and the different areas within, within a customer's network. >>Um, and having them, having that all opened up and connected and having all that networking done underneath the covers. You know, it's one thing to call the API APIs. It's one thing to have access to those. And that's been a big focus of a lot of, you know, ISBNs and customers to build those API APIs and expose them, but having that network infrastructure and being able to stay within the cloud within AWS to make those connections, the past that data, we always talk about scale, right? It's one thing if I just need to pass like a, you know, a simple user ID back and forth, right? That's, that's fine. We're not talking massive data sets, whether it be seismic data or whatever it be passing those of those large, those large data sets between customers across the Amazon network is going to, is going to open up the world. >>Yeah. I see huge possibilities there and love to keep on this story. I think it's going to be important and something to keep track of. I'm sure you guys will be on top of it. You know, one of the things I want to, um, dig into with you guys now is Andy had kind of this philosophy philosophical thing in his keynote, talk about societal change and how tough the pandemic is. Everything's on full display. Um, and this kind of brings out kind of like where we are and the truth. You look at the truth, it's a virtual event. I mean, it's a website and you got some sessions out there with doing remote best weekend. Um, and you've got software and you've got technology and, you know, the concept of a mechanism it's software, it does something, it does a purpose. Essentially. You guys have a concept called living systems where growth strategy powered by technology. How do you take the concept of a, of a living organism or a system and replace the mechanism, staleness of computing and software. And this is kind of an interesting, because we're on the cusp of a, of a major inflection point post COVID. I get the digital transformation being slow that's yes, that's happening. There's other things going on in society. What do you guys think about this living systems concept? >>Yeah, so I, you know, I'll start, but, you know, I think the living system concept, um, you know, it started out very much thinking about how do you rapidly change the system, right? And, and because of cloud, because of, of dev ops, because of, you know, all these software technologies and processes that we've created, you know, that's where it started it, making it much easier to make it a much faster being able to change rapidly, but you're right. I think as you now bring in more technologies, the AI technology self-healing technologies, again, you're hurting Indian in his keynote, talk about, you know, the, the systems and services they're building to the tech problems and, and, and, and give, uh, resolve those problems. Right. Obviously automation is a big part of that living systems, you know, being able to bring that all together and to be able to react in real time to either what a customer, you know, asks, um, you know, either through the AI models that have been generated and turning those AI models around much faster, um, and being able to get all the information that came came in in the last 20 minutes, right. >>You know, society's moving fast and changing fast. And, you know, even in one part of the world, if, um, something, you know, in 10 minutes can change and being able to have systems to react to that, learn from that and be able to pass that on to the next country, especially in this world with COVID and, you know, things changing very quickly with quickly and, and, and, um, diagnosis and, and, um, medical response, all that so quickly to be able to react to that and have systems pass that information learned from that information is going to be critical. >>That's awesome. Brian, one of the things that comes up every year is, Oh, the cloud scalable this year. I think, you know, we've, we've talked on the cube before, uh, years ago, certainly with the censure and Amazon, I think it was like three or four years ago. Yeah. The clouds horizontally scalable, but vertically specialized at the application layer. But if you look at the data Lake stuff that you guys have been doing, where you have machine learning, the data's horizontally scalable, and then you got the specialization in the app changes that changes the whole vertical thing. Like you don't need to have a whole vertical solution or do you, so how has this year's um, cloud news impacted vertical industries because it used to be, Oh, the oil and gas financial services. They've got a team for that. We've got a stack for that. Not anymore. Is it going away? What's changing. Wow. >>I, you know, I think it's a really good question. And I don't think, I think what we're saying, and I was just on a call this morning talking about banking and capital markets. And I do think the, you know, the, the challenges are still pretty sector specific. Um, but what we do see is the, the kind of commonality, when we start looking at the, and we talked about it as the industry solutions that we're building as a partnership, most of them follow the pattern of ingesting data, analyzing that data, and then being able to, uh, provide insights and an actions. Right. So if you think about creating that yeah. That kind of common chassis of that ingest the data Lake and then the machine learning, can you talk about, you know, the announces around SageMaker and being able to manage these models, what changes then really are the very specific industries algorithms that you're, you're, you're writing right within that framework. And so we're doing a lot in connect is a good example of this too, where you look at it. Yeah. Customer service is a horizontal capability that we're building out, but then when you stop it into insurance or retail banking or utilities, there are nuances then that we then extend and build so that we meet the unique needs of those, those industries. And that's usually around those, those models. >>Yeah. And I think this year was the first reinvented. I saw real products coming out that actually solve that problem. And that was their last year SageMaker was kinda moving up the stack, but now you have apps embedding machine learning directly in, and users don't even know it's in there. I mean, Christmas is kind of where it's going. Right. I mean, >>Yeah. Announcements. Right. How many, how many announcements where machine learning is just embedded in? I mean, so, you know, code guru, uh, dev ops guru Panorama, we talked about, it's just, it's just there. >>Yeah. I mean, having that knowledge about the linguistics and the metadata, knowing the, the business logic, those are important specific use cases for the vertical and you can get to it faster. Right. Chris, how is this changing on the tech side, your perspective? Yeah. >>You know, I keep coming back to, you know, AWS and cloud makes it easier, right? None of this stuff, you know, all of this stuff can be done, uh, and has some of it has been, but you know, what Amazon continues to do is make it easier to consume by the developer, by the, by the customer and to actually embedded into applications much easier than it would be if I had to go set up the stack and build it all on that and, and, and, uh, embed it. Right. So it's, shortcutting that process. And again, as these products continue to mature, right. And some of the stuff is embedded, um, it makes that process so much faster. Uh, it makes it reduces the amount of work required by the developers, uh, the engineers to get there. So I I'm expecting, you're going to see more of this. >>Right. I think you're going to see more and more of these multi connected services by AWS that has a lot of the AIML, um, pre-configured data lakes, all that kind of stuff embedded in those services. So you don't have to do it yourself and continue to go up the stack. And we was talking about, Amazon's built for builders, right. But, you know, builders, you know, um, have been super specialized in, or we're becoming, you know, as engineers, we're being asked to be bigger and bigger and to be, you know, uh, be able to do more stuff. And I think, you know, these kinds of integrated services are gonna help us do that >>And certainly needed more. Now, when you have hybrid edge that are going to be operating with microservices on a cloud model, and with all those advantages that are going to come around the corner for being in the cloud, I mean, there's going to be, I think there's going to be a whole clarity around benefits in the cloud with all these capabilities and benefits cloud guru. Thanks my favorite this year, because it just points to why that could happen. I mean, that happens because of the cloud data. If you're on premise, you may not have a little cloud guru, you got to got to get more data. So, but they're all different edge certainly will come into your vision on the edge. Chris, how do you see that evolving for customers? Because that could be complex new stuff. How is it going to get easier? >>Yeah. It's super complex now, right? I mean, you gotta design for, you know, all the different, uh, edge 5g, uh, protocols are out there and, and, and solutions. Right. You know, Amazon's simplifying that again, to come back to simplification. Right. I can, I can build an app that, that works on any 5g network that's been integrated with AWS. Right. I don't have to set up all the different layers to get back to my cloud or back to my, my bigger data side. And I was kind of choking. I don't even know where to call the cloud anymore, big cloud, which is a central and I go down and then I've got a cloud at the edge. Right. So what do I call that? >>Exactly. So, you know, again, I think it is this next generation of technology with the edge comes, right. And we put more and more data at the edge. We're asking for more and more compute at the edge, right? Whether it be industrial or, you know, for personal use or consumer use, um, you know, that processing is gonna get more and more intense, uh, to be able to manage and under a single console, under a single platform and be able to move the code that I develop across that entire platform, whether I have to go all the way down to the, you know, to the very edge, uh, at the, at the 5g level, right? Or all the way into the bigger cloud and how that process, isn't there be able to do that. Seamlessly is going to be allow the speed of development that's needed. >>Well, you guys done a great job and no better time to be a techie or interested in technology or computer science or social science for that matter. This is a really perfect storm, a lot of problems to solve a lot of things, a lot of change happening, positive change opportunities, a lot of great stuff. Uh, final question guys, five years working together now on this partnership with AWS and Accenture, um, congratulations, you guys are in pole position for the next wave coming. Um, what's exciting. You guys, Chris, what's on your mind, Brian. What's, what's getting you guys pumped up >>Again. I come back to G you know, Andy mentioned it in his keynote, right? We're seeing customers move now, right. We're seeing, you know, five years ago we knew customers were going to get a new, this. We built a partnership to enable these enterprise customers to make that, that journey. Right. But now, you know, even more, we're seeing them move at such great speed. Right. Which is super excites me. Right. Because I can see, you know, being in this for a long time, now I can see the value on the other end. And I really, we've been wanting to push our customers as fast as they can through the journey. And now they're moving out of, they're getting, they're getting the religion, they're getting there. They see, they need to do it to change your business. So that's what excites me is just the excites me. >>It's just the speed at which we're, we're in a single movement. Yeah, yeah. I'd agree with, yeah, I'd agree with that. I mean, so, you know, obviously getting, getting customers to the cloud is super important work, and we're obviously doing that and helping accelerate that, it's it, it's what we've been talking about when we're there, all the possibilities that become available right. Through the common data capabilities, the access to the 175 some-odd AWS services. And I also think, and this is, this is kind of permeated through this week at re-invent is the opportunity, especially in those industries that do have an industrial aspect, a manufacturing aspect, or a really strong physical aspect of bringing together it and operational technology and the business with all these capabilities, then I think edge and pushing machine learning down to the edge and analytics at the edge is really going to help us do that. And so I'm super excited by all that possibility is I feel like we're just scratching the surface there, >>Great time to be building out. And you know, this is the time for re reconstruction. Re-invention big themes. So many storylines in the keynote, in the events. It's going to keep us busy here. It's looking at angle in the cube for the next year. Gentlemen, thank you for coming out. I really appreciate it. Thanks. Thank you. All right. Great conversation. You're getting technical. We could've go on another 30 minutes. Lot to talk about a lot of storylines here at AWS. Reinvent 2020 at the Centure executive summit. I'm John furrier. Thanks for watching.

>> Instructor: From around the globe, it's theCUBE. With digital coverage of AWS re:Invent 2020. Special coverage sponsored by AWS Worldwide Public Sector. >> And welcome back to theCUBE's virtual coverage of AWS re:Invent 2020. I'm John Furrier your host. This is theCUBE virtual. Special coverage of the public sector. Today Rebecca Wetherly, Director of Worldwide Public Sector System Integrator Partners for AWS. Great to see you. Welcome to theCUBE virtual. >> Thanks, John. I'm glad to be here. >> So just the news we've been covering all through re:Invented priors, just the growth in public sector. The acceleration with the pandemic, it's just that this acceleration has been massive. So I want to just get get your take. It's been hard but also, it's been an opportunity for partners. >> You leading the Integrators. >> Sure. >> They're on the front lines. I got to ask you, (chuckling) what is AWS doing to support their partners, as the business models are forced really upon them to move faster? >> Yeah, sure. Thank you. Let me start with saying that, companies are really building a business in partnering with us. Because of global needs such as the pandemic. But we also have many partners that are coming to us because of our customer demand outside of COVID. Because we're a leader in cloud innovation, and because we've got a global field engagement and go-to-market strategy. You know AWS is a customer driven company, and our partners are also our customers. We have a full suite of programs for our partners and whether they be a consulting partner or a technology partner. We have tens of thousands of partners all across the globe, with more than 35,000 new partners since January 2016. And in our public sector space, we have over 1,500 partners with solutions and experience, delivering on a combination of government, education, and nonprofit customer missions all around the world. Consulting partners are really professional services firms. That help customers of all types and sizes design, architect, build, migrate and manage workloads and applications on AWS. They accelerate the journey to the cloud for our customers. And they often are implementing technology solutions. As you referred to around COVID, that our technology partners are actually developing. So consulting partners are SIs that I work with, Strategic Consultant Partners, Managed Service Providers, and also resellers. And they are providing really great value to our customers by providing strategic advisory services, implementation and migration services, Staffog. They also have great specialty depth and machine learning or AI. IOT, data lakes and analytics. And even in things like communication tools using technologies like we're doing today on zoom, and taking those to our customers. Our technology partners on the other hand they deliver hardware, connectivity services and software solutions that are hosted or integrated with AWS cloud. And they deliver components to broad customer solutions, often via our consulting partners. We have a great, a great way of delivering technology through our AWS Marketplace and we'll talk about that in a minute. But I will say, that our tech partners are helping our customers decrease their deployment times, provide cost optimization and infrastructure for DevOps and production workloads. They're also lowering their costs on code development by using our broad portfolio of services. And oftentimes for our public sector customers they are helping shorten the path to achieving regulatory requirements for our public sector needs. >> That's awesome. You guys have a lot to do there to support your partners. Obviously the main concern is, how do I maintain that profitability in the fast pace. And then making sure that their customers can also transition and ride the digital transformation wave. So I have to ask you, what programs are you guys offering to help these partners succeed because certainly it's beyond just the profitability. it's this new business model of Cloud-scale. So what programs specifically are you guys offering? >> Yeah, we have a lot of different programs at AWS. The first stop is really the AWS Partner Network. Which I'll refer to as the APN. This is really our global partner program for technology and consulting businesses to leverage Amazon Web Services to build solutions and services for customers. The APN is the first place where companies can build, market, and sell their offerings, and provide valuable business, technical, and opportunities for marketing with their customers. Our programs provide promotional support. We provide visibility throughout our website. We give partners opportunities to engage with customers for events, social media. And we provide access to funding and go-to market opportunities. I touched on briefly our AWS Marketplace . And this is really a great program offering to our customers both consulting partners and technology partners. The AWS Marketplace simplifies procurement and entitlement of provisioning software across 50 different categories. And we have more than 8,000 transactional listings. That marketplace connects customers with more than 1,000 different ISBs or independent software vendors to help meet their business needs. And we have more than 300,000 customers using software from the AWS Marketplace. The Marketplace is also available on 24 different regions. So when a customer chooses to use the Marketplace they have the opportunity to procure their software from our consulting partners and leverage the software and the technology from our from our tech partners. Other really cool programs we have are our Partner Transformation Program or SaaS Factory Program, and also our Migration Acceleration Program. >> Awesome. Great programs. What else are you guys besides programs, Are you guys doing >> Yeah. >> to help partners succeed. Because I know there's a lot of touches, there's some new things going on. What else do you guys do? >> Yeah, I think we have a lot of great resources available to our partners. Most of our partners have Partner Development Managers that are working with them on a daily basis. Access to our business development and sales teams, solutions architects and other subject matter experts. Really getting deep into the technology and having access to those folks to help our partners design, build, architect and validate a purchase with customers. Also our Professional Services Teams.Right? They are deep subject matter experts that our partners have the ability to tap into. And then of course, because of the way we go to market in public sector, access and engagement with our capture, bid, and proposal teams are super important. We also have to consider access for our partners to be trained and become certified. That's a real requirement that our customers need to help them achieve their goals. We offer digital and classroom training for our partners to be able to learn at their own pace or via an AWS instructor. And AWS training and certification helps our partners build competence, confidence, and credibility with our customers. We also have AWS competencies. And our competency program is designed to identify, validate, and promote APN partners that have demonstrated technical expertise and proven customer success. One of the most critical competencies for us is and these days is around our migration. Migration competencies allows our partners to accelerate their customer's cloud adoption journey by providing strategy, personnel tools, education, and tech support to their customers. One of those customers and partners is InterVision. They're a consulting firm that provide strategic advisory services to organizations to help them run, grow, and transform their business needs with the cloud via modern IT services. Their experts have a deep history in technology solutions and they have a deep bench of certified engineers and data scientists to excel delivering Managed Services and Migration Services to both public sector and commercial customers. And with the California Department of Technology. Which is a state agency that provides authority and responsibility over all aspects of technology for California state governments, they selected InterVision to work with them due to their expertise and their proprietary offering called Cloud Migration Lifecycle Assurance. And that offering provided that CDT, the ability, pardon me. To take advantage of their Cloud Migration operations and optimization specialty. So our partners are really getting great opportunities to build their business and to accelerate their their work with us through a variety of programs, and by really digging deep and leveraging all of the programs that are available to them. >> It's nice with the mix of programs, plus the field support, plus the care they're nurtured that, grow that. As you know in these in these markets where you have partnerships and channels and relationships. You need to be profitable. And profitability is about happy customers. >> Rebecca: Sure. >> And margins.(chuckles) Making money. >> Rebecca: Yeah. Sure. >> You got to make money to stay in business. So, this is a big opportunity as the new economics of cloud come into the channel. This is really a big conversation. Moving fast, scaling up, new kinds of services. The integrators are really having a good time here. And these are new practices. How can someone learn more? What's out there? How does someone get engaged with you guys? What information can they, is there a site? Is there a program? How does someone get the resources? What would they do? >> Yeah. Well, I will tell you. The first stop is really our website. And that may sound trivial but that is the best place to get started for us. You're going to find there by visiting https://aws.amazon.com. You can register to become an AWS partner very easily. Right there you're going to get step-by-step instructions and learning paths, as well as tutorials and how to get your business up and running, and how to become a partner. And the journey largely looks like this. Right? One. get on board. Get familiar. Establish your relationship and join the Amazon Partner Network. Go through some very basic training and get familiar with their services. Second. Develop those technical and sales skills. Develop a business model where AWS lends the greatest value to your partner business. And as you move through the tiers of maturity, we will co-invest in your business to help you scale. And then three, really go to market. Establish the pathways to your customers. Build out your differentiated approach. Look at the competencies we offer and decide which ones are going to be the most relevant to you. We want you to leverage the funding mechanisms we have, and we want you also to think about how we co-market together. There are so many roads to success and AWS offers lots of different partner programs and opportunities to develop your unique roadmap John. >> Yeah, that's great enablement. That is super valuable. Having the co-funding, the go marketing, and the tools and the programs. All there to enable services to be successful. Rebecca, thanks for sharing that program. >> My pleasure. >> Great to have you on. Rebecca Wetherly, >> Thank you so much. Director of the Worldwide Public Sector System Integrator Partners. A big growing part of the public sector when we need it the most, which is now and it's growing. So check them out. Thanks for watching. This is theCUBE coverage. CUBE virtual, for AWS re:Invent reinvent public sector, special coverage. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>>From around the globe. It's the cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent executive summit 2020, sponsored by Accenture and AWS. >>Welcome everyone to the cubes coverage of the Accenture executive summit. Part of AWS reinvent. I'm your host Rebecca Knight. Today we're welcoming back to Cuba alum. We have Kishor Dirk. He is the Accenture senior managing director first global services lead. Welcome back to the show Kishore. >>Thank you very much. If I go through it again, >>Do it again. And, uh, Tristin moral horse set. He is the managing director, Accenture cloud first North American crows. Welcome back to you to trust in >>Rebecca. >>Exactly. Even in this virtual format, it is good to see your faces. Um, today we're going to be talking about my nav and green cloud advisor capability. Kishor I want to start with you. So my nav is a platform that is really celebrating its first year in existence. Uh, November, 2019 is when Accenture introduced it. Uh, but it's, it has new relevance in light of this global pandemic that we are all enduring and suffering through. Tell us a little bit about the miner platform, what it is. >>Sure, Rebecca, you know, he lost it and now we're 2019 and, uh, you know, he does that cloud platform to help our clients navigate the complexity of cloud and cloud decisions and to make it faster and obviously innovate in the cloud, uh, you know, with the increased relevance and all the, especially over the last few months with the impact of COVID crisis and exhibition of digital transformation, you know, we are seeing the transformation or the acceleration to cloud much faster. This platform that you're talking about has enabled hundred and 40 clients globally across different industries to identify the right cloud solution, navigate the complexity, provide a boat specific solution simulate for our clients to meet the strategy business needs. And the plants are loving it. >>I want to go to you now trust and tell us a little bit about how my nav works and how it helps companies make good cloud choices. >>Yeah, so Rebecca, we, and we've talked about cloud is, is more than just infrastructure and that's what mine app tries to solve for it. It really looks at a variety of variables, including infrastructure operating model and fundamentally what clients' business outcomes. Um, uh, our clients are, are looking for and identify as the optimal solution for what they need. And we assign this to accelerate. We mentioned, uh, the pandemic, one of the big focus now is to accelerate. And so we worked through a three-step process. The first is scanning and assessing our client's infrastructure, their data landscape, their application. Second, we use our automated, um, artificial intelligence engine to interact with. We have a wide variety and library of, uh, collective plant expertise. >>And we look to recommend what is the enterprise architecture and solution. And then third, before we aligned with our clients, we look to simulate and test this scaled up model. And this simulation gives our clients a way to see what cloud is going to look like, feel like and how it's going to transform their business before they go there. >>So tell us a little bit about that in real life. Now as a company, so many of people are working remotely having to collaborate, uh, not in real life. How is that helping them right now, Justin? >>So, um, the, the pandemic has put a tremendous strain on systems, uh, because of the demand on those systems. And so we talk about resiliency. We also now need to collaborate across data across people. Um, I think all of us are calling from a variety of different places where our last year we were all at the cube itself. Um, and, and cloud technologies such as teams, zoom that we're we're leveraging now has fundamentally accelerated and clients are looking to onboard this for their capabilities. They're trying to accelerate their journey. They realized that now the cloud is what is going to become important for them to differentiate. Once we come out of the pandemic and the ability to collaborate with their employees, their partners, and their clients through these systems is becoming a true business differentiator for our clients. >>Sure. I want to talk with you now about my NABS multiple capabilities, um, and helping clients design and navigate their cloud journeys. Tell us a little bit about the green cloud advisor capability and its significance, particularly as so many companies are thinking more deeply and thoughtfully about sustainability. >>Yes. So since the launch of my NAB, we continue to enhance capabilities for our clients. One of the significant, uh, capabilities that we have enabled is the being our advisor today. You know, Rebecca, a lot of the businesses are more environmentally aware and are expanding efforts to decrease power consumption, uh, and obviously carbon emissions and, uh, and run a sustainable operations across every aspect of the enterprise. Uh, as a result, you're seeing an increasing trend in adoption of energy, efficient infrastructure in the global market. And one of the things that we did, a lot of research we found out is that there's an ability to influence our client's carbon footprint through a better cloud solution. And that's what being entered by that brings to us, uh, in, in terms of a lot of the client connotation that you're seeing in Europe, North America and others. Lot of our clients are accelerating to a green cloud strategy to unlock beta financial, societal and environmental benefit, uh, through obviously cloud-based circular, operational, sustainable products and services. That is something that we are enhancing my now. And we are having active planning discussions at this point of time. >>So Tristan, tell us a little bit about how this capability helps clients make greener decisions. >>Yeah. Um, well, let's start about the investments from the cloud providers in renewable and sustainable energy. Um, they have most of the hyperscalers today, um, have been investing significantly on data centers that are run or renewable energy, some incredibly creative constructs on the, how, how to do that. And sustainability is there for a key, um, key item of importance for the hyperscalers and also for our clients who now are looking for sustainable energy. And it turns out this marriage is now possible. I can, we marry the, the green capabilities of the cloud providers with a sustainability agenda of our clients. And so what we look in the way the mind works is it looks at industry benchmarks and evaluates our current clients, um, capabilities and carpet footprint leveraging their existing data centers. We then look to model from an end-to-end perspective, how the, their journey to the cloud leveraging sustainable and, um, and data centers with renewable energy. We look at how their solution will look like and, and quantify carbon tax credits, um, improve a green index score and provide quantifiable, um, green cloud capabilities and measurable outcomes to our clients, shareholders, stakeholders, clients, and customers. Um, and our green plot advisers sustainability solutions already been implemented at three clients. And in many cases in two cases has helped them reduce the carbon footprint by up to 400% to migration from their existing data center to green cloud. Very, very important. Right. >>That is remarkable. Now tell us a little bit about the kinds of clients. Is this, is this more interesting to clients in Europe? Would you say that it's catching on in the United States? Where, what is the breakdown that you're seeing right now? >>Uh, sustainability is becoming such a global agenda and we're seeing our clients, um, uh, tie this and put this at board level, um, uh, agenda and requirements across the globe. Um, Europe has specific constraints around data sovereignty, right where they need their data in country, but from a green, a sustainability agenda, we see clients across all our markets, North America, Europe, and our growth markets adopt this. And we have seen case studies in all three markets. >>Kishor I want to bring you back into the conversation. Talk a little bit about how up ties into Accenture's cloud first strategy, your Accenture's CEO, Julie Sweet has talked about post COVID leadership requiring every business to become a cloud first business. Tell us a little bit about how this ethos is in Accenture and how you're sort of looking outward with it too. >>So Rebecca mine is the launch pad, uh, to a cloud first transformation for our clients. Uh, Accenture see you or Julie Sweet, uh, shared the Accenture cloud first and our substantial investment demonstrate our commitment and is delivering greater value for our clients when they need it the most. And with the digital transformation requiring cloud at scale, you know, we're seeing that in the post COVID leadership, it requires that every business should become a cloud business. And my nap helps them get there by evaluating the cloud landscape, navigating the complexity, modeling architecting and simulating an optimal cloud solution for our clients. And as Justin was sharing a greener cloud. >>So Tristan, talk a little bit more about some of the real life use cases in terms of what are we, what are clients seeing? What are the results that they're having? >>Yes. Thank you, Rebecca. I would say two key things right around my neck. The first is the iterative process. Clients don't want to wait, um, until they get started, they want to get started and see what their journey is going to look like. And the second is fundamental acceleration, dependent make, as we talked about, has accelerated the need to move to cloud very quickly. And my nav is there to do that. So how do we do that? First is generating the business cases. Clients need to know in many cases that they have a business case by business case, we talk about the financial benefits, as well as the business outcomes, the green, green clot impact sustainability impacts with minus we can build initial recommendations using a basic understanding of her environment and benchmarks in weeks versus months with indicative value savings in the millions of dollars arranges. >>So for example, very recently, we worked with a global oil and gas company, and in only two weeks, we're able to provide an indicative savings for $27 million over five years. This enabled the client to get started, knowing that there is a business case benefit and then iterate on it. And this iteration is, I would say the second point that is particularly important with my nav that we've seen in bank, the clients, which is, um, any journey starts with an understanding of what is the application landscape and what are we trying to do with those, these initial assessments that used to take six to eight weeks are now taking anywhere from two to four weeks. So we're seeing a 40 to 50% reduction in the initial assessment, which gets clients started in their journey. And then finally we've had discussions with all of the hyperscalers to help partner with Accenture and leverage mine after prepared their detailed business case module as they're going clients. And as they're accelerating the client's journey, so real results, real acceleration. And is there a journey? Do I have a business case and furthermore accelerating the journey once we are by giving the ability to work in iterative approach. >>I mean, it sounds as though that the company that clients and and employees are sort of saying, this is an amazing time savings look at what I can do here in, in so much in a condensed amount of time, but in terms of getting everyone on board, one of the things we talked about last time we met, uh, Tristan was just how much, uh, how one of the obstacles is getting people to sign on and the new technologies and new platforms. Those are often the obstacles and struggles that companies face. Have you found that at all? Or what is sort of the feedback that you're getting from people? >>Yeah. Sorry. Yes. We clearly, there are always obstacles to a cloud journey. If there weren't obstacles, all our clients would be, uh, already fully in the cloud. What man I gives the ability is to navigate through those, to start quickly. And then as we identify obstacles, we can simulate what things are going to look like. We can continue with certain parts of the journey while we deal with that obstacle. And it's a fundamental accelerator. Whereas in the past one obstacle would prevent a class from starting. We can now start to address the obstacles one at a time while continuing and accelerating the classroom. That is the fundamental difference. >>Uh Kishor I want to give you the final word here. Tell us a little bit about what is next for Accenture might have and what we'll be discussing next year at the Accenture executive summit >>Sort of echo, we are continuously evolving with our client needs and reinventing, reinventing for the future. For my advisor, our plan is to help our clients reduce carbon footprint and again, migrate to a greener cloud. Uh, and additionally, we're looking at, you know, two capabilities, uh, which includes sovereign cloud advisor, uh, with clients, especially in, in Europe and others are under pressure to meet stringent data norms that Chris was talking about and the sovereignty advisor health organization to create an architecture cloud architecture that complies with the green. Uh, I would say the data sound-bitey norms that is out there. The other element is around data to cloud. We are seeing massive migration, uh, for, uh, for a lot of the data to cloud. And there's a lot of migration hurdles that come within that. Uh, we have expanded mine app to support assessment capabilities, uh, for, uh, assessing applications, infrastructure, but also covering the entire state, including data and the code level to determine the right cloud solution. So we are, we are pushing the boundaries on what mine app can do with mine. And we have created the ability to take the guesswork out of cloud, navigate the complexity. We are rolling risk costs, and we are, you know, achieving client's strategic business objectives while building a sustainable alerts with being cloud. Any >>Platform that can take some of the guesswork out of the future. I am I'm on board with thank you so much, Kristin and Kishore. This has been a great conversation. Thank you, Rebecca, stay tuned for more of the cubes coverage of the Accenture executive summit. I'm Rebecca Knight.

