>> from Bahrain. It's the Q covering AWS Public sector Bahrain brought to you by Amazon Web service is >> Welcome back. It runs the cube coverage for Amazon whips were summoned by rain and Middle East jump for cloud computing. Our startup panel at two great guests. So, Abdullah, who's with Flat Labs? Flat? Six Labs Incubator Investor. Same dull bet with sink. Sorry. So sorry They got that wrong with little glare on my spring there. Thanks for coming on. Appreciate it. Guys, start up. Scene here is robust. Last year from this year, More energy, more deployed capital because you're deploying capital. You're building a company. Give us the update start. >> Yeah, I would say over the past year, just our Bahrain location alone. We've already hit 23 startups that we've invested in, and we're looking to increase that number by about 68 start ups every six months. Um, as you've seen over the past year and Amina region and the GCC, there's rapid growth in the startup scene. Um and we're slowly starting to see each vertical fill up with the relevant startups and get more saturated. I think for a while we were one of the regions that were a lot less saturated when it came to our local startup because systems and the rest of the world The good thing is, now that we've gotta love the financial infrastructure into place, flat six Labs is one of them. And I think that's where we really um, we're lacking support before on DSO were signed to feel see players come into every stage of the startup growth be ableto help the stops raise their seed funds. Siri's a Series B >> and your role here is outreach building out my rain. Yet where the Economic Development Board trying to figure out that put together an entrepreneur strategy and not figure it out. We know what it is. You get money? Yeah, yeah. Party together, >> Yes. So what we're trying to do is there's two main things. One is that we're trying Thio finally be the first kind of financial investor that can help people going from a full time job in tow. You know, full time entrepreneurship rolls on to give them access to three of the biggest barriers that they usually will face, which is a business development network mentorship on Capitol andan. Everything that we're doing is weed. So personally, What I take care of is that I go to a lot of the international events around the globe, would start up because systems and try and find very early stage founders and educate them on the market. The region see where people would fit, where the gaps are in the market on dumb kind of raise awareness of old advantages that we have here in Bahrain. >> What makes you guys different? What's the differentiation >> as a country or as flat six labs? Both. So I'd say, as a country behinds in a very unique position where we have, ah, cultural mindset that is very easy for a lot of foreigners and expatriates to adapt to, Um, I think we've even been ranked number one in the world as a place for expect us to live several times on DA number. Thing is that we have a very high skilled workforce. Um, overhead costs are lower. So, for example, when it comes to the cost of rent when it comes to hiring a team, you also have subsidies that come into place like Tom Keen, uh, which Sam has also benefited from where if you go and you hire fresh graduate Bahrainis, you'll get >> ah, >> large margin of that subsidized by the government. So you're looking at, ah, mix where you have a high quality of life. But at the same time, it's the best starting point for a lot of start ups. Because you can extend your runway. You have, ah, much lower cash burn, and at the same time you've got one of the biggest market places right next door, which is Saudi Arabia, is the 30 minute drive across the bridge. So we've kind of got the best of all worlds over here, and and because we're a small country, we have a government that's incredibly reactive. So the regulatory authorities are very close with the startup ecosystem, for example, were always involved in the economic development board round table meetings on the ministries, all working closely together to try and make this as friendly and atmosphere is possible for the startup >> and they're authentic. That's interesting and see government authentically aligning. >> Yeah, it's in the interest of entrepreneur, I would say. One thing we really have going on is it's really an nationwide initiative from the founders to the private entities and investors like us and to the governmental agencies where we all are really dedicated towards making this start up >> san talk about your company. What do you guys do and what's your situation? >> Right? So my company's name is sinking. We're software as a service company that helps businesses manage the really hard aspects of managing their employees like things like timesheets scheduling. Job safety is a big one for us and job costing, and our target market is actually us small businesses and way were early stage company, and we met Salar and Flat six Labs, and they convinced us to come sit up here in Bahrain and never looked back. But the access to talent here is just amazing the cost of very low and were able to do a lot of a very small amount of money. And so far we've got to a total of four and 1/2 1000 U. S. Businesses using the platform. And we've done that all here from Bahrain, >> so very low, low cost leverage, a model, and that's because of the substance of just talent >> as a >> mixer, so it's a little bit cheaper to hire. People have more access to tell him it's a number of things. It's both of those things. >> Yeah, the university programs were interesting there. Got a degree in cloud Computing. They announced that we heard that news today. I mean, that's compelling. I mean, have you want to make the market just teach it? Yeah, exact. This is good, I think. >> I think the good thing is that everyone's come to an understanding that all parties have to get actively involved to make it the right atmosphere. So the universities are also working very closely with us hand in hand. And I've seen Percy a gigantic improvement over the past year where their senior projects of the universities are turning out where they got legitimate startup. It's Dex on Dhe. Some of them are even ready to go straight into acceleration, which was not the case a few years ago. So everybody's really on board. >> That's one of things we met last year in the economic Dillman for that round table. Lotte. I won't say complaints but concerns, and they're very listening to the whiteboards out their charts. How are they doing? Checking the boxes? They are checking the items off, moving these blockers and what's remaining in your mind in terms of things to make it frictionless. >> Yeah, I'd say like there's so far. We've done a great start andan the space of a year. We've accomplished a lot. But of course there's still shifting the whole mentality to understand the startup scene and also, you know, to get people to be less as, ah, cultural mentality, risk averse and start letting people feel that failure is an okay thing. It's okay to go straight out of university and give it a shot and try and start your own startup, Um, and also educating people of all the tools that are available to them. So although we do a lot of outreach and roadshows, still, there's, ah, a lot of people that need to be educated on how exploration works, how the VC side of it works. And I'd say another thing. We need Thio See coming is bridge funds. So we've got people that are ready to come in at Siri's a that precede that seed. But then there's usually these gaps where we need to kind of help Fila's well to keep people on target towards seriously >> like a bullpen. Capital kind of model. Like Paul Martinez Company? Yeah, sass coming that are in between being Air B or B and C just need that little bridge. Yeah, exactly. That. Just >> that extra runway so that they