>>From around the globe. It's the cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent executive summit 2020, sponsored by Accenture and AWS. >>Hi, everyone. Welcome to the cube virtual coverage of the executive summit at AWS reinvent 2020 virtual. This is the cube virtual. We can't be there in person like we are every year we have to be remote. This executive summit is with special programming supported by Accenture where the cube virtual I'm your host John for a year. We had a great panel here called on cloud first digital transformation from some experts, Stuart driver, the director of it and infrastructure and operates at lion Australia, Douglas Regan, managing director, client account lead at lion for Accenture as a deep Islam associate director application development lead for Accenture gentlemen. Thanks for coming on the cube virtual. >>That's a mouthful, >>All that digital, but the bottom line it's cloud transformation. This is a journey that you guys have been on together for over 10 years to be really a digital company. Now, some things have happened in the past year that kind of brings all this together. This is about the next generation organization. So I want to ask a Stuart, you first, if you can talk about this transformation at lion has undertaken some of the challenges and opportunities and how this year in particular has brought it together because you know, COVID has been the accelerant of digital transformation. Well, if you're 10 years in, I'm sure you're there. You're in the, uh, on that wave right now. Take a minute to explain this transformation journey. >>Yeah, sure. So number of years back, we, we looked at kind of our infrastructure and our landscape. I'm trying to figure out where we wanted to go next. And we were very analog based, um, and stuck in the old it Grove of Capitol reef rash, um, struggling to transform, struggling to get to a digital platform and we needed to change it up so that we could, uh, become very different business to the one that we were back then. Um, obviously cloud is an accelerant to that and we had a number of initiatives that needed a platform to build on. And a cloud infrastructure was the way that we started today. That side, we went through a number of transformation programs that we didn't want to do that in the old world. We wanted to do it in the new world. So, um, for us, it was palming up with, uh, you know, dried organizations that can take you on the journey and, uh, you know, start to deliver a bit by bit incremental progress, uh, to get to the, uh, I guess the promise land. >>Um, we're not, uh, not all the way there, but to where we were a long way along. And then when you get to some of the challenges like we've had this year, um, it makes all of the hard work worthwhile because you can actually change pretty quickly, um, provide capacity and, uh, and increase your environments and, you know, do the things that you need to do in a much more dynamic way than we would have been able to previously where we might've been waiting for the hardware vendors, et cetera, to deliver, um, capacity for us this year. It's been a pretty strong year from an it perspective and delivering for the business needs before we hit the Douglas. I want to >>Just really quick redirect to you and say, you know, if all the people who said, Oh yeah, you got to jump on cloud, get in early, you know, a lot of naysayers like, well, wait till to mature a little bit. Really, if you got in early and you, you know, paying your dues, if you will taking that medicine with the cloud, you're really kind of peaking at the right time. Is that true? Is that one of the benefits that comes out of this getting in there? >>Well, I mean, John, this has been an unprecedented year, right? And, um, you know, Australia, we had to live through bushfires and then we had covert and, and then we actually had to deliver a, um, a project on very large transformational product project, completely remote. And then we also had had some, some cyber challenges, which is public as well. And I don't think if we weren't moved into and enabled through the cloud, we would have been able to achieve that this year. It would have been much different. It would have been very difficult to do the fact that we're able to work and partner with Amazon through this year, which has been unprecedented and actually come out the other end and we've delivered a brand new digital capability across the entire business. Um, it really wouldn't have been impossible if we could, I guess, stayed in the old world. The fact that we were moved into the new Naval by the Navy allowed us to work in this unprecedented year. >>Just quick. What's your personal view on this? Because I've been saying on the Cuban reporting, necessity's the mother of all invention and the word agility has been kicked around as kind of a cliche, Oh, be agile. You know, we're going to get to Sydney. You can a minute on specifically, but from your perspective, uh, Douglas, what does that mean to you? Because there is benefits there for being agile. And >>I mean, I think as Stuart mentioned, right, in a lot of these things we try to do and, you know, typically, you know, hardware capabilities, uh, the last to be told and, and, and always the only critical path to be done, you know, we really didn't have that in this case, what we were doing with our projects in our deployments, right. We were able to move quickly able to make decisions in line with the business and really get things going, right. So a lot of times in a traditional world, you have these inhibitors, you have these critical path, it takes weeks and months to get things done as opposed to hours and days, and, and truly allowed us to, we had to, you know, BJ things, move things. And, you know, we were able to do that in this environment with AWS to support and the fact that we can kind of turn things off and on as quickly as we needed. Yeah. >>Cloud-scale is great for speed. So DECA, Gardez get your thoughts on this cloud first mission, you know, it, you know, the dev ops world, they saw this early, that jumping in there, they saw the, the, the agility. Now the theme this year is modern applications with the COVID pandemic pressure, there's real business pressure to make that happen. How did you guys learn to get there fast? And what specifically did you guys do at Accenture and how did it all come together? Can you take us inside kind of how it played out? >>No ma'am. So we started off with us and we worked with lions experts and, uh, the lost knowledge that I had, um, we then applied >>Our journey to cloud strategy and basically revolves around the seminars and, and, uh, you know, the deep repeating steps from our perspective was, uh, assessing the current environment, setting up the new cloud environment. And as we go modernizing and migrating these applications to the cloud now, you know, one of the key things that, uh, you know, we did not along this journey was that, you know, you can have the best plans, but the environment that we were dealing with, we, we often than not have to make changes. Uh, what opened a lot of agility and also work with a lot of collaboration with the, uh, Lyon team, as well as, uh, uh, AWS. I think the key thing for me was being able to really bring it all together. It's not just, uh, you know, essentially mobilize all of us working together to make this happen. >>What were some of the learnings real quick here for your journey there? >>So I think so from our perspective, the key learnings that, you know, uh, you know, when, when we look back at, uh, the, the infrastructure that was that we were trying to migrate over to the cloud, a lot of the documentation, et cetera, was not, uh, available. We were having to, uh, figure out a lot of things on the fly. Now that really required us to have, uh, uh, people with deep expertise who could go into those environments and, and work out, uh, you know, the best ways to, to migrate the workloads to the cloud. Uh, I think, you know, the biggest thing for me was making Jovi had on that real SMEs across the board globally, that we could leverage across the various technologies, uh, uh, and, and, and, you know, that would really work in our collaborative and agile. A lot of it would lie. >>Let's do what I got to ask you. How did you address your approach to the cloud and what was your experience? >>Yeah, for me, it's around getting the foundations right. To start with and then building on them. Um, so, you know, you've gotta have your, your, your process and you've got to have your, your kind of your infrastructure there and your blueprints ready. Um, AWS do a great job of that, right. Getting the foundations right. And then building upon it, and then, you know, partnering with Accenture allows you to do that very successfully. Um, I think, um, you know, the one thing that was probably surprising to us when we started down this journey and kind of after we got a long way down the track and looking backwards is actually how much you can just turn off. Right? So a lot of stuff that you, uh, you get left with a legacy in your environment, and when you start to work through it with the types of people that civic just mentioned, you know, the technical expertise working with the business, um, you can really rationalize environment and, uh, um, you know, cloud is a good opportunity to do that, to drive that legacy out. >>Um, so you know, a few things there, the other thing is, um, you've got to try and figure out the benefits that you're going to get out of moving here. So there's no point just taking something that is not delivering a huge amount of value in the traditional world, moving it into the cloud, and guess what is going to deliver the same limited amount of value. So you've got to transform it, and you've got to make sure that you build it for the future and understand exactly what you're trying to gain out of it. So again, you need a strong collaboration, you need, uh, um, you know, good partners to work with, and you need good engagement from the business as well, because the kind of, uh, you know, digital transformation, cloud transformation, isn't really an it project, I guess, fundamentally it is at the core, but it's a business project that you've got to get the whole business aligned on. You've got to make sure that your investment streams are appropriate and that's, uh, you're able to understand the benefits and the value that say, you're going to draw it back towards the business. >>Let's do it. If you don't mind me asking, what was some of the obstacles you encountered or learnings, um, that might've differed from the expectations we all been there, Hey, you know, we're going to change the world. Here's the sales pitch, here's the outcome. And then obviously things happen, you know, you learn legacy, okay. Let's put some containerization around that cloud native, um, all that rational. You're talking about what are you going to have obstacles? That's how you learn. That's how perfection is developed. How, what obstacles did you come up with and how are they different from your expectations going in? Yeah, >>They're probably no different from other people that have gone down the same journey. If I'm totally honest, the, you know, 70 or 80% of what you do is relatively easy because of the known quantity, it's relatively modern architectures and infrastructures, and you can, you know, upgrade, migrate, move them into the cloud, whatever it is, rehost, replatform, you know, rearchitect, whatever it is you want to do, it's the other stuff, right? It's the stuff that always gets left behind. And that's the challenge. It's, it's getting that last bit over the line and making sure that you haven't invested in the future while still carrying all of your legacy costs and complexity within your environment. So, um, to be quite honest, that's probably taken longer and has been more of a challenge than we thought it would be. Um, the other piece I touched on earlier on in terms of what was surprising was actually how much of, uh, your environment is actually not needed anymore. >>When you start to put a critical eye across it and understand, um, uh, ask the tough questions and start to understand exactly what, what it is you're trying to achieve. So if you ask a part of the business, do they still need this application or this service a hundred percent of the time, they'll say yes, until you start to lay out to them, okay. Now going to cost you this to migrate it or this, to run it in the future. And, you know, here's your ongoing costs and, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And then, uh, for a significant amount of those answers, you get a different response when you start to layer on the true value of it. So you start to flush out those hidden costs within the, and you start to make some critical decisions as a company based on that, based on that. So that was a little tougher than we first thought and probably broader than we thought there was more of that than we anticipated, uh, which actually resulted in a much cleaner environment, post post migration, >>You know, the old expression, if it moves automated, you know, it's kind of a joke on government, how they want to tax everything, you know, you want to automate, that's a key thing in cloud, and you've got to discover those opportunities to create value, uh, Stuart and Siddique. Mainly if you can weigh in on this love to know the percentage of total cloud that you have now, versus when you started, because as you start to uncover whether it's by design for purpose, or you discover opportunity to innovate like you guys have, I'm sure it kind of, you took on some territory inside Lyon, what percentage of cloud now versus stark? >>Yeah. I just thought it was minimal, right. You know, close to zero rise, single and single digits. Right. It was mainly SAS environments that we had, uh, sitting in cloud when we, uh, when we started, um, Don mentioned that air on a really significant transformation project, um, that we've on the Turk and recently gone live on a multi-year one. Um, you know, that's all stood up on AWS and there's a, a significant portion of our environment, um, in terms of what we can move to cloud. Uh, we're probably at about 80 or 90% now. And the balanced bit is, um, legacy infrastructure that is just gonna retire as we go through the cycle rather than migrate to the cloud. Um, so we are significantly cloud biased and, uh, you know, we're reaping the benefits of it in a year, like 2020, and makes you glad that you did all of the hard yards in the previous years when you start business challenges starting out as, yeah. >>So I think any common reaction. Yeah. Still the cloud percentage penetration. Okay. >>So I do, I do guys, all I was going to say was, I think it's like the 80 20 rule, right? We, we, we worked really hard in the, you know, I think 2018, 19 to get any person off the application onto the cloud. And over the last year is the 20% that we have been migrating to extend. Right. Uh, not, I think that is also, that's going to be good diet. And I think our next big step is going to be obviously, you know, the icing on the cake, which is to decommission all of these apps as well. Right. So, you know, to get the real benefits out of, uh, the whole conservation program from a, uh, from a reduction of cap ex >>Douglas and Stuart, can you guys talk about the decision around the cloud because you guys have had success with AWS, why AWS how's that decision made? Can you guys give some insight into some of those thoughts? >>I can, I can stop, start off. I think back when the decision was made and it was, it was a while back, um, you know, there's some clear advantages of moving relay, Ws, a lot of alignment with some of the significant projects and the trend, that particular one big transformation project that we've alluded to as well. Um, you know, we needed some, um, um, some very robust and, um, just future proof and, um, proven technology. And AWS gave that to us. We needed a lot of those blueprints to help us move down the path. We didn't want to reinvent everything. So, um, you know, having a lot of that legwork done for us and AWS gives you that, right. And particularly when you partner up with, uh, with a company like Accenture as well, you get a combination of the technology and the, and the skills and the knowledge to, to move you forward in that direction. >>So, um, you know, for us, it was a, uh, uh, it was a decision based on, you know, best of breed, um, you know, looking forward and, and trying to predict the future needs and, and, and kind of the environmental that we might need. Um, and, you know, partnering up with organizations that can take you on the journey. Yeah. And just to build on that. So obviously, you know, lions like an NWS, but, you know, we knew it was a very good choice given the, um, uh, the skills and the capability that we had, as well as the assets and tools we had to get the most out of, um, out of the AWS. And obviously our CEO globally has just made an announcement about a huge investment that we're making in cloud. Um, but you know, we've, we've worked very well with AWS. We've done some joint workshops and joint investments, um, some joint POC. So yeah, w we have a very good working relationship, AWS, and I think, um, one incident to reflect upon the cyber is, and again, where we actually jointly, you know, dove in with, um, with Amazon and some of their security experts and our experts, and we're able to actually work through that with wine success, quite them. So, um, you know, really good behaviors as an organization, but also really good capabilities. >>Yeah. As you guys, you're essential cloud outcomes, research shown, it's the cycle of innovation with the cloud. That's creating a lot of benefits knowing what you guys know now, looking back certainly COVID has impacted a lot of people kind of going through the same process, uh, knowing what you guys know now, would you advocate people to jump on this transformation journey? If so, how and what tweaks they make what's, uh, changes, what would you advise? >>I might take that one to start with. Um, I hate to think where we would have been when, uh, COVID kicked off here in Australia and, you know, we were all sent home, literally were at work on the Friday, and then over the weekend. And then Monday, we were told not to come back into the office and all of a sudden, um, our capacity in terms of remote access quadrupled, or more four, five X, uh, what we had on the Friday we needed on the Monday. And we were able to stand that up during the day Monday night into Tuesday, because we were cloud-based and, uh, you know, we just spun up your instances and, uh, you know, sort of our licensing, et cetera. And, and we had all of our people working remotely, um, within, uh, you know, effectively one business day. Um, I know peers of mine in other organizations and industries that are relying on kind of a traditional wise and getting hardware, et cetera, that were weeks and before they could get the right hardware to be able to deliver to their user base. >>So, um, you know, one example where you're able to scale and, uh, um, get, uh, get value out of this platform beyond probably what was anticipated at the time you talked about, um, you know, less this, the, in all of these kinds of things. And you can also think of a few scenarios, but real world ones where you're getting your business back up and running in that period of time is, is just phenomenal. There's other stuff, right? There's these programs that we've rolled out, you do your sizing, um, and in the traditional world, you would just go out and buy more servers than you need. And, you know, probably never realize the full value of those, you know, the capability of those servers over the life cycle of them. Whereas, you know, in a cloud world, you're putting what you think is right. And if it's not right, you bump it up a little bit when, when all of your metrics and so on, I'm tell you that you need to bump it up. And conversely, you Scarlet down at a, at the same rate. So for us with the types of challenges and programs and, uh, uh, and just business need, that's come at as this year, uh, we wouldn't have been able to do it without a strong cloud base, uh, to, uh, to move forward with >>Yeah, Douglas, one of the things I talked to, a lot of people on the right side of history who have been on the right wave with cloud, with the pandemic, and they're happy, they're like, and they're humble. Like, well, we're just lucky, you know, luck is preparation meets opportunity. And this is really about you guys getting in early and being prepared and readiness. This is kind of important as people realize that you gotta be ready. I mean, it's not just, you don't get lucky by being in the right place, the right time. And there were a lot of companies were on the wrong side of history here who might get washed away. This is a super important one >>Yeah. To echo and kind of build on what Stewart said. I think that the reason that we've had success and, and I guess the momentum is we, we didn't just do it in isolation within it and technology. It was actually linked to broader business changes, you know, creating basically a digital platform for the entire business, moving the business, where are they going to be able to come back stronger after COVID, when they're actually set up for growth, um, and actually allows, you know, uh, line to achievements growth objectives, and also its ambitions as far as what it wants to do, uh, with growth and whatever they may do with acquiring other companies and moving into different markets and launching new products. So we've actually done it in a way that is, you know, real and direct business benefit. Uh, it actually enables learning to grow. >>Jim. I really appreciate you coming. I have one final question. If you can wrap up here, uh, Stuart and Douglas, you don't mind weighing in what's the priorities for the future. What's next for lion and essential >>Christmas holidays, I'll start Christmas holidays and it's been a big year and then a, and then a reset, obviously, right? So, um, you know, it's, it's figuring out, uh, transform what we've already transformed, if that makes sense. So God, a huge proportion of our services sitting in the cloud. Um, but we know we're not done even with the stuff that is in there. We need to take those steps. We need more and more automation and orchestration. Uh, we need to, um, uh, our environment is more future growth. We need to be able to work with the business and understand what's coming at them so that we can know, build that into our environment. So again, it's really transformation on top of transformation. It's the way that I'll describe it. And it's really an open book, right? Once you get it in and you've got the capabilities and the evolving tool sets that, uh, AWS continue to bring to the market, um, you know, working with the partners to, to figure out how we unlock that value, um, you know, drive our costs down our efficiency up, uh, all of those kind of, you know, standard metrics. >>Um, but you know, we're looking for the next things to transform and showed value back out to our customer base, um, that, uh, that we continue to, you know, sell our products to and work with and understand how we can better make their names. Yeah, I think just to echo that, I think it's really leveraging this end to end digital capability they have and getting the most out of that investment. And then I think it's also moving to, uh, in a dumping more new ways of working as far as, you know, the state of the business. Um, it's getting up the speed of the market is changing. So being able to launch and do things quickly and also, um, be competitive with it, you know, inefficient operating costs, uh, now that they're in the cloud, right. So I think it's really leveraging the most out of a platform and then, you know, being efficient in launching things. So putting it with the business, >>Sadiq, any word from you on your priorities by UC this year in folding. >>Yeah. So, uh, there's got to say like e-learning squares, right? For me around this journey, this is a journey to the cloud, right. And, uh, you know, as well dug the students at it's getting all, you know, different parts of the organization along the journey business to ID to your, uh, Warnock Legos, et cetera. Right. And it takes time. It is tough, but, uh, uh, you know, you got to get started on it and, you know, once we, once we finish off, uh, it's the realization of the benefits now that, you know, looking forward, I think for, from Alliance perspective is, is, uh, you know, once we migrate all the workloads to the cloud, it is leveraging, uh, our stack drive. And as I think Stewart said, uh, earlier, uh, with, uh, you know, the latest and greatest stuff that non-compete WLC, it's basically working to see how we can really, uh, achieve more better operational excellence, uh, from a, uh, from a cloud perspective. >>Well, Stewart, thanks for coming on with a century, sharing your environment and what's going on and your journey you're on the right wave. Did the work you're in the, it's all coming together with faster, congratulations for your success and, uh, really appreciate Douglas and Steve for coming on as well from Accenture. Thank you for coming on. Thanks, John. Okay. Just the cubes coverage of executive summit at AWS reinvent. This is where all the thought leaders share their best practices, their journeys, and of course, special programming with Accenture and the cube. I'm Sean ferry, your host. Thanks for watching.

>>From around the globe. It's the cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent executive summit 2020, sponsored by Accenture and AWS. >>Welcome to cube three 60 fives coverage of the Accenture executive summit. Part of AWS reinvent. I'm your host Rebecca Knight. Today we are joined by a cube alum, Karthik, Lorraine. He is Accenture senior managing director and lead Accenture cloud. First, welcome back to the show Karthik. >>Thank you. Thanks for having me here. >>Always a pleasure. So I want to talk to you. You are an industry veteran, you've been in Silicon Valley for decades. Um, I want to hear from your perspective what the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been, what are you hearing from clients? What are they struggling with? What are their challenges that they're facing day to day? >>I think, um, COVID-19 is being a eye-opener from, you know, various facets, you know, um, first and foremost, it's a, it's a hell, um, situation that everybody's facing, which is not just, uh, highest economic bearings to it. It has enterprise, um, an organization with bedding to it. And most importantly, it's very personal to people, um, because they themselves and their friends, family near and dear ones are going through this challenge, uh, from various different dimension. But putting that aside, when you come to it from an organization enterprise standpoint, it has changed everything well, the behavior of organizations coming together, working in their campuses, working with each other as friends, family, and, uh, um, near and dear colleagues, all of them are operating differently. So that's what big change to get things done in a completely different way, from how they used to get things done. >>Number two, a lot of things that were planned for normal scenarios, like their global supply chain, how they interact with their client customers, how they go innovate with their partners on how that employees contribute to the success of an organization at all changed. And there are no data models that give them a hint of something like this for them to be prepared for this. So we are seeing organizations, um, that have adapted to this reasonably okay, and are, you know, launching to innovate faster in this. And there are organizations that have started with struggling, but are continuing to struggle. And the gap between the leaders and legs are widening. So this is creating opportunities in a different way for the leaders, um, with a lot of pivot their business, but it's also creating significant challenge for the lag guides, uh, as we defined in our future systems research that we did a year ago, uh, and those organizations are struggling further. So the gap is actually widening. >>So you just talked about the widening gap. I've talked about the tremendous uncertainty that so many companies, even the ones who have adapted reasonably well, uh, in this, in this time, talk a little bit about Accenture cloud first and why, why now? >>I think it's a great question. Um, we believe that for many of our clients COVID-19 has turned, uh, cloud from an experimentation aspiration to an origin mandate. What I mean by that is everybody has been doing something on the other end cloud. There's no company that says we don't believe in cloud are, we don't want to do cloud. It was how much they did in cloud. And they were experimenting. They were doing the new things in cloud, but they were operating a lot of their core business outside the cloud or not in the cloud. Those organizations have struggled to operate in this new normal, in a remote fashion, as well as, uh, their ability to pivot to all the changes the pandemic has brought to them. But on the other hand, the organizations that had a solid foundation in cloud were able to collect faster and not actually gone into the stage of innovating faster and driving a new behavior in the market, new behavior within their organization. >>So we are seeing that spend to make is actually fast-forwarded something that we always believed was going to happen. This, uh, uh, moving to cloud over the next decade is fast forward it to happen in the next three to five years. And it's created this moment where it's a once in an era, really replatforming of businesses in the cloud that we are going to see. And we see this moment as a cloud first moment where organizations will use cloud as the, the, the canvas and the foundation with which they're going to reimagine their business after they were born in the cloud. Uh, and this requires a whole new strategy. Uh, and as Accenture, we are getting a lot in cloud, but we thought that this is the moment where we bring all of that, gave him a piece together because we need a strategy for addressing, moving to cloud are embracing cloud in a holistic fashion. And that's what Accenture cloud first brings together a holistic strategy, a team that's 70,000 plus people that's coming together with rich cloud skills, but investing to tie in all the various capabilities of cloud to Delaware, that holistic strategy to our clients. So I want you to >>Delve into a little bit more about what this strategy actually entails. I mean, it's clearly about embracing change and being willing to experiment and having capabilities to innovate. Can you tell us a little bit more about what this strategy entails? >>Yeah. The reason why we say that as a need for strategy is like I said, cloud is not new. There's almost every customer client is doing something with the cloud, but all of them have taken different approaches to cloud and different boundaries to cloud. Some organizations say, I just need to consolidate my multiple data centers to a small data center footprint and move the nest to cloud. Certain other organizations say that well, I'm going to move certain workloads to cloud. Certain other organizations said, well, I'm going to build this Greenfield application or workload in cloud. Certain other said, um, I'm going to use the power of AI ML in the cloud to analyze my data and drive insights. But a cloud first strategy is all of this tied with the corporate strategy of the organization with an industry specific cloud journey to say, if in this current industry, if I were to be reborn in the cloud, would I do it in the exact same passion that I did in the past, which means that the products and services that they offer need to be the matching, how they interact with that customers and partners need to be revisited, how they bird and operate their IP systems need to be the, imagine how they unearthed the data from all of the systems under which they attract need to be liberated so that you could drive insights of cloud. >>First strategy hands is a corporate wide strategy, and it's a C-suite responsibility. It doesn't take the ownership away from the CIO or CIO, but the CIO is, and CDI was felt that it was just their problem and they were to solve it. And everyone as being a customer, now, the center of gravity is elevated to it becoming a C-suite agenda on everybody's agenda, where probably the CDI is the instrument to execute that that's a holistic cloud-first strategy >>And it, and it's a strategy, but the way you're describing it, it sounds like it's also a mindset and an approach, as you were saying, this idea of being reborn in the cloud. So now how do I think about things? How do I communicate? How do I collaborate? How do I get done? What I need to get done. Talk a little bit about how this has changed, the way you support your clients and how Accenture cloud first is changing your approach to cloud services. >>Wonderful. Um, you know, I did not color one very important aspect in my previous question, but that's exactly what you just asked me now, which is to do all of this. I talked about all of the variables, uh, an organization or an enterprise is going to go through, but the good part is they have one constant. And what is that? That is their employees, uh, because you do, the employees are able to embrace this change. If they are able to, uh, change them, says, pivot them says retool and train themselves to be able to operate in this new cloud. First one, the ability to reimagine every function of the business would be happening at speed. And cloud first approach is to do all of this at speed, because innovation is deadly proposed there, do the rate of probability on experimentation. You need to experiment a lot for any kind of experimentation. >>There's a probability of success. Organizations need to have an ability and a mechanism for them to be able to innovate faster for which they need to experiment a lot, the more the experiment and the lower cost at which they experiment is going to help them experiment a lot. And they experiment demic speed, fail fast, succeed more. And hence, they're going to be able to operate this at speed. So the cloud-first mindset is all about speed. I'm helping the clients fast track that innovation journey, and this is going to happen. Like I said, across the enterprise and every function across every department, I'm the agent of this change is going to be the employees or weapon, race, this change through new skills and new grueling and new mindset that they need to adapt to. >>So Karthik what you're describing it, it sounds so exciting. And yet for a pandemic wary workforce, that's been working remotely that may be dealing with uncertainty if for their kid's school and for so many other aspects of their life, it sounds hard. So how are you helping your clients, employees get onboard with this? And because the change management is, is often the hardest part. >>Yeah, I think it's, again, a great question. A bottle has only so much capacity. Something got to come off for something else to go in. That's what you're saying is absolutely right. And that is again, the power of cloud. The reason why cloud is such a fundamental breakthrough technology and capability for us to succeed in this era, because it helps in various forms. What we talked so far is the power of innovation that can create, but cloud can also simplify the life of the employees in an enterprise. There are several activities and tasks that people do in managing that complex infrastructure, complex ID landscape. They used to do certain jobs and activities in a very difficult underground about with cloud has simplified. And democratised a lot of these activities. So that things which had to be done in the past, like managing the complexity of the infrastructure, keeping them up all the time, managing the, um, the obsolescence of the capabilities and technologies and infrastructure, all of that could be offloaded to the cloud. >>So that the time that is available for all of these employees can be used to further innovate. Every organization is going to spend almost the same amount of money, but rather than spending activities, by looking at the rear view mirror on keeping the lights on, they're going to spend more money, more time, more energy, and spend their skills on things that are going to add value to their organization. Because you, every innovation that an enterprise can give to their end customer need not come from that enterprise. The word of platform economy is about democratising innovation. And the power of cloud is to get all of these capabilities from outside the four walls of the enterprise, >>It will add value to the organization, but I would imagine also add value to that employee's life because that employee, the employee will be more engaged in his or her job and therefore bring more excitement and energy into her, his or her day-to-day activities too. >>Absolutely. Absolutely. And this is, this is a normal evolution we would have seen everybody would have seen in their lives, that they keep moving up the value chain of what activities that, uh, gets performed buying by those individuals. And this is, um, you know, no more true than how the United States, uh, as an economy has operated where, um, this is the power of a powerhouse of innovation, where the work that's done inside the country keeps moving up to value chain. And, um, us leverage is the global economy for a lot of things that is required to power the United States and that global economic, uh, phenomenon is very proof for an enterprise as well. There are things that an enterprise needs to do them soon. There are things an employee needs to do themselves. Um, but there are things that they could leverage from the external innovation and the power of innovation that is coming from technologies like cloud. >>So at Accenture, you have long, long, deep Stan, sorry, you have deep and long-standing relationships with many cloud service providers, including AWS. How does the Accenture cloud first strategy, how does it affect your relationships with those providers? >>Yeah, we have great relationships with cloud providers like AWS. And in fact, in the cloud world, it was one of the first, um, capability that we started about years ago, uh, when we started developing these capabilities. But five years ago, we hit a very important milestone where the two organizations came together and said that we are forging a pharma partnership with joint investments to build this partnership. And we named that as a Accenture, AWS business group ABG, uh, where we co-invest and brought skills together and develop solutions. And we will continue to do that. And through that investment, we've also made several acquisitions that you would have seen in the recent times, like, uh, an invoice and gecko that we made acquisitions in in Europe. But now we're taking this to the next level. What we are saying is two cloud first and the $3 billion investment that we are bringing in, uh, through cloud-first. >>We are going to make specific investment to create unique joint solution and landing zones foundation, um, cloud packs with which clients can accelerate their innovation or their journey to cloud first. And one great example is what we are doing with Takeda, uh, billable, pharmaceutical giant, um, between we've signed a five-year partnership. And it was out in the media just a month ago or so, where we are, the two organizations are coming together. We have created a partnership as a power of three partnership, where the three organizations are jointly hoarding hats and taking responsibility for the innovation and the leadership position that Takeda wants to get to with this. We are going to simplify their operating model and organization by providing and flexibility. We're going to provide a lot more insights. Tequila has a 230 year old organization. Imagine the amount of trapped data and intelligence that is there. >>How about bringing all of that together with the power of AWS and Accenture and Takeda to drive more customer insights, um, come up with breakthrough R and D uh, accelerate clinical trials and improve the patient experience using AI ML and edge technologies. So all of these things that we will do through this partnership with joined investment from Accenture cloud first, as well as partner like AWS, so that Takeda can realize their gain. And, uh, their senior actually made a statement that five years from now, every ticket an employee will have an AI assistant. That's going to make that beginner employee move up the value chain on how they contribute and add value to the future of tequila with the AI assistant, making them even more equipped and smarter than what they could be otherwise. >>So, one last question to close this out here. What is your future vision for, for Accenture cloud first? What are we going to be talking about at next year's Accenture executive summit? Yeah, the future >>Is going to be, um, evolving, but the part that is exciting to me, and this is, uh, uh, a fundamental belief that we are entering a new era of industrial revolution from industry first, second, and third industry. The third happened probably 20 years ago with the advent of Silicon and computers and all of that stuff that happened here in the Silicon Valley. I think the fourth industrial revolution is going to be in the cross section of, uh, physical, digital and biological boundaries. And there's a great article, um, in one economic forum that people, uh, your audience can Google and read about it. Uh, but the reason why this is very, very important is we are seeing a disturbing phenomenon that over the last 10 years are seeing a Blackwing of the, um, labor productivity and innovation, which has dropped to about 2.1%. When you see that kind of phenomenon over that longer period of time, there has to be breakthrough innovation that needs to happen to come out of this barrier and get to the next, you know, base camp, as I would call it to further this productivity, um, lack that we are seeing, and that is going to happen in the intersection of the physical, digital and biological boundaries. >>And I think cloud is going to be the connective tissue between all of these three, to be able to provide that where it's the edge, especially is good to come closer to the human lives. It's going to come from cloud. Yeah. Pick totally in your mind, you can think about cloud as central, either in a private cloud, in a data center or in a public cloud, you know, everywhere. But when you think about edge, it's going to be far reaching and coming close to where we live and maybe work and very, um, get entertained and so on and so forth. And there's good to be, uh, intervention in a positive way in the field of medicine, in the field of entertainment, in the field of, um, manufacturing in the field of, um, you know, mobility. When I say mobility, human mobility, people, transportation, and so on and so forth with all of this stuff, cloud is going to be the connective tissue and the vision of cloud first is going to be, uh, you know, blowing through this big change that is going to happen. And the evolution that is going to happen where, you know, the human grace of mankind, um, our person kind of being very gender neutral in today's world. Um, go first needs to be that beacon of, uh, creating the next generation vision for enterprises to take advantage of that kind of an exciting future. And that's why it, Accenture, are we saying that there'll be change as our, as our purpose? >>I genuinely believe that cloud first is going to be in the forefront of that change agenda, both for Accenture as well as for the rest of the work. Excellent. Let there be change, indeed. Thank you so much for joining us Karthik. A pleasure I'm Rebecca nights stay tuned for more of Q3 60 fives coverage of the Accenture executive summit >>From around the globe. It's the cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent executive summit 2020, sponsored by Accenture and AWS >>Welcome everyone to the Q virtual and our coverage of the Accenture executive summit, which is part of AWS reinvent 2020. I'm your host Rebecca Knight. Today, we are talking about the green cloud and joining me is Kishor Dirk. He is Accenture senior managing director cloud first global services lead. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Kishor nice to meet you. So I want to start by asking you what it is that we mean when we say green cloud, we know the sustainability is a business imperative. So many organizations around the world are committing to responsible innovation, lowering carbon emissions. But what is this? What is it? What does it mean when they talk about cloud from a sustainability perspective? I think it's about responsible innovation being cloud is a cloud first approach that has benefit the clients by helping reduce carbon emissions. Think about it this way. >>You have a large number of data centers. Each of these data centers are increasing by 14% every year. And this double digit growth. What you're seeing is these data centers and the consumption is nearly coolant to the kind of them should have a country like Spain. So the magnitude of the problem that is out there and how do we pursue a green approach. If you look at this, our Accenture analysis, in terms of the migration to public cloud, we've seen that we can reduce that by 59 million tons of CO2 per year with just the 5.9% reduction in total emissions and equates this to 22 million cars off the road. And the magnitude of reduction can go a long way in meeting climate change commitments, particularly for data sensitive. Wow, that's incredible. The numbers that you're putting forward are, are absolutely mind blowing. So how does it work? Is it a simple cloud migration? So, you know, when companies begin their cloud journey and then they confront, uh, with >>Them a lot of questions, the decision to make, uh, this particular, uh, element sustainable in the solution and benefits they drive and they have to make wise choices, and then they will gain unprecedented level of innovation leading to both a greener planet, as well as, uh, a greener balance sheet, I would say, uh, so effectively it's all about ambition, data ambition, greater the reduction in carbon emissions. So from a cloud migration perspective, we look at it as a, as a simple solution with approaches and sustainability benefits, uh, that vary based on things it's about selecting the right cloud provider, a very carbon thoughtful provider and the first step towards a sustainable cloud journey. And here we're looking at cloud operators know, obviously they have different corporate commitments towards sustainability, and that determines how they plan, how they build, uh, their, uh, uh, the data centers, how they are consumed and assumptions that operate there and how they, or they retire their data centers. >>Then, uh, the next element that you want to do is how do you build it ambition, you know, for some of the companies, uh, and average on-prem, uh, drives about 65% energy reduction and the carbon emission reduction number was 84%, which is kind of good, I would say. But then if you could go up to 98% by configuring applications to the cloud, that is significant benefit for, uh, for the board. And obviously it's a, a greener cloud that we're talking about. And then the question is, how far can you go? And, uh, you know, the, obviously the companies have to unlock greater financial societal environmental benefits, and Accenture has this cloud based circular operations and sustainable products and services that we bring into play. So it's a, it's a very thoughtful, broader approach that w bringing in, in terms of, uh, just a simple concept of cloud migration. >>So we know that in the COVID era, shifting to the cloud has really become a business imperative. How is Accenture working with its clients at a time when all of this movement has been accelerated? How do you partner and what is your approach in terms of helping them with their migrations? >>Yeah, I mean, let, let me talk a little bit about the pandemic and the crisis that is that today. And if you really look at that in terms of how we partnered with a lot of our clients in terms of the cloud first approach, I'll give you a couple of examples. We worked with rolls, Royce, MacLaren, DHL, and others, as part of the ventilator, a UK challenge consortium, again, to, uh, coordinate production of medical ventilator surgically needed for the UK health service. Many of these farms I've taken similar initiatives in, in terms of, uh, you know, from a few manufacturers hand sanitizers, and to answer it as us and again, leading passionate labels, making PPE, and again, at the UN general assembly, we launched the end-to-end integration guide that helps company is essentially to have a sustainable development goals. And that's how we are parking at a very large scale. >>Uh, and, and if you really look at how we work with our clients and what is Accenture's role there, uh, you know, from, in terms of our clients, you know, there are multiple steps that we look at. One is about planning, building, deploying, and managing an optimal green cloud solution. And Accenture has this concept of, uh, helping clients with a platform to kind of achieve that goal. And here we are having, we are having a platform or a mine app, which has a module called BGR advisor. And this is a capability that helps you provide optimal green cloud, uh, you know, a business case, and obviously a blueprint for each of our clients and right from the start in terms of how do we complete cloud migration recommendation to an improved solution, accurate accuracy to obviously bringing in the end to end perspective, uh, you know, with this green card advisor capability, we're helping our clients capture what we call as a carbon footprint for existing data centers and provide, uh, I would say the current cloud CO2 emission score that, you know, obviously helps them, uh, with carbon credits that can further that green agenda. >>So essentially this is about recommending a green index score, reducing carbon footprint for migration migrating for green cloud. And if we look at how Accenture itself is practicing what we preach, 95% of our applications are in the cloud. And this migration has helped us, uh, to lead to about $14.5 million in benefit. And in the third year and another 3 million analytics costs that are saved through right-sizing a service consumption. So it's a very broad umbrella and a footprint in terms of how we engage societaly with the UN or our clients. And what is it that we exactly bring to our clients in solving a specific problem? >>Accenture isn't is walking the walk, as you say, >>Instead of it, we practice what we preach, and that is something that we take it to heart. We want to have a responsible business and we want to practice it. And we want to advise our clients around that >>You are your own use case. And so they can, they know they can take your advice. So talk a little bit about, um, the global, the cooperation that's needed. We know that conquering this pandemic is going to take a coordinated global effort and talk a little bit about the great reset initiative. First of all, what is that? Why don't we, why don't we start there and then we can delve into it a little bit more. >>Okay. So before we get to how we are cooperating, the great reset, uh, initiative is about improving the state of the world. And it's about a group of global stakeholders cooperating to simultaneously manage the direct consequences of their COVID-19 crisis. Uh, and in spirit of this cooperation that we're seeing during COVID-19, uh, which will obviously either to post pandemic, to tackle the world's pressing issues. As I say, uh, we are increasing companies to realize a combined potential of technology and sustainable impact to use enterprise solutions, to address with urgency and scale, and, um, obviously, uh, multiple challenges that are facing our world. One of the ways that are increasing, uh, companies to reach their readiness cloud with Accenture's cloud strategy is to build a solid foundation that is resilient and will be able to faster to the current, as well as future times. Now, when you think of cloud as the foundation, uh, that drives the digital transformation, it's about scale speed, streamlining your operations, and obviously reducing costs. >>And as these businesses seize the construct of cloud first, they must remain obviously responsible and trusted. Now think about this, right, as part of our analysis, uh, that profitability can co-exist with responsible and sustainable practices. Let's say that all the data centers, uh, migrated from on-prem to cloud based, we estimate that would reduce carbon emissions globally by 60 million tons per year. Uh, and think about it this way, right? Easier metric would be taking out 22 million cars off the road. Um, the other examples that you've seen, right, in terms of the NHS work that they're doing, uh, in, in UK to build, uh, uh, you know, uh, Microsoft teams in based integration. And, uh, the platform rolled out for 1.2 million users, uh, and got 16,000 users that we were able to secure, uh, instant messages, obviously complete audio video calls and host virtual meetings across India. So, uh, this, this work that we did with NHS is, is something that we have, we are collaborating with a lot of tools and powering businesses. >>Well, you're vividly describing the business case for sustainability. What do you see as the future of cloud when thinking about it from this lens of sustainability, and also going back to what you were talking about in terms of how you are helping your, your fostering cooperation within these organizations. >>Yeah, that's a very good question. So if you look at today, right, businesses are obviously environmentally aware and they are expanding efforts to decrease power consumption, carbon emissions, and they want to run a sustainable operational efficiency across all elements of their business. And this is an increasing trend, and there is that option of energy efficient infrastructure in the global market. And this trend is the cloud first thinking. And with the right cloud migration that we've been discussing is about unlocking new opportunity, like clean energy foundations enable enabled by cloud based geographic analysis, material, waste reductions, and better data insights. And this is something that, uh, uh, will drive, uh, with obviously faster analytics platform that is out there. Now, the sustainability is actually the future of business, which is companies that are historically different, the financial security or agility benefits to cloud. Now sustainability becomes an imperative for them. And I would own experience Accenture's experience with cloud migrations. We have seen 30 to 40% total cost of ownership savings, and it's driving a greater workload, flexibility, better service, your obligation, and obviously more energy efficient, uh, public clouds that cost, uh, we'll see that, that drive a lot of these enterprise own data centers. So in our view, what we are seeing is that this, this, uh, sustainable cloud position helps, uh, helps companies to, uh, drive a lot of the goals in addition to their financial and other goods. >>So what should organizations who are, who are watching this interview and saying, Hey, I need to know more, what, what do you recommend to them? And what, where should they go to get more information on Greenplum? >>Yeah. If you wanna, if you are a business leader and you're thinking about which cloud provider is good, or how, how should applications be modernized to meet our day-to-day needs, which cloud driven innovations should be priorities. Uh, you know, that's why Accenture, uh, formed up the cloud first organization and essentially to provide the full stack of cloud services to help our clients become a cloud first business. Um, you know, it's all about excavation, uh, the digital transformation innovating faster, creating differentiated, uh, and sustainable value for our clients. And we are powering it up at 70,000 cloud professionals, $3 billion investment, and, uh, bringing together and services for our clients in terms of cloud solutions. And obviously the ecosystem partnership that we have that we are seeing today, uh, and, and the assets that help our clients realize their goals. Um, and again, to do reach out to us, uh, we can help them determine obviously, an optimal, sustainable cloud for solution that meets the business needs and being unprecedented levels of innovation. Our experience, uh, will be our advantage. And, uh, now more than ever Rebecca, >>Just closing us out here. Do you have any advice for these companies who are navigating a great deal of uncertainty? We, what, what do you think the next 12 to 24 months? What do you think that should be on the minds of CEOs as they go through? >>So, as CEO's are thinking about rapidly leveraging cloud, migrating to cloud, uh, one of the elements that we want them to be thoughtful about is can they do that, uh, with unprecedent level of innovation, but also build a greener planet and a greener balance sheet, if we can achieve this balance and kind of, uh, have a, have a world which is greener, I think the world will win. And we all along with Accenture clients will win. That's what I would say, uh, >>Optimistic outlook, and I will take it. Thank you so much. Kishor for coming on the show >>That was >>Accenture's Kishor Dirk, I'm Rebecca Knight stay tuned for more of the cube virtuals coverage of the Accenture executive summit >>Around the globe. >>It's the cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent executive summit 2020, sponsored by Accenture and AWS. >>Welcome everyone to the cube virtual and our coverage of the Accenture executive summit. Part of AWS reinvent 2020. I'm your host Rebecca Knight. Today, we are talking about the power of three. And what happens when you bring together the scientific know-how of a global bias biopharmaceutical powerhouse in Takeda, a leading cloud services provider in AWS, and Accenture's ability to innovate, execute, and deliver innovation. Joining me to talk about these things. We have Aaron, sorry, Arjun, baby. He is the senior managing director and chairman of Accenture's diamond leadership council. Welcome Arjun, Karl hick. He is the chief digital and information officer at Takeda. What is your bigger, thank you, Rebecca and Brian bowhead, global director, and head of the Accenture AWS business group at Amazon web services. Thanks so much for coming up. So, as I said, we're talking today about this relationship between, uh, your three organizations. Carl, I want to talk with you. I know you're at the beginning of your cloud journey. What was the compelling reason? What w why, why move to the cloud and why now? >>Yeah, no, thank you for the question. So, you know, as a biopharmaceutical leader, we're committed to bringing better health and a brighter future to our patients. We're doing that by translating science into some really innovative and life transporting therapies, but throughout, you know, we believe that there's a responsible use of technology, of data and of innovation. And those three ingredients are really key to helping us deliver on that promise. And so, you know, while I think, uh, I'll call it, this cloud journey is already always been a part of our strategy. Um, and we've made some pretty steady progress over the last years with a number of I'll call it diverse approaches to the digital and AI. We just weren't seeing the impact at scale that we wanted to see. Um, and I think that, you know, there's a, there's a need ultimately to, you know, accelerate and, uh, broaden that shift. >>And, you know, we were commenting on this earlier, but there's, you know, it's been highlighted by a number of factors. One of those has been certainly a number of the large acquisitions we've made Shire, uh, being the most pressing example, uh, but also the global pandemic, both of those highlight the need for us to move faster, um, at the speed of cloud, ultimately. Uh, and so we started thinking outside of the box because it was taking us too long and we decided to leverage the strategic partner model. Uh, and it's giving us a chance to think about our challenges very differently. We call this the power of three, uh, and ultimately our focus is singularly on our patients. I mean, they're waiting for us. We need to get there faster. It can take years. And so I think that there is a focus on innovation, um, at a rapid speed, so we can move ultimately from treating conditions to keeping people healthy. >>So, as you are embarking on this journey, what are some of the insights you want to share about, about what you're seeing so far? >>Yeah, no, it's a great question. So, I mean, look, maybe right before I highlight some of the key insights, uh, I would say that, you know, with cloud now as the, as the launchpad for innovation, you know, our vision all along has been that in less than 10 years, we want every single to kid, uh, associate we're employed to be empowered by an AI assistant. And I think that, you know, that's going to help us make faster, better decisions. It'll help us, uh, fundamentally deliver transformative therapies and better experiences to, to that ecosystem, to our patients, to physicians, to payers, et cetera, much faster than we previously thought possible. Um, and I think that technologies like cloud and edge computing together with a very powerful I'll call it data fabric is going to help us to create this, this real-time, uh, I'll call it the digital ecosystem. >>The data has to flow ultimately seamlessly between our patients and providers or partners or researchers, et cetera. Uh, and so we've been thinking about this, uh, I'll call it, we call it sort of this pyramid, um, that helps us describe our vision. Uh, and a lot of it has to do with ultimately modernizing the foundation, modernizing and rearchitecting, the platforms that drive the company, uh, heightening our focus on data, which means that there's an accelerated shift towards, uh, enterprise data platforms and digital products. And then ultimately, uh, uh, P you know, really an engine for innovation sitting at the very top. Um, and so I think with that, you know, there's a few different, I'll call it insights that, you know, are quickly kind of come zooming into focus. I would say one is this need to collaborate very differently. Um, you know, not only internally, but you know, how do we define ultimately, and build a connected digital ecosystem with the right partners and technologies externally? >>I think the second component that maybe people don't think as much about, but, you know, I find critically important is for us to find ways of really transforming our culture. We have to unlock talent and shift the culture certainly as a large biopharmaceutical very differently. And then lastly, you've touched on it already, which is, you know, innovation at the speed of cloud. How do we re-imagine that, you know, how do ideas go from getting tested and months to kind of getting tested in days? You know, how do we collaborate very differently? Uh, and so I think those are three, uh, perhaps of the larger I'll call it, uh, insights that, you know, the three of us are spending a lot of time thinking about right now. >>So Arjun, I want to bring you into this conversation a little bit, let let's delve into those a bit. Talk first about the collaboration, uh, that Carl was referencing there. How, how have you seen that? It is enabling, uh, colleagues and teams to communicate differently and interact in new and different ways? Uh, both internally and externally, as Carl said, >>No, th thank you for that. And, um, I've got to give call a lot of credit, because as we started to think about this journey, it was clear, it was a bold ambition. It was, uh, something that, you know, we had all to do differently. And so the, the concept of the power of three that Carl has constructed has become a label for us as a way to think about what are we going to do to collectively drive this journey forward. And to me, the unique ways of collaboration means three things. The first one is that, um, what is expected is that the three parties are going to come together and it's more than just the sum of our resources. And by that, I mean that we have to bring all of ourselves, all of our collective capabilities, as an example, Amazon has amazing supply chain capabilities. >>They're one of the best at supply chain. So in addition to resources, when we have supply chain innovations, uh, that's something that they're bringing in addition to just, uh, talent and assets, similarly for Accenture, right? We do a lot, uh, in the talent space. So how do we bring our thinking as to how we apply best practices for talent to this partnership? So, um, as we think about this, so that's, that's the first one, the second one is about shared success very early on in this partnership, we started to build some foundations and actually develop seven principles that all of us would look at as the basis for this success shared success model. And we continue to hold that sort of in the forefront, as we think about this collaboration. And maybe the third thing I would say is this one team mindset. So whether it's the three of our CEOs that get together every couple of months to think about, uh, this partnership, or it is the governance model that Carl has put together, which has all three parties in the governance and every level of leadership. We always think about this as a collective group, so that we can keep that front and center. And what I think ultimately has enabled us to do is it allowed us to move at speed, be more flexible. And ultimately all we're looking at the target the same way, the North side, the same way. >>Brian, what about you? What have you observed? And are you thinking about in terms of how this is helping teams collaborate differently, >>Lillian and Arjun made some, some great points there. And I think if you really think about what he's talking about, it's that, that diversity of talent, diversity of scale and viewpoint and even culture, right? And so we see that in the power of three. And then I think if we drill down into what we see at Takeda, and frankly, Takeda was, was really, I think, pretty visionary and on their way here, right? And taking this kind of cross functional approach and applying it to how they operate day to day. So moving from a more functional view of the world to more of a product oriented view of the world, right? So when you think about we're going to be organized around a product or a service or a capability that we're going to provide to our customers or our patients or donors in this case, it implies a different structure, although altogether, and a different way of thinking, right? >>Because now you've got technical people and business experts and marketing experts, all working together in this is sort of cross collaboration. And what's great about that is it's really the only way to succeed with cloud, right? Because the old ways of thinking where you've got application people and infrastructure, people in business, people is suboptimal, right? Because we can all access this tool as these capabilities and the best way to do that. Isn't across kind of a cross-collaborative way. And so this is product oriented mindset. It's a keto was already on. I think it's allowed us to move faster in those areas. >>Carl, I want to go back to this idea of unlocking talent and culture. And this is something that both Brian and Arjun have talked about too. People are an essential part of their, at the heart of your organization. How will their experience of work change and how are you helping re-imagine and reinforce a strong organizational culture, particularly at this time when so many people are working remotely. >>Yeah. It's a great question. And it's something that, you know, I think we all have to think a lot about, I mean, I think, um, you know, driving this, this call it, this, this digital and data kind of capability building, uh, takes a lot of, a lot of thinking. So, I mean, there's a few different elements in terms of how we're tackling this one is we're recognizing, and it's not just for the technology organization or for those actors that, that we're innovating with, but it's really across all of the Cato where we're working through ways of raising what I'll call the overall digital leaders literacy of the organization, you know, what are the, you know, what are the skills that are needed almost at a baseline level, even for a global bio-pharmaceutical company and how do we deploy, I'll call it those learning resources very broadly. >>And then secondly, I think that, you know, we're, we're very clear that there's a number of areas where there are very specialized skills that are needed. Uh, my organization is one of those. And so, you know, we're fostering ways in which, you know, we're very kind of quickly kind of creating, uh, avenues excitement for, for associates in that space. So one example specifically, as we use, you know, during these very much sort of remote, uh, sort of days, we, we use what we call global it meet days, and we set a day aside every single month and this last Friday, um, you know, we, we create during that time, it's time for personal development. Um, and we provide active seminars and training on things like, you know, robotic process automation, data analytics cloud, uh, in this last month we've been doing this for months and months now, but in his last month, more than 50% of my organization participated, and there's this huge positive shift, both in terms of access and excitement about really harnessing those new skills and being able to apply them. >>Uh, and so I think that that's, you know, one, one element that, uh, can be considered. And then thirdly, um, of course, every organization to work on, how do you prioritize talent, acquisition and management and competencies that you can't rescale? I mean, there are just some new capabilities that we don't have. And so there's a large focus that I have with our executive team and our CEO and thinking through those critical roles that we need to activate in order to kind of, to, to build on this, uh, this business led cloud transformation. And lastly, probably the hardest one, but the one that I'm most jazzed about is really this focus on changing the mindsets and behaviors. Um, and I think there, you know, this is where the power of three is, is really, uh, kind of coming together nicely. I mean, we're working on things like, you know, how do we create this patient obsessed curiosity, um, and really kind of unlock innovation with a real, kind of a growth mindset. >>Uh, and the level of curiosity that's needed, not to just continue to do the same things, but to really challenge the status quo. So that's one big area of focus we're having the agility to act just faster. I mean, to worry less, I guess I would say about kind of the standard chain of command, but how do you make more speedy, more courageous decisions? And this is places where we can emulate the way that a partner like AWS works, or how do we collaborate across the number of boundaries, you know, and I think, uh, Arjun spoke eloquently to a number of partnerships that we can build. So we can break down some of these barriers and use these networks, um, whether it's within our own internal ecosystem or externally to help, to create value faster. So a lot of energy around ways of working and we'll have to check back in, but I mean, we're early in on this mindset and behavioral shift, um, but a lot of good early momentum. >>Carl you've given me a good segue to talk to Brian about innovation, because you said a lot of the things that I was the customer obsession and this idea of innovating much more quickly. Obviously now the world has its eyes on drug development, and we've all learned a lot about it, uh, in the past few months and accelerating drug development is all, uh, is of great interest to all of us. Brian, how does a transformation like this help a company's, uh, ability to become more agile and more innovative and add a quicker speed to, >>Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think some of the things that Carl talked about just now are critical to that, right? I think where sometimes folks fall short is they think, you know, we're going to roll out the technology and the technology is going to be the silver bullet where in fact it is the culture, it is, is the talent. And it's the focus on that. That's going to be, you know, the determinant of success. And I will say, you know, in this power of three arrangement and Carl talked a little bit about the pyramid, um, talent and culture and that change, and that kind of thinking about that has been a first-class citizen since the very beginning, right. That absolutely is critical for, for being there. Um, and, and so that's been, that's been key. And so we think about innovation at Amazon and AWS, and Carl mentioned some of the things that, you know, partner like AWS can bring to the table is we talk a lot about builders, right? >>So kind of obsessive about builders. Um, and, and we meet what we mean by that is we at Amazon, we hire for builders, we cultivate builders and we like to talk to our customers about it as well. And it also implies a different mindset, right? When you're a builder, you have that, that curiosity, you have that ownership, you have that stake and whatever I'm creating, I'm going to be a co-owner of this product or this service, right. Getting back to that kind of product oriented mindset. And it's not just the technical people or the it people who are builders. It is also the business people as, as Carl talked about. Right. So when we start thinking about, um, innovation again, where we see folks kind of get into a little bit of a innovation pilot paralysis, is that you can focus on the technology, but if you're not focusing on the talent and the culture and the processes and the mechanisms, you're going to be putting out technology, but you're not going to have an organization that's ready to take it and scale it and accelerate it. >>Right. And so that's, that's been absolutely critical. So just a couple of things we've been doing with, with Takeda and Decatur has really been leading the way is, think about a mechanism and a process. And it's really been working backward from the customer, right? In this case, again, the patient and the donor. And that was an easy one because the key value of Decatur is to be a patient focused bio-pharmaceutical right. So that was embedded in their DNA. So that working back from that, that patient, that donor was a key part of that process. And that's really deep in our DNA as well. And Accenture's, and so we were able to bring that together. The other one is, is, is getting used to experimenting and even perhaps failing, right. And being able to iterate and fail fast and experiment and understanding that, you know, some decisions, what we call it at Amazon are two two-way doors, meaning you can go through that door, not like what you see and turn around and go back. And cloud really helps there because the costs of experimenting and the cost of failure is so much lower than it's ever been. You can do it much faster and the implications are so much less. So just a couple of things that we've been really driving, uh, with the cadence around innovation, that's been really critical. Carl, where are you already seeing signs of success? >>Yeah, no, it's a great question. And so we chose, you know, uh, with our focus on innovation to try to unleash maybe the power of data digital in, uh, in focusing on what I call sort of a nave. And so we chose our, our, our plasma derived therapy business, um, and you know, the plasma-derived therapy business unit, it develops critical life-saving therapies for patients with rare and complex diseases. Um, but what we're doing is by bringing kind of our energy together, we're focusing on creating, I'll call it state of the art digitally connected donation centers. And we're really modernizing, you know, the, the, the donor experience right now, we're trying to, uh, improve also I'll call it the overall plasma collection process. And so we've, uh, selected a number of alcohol at a very high speed pilots that we're working through right now, specifically in this, in this area. And we're seeing >>Really great results already. Um, and so that's, that's one specific area of focus are Jen, I want you to close this out here. Any ideas, any best practices advice you would have for other pharmaceutical companies that are, that are at the early stage of their cloud journey? Sorry. Was that for me? Yes. Sorry. Origin. Yeah, no, I was breaking up a bit. No, I think they, um, the key is what's sort of been great for me to see is that when people think about cloud, you know, you always think about infrastructure technology. The reality is that the cloud is really the true enabler for innovation and innovating at scale. And, and if you think about that, right, and all the components that you need, ultimately, that's where the value is for the company, right? Because yes, you're going to get some cost synergies and that's great, but the true value is in how do we transform the organization in the case of the Qaeda and our life sciences clients, right. >>We're trying to take a 14 year process of research and development that takes billions of dollars and compress that right. Tremendous amounts of innovation opportunity. You think about the commercial aspect, lots of innovation can come there. The plasma derived therapy is a great example of how we're going to really innovate to change the trajectory of that business. So I think innovation is at the heart of what most organizations need to do. And the formula, the cocktail that the Qaeda has constructed with this footie program really has all the ingredients, um, that are required for that success. Great. Well, thank you so much. Arjun, Brian and Carl was really an enlightening conversation. Thank you. It's been a lot of, thank you. Yeah, it's been fun. Thanks Rebecca. And thank you for tuning into the cube. Virtual has coverage of the Accenture executive summit >>From around the globe. It's the cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent executive summit 2020, sponsored by Accenture and AWS. >>Welcome everyone to the cubes coverage of Accenture executive summit here at AWS reinvent. I'm your host Rebecca Knight for this segment? We have two guests. First. We have Helen Davis. She is the senior director of cloud platform services, assistant director for it and digital for the West Midlands police. Thanks so much for coming on the show, Helen, and we also have Matthew pound. He is Accenture health and public service associate director and West Midlands police account lead. Thanks so much for coming on the show. Matthew, thank you for having us. So we are going to be talking about delivering data-driven insights to the West Midlands police force. Helen, I want to start with >>You. Can you tell us a little bit about the West Midlands police force? How big is the force and also what were some of the challenges that you were grappling with prior to this initiative? >>Yeah, certainly. So Westerners police is the second largest police force in the UK, outside of the metropolitan police in London. Um, we have an excessive, um, 11,000 people work at Westman ins police serving communities, um, through, across the Midlands region. So geographically, we're quite a big area as well, as well as, um, being population, um, density, having that as a, at a high level. Um, so the reason we sort of embarked on the data-driven insights platform and it, which was a huge change for us was for a number of reasons. Um, namely we had a lot of disparate data, um, which was spread across a range of legacy systems that were many, many years old, um, with some duplication of what was being captured and no single view for offices or, um, support staff. Um, some of the access was limited. You have to be in a, in an actual police building on a desktop computer to access it. Um, other information could only reach the offices on the frontline through a telephone call back to one of our enabling services where they would do a manual checkup, um, look at the information, then call the offices back, um, and tell them what they needed to know. So it was a very long laborious, um, process and not very efficient. Um, and we certainly weren't exploiting the data that we had in a very productive way. >>So it sounds like as you're describing and an old clunky system that needed a technological, uh, reimagination, so what was the main motivation for, for doing, for making this shift? >>It was really, um, about making us more efficient and more effective in how we do how we do business. So, um, you know, certainly as a, as an it leader and sort of my operational colleagues, we recognize the benefits, um, that data and analytics could bring in, uh, in a policing environment, not something that was, um, really done in the UK at the time. You know, we have a lot of data, so we're very data rich and the information that we have, but we needed to turn it into information that was actionable. So that's where we started looking for, um, technology partners and suppliers to help us and sort of help us really with what's the art of the possible, you know, this hasn't been done before. So what could we do in this space that's appropriate for policing? >>I love that idea. What is the art of the possible, can you tell us a little bit about why you chose AWS? >>I think really, you know, as with all things and when we're procuring a partner in the public sector that, you know, there are many rules and regulations, uh, quite rightly as you would expect that to be because we're spending public money. So we have to be very, very careful and, um, it's, it's a long process and we have to be open to public scrutiny. So, um, we sort of look to everything, everything that was available as part of that process, but we recognize the benefits that Clyde would provide in this space because, you know, without moving to a cloud environment, we would literally be replacing something that was legacy with something that was a bit more modern. Um, that's not what we wanted to do. Our ambition was far greater than that. So I think, um, in terms of AWS, really, it was around the scalability, interoperability, you know, disaster things like the disaster recovery service, the fact that we can scale up and down quickly, we call it dialing up and dialing back. Um, you know, it's it's page go. So it just sort of ticked all the boxes for us. And then we went through the full procurement process, fortunately, um, it came out on top for us. So we were, we were able to move forward, but it just sort of had everything that we were looking for in that space. >>Matthew, I want to bring you into the conversation a little bit here. How are you working with a wet with the West Midlands police, sorry. And helping them implement this cloud-first journey? >>Yeah, so I guess, um, by January the West Midlands police started, um, favorite five years ago now. So, um, we set up a partnership with the force. I wanted to operate in a way that it was very different to a traditional supplier relationship. Um, secretary that the data difference insights program is, is one of many that we've been working with last nights on, um, over the last five years. Um, as having said already, um, cloud gave a number of, uh, advantages certainly from a big data perspective and the things that that enabled us today, um, I'm from an Accenture perspective that allowed us to bring in a number of the different themes that we have say, cloud teams, security teams, um, and drafted from an insurance perspective, as well as more traditional services that people would associate with the country. >>I mean, so much of this is about embracing comprehensive change to experiment and innovate and try different things. Matthew, how, how do you help, uh, an entity like West Midlands police think differently when they are, there are these ways of doing things that people are used to, how do you help them think about what is the art of the possible, as Helen said, >>There's a few things to that enable those being critical is trying to co-create solutions together. Yeah. There's no point just turning up with, um, what we think is the right answer, try and say, um, collectively work three, um, the issues that the fullest is seeing and the outcomes they're looking to achieve rather than simply focusing on a long list of requirements, I think was critical and then being really open to working together to create the right solution. Um, rather than just, you know, trying to pick something off the shelf that maybe doesn't fit the forces requirements in the way that it should too, >>Right. It's not always a one size fits all. >>Absolutely not. You know, what we believe is critical is making sure that we're creating something that met the forces needs, um, in terms of the outcomes they're looking to achieve the financial envelopes that were available, um, and how we can deliver those in a, uh, iterative agile way, um, rather than spending years and years, um, working towards an outcome, um, that is gonna update before you even get that. >>So Helen, how, how are things different? What kinds of business functions and processes have been re-imagined in, in light of this change and this shift >>It's, it's actually unrecognizable now, um, in certain areas of the business as it was before. So to give you a little bit of, of context, when we, um, started working with essentially in AWS on the data driven insights program, it was very much around providing, um, what was called locally, a wizzy tool for our intelligence analysts to interrogate data, look at data, you know, decide whether they could do anything predictive with it. And it was very much sort of a back office function to sort of tidy things up for us and make us a bit better in that, in that area or a lot better in that area. And it was rolled out to a number of offices, a small number on the front line. Um, I'm really, it was, um, in line with a mobility strategy that we, hardware officers were getting new smartphones for the first time, um, to do sort of a lot of things on, on, um, policing apps and things like that to again, to avoid them, having to keep driving back to police stations, et cetera. >>And the pilot was so successful. Every officer now has access to this data, um, on their mobile devices. So it literally went from a handful of people in an office somewhere using it to do sort of clever bang things to, um, every officer in the force, being able to access that level of data at their fingertips. Literally. So what they were touched with done before is if they needed to check and address or check details of an individual, um, just as one example, they would either have to, in many cases, go back to a police station to look it up themselves on a desktop computer. Well, they would have to make a call back to a centralized function and speak to an operator, relay the questions, either, wait for the answer or wait for a call back with the answer when those people are doing the data interrogation manually. >>So the biggest change for us is the self-service nature of the data we now have available. So officers can do it themselves on their phone, wherever they might be. So the efficiency savings from that point of view are immense. And I think just parallel to that is the quality of our, because we had a lot of data, but just because you've got a lot of data and a lot of information doesn't mean it's big data and it's valuable necessarily. Um, so again, it was having the single source of truth as we, as we call it. So you know that when you are completing those safe searches and getting the responses back, that it is the most accurate information we hold. And also you're getting it back within minutes, as opposed to, you know, half an hour, an hour or a drive back to a station. So it's making officers more efficient and it's also making them safer. The more efficient they are, the more time they have to spend out with the public doing what they, you know, we all should be doing >>That kind of return on investment because what you were just describing with all the steps that we needed to be taken in prior to this, to verify an address say, and those are precious seconds when someone's life is on the line in, in sort of in the course of everyday police work. >>Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. It's difficult to put a price on it. It's difficult to quantify. Um, but all the, you know, the minutes here and there certainly add up to a significant amount of efficiency savings, and we've certainly been able to demonstrate the officers are spending less time up police stations as a result or more time out on the front line. Also they're safer because they can get information about what may or may not be and address what may or may not have occurred in an area before very, very quickly without having to wait. >>I do, I want to hear your observations of working so closely with this West Midlands police. Have you noticed anything about changes in its culture and its operating model in how police officers interact with one another? Have you seen any changes since this technology change? >>What's unique about the Western displaces, the buy-in from the top down, the chief and his exact team and Helen as the leader from an IOT perspective, um, the entire force is bought in. So what is a significant change program? Uh, I'm not trickles three. Um, everyone in the organization, um, change is difficult. Um, and there's a lot of time effort that's been put in to bake the technical delivery and the business change and adoption aspects around each of the projects. Um, but you can see the step change that is making in each aspect to the organization, uh, and where that's putting West Midlands police as a leader in, um, technology I'm policing in the UK. And I think globally, >>And this is a question for both of you because Matthew, as you said, change is difficult and there is always a certain intransigence in workplaces about this is just the way we've always done things and we're used to this and don't try us to get us. Don't try to get us to do anything new here. It works. How do you get the buy-in that you need to do this kind of digital transformation? >>I think it would be wrong to say it was easy. Um, um, we also have to bear in mind that this was one program in a five-year program. So there was a lot of change going on, um, both internally for some of our back office functions, as well as front tie, uh, frontline offices. So with DDI in particular, I think the stack change occurred when people could see what it could do for them. You know, we had lots of workshops and seminars where we all talk about, you know, big data and it's going to be great and it's data analytics and it's transformational, you know, and quite rightly people that are very busy doing a day job, but not necessarily technologists in the main and, you know, are particularly interested quite rightly so in what we are not dealing with the cloud, you know? And it was like, yeah, okay. >>It's one more thing. And then when they started to see on that, on their phones and what teams could do, that's when it started to sell itself. And I think that's when we started to see, you know, to see the stat change, you know, and, and if we, if we have any issues now it's literally, you know, our help desks in meltdown. Cause everyone's like, well, we call it manage without this anymore. And I think that speaks for itself. So it doesn't happen overnight. It's sort of incremental changes and then that's a step change in attitude. And when they see it working and they see the benefits, they want to use it more. And that's how it's become fundamental to all policing by itself, really, without much selling >>You, Helen just made a compelling case for how to get buy in. Have you discovered any other best practices when you are trying to get everyone on board for this kind of thing? >>We've um, we've used a lot of the traditional techniques, things around comms and engagement. We've also used things like, um, the 30 day challenge and nudge theory around how can we gradually encourage people to use things? Um, I think there's a point where all of this around, how do we just keep it simple and keep it user centric from an end user perspective? I think DDI is a great example of where the, the technology is incredibly complex. The solution itself is, um, you know, extremely large and, um, has been very difficult to, um, get delivered. But at the heart of it is a very simple front end for the user to encourage it and take that complexity away from them. Uh, I think that's been critical through the whole piece of DDR. >>One final word from Helen. I want to hear, where do you go from here? What is the longterm vision? I know that this has made productivity, um, productivity savings equivalent to 154 full-time officers. Uh, what's next, >>I think really it's around, um, exploiting what we've got. Um, I use the phrase quite a lot, dialing it up, which drives my technical architects crazy, but because it's apparently not that simple, but, um, you know, we've, we've been through significant change in the last five years and we are still continuing to batch all of those changes into everyday, um, operational policing. But what we need to see is we need to exploit and build on the investments that we've made in terms of data and claims specifically, the next step really is about expanding our pool of data and our functions. Um, so that, you know, we keep getting better and better at this. Um, the more we do, the more data we have, the more refined we can be, the more precise we are with all of our actions. Um, you know, we're always being expected to, again, look after the public purse and do more for less. And I think this is certainly an and our cloud journey and cloud first by design, which is where we are now, um, is helping us to be future-proofed. So for us, it's very much an investment. And I see now that we have good at embedded in operational policing for me, this is the start of our journey, not the end. So it's really exciting to see where we can go from here. >>Exciting times. Indeed. Thank you so much. Lily, Helen and Matthew for joining us. I really appreciate it. Thank you. And you are watching the cube stay tuned for more of the cubes coverage of the AWS reinvent Accenture executive summit. I'm Rebecca Knight from around the globe. It's the cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent executive summit 2020, sponsored by Accenture and AWS. >>Hi, everyone. Welcome to the cube virtual coverage of the executive summit at AWS reinvent 2020 virtual. This is the cube virtual. We can't be there in person like we are every year we have to be remote. This executive summit is with special programming supported by Accenture where the cube virtual I'm your host John for a year, we had a great panel here called uncloud first digital transformation from some experts, Stuart driver, the director of it and infrastructure and operates at lion Australia, Douglas Regan, managing director, client account lead at lion for Accenture as a deep Islam associate director application development lead for Accenture gentlemen, thanks for coming on the cube virtual that's a mouthful, all that digital, but the bottom line it's cloud transformation. This is a journey that you guys have been on together for over 10 years to be really a digital company. Now, some things have happened in the past year that kind of brings all this together. This is about the next generation organization. So I want to ask Stuart you first, if you can talk about this transformation at lion has undertaken some of the challenges and opportunities and how this year in particular has brought it together because you know, COVID has been the accelerant of digital transformation. Well, if you're 10 years in, I'm sure you're there. You're in the, uh, on that wave right now. Take a minute to explain this transformation journey. >>Yeah, sure. So number of years back, we looked at kind of our infrastructure and our landscape trying to figure out where we >>Wanted to go next. And we were very analog based and stuck in the old it groove of, you know, Capitol reef rash, um, struggling to transform, struggling to get to a digital platform and we needed to change it up so that we could become very different business to the one that we were back then obviously cloud is an accelerant to that. And we had a number of initiatives that needed a platform to build on. And a cloud infrastructure was the way that we started to do that. So we went through a number of transformation programs that we didn't want to do that in the old world. We wanted to do it in a new world. So for us, it was partnering up with a dried organizations that can take you on the journey and, uh, you know, start to deliver bit by bit incremental progress, uh, to get to the, uh, I guess the promise land. >>Um, we're not, not all the way there, but to where we're on the way along. And then when you get to some of the challenges like we've had this year, um, it makes all of the hard work worthwhile because you can actually change pretty quickly, um, provide capacity and, uh, and increase your environments and, you know, do the things that you need to do in a much more dynamic way than we would have been able to previously where we might've been waiting for the hardware vendors, et cetera, to deliver capacity. So for us this year, it's been a pretty strong year from an it perspective and delivering for the business needs >>Before I hit the Douglas. I want to just real quick, a redirect to you and say, you know, if all the people said, Oh yeah, you got to jump on cloud, get in early, you know, a lot of naysayers like, well, wait till to mature a little bit, really, if you got in early and you, you know, paying your dues, if you will taking that medicine with the cloud, you're really kind of peaking at the right time. Is that true? Is that one of the benefits that comes out of this getting in the cloud? Yeah, >>John, this has been an unprecedented year, right. And, um, you know, Australia, we had to live through Bush fires and then we had covert and, and then we actually had to deliver a, um, a project on very large transformational project, completely remote. And then we also had had some, some cyber challenges, which is public as well. And I don't think if we weren't moved into and enabled through the cloud, we would have been able to achieve that this year. It would have been much different, would have been very difficult to do the backing. We're able to work and partner with Amazon through this year, which is unprecedented and actually come out the other