can hit the targets that the later stage investors want us. >> Guys, give it plug for your reference. What you working on? Now? What do you quit your to do? Item? What's, uh what's the plan? Give a pitch for the company. >> Looks way No. The first company to attack time tendons. And we won't be the last. But where we think that we can win his job costing and job tracking, which is something that the customers that we talked to it really screaming out, too. So we've been building a really complex but simple to use system for managing jobs the last 3 to 6 months, and we're about to deploy that to our users in a few weeks. We're very excited about that. And that's really our secret source. We just a lot of guys doing the time in attendance. We're doing it very well, but we want to be the best of jobs. And we also want to stay laser focused throughout our particular users, which is actually employers with 1 to 20 employees in the states. And that's actually that actually makes up 89% of all employers in the States. And it's very hard to historically to find these guys. But we'll be having a smart phone in their pocket. It's actually becoming easier and easier for us, and we find it. >> And those coming need the most help, too, because they're the ones that could grow to 50 employees next. Exactly. So what's the U. R L? Our website and app Tick and download. What's the head of someone contact U S. >> So they will go to sync dot business and they can use the Web version there. But we also have to mobile app so we could be found in the APP store and on the place. >> Awesome. Congratulations and updates for you guys. What's next for you here by rain in general? >> Well, in Bahrain and Demeanor Region, we're continuing to expand their several locations that we're gonna launch again as accelerator programs on dhe. Locally, over here, we're always accepting applications from international startups. We're actually having our demo day tomorrow So you should drop by if you're gonna be here. Yes. Did I would be great if you come down and a CZ that happens. We're accepting applications to the next cycle on dhe. They can just log onto flat six labs, bahrain dot com All the information's over there. And if they want to get in touch with me, they can just put my name into Lincoln. So >> I beat him up into a system, and when they're ready to accelerate, they go. Good to go. Congratulates. Good job, guys. Thanks for the update. Startup scene is robust here by rain. The Cube coverage for our second year covering Amazon Web service is summit. I'm Jumper Stevens for more coverage after this short break.

>> Live from Washington, D.C., it's theCUBE, covering AWS Public Sector Summit, 2017. Brought to you by Amazon web services and it's partner, Ecosystem. >> And welcome to our nation's capitol. Here we are in Washington, D.C. TheCUBE coming live from the Walter Washington Convention Center, here for AWS Private Sector Summit. It's our maiden voyage with the Public Sector so looking forward to this. John Walsh and John Furrier, glad to have you along for the ride, John, this is going to be a good week. >> Hey, it'll be fun. >> A good couple of days. John Galvin joins us. He is the Vice President and General Manager of the Public Sector Intel. John, thank you for being with us here on theCUBE; glad to have you. >> It's a pleasure to be here, thank you. >> Tell us a little bit first off, about your portfolio. >> Sure. >> I understand you cover not only United States, but you have a global footprint as well. Touch base a little bit with our audience with what you're up to. >> Yeah, absolutely. So first of all, I have to put it in perspective for everyone. People know us as a micro-processor company. They don't always attribute us to going out and calling on government, or education decision makers. So we really act as a trusted advisor. We don't sell directly to government or to education entities, and I have sales people, or account exec's, around the world who are going in and meeting with ministers of education or ministers of ICT. Sometimes it's a school superintendent or a district superintendent, but, overall, what we're talking about is digital transformation and how technology can be used to advance government or advance education. And sometimes at a national level, could be at a state level, could be at a district level. >> Well, John and I were talking in our open segment just a little bit ago, about maybe a glacial pace isn't fair to say about how government had that reputation, obviously, for many years about being, maybe, reluctant. >> Right. >> To embrace change. What do you see now in that space? Is there this shift going on, that there's more of an embracing of technology? And of more entrepreneurial kind of spirit within the operation of government? >> Yeah, absolutely. It is happening so quickly. The categorization of government moving slowly is absolutely true. Education the same. But now wherever I go around the world, everyone is talking about transformation and they're starting to launch projects that might be a pilot or a proof of concept, but they're getting started. The challenge is when you talk about digital transformation it is so big so it becomes difficult for governments to really get their hands around it, and what are they going to do to improve citizens quality of life. Is that going to be a healthcare initiative? Is it going to be a transportation initiative? Sometimes it's an education initiative; and we're seeing them all. I think what is causing it to advance now is they see proof-points that it works. That by making those investments it really is changing the quality of life for people. And in emerging markets they don't have existing infrastructure that they have to tear out and replace. And some of the mature markets, it's how do you actually breakdown those silos. >> Well, John, I'm really glad you came on. Intel, in my opinion, I've been following Intel for many years, recently, has been pretty amazing. But you guys have always been a bellwether for trends, I'd say, five to 10 years out. I mean, look at everything that Intel's done with technology You have that five to 10 year stair instantly in what you're proposing. We've been seeing a lot of the AI commercials with Intel, what is the Public Sector trends that intersect with the vision of Intel? >> Well, you're absolutely right. If you look at what Intel does we're similar to the auto industry. It takes us five to six years to produce our next processor, and so we have to be looking that far out of what are the use cases, and really, what are those technological boundaries that we're going to either cross or break? And AI is absolutely the conversation today. It's sort of around artificial intelligence and it's no longer science fiction. We're not talking about it in the future; we're now talking about how can we use it today? Machine learning big, big topic, and not just the role that Intel plays, but companies like AWS; big players, in terms of how that actually comes to life in your home. It's not just how it's going to come to life in a big government institution or a big enterprise. >> And the Public Sector landscape, for the folks that are watching some know the Public Sector, what is the Public Sector? Because it's not the government. There's education, there's health, so what's the layout. How do you categorically look at it? How should people think about Public Sector? Not just GovCloud because there's a GovCloud, but is there a Public Sector cloud? I mean, how should people think about it? >> Yeah, great question. I work as part of a group at Intel that are all verticals. There's a healthcare team, there's a transportation team, there's an energy team. Public Sector is completely different because we're all of those things. We're working on transportation projects, we're working big healthcare projects, and