end. Then we've delivered a brand new digital capability across the entire business. Um, in many, you know, wouldn't have been impossible if we could, I guess, state in the old world, the fact that we were moved into the new Naval by the new allowed us to work in this unprecedented year. >>Just quick, what's your personal view on this? Because I've been saying on the Cuban reporting necessity is the mother of all invention and the word agility has been kicked around as kind of a cliche, Oh, it'd be agile. You know, we're going to get the city, you get a minute on specifically, but from your perspective, uh, Douglas, what does that mean to you? Because there is benefits there for being agile. And >>I mean, I think as Stuart mentioned, right, in a lot of these things we try to do and, you know, typically, you know, hardware and of the last >>To be told and, and, and always on the critical path to be done, we really didn't have that in this case, what we were doing with our projects in our deployments, right. We were able to move quickly able to make decisions in line with the business and really get things going. Right. So you see a lot of times in a traditional world, you have these inhibitors, you have these critical path, it takes weeks and months to get things done as opposed to hours and days, and truly allowed us to, we had to, you know, VJ things, move things. And, you know, we were able to do that in this environment with AWS support and the fact that we can kind of turn things off and on as quickly as we need it. >>Yeah. Cloud-scale is great for speed. So DECA, Gardez get your thoughts on this cloud first mission, you know, it, you know, the dev ops world, they saw this early that jumping in there, they saw the, the, the agility. Now the theme this year is modern applications with the COVID pandemic pressure, there's real business pressure to make that happen. How did you guys learn to get there fast? And what specifically did you guys do at Accenture and how did it all come together? Can you take us inside kind of how it played out? >>Oh, right. So yeah, we started off with, as we do in most cases with a much more bigger group, and we worked with lions functional experts and, uh, the lost knowledge that allowed the infrastructure being had. Um, we then applied our journey to cloud strategy, which basically revolves around the seminars and, and, uh, you know, the deep three steps from our perspective, uh, assessing the current environment, setting up the new cloud environment. And as we go modernizing and, and migrating these applications to the cloud now, you know, one of the key things that, uh, you know, we learned along this journey was that, you know, you can have the best plans, but bottom line that we were dealing with, we often than not have to make changes. Uh, what a lot of agility and also work with a lot of collaboration with the, uh, Lyon team, as well as, uh, uh, AWS. I think the key thing for me was being able to really bring it all together. It's not just, uh, you know, essentially mobilize it's all of us working together to make this happen. >>What were some of the learnings real quick journeys? >>So I think so the perspective of the key learnings that, you know, uh, you know, when you look back at, uh, the, the infrastructure that was that we were trying to migrate over to the cloud, a lot of the documentation, et cetera, was not available. We were having to, uh, figure out a lot of things on the fly. Now that really required us to have, uh, uh, people with deep expertise who could go into those environments and, and work out, uh, you know, the best ways to, to migrate the workloads to the cloud. Uh, I think, you know, the, the biggest thing for me was making sure all the had on that real SMEs across the board globally, that we could leverage across the various technologies, uh, uh, and, and, and, you know, that would really work in our collaborative and agile environment with line. >>Let's do what I got to ask you. How did you address your approach to the cloud and what was your experience? >>Yeah, for me, it's around getting the foundations right. To start with and then building on them. Um, so, you know, you've gotta have your, your, your process and you've got to have your, your kind of your infrastructure there and your blueprints ready. Um, AWS do a great job of that, right. Getting the foundations right. And then building upon it, and then, you know, partnering with Accenture allows you to do that very successfully. Um, I think, um, you know, the one thing that was probably surprising to us when we started down this journey and kind of after we got a long way down the track and looking backwards is actually how much you can just turn off. Right? So a lot of stuff that you, uh, you get left with a legacy in your environment, and when you start to work through it with the types of people that civic just mentioned, you know, the technical expertise working with the business, um, you can really rationalize your environment and, uh, you know, cloud is a good opportunity to do that, to drive that legacy out. >>Um, so you know, a few things there, the other thing is, um, you've got to try and figure out the benefits that you're going to get out of moving here. So there's no point just taking something that is not delivering a huge amount of value in the traditional world, moving it into the cloud, and guess what is going to deliver the same limited amount of value. So you've got to transform it, and you've got to make sure that you build it for the future and understand exactly what you're trying to gain out of it. So again, you need a strong collaboration. You need a good partners to work with, and you need good engagement from the business as well, because the kind of, uh, you know, digital transformation, cloud transformation, isn't really an it project, I guess, fundamentally it is at the core, but it's a business project that you've got to get the whole business aligned on. You've got to make sure that your investment streams are appropriate and that you're able to understand the benefits and the value that, so you're going to drive back towards the business. >>Let's do it. If you don't mind me asking, what was some of the obstacles you encountered or learnings, um, that might different from the expectation we all been there, Hey, you know, we're going to change the world. Here's the sales pitch, here's the outcome. And then obviously things happen, you know, you learn legacy, okay. Let's put some containerization around that cloud native, um, all that rational. You're talking about what are, and you're going to have obstacles. That's how you learn. That's how perfection has developed. How, what obstacles did you come up with and how are they different from your expectations going in? >>Yeah, they're probably no different from other people that have gone down the same journey. If I'm totally honest, the, you know, 70 or 80% of what you do is relatively easy of the known quantity. It's relatively modern architectures and infrastructures, and you can upgrade, migrate, move them into the cloud, whatever it is, rehost, replatform, rearchitect, whatever it is you want to do, it's the other stuff, right? It's the stuff that always gets left behind. And that's the challenge. It's, it's getting that last bit over the line and making sure that you haven't invested in the future while still carrying all of your legacy costs and complexity within your environment. So, um, to be quite honest, that's probably taken longer and has been more of a challenge than we thought it would be. Um, the other piece I touched on earlier on in terms of what was surprising was actually how much of, uh, your environment is actually not needed anymore. >>When you start to put a critical eye across it and understand, um, uh, ask the tough questions and start to understand exactly what, what it is you're trying to achieve. So if you ask a part of a business, do they still need this application or this service a hundred percent of the time, they will say yes until you start to lay out to them, okay, now I'm going to cost you this to migrate it or this, to run it in the future. And, you know, here's your ongoing costs and, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And then, uh, for a significant amount of those answers, you get a different response when you start to layer on the true value of it. So you start to flush out those hidden costs within the business, and you start to make some critical decisions as a company based on, uh, based on that. So that was a little tougher than we first thought and probably broader than we thought there was more of that than we anticipated, um, which actually results in a much cleaner environment post and post migration. >>You know, the old expression, if it moves automated, you know, it's kind of a joke on government, how they want to tax everything, you know, you want to automate, that's a key thing in cloud, and you've got to discover those opportunities to create value Stuart and Sadiq. Mainly if you can weigh in on this love to know the percentage of total cloud that you have now, versus when you started, because as you start to uncover whether it's by design for purpose, or you discover opportunities to innovate, like you guys have, I'm sure it kind of, you took on some territory inside Lyon, what percentage of cloud now versus stark? >>Yeah. At the start, it was minimal, right. You know, close to zero, right. Single and single digits. Right. It was mainly SAS environments that we had, uh, sitting in clouds when we, uh, when we started, um, Doug mentioned earlier on a really significant transformation project, um, that we've undertaken and recently gone live on a multi-year one. Um, you know, that's all stood up on AWS and is a significant portion of our environment, um, in terms of what we can move to cloud. Uh, we're probably at about 80 or 90% now. And the balanced bit is, um, legacy infrastructure that is just gonna retire as we go through the cycle rather than migrate to the cloud. Um, so we are significantly cloud-based and, uh, you know, we're reaping the benefits of it. I know you like 20, 20, I'm actually glad that you did all the hard yards in the previous years when you started that business challenges thrown out as, >>So do you any common reaction to the cloud percentage penetration? >>I mean, guys don't, but I was going to say was, I think it's like the 80 20 rule, right? We, we, we worked really hard in the, you know, I think 2018, 19 to get any person off, uh, after getting a loan, the cloud and, or the last year is the 20% that we have been migrating. And Stuart said like, uh, not that is also, that's going to be a good diet. And I think our next big step is going to be obviously, you know, the icing on the tape, which is to decommission all these apps as well. Right. So, you know, to get the real benefits out of, uh, the whole conservation program from a, uh, from a >>Douglas and Stewart, can you guys talk about the decision around the cloud because you guys have had success with AWS, why AWS how's that decision made? Can you guys give some insight into some of those thoughts? >>I can stop, start off. I think back when the decision was made and it was, it was a while back, um, you know, there's some clear advantages of moving relay, Ws, a lot of alignment with some of the significant projects and, uh, the trend, that particular one big transformation project that we've alluded to as well. Um, you know, we needed some, uh, some very robust and, um, just future proof and, um, proven technology. And they Ws gave that to us. We needed a lot of those blueprints to help us move down the path. We didn't want to reinvent everything. So, um, you know, having a lot of that legwork done for us and AWS gives you that, right. And, and particularly when you partner up with, uh, with a company like Accenture as well, you get combinations of the technology and the skills and the knowledge to, to move you forward in that direction. >>So, um, you know, for us, it was a, uh, uh, it was a decision based on, you know, best of breed, um, you know, looking forward and, and trying to predict the future needs and, and, and kind of the environmental that we might need. Um, and, you know, partnering up with organizations that can then take you on the journey. Yeah. And just to build on it. So obviously, you know, lion's like an AWS, but, you know, we knew it was a very good choice given that, um, uh, the skills and the capability that we had, as well as the assets and tools we had to get the most out of, um, AWS and obviously our, our CEO globally, you know, announcement about a huge investment that we're making in cloud. Um, but you know, we've, we've worked very well DWS, we've done some joint workshops and joint investments, um, some joint POC. So yeah, w we have a very good working relationship, AWS, and I think, um, one incident to reflect upon whether it's cyber it's and again, where we actually jointly, you know, dove in with, um, with Amazon and some of their security experts and our experts. And we're able to actually work through that with mine quite successfully. So, um, you know, really good behaviors as an organization, but also really good capabilities. >>Yeah. As you guys, you're essential cloud outcomes, research shown, it's the cycle of innovation with the cloud. That's creating a lot of benefits, knowing what you guys know now, looking back certainly COVID is impacted a lot of people kind of going through the same process, knowing what you guys know now, would you advocate people to jump on this transformation journey? If so, how, and what tweaks they make, which changes, what would you advise? >>Uh, I might take that one to start with. Um, I hate to think where we would have been when, uh, COVID kicked off here in Australia and, you know, we were all sent home, literally were at work on the Friday, and then over the weekend. And then Monday, we were told not to come back into the office and all of a sudden, um, our capacity in terms of remote access and I quadrupled, or more four, five X, uh, what we had on the Friday we needed on the Monday. And we were able to stand that up during the day Monday and into Tuesday, because we were cloud-based. And, uh, you know, we just found up your instances and, uh, you know, sort of our licensing, et cetera. And we had all of our people working remotely, um, within, uh, you know, effectively one business day. >>Um, I know peers of mine in other organizations and industries that are relying on kind of a traditional wise and getting hardware, et cetera, that were weeks and months before they could get their, the right hardware to be able to deliver to their user base. So, um, you know, one example where you're able to scale and, uh, uh, get, uh, get value out of this platform beyond probably what was anticipated at the time you talk about, um, you know, less the, in all of these kinds of things. And you can also think of a few scenarios, but real world ones where you're getting your business back up and running in that period of time is, is just phenomenal. There's other stuff, right? There's these programs that we've rolled out, you do your sizing, um, and in the traditional world, you would just go out and buy more servers than you need. >>And, you know, probably never realize the full value of those, you know, the capability of those servers over the life cycle of them. Whereas you're in a cloud world, you put in what you think is right. And if it's not right, you pump it up a little bit when, when all of your metrics and so on, tell you that you need to bump it up. And conversely you scale it down at the same rate. So for us, with the types of challenges and programs and, uh, uh, and just business need, that's come at as this year, uh, we wouldn't have been able to do it without a strong cloud base, uh, to, uh, to move forward >>Know Douglas. One of the things that I talked to, a lot of people on the right side of history who have been on the right wave with cloud, with the pandemic, and they're happy, they're like, and they're humble. Like, well, we're just lucky, you know, luck is preparation meets opportunity. And this is really about you guys getting in early and being prepared and readiness. This is kind of important as people realize, then you gotta be ready. I mean, it's not just, you don't get lucky by being in the right place, the right time. And there were a lot of companies were on the wrong side of history here who might get washed away. This is a super important, I think, >>To echo and kind of build on what Stewart said. I think that the reason that we've had success and I guess the momentum is we, we didn't just do it in isolation within it and technology. It was actually linked to broader business changes, you know, creating basically a digital platform for the entire business, moving the business, where are they going to be able to come back stronger after COVID, when they're actually set up for growth, um, and actually allows, you know, lying to achievements growth objectives, and also its ambitions as far as what it wants to do, uh, with growth in whatever they make, do with acquiring other companies and moving into different markets and launching new products. So we've actually done it in a way that is, you know, real and direct business benefit, uh, that actually enables line to grow >>General. I really appreciate you coming. I have one final question. If you can wrap up here, uh, Stuart and Douglas, you don't mind weighing in what's the priorities for the future. What's next for lion in a century >>Christmas holidays, I'll start Christmas holidays been a big deal and then a, and then a reset, obviously, right? So, um, you know, it's, it's figuring out, uh, transform what we've already transformed, if that makes sense. So God, a huge proportion of our services sitting in the cloud. Um, but we know we're not done even with the stuff that is in there. We need to take those next steps. We need more and more automation and orchestration. We need to, um, our environment, there's more future growth. We need to be able to work with the business and understand what's coming at them so that we can, um, you know, build that into, into our environment. So again, it's really transformation on top of transformation is the way that I'll describe it. And it's really an open book, right? Once you get it in and you've got the capabilities and the evolving tool sets that, uh, AWS continue to bring to the market, um, you know, working with the partners to, to figure out how we unlock that value, um, you know, drive our costs down efficiency, uh, all of those kind of, you know, standard metrics. >>Um, but you know, we're looking for the next things to transform and show value back out to our customer base, um, that, uh, that we continue to, you know, sell our products to and work with and understand how we can better meet their needs. Yeah, I think just to echo that, I think it's really leveraging this and then did you capability they have and getting the most out of that investment. And then I think it's also moving to, uh, and adopting more new ways of working as far as, you know, the speed of the business, um, is getting up the speed of the market is changing. So being able to launch and do things quickly and also, um, competitive and efficient operating costs, uh, now that they're in the cloud, right? So I think it's really leveraging the most out of the platform and then, you know, being efficient in launching things. So putting them with the business, >>Any word from you on your priorities by you see this year in folding, >>There's got to say like e-learning squares, right, for me around, you know, just journey. This is a journey to the cloud, right. >>And, uh, you know, as well, the sort of Saturday, it's getting all, you know, different parts of the organization along the journey business to it, to your, uh, product lenders, et cetera. Right. And it takes time. It is tough, but, uh, uh, you know, you got to get started on it. And, you know, once we, once we finish off, uh, it's the realization of the benefits now that, you know, looking forward, I think for, from Alliance perspective, it is, uh, you know, once we migrate all the workloads to the cloud, it is leveraging, uh, all staff, right. And as I think students said earlier, uh, with, uh, you know, the latest and greatest stuff that AWS is basically working to see how we can really, uh, achieve more better operational excellence, uh, from a, uh, from a cloud perspective. >>Well, Stewart, thanks for coming on with a and sharing your environment and what's going on and your journey you're on the right wave. Did the work you're in, it's all coming together with faster, congratulations for your success, and, uh, really appreciate Douglas with Steve for coming on as well from Accenture. Thank you for coming on. Thanks, John. Okay. Just the cubes coverage of executive summit at AWS reinvent. This is where all the thought leaders share their best practices, their journeys, and of course, special programming with Accenture and the cube. I'm Sean ferry, your host, thanks for watching from around the globe. It's the cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent executive summit 2020, sponsored by Accenture and AWS. >>Welcome everyone to the cube virtuals coverage of the Accenture executive summit. Part of AWS reinvent 2020. I'm your host Rebecca Knight. We are talking today about reinventing the energy data platform. We have two guests joining us. First. We have Johan Krebbers. He is the GM digital emerging technologies and VP of it. Innovation at shell. Thank you so much for coming on the show, Johan you're welcome. And next we have Liz Dennett. She is the lead solution architect for O S D U on AWS. Thank you so much Liz to be here. So I want to start our conversation by talking about OSD. You like so many great innovations. It started with a problem Johan. What was the problem you were trying to solve at shell? >>Yeah, the ethical back a couple of years, we started shoving 2017 where we had a meeting with the deg, the gas exploration in shell, and the main problem they had. Of course, they got lots of lots of data, but are unable to find the right data. They need to work from all over the place. And totally >>Went to real, probably tried to solve is how that person working exploration could find their proper date, not just a day, but also the date you really needed that we did probably talked about his summer 2017. And we said, okay, they don't maybe see this moving forward is to start pulling that data into a single data platform. And that, that was at the time that we called it as the, you, the subsurface data universe in there was about the shell name was so in, in January, 2018, we started a project with Amazon to start grating a co fricking that building, that Stu environment that subserve the universe, so that single data level to put all your exploration and Wells data into that single environment that was intent. And every cent, um, already in March of that same year, we said, well, from Michelle point of view, we will be far better off if we could make this an industry solution and not just a shelf sluice, because Shelby, Shelby, if you can make an industry solution where people are developing applications for it, it also is far better than for shell to say we haven't shell special solution because we don't make money out of how we start a day that we can make money out of it. >>We have access to the data, we can explore the data. So storing the data we should do as efficiently possibly can. So we monitor, we reach out to about eight or nine other large, uh, or I guess operators like the economics, like the tutorials, like the chefs of this world and say, Hey, we inshallah doing this. Do you want to join this effort? And to our surprise, they all said, yes. And then in September, 2018, we had our kickoff meeting with your open group where we said, we said, okay, if you want to work together with lots of other companies, we also need to look at okay, how, how we organize that. Or if you started working with lots of large companies, you need to have some legal framework around some framework around it. So that's why we went to the open group and say, okay, let's, let's form the old forum as we call it at the time. So it's September, 2080, where I did a Galleria in Houston, but the kickoff meeting for the OT four with about 10 members at the time. So there's just over two years ago, we started an exercise for me called ODU, uh, kicked it off. Uh, and so that's really them will be coming from and how we've got there. Also >>The origin story. Um, what, so what digging a little deeper there? What were some of the things you were trying to achieve with the OSU? >>Well, a couple of things we've tried to achieve with you, um, first is really separating data from applications for what is, what is the biggest problem we have in the subsurface space that the data and applications are all interlinked tied together. And if, if you have them and a new company coming along and say, I have this new application and is access to the data that is not possible because the data often interlinked with the application. So the first thing we did is really breaking the link between the application, the data out as those levels, the first thing we did, secondly, put all the data to a single data platform, take the silos out what was happening in the sub-service space and know they got all the data in what we call silos in small little islands out there. So what we're trying to do is first break the link to great, great. >>They put the data single day, the bathroom, and the third part, put a standard layer on top of that, it's an API layer on top to create a platform. So we could create an ecosystem out of companies to start a valving shop application on top of dev data platform across you might have a data platform, but you're only successful. If you have a rich ecosystem of people start developing applications on top of that. And then you can export the data like small companies, last company, university, you name it, we're getting after create an ecosystem out there. So the three things were as was first break, the link between application data, just break it and put data at the center and also make sure that data, this data structure would not be managed by one company. It would only be met. It will be managed the data structures by the ODI forum. Secondly, then put a data, a single data platform certainly then has an API layer on top and then create an ecosystem. Really go for people, say, please start developing applications because now you have access to the data or the data no longer linked to somebody whose application was all freely available, but an API layer that was, that was all September, 2018, more or less >>To hear a little bit. Can you talk a little bit about some of the imperatives from the AWS standpoint in terms of what you were trying to achieve with this? Yeah, absolutely. And this whole thing is Johann said started with a challenge that was really brought out at shell. The challenges that geoscientists spend up to 70% of their time looking for data. I'm a geologist I've spent more than 70% of my time trying to find data in these silos. And from there, instead of just figuring out how we could address that one problem, we worked together to really understand the root cause of these challenges and working backwards from that use case OSU and OSU on AWS has really enabled customers to create solutions that span, not just this in particular problem, but can really scale to be inclusive of the entire energy value chain and deliver value from these use cases to the energy industry and beyond. >>Thank you, Lee, >>Uh, Johann. So talk a little bit about Accenture's cloud first approach and how it has, uh, helped shell work faster and better with it. >>Well, of course, access a cloud first approach only works together. It's been an Amazon environment, AWS environment. So we really look at, uh, at, at Accenture and others up together helping shell in this space. Now the combination of the two is where we're really looking at, uh, where access of course can be increased knowledge student to that environment operates support knowledge to do an environment. And of course, Amazon will be doing that to this environment that underpinning their services, et cetera. So, uh, we would expect a combination, a lot of goods when we started rolling out and put in production, the old you are three and four because we are anus. Then when release feed comes to the market in Q1 next year of ODU, when he started going to Audi production inside shell, but as the first release, which is ready for prime time production across an enterprise will be released just before Christmas, last year when he's still in may of this year. But really three is the first release we want to use for full scale production deployment inside shell, and also all the operators around the world. And there is one Amazon, sorry, at that one. Um, extensive can play a role in the ongoing, in the, in deployment building up, but also support environment. >>So one of the other things that we talk a lot about here on the cube is sustainability. And this is a big imperative at so many organizations around the world in particular energy companies. How does this move to OSD you, uh, help organizations become, how is this a greener solution for companies? >>Well, first he make it's a greatest solution because you start making a much more efficient use of your resources. is already an important one. The second thing we're doing is also, we started with ODU in framers, in the oil and gas space in the expert development space. We've grown, uh, OTU in our strategy, we've grown. I was, you know, also do an alternative energy sociology. We'll all start supporting next year. Things like solar farms, wind farms, uh, the, the dermatomal environment hydration. So it becomes an and, and an open energy data platform, not just what I want to get into steep that's for new industry, any type of energy industry. So our focus is to create, bring the data of all those various energy data sources to get me to a single data platform you can to use AI and other technology on top of that, to exploit the data, to beat again into a single data platform. >>Liz, I want to ask you about security because security is, is, is such a big concern when it comes to data. How secure is the data on OSD? You, um, actually, can I talk, can I do a follow up on this sustainability talking? Oh, absolutely. By all means. I mean, I want to interject though security is absolutely our top priority. I don't mean to move away from that, but with sustainability, in addition to the benefits of the OSU data platform, when a company moves from on-prem to the cloud, they're also able to leverage the benefits of scale. Now, AWS is committed to running our business in the most environmentally friendly way possible. And our scale allows us to achieve higher resource utilization and energy efficiency than a typical data center. Now, a recent study by four 51 research found that AWS is infrastructure is 3.6 times more energy efficient than the median of surveyed enterprise data centers. Two thirds of that advantage is due to higher, um, server utilization and a more energy efficient server population. But when you factor in the carbon intensity of consumed electricity and renewable energy purchases for 51 found that AWS performs the same task with an 88% lower carbon footprint. Now that's just another way that AWS and OSU are working to support our customers is they seek to better understand their workflows and make their legacy businesses less carbon intensive. >>That's that's incorrect. Those are those statistics are incredible. Do you want to talk a little bit now about security? Absolutely. Security will always be AWS is top priority. In fact, AWS has been architected to be the most flexible and secure cloud computing environment available today. Our core infrastructure is built to satisfy. There are the security requirements for the military global banks and other high sensitivity organizations. And in fact, AWS uses the same secure hardware and software to build an operate each of our regions. So that customers benefit from the only commercial cloud that's hat hits service offerings and associated supply chain vetted and deemed secure enough for top secret workloads. That's backed by a deep set of cloud security tools with more than 200 security compliance and governmental service and key features as well as an ecosystem of partners like Accenture, that can really help our customers to make sure that their environments for their data meet and or exceed their security requirements. Johann, I want you to talk a little bit about how OSD you can be used today. Does it only handle subsurface data? >>Uh, today it's Honda's subserves or Wells data. We got to add to that production around the middle of next year. That means that the whole upstate business. So we've got goes from exploration all the way to production. You've made it together into a single data platform. So production will be added around Q3 of next year. Then a principal. We have a difficult, the elder data that single environment, and we want to extend it then to other data sources or energy sources like solar farms, wind farms, uh, hydrogen, hydro, et cetera. So we're going to add a whore, a whole list of audit day energy source to them and be all the data together into a single data club. So we move from an all in guest data platform to an entity data platform. That's really what our objective is because the whole industry, if you look it over, look at our competition or moving in that same two acts of quantity of course, are very strong in oil and gas, but also increased the, got into other energy sources like, like solar, like wind, like th like highly attended, et cetera. So we would be moving exactly what it's saying, method that, that, that, that the whole OSU can't really support at home. And as a spectrum of energy sources, >>Of course, and Liz and Johan. I want you to close this out here by just giving us a look into your crystal balls and talking about the five and 10 year plan for OSD. We'll start with you, Liz, what do you, what do you see as the future holding for this platform? Um, honestly, the incredibly cool thing about working at AWS is you never know where the innovation and the journey is going to take you. I personally am looking forward to work with our customers, wherever their OSU journeys, take them, whether it's enabling new energy solutions or continuing to expand, to support use cases throughout the energy value chain and beyond, but really looking forward to continuing to partner as we innovate to slay tomorrow's challenges, Johann first, nobody can look at any more nowadays, especially 10 years, but our objective is really in the next five years, you will become the key backbone for energy companies for store your data intelligence and optimize the whole supply energy supply chain, uh, in this world Johan Krebbers Liz Dennett. Thank you so much for coming on the cube virtual. Thank you. I'm Rebecca Knight stay tuned for more of our coverage of the Accenture executive summit >>From around the globe. It's the cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent executive summit 2020, sponsored by Accenture and AWS. >>Welcome everyone to the cubes coverage of the Accenture executive summit. Part of AWS reinvent. I'm your host Rebecca Knight today we're welcoming back to Cuba alum. We have Kishor Dirk. He is the Accenture senior managing director cloud first global services lead. Welcome back to the show Kishore. Thank you very much. Nice to meet again. And, uh, Tristan moral horse set. He is the managing director, Accenture cloud first North American growth. Welcome back to you to Tristin. Great to be back in grapes here again, Rebecca. Exactly. Even in this virtual format, it is good to see your faces. Um, today we're going to be talking about my NAB and green cloud advisor capability. Kishor I want to start with you. So my NAB is a platform that is really celebrating its first year in existence. Uh, November, 2019 is when Accenture introduced it. Uh, but it's, it has new relevance in light of this global pandemic that we are all enduring and suffering through. Tell us a little bit about the lineup platform, what it is that cloud platform to help our clients navigate the complexity of cloud and cloud decisions and to make it faster. And obviously, you know, we have in the cloud, uh, you know, with >>The increased relevance and all the, especially over the last few months with the impact of COVID crisis and exhibition of digital transformation, you know, we are seeing the transformation of the exhibition to cloud much faster. This platform that you're talking about has enabled hardened 40 clients globally across different industries. You identify the right cloud solution, navigate the complexity, provide a cloud specific solution simulate for our clients to meet that strategy business needs. And the clients are loving it. >>I want to go to you now trust and tell us a little bit about how my nav works and how it helps companies make good cloud choice. >>Yeah, so Rebecca, we we've talked about cloud is, is more than just infrastructure and that's what mine app tries to solve for it. It really looks at a variety of variables, including infrastructure operating model and fundamentally what clients' business outcomes, um, uh, our clients are, are looking for and, and identifies the optimal solution for what they need. And we assign this to accelerate. And we mentioned that the pandemic, one of the big focus now is to accelerate. And so we worked through a three-step process. The first is scanning and assessing our client's infrastructure, their data landscape, their application. Second, we use our automated artificial intelligence engine to interact with. We have a wide variety and library of, uh, collective plot expertise. And we look to recommend what is the enterprise architecture and solution. And then third, before we live with our clients, we look to simulate and test this scaled up model. And the simulation gives our clients a way to see what cloud is going to look like, feel like and how it's going to transform their business before they go there. >>Tell us a little bit about that in real life. Now as a company, so many of people are working remotely having to collaborate, uh, not in real life. How is that helping them right now? >>So, um, the, the pandemic has put a tremendous strain on systems, uh, because of the demand on those systems. And so we talk about resiliency. We also now need to collaborate across data across people. Um, I think all of us are calling from a variety of different places where our last year we were all at the VA cube itself. Um, and, and cloud technologies such as teams, zoom that we're we're leveraging now has fundamentally accelerated and clients are looking to onboard this for their capabilities. They're trying to accelerate their journey. They realize that now the cloud is what is going to become important for them to differentiate. Once we come out of the pandemic and the ability to collaborate with their employees, their partners, and their clients through these systems is becoming a true business differentiator for our clients. >>Keisha, I want to talk with you now about my navs multiple capabilities, um, and helping clients design and navigate their cloud journeys. Tell us a little bit about the green cloud advisor capability and its significance, particularly as so many companies are thinking more deeply and thoughtfully about sustainability. >>Yes. So since the launch of my NAB, we continue to enhance capabilities for our clients. One of the significant, uh, capabilities that we have enabled is the being or advisor today. You know, Rebecca, a lot of the businesses are more environmentally aware and are expanding efforts to decrease power consumption, uh, and obviously carbon emissions and, uh, and run a sustainable operations across every aspect of the enterprise. Uh, as a result, you're seeing an increasing trend in adoption of energy, efficient infrastructure in the global market. And one of the things that we did, a lot of research we found out is that there's an ability to influence our client's carbon footprint through a better cloud solution. And that's what we internalize, uh, brings to us, uh, in, in terms of a lot of the client connotation that you're seeing in Europe, North America and others. Lot of our clients are accelerating to a green cloud strategy to unlock greater financial societal and environmental benefit, uh, through obviously cloud-based circular, operational, sustainable products and services. That is something that we are enhancing my now, and we are having active client discussions at this point of time. >>So Tristan, tell us a little bit about how this capability helps clients make greener decisions. >>Yeah. Um, well, let's start about the investments from the cloud providers in renewable and sustainable energy. Um, they have most of the hyperscalers today, um, have been investing significantly on data centers that are run on renewable energy, some incredibly creative constructs on the, how, how to do that. And sustainability is there for a key, um, key item of importance for the hyperscalers and also for our clients who now are looking for sustainable energy. And it turns out this marriage is now possible. I can, we marry the, the green capabilities of the cloud providers with a sustainability agenda of our clients. And so what we look into the way the mind works is it looks at industry benchmarks and evaluates our current clients, um, capabilities and carpet footprint leveraging their existing data centers. We then look to model from an end-to-end perspective, how the, their journey to the cloud leveraging sustainable and, um, and data centers with renewable energy. We look at how their solution will look like and, and quantify carbon tax credits, um, improve a green index score and provide quantifiable, um, green cloud capabilities and measurable outcomes to our clients, shareholders, stakeholders, clients, and customers. Um, and our green plot advisers sustainability solutions already been implemented at three clients. And in many cases in two cases has helped them reduce the carbon footprint by up to 400% through migration from their existing data center to green cloud. Very, very, >>That is remarkable. Now tell us a little bit about the kinds of clients. Is this, is this more interesting to clients in Europe? Would you say that it's catching on in the United States? Where, what is the breakdown that you're seeing right now? >>Sustainability is becoming such a global agenda and we're seeing our clients, um, uh, tie this and put this at board level, um, uh, agenda and requirements across the globe. Um, Europe has specific constraints around data sovereignty, right, where they need their data in country, but from a green, a sustainability agenda, we see clients across all our markets, North America, Europe in our growth markets adopt this. And we have seen case studies and all three months, >>Kesha. I want to bring you back into the conversation. Talk a little bit about how MindUP ties into Accenture's cloud first strategy, your Accenture's CEO, Julie Sweet, um, has talked about post COVID leadership, requiring every business to become a cloud first business. Tell us a little bit about how this ethos is in Accenture and how you're sort of looking outward with it too. >>So Rebecca mine is the launch pad, uh, to a cloud first transformation for our clients. Uh, Accenture, see your jewelry suite, uh, shared the Accenture cloud first and our substantial investment demonstrate our commitment and is delivering greater value for our clients when they need it the most. And with the digital transformation requiring cloud at scale, you know, we're seeing that in the post COVID leadership, it requires that every business should become a cloud business. And my nap helps them get there by evaluating the cloud landscape, navigating the complexity, modeling architecting and simulating an optimal cloud solution for our clients. And as Justin was sharing a greener cloud. >>So Tristan, talk a little bit more about some of the real life use cases in terms of what are we, what are clients seeing? What are the results that they're having? >>Yes. Thank you, Rebecca. I would say two key things right around my notes. The first is the iterative process. Clients don't want to wait, um, until they get started, they want to get started and see what their journey is going to look like. And the second is fundamental acceleration, dependent make, as we talked about, has accelerated the need to move to cloud very quickly. And my nav is there to do that. So how do we do that? First is generating the business cases. Clients need to know in many cases that they have a business case by business case, we talk about the financial benefits, as well as the business outcomes, the green, green clot impact sustainability impacts with minus. We can build initial recommendations using a basic understanding of their environment and benchmarks in weeks versus months with indicative value savings in the millions of dollars arranges. >>So for example, very recently, we worked with a global oil and gas company, and in only two weeks, we're able to provide an indicative savings where $27 million over five years, this enabled the client to get started, knowing that there is a business case benefit and then iterate on it. And this iteration is, I would say the second point that is particularly important with my nav that we've seen in bank of clients, which is, um, any journey starts with an understanding of what is the application landscape and what are we trying to do with those, these initial assessments that used to take six to eight weeks are now taking anywhere from two to four weeks. So we're seeing a 40 to 50% reduction in the initial assessment, which gets clients started in their journey. And then finally we've had discussions with all of the hyperscalers to help partner with Accenture and leverage mine after prepared their detailed business case module as they're going to clients. And as they're accelerating the client's journey, so real results, real acceleration. And is there a journey? Do I have a business case and furthermore accelerating the journey once we are by giving the ability to work in iterative approach. >>I mean, it sounds as though that the company that clients and and employees are sort of saying, this is an amazing time savings look at what I can do here in, in so much in a condensed amount of time, but in terms of getting everyone on board, one of the things we talked about last time we met, uh, Tristin was just how much, uh, how one of the obstacles is getting people to sign on and the new technologies and new platforms. Those are often the obstacles and struggles that companies face. Have you found that at all? Or what is sort of the feedback that you're getting? >>Yeah, sorry. Yes. We clearly, there are always obstacles to a cloud journey. If there were an obstacles, all our clients would be, uh, already fully in the cloud. What man I gives the ability is to navigate through those, to start quickly. And then as we identify obstacles, we can simulate what things are going to look like. We can continue with certain parts of the journey while we deal with that obstacle. And it's a fundamental accelerator. Whereas in the past one, obstacle would prevent a class from starting. We can now start to address the obstacles one at a time while continuing and accelerating the contrary. That is the fundamental difference. >>Kishor I want to give you the final word here. Tell us a little bit about what is next for Accenture might have and what we'll be discussing next year at the Accenture executive summit, >>Rebecca, we are continuously evolving with our client needs and reinventing reinventing for the future. Well, mine has been toward advisor. Our plan is to help our clients reduce carbon footprint and again, migrate to a green cloud. Uh, and additionally, we're looking at, you know, two capabilities, uh, which include sovereign cloud advisor, uh, with clients, especially in, in Europe and others are under pressure to meet, uh, stringent data norms that Kristen was talking about. And the sovereign cloud advisor helps organization to create an architecture cloud architecture that complies with the green. Uh, I would say the data sovereignty norms that is out there. The other element is around data to cloud. We are seeing massive migration, uh, for, uh, for a lot of the data to cloud. And there's a lot of migration hurdles that come within that. Uh, we have expanded mine app to support assessment capabilities, uh, for, uh, assessing applications, infrastructure, but also covering the entire state, including data and the code level to determine the right cloud solution. So we are, we are pushing the boundaries on what mine app can do with mine. Have you created the ability to take the guesswork out of cloud, navigate the complexity? We are rolling risks costs, and we are, you know, achieving client's static business objectives while building a sustainable alerts with being cloud, >>Any platform that can take some of the guesswork out of the future. I am I'm on board with thank you so much, Tristin and Kishore. This has been a great conversation. Stay tuned for more of the cubes coverage of the Accenture executive summit. I'm Rebecca Knight.

>>From around the globe. It's the cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent executive summit 2020, sponsored by Accenture and AWS. >>Welcome to cube three 60 fives coverage of the Accenture executive summit. Part of AWS reinvent. I'm your host Rebecca Knight. Today we are joined by a cube alum, Karthik, Lorraine. He is Accenture senior managing director and lead Accenture cloud. First, welcome back to the show Karthik. >>Thank you. Thanks for having me here. >>Always a pleasure. So I want to talk to you. You are an industry veteran, you've been in Silicon Valley for decades. Um, I want to hear from your perspective what the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been, what are you hearing from clients? What are they struggling with? What are their challenges that they're facing day to day? >>I think, um, COVID-19 is being a eye-opener from, you know, various facets, you know, um, first and foremost, it's a, it's a hell, um, situation that everybody's facing, which is not just, uh, highest economic bearings to it. It has enterprise, um, an organization with bedding to it. And most importantly, it's very personal to people, um, because they themselves and their friends, family near and dear ones are going through this challenge, uh, from various different dimension. But putting that aside, when you come to it from an organization enterprise standpoint, it has changed everything well, the behavior of organizations coming together, working in their campuses, working with each other as friends, family, and, uh, um, near and dear colleagues, all of them are operating differently. So that's what big change to get things done in a completely different way, from how they used to get things done. >>Number two, a lot of things that were planned for normal scenarios, like their global supply chain, how they interact with their client customers, how they go innovate with their partners on how that employees contribute to the success of an organization at all changed. And there are no data models that give them a hint of something like this for them to be prepared for this. So we are seeing organizations, um, that have adapted to this reasonably okay, and are, you know, launching to innovate faster in this. And there are organizations that have started with struggling, but are continuing to struggle. And the gap between the leaders and legs are widening. So this is creating opportunities in a different way for the leaders, um, with a lot of pivot their business, but it's also creating significant challenge for the lag guides, uh, as we defined in our future systems research that we did a year ago, uh, and those organizations are struggling further. So the gap is actually widening. >>So you just talked about the widening gap. I've talked about the tremendous uncertainty that so many companies, even the ones who have adapted reasonably well, uh, in this, in this time, talk a little bit about Accenture cloud first and why, why now? >>I think it's a great question. Um, we believe that for many of our clients COVID-19 has turned, uh, cloud from an experimentation aspiration to an origin mandate. What I mean by that is everybody has been doing something on the other end cloud. There's no company that says we don't believe in cloud are, we don't want to do cloud. It was how much they did in cloud. And they were experimenting. They were doing the new things in cloud, but they were operating a lot of their core business outside the cloud or not in the cloud. Those organizations have struggled to operate in this new normal, in a remote fashion, as well as, uh, their ability to pivot to all the changes the pandemic has brought to them. But on the other hand, the organizations that had a solid foundation in cloud were able to collect faster and not actually gone into the stage of innovating faster and driving a new behavior in the market, new behavior within their organization. >>So we are seeing that spend to make is actually fast-forwarded something that we always believed was going to happen. This, uh, uh, moving to cloud over the next decade is fast forward it to happen in the next three to five years. And it's created this moment where it's a once in an era, really replatforming of businesses in the cloud that we are going to see. And we see this moment as a cloud first moment where organizations will use cloud as the, the, the canvas and the foundation with which they're going to reimagine their business after they were born in the cloud. Uh, and this requires a whole new strategy. Uh, and as Accenture, we are getting a lot in cloud, but we thought that this is the moment where we bring all of that, gave him a piece together because we need a strategy for addressing, moving to cloud are embracing cloud in a holistic fashion. And that's what Accenture cloud first brings together a holistic strategy, a team that's 70,000 plus people that's coming together with rich cloud skills, but investing to tie in all the various capabilities of cloud to Delaware, that holistic strategy to our clients. So I want you to >>Delve into a little bit more about what this strategy actually entails. I mean, it's clearly about embracing change and being willing to experiment and having capabilities to innovate. Can you tell us a little bit more about what this strategy entails? >>Yeah. The reason why we say that as a need for strategy is like I said, cloud is not new. There's almost every customer client is doing something with the cloud, but all of them have taken different approaches to cloud and different boundaries to cloud. Some organizations say, I just need to consolidate my multiple data centers to a small data center footprint and move the nest to cloud. Certain other organizations say that well, I'm going to move certain workloads to cloud. Certain other organizations said, well, I'm going to build this Greenfield application or workload in cloud. Certain other said, um, I'm going to use the power of AI ML in the cloud to analyze my data and drive insights. But a cloud first strategy is all of this tied with the corporate strategy of the organization with an industry specific cloud journey to say, if in this current industry, if I were to be reborn in the cloud, would I do it in the exact same passion that I did in the past, which means that the products and services that they offer need to be the matching, how they interact with that customers and partners need to be revisited, how they bird and operate their IP systems need to be the, imagine how they unearthed the data from all of the systems under which they attract need to be liberated so that you could drive insights of cloud. >>First strategy hands is a corporate wide strategy, and it's a C-suite responsibility. It doesn't take the ownership away from the CIO or CIO, but the CIO is, and CDI was felt that it was just their problem and they were to solve it. And everyone as being a customer, now, the center of gravity is elevated to it becoming a C-suite agenda on everybody's agenda, where probably the CDI is the instrument to execute that that's a holistic cloud-first strategy >>And it, and it's a strategy, but the way you're describing it, it sounds like it's also a mindset and an approach, as you were saying, this idea of being reborn in the cloud. So now how do I think about things? How do I communicate? How do I collaborate? How do I get done? What I need to get done. Talk a little bit about how this has changed, the way you support your clients and how Accenture cloud first is changing your approach to cloud services. >>Wonderful. Um, you know, I did not color one very important aspect in my previous question, but that's exactly what you just asked me now, which is to do all of this. I talked about all of the variables, uh, an organization or an enterprise is going to go through, but the good part is they have one constant. And what is that? That is their employees, uh, because you do, the employees are able to embrace this change. If they are able to, uh, change them, says, pivot them says retool and train themselves to be able to operate in this new cloud. First one, the ability to reimagine every function of the business would be happening at speed. And cloud first approach is to do all of this at speed, because innovation is deadly proposed there, do the rate of probability on experimentation. You need to experiment a lot for any kind of experimentation. >>There's a probability of success. Organizations need to have an ability and a mechanism for them to be able to innovate faster for which they need to experiment a lot, the more the experiment and the lower cost at which they experiment is going to help them experiment a lot. And they experiment demic speed, fail fast, succeed more. And hence, they're going to be able to operate this at speed. So the cloud-first mindset is all about speed. I'm helping the clients fast track that innovation journey, and this is going to happen. Like I said, across the enterprise and every function across every department, I'm the agent of this change is going to be the employees or weapon, race, this change through new skills and new grueling and new mindset that they need to adapt to. >>So Karthik what you're describing it, it sounds so exciting. And yet for a pandemic wary workforce, that's been working remotely that may be dealing with uncertainty if for their kid's school and for so many other aspects of their life, it sounds hard. So how are you helping your clients, employees get onboard with this? And because the change management is, is often the hardest part. >>Yeah, I think it's, again, a great question. A bottle has only so much capacity. Something got to come off for something else to go in. That's what you're saying is absolutely right. And that is again, the power of cloud. The reason why cloud is such a fundamental breakthrough technology and capability for us to succeed in this era, because it helps in various forms. What we talked so far is the power of innovation that can create, but cloud can also simplify the life of the employees in an enterprise. There are several activities and tasks that people do in managing that complex infrastructure, complex ID landscape. They used to do certain jobs and activities in a very difficult underground about with cloud has simplified. And democratised a lot of these activities. So that things which had to be done in the past, like managing the complexity of the infrastructure, keeping them up all the time, managing the, um, the obsolescence of the capabilities and technologies and infrastructure, all of that could be offloaded to the cloud. >>So that the time that is available for all of these employees can be used to further innovate. Every organization is going to spend almost the same amount of money, but rather than spending activities, by looking at the rear view mirror on keeping the lights on, they're going to spend more money, more time, more energy, and spend their skills on things that are going to add value to their organization. Because you, every innovation that an enterprise can give to their end customer need not come from that enterprise. The word of platform economy is about democratising innovation. And the power of cloud is to get all of these capabilities from outside the four walls of the enterprise, >>It will add value to the organization, but I would imagine also add value to that employee's life because that employee, the employee will be more engaged in his or her job and therefore bring more excitement and energy into her, his or her day-to-day activities too. >>Absolutely. Absolutely. And this is, this is a normal evolution we would have seen everybody would have seen in their lives, that they keep moving up the value chain of what activities that, uh, gets performed buying by those individuals. And this is, um, you know, no more true than how the United States, uh, as an economy has operated where, um, this is the power of a powerhouse of innovation, where the work that's done inside the country keeps moving up to value chain. And, um, us leverage is the global economy for a lot of things that is required to power the United States and that global economic, uh, phenomenon is very proof for an enterprise as well. There are things that an enterprise needs to do them soon. There are things an employee needs to do themselves. Um, but there are things that they could leverage from the external innovation and the power of innovation that is coming from technologies like cloud. >>So at Accenture, you have long, long, deep Stan, sorry, you have deep and long-standing relationships with many cloud service providers, including AWS. How does the Accenture cloud first strategy, how does it affect your relationships with those providers? >>Yeah, we have great relationships with cloud providers like AWS. And in fact, in the cloud world, it was one of the first, um, capability that we started about years ago, uh, when we started developing these capabilities. But five years ago, we hit a very important milestone where the two organizations came together and said that we are forging a pharma partnership with joint investments to build this partnership. And we named that as a Accenture, AWS business group ABG, uh, where we co-invest and brought skills together and develop solutions. And we will continue to do that. And through that investment, we've also made several acquisitions that you would have seen in the recent times, like, uh, an invoice and gecko that we made acquisitions in in Europe. But now we're taking this to the next level. What we are saying is two cloud first and the $3 billion investment that we are bringing in, uh, through cloud-first. >>We are going to make specific investment to create unique joint solution and landing zones foundation, um, cloud packs with which clients can accelerate their innovation or their journey to cloud first. And one great example is what we are doing with Takeda, uh, billable, pharmaceutical giant, um, between we've signed a five-year partnership. And it was out in the media just a month ago or so, where we are, the two organizations are coming together. We have created a partnership as a power of three partnership, where the three organizations are jointly hoarding hats and taking responsibility for the innovation and the leadership position that Takeda wants to get to with this. We are going to simplify their operating model and organization by providing and flexibility. We're going to provide a lot more insights. Tequila has a 230 year old organization. Imagine the amount of trapped data and intelligence that is there. >>How about bringing all of that together with the power of AWS and Accenture and Takeda to drive more customer insights, um, come up with breakthrough R and D uh, accelerate clinical trials and improve the patient experience using AI ML and edge technologies. So all of these things that we will do through this partnership with joined investment from Accenture cloud first, as well as partner like AWS, so that Takeda can realize their gain. And, uh, their senior actually made a statement that five years from now, every ticket an employee will have an AI assistant. That's going to make that beginner employee move up the value chain on how they contribute and add value to the future of tequila with the AI assistant, making them even more equipped and smarter than what they could be otherwise. >>So, one last question to close this out here. What is your future vision for, for Accenture cloud first? What are we going to be talking about at next year's Accenture executive summit? Yeah, the future >>Is going to be, um, evolving, but the part that is exciting to me, and this is, uh, uh, a fundamental belief that we are entering a new era of industrial revolution from industry first, second, and third industry. The third happened probably 20 years ago with the advent of Silicon and computers and all of that stuff that happened here in the Silicon Valley. I think the fourth industrial revolution is going to be in the cross section of, uh, physical, digital and biological boundaries. And there's a great article, um, in one economic forum that people, uh, your audience can Google and read about it. Uh, but the reason why this is very, very important is we are seeing a disturbing phenomenon that over the last 10 years are seeing a Blackwing of the, um, labor productivity and innovation, which has dropped to about 2.1%. When you see that kind of phenomenon over that longer period of time, there has to be breakthrough innovation that needs to happen to come out of this barrier and get to the next, you know, base camp, as I would call it to further this productivity, um, lack that we are seeing, and that is going to happen in the intersection of the physical, digital and biological boundaries. >>And I think cloud is going to be the connective tissue between all of these three, to be able to provide that where it's the edge, especially is good to come closer to the human lives. It's going to come from cloud. Yeah. Pick totally in your mind, you can think about cloud as central, either in a private cloud, in a data center or in a public cloud, you know, everywhere. But when you think about edge, it's going to be far reaching and coming close to where we live and maybe work and very, um, get entertained and so on and so forth. And there's good to be, uh, intervention in a positive way in the field of medicine, in the field of entertainment, in the field of, um, manufacturing in the field of, um, you know, mobility. When I say mobility, human mobility, people, transportation, and so on and so forth with all of this stuff, cloud is going to be the connective tissue and the vision of cloud first is going to be, uh, you know, blowing through this big change that is going to happen. And the evolution that is going to happen where, you know, the human grace of mankind, um, our person kind of being very gender neutral in today's world. Um, go first needs to be that beacon of, uh, creating the next generation vision for enterprises to take advantage of that kind of an exciting future. And that's why it, Accenture, are we saying that there'll be change as our, as our purpose? >>I genuinely believe that cloud first is going to be the forefront of that change agenda, both for Accenture as well as for the rest of the work. >>Excellent. Let there be changed. Indeed. Thank you so much for joining us Karthik. A pleasure I'm Rebecca Knight stay tuned for more of Q3 60 fives coverage of the Accenture executive summit >>From around the globe. It's the cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent executive summit 2020, sponsored by Accenture and AWS. >>Welcome everyone to the cube virtual and our coverage of the Accenture executive summit. Part of AWS reinvent 2020. I'm your host Rebecca Knight. Today, we are talking about the power of three. And what happens when you bring together the scientific, how of a global bias biopharmaceutical powerhouse in Takeda, a leading cloud services provider in AWS, and Accenture's ability to innovate, execute, and deliver innovation. Joining me to talk about these things. We have Aaron, sorry. Arjan Beatty. He is the senior managing director and chairman of Accenture's diamonds leadership council. Welcome Arjun. Thank you, Karl hick. He is the chief digital and information officer at Takeda. >>What is your bigger, thank you, Rebecca >>And Brian Beau Han global director and head of the Accenture AWS business group at Amazon web services. Thanks so much for coming on. Thank you. So, as I said, we're talking today about this relationship between, uh, your three organizations. Carl, I want to talk with you. I know you're at the beginning of your cloud journey. What was the compelling reason? Why w why, why move to the cloud and why now? >>Yeah, no, thank you for the question. So, you know, as a biopharmaceutical leader, we're committed to bringing better health and a brighter future to our patients. We're doing that by translating science into some really innovative and life transporting therapies, but throughout, you know, we believe that there's a responsible use of technology, of data and of innovation. And those three ingredients are really key to helping us deliver on that promise. And so, you know, while I think a I'll call it, this cloud journey is already always been a part of our strategy. Um, and we've made some pretty steady progress over the last years with a number of I'll call it diverse approaches to the digital and AI. We just weren't seeing the impact at scale that we wanted to see. Um, and I think that, you know, there's a, there's a need ultimately to, you know, accelerate and broaden that shift. >>And, you know, we were commenting on this earlier, but there's, you know, it's been highlighted by a number of factors. One of those has been certainly a number of the acquisitions we've made Shire, uh, being the most pressing example, uh, but also the global pandemic, both of those highlight the need for us to move faster, um, at the speed of cloud, ultimately. Uh, and so we started thinking outside of the box because it was taking us too long and we decided to leverage the strategic partner model. Uh, and it's giving us a chance to think about our challenges very differently. We call this the power of three, uh, and ultimately our focus is singularly on our patients. I mean, they're waiting for us. We need to get there faster. It can take years. And so I think that there is a focus on innovation at a rapid speed, so we can move ultimately from treating conditions to keeping people healthy. >>So as you are embarking on this journey, what are some of the insights you want to share about, about what you're seeing so far? >>Yeah, no, it's a great question. So, I mean, look, maybe right before I highlight some of the key insights, uh, I would say that, you know, with cloud now as the, as a launchpad for innovation, you know, our vision all along has been that in less than 10 years, we want every single to kid, uh, the associate or employee to be empowered by an AI assistant. And I think that, you know, that's going to help us make faster, better decisions. That'll help us, uh, fundamentally deliver transformative therapies and better experiences to, to that ecosystem, to our patients, to physicians, to payers, et cetera, much faster than we previously thought possible. Um, and I think that technologies like cloud and edge computing together with a very powerful I'll call it data fabric is going to help us to create this, this real-time, uh, I'll call it the digital ecosystem. >>The data has to flow ultimately seamlessly between our patients and providers or partners or researchers, et cetera. Uh, and so we've been thinking about this, uh, I'll call it weekly, call up sort of this pyramid, um, that helps us describe our vision. Uh, and a lot of it has to do with ultimately modernizing the foundation, modernizing and rearchitecting, the platforms that drive the company, uh, heightening our focus on data, which means that there's an accelerated shift towards, uh, enterprise data platforms and digital products. And then ultimately, uh, uh, uh, you know, really an engine for innovation sitting at the very top. Um, and so I think with that, you know, there's a few different, I'll call it insights that, you know, are quickly kind of come zooming into focus. I would say one is this need to collaborate very differently. Um, you know, not only internally, but you know, how do we define ultimately, and build a connected digital ecosystem with the right partners and technologies externally? >>I think the second component that maybe people don't think as much about, but, you know, I find critically important is for us to find ways of really transforming our culture. We have to unlock talent and shift the culture certainly as a large biopharmaceutical very differently. And then lastly, you've touched on it already, which is, you know, innovation at the speed of cloud. How do we re-imagine that? You know, how do ideas go from getting tested in months to kind of getting tested in days? You know, how do we collaborate very differently? Uh, and so I think those are three, uh, perhaps of the larger I'll call it, uh, insights that, you know, the three of us are spending a lot of time thinking about right now. >>So Arjun, I want to bring you into this conversation a little bit. Let's, let's delve into those a bit. Talk first about the collaboration, uh, that Carl was referencing there. How, how have you seen that? It is enabling, uh, colleagues and teams to communicate differently and interact in new and different ways? Uh, both internally and externally, as Carl said, >>No, thank you for that. And, um, I've got to give call a lot of credit because as we started to think about this journey, it was clear. It was a bold ambition was, uh, something that, you know, we had all to do differently. And so the concept of the power of three that Carl has constructed has become a label for us as a way to think about what are we going to do to collectively drive this journey forward. And to me, the unique ways of collaboration means three things. The first one is that, um, what is expected is that the three parties are going to come together and it's more than just the sum of our resources. And by that, I mean that we have to bring all of ourselves, all of our collective capabilities, as an example, Amazon has amazing supply chain capabilities. They're one of the best at supply chain. >>So in addition to resources, when we have supply chain innovations, uh, that's something that they're bringing in addition to just, uh, talent and assets, similarly for Accenture, right? We do a lot, uh, in the talent space. So how do we bring our thinking as to how we apply best practices for talent to this partnership? So, um, as we think about this, so that's, that's the first one, the second one is about shared success very early on in this partnership, we started to build some foundations and actually develop seven principles that all of us would look at as the basis for this success shared success model. And we continue to hold that sort of in the forefront, as we think about this collaboration. And maybe the third thing I would say is this one team mindset. So whether it's the three of our CEOs that get together every couple of months to think about, uh, this partnership, or it is the governance model that Carl has put together, which has all three parties in the governance and every level of leadership, we always think about this as a collective group so that we can keep that front and center. >>And what I think ultimately has enabled us to do is it's allowed us to move at speed, be more flexible. And ultimately all we're looking at the target the same way, the North side, the same way, >>Brian, about you, what have you observed and what are you thinking about in terms of how this is helping teams collaborate differently? Yeah, >>Absolutely. And RJ made some, some great points there. And I think if you really think about what he's talking about, it's that, that diversity of talent, diversity of skill and viewpoint and even culture, right? And so we see that in the power of three. And then I think if we drill down into what we see at Takeda and frankly Takeda was, was really, I think, pretty visionary and on their way here, right. And taking this kind of cross-functional approach and applying it to how they operate day to day. So moving from a more functional view of the world to more of a product oriented view of the world, right? So when you think about we're going to be organized around a product or a service or a capability that we're going to provide to our customers or our patients or donors in this case, it implies a different structure all to altogether and a different way of thinking, right? >>Because now you've got technical people and business experts and marketing experts all working together in this is sort of cross collaboration. And what's great about that is it's really the only way to succeed with cloud, right? Because the old ways of thinking where you've got application people and infrastructure, people in business, people is suboptimal, right? Because we can all access this tool as these capabilities and the best way to do that. Isn't across kind of a cross collaborative way. And so this is product oriented mindset. It's a keto was already on. I think it's allowed us to move faster. >>Carl, I want to go back to this idea of unlocking talent and culture. And this is something that both Brian and Arjun have talked about too. People are an essential part of their, at the heart of your organization. How will their experience of work change and how are you helping re-imagine and reinforce a strong organizational culture, particularly at this time when so many people are working remotely. >>Yeah. It's a great question. And it's something that, you know, I think we all have to think a lot about, I mean, I think, um, you know, driving this, this color, this, this digital and data kind of capability building, uh, it takes a lot of, a lot of thinking. So, I mean, there's a few different elements in terms of how we're tackling this one is we're recognizing, and it's not just for the technology organization or for those actors that, that we're innovating with, but it's really across all of the Qaeda where we're working through ways of raising what I'll call the overall digital leaders literacy of the organization, you know, what are the, you know, what are the skills that are needed almost at a baseline level, even for a global bio-pharmaceutical company and how do we deploy, I'll call it those learning resources very broadly. >>And then secondly, I think that, you know, we're, we're very clear that there's a number of areas where there are very specialized skills that are needed. Uh, my organization is one of those. And so, you know, we're fostering ways in which, you know, we're very kind of quickly kind of creating, uh, avenues excitement for, for associates in that space. So one example specifically, as we use, you know, during these, uh, very much sort of remote, uh, sort of days, we, we use what we call global it meet days, and we set a day aside every single month and this last Friday, um, you know, we, we create during that time, it's time for personal development. Um, and we provide active seminars and training on things like, you know, robotic process automation, data analytics cloud, uh, in this last month we've been doing this for months and months now, but in his last month, more than 50% of my organization participated, and there's this huge positive shift, both in terms of access and excitement about really harnessing those new skills and being able to apply them. >>Uh, and so I think that that's, you know, one, one element that can be considered. And then thirdly, um, of course every organization has to work on how do you prioritize talent, acquisition and management and competencies that you can't rescale? I mean, there are just some new capabilities that we don't have. And so there's a large focus that I have with our executive team and our CEO and thinking through those critical roles that we need to activate in order to kind of, to, to build on this, uh, this business led cloud transformation. And lastly, probably the hardest one, but the one that I'm most jazzed about is really this focus on changing the mindsets and behaviors. Um, and I think there, you know, this is where the power of three is, is really, uh, kind of coming together nicely. I mean, we're working on things like, you know, how do we create this patient obsessed curiosity, um, and really kind of unlock innovation with a real, kind of a growth mindset. >>Uh, and the level of curiosity that's needed, not to just continue to do the same things, but to really challenge the status quo. So that's one big area of focus we're having the agility to act just faster. I mean, to worry less, I guess I would say about kind of the standard chain of command, but how do you make more speedy, more courageous decisions? And this is places where we can emulate the way that a partner like AWS works, or how do we collaborate across the number of boundaries, you know, and I think, uh, Arjun spoke eloquently to a number of partnerships that we can build. So we can break down some of these barriers and use these networks, um, whether it's within our own internal ecosystem or externally to help, to create value faster. So a lot of energy around ways of working and we'll have to check back in, but I mean, we're early in on this mindset and behavioral shift, um, but a lot of good early momentum. >>Carl you've given me a good segue to talk to Brian about innovation, because you said a lot of the things that I was the customer obsession and this idea of innovating much more quickly. Obviously now the world has its eyes on drug development, and we've all learned a lot about it, uh, in the past few months and accelerating drug development is all, uh, is of great interest to all of us. Brian, how does a transformation like this help a company's ability to become more agile and more innovative and at a quicker speed to, >>Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think some of the things that Carl talked about just now are critical to that, right? I think where sometimes folks fall short is they think, you know, we're going to roll out the technology and the is going to be the silver bullet where in fact it is the culture, it is, is the talent. And it's the focus on that. That's going to be, you know, the determinant of success. And I will say, you know, in this power of three arrangement and Carl talked a little bit about the pyramid, um, talent and culture and that change, and that kind of thinking about that has been a first-class citizen since the very beginning, right. That absolutely is critical for, for being there. Um, and so that's been, that's been key. And so we think about innovation at Amazon and AWS and Chrome mentioned some of the things that, you know, a partner like AWS brings to the table is we talk a lot about builders, right? >>So we're kind of obsessive about builders. Um, and, and we meet what we mean by that is we, we, at Amazon, we hire for builders, we cultivate builders and we like to talk to our customers about it as well. And it also implies a different mindset, right? When you're a builder, you have that, that curiosity, you have that ownership, you have that stake and whatever I'm creating, I'm going to be a co-owner of this product or this service, right. Getting back to that kind of product oriented mindset. And it's not just the technical people or the it people who are builders. It is also the business people as, as Carl talked about. Right. So when we start thinking about, um, innovation again, where we see folks kind of get into a little bit of, uh, innovation, pilot paralysis, is that you can focus on the technology, but if you're not focusing on the talent and the culture and the processes and the mechanisms, you're going to be putting out technology, but you're not going to have an organization that's ready to take it and scale it and accelerate it. >>Right. And so that's, that's been absolutely critical. So just a couple of things we've been doing with, with the Qaeda and Decatur has really been leading the way is, think about a mechanism and a process. And it's really been working backward from the customer, right? In this case, again, the patient and the donor. And that was an easy one because the key value of Decatur is to be a patient focused bio-pharmaceutical right. So that was embedded in their DNA. So that working back from that, that patient, that donor was a key part of that process. And that's really deep in our DNA as well and Accentures. And so we were able to bring that together. The other one is, is, is getting used to experimenting and even perhaps failing, right. And being able to iterate and fail fast and experiment and understanding that, you know, some decisions, what we call it at Amazon are two two-way doors, meaning you can go through that door, not like what you see and turn around and go back. And cloud really helps there because the costs of experimenting and the cost of failure is so much lower than it's ever been. You can do it much faster and the implications are so much less. So just a couple of things that we've been really driving, uh, with Decatur around innovation, that's been really critical. >>Carl, where are you already seeing signs of success? Yeah, no, it's a great question. And so we chose, you know, uh, with our focus on, on innovation to try to unleash maybe the power of data digital in, uh, in focusing on what I call sort of a nave. And so we chose our, our, our plasma derived therapy business, um, and you know, the plasma-derived therapy business unit, it develops critical life-saving therapies for patients with rare and complex diseases. Um, but what we're doing is by bringing kind of our energy together, we're focusing on creating, I'll call it state of the art digitally connected donation centers. And we're really modernizing, you know, the, the, the donor experience right now, we're trying to, uh, improve also I'll call it the overall plasma collection process. And so we've, uh, selected a number of alcohol at a very high-speed pilots that we're working through right now, specifically in this, in this area. And we're seeing really great results already. Um, and so that's, that's one specific area of focus >>Arjun. I want you to close this out here. Any ideas, any best practices advice you would have for other pharmaceutical companies that are, that are at the early stage of their cloud journey for me? Yes. >>Yeah, no, I was breaking up a bit. No, I think they, um, the key is what's sort of been great for me to see is that when people think about cloud, you know, you always think about infrastructure technology. The reality is that the cloud is really the true enabler for innovation and innovating at scale. And, and if you think about that, right, in all the components that you need, that ultimately that's where the value is for the company, right? Because yes, you're going to get some cost synergies and that's great, but the true value is in how do we transform the organization in the case of the Qaeda and the life sciences clients, right. We're trying to take a 14 year process of research and development that takes billions of dollars and compress that, right. Tremendous amounts of innovation opportunity. You think about the commercial aspect, lots of innovation can come there. The plasma derived therapy is a great example of how we're going to really innovate to change the trajectory of that business. So I think innovation is at the heart of what most organizations need to do. And the formula, the cocktail that the Qaeda has constructed with this Fuji program really has all the ingredients, um, that are required for that success. >>Great. Well, thank you so much. Arjun, Brian and Carl was really an enlightening conversation. >>Yeah, it's been fun. Thanks Rebecca. >>Thank you for tuning into the cube virtuals coverage of the Accenture executive summit from around the globe. It's the cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent executive summit 2020, sponsored by Accenture and AWS. Welcome everyone to the cubes of Accenture >>Executive summit here at AWS reinvent. I'm your host Rebecca Knight for this segment? We have two guests. First. We have Helen Davis. She is the senior director of cloud platform services, assistant director for it and digital for the West Midlands police. Thanks so much for coming on the show, Helen, And we also have Matthew lb. He is Accenture health and public service associate director and West Midlands police account lead. Thanks so much for coming on the show. Matthew, thank you for having us. So we are going to be talking about delivering data-driven insights to the West Midlands police force. Helen, I want to start with you. Can you tell us a little bit about the West Midlands police force? How big is the force and also what were some of the challenges that you were grappling with prior to this initiative? >>Yes, certainly. So Westerners police is the second largest police force in the UK, outside of the metropolitan police in London. Um, we have an excessive, um, 11,000 people work at Westminster police serving communities, um, through, across the Midlands region. So geographically, we're quite a big area as well, as well as, um, being population, um, density, having that as a, at a high level. Um, so the reason we sort of embarked on the data-driven insights platform and it, which was a huge change for us was for a number of reasons. Um, namely we had a lot of disparate data, um, which was spread across a range of legacy systems that were many, many years old, um, with some duplication of, um, what was being captured and no single view for offices or, um, support staff. Um, some of the access was limited. You have to be in a, in an actual police building on a desktop computer to access it. Um, other information could only reach officers on the frontline through a telephone call back to one of our enabling services where they would do a manual checkup, um, look at the information, then call the offices back, um, and tell them what they needed to know. So it was a very long laborious process and not very efficient. Um, and we certainly weren't exploiting the data that we had in a very productive way. >>So it sounds like as you're describing and an old clunky system that needed a technological, uh, reimagination, so what was the main motivation for, for doing, for making this shift? >>It was really, um, about making us more efficient and more effective in how we do how we do business. So, um, you know, certainly as a, as an it leader and sort of my operational colleagues, we recognize the benefits, um, that data analytics could bring in, uh, in a policing environment, not something that was, um, really done in the UK at time. You know, we have a lot of data, so we're very data rich and the information that we have, but we needed to turn it into information that was actionable. So that's where we started looking for, um, technology partners and, um, suppliers to help us and sort of help us really with what's the art of the possible, you know, this hasn't been done before. So what could we do in this space that's appropriate for policing >>Helen? I love that idea. What is the art of the possible, can you tell us a little bit about why you chose AWS? >>I think really, you know, as with all things and when we're procuring a partner in the public sector that, you know, there are many rules and regulations quite rightly as you would expect that to be because we're spending public money. So we have to be very, very careful and, um, it's, it's a long process and we have to be open to public scrutiny. So, um, we sort of look to everything, everything that was available as part of that process, but we recognize the benefits that tide would provide in this space because, you know, without moving to a cloud environment, we would literally be replacing something that was legacy with something that was a bit more modern. Um, that's not what we wanted to do. Our ambition was far greater than that. So I think, um, in terms of AWS, really, it was around scalability, interoperability, you know, disaster things like the disaster recovery service, the fact that we can scale up and down quickly, we call it dialing up and dialing back. Um, you know, it's it's page go. So it just sort of ticked all the boxes for us. And then we went through the full procurement process, fortunately, um, it came out on top for us. So we were, we were able to move forward, but it just sort of had everything that we were looking for in that space. >>Matthew, I want to bring you into the conversation a little bit here. How are you working with the wet with the West Midlands police, sorry, and helping them implement this cloud first journey? >>Yeah, so I guess, um, by January the West Midlands police started, um, pay for five years ago now. So, um, we set up a partnership with the force I, and you to operate operation the way that was very different to a traditional supplier relationship. Um, secretary that the data difference insights program is, is one of many that we've been working with less neutral on, um, over the last five years. Um, as having said already, um, cloud gave a number of, uh, advantages certainly from a big data perspective and the things that that enabled us today, um, I'm from an Accenture perspective that allowed us to bring in a number of the different themes that we have say cloud themes, security teams, um, interacted from a design perspective, as well as more traditional services that people would associate with the country. >>So much of this is about embracing comprehensive change to experiment, innovate, and try different things. Matthew, how, how do you help an entity like West Midlands police think differently when they are, there are these ways of doing things that people are used to, how do you help them think about what is the art of the possible, as Helen said, >>There's a few things for that, you know, what's being critical is trying to co-create solutions together. Yeah. There's no point just turning up with, um, what we think is the right answer, try and say, um, collectively work through, um, the issues that the forest are seeing the outcomes they're looking to achieve rather than simply focusing on the long list of requirements I think was critical and then being really open to working together to create the right solution. Um, rather than just, you know, trying to pick something off the shelf that maybe doesn't fit the forces requirements in the way that it should to, right. It's not always a one size fits all. Obviously, you know, today what we thought was critical is making sure that we're creating something that met the forces needs, um, in terms of the outcomes they're looking to