so Public Sector you have to look at in the biggest sense where it's not just a federal presence but it is a state presence, it's a city presence or a county presence. And so our opportunity is to be able to connect all of those things, and that is what I think is so exciting about the transformation that is taking place right now is for that vision to be realized those silos really need to be broken. You know, you're going to hear comments over the next couple of days about forming a data lake. Which is bringing in all of those data streams into a single spot so that you can apply analytics and be able to get to insights that we've never been able to get to before. >> So how do you do that if you talk about municipality levels, state levels, federal levels, different operating systems, different processes, different procedures? And all great resources, how do you pull all that together and make that an asset instead of a morass? >> Well, in that question you just captured how big this opportunity is, and the way that we do it is we work with our ecosystem partners. The strength that Intel has when we enter into those conversations is we work with everyone. We work with the big cloud providers, we work with all the different operating system providers. We're not only with the computer companies that are our partners and our customers, but we're working now with internet and think companies, and so we have the ability to now work across that ecosystem to start pulling all of those pieces together. The heart of your question though is that those are all different systems that have been built over time. And if you look at what's been happening in enterprise over the past 10 years is CIO's and CTO's at the enterprise levels have been breaking down those silos and moving more to single systems and big data streams. And now that's what's happening with in the Public Sector is that data has to come together. >> John, talk about the collaboration between Intel and AWS and what is going on with you guys, how you guys are working together, and what's the impact in serving Public Sector customers? >> Well, we have had a great partnership with AWS from the beginning. (audio cuts out) (audio cuts out) That's going to take on this bigger vision is going to have a cloud discussion. There will still be things that they're going to be doing on premise, but it's most likely going to be a hybrid environment. And so with AWS we really have the opportunity to have a bigger discussion, where they can really have that cloud discussion and even some of the analytics layer. They're also doing more at an IOT perspective; we're able to join that conversation in terms of how our technology really plays into it. But I think the other thing we're able to do with AWS is really look for innovators. We're able to identify either those small companies, or even some of the cities are doing some really great things. And then because of their global footprint and our global footprint we can share that pretty broadly. >> And ecosystem's critical. You guys, Intel's always been ecosystem friendly company. With that in mind I got to ask you the question that everyone's talking about, and certainly, we're covering Mobile World Congress this year in Barcelona. And you couldn't go anywhere without hearing 5G and these new phones that are coming out. And then under the hood network transformation, you're hearing about software to find networking, machine learning, AI a lot of things that you guys are talking about. So the question for you is Smart Cities. It is a really, really hot opportunity just to even think about the concept of what a Smart City entails. I mean, here in D.C., like other cities, they have bicycles people can take out and ride around. That's a smart city, that's a cool service. But now you bring digital all to it. Imagine, Air B&B, you've got Uber, you've got Lift you've got all kinds of digital services, digital experiences. This is a government, this is a Public Sector issue. This is an interesting one. How is Intel's view on Smart Cities, how do you see that rolling out? >> First of all, we're very excited about what's happening within Smart Cities, and to the beginning of your question we think 5G is going to be an accelerant. It's going to cause it to happen even faster than it's happening now. What's interesting about Smart City is that it really does take a lot of different formats. And so we see cities who are really focused on public security and safety. We have examples whether it's Singapore, London of how they're now capturing new data with the cameras that they put up, and can do real-time analytics on it using AI and machine learning. So it's not that they just have all of these data streams, but they're doing real-time analysis of the data stream to be able to identify potential threats. But we also have examples where we're seeing cities invest in new technology to, essentially, replace what are the old ways of us being able to communicate and engage with the government. And that could be as simple as there's new information that's available to us. Or as they're collecting all these data streams they're making that data public and available for innovation, and so entrepreneurs now have the ability to also build solutions on those data streams. It's an incredibly exciting time. >> I mean, it's mind boggling to just think about how we live our lives in our cities. I can call the police department, the fire department, call for services in the analog world. Imagine video chat. Is that going to go to the certain departments? So how people engage, which side of the street do the cars drive on, who decides all that? And this is kind of how big this is. It's mind blowing. >> Well, it is big, and I'm going to answer that in two ways. Yes, the way that we did things before is changing and it's changing rapidly. To your 911 reference, I don't know, does it have to be a video engagement? Or through video are we actually capturing real-time that there's an incident that the fire department or an ambulance or police need to be dispatched. Where no phone call actually needs to be made. >> Real-time analytics. >> Yeah. >> Predicted, prescriptive analytics could come to the table. >> Yeah, absolutely. And so we're already seeing examples of that, where that's happening today. What we're not seeing happening at scale, but I think we will see it happening at scale, all of those early adopters they had to figure it out on their own. But now we have blueprints, we have frameworks that we can share with other cities where they will be able to do it much more quickly. >> All right, what project really stands out for you, in all the things you're looking at, in the Public Sector because there's so much going on that you guys are doing I mean, props to Intel love what they're doing. The AI mission really puts a vision in place but also it's reality now with machine learning. What projects stand out for you that you see as real innovative, collaborative between Intel and AWS? >> Yeah, so we did a project with AWS where we, essentially, created a competition for new ideas to be able to come forward, and out of that what we've seen is some cities really doing some innovative things, just taking those first steps. What that does for us is it gives us a broader view than we would be able to get on our own. But some of that's basic. Say exciting stuff, we have exciting examples, the kiosks on the street corners in New York are an exciting example. What we see some of the universities doing, I think, is really exciting. Universities around the world have an issue with student retention. Where they just experience high drop out rates at the end of the freshman year and the end of the sophomore year. The challenge is how do you identify a student at risk? Well, automate attendance and you can now see are students actually attending classes. Or are they skipping class? Start using sensors and beacons on the campus and you can actually detect what those student patterns are and you just might need to have a counselor step in or a professor step in and really sit down with them and walk them through it. >> Use the IOT example, humans are things too, right? I mean, wearables, they got all kinds of sensors that could be even on-person device too. Absolutely, we have been working with the University of Texas Arlington, exactly, on that project. Through a sensor you can actually capture the emotional state of student. Are they highly stressed? And should that be, again, an environment where-- >> Explain how. How does that work? >> Through body temperature and -- >> So biometrics being measured. >> Yeah. >> Body temperature, respiration rates, all those kinds of things. >> Mental health is a huge issue in colleges and universities around the pressure. >> You can see that idea from a health perspective, strep throat, right? >> Sure. >> It's like the freshman plague. Every freshman gets strep throat. But if you could identify anxiety as it's being formulated before it manifests itself in academic performance, you could treat that. >> Sure, and now you combine that with capturing data from the student cafeteria or dorms of what are they're eating patterns, what are they're sleeping patterns? Are they actually getting enough sleep? So you get a much more holistic view of the student. And we have to be careful here, right, because-- >> There's privacy concerns. >> Right, there's absolutely privacy and security concerns. And anyone who engages in these projects, heightened awareness of that. So it really is about quality of life and how do you create a better educational experience, not create anything that's threatening, but it becomes a much more personalized learning experience. >> The convergence and the conflicts between IOT and cloud and processing power and software, it's interesting, I was looking on prior to the show coming in I saw on your website at Intel Farmers in America. And then on Amazon's site there's a City on the Cloud. Can you take a minute and explain those projects. I think they're both Intel and AWS collaborations. Can you just take a minute to explain the City on the Cloud and the Farmers of America, what's the big aha there? >> So it's a three year project that we've been working on in collaboration with AWS, and the whole idea was for us to be able to identify some innovative ideas within the space because it is still a new area. How do we, essentially, give some of these entrepreneurs and innovative people a chance to be able to bring their idea into fruition? And so agriculture and Farmers America's a great example because that data is being collected in terms of weather patterns and how they can now, essentially, access that data to be able to plan differently what they're doing as well as better enable them to share with others what they're finding as they're making changes too. >> The farm tech has been hot on the D.C. community, certainly, in the Silicon Valley seeing people doing farm tech. Farm tech is one of those things, agriculture's a huge area that health implications too. People are interested in automating a lot of things and bringing tech there. And then also healthcare is a factor too. One of the areas is education but healthcare is another one that you guys are, what's the new thing in there that you guys are doing in healthcare? >> Yeah, we're doing quite a bit in healthcare around the world, and if you really think about it the challenge with healthcare is that your records are typically with your doctor or with your hospital. They're not always shared and they don't move with you when you travel. And so the first opportunity is how does that data actually become standardized so that it can actually be shared. But the other opportunity in healthcare is for those CTO's and CIO's to start using data very differently, to understand the patterns of what's happening within their hospitals. And you're earlier reference, John, to strep throat within a campus, how do you, essentially, start tracking that there's a trend and that there's something that you could potentially deal with much more quickly once you have the insights to it. >> All right, so take a minute as end this segment here, I want to get your thoughts on, give us a taste and showcase some of the Intel speeds and feeds, some of the tech, what's under the hood, what's coming out of Intel that's powering all of this because remember we're all driving the self-driving digital tooling out there. It's all powered by the Zeons, all kinds of cool stuff. What's the latest state-of-the-art that you got from Intel that you guys are bringing to the market in the Public Sector? >> Yeah, well, thank you for that question. I don't normally get it. >> John loves it. He's a speed and feed guy. >> To get too much feedback. Too geeky. >> Well, your earlier question was around AI and machine learning and for us that's the zonify. And if you look at the power of zonify it's, essentially, three times the teraflops of the largest super computer that existed 20 years ago, in a single processor. And so for us it's an opportunity to then really be able to advance and accelerate what's happening with artificial intelligence as well as machine learning. >> Well, it's an exciting new world. Obviously with a realm that goes healthcare to ag, to education, to government with Intel very much at the center of that. John, thanks for being with us. >> It was great to be here. >> We appreciate the time on theCUBE. We look forward to having you back. We'll continue our coverage live here from the AWS Public Sector Summit here on theCUBE. Back with more in just a bit. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live from Washington D.C. it's The Cube. Covering AWS Public Sector Summit 2017. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services and its partner ecosystem. >> Hello everyone welcome to this Cube here in D.C. Washington D.C. I'm John Furrier with my cohost. For the next two days John Walls we will be discussing the government Cloud. AWS Public Sector Summit this is our live coverage on the ground. Also as you know we have been covering the event for multiple, multiple years. It's our inaugural event here in Washington D.C. No better place where there's a lot of change, a lot of action. Data lakes here are turning into data swamps. We're here to drain the data swamps. (laughing) And get that data to you. I'm John Furrier with John Walls. Again, John we're kicking off our first inaugural event. Not the first event for AWS Public Sector Summit. I think this is their seventh or eighth year doing it. Started as a small little conference. But now the full on Public Sector Summit has become I'm calling the reinvent of government. 'Cause with Health and Human Services, government agencies, education, now there's a complete change-over from the Obama administration. Really started that off by initiating more open government, more access to data. You're starting to see AWS with wins over the past few years with the CIA. The ability to stand up with government Cloud now is now reality. Amazon has done extremely well on their billions and billions of dollars they're doing. 