achieve the financial envelopes that were available, um, and how we can deliver those in a, uh, iterative agile way, um, rather than spending years and years, um, working towards an outcome, um, that is going to outdate before you even get that. >>How, how are things different? What kinds of business functions and processes have been re-imagined in, in light of this change and this shift >>It's, it's actually unrecognizable now, um, in certain areas of the business as it was before. So to give you a little bit of context, when we, um, started working with essentially century AWS on the data driven insights program, it was very much around providing, um, what was called locally, a wizzy tool for our intelligence analysts to interrogate data, look at data, you know, decide whether they could do anything predictive with it. And it was very much sort of a back office function to sort of tidy things up for us and make us a bit better in that, in that area or a lot better in that area. And it was rolled out to a number of offices, a small number on the front line. Um, I'm really, it was, um, in line with a mobility strategy that we, hardware officers were getting new smartphones for the first time, um, to do sort of a lot of things on, on, um, policing apps and things like that to again, to avoid them, having to keep driving back to police stations, et cetera. >>And the pilot was so successful. Every officer now has access to this data, um, on their mobile devices. So it literally went from a handful of people in an office somewhere using it to do sort of clever whizzbang things to, um, every officer in the force, being able to access that level of data at their fingertips literally. So what they would touch we've done before is if they needed to check and address or check, uh, details of an individual, um, just as one example, they would either have to, in many cases, go back to a police station to look it up themselves on a desktop computer. Well, they would have to make a call back to, um, a centralized function and speak to an operator, relay the questions either, wait for the answer or wait for a call back with the answer when those people are doing the data interrogation manually. >>So the biggest change for us is the self-service nature of the data we now have available. So officers can do it themselves on their phone, wherever they might be. So the efficiency savings, um, from that point of view are immense. And I think just parallel to that is the quality of our data because we had a lot of data, but just because you've got a lot of data and a lot of information doesn't mean it's big data and it's valuable necessarily. Um, so again, it was having the single source of truth as we, as we call it. So you know, that when you are completing those safe searches and getting the responses back, that it is the most accurate information we hold. And also you're getting it back within minutes as opposed to, you know, half an hour, an hour or a drive back to the station. So it's making officers more efficient and it's also making them safer. The more efficient they are, the more time they have to spend, um, out with the public doing what they, you know, we all should be doing. >>And have you seen that kind of return on investment because what you were just describing with all the steps that we'd needed to be taken in prior to this to verify and address say, and those are precious seconds when someone's life is on the line in, in sort of in the course of everyday police work. >>Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. It's difficult to put a price on it. It's difficult to quantify. Um, but all the, you know, the minutes here and that certainly add up to a significant amount of efficiency savings, and we've certainly been able to demonstrate the officers are spending less time up police stations as a result and more time out on the front line. Also they're safer because they can get information about what may or may not be and address what may or may not have occurred in an area before very, very quickly without having to wait. >>Matthew, I want to hear your observations of working so closely with this West Midlands police. Have you noticed anything about changes in its culture and its operating model in how police officers interact with one another? Have you seen any changes since this technology change, >>Um, unique about the West new misplaces, the buy-in from the top, it depend on the chief and his exact team. And Helen is the leader from an IOT perspective. Um, the entire force is bought in. So what is a significant change program? Uh, uh, not trickles three. Um, everyone in the organization, um, change is difficult. Um, and there's a lot of time effort. That's been put into bake, the technical delivery and the business change and adoption aspects around each of the projects. Um, but you can see the step change that it's making in each aspect to the organization, uh, and where that's putting West Midlands police as a leader in, um, technology I'm policing in the UK. And I think globally, >>And this is a question for both of you because Matthew, as you said, change is difficult and there is always a certain intransigence in workplaces about this is just the way we've always done things and we're used to this and don't try to get us, don't try to get us to do anything new here. It works. How do you get the buy-in that you need to, to do this kind of digital transformation? >>I think it, it would be wrong to say it was easy. Um, um, we also have to bear in mind that this was one program in a five year program. So there was a lot of change going on, um, both internally for some of our back office functions, as well as front tie, uh, frontline offices. So with DDI in particular, I think the stat change occurred when people could see what it could do for them. You know, we had lots of workshops and seminars where we all talk about, you know, big data and it's going to be great and it's data analytics and it's transformational, you know, and quite rightly people that are very busy doing a day job that not necessarily technologists in the main and, you know, are particularly interested quite rightly so in what we are not dealing with the cloud, you know? >>And it was like, yeah, okay. It's one more thing. And then when they started to see on that, on their phones and what teams could do, that's when it started to sell itself. And I think that's when we started to see, you know, to see the stack change, you know, and, and if we, if we have any issues now it's literally, you know, our help desks in meltdown. Cause everyone's like, well, we call it manage without this anymore. And I think that speaks for itself. So it doesn't happen overnight. It's sort of incremental changes and then that's a step change in attitude. And when they see it working and they see the benefits, they want to use it more. And that's how it's become fundamental to our policing by itself, really without much selling >>Matthew, Helen just made a compelling case for how to get buy in. Have you discovered any other best practices when you are trying to get everyone on board for this kind of thing? >>So we've, um, we've used a lot of the traditional techniques, things around comms and engagement. We've also used things like, um, the 30 day challenge and nudge theory around how can we gradually encourage people to use things? Um, I think there's a point where all of this around, how do we just keep it simple and keep it user centric from an end user perspective? I think DDI is a great example of where the, the technology is incredibly complex. The solution itself is, um, you know, extremely large and, um, has been very difficult to, um, get delivered. But at the heart of it is a very simple front end for the user to encourage it and take that complexity away from them. Uh, I think that's been critical through the whole piece of video. >>One final word from Helen. I want to hear, where do you go from here? What is the longterm vision? I know that this made productivity, >>Um, productivity savings equivalent to 154 full-time officers. Uh, what's next, I think really it's around, um, exploiting what we've got. Um, I use the phrase quite a lot, dialing it up, which drives my technical architects crazy, but because it's apparently not that simple, but, um, you know, we've, we've been through significant change in the last five years and we are still continuing to batch all of those changes into everyday, um, operational policing. But what we need to see now is we need to exploit and build on the investments that we've made, um, in terms of data and claims specifically, the next step really is about expanding our pool of data and our functions. Um, so that, you know, we keep getting better and better, um, at this, um, the more we do, the more data we have, the more refined we can be, the more precise we are with all of our actions. >>Um, you know, we're always being expected to, again, look after the public purse and do more for less. And I think this is certainly an and our cloud journey and cloud first by design, which is where we are now, um, is helping us to be future-proofed. So for us, it's very much an investment. And I see now that we have good at embedded in operational policing for me, this is the start of our journey, not the end. So it's really exciting to see where we can go from here. Exciting times. Indeed. Thank you so much. And Matthew for joining us, I really appreciate it. And you are watching the cube stay tuned for more of the cubes coverage of the AWS reinvent Accenture executive summit. I'm Rebecca Knight from around the globe with digital coverage, >>AWS reinvent executive summit, 2020, sponsored by Accenture and AWS. Everyone. Welcome to the cube virtual coverage of the executive summit at AWS reinvent 2020 virtual. This is the cube virtual. We can't be there in person like we are every year we have to be remote. This executive summit is with special programming supported by Accenture where the cube virtual I'm your host John for a year, we had a great panel here called uncloud first digital transformation from some experts, Stuart driver, the director of it and infrastructure and operates at lion Australia, Douglas Regan, managing director, client account lead at lion for Accenture as a deep Islam associate director application development lead for Accenture gentlemen, thanks for coming on the cube virtual that's a mouthful, all that digital, but the bottom line it's cloud transformation. This is a journey that you guys have been on together for over 10 years to be really a digital company. Now, some things have happened in the past year that kind of brings all this together. This is about the next generation organization. So I want to ask Stuart you first, if you can talk about this transformation at lion has undertaken some of the challenges and opportunities and how this year in particular has brought it together because you, you know, COVID has been the accelerant of digital transformation. Well, if you're 10 years in, I'm sure you're there. You're in the, uh, uh, on that wave right now. Take a minute to explain this transformation journey. >>Yeah, sure. So number of years back, we, we looked at kind of our infrastructure and our landscape. I'm trying to figure out where we wanted to go next. And we were very analog based, um, and stuck in the old it groove of, you know, capital refresh, um, struggling to transform, struggling to get to a digital platform and we needed to change it up so that we could, uh, become very different business to the one that we were back then. Um, obviously cloud is an accelerant to that and we had a number of initiatives that needed a platform to build on. And a cloud infrastructure was the way that we started to do that. So we went through a number of transformation programs that we didn't want to do that in the old world. We wanted to do it in a new world. So for us, it was partnering up with a, you know, great organizations that can take you on the journey and, uh, you know, start to deliver a bit by bit incremental progress, uh, to get to the, uh, I guess the promise land. >>Um, we're not, uh, not all the way there, but to where we're a long way along. And then when you get to some of the challenges like we've had this year, um, it makes all of the hard work worthwhile because you can actually change pretty quickly, um, provide capacity and, uh, and increase your environments and, you know, do the things that you need to do in a much more dynamic way than we would have been able to previously where we might've been waiting for the hardware vendors, et cetera, to deliver capacity for us this year, it's been a pretty strong year from an it perspective and delivering for the business needs, >>Forget the Douglas. I want to just real quick and redirect to you and say, you know, for all the people who said, Oh yeah, you got to jump on cloud, get in early, you know, a lot of naysayers like, well, wait till to mature a little bit. Really, if you got in early and you paying your dues, if you will taking that medicine with the cloud, you're really kind of peaking at the right time. Is that true? Is that one of the benefits that comes out of this getting in the cloud, >>John, this has been an unprecedented year, right. And, um, you know, Australia, we had to live through Bush fires and then we had covert and, and then we actually had to deliver a, um, a project I'm very know transformational product project, completely remote. And then we also had had some, some cyber challenges, which is public as well. And I don't think if we weren't moved into and enabled through the cloud would have been able to achieve that this year. It would have been much different. It would have been very difficult to do the fact that we were able to work and partner with Amazon through this year, which is unprecedented and actually come out the other end and we've delivered a brand new digital capability across the entire business. Um, it wouldn't >>Have been impossible if we could, I guess, stayed in the old world. The fact that we moved into the new Naval by the Navy allowed us to work in this unprecedented gear >>Just quick. What's your personal view on this? Because I've been saying on the Cuban reporting, necessity's the mother of all invention and the word agility has been kicked around as kind of a cliche, Oh, it'd be agile. You know, we're gonna get to Sydney. You get a minute on specifically, but from your perspective, uh, Douglas, what does that mean to you? Because there is benefits there for being agile. And >>I mean, I think as Stuart mentioned writing, and a lot of these things we try to do and, you know, typically, you know, hardware capabilities of the last to be told and, and always the only critical path to be done. You know, we really didn't have that in this case, what we were doing with our projects in our deployments, right. We were able to move quickly able to make decisions in line with the business and really get things going, right. So you, a lot of times in a traditional world, you have these inhibitors, you have these critical path, it takes weeks and months to get things done as opposed to hours and days. And it truly allowed us to, we had to VJ things, move things. And, you know, we were able to do that in this environment with AWS to support and the fact that we can kind of turn things off and on as quickly as we need it. Yeah. >>Cloud-scale is great for speed. So DECA got, Gardez get your thoughts on this cloud first mission, you know, it, you know, the dev ops worlds, they saw this early, that jumping in there, they saw the, the, the agility. Now the theme this year is modern applications with the COVID pandemic pressure, there's real business pressure to make that happen. How did you guys learn to get there fast? And what specifically did you guys do at Accenture and how did it all come together? Can you take us inside kind of how it played out? >>All right. So we started off with us and we work with lions experts and, uh, the lost knowledge that allowed reconstructive being had. Um, we then applied our journey group cloud strategy basically revolves around the seven Oz and, and, uh, you know, the deep peaking steps from our perspective, uh, assessing the current bottom, setting up the new cloud in modern. And as we go modernizing and, and migrating these applications to the cloud now, you know, one of the things that, uh, no we did not along this journey was that, you know, you can have the best plans, but bottom of that, we were dealing with, we often than not have to make changes. Uh, what a lot of agility and also work with a lot of collaboration with the, uh, Lyon team, as well as, uh, uh, AWS. I think the key thing for me was being able to really bring it all together. It's not just, uh, you know, essentially mobilize all of us. >>What were some of the learnings real quick, your journey there? >>So I think perspective the key learnings around that, you know, uh, you know, what, when we look back at, uh, the, the infrastructure that was that we were trying to migrate over to the cloud, a lot of the documentation, et cetera, was not, uh, available. We were having to, uh, figure out a lot of things on the fly. Now that really required us to have, uh, uh, people with deep expertise who could go into those environments and, and work out, uh, you know, the best ways to, to migrate the workloads to the cloud. Uh, I think, you know, the, the biggest thing for me was making Jovi had on that real SMEs across the board globally, that we could leverage across various technologies, uh, uh, and, and, and, you know, that would really work in our collaborative and agile environment would line >>Just do what I got to ask you. How did you address your approach to the cloud and what was your experience? >>Yeah, for me, it's around getting the foundations right. To start with and then building on them. Um, so, you know, you've got to have your, your process and you're going to have your, your kind of your infrastructure there and your blueprints ready. Um, AWS do a great job of that, right. Getting the foundations right. And then building upon it, and then, you know, partnering with Accenture allows you to do that very successfully. Um, I think, um, you know, the one thing that was probably surprising to us when we started down this journey and kind of, after we got a long way down, the track of looking backwards is actually how much you can just turn off. Right? So a lot of stuff that you, uh, you get left with a legacy in your environment, and when you start to work through it with the types of people that civic just mentioned, you know, the technical expertise working with the business, um, you can really rationalize your environment and, uh, um, you know, cloud is a good opportunity to do that, to drive that legacy out. >>Um, so you know, a few things there, the other thing is, um, you've got to try and figure out the benefits that you're going to get out of moving here. So there's no point just taking something that is not delivering a huge amount of value in the traditional world, moving it into the cloud, and guess what it's going to deliver the same limited amount of value. So you've got to transform it, and you've got to make sure that you build it for the future and understand exactly what you're trying to gain out of it. So again, you need a strong collaboration. You need a good partners to work with, and you need good engagement from the business as well, because the kind of, uh, you know, digital transformation, cloud transformation, isn't really an it project, I guess, fundamentally it is at the core, but it's a business project that you've got to get the whole business aligned on. You've got to make sure that your investment streams are appropriate and that you're able to understand the benefits and the value that you're going to drive back towards the business. >>Let's do it. If you don't mind me asking what was some of the obstacles encountered or learnings, um, that might've differed from the expectation we all been there, Hey, you know, we're going to change the world. Here's the sales pitch, here's the outcome. And then obviously things happen, you know, you learn legacy, okay. Let's put some containerization around that cloud native, um, all that rational. You're talking about what are, and you're going to have obstacles. That's how you learn. That's how perfection has developed. How, what obstacles did you come up with and how are they different from your expectations going in? >>Yeah, they're probably no different from other people that have gone down the same journey. If I'm totally honest, the, you know, 70 or 80% of what you do is relative music, because they're a known quantity, it's relatively modern architectures and infrastructures, and you can, you know, upgrade, migrate, move them into the cloud, whatever it is, rehost, replatform, rearchitect, whatever it is you want to do, it's the other stuff, right? It's the stuff that always gets left behind. And that's the challenge. It's, it's getting that last bit over the line and making sure that you haven't invested in the future while still carrying all of your legacy costs and complexity within your environment. So, um, to be quite honest, that's probably taken longer and, and has been more of a challenge than we thought it would be. Um, the other piece I touched on earlier on in terms of what was surprising was actually how much of your environment is actually not needed anymore. >>When you start to put a critical eye across it and understand, um, uh, ask the tough questions and start to understand exactly what, what it is you're trying to achieve. So if you ask a part of a business, do they still need this application or this service a hundred percent of the time, they'll say yes, until you start to lay out to them, okay, now I'm going to cost you this to migrate it or this, to run it in the future. And, you know, here's your ongoing costs and, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And then, uh, for a significant amount of those answers, you get a different response when you start to layer on the true value of it. So you start to flush out those hidden costs within the business, and you start to make some critical decisions as a company based on, uh, based on that. So that was a little tougher than we first thought and probably broader than we thought there was more of that than we anticipated, which actually resulted in a much cleaner environment post and post migration. Yeah. >>Well, expression, if it moves automated, you know, it's kind of a joke on government, how they want to tax everything, you know, you want to automate, that's a key thing in cloud, and you've got to discover those opportunities to create value, uh, Stuart and Siddique. Mainly if you can weigh in on this love to know the percentage of total cloud that you have now, versus when you started, because as you start to uncover whether it's by design for purpose, or you discover opportunities to innovate, like you guys have, I'm sure it kind of, you took on some territory inside Lyon, what percentage of cloud now versus >>Yeah. At the start, it was minimal, right. You know, close to zero, right. Single and single digits. Right. It was mainly SAS environments that we had, uh, sitting in cloud when we, uh, when we started, um, Doug mentioned earlier a really significant transformation project that we've undertaken recently gone live on a multi-year one. Um, you know, that's all stood up on AWS and is a significant portion of our environment, um, in terms of what we can move to cloud. Uh, we're probably at about 80 or 90% now. And the balanced bit is, um, legacy infrastructure that is just gonna retire as we go through the cycle rather than migrate to the cloud. Um, so we are significantly cloud-based and, uh, you know, we're reaping the benefits of it in a year, like 2020, and makes you glad that you did all of the hard yards in the previous years when you start business challenges, trying out as, >>So do you get any common reaction to the cloud percentage penetration? >>Sorry, I didn't, I didn't catch that, but I, all I was going to say was, I think it's like the typical 80 20 rule, right? We, we, we worked really hard in the, you know, I think 2018, 19 to get 80% off the, uh, application onto the cloud. And over the last year is the 20% that we have been migrating. And Stuart said, right. A lot of it is also, that's going to be your diet. And I think our next big step is going to be obviously, you know, the icing on the cake, which is to decommission all of these apps as well. Right. So, you know, to get the real benefits out of, uh, out of the whole conservation program from a, uh, from a reduction of CapEx, OPEX perspective, >>Douglas and Stuart, can you guys talk about the decision around the clouds because you guys have had success with AWS? Why AWS how's that decision made? Can you guys give some insight into some of those things? >>I can, I can start, start off. I think back when the decision was made and it was, it was a while back, um, you know, there was some clear advantages of moving relay, Ws, a lot of alignment with some of the significant projects and, uh, the trend, that particular one big transformation project that we've alluded to as well. Um, you know, we needed some, um, some very robust and, um, just future proof and, and proven technology. And AWS gave that to us. We needed a lot of those blueprints to help us move down the path. We didn't want to reinvent everything. So, um, you know, having a lot of that legwork done for us and AWS gives you that, right. And particularly when you partner up with, uh, with a company like Accenture as well, you get combinations of technology and the, the skills and the knowledge to, to move you forward in that direction side. Um, you know, for us, it was a, uh, uh, it was a decision based on, you know, best of breed, um, you know, looking forward and, and trying to predict the future needs and, and, and kind of the environmental that we might need. Um, and, you know, partnering up with organizations that can then take you on the journey >>Just to build on that. So obviously, you know, lines like an antivirus, but, you know, we knew it was a very good choice given the, um, >>Uh, skills and the capability that we had, as well as the assets and tools we had to get the most out of an AWS. And obviously our CEO globally just made an announcement about a huge investment that we're making in cloud. Um, but you know, we've, we've worked very well with AWS. We've done some joint workshops and joint investments, um, some joint POC. So yeah, w we have a very good working relationship, AWS, and I think, um, one incident to reflect upon whether it's cyber it's and again, where we actually jointly, you know, dove in with, um, with Amazon and some of their security experts and our experts. And we're able to actually work through that with mine quite successful. So, um, you know, really good behaviors as an organization, but also really good capabilities. >>Yeah. As you guys, your essential cloud outcomes, research shown, it's the cycle of innovation with the cloud, that's creating a lot of benefits, knowing what you guys know now, looking back certainly COVID has impacted a lot of people kind of going through the same process, knowing what you guys know now, would you advocate people to jump on this transformation journey? If so, how, and what tweaks they make, which changes, what would you advise? >>I might take that one to start with. Um, I hate to think where we would have been when, uh, COVID kicked off here in Australia and, you know, we were all sent home, literally were at work on the Friday, and then over the weekend. And then Monday, we were told not to come back into the office and all of a sudden, um, our capacity in terms of remote access and I quadrupled, or more four, five X, what we had on the Friday we needed on the Monday. And we were able to stand that up during the day Monday into Tuesday, because we were cloud-based and, uh, you know, we just spun up your instances and, uh, you know, sort of our licensing, et cetera. And, and we had all of our people working remotely, um, within, uh, you know, effectively one business day. Um, I know peers of mine in other organizations and industries that are relying on kind of a traditional wise and getting hardware, et cetera, that were weeks and months before they could get the right hardware to be able to deliver to their user base. >>So, um, you know, one example where you're able to scale and, uh, uh, get, uh, get value out of this platform beyond probably what was anticipated at the time you talk about, um, you know, less this, the, and all of these kinds of things. And you can also think of a few scenarios, but real world ones where you're getting your business back up and running in that period of time is, is just phenomenal. There's other stuff, right? There's these programs that we've rolled out, you do your sizing, um, and in the traditional world, you would just go out and buy more servers than you need. And, you know, probably never realize the full value of those, you know, the capability of those servers over the life cycle of them. Whereas, you know, in a cloud world, you put in what you think is right. And if it's not right, you pump it up a little bit when, when all of your metrics and so on telling you that you need to bump it up and conversely Scarlett down at the same rate. So for us with the types of challenges and programs and, uh, uh, and just business need, that's come at as this year, uh, we wouldn't have been able to do it without a strong cloud base, uh, to, uh, to move forward with >>Yeah, Douglas, one of the things that I talked to, a lot of people on the right side of history who have been on the right wave with cloud, with the pandemic, and they're happy, they're like, and they're humble. Like, well, we're just lucky, you know, luck is preparation meets opportunity. And this is really about you guys getting in early and being prepared and readiness. This is kind of important as people realize, then you gotta be ready. I mean, it's not just, you don't get lucky by being in the right place, the right time. And there were a lot of companies were on the wrong side of history here who might get washed away. This is a second >>I think, to echo and kind of build on what Stewart said. I think that the reason that we've had success and I guess the momentum is we, we didn't just do it in isolation within it and technology. It was actually linked to broader business changes, you know, creating basically a digital platform for the entire business, moving the business, where are they going to be able to come back stronger after COVID, when they're actually set up for growth, um, and actually allows, you know, a line new achievements, growth objectives, and also its ambitions as far as what he wants to do, uh, with growth in whatever they may do as acquiring other companies and moving into different markets and launching new product. So we've actually done it in a way that there's, you know, real and direct business benefit, uh, that actually enables line to grow >>General. I really appreciate you coming. I have one final question. If you can wrap up here, uh, Stuart and Douglas, you don't mind waiting, and what's the priorities for the future. What's next for lion and a century >>Christmas holidays, I'll start Christmas holidays. And I spent a third year and then a, and then a reset, obviously, right? So, um, you know, it's, it's figuring out, uh, transform what we've already transformed, if that makes sense. So God, a huge proportion of our services sitting in the cloud. Um, but we know we're not done even with the stuff that is in there. We need to take those next steps. We need more and more automation and orchestration. We need to, um, our environment, there's more future growth. We need to be able to work with the business and understand what's coming at them so that we can, um, you know, build that into, into our environment. So again, it's really transformation on top of transformation is the way that I'll describe it. And it's really an open book, right? Once you get it in and you've got the capabilities and the evolving tool sets that AWS continue to bring to the market base, um, you know, working with the partners to, to figure out how we unlock that value, um, you know, drive our costs down our efficiency, uh, all of those kind of, you know, standard metrics. >>Um, but you know, we're looking for the next things to transform and show value back out to our customer base, um, that, uh, that we continue to, you know, sell our products to and work with and understand how we can better meet their needs. Yeah, I think just to echo that, I think it's really leveraging this and then digital capability they have and getting the most out of that investment. And then I think it's also moving to, >>Uh, and adopting more new ways of working as far as, you know, the state of the business. Um, it's getting up the speed of the market is changing. So being able to launch and do things quickly and also, um, competitive and efficient operating costs, uh, now that they're in the cloud, right. So I think it's really leveraging the most out of a platform and then, you know, being efficient in launching things. So putting the, with the business, >>Cedric, any word from you on your priorities by UC this year and folding. >>Yeah. So, uh, just going to say like e-learning squares, right for me were around, you know, just journey. This is a journey to the cloud, right. And, uh, you know, as well dug into sort of Saturday, it's getting all, you know, different parts of the organization along the journey business to ID to your, uh, product windows, et cetera. Right. And it takes time with this stuff, but, uh, uh, you know, you gotta get started on it and, you know, once we, once we finish off, uh, it's the realization of the benefits now that, you know, I'm looking forward? I think for, from Alliance perspective, it's, it is, uh, you know, once we migrate all the workloads to the cloud, it is leveraging, uh, all stack drive. And as I think Stewart said earlier, uh, with, uh, you know, the latest and greatest stuff that AWS it's basically working to see how we can really, uh, achieve more better operational excellence, uh, from a, uh, from a cloud perspective. >>Well, Stewart, thanks for coming on with a century and sharing your environment and what's going on and your journey you're on the right wave. Did the work you were in that it's all coming together with faster, congratulations for your success, and really appreciate Douglas with Steve for coming on as well from Accenture. Thank you for coming on. Thanks, John. Okay. Just the cubes coverage of executive summit at AWS reinvent. This is where all the thought leaders share their best practices, their journeys, and of course, special programming with the center and the cube. I'm Sean ferry, your host, thanks for watching From around the globe. It's the cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent executive summit 2020, sponsored by Accenture and AWS. >>Welcome everyone to the cube virtuals coverage of the Accenture executive summit. Part of AWS reinvent 2020. I'm your host Rebecca Knight. We are talking today about reinventing the energy data platform. We have two guests joining us. First. We have Johan Krebbers. He is the GM digital emerging technologies and VP of it. Innovation at shell. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Johan you're welcome. And next we have Liz Dennett. She is the lead solution architect for O S D U on AWS. Thank you so much, Liz. You'll be. So I want to start our conversation by talking about OSD. You like so many great innovations. It started with a problem Johan. What was the problem you were trying to solve at shell? >>Yeah, the ethical back a couple of years, we started summer 2017, where we had a meeting with the deg, the gas exploration in shell, and the main problem they had. Of course, they got lots of lots of data, but are unable to find the right data. They need to work from once the day, this was scattered in is scattered my boss kind of Emirates all over the place and turned them into real, probably tried to solve is how that person working exploration could find their proper date, not just a day of loss of date. You really needed that we did probably talked about is summer 2017. We said, okay. The only way ABC is moving forward is to start pulling that data into a single data platform. And that, that was at the time that we called it as the, you, the subsurface data universe in there was about the shell name was so in, in January, 2018, we started a project with Amazon to start grating a freaking that building, that Stu environment that the, that universe, so that single data level to put all your exploration and Wells data into that single environment that was intent and every cent, um, already in March of that same year, we said, well, from Michele point of view, we will be far better off if we could make this an industry solution and not just a shelf solution, because Shelby, Shelby, if you can make this industry solution, but people are developing applications for it. >>It also is far better than for shell to say we haven't shell special solution because we don't make money out of how we start a day that we can make money out of, if you have access to the data, we can explore the data. So storing the data we should do as efficiently possibly can. So in March, we reached out to about eight or nine other large, uh, I gas operators, like the economics, like the totals, like the chefs of this world and say, Hey, we inshallah doing this. Do you want to join this effort? And to our surprise, they all said, yes. And then in September, 2018, we had our kickoff meeting with your open group where we said, we said, okay, if you want to work together, lots of other companies, we also need to look at, okay, how, how we organize that, or is that if you started working with lots of large companies, you need to have some legal framework around some framework around it. So that's why we went to the open group and said, okay, let's, let's form the ODU forum as we call it the time. So it's September, 2080, where I did a Galleria in Houston, but the kick off meeting for the OT four with about 10 members at the time. So there's just over two years ago, we started an exercise for me called ODU, kicked it off. Uh, and so that's really then we'll be coming from and how we got there. Also >>The origin story. Um, well, so what digging a little deeper there? What were some of the things you were trying to achieve with the OSD? >>Well, a couple of things we've tried to achieve with OSU, um, first is really separating data from applications. And what is the, what is the biggest problem we have in the subsurface space that the data and applications are all interlinked or tied together. And if you have them and a new company coming along and say, I have this new application and has access to the data that is not possible because the data often interlinked with the application. So the first thing we did is really breaking the link between the application, the data as those levels, the first thing we did, secondly, put all the data to a single data platform, take the silos out what was happening in the subsurface space. And they got all the data in what we call silos in small little islands out there. So we're trying to do is first break the link to great, great. >>They put the data in a single data bathroom, and a third part who does standard layer. On top of that, it's an API layer on top of the, a platform. So we could create an ecosystem out of companies to start developing soft applications on top of dev data platform across you might have a data platform, but you're only successful. If you have a rich ecosystem of people start developing applications on top of that. And then you can explore today, like small companies, last company, university, you name it, we're getting after create an ecosystem out here. So the three things, whereas was first break the link between application data, just break it and put data at the center and also make sure that data, this data structure would not be managed by one company. It would only be met. It will be managed the data structures by the OT forum. Secondly, then the data of single data platform certainly has an API layer on top and then create an ecosystem. Really go for people, say, please start developing applications because now you have access to the data. I've got the data no longer linked to somebody whose application was all freely available for an API layer. That was, that was all September, 2018, more or less. >>And to bring you in here a little bit, can you talk a little bit about some of the imperatives from the AWS standpoint in terms of what you were trying to achieve with this? Yeah, absolutely. And this whole thing is Johan said started with a challenge that was really brought out at shell. The challenges that geo-scientists spend up to 70% of their time looking for data, I'm a geologist I've spent more than 70% of my time trying to find data in these silos. And from there, instead of just figuring out how we could address that one problem, we worked together to really understand the root cause of these challenges and working backwards from that use case OSU and OSU on AWS has really enabled customers to create solutions that span, not just this in particular problem, but can really scale to be inclusive of the entire energy chain and deliver value from these use cases to the energy industry and beyond. Thank you, Lee, uh, Johann. So talk a little bit about Accenture's cloud first approach and how it has, uh, helped shell work faster and better with speed. >>Well, of course, access a cloud first approach only works together in an Amazon environment, AWS environment. So we really look at, at, at, at Accenture and others altogether helping shell in this space. Now the combination of the two is what we're really looking at, uh, where access of course can be, this is not a student who that environment operates, support knowledge to an environment. And of course, Amazon would be doing that to today's environment that underpinning, uh, services, et cetera. So, uh, we would expect a combination, a lot of goods when we started rolling out and put in production, the old you are three and bubble because we are anus. Then when the release feed comes to the market in Q1 next year of ODU, when he started going to Audi production inside shell, but as the first release, which is ready for prime time production across an enterprise will be released one just before Christmas, last year when he's still in may of this year. But release three is the first release we want to use for full scale production deployment inside shell, and also all the operators around the world. And there is what Amazon, sorry. Um, extensive can play a role in the ongoing, in the, in deployment building up, but also support environment. >>So one of the other things that we talk a lot about here on the cube is sustainability. And this is a big imperative at so many organizations around the world in particular energy companies. How does this move to OSD you, uh, help organizations become, how is this a greener solution for companies? >>Well, firstly make it, it's a great solution because you start making a much more efficient use of your resources, which is, which is already an important one. The second thing they're doing is also, we started with ODU in the oil and gas space with the expert development space. We've grown, uh OTU but in our strategy of growth, OSU now also do an alternative energy sociology. We'll all start supporting next year. Things like solar farms, wind farms, uh, the, the dermatomal environment hydration. So it becomes an and, and an open energy data platform, not just for the, for the, I want to get into steam that's for new industry, any type of energy industry. So our focus is to create, bring that data of all those various energy data sources together into a single data platform. You're going to use AI and other technology on top of that to exploit the data, to meet again in a single data platform. >>Liz, I want to ask you about security because security is, is, is such a big concern when it comes to how secure is the data on OSD you, um, actually, can I talk, can I do a follow up on the sustainability talking? Oh, absolutely. By all means. I mean, I want to interject though security is absolutely our top priority. I don't mean to move away from that, but with sustainability, in addition to the benefits of the OSU data platform, when a company moves from on-prem to the cloud, they're also able to leverage the benefits of scale. Now, AWS is committed to running our business in the most environmentally friendly way possible. And our scale allows us to achieve higher resource utilization and energy efficiency than a typical on-prem data center. Now, a recent study by four 51 research found that AWS is infrastructure is 3.6 times more energy efficient than the median of surveyed enterprise data centers. Two thirds of that advantage is due to higher server utilization and a more energy efficient server population. But when you factor in the carbon intensity of consumed electricity and renewable energy purchases, four 51 found that AWS performs the same task with an 88% lower carbon footprint. Now that's just another way that AWS and OSU are working to support our customers is they seek to better understand their workflows and make their legacy businesses less carbon intensive. >>That's that's those are those statistics are incredible. Do you want to talk a little bit now about security? Absolutely. And security will always be AWS is top priority. In fact, AWS has been architected to be the most flexible and secure cloud computing environment available today. Our core infrastructure is built