50% growth on those kinds of numbers. Amazon is just taking down market after market. Enterprise now, in the government for a while. Just really a case of history, Amazon. >> John you were on top of this. We were talking about this earlier. You wrote about this three, four years ago. Now we're seeing this tectonic shift occur. Government's starting to say okay, we can be open to a transformative experience now that we understand it's secure, and it's valuable. It helps us provide better services, and improve our services. But again there's still some convincing to be done, right? There's not a 100% discipleship if you will amongst the government crowd. Opportunities like this kind of bring that innovation, bring that entrepreneurialism to the government mindset. It's a good opportunity. But how do you get there? How do you make that shift from the cooporate side? Everybody gets private sector. Public sector may be a little slower, a little more of a foot dragger. >> Amazon's roots, I wrote that story as you mentioned three years ago on Forbes. Kind of broke the story on Andy Jassy and AWS Amazon Web Services. He talked about the journey of Amazon Web Services, how it started as a six-page business plan. He talked about their approach. Amazon's approach from day one has always been about building blocks. One of the things that Andy Jassy and the entire team has always been about, is about listening to the customer. Jeff Bezos's ethos within Amazon has always been lower prices and shipping things faster. You apply that to technology. Lower prices of technology and faster response times, and you mentioned security. Amazon's moved from that developer centered culture to the enterprise. But really three years ago is where you start to see them really start to get a landscape into the government and get the beachhead. They want to kill a key deal against IBM and the CIA. That went to court and the judge actually ruled in favor of Amazon saying Amazon has a better product. So that was to me a seminal moment. That was a flash point. That was an inflection point. Whatever you want to call it. Since that time, they've just been bringing the Amazon Web Services business model into the government. What that is is really providing an agility, the ability to turn on, compute, stand up Cloud in a way that makes government agencies agile. We all know from looking at the history of the government, they are far from being agile. They are slower than molasses to get things done. Usually little stove pipes and fiefdoms in politics. But now when you start to bring in what Obama did in his administration, he opened up the government. That means data can now be exposed. Data from agencies, for developers. So when you start thinking about developer integration into a government environment. You're starting to see potentially innovation happening. You're seeing evidence of that. We're going to talk with Intel about their AI strategy starting from machine learning. We're now bringing technology to the government and public sector for education, health and human services. A variety of agencies can benefit from having a dev ops mindset. >> Share with me your perspective. You've got this obviously this treasure trove of an asset in public data. >> Yeah. >> That can be used to improve any number of services. At the same time you've got major security concerns, because it's that valuable. How does that square up? How does that balance out with this crowd here this week? How much of a discussion is there going to be about making sure there's a secure environment, making sure it's a protected environment, that there's compliance and governance issues that really abound. >> There's really three things right now when you talk about federal agencies going to the Cloud. One is the centralization of infrastructure governance. With the advent of Cloud, the notion of standing something up, compute and resources, is easier more than ever. For governments, you can now put your credit card down, get a prototype going, and have it in production in months. Days, weeks, months. The second thing besides centralized infrastructure is really enforcing policy. It's policy compliance. That is key because now with all the regulations one department has data that's got to be protected. You see this in health care historically, but now government same thing. Compliance of those policies. This day they can only be touched by these people. Third, automating operations at scale. To me, those are the things that Amazon can bring to the table. If they can do those three things with their partners like Foog, for instance, a startup in the ecosystem, Evident.io, Intel and others, and then Amazon, you can essentially roll out developers, develop apps. So they consumption side of the equation, the users, can get new stuff quick. But the table stakes, a lot of that under the hood technology. Centralized governance, enforcing policy compliance around the data, and Cloud operations at scale. That's really the key. >> How does it differ then from the corporate world? You're talking about things that are just as important to a brand as they are to HSS or DHS or whomever. Everybody has common concerns. Everybody has protection at the top of their mind, but he's got compliance and enforcement and all those things, validation, identification, everything applies to public just like it does public, as opposed to private. What's the difference? >> Here's my thought on this. I haven't written about this yet, but here's my thought. This is kind of where I see it. You saw the consumerization of enterprises as a big wave over the past five years, and that's going to be a run for the next 10, 20 years. We're seeing enterprise businesses providing a consumer experience for employees. Meaning my iPhone has apps on it, I want an app-like experience. I don't really want to have that specialized device because I work for a company, or a certain email account. I just want to be able to do my thing on premise in the company and then in the wild as a consumer. I should be able to watch some sports, video gaming, whatever I want to do I should be able to do that on a device and then come to work and have that work fine. That's been going on for about five years. That's got another big horizon of another 10 years plus, minimum. Consumerization of enterprise of business. That's one. What's going on in the government is really being enterprised. The government is being enterprised. Meaning it's always been the snail pace evolution. The old terminals, government employees having phones that look like relics. >> John: Right. >> There's a perception that in reality that the government just is slow, because they're so stuck on these compliance issues, security, all these risk factors really slow down the adoption of government. Consumerization is going to the business, and now the businesses is going to the government. So you start to see government really start to act like agile companies. >> A problem though, or at least I would imagine a challenge in the public space if I'm a government agency, I've got a different board of directors, right? I have congressional oversight. They have budgetary control. I am year to year. I don't have quarterly board meetings. Sometimes we get stuck in the whole appropriation process, that in itself is a whole... >> The government's always had a cover your ass mentality because a lot of appointees come in. But a lot of the people, whether they work in the state department down into the different agencies are public service. They've been in their jobs. >> 25, 30 years. >> Normally good workers, right? So even though you might have change at the top, at the quote elected official level of the different department and agencies, in general people are trying to do a good thing. So that's why it slows down. It's a moving train relative to I don't want to get fired mentality. Everyone's always been concerned with government around leaking data, compliance, oh my god something went wrong. They're very conservative. That's why I'm saying they've been slower than business. Consumers go super fast, businesses now are going faster because of the consumer trend, and now that trend is coming into the government, where again scale, agility, governance, all have to be big. Those building blocks have to be big. Then the goodness for the developers is really where the action is. Because at the end of the day, there is a developer community out there take could take data from different agencies, say Health and Human Services, and take that broad data and create a mash up to say hey I'm going to provide some services to the community on where the best place to get medicine, or how to optimize medicare so that the spending can be more efficient. Who should be doing this or that? There's lot of cases where with the data being exposed government innovation really thrives. That's going to come from the developer community. That creativity cannot be realized without exposing the data, without creating a massive amounts of compute. And goodness, like what Amazon have on their stack. >> Is there any kind of, I don't want to say clash of culture, but again as you said, in terms of government, we think about a more methodical approach, right? And that might come with experience. The worker has maybe been in that position a little bit longer as opposed to the private sector where you're getting maybe recent college graduates who are coming in with different ideas, different approaches, different mindsets. So how about that mash up, just in terms of being open to new approaches, and being open to new ideas, and having the confidence to embrace them as opposed to a startup mentality that obviously is very, very different. >> It's the same kind of trends we see in the dev ops movement. Culturally it always starts with the organization. But at the end of the day, if people have confidence that they're not going to get fired, or that the risk of whatever their issues are, whether it's data, or a certain kind of enforcement around policies, if that's solved, then you're now in an environment where everything's been encapsulated, so then more freedom to do things. I think that's step number one. Just getting it out there, letting people know that it's reliable and secure and has scale and the elasticity. Because the beautiful thing of the business model of the Cloud is it's very elastic. You buy as you go. It's not a big buy up front. This is where the government actually can save money. From a tax payer perspective, the U.S. government can be highly efficient with Cloud. So there's an economic impact, not just the technology and privacy and governance issues. >> You hit on this in your opening comments about Obama and 2.0. Now we have the Trump administration in office. That's provided certainly a change in how business is being done in Washington in a number of ways. I live here. (laughing) Believe me we see it on a regular basis. But because of that shift in administration in general, how do companies like Intel and AWS and Riverbed we're going to see here a little bit later on, some other folks, how did they adapt in that environment when the rules of engagement appear to be maybe a bit cloudier right now? >> Well I think the thing that folks like Intel which huge AI focus, they've always been an enabler. You look at, I look at these companies like Intel, like Amazon itself, Foog, Riverbed, Truva, these are the kinds of companies out there that are creating enabling technologies. Meaning you want to enable growth and opportunity and not foreclose the future. That's really the job of most of those. Intel in particular has always been that bellwether innovator. They create technology. We've had Moore's law, that's changed the landscape over the years. They have an AI focus over 5G, network transformation, smart cities, autonomous vehicles. Intel has now a fabric of technology that's taken to the next level. Obviously Intel and AWS work together. And things like smart cities. This is a huge issue. Talk about being consumerized. I mentioned consumerization of IT and business, and business now impacting government. When you start getting the consumerization of government, you're talking about Uber, Airbnb, Lyft, autonomous vehicles. Who the hell sets the policies for those? There's going to be a governance involved on the societal impact at the smart cities level. Meaning that's a government issue. So who determines the policy and risk for the citizen of the community? The cities and towns are going to monitor which side of the street the cars drive on. Are they going to monitor cyber bullying and cyber security? Are they going to monitor the kind of healthcare that's being provided to the front door of people's homes? Are they going to monitor the AI? There are open questions. This is why I call the gov Cloud the tip of the iceberg. Because these things are going to open up a slew of societal challenges as well as technology. >> This is why I'm looking forward to looking and talking to the array of guests that we have. Because you've just opened up this Pandora's box of questions. Government is as you said has a C.Y.A. mentality. Always has, and should. Frankly, to a certain degree. There has to be some process here. It can't just go willy-nilly. As technology races to innovate, how does government maintain that pace? >> Government just has to be agile. >> John: But that's almost oxymoronic in some way. >> The change in the landscape certainly with the Trump administration from Obama has been like night and day. You got a president with no scandals at all in Obama, who's done a lot of great things. Trump who's got the mojo saying hey I'm going to drain the swamp, all that bravado. He's in a trainwreck situation here going on in D.C. It's kind of shaken things up. I think it could be a catalyst opportunity. One of the things that's interesting is that you look at education and health care, for instance. Forget government for a minute. Really impactful human civilization issues. Health and human services can be completely transformed by technology. Education to me seems like a slow motion video game that's lagging. The kids are getting so much more education online, than they are in the linear analog classroom. Some people are trying to get iPads and do some things differently integrating curriculums. There's a whole disruption. I watch my kids learning, and it's like boring school that's going so slow and linear. They're online putting together, building his own motor skateboard. He's doing YouTube. He's essentially in a robotics club at home from YouTube videos. So you're seeing the eLearning impacting education. What does that mean for education? That means they got to be more competitive. At the end of the day the competitiveness of the groups within public sector have to step up their game. And the only way they're going to do that is build better apps. And apply what they've got to the people they're targeting and deliver it better, faster, cheaper than before. That is why Amazon is poised in my opinion to do extremely well. >> Amazon being a global brand, some of these, many of these companies with international footprints are they bringing back experiences from developing countries who maybe don't have that education infrastructure in place and are leapfrogging to the technology, being able to bring back these kinds of lessons to the united States? >> You know John you and I both love golf. And we talk golf all the time. I'll use the golf analogy here for the golfers out there. Non-golfers I'm sorry. It's like playing with old clubs. Someone comes up and starts winning everything 'cause they've got big fat driver, get the new technology. It kind of depends. It depends what your legacy is. A lot of countries, your question about international, have no infrastructure and all of a sudden when they stand up these 3G, 4G, 5G LTE towers they have full connectivity. They've got better connectivity wirelessly than the third nation, than us. It all comes down to the legacy and the baggage, and that is why I see the transformation really being on the Cloud because the U.S. public sector in North America they've got so much legacy baggage. It's slowing them down. It's anchoring them down. >> John: Right. >> They got to unleash that, and it's going to take a progressive mentality. It's going to take someone saying let's get the civil liberties of our citizens nailed down. Let's deliver better services. More expensive every day, faster, and better. That's the Amazon way in my opinion. That's why they've been doing well in the startup world. That's why they're now doing well in the enterprise. That's the secret to their success. Before we jump into our first guest of the day, they're coming up in just a few moments here. What's your, if you have two or three curiosity points or questions that you'd like to explore over the next day and a half with our guests, what would those be? >> To me, I've been involved in public sector in my career, in previous jobs. So I kind of get a sense of the moving parts. I don't think anyone would argue in public sector we want technology. I think to me it's how to get it done. Question of how to get it operationalized. To me what I'm looking for is how decisions get made, how organizational structures are changing to make decisions that are more dev ops oriented. And how the transformation of the process of deploying and requiring the technology. 