to satisfy. There are the security requirements for the military global banks and other high sensitivity organizations. And in fact, AWS uses the same secure hardware and software to build and operate each of our regions. So that customers benefit from the only commercial cloud that's had hits service offerings and associated supply chain vetted and deemed secure enough for top secret workloads. That's backed by a deep set of cloud security tools with more than 200 security compliance and governmental service and key features as well as an ecosystem of partners like Accenture, that can really help our customers to make sure that their environments for their data meet and or exceed their security requirements. Johann, I want you to talk a little bit about how OSD you can be used today. Does it only handle subsurface data >>And today it's hundreds of servers or Wells data. We got to add to that production around the middle of next year. That means that the whole upstate business. So we've got, if you look at MC, obviously this goes from exploration all the way to production. You've been at the into to a single data platform. So production will be added the round Q3 of next year. Then it principal, we have a difficult, the elder data that single environment, and we want to extended them to other data sources or energy sources like solar farms, wheat farms, uh, hydrogen hydro at San Francisco. We want to add a whore or a list of other day. >>And he saw a student and B all the data together into a single data club. So we move from an fallen guest, a data platform to an energy data platform. That's really what our objective is because the whole industry we've looked at, I've looked at our company companies all moving in that same direction of quantity, of course are very strong at all, I guess, but also increase the, got into all the other energy sources like, like solar, like wind, like, like the hydrogen, et cetera. So we, we move exactly the same method that, that, that the whole OSU can really support at home. And as a spectrum of energy sources, of course, >>And Liz and Johan. I want you to close us out here by just giving us a look into your crystal balls and talking about the five and 10 year plan for OSD. You we'll start with you, Liz. What do you, what do you see as the future holding for this platform? Um, honestly, the incredibly cool thing about working at AWS is you never know where the innovation and the journey is going to take you. I personally am looking forward to work with our customers, wherever their OSU journeys, take them, whether it's enabling new energy solutions or continuing to expand, to support use cases throughout the energy value chain and beyond, but really looking forward to continuing to partner as we innovate to slay tomorrow's challenges. >>Yeah. First, nobody can look that far ahead, any more nowadays, especially 10 years mean now, who knows what happens in 10 years, but if you look what our whole objective is that really in the next five years owes you will become the key backbone for energy companies for storing your data. You are efficient intelligence and optimize the whole supply energy supply chain in this world out there. >>Rubbers Liz Dennett. Thank you so much for coming on the cube virtual, >>Thank you, >>Rebecca nights, stay tuned for more of our coverage of the Accenture executive summit >>Around the globe. It's the cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent executive summit 2020, sponsored by Accenture and AWS. >>Welcome everyone to the cubes coverage of the Accenture executive summit. Part of AWS reinvent. I'm your host Rebecca Knight today we're welcoming back to Kubila. We have Kishor Dirk. He is the Accenture senior managing director cloud first global services lead. Welcome back to the show >>Kishore. Thank you very much. >>Nice to meet again. And, uh, Tristin moral horse set. He is the managing director, Accenture cloud first North American growth. Welcome back to YouTube. >>Great to be back in. Great to see you again, Rebecca. >>Exactly. Even in this virtual format, it is good to see your faces. Um, today we're going to be talking about my nav and green cloud advisor >>Capability. Kishor I want to start with you. So my NAB is a platform that is really celebrating its first year in existence. Uh, November, 2019 is when Accenture introduced it. Uh, but it's, it has new relevance in light of this global pandemic that we are all enduring and suffering through. Tell us a little bit about the miner platform, what it is. >>Sure, Rebecca, you know, we lost it and now 2019 and, uh, you know, it is a cloud platform to help our clients navigate the complexity of cloud and cloud decisions and to make it faster and obviously innovate in the cloud, uh, you know, with the increased relevance and all the, especially over the last few months with the impact of COVID crisis and exhibition of digital transformation, you know, we are seeing the transformation of the acceleration to cloud much faster. This platform that you're talking about has enabled hundred and 40 clients globally across different industries. You identify the right cloud solution, navigate the complexity, provide a cloud specific solution simulate for our clients to meet the strategy business needs and the clients are loving it. >>I want to go to you now trust and tell us a little bit about how my nav works and how it helps companies make good cloud choices. >>Yeah. So Rebecca we've talked about cloud is, is more than just infrastructure and that's what mine app tries to solve for. It really looks at a variety of variables, including infrastructure operating model and fundamentally what clients business outcomes, um, uh, our clients are, are looking for and, and identify as the optimal solution for what they need. And we design this to accelerate and we mentioned the pandemic. One of the big focus now is to accelerate. And so we worked through a three-step process. The first is scanning and assessing our client's infrastructure, their data landscape, their application. Second, we use our automated artificial intelligence engine to interact with. We have a wide variety and library of, uh, collective plot expertise. And we look to recommend what is the enterprise architecture and solution. And then third, before we aligned with our clients, we look to simulate and test this scaled up model. And the simulation gives our clients a wait to see what cloud is going to look like, feel like and how it's going to transform their business before they go there. >>Tell us a little bit about that in real life. Now as a company, so many of people are working remotely having to collaborate, uh, not in real life. How is that helping them right now? >>So, um, the, the pandemic has put a tremendous strain on systems, uh, because of the demand on those systems. And so we talk about resiliency. We also now need to collaborate across data across people. Um, I think all of us are calling from a variety of different places where our last year we were all at the cube itself. Um, and, and cloud technologies such as teams, zoom that we're we're leveraging now has fundamentally accelerated and clients are looking to onboard this for their capabilities. They're trying to accelerate their journey. They realize that now the cloud is what is going to become important for them to differentiate. Once we come out of the pandemic and the ability to collaborate with their employees, their partners, and their clients through these systems is becoming a true business differentiator for our clients. >>Sure. I want to talk with you now about my NABS multiple capabilities, um, and helping clients design and navigate their cloud journeys. Tell us a little bit about the green cloud advisor capability and its significance, particularly as so many companies are thinking more deeply and thoughtfully about sustainability. >>Yes. So since the launch of my NAB, we continue to enhance capabilities for our clients. One of the significant, uh, capabilities that we have enabled is the brain trust advisor today. You know, Rebecca, a lot of the businesses are more environmentally aware and are expanding efforts to decrease power consumption, uh, and obviously carbon emissions and, uh, and run a sustainable operations across every aspect of the enterprise. Uh, as a result, you're seeing an increasing trend in adoption of energy, efficient infrastructure in the global market. And one of the things that we did, a lot of research we found out is that there's an ability to influence our client's carbon footprint through a better cloud solution. And that's what we entered by brings to us, uh, in, in terms of a lot of the client connotation that you're seeing in Europe, North America and others, lot of our clients are accelerating to a green cloud strategy to unlock beta financial, societal and environmental benefit, uh, through obviously cloud-based circular, operational and sustainable products and services. That is something that, uh, we are enhancing my now and we are having active client discussions at this point of time. >>So Tristan, tell us a little bit about how this capability helps clients make greener. >>Yeah. Um, well, let's start about the investments from the cloud providers in renewable and sustainable energy. Um, they have most of the hyperscalers today, um, have been investing significantly on data centers that are run or renewable energy, some incredibly creative constructs on the how to do that. And sustainability is therefore a key, um, key item of importance for the hyperscalers and also for our clients who now are looking for sustainable energy. And it turns out this marriage is now possible. I can, we marry the, the green capabilities of the cloud providers with a sustainability agenda of our clients. And so what we look into way the mine EF works is it looks at industry benchmarks and evaluates our current clients, um, capabilities and carpet footprint leveraging their existing data centers. We then look to model from an end-to-end perspective, how the, their journey to the cloud leveraging sustainable and, um, and data centers with renewable energy. We look at how their solution will look like and, and quantify carbon tax credits, um, improve a green index score and provide quantifiable, um, green cloud capabilities and measurable outcomes to our clients, shareholders, stakeholders, clients, and customers, um, and our green plot advisors, sustainability solutions already been implemented at three clients. And in many cases in two cases has helped them reduce the carbon footprint by up to 400% through migration from their existing data center to green club. Very, very important. Yeah, >>That is remarkable. Now tell us a little bit about the kinds of clients. Is this, is this more interesting to clients in Europe? Would you say that it's catching on in the United States where we're at? What is the breakdown that you're seeing right now? >>Sustainability is becoming such a global agenda and we're seeing our clients, um, uh, tie this and put this at board level, um, uh, agenda and requirements across the globe. Um, Europe has specific constraints around data sovereignty, right, where they need their data in country, but from a green, a sustainability agenda, we see clients across all our markets, North America, Europe, and our growth markets adopt this. And we have seen case studies in all three markets >>Kisha. I want to bring you back into the conversation. Talk a little bit about how mine up ties into Accenture's cloud first strategy, your Accenture's CEO, Julie Sweet has talked about post COVID leadership requiring every business to become a cloud first business. Tell us a little bit about how this ethos is in Accenture and how you're sort of looking outward with it too. >>So Rebecca mine is the launch pad, uh, to a cloud first transformation for our clients. Uh, Accenture, see you, uh, Julie Sweet, uh, shared the Accenture cloud first and our substantial investment demonstrate our commitment and is delivering data value for our clients when they need it the most. And with the district transformation requiring cloud at scale, you know, we're seeing that in the post COVID leadership, it requires that every business should become a cloud business. And my nap helps them get there by evaluating the cloud landscape, navigating the complexity, modeling architecting and simulating an optimal cloud solution for our clients. And as Justin was sharing a greener cloud, Tristan, talk a little >>Bit more about some of the real life use cases in terms of what are we, what are clients seeing? What are the results? >>Yes, thank you, Rebecca. I would say two key things right around my now the first is the iterative process. Clients don't want to wait, um, until they get started, they want to get started and see what their journey is going to look like. And the second is fundamental acceleration, dependent make, as we talked about, has accelerated the need to move to cloud very quickly. And my nav is there to do that. So how do we do that? First is generating the business cases. Clients need to know in many cases that they have a business case by business case, we talk about the financial benefits, as well as the business outcomes, the green green cloud impact sustainability impacts with minus we can build initial recommendations using a basic understanding of their environment and benchmarks in weeks versus months with indicative value savings in the millions of dollars arranges. >>So for example, very recently, we worked with a global oil and gas company, and in only two weeks, we're able to provide an indicative savings for $27 million over five years. This enabled the client to get started, knowing that there is a business case benefit and then iterate on it. And this iteration is, I would say the second point that is particularly important with my nav that we've seen in bank, the clients, which is, um, any journey starts with an understanding of what is the application landscape and what are we trying to do with those, these initial assessments that used to take six to eight weeks are now taking anywhere from two to four weeks. So we're seeing a 40 to 50% reduction in the initial assessment, which gets clients started in their journey. And then finally we've had discussions with all of the hyperscalers to help partner with Accenture and leverage mine after prepared their detailed business case module as they're going to clients. And as they're accelerating the client's journey, so real results, real acceleration. And is there a journey? Do I have a business case and furthermore accelerating the journey once we are by giving the ability to work in an iterative approach, >>It sounds as though that the company that clients and and employees are sort of saying, this is an amazing time savings look at what I can do here in, in so much in a condensed amount of time, but in terms of getting everyone on board, one of the things we talked about last time we met, uh, Tristin was just how much, uh, how one of the obstacles is getting people to sign on and the new technologies and new platforms. Those are often the obstacles and struggles that companies face. Have you found that at all? Or what is sort of the feedback that you're getting from? >>Yeah. Sorry. Yes. We clearly, there are always obstacles to a con journey. If there weren't obstacles, all our clients would be already fully in the cloud. What man I gives the ability is to navigate through those, to start quickly. And then as we identify obstacles, we can simulate what things are going to look like. We can continue with certain parts of the journey while we deal with that obstacle. And it's a fundamental accelerator. Whereas in the past one, obstacle would prevent a class from starting. We can now start to address the obstacles one at a time while continuing and accelerating the contrary. That is the fundamental difference. Kishor I want to give you the final word here. Tell us a little bit about what is next for Accenture might have and what we'll be discussing next year at the Accenture executive summit >>Sort of echo, we are continuously evolving with our client needs and reinventing, reinventing for the future. For my advisor, our plan is to help our clients reduce carbon footprint and again, migrate to a green cloud. Uh, and additionally, we're looking at, you know, two capabilities, uh, which include sovereign cloud advisor, uh, with clients, especially in, in Europe and others are under pressure to meet stringent data norms that Kristen was talking about. And the sovereign cloud advisor health organization to create an architecture cloud architecture that complies with the green. Uh, I would say the data sound-bitey norms that is out there. The other element is around data to cloud. We are seeing massive migration, uh, for, uh, for a lot of the data to cloud. And there's a lot of migration hurdles that come within that. Uh, we have expanded mine app to support assessment capabilities, uh, for, uh, assessing applications, infrastructure, but also covering the entire state, including data and the code level to determine the right cloud solution. So we are, we are pushing the boundaries on what might have can do with mine. And we have created the ability to take the guesswork out of cloud, navigate the complexity. We are rolling risks costs, and we are achieving clients strategy, business objectives, while building a sustainable lots with being cloud, >>Any platform that can take some of the guesswork out of the future. I'm I'm on board with. Thank you so much, Kristin and Kishore. This has been a great conversation. Thank you, Rebecca. Thank you, Rebecca. Stay tuned for more of the cubes coverage of the Accenture executive summit. I'm Rebecca Knight. >>Yeah, Yeah.

>> Announcer: From around the globe, It's theCUBE with digital coverage of Accenture Executive Summit brought to you by Accenture. >> Welcome everyone to theCUBEs coverage of the Accenture Executive Summit part of AWS reinvent, I'm your host Rebecca Knight. Today we're welcoming back two CUBE alum, We have Kishore Durg, he is the Accenture Senior Managing Director, Cloud First Global Services Lead. Welcome back to the show Kishore. >> Thank you very much Rebecca, nice to meet again. >> Nice to meet you again, and Tristan Morel L'Horset, he is the Managing Director Accenture Cloud First North American Crows, welcome back to you Tristan. >> Great to be back and great to see you again, Rebecca. >> Exactly, even in this virtual format, it is good to see your faces. Today we're going to be talking about myNav and Green Cloud Advisor Capability. Kishore I want to start with you. So myNav is a platform that is really celebrating its first year in existence, November, 2019 is when Accenture introduced it, but it has new relevance in light of this global pandemic that we are all enduring and suffering through. Tell us a little bit about the myNav platform, what it is? >> Sure, Rebecca, we lost it and now what, 2019 and its a does that cloud platform to help our clients navigate the complexity of cloud and cloud decisions and to make it faster and obviously innovating the cloud. With the increased relevance and all the especially over the last few months with the impact of COVID crisis and exhibition of digital transformation, we are seeing the transformation or the acceleration to cloud much faster. This platform that we're talking about has enabled 140 clients globally across different industries to identify the right cloud solution, navigate the complexity, provide a cloud specific solution, simulate what our clients to meet the strategy business needs, and the plant are loving it. >> I want to go to you now Tristan, tell us a little bit about how myNav works and how it helps companies make good cloud choices. >> Yeah, so Rebecca, we've talked about cloud is more than just infrastructure and that's what myNav tries to solve for it. It really looks at a variety of variables, including infrastructure, operating model and fundamentally what clients' business outcomes our clients are looking for, and identify as the optimal solution for what they need and we designed this to accelerate, and we mentioned the pandemic, one of the big focus now is to accelerate. And so we worked through a three-step process. The first is scanning and assessing our client's infrastructure, their data landscape, their application. Second, we use our automated artificial intelligence engine to interact with... We have a wide variety and library of collective plan expertise, and we look to recommend what is the enterprise architecture and solution. And then third, before we aligned with our clients, we look to simulate and test this scaled up model, and this simulation gives our clients a way to see what cloud is going to look like, feel like and how it's going to transform their business before they go there. >> So tell us a little bit about that in real life now as a company so many of people are working remotely having to collaborate not in real life, How is that helping them right now, Tristan? >> So the pandemic has put a tremendous strain on systems because of the demand on those systems and so we talk about resiliency, we also now need to collaborate across data across people, I think all of us are calling from a variety of different places where last year we were all at theCUBE itself, and cloud technologies such as teams, Zoom that we're leveraging now has fundamentally accelerated and clients are looking to on board this for their capabilities, they're trying to accelerate their journey, they realize that now the cloud is what is going to become important for them to differentiate once we come out of the pandemic and the ability to collaborate with their employees, their partners, and their clients through these systems is becoming a true business differentiator for our clients. >> Kishore, I want to talk with you now about myNav multiple capabilities and helping clients design and navigate their cloud journeys. Tell us a little bit about the green cloud advisor capability and its significance particularly as so many companies are thinking more deeply and thoughtfully about sustainability. >> Yes, so since the launch of myNav, we continue to enhance capabilities for our clients. One of the significant capabilities that we have enabled is the lead cloud advisor. Today Rebecca a lot of the businesses are more environmentally aware and are expanding efforts to decrease power consumption and obviously carbon emissions and run a sustainable operations across every aspect of the enterprise. As a result, you're seeing an increasing trend in adoption of energy efficient infrastructure in the global market. And one of the things that we did a lot of research we found out is that there's an ability to influence our client's carbon footprint through a better cloud solution and that's what being green cloud advisor brings to us. In terms of a lot of the client connotation that we're seeing in Europe, North America and others, lot of our clients are accelerating to a green cloud strategy to unlock greater financial, societal and environmental benefit through obviously cloud-based circular operational and sustainable products and services. That is something that we are enhancing myNav and we're having active client discussions at these point of tome. >> So Tristan, tell us a little bit about how this capability helps clients make greener decisions? >> Yeah, well, let's start about the investments from the cloud providers in renewable and sustainable energy. They have... Most of the hyperscalers today, have been investing significantly on data centers that are run on renewable energy, some incredibly creative constructs on how to do that. And sustainability is there for a key item of importance for the hyperscalers and also for our clients who now are looking for sustainable energy. And it turns out this marriage is now possible, I can we re-marry the green capabilities of the cloud providers with a sustainability agenda of our clients. And so what we look into way the myNav works is it looks at industry benchmarks and evaluates our current clients capabilities and carbon footprint leveraging their existing data centers. We then look to model from an end-to-end perspective, how their journey to the cloud leveraging sustainable and data centers with renewable energy, we look at how their solution will look like and quantify carbon tax credits improve a green index score and provide quantifiable green cloud capabilities and measurable outcomes to our clients shareholders, stakeholders, clients, and customers. And our green plot advisor's sustainability solutions already been implemented at three clients, and in many cases in two cases has helped them reduce the carbon footprint by up to 400% to migration from their existing data center to a green cloud, very, very important item. >> That is remarkable. Now tell us a little bit about the kinds of clients, is this more interesting to clients in Europe? Would you say that it's catching on in the United States? what is the breakdown that you're seeing right now? >> Sustainability has becoming such a global agenda and we're seeing our clients tie this and put this at board level agenda and requirements across the globe. Europe has specific constraints around data sovereignty, where they need their data in country, but from a green a sustainability agenda we see clients across all our markets, North America, Europe, and our growth markets adopt this and we have seen case studies in all three markets. >> Kishore, I want to bring you back into the conversation, talk a little bit about how myNav ties into Accenture's cloud first strategy, your Accenture's CEO, Julie Sweet has talked about post COVID leadership requiring every business to become a cloud first business. Tell us a little bit about how this ethos is in Accenture and how you're sort of looking outward with it too? >> So Rebecca myNav is the launch pad to a cloud first transformation for our clients. Accenture, CEO Julie Sweet shared the Accenture cloud first and our substantial investment demonstrate our commitment and is delivering data value for our clients when they need it the most. And with the digital transformation requiring cloud at scale we're seeing that in the post COVID leadership it requires that every business should become a cloud business, and myNav helps them get there by evaluating the cloud landscape, navigating the complexity, modeling architecting and simulating an optimal cloud solution for our clients and as Tristan was sharing a greener cloud. >> So Tristan talk a little bit more about some of the real life use cases in terms of what are clients seeing? What are the results that they're having? >> Yes, thank you Rebecca. I would say two key things around myNav. the first is the iterative process, clients don't want to wait until they get started, they want to get started and see what their journey is going to look like. And the second is fundamental acceleration, the pandemic as we talked about has accelerated the need to move to cloud very quickly and myNav is there to do that. So how do we do that? First is generating the business cases. Clients need to know in many cases that they have a business case, and by business case we talk about the financial benefits as well as the business outcomes, the green cloud of impact sustainability on the impact. With myNav we can build initial recommendations using a basic understanding of their environment and benchmarks in weeks versus months with indicative value savings and the millions of dollars arranges. So for example very recently we worked with a global oil and gas company, and in only two weeks, we're able to provide an indicative savings worth $27 million over five years. This enabled the client to get started, knowing that there is a business case benefit and then iterate on it. And this iteration is, I would say the second point that is particularly important with myNav that we've seen in Bangalore clients, which is any journey starts with an understanding of what is the application landscape and what are we trying to do with those. These initial assessments that used to take six to eight weeks are now taking anywhere from two to four weeks. So we're seeing a 40 to 50% reduction in the initial assessment, which gets clients started in their journey. And then finally we've had discussions with all of the hyperscalers to help partner with Accenture and leverage myNav to prepared their detailed business case module as they're going to clients and as they're accelerating the client's journey. So real results, real acceleration and is there a journey? Do I have a business case? And furthermore accelerating the journey once we are by giving the ability to work in an iterative approach. >> I mean, it sounds as though the company that clients and employees are sort of saying, this is an amazing time savings look at what I can do here in a condensed amount of time, but in terms of getting everyone on board, one of the things we talked about last time we met Tristan was just how much... One of the obstacles is getting people to sign on and the new technologies and new platforms, those are often the obstacles and struggles that companies face. Have you found that at all? Or what is sort of the feedback that you're getting from employees? >> Yes, clearly there are always obstacles to a cloud journey. If there were an obstacles all our clients would be already fully in the cloud. Well, myNav gives the ability is to navigate through those to start quickly, and then as we identify obstacles we can simulate what things are going to look like, we can continue with certain parts of the journey while we deal with that obstacle, and it's a fundamental accelerator, whereas in the past one obstacle would prevent a client from starting, we can now start to address the obstacles one at a time while continuing and accelerating the client journey, that is the fundamental difference. >> Kishore, I want to give you the final word here, tell us a little bit about what is next for Accenture myNav and what we'll be discussing next year at the Accenture Executive Summit >> Sort of echo, we are continuously evolving with our client needs and reinventing for the future. For myNav SaaS green cloud advisor our plan is to help our clients reduce carbon footprint and again migrate to our greener cloud. And additionally, we're looking at two capabilities which includes sovereign cloud advisor with clients especially in Europe and others are under pressure to meet stringent data norms that Kristan was talking about, and the sovereignty advisor health organization to create an cloud architecture that complies with the green, I would say the data sovereignty norms that is out there. The other element is around data to cloud, we are seeing massive migration for a lot of the data to cloud, and there's a lot of migration hurdles that come within that, we have expanded myNav to support assessment capabilities for assessing applications, infrastructure, but also covering the entire estate, including data and the code level to determine the right cloud solution. So we are pushing the boundaries on what myNav can do, with myNav we have created the ability to take the guesswork out of cloud, navigate the complexity, we are lowering risks costs, and we are achieving client's strategic business objectives while building a sustainable lots with green cloud. >> Any platform that can take some of the guesswork out of the future I'm on board with. Thank you so much, Kristan and Kishore, this has been a great conference. >> Thank you Rebecca. >> Thank you Rebecca. >> Stay tuned for more of theCUBEs coverage of the Accenture Executive Summit, I'm Rebecca ca Knight. (upbeat music)

>> Narrator: From around the Globe, it's theCUBE, with digital coverage of Dell Technologies World, Digital experience, brought to you by Dell Technologies. >> Welcome to theCUBE's coverage of Dell Technologies World 2020, the Digital Experience. I am Lisa Martin and I got two returning guests from Dell Technologies joining me back on theCUBE today, we've got Doug Schmidtt, President of Dell Technology Services. Doug, welcome back to the virtual CUBE. >> Well, thank you Lisa. Thank you for having Alex and I back again. >> And Alex is here, Alex Barretto, SPP of Planning and Technology for Dell Technologies. Alex, welcome back. >> Thanks Lisa, happy to be here. >> So guys a lot has happened since we last got to sit together about 18 months ago and Dell Technologies World 2019, I think back. >> Thanks you. >> Right, you could think back pre pandemic, when we could actually be not socially distant. Talk to us Doug about what's going on with Dell Technology Services. You gave us a great update then, what's going on now and now you guys have 60,000 services and IT. Folks you're delivering services in 170 countries. Give us an update. >> Well, yeah, so look, it's really about Dell Technology Services enabling our customers to effectively adopt and leverage and sustain their IT investment. It's bottom line, helping our customers get the most out of what they're looking for out of their IT solutions, and making sure we deliver that for them. And as you stated, the size of the organization, I had the privilege of leading that team of 60,000 direct and partners in 170 countries. We provide that service and over 55 languages and really we cover services from the edge to the core. So everything in between, and it's an end to end service, meaning we can help with consulting a deployment managed services, education services, right down to the support side of it. And that really gives us a lot of flexibility to help our customers deliver what they need. And it's really about helping them navigate the digital journey, right? It really is helping them pivot to the new business model we're seeing out there. Especially today, considering as we said last time we were sitting down together. Now we're doing this virtually, everyone's going through this transformation in addition to moving more to the edge and hybrid cloud. So it's as important as ever for services to be there for our customers. And that's what we're doing every single day. >> And we'll unpack a bit more, some of the things that you've been doing since 2020 has started and made all these changes. But Alex, let's go to you for a little bit, services strategy, services technology, what's going on there? >> Yeah, so really responsible for both those areas, right strategy and technology on the strategy side, really believe we're differentiated across three batters, you think about our physical footprint, right? Quite massive, we operate in quite a few countries, as you pointed out. And if you look at a portfolio graph, we have everything from consumer all the way to the large enterprise. So big scale from a portfolio perspective. And then if you look from our digital reach, we have massive digital reach, which is really quite unmatched. And actually, that's where the technology piece really comes to shine. If you think about it? We have 200 million assets in the field today, those assets are generating 22 terabytes of data per day. That's a massive settlement not being able to use our AI engines to generate valuable customer insight. (clears throat) Last year alone, we are able to predict 3.7 million issues before they occurred, and then take proactive action on those issues. And that's just one example. But we're really investing in our software engineering capabilities, building tools that enable our customers to drive their own actual digital transformation. And as Doug alluded to, we do this across the entire services lifecycle. So everything from consulting, to deployment, to support, to manage services. >> Excellent, thanks for that, Alex. So Doug now let's kind of dig into what's been going on in the year of 2020, the year of what's next, a lot of changes and big challenges for customers in every industry, seven months ago, trying to figure out how do we survive in this mode, the massive shift to work from home to remote devices everywhere. Talk to us about how Dell Technologies has responded and helped your customers to survive and get to that thrive state in this crazy time. >> Yeah, well no, you're right. And it was something that happened very, very quickly, obviously to all of us globally. And these events in 2020, really brought us even closer to our customers, we've always listened very closely made sure we were in tune with that. Obviously, when all of this hit, we were there for them and we had to rapidly challenge and change how we delivered our service in this dynamic environment. We were able to do that we have an incredible team that obviously went to in full work remote, you could imagine that with 60,000 folks changing our service offering, so where we may have gone on site for a customer, we then set up a depot. So that we're able to do that safely. We were able to get our PPE equipment out to the field service agents that needed to be in a data center and make sure we were following all the protocols. We leverage our five Integrated Global Command Centers, these are strategic Hubs, we have around the world to really monitor and help and track all of this. So we were able to do that that was that had been digitized years before, so we were able to do all that safely. Really, this was about going in then and helping our customers mitigate the impacts that they may have had help them through that, whether it was through deployments being virtual, getting in the systems that they needed, and just helping them through their critical environments and changes. >> What are some of the things that you're hearing from customers? Because we talked about this massive pivot for everyone, and the breadth of services that you cover from consulting to managed services to education. What were some of the things that were really the highest need that you saw from customers, especially when this first happened? >> Well, when it first happened, it was clearly the working remote, right, and helping everybody do that and doing it virtually making sure that like I talked about making sure they had the systems, making sure connection for okay, did the centers were able to handle all of that, and doing all that in a fashion in a safe way for our team members and our customers, team members, that was first and foremost priority with the safety of everyone. Once we had gotten through that, I'm going to say, look no gauge exact, but I would say starting beginning of summer, maybe May, what we started seeing that is the people really actually pivoting even more into their transformations that they were doing, their digital transformations our customers were, and they were really looking for strategic guidance in on their planning. And so we set up where our consultants were delivering half day accelerator workshops virtually to help them solve their IT challenges that they may have had. We also help them understand what we added in the space of unified workspace as a complete solution that helps them deploy support, manage all of their end user devices, so that they can achieve full productivity in this new environment. And they were asking for IT to be simple. How do we simplify a lot of this? And how do they simplify that via our managed service capabilities. And so we are working through that, again, setting up these virtual workshops, and having them understand what those capabilities were and how we can help them through that. And then look, they were also as you know, financing? Financing options? How can we do this type of service, all these different methods that we were helping with as well. It was really a great in the sense of us stepping up to help our customers and we were there for them. >> And we talked about the digital transformation, guys last year at Dell Technologies world that Dell Technologies was undergoing. Alex, talk to us about, what is going on with that digital transformation that Dell has undergone and how technology services or rather services technology is helping to play a role in that especially the last six, seven months. >> Yeah, it's amazing to your question, we actually do digital transformation every day for our customers. But as you pointed out, we're actually undergoing our own digital transformation. And that's actually quite interesting to see compare and contrast with everything that's happening with our customers. And we're able to actually take some of the insights that we learn in house and expose that to customers. So we actually, if you look at services, we invested quite heavily on software engineering, the number of software engineers that we've had now inside the services business units and all time high. If you look at the number of data scientists and PhDs that we have brought in, again, all time high, it really focused on developing AI engines that we use both internally and externally, driving digital transformation. A couple examples of that, if you look at something called PCI, which is a stands for Proactive Case Intelligence, it actually looks at the entire services journey that a customer has, and we're able to detect and put information in front of agents at the right time, the right information then actually enables them to deliver a better customer experience. We've actually seen through the implementation of PCI, a 10% reduction in the time that we spent engaging with customers and at the same time and improvement in seaside to the tune of approximately 130 basis points. So we're off a productivity improvement which helps us internally as well as obviously benefit for the customers. Another thing we're doing is actually digitizing our entire services processes. That means everything from consulting to the point of support. So we have a digital variant of what processes should look like. And then real time, we're able to actually measure active processes versus what they should be, and when we detect anomalies, we're able to correct those in real time, that again, gives us efficiencies internally, but more importantly, enables us to deliver a better customer experience. >> And that customer experience is critical, not just for Dell Technologies to deliver to its customers, but for your customers to deliver to their customers. You talked about improving the customer experience and some of the impact there, Alex, you think about the last in the year of 2020, how we suddenly went from this expectation that we can order anything on Amazon, and it shows up tomorrow to having things be delayed that we were not anticipating, talk to me about the transformation you guys are on, and we've heard a lot of Dell folks talk about the acceleration in the digital transformation that your customers are undergoing, that if you can walk us through from a strategic vision perspective, you've got the digitization going to the services, we know that a good amount of remote workforce will stay that way, for quite some time, but give us a vision into the year 2021. >> Yeah, let's talk about the future, because to your point look we have AI today, and we plan to continue augmenting and investing in AI, we're going to continue developing software applications to have our customers to drive the transformation. But if you look forward to exciting areas, and let me name three specifically, there are very interesting. The first is as a service, we're actually take in our complete services portfolio and transitioning all of it to be available as a service. That's what customers are looking for a very simple way to consume buy and consume our set of services, and we're doing that transformation and taking everything in transition to be available as a service. Second 5G, and Telco the Telco Transformation is that's going to occur as part of 5G, we're fully embracing that, so that we can have and deliver the set of services in a differentiated way leveraging the power of 5G, and you see that come about when you fast forward 2021, 2020. And then we have cloud services, also something we're very, very interested excited about. So we obviously have our hybrid cloud solution, Doug alluded to this. But on top of that hundred color solutions, we're developing and building a set of cloud services, that's going to enable our customers to be able to consumer solutions in a very simple and easy way, and get the value out that they're looking for again, >> And Doug wrap us up here with the vision overall, from Dell Technologies services, the demand coming in from customers globally, all of the changing demands and this uncertainty in which we're living in what does the future the next year so look like from Dell Technologies services level? >> Well yeah, as we've talked about, like the demand for exceptional customer, and employee experiences through all this is really driving these business model disruptions across the board. And look, we understand customers need to thrive during all this. And it's rapidly evolving and changing. So we're building our portfolio, quickly to stay ahead of that being able to listen to customers and build those services out. So we're doing that. As we mentioned earlier, both Alex and I, we've talked about the disruption we're seeing with 5G, the edge, cloud as a service. And this is driving a massive change in the industry, right. And therefore you have all the services to help our customers manage through that. And it's really about this convergence, we're seeing of capabilities that we provide, the lines between like I call these traditional silos inside support, consulting, managed services, all of that being blurred. Our customers are really looking for an outcome, they're looking for flexibility and some for things to be simple. We're helping them achieve that. And like I talked about earlier, they our customers want outcomes. And they really want to select Dell, for the comprehensive portfolio that we have. That could be everything from PC as a service, storage as a service, right into hybrid cloud. So, look moving forward, we work very closely, obviously integrated with our product teams hand in hand, we see that blurring as well. The product is a service the service is a product. We think Dell Technologies is in an ideal position to pull all this together and we have a clear vision with a world-class team will really help our customers to their transformation and deliver the outcomes they're looking for. >> It's definitely customer influence customer driven the future of Dell Technologies service. One last question done for you, this year's Dell Technologies world not going to be able to get those 14,000 or so folks together, what are some of the things, education wise that folks can learn about the different types of services? which you're offering now, some of the things that have changed since they last engaged with you? >> Well, yeah, actually, that's being discussed as you mentioned, throughout the Dell Technologies World, so it's ingrained, obviously, into our product announcements solution announcements that we're doing as a team. We obviously have everything online and links so that folks can learn more and more customers can learn more about these great solutions and the services we offer, and of course, through there, you can always click to link back to myself and the team and we're more than willing to help anybody at any time. If they have questions or further things they want to learn. >> Terrific, Doug, Alex, thank you so much. It's nice to see you again. I'll be it virtually. Maybe someday soon we'll get to be sitting down on a CUBE desk together again I hope. >> Look forward to eat. >> Thank you. Thank you for Doug Schmidtt and Alex Barretto. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE's coverage of Dell Technologies World, the virtual edition. Thanks for watching. (soft music)