'Cause that's really the key. The disruption of the business model of Cloud, renting versus buying. Then two, how those decisions get made. My questions will be all about not only the vision and the road map of what the technology impact is, but how does the reality play out? I think that's the key there. I also want to take a minute John, if you don't mind, to thank our sponsors. >> John: Absolutely. >> Without our sponsors, The Cube would not be able to be allowed to go to these events because they're expensive to run. I want to thank our sponsors. We get to do our good work thanks to the sponsorship support. Our business model's sponsorship generated. We appreciate that. I want to give a shout out to AWS as a main sponsor, with Intel. I want to thank Intel. Intel's doing some great stuff with AI. Again, across multiple sectors of the business. 5G, network transformation, Cloud, et cetera. Riverbed, I want to thank Riverbed, give a shout out. Foog. Who's really taking agencies to the Cloud one of the things I talked about. And Truva. I want to thank those guys for putting the business model in the Cloud together with Amazon here in The Cube. Thanks to the sponsors. Go check them out. Tell them we sent you. Get a 10% discount on all their products and services. (laughing) Only kidding. >> Time out on that. That was just kind of a joke. (laughing) >> Alright John. >> John: Here we go. We're off and running. >> Alright we'll be back with more live coverage of AWS Public Sector after this short break. (electronic music)

>> Live from Washington, D.C., it's theCube. Covering AWS Public Sector Summit 2018. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to the nation's capital everybody. You're watching theCube, the leader in live tech coverage. My name is Dave Vellante, I'm here with Stuart Miniman, and we're covering, this is day one of the AWS Public Sector Summit, #AWSPSSummit, got that right, right, Stu? >> You did, Dave. >> Lynn Martin is here. She's the Vice President and General Manager of Government, Education, and Healthcare at VMware. We got news. Lynn, welcome to theCube. >> Thanks for having me. >> It's our pleasure. So let's start, before we get into the news, let's start with VMware and Public Sector. You were kind of explaining to us off-camera. Talk about VMware and its role in Public Sector. >> So VMware has been ingrained in the government agencies and the education across state, local, and federal government for the beginning of VMware. There's billions of dollars of investments across all the different parts of Public Sector. So we have a trusted partnership, 90% share of wallet across those agencies, and the different entities across state and local government as well. And today, I'll pivot a little bit towards the announcement, today's announcement. We were partnered with AWS around the VMC on AWS GovCloud. Today, we offer VMC on AWS. That is a commercial offering that supports all of our customers that do not require the same levels of security that the federal government and some of our state and local customers require. >> Lynn, I'm just wondering. We're intimately familiar with VMC. John Furrier was at the announcement with AWS, and VMware went and announced. But for our audience that's not, maybe just the short summary as to what that solution is. >> Sure. So VMware Cloud, that's VMC, on AWS, allows you to leverage the VMware suite of product sets that are already being used in running your data centers today. And then be able to move your workload into the public cloud. So we call it hybrid cloud technology, utilizing the tools of the software-defined data center that are already running in those customer environments, and give you the flexibility and agility to move workloads in and out as you need for your business demands at a high level. >> We were just speaking to the former CTO of the CIA, and he took us back to sort of the initial impetus for the CIA moving to cloud. And he gave four things, velocity, efficiency, drive innovation, and security. If I think about the early days of VMware and the impact that it had on the data center, I could have listed those same four things. It's now we're just taking it up another level. >> Right. >> In terms of everything is higher velocity, the drive for efficiency is even greater. Innovations like we've never seen before, and security is more important than ever before. So you go that dialed up, but you also now have, to your point, the hybrid factor. Used to be all on prem, now we got this morphing into public and private. So I wonder if you could talk about sort of those four pillars. They're similar issues for IT people today as it was yesterday. >> I don't think they've changed, to be honest with you. >> That's what you're hearing from customers, right? >> So I would say, part of the desire to move forward with the VMC on AWS GovCloud is what we've heard from customers. So the solution will provide that flexibility even at another level than public cloud, because today, as most people know, when you go to move your applications, CIA's a great one, they started that endeavor I think three years ago plus? Maybe four, it's coming on? Three to four? To get those workloads moved is heavy lifting. So with the flexibility of the VMC on AWS, and I think that's what's interesting in the partnership between Andy and Pat around this, is really being able to take that software layer and being able to move much faster. So a great example would be MIT had built an on prem solution with VMware. Just recently we moved them to VMC on AWS. Those workloads got moved in days. The first time it took months and months and months and a year before we could move all 900 workloads. Literally that was done in less than two weeks and it could go back and forth. So the flexibility for new things when they come up, and then when you wrap that around with the security layers, I think that's what really creates a unique value proposition. So I think public cloud's here. I think you're going to see in the future over the next three to five years more and more different cloud providers, and hybrid cloud technology with that layer that allows you to figure out where you want to go, when you want to go, unique situations, if you think about the government, omissions that come up. That gives you a flexibility to move at a speed that doesn't exist in the marketplace today. >> Yeah, Lynn, I remember last year at VMworld I talked to a customer, and there was a group inside the company that was like we need to do more cloud, we need to move faster. But from an administrative standpoint, it's like, ugh, I need need to retrain, I need to do things, the talent, and they're like, when I told them it's a full VMware stack, they were like, they actually opened up and they were able to move forward, and that was step one in making changes as to how they were building their applications. >> That was, Teresa's keynote today had a slide on the people piece. And I think one of the biggest benefits today is that your talent is already trained on the VMware tools. So you're not really getting through that mindset of doing everything different and retraining and trying to figure out how to get the expertise in. Those same computer operators that run the Vmware environment can now run your cloud environment. >> That's a really important point. I remember when Hadoop first kind of hit the scene. Everybody wanted SQL, because they didn't have to re-skill. >> Exactly. >> And that was a game-changer. And this is part of the, I want to bring in the Modernizing Government Technology Act. So to the extent that you don't have to completely re-skill, you're going to be able to-- >> Modernize. >> Modernize faster, right? >> Right. So I think today, the differentiator from the beginning of VMware was, we still had to teach a lot of the workforce how to use the VMware tools. Now, everybody was behind. If you worked at an HP or Dell or IBM, anyone selling hardware for server consolidation, they learned quickly how to spin up a VM and then move. Today, those organizations have invested in other software-defined data center tools, whether it be our networking tools, our storage tools, and then you got the compute layer, and you can abstract that up and then have a management feature that allows you to make your hybrid cloud decisions, and look at price points across the market as well. With the same people that know how to work that environment and manage it. And I think part of the issue is when you look at server virtualization in the early days, I happened to work at another company back then, the challenge we ran into was the change-management processes at the government sites, and it took years to transform the workforce into that type of an environment. >> So an example would be maybe security, or backup, would be, I would think, would be-- >> Easy, DR. >> Yeah, DR, data protection. >> Or new missions for things, or the postal service for the Christmas mailing system instead of spending millions of dollars in spin-up infrastructure, you spin out to the cloud, then in January you come back in to your own prem database. >> Okay, but I wonder if you could help explain a little bit, what goes into getting VMC on GovCloud? We heard from Teresa there are certain things that was like, oh, Aurora's on there, it's like, oh, we've been talking about Aurora for a while, so why isn't it ready day one? What's the process to get through it? And can you give us a little visibility as to when this will launch? >> So what we announced today was our intent to enter into the FedRAMP process jointly. So the engineering teams both are working right now on the solutioning. The differentiator is we already have the VMC on AWS, as you guys know, and it's available in quite a few places, and more are spinning up and being announced, of the AWS locations. It's taking that through the security accreditation processes that the government has. And we will be pursuing FedRAMP High, as well as DoD impact levels. So we are going for the highest levels of security, 'cause then you can do everything else after that. >> Okay, but it's not a days or weeks kind of initiative. This is a months plus kind of thing. >> Months, but once you enter into the FedRAMP process which we're looking towards fall of this year, once you enter in, you actually can start going after procurements in there, because you're in process, so through that. >> I mean, that's early, you just announced it. But maybe you talked to a few customers beforehand. What's the reaction been, what's the feedback? >> So we have a list of customers that are fighting to be our sponsor. We have more customers wanting to sponsor it than we can have. >> So you do you then-- >> And I would say the driver from the market really to push this with VMware was customers. >> Yeah. >> Customers were like, VMC on AWS is great, but these customers here that we're talking to at Public they're all like, we need it on AWS GovCloud. >> It's interesting how things have changed so quickly. It was like VMware and AWS were kind of adversaries. It was a lot of fear that oh, the public cloud is going to kill, and then all of a sudden, these two companies come together, and you see this huge momentum. >> Well and I think that it's a unique value proposition that isn't offered in the marketplace combined. So all the cloud proprietors that are there today, I think they still are struggling with how you, you know, you can move workloads, but then there's going to be some you just can't get off of the VMware platform. I could go count by count, and there's some they're keeping in house. This allows you to afford the flexibility of the cloud environment, utilizing what you have there on prem. >> Well, and you're share of wallet. >> True hybrid. >> But your share of wallet makes it different as well, because you have such a huge footprint. Other cloud companies have relationships, or other companies have relationships with cloud companies, but VMware is the standard. >> For virtualization. >> Right? So that's kind of, you know, those customers talking, and Jessie always says, we're customer driven, we're not competitive driven. I mean, I think the culture-- >> I think for us as well, I'm sure you guys have talked to Pat. So even with us, I think we realize, that's a good marriage for us too, and our customers. It solves a problem that no one else has solved. That's very unique. >> Has the Dell acquisition, what has that changed, if anything, or expanded, or, culturally? I know VMware's largely sort of its own separate entity, but still, you know, Michael's around, he's very-- >> I just spent last week here at a bunch of customer meetings with Dell on executive calls with their worldwide sales leader. So I would say that the culture between Dell, legacy Dell, and VMware are very similar. EMC a little different, but the culture between those two are very, very similar. I think the good news is, and I give Michael Dell a lot of credit for this with the Dell Technologies, which is a collection of all the companies underneath that, VMware, Pivotal, Secureworks, RSA, Dell EMC, et cetera. He really has tried to put together a business model that customers get the benefit of that. So when VMware was owned by EMC, we kind of said, oh yeah, you can get EMC VMware together, but then customers had to write two contracts, customers had to deal with two different, here, Michael's allowed, in Creative Frameworks, to allow customers to get the benefits of Dell technology when they want to. They don't have to. VMware still is this independent company and we work with all the different companies. But he's created an environment that really is conducive for the teaming for customers' best interests. >> So, Lynn, what should we be watching, you know, near-term, mid-term, long-term, in terms of just, adoption, in federal, maybe partnerships, ecosystem growth? >> So I think you'll see what we're already beginning to see across the marketplace with non-GovCloud adoption, and I would say that the Public Sector team is actually driving a faster rate of adoption than other parts of our business already. >> Really, okay. >> Very interesting to see what's going on in all our joint planning meetings with Amazon and VMware, and looking at the adoption we're seeing from the government as well as state and local and education. And then I think you'll see the ecosystem. Terese and I have worked through who's the right ecosystem. What does that look like? Who are yours, what are ours? You know that's been a big emphasis for AWS. So