>>from the Cube Studios in Palo Alto and Boston connecting with thought leaders all around the world. This is a cube conversation. >>Welcome back to the Cube's coverage of AWS Public Sector Partner Awards program. I'm John Furrow, your host of the Cube here in Palo Alto, California In the remote interviews during this pandemic, we have our remote crews and getting all the stories and celebrating the award winners. And here to feature the most innovative connect deployment. We have a center of Canada and the Department of Employment and Social Development of Canada, known as E S D. C guys. Congratulations, Joel. More Children Censure Canada Managing director and Ben while long sdc of Canada Chief Transformation officer. Gentlemen, thanks for coming on. And congratulations on the award. >>Thank you. >>Thank you. >>So, Ashley, during this pandemic, a lot of disruption and a lot of business still needs to go on, including government services. But the citizens and people need to still do their thing. Business got to run, and you got to get things going. But the disruptions caused a little bit of how the user experiences are. So this connect has been interesting. It's been a featured part of where you've been hearing at the Public Sector summit with Theresa Carlson. You guys, this is a key product. Tell us about the award. What is the solution? That disturbing of deserving reward? >>Maybe I'll get I'll go first and then pass it over to Benoit. But I think the solution is Amazon Connect based Virtual Contact Center that we stood up fairly quickly over the course of about four days and really in support of of benefit that the government of Canada was was releasing as part of its economic response to the pandemic. And in the end that, you know, it's a fully functioning featured contact center solution includes an I V r. And, uh, you know, we stood it up for about 1500 to 2000 agents so that that's the crux of the solution. And maybe Benoit can give a bit of insight as to to how it came about so quickly. >>Yeah, happy to actually wear obviously, like every other government, facing enormous pressures at that time to deliver benefits directly to people who were in true need, the jobs are being lost. Our current systems were in trouble because of their age and barricade cake nature. And so the challenge is was quickly how to actually support a lot of people really fast. And so it came through immediately that after our initial payments were made under what was called Canada Emergency Response Benefit, then we have to support our clients directly. And so people turn to the transformation team of all teams. If you wish during a fire firestorm to say, Well, what could you do and how could you help? And so we had an established relationship with a number of other system integrators, including Accenture, and we were able to run a competition very rapidly. Accenture one. And then we deployed. And as you all said, in a matter of four days, what for us was a new, exceptional on high quality solution to a significant client problem. And I say that because I think you can imagine how people feel in the endemic of all of all things. But with the uncertainty that comes with the loss of income, loss of jobs, the question of being able to deal with somebody really a human being, as well as to be able to be efficiently answer a very simple but straightforward questions rapidly and with high quality, with pretty fundamental for us. So the people in the groups that were talking through here are talking, speaking to millions of people who were literally being asked to to accept the pavement rapidly and to be able to connect with us quickly. And without this solution, which was exceptionally well done and deployed and of high quality personally, just a technology, uh, solution. I would not have been possible to even answer any of these queries quickly. >>And while that's a great 0.1 of the things that you see with the pandemic it's a disaster in the quote disaster kind of readiness thing. Unforeseen, right? So, like other things, you can kind of plan for things that hypothetical. You've got scenarios, but this >>is >>truly a case where every day counts. Every minute counts because humans are involved is no our ROI calculation. It's not like it's not like, Well, what's the payback of our system? The old kind of way to think this is really results fast. This is what cloud is all about. This is the promise of cloud. Can I stand up something quick and you did it with a partner. Okay, this is, like, not, like, normal again. It's like it's, you know, it's like, unheard of, right? Four days with critical infrastructure, critical services that were unforeseen. Take us through what was going on in the war room, as you guys knew this was here. Take us through the through what happened. Yeah, >>So I think I can start a Z. You can imagine the set of executives that we're seeing a payment process. Uh, was an exceptional. It was like a bunker. Frankly, for about two weeks, we had to suspend the normal operations off the vast majority of our programming. We had to launch brand new payments and benefits systems and programs that nobody had seen before. The level of simplicity was maximized to delivered the funds quickly. So you could imagine it's a warpath if you wish, because the campaign is really around. A timing. Timing is fundamental. People are are literally losing their jobs. There is no support. There's no funding money for them to be able to buy groceries. So on the trust that people have in the government, Ai's pretty much at risk right there and then in a very straightforward but extraordinarily powerful magic moment. If you wish. If you can deliver a solution, then you make a difference for a long time. And so the speed unheard off on old friends when he came to the call center capability and the ability for us to support and service context the clients that were desperate to reach us on. We're talking hundreds of thousands of calls, right? We're not talking a few 1000 year. Ultimately, at some point we were literally getting in our over over, taken by volumes, call centers. But we had a regular one still operating over a 1,000,000 calls for coming in today with the capacity to answer, um, you know, tens of thousands. And so the reality is that the counselor that we put up here very quickly became capable of answering more calls than our regular costumes. And that speaks to the speed of delivery, the quality of the solution, of course, but the scalability of it and I have to say, maybe unheard of, it may be difficult to replicate. The conditions to lead to this are rare, but I have to say that my bosses and most of the government is probably now wondering why we can't do this more often, like we can't operate with that kind of speed and agility. So I think what you've got is a client in our case, under extreme circumstances. Now, realizing the new normal will never be the same, that these types of solutions and technology. And then there's scalability. There's agility there, the speed of deployment. It's frankly, something we want. We want all the time. Now we'd like to be able to do it under your whole timeline conditions. But even those will be a fraction of what it used to take. It would have taken us well, actually, I can actually tell you because I was the lead, Ah, technologists to deploy at scale for the government. Canada all the call center capabilities under a single software as a service platform. It took us two years to design it two years to procure it and five years to install it. That's the last experience. We have a call center enterprise scale capabilities, and in this case, we went from years to literally days. >>Well, you know, it takes a crisis sometimes to kind of wire up the simplicity solution that you say. Why didn't we do this before? You know, the waterfall meetings, Getting everyone arguing gets kind of gets in the way of the old the old software model. I want to come back to the transformation been wanna minute, cause I think that's gonna be a great success story and some learnings, and I want to get your thoughts on that. But I want to go to Joel because Joel, we've talked to many Accenture executives over the years and most recently this past 24 months. And the message we've been hearing is we're going to be faster. We're not going to be seen as that. You know, a consulting firm taking our times. Try and get a pound of flesh from the client. This is an example. In my opinion of a partner working with a problem statement that kind of matches the cloud speed. So you guys have been doing this. This is not new to a censure. So take us through how you guys reacted because one you got to sync up and get the cadence of what, Ben? What I was trying to do sync up and execute. Take us through what happened on your side. >>Yeah, I mean, so it's It's Ah, it's an unprecedented way of operating for us as well, frankly, and, um and, uh and, you know, we've had to look at to get this specific solution at the door and respond to an RFP and the commercial requirements that go with that way. Had Teoh get pretty agile ourselves internally on on how we go through approvals, etcetera, to make sure that that we were there to support Ben Wan is team. And I think you know that we saw this is a broader opportunity to really respond to it, to help Canada in a time of need. So So I think we, you know, we had to streamline a lot of our internal processes that make quick decisions that normally even for our organization, would have taken, um, could it could have taken weeks, right? And we were down to hours in a lot of instances. So it helps. It forces us to react and act differently as well. But I mean, to Benoit's point, I think this is really going to to hopefully change the way it illustrates the art of the possible and hopefully will change How, How quick We can look at problems and and we reduced deployment timeframes from from years to months and months to weeks, etcetera for solutions like this. Um, and I think that the AWS platform specifically in this case but what touched on a lot of things to beat the market scale ability But just as the benefit itself was, you know has to be simplified to do this quickly. I think one of the one of the benefits of the solution itself is it's simple to use technologically. I mean, we know least retrained. As I said, I think 1600 agents on how to use the platform over the course of a weekend on and and were able, and they're not normal agents. These were people who are firm from other jobs, potentially within the government. So they're not necessarily contact center agents by training. But they became contact center agents over the course of 48 hours, and I think from that perspective, you know, that was important as well have something that people could could use. The answer those calls that we know that when you were gonna come so >>Ben what this is. This is the transformation dream scenario in the sense of capabilities. I know it's under circumstances of the pandemic, and you guys didn't solve a big, big problem really fast and saved lives and help people get on with their day. But transformations about having people closest to the problem execute and the the also the people equation people process technology, as they say, is kind of playing out in real time. This >>is >>the this is kind of the playbook, you know? Amazon came in said, Hey, you want to stand something up? You wired it together. The solution quickly. You're close to it. Looking back now, it's almost like, Hey, why aren't we doing this before? As you said and then you had to bring people in who weren't trained and stood them up and they were delivering the service. This >>is >>the playbook to share your thoughts on this, because this is what you're you're thinking about all the time and it actually playing out in real time. >>Well, I would definitely endorsed the idea that it's a playbook. It's I would say it's an ideal and dream playbook timidly showing up on the basketball court with all the best players in the entire league playing together magically, it is exactly that. So a lot of things have to happen quickly, but also, um, correctly because you know, you can't pull these things properly together without that. So I would say the partnership with the private sector here was fundamental, and I have to applaud the work that Accenture did particularly, I think, as Canadians, we're very proud of the fact that we needed to respond quickly. Everyone was in this, our neighbors, we knew people who were without support and Accenture's team, I mean, all the way up and down across the organization was fundamental and delivering this, but also literally putting themselves into, uh, these roles and to make sure that we would be able to respond quickly to do so. I think the playbook around the readiness for change I was shocked into existence every night. I won't talk about quantum physics, but clearly some some high level of energy was thrown in very quickly, mobilized everybody all at once. Nobody was said. He's sitting around saying, I wonder if we have change management covered off, you know this was changed readiness at its best. And so I think for me from a learning perspective, apart from just the technology side, which is pretty fundamental if you don't have ready enough technology to deploy quickly than the best paid plans in the world won't work. The reality is that to mobilize an organization going for it into that level of of spontaneous driving, change, exception, acceptance and adoption is really what I would aim for. And so our challenge now we'll be continuing that kind of progression going forward, and we now found the way. We certainly use the way to work with private sector in an innovative capacity in the new, innovative ways with brand new solutions that are truly agile and and and scalable to be able to pull all of the organization. All that one's very rapidly, and I have to admit that it is going to shift permanently our planning. We had 10 year plans for our big transformation, so some of our programs are the most important in the country. In many ways. We support people about eight million Canadians a month and on the benefits payments that we deliver, and they're the most marginal needed meeting and and requires our support from senior study, unemployed jobseekers and whatnot. So if you think about that group itself and to be able to support them clearly with the systems that we have is just unsustainable. But the new technologies are clearly going to show us the way that we had never for forecast. And I have to say I had to throw up, like in your plan. And now I'm working my way down from 10 denying date your plants going forward. And so it's exciting and nerve wracking sometimes, but then obviously has a change leader. Our goal is to get there as quickly as possible, so the benefit of all of these solutions could make a difference in people's lives. >>What's interesting is that you can shorten that timetable but also frees you up to be focused on what's contemporary and what's needed at the time. So leverage the people on the resource is You have and take advantage of that versus having something that you're sitting on that need to be refreshed. You can always be on that bleeding edge, and this brings up the Dev ops kind of mindset agility. The lean startup glean company. You know this is a team effort between Amazon and center and SDC. It's pass, shoot, score really fast. So this isn't the new, the new reality. Any commentary from you guys on this, you know, new pass shoot score combination. Because you got speed, you got agility. You're leaner, which makes you more flexible for being contemporary and solving problems. What's your thoughts? >>So my perspective on that is most definitely right. I think what we what we were able to show and what's. You know, what's coming out of a lot of different responses to the pandemic by government is, um, you know, perfection isn't the most important thing out of the gate. Getting something out there that's going to reassure citizens that's gonna allow them to answer their questions or access benefits quickly is what's becoming more important. Obviously, security and privacy. Those things are of the utmost importance as well. But it's ability to get stuff out there, quickly, test it, change it, tested again and and just always be iterating on the solutions. Like I can say what we put out on April 6th within four days is the backbone of what's out there still today. But we've added, you know, we added an integrated workforce management solution from Nice, and we added some other eyes views to do outbound dialing from acquisition, things like that. So the solution has grown from that M v p. And I think that's one other thing that that's going to be a big takeaways if you're not gonna do anything. So you got the final and product out there, then it's going to be here, right? So let's go quickly and let's adapt from there. >>Then we'll talk about that dynamic cause that's about building blocks, fund foundational things and then services. It's the cloud model. >>Yeah, I mean, before the pandemic, I had lunch with Mark Schwarz, which I believe you're quite familiar with, and, you know, I spent an hour and 1/2 with it. We were talking, and he was so exciting and and energized by what the technologies could do. And I was listening to him, and I used to be the chief technology officer for the government can right? And so I've seen a lot of stuff and I said, Well, that's really exciting, and I'm sure it's possible in some other places. And maybe it's some other countries where you know they didn't have infrastructure and legacy. I guess if I see him again soon, I'll have to. I apologize for not believing him enough, I think the building blocks of edge of the building, blocks of sprints and MVP's I mean they're not fundamental to the way we're gonna. So our biggest, various and scariest problems, technologically and then from a business perspective, Service candidate itself has 18,000 employees involved in multiple channels where the work has always been very lethargic, very difficult, arduous. You make change over years, not months, not days for sure. And so I think that that new method is not only a different way of working, it's a completely re HVAC way of assembly solutions, and I think the concept of engineering is probably going to be closer to what we're going to do on. And I have to borrow the Lego metaphor, but the building blocks are gonna be assembled. We now and working. I'm saying this in front of goal. He doesn't know that you should practice partners. We're gonna be assembling MPP maps of an entire long program, and it's gonna be iterative. It is gonna be designed, built. It will be agile as much as we can implement it. But more importantly, and punches weaken govern. It is, you know, the government is we may have changed. A lot of the government is not necessarily can count on to Most of these things approaches, But the reality is that that's where we're heading. And I will say, Oh, close. Perhaps on this on this answer. The biggest reason for doing that apart from we've proved it is the fact that the appetite inside the organization for that level of globalization, speed solution ing and being engaged rapidly you just can't take that away from an organization. Must be a piece of that. Uh, if you let them down, well, they'll remember. And frankly, they do remember now, cause they want more and it's gonna be hard. But it's a better heart. Ah, a better challenge that the one of having to do things over a decade, then to go fast and to kind of iterating quickly through the challenges and the issues and then move on very much to the next one as rapidly as possible. I think the other company, I would add is most of this was driven by a client need, and that's not inconsequential because it mobilized everybody to comment focused. If you have been just about, well, you know, we need to get people on side and solutions in place just to make our lives better, it providers. Yeah, it would have worked, perhaps, but it would have been different than the mobilisation It comes when the client is put in the middle, the client is the focus, and then we drive. Everyone's with that solution, >>you know, shared success and success is contagious. And when you ride the new way to oh, we need a new board, right? So once you get it, it then spreads like wildfire. This is what we've been seeing. And it also translates down to the citizens because again, being contemporary, none of us just looked could feel it's success in performance. So, as you know, people in business start to adopt cloud. It becomes a nice, nice, nice synergy. This is key. I'll take a year on a center. Um, the award winner. You guys did a great job. Final thoughts. >>Yeah. I mean, I think final thoughts would be happy to have the opportunity that help. And it was a It was a complete team effort and continues to be, um, it's not. It's not a bunch of Accenture technologists in the background in this, you know the commitment from everyone to get this in place. And can you continue to improvement from Benoit's team and from other folks across the government has been, uh, has been paramount to the success. So, um um, it's been a fantastic if world win like experience and, uh, look forward to continuing to build on it. And it has been said, I think one thing this is done is it's created demand for speed on some of these larger transformations. So I'm looking forward to continuing to innovate with with Ben wanting. >>Well, congratulations. The most innovative connect deployment. And because you guys from Canada, I have to use the hockey reference. You get multiple people working together in a cohesive manner. It's pass, shoot, score every time. And you know it's contagious. Thank you very much for your time. And congratulations for winning the >>West. Thanks. Thank you. Okay, this is the >>Cube's coverage of AWS Public Sector Partner Award show. I'm John Furrier, host of the Cube. Thanks for watching. Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah.

>>from the Cube Studios in Palo Alto and Boston connecting with thought leaders all around the world. This is a cube conversation. >>Welcome back to the Cube's coverage of AWS Public Sector Partner Awards program. I'm John Furrow, your host of the Cube here in Palo Alto, California In the remote interviews during this pandemic, we have our remote crews and getting all the stories and celebrating the award winners. And here to feature the most innovative connect deployment. We have a center of Canada and the Department of Employment and Social Development of Canada, known as E S D. C guys. Congratulations, Joel. More Children Censure Canada Managing director and Ben while long sdc of Canada Chief Transformation officer. Gentlemen, thanks for coming on. And congratulations on the award. >>Thank you. >>Thank you. >>So, Ashley, during this pandemic, a lot of disruption and a lot of business still needs to go on, including government services. But the citizens and people need to still do their thing. Business got to run, and you got to get things going. But the disruptions caused a little bit of how the user experiences are. So this connect has been interesting. It's been a featured part of what we've been hearing at the public sector summit with Theresa Carlson. You guys, this is a key product. Tell us about the award. What is the solution? That disturbing of deserving reward? >>Maybe I'll get I'll go first and then pass it over to Benoit. But I think the solution is Amazon. Connect a spiritual contact center that we stood up fairly quickly over the course of about four days and really in support of of benefit that the government of Canada was was releasing as part of its economic response to the pandemic. And in the end that, you know, it's a fully functioning featured contact center solution includes an ai VR and, uh, you know, we stood it up for 1500 to 2000 agents so that that's the crux of the solution. And maybe Benoit can give a bit of insight as to to how it came about so quickly. >>Yeah, I'd be happy to actually wear obviously, like every other government, facing enormous pressures at that time to deliver benefits directly to people who were in true need, the jobs are being lost. Our current systems were in trouble because of their age in the arcade cake Nature. And so the challenge is was quickly how to actually support a lot of people really fast. And so it came through immediately that after our initial payments were made under what was called Canada Emergency Response Benefit, then we have to support our clients directly. And so people turn to the transformation team of all teams. If you wish during a fire firestorm to say, Well, what could you do and how could you help? And so we had an established relationship with a number of other system integrators, including Accenture, and we were able to run a competition very rapidly. Accenture one. And then we deployed in, as you all said, in a matter of four days, what for us was a new, exceptional on high quality solution to a significant client problem. And I say that because I think you can imagine how people feel in that endemic of all of all things. But with the uncertainty that comes with the loss of income, loss of jobs, the question of being able to deal with somebody really a human being, as well as to be able to be efficiently answer a very simple but straightforward questions rapidly and with high quality, with pretty fundamental for us. So the people in the groups that were talking through here are talking, speaking to millions of people who were literally being asked to to accept the pavement rapidly and to be able to connect with us quickly. And without this solution, which was exceptionally well done and deployed and of high quality personally, just a technology, uh, solution. I would not have been possible to even answer any of these queries quickly. >>And while that's a great 0.1 of the things that you see with the pandemic it's a disaster in the quote disaster kind of readiness thing. Unforeseen, right? So, like other things, you can kind of plan for things that hypothetical. You've got scenarios, but this >>is >>truly a case where every day counts. Every minute counts because humans are involved is no our ROI calculation. It's not like it's not like, Well, what's the payback of our system? The old kind of way to think this is really results fast. This is what cloud is all about. This is the promise of cloud. Can I stand up something quick and you did it with a partner. Okay, this is, like, not, like, normal again. It's like it's, you know, it's like, unheard of right? Four days with critical infrastructure, critical services that were unforeseen. Take us through what was going on in the war room, as you guys knew this was here. Take us through the through what happened. Yeah, >>So I think I can start a Z. You can imagine the set of executives that we're seeing a payment process. Uh, was an exceptional. It was like a bunker. Frankly, for about two weeks, we had to suspend the normal operations off the vast majority of our programming. We had to launch brand new payments and benefits systems and programs that nobody had seen before. The level of simplicity was maximized to delivered the funds quickly. So you could imagine it's a warpath if you wish, because the campaign is really around. A timing. Timing is fundamental. People are are literally losing their jobs. There is no support. There's no funding money for them to be able to buy groceries. So on the trust that people have in the government, Ai's pretty much at risk right there and then, in a very straightforward but extraordinarily powerful magic moment. If you wish. If you can deliver a solution, then you make a difference for a long time. And so the speed unheard off on old friends when he came to the call center capability and the ability for us to support and service context the clients that were desperate to reach us on. We're talking hundreds of thousands of calls, right? We're not talking a few 1000 year. Ultimately, at some point we were literally getting in our over over, taken by volumes, call centers, but we had a regular one still operating over a 1,000,000 calls for coming in today. Uh, with the capacity to answer, um, you know, tens of thousands. And so the reality is that the counselor that we put up here very quickly became capable of answering more calls than our regular costumes. And that speaks to the speed of delivery, the quality of the solution, of course, but the scalability of it and I have to say, maybe unheard of, it may be difficult to replicate. The conditions to lead to this are rare, but I have to say that my bosses and most of the government is probably now wondering why we can't do this more often like we can't operate with that kind of speed and agility. So I think what you've got is a client in our case, under extreme circumstances. Now, realizing the new normal will never be the same, that these types of solutions and technology. And then there's scalability. There's agility there, the speed of deployment. It's frankly, something we want. We want all the time. Now we'd like to be able to do it under your whole timeline conditions. But even those will be a fraction of what it used to take. It would have taken us well, actually, I can actually tell you because I was the lead. Ah, technologist, to deploy at scale for the government, Canada, all the call center capabilities under a single software as a service platform. It took us two years to design it. Two years to procure it and five years to install it. That's the last experience. We have a call center enterprise scale capabilities, and in this case, we went from years to literally days. >>Well, you know, it takes a crisis sometimes to kind of wire up the simplicity solution that you say. Why didn't we do this before? You know the waterfall meetings, Getting everyone arguing gets kind of gets in the way of the old, the old software model. I want to come back to the transformation been wanna minute, cause I think that's going to be a great success story and some learnings, and I want to get your thoughts on that. But I want to go to Joel because Joel we've talked to many Accenture executives over the years and most recently this past 24 months, And the message we've been hearing is we're going to be faster. We're not going to be seen as that. You know, a consulting firm taking our times. Try and get a pound of flesh from the client. This is an example, in my opinion of a partner working with the problem statement that kind of matches the cloud speed. So you guys have been doing this. This is not new to a censure. So take us through how you guys reacted because one you got to sync up and get the cadence of what? Ben? What I was trying to do, sync up and execute. Take us through what happened on your side. >>Yeah. I mean, so it's It's Ah, It's an unprecedented way of operating for us as well, frankly, and, um and, uh and, you know, we've had to look at to get this specific solution at the door and respond to an RFP and the commercial requirements that go with that way. Had Teoh get pretty agile ourselves internally on on how we go through approvals, etcetera, to make sure that that we were there to support Ben Wan is team. And I think you know that we saw this is a broader opportunity to really respond to it, to help Canada in a time of need. So So I think we, you know, we had to streamline a lot of our internal processes and make quick decisions that normally, even for our organization, would have taken, um, could it could have taken weeks, right? And we were down to hours in a lot of instances. So it helps. It forces us to react and act differently as well. But I mean, to Benoit's point, I think this is really going to to hopefully change the way it illustrates the art of the possible and hopefully will change how, How quickly we can look at problems and and we reduce deployment timeframes from from years to months and months to weeks, etcetera for solutions like this. Um, and I think that the AWS platform specifically in this case but what touched on a lot of things to beat the market scale ability But just as the benefit itself was, you know has to be simplified to do this quickly. I think one of the one of the benefits of the solution itself is it's simple to use technologically. I mean, we know least retrained. As I said, I think 1600 agents on how to use the platform over the course of a weekend on and and were able, and they're not normal agents. These were people who are firm from other jobs, potentially within the government. So they're not necessarily contact center agents by training. But they became contact center agents over the course of 48 hours that I think from that perspective, you know, that was important as well have something that people could could use. The answer those calls that you know that when you're gonna come So, >>Ben, what this is This is the transformation dream scenario in the sense of capabilities. I know it's under circumstances of the pandemic, and you guys didn't solve a big, big problem really fast and saved lives and help people get on with their day. But transformations about having people closest to the problem execute and the the also the people equation. People process technology, as they say, is kind of playing out in real time. This >>is >>the this is kind of the playbook, you know, Amazon came in said, Hey, you want to stand something up? You wired it together. The solution quickly. You're close to it. Looking back now, it's almost like, Hey, why aren't we doing this before? As you said and then you had to bring people in who weren't trained and stood them up and they were delivering the service. This >>is >>the playbook to share your thoughts on this, because this is what you're you're thinking about all the time and it actually playing out in real time. >>Well, I would definitely endorsed the idea that it's a playbook. It's I would say it's an ideal and dream playbook to build like showing up on the basketball court with all the best players in the entire league playing together magically, it is exactly that. So a lot of things have to happen quickly, but also correctly because you know you can't pull these things properly together without that. So I would say the partnership with the private sector here was fundamental. And I have to applaud the work that Accenture did particularly, I think, as Canadians, we're very proud of the fact that we needed to respond quickly. Everyone was in this, our neighbors, we knew people who were without support and Accenture's team, I mean all the way up and down across the organization was fundamental in and delivering this, but also literally putting themselves into, uh, these roles and to make sure that we would be able to respond quickly, do so. I think the playbook around the readiness for change. I was shocked into existence every night. I won't talk about quantum physics, but clearly some some high level of energy was thrown in very quickly, mobilized everybody all at once. Nobody was said. He's sitting around saying, I wonder if we have change management covered off, you know this was changed readiness at its best. And so I think for me from a learning perspective, apart from just the technology side, which is pretty fundamental if you don't have ready enough technology to deploy quickly than the best plans in the world won't work. The reality is that to mobilize an organization going forward into that level of of spontaneous driving, change, exception, acceptance and adoption is really what I would ain't for. And so our challenge Now we'll be continuing that kind of progression going forward, and we now found a way. And we certainly use the way to work with private sector in an innovative capacity and in innovative ways with brand new solutions that are truly agile and and scalable to be able to pull all of the organization. All that one's very rapidly, and I have to admit that it is going to shift permanently our planning. We had 10 year plans for our big transformation, so some of our programs are the most important in the country. In many ways. We support people about eight million Canadians a month and on the benefits payments that we deliver, and they're the most marginal needed meeting and and requires our support from senior studio, unemployed jobseekers and whatnot. So if you think about that group itself and to be able to support them clearly with their systems that we have is just unsustainable. But the new technologies are clearly going to show us the way that we had never for forecast. And I have to say I had to throw up, like in your plan. And now I'm working my way down from 10 denying date your plants going forward. And so it's exciting and nerve wracking sometimes. But then, obviously, as a change leader, our goal is to get there as quickly as possible, so the benefit of all of these solutions could make a difference in people's lives. >>What's interesting is that you can shorten that timetable but also frees you up to be focused on what's contemporary and what's needed at the time. So leverage the people on the resource is You have and take advantage of that versus having something that you're sitting on that need to be refreshed. You can always be on that bleeding edge, and this brings up the Dev ops kind of mindset agility. The lean startup glean company. You know this is a team effort between Amazon and center and SDC. It's pass, shoot, score really fast. So this isn't the new, the new reality. Any commentary from you guys on this, you know, new pass shoot score combination. Because you got speed, you got agility. You're leaner, which makes you more flexible for being contemporary and solving problems. What's your thoughts? >>Yeah, So my perspective on that is most definitely right. I think what we what we were able to show and what's. You know, what's coming out of a lot of different responses to the pandemic by government is, um, you know, perfection isn't the most important thing out of the gate. Getting something out there that's going to reassure citizens that's going to allow them to answer their questions or access benefits quickly is what's becoming more important. Obviously, security and privacy. Those things are of the utmost importance as well. But it's ability to get stuff in there, quickly, test it, change it tested again and just always be iterating on the solutions. Like I can say what we put out on April 6th within four days is the backbone of what's out there still today. But we've added, you know, we added an integrated workforce management solution from Nice, and we added some other eyes views to do outbound dialing from acquisition, things like that. So the solution has grown from that M v p. And I think that's one other thing that that's going to be a big takeaways if you're not gonna do anything. So you got the final and product out there, then it's going to be here, right? So let's go quickly and let's adapt from there. >>Then we'll talk about that dynamic cause that's about building blocks, fund foundational things and then services. It's the cloud model. >>Yeah, I mean, before the pandemic, I had lunch with Mark Schwarz, which I believe you're quite familiar with, and, you know, I spent an hour and 1/2 with it. We were talking, and he was so exciting and and energized by what the technologies could do. And I was listening to him, and I used to be the chief technology officer for the government. Can't right. And so I've seen a lot of stuff and I said, Well, that's really exciting, and I'm sure it's possible in some other places. And maybe it's some other countries where you know they didn't have infrastructure and legacy. I guess if I see him again soon, I'll have to. I apologize for not believing him enough, I think the building blocks of agile, the building blocks of sprints and MVP's I mean, they're not fundamental to the way we're going to solve our biggest various and scariest problems technologically and then from a business perspective. Service candidate itself has 18,000 employees involved in multiple channels, where the work has always been very lethargic, very difficult, arduous. You make change over years, not months, not days for sure. And so I think that that new method is not only a different way of working, it's a completely revamped way of assembly solutions, and I think the concept of engineering is probably going to be closer to what we're going to do. Um, and I have to borrow the Lego metaphor, but the building blocks are gonna be assembled. We now and working. I'm saying this in front of goal. He doesn't know that you should practice partners. We're gonna be assembling MPP maps of an entire long program, and it's gonna be iterative. It is gonna be designed, built. It will be agile as much as we can implement it. But more importantly, and punches weaken govern. It is, you know, the government is we may have changed. A lot of the government is not necessarily can count on to Most of these things approaches. But the reality is that that's where we're headed. And I will say, Oh, close. Perhaps on this on this answer. The biggest reason for doing that apart from we've proved it is the fact that the appetite inside the organization for that level of globalization, speed solution ing and being engaged rapidly you just can't take that away from an organization. Must be a piece of that. Uh, if you let them down, well, they don't remember. And frankly, they do remember now, cause they want more and it's gonna be hard. But it's a better heart. Ah, a better challenge that the one of having to do things over a decade, then to go fast and to kind of iterating quickly through the challenges and the issues and then move on very much to the next one as rapidly as possible. I think The other company, I would add, is most of this was driven by a client need, and that's not inconsequential because it mobilized everybody to comment focused. It could have been just about well, you know, we need to get people on side and solutions in place just to make our lives better. It is his providers. Yeah, it would have worked, perhaps, but it would have been different than the mobilisation It comes when the client is put in the middle. The client is the focus. And then we drive. Everyone's with that, >>you know, shared success and and successes contagious. And when you ride the new way to oh, we need a new board, right? So once you get it, it then spreads like wildfire. This is what we've been seeing. And it also translates down to the citizens because again, being contemporary numbers just look and feel. It's success in performance. So, as you know, people in business start to adopt cloud. It becomes a nice, nice, nice synergy. This is key. I'll take a year on a center. Um, the award winner. You guys did a great job. Final thoughts. >>Yeah. I mean, I think final thoughts would be happy to have the opportunity that help. And it was a It was a complete team effort and continues to be, um, it's not. It's not a bunch of Accenture technologists in the background in this, you know the commitment from everyone to get this in place. And can you continue to improvement from Benoit's team and from other folks across the government has been has been paramount to the success. So, um um, it's been a fantastic world win like experience and, uh, look forward to continuing to build on it. And it has been said, I think one thing this is done is it's created demand for speed on some of these larger transformations. So I'm looking forward to continuing to innovate with with Ben wanting. >>Well, congratulations. The most innovative connect deployment. And because you guys from Canada, I have to use the hockey reference. You get multiple people working together in a cohesive manner. It's pass, shoot, score every time. And you know it's contagious. Thank you very much for your time. And congratulations for winning the West. Thanks. Okay, this is the Cube's coverage of AWS Public Sector Partner Award show. I'm John Furrier, host of the Cube. Thanks for watching. Yeah, Yeah, >>yeah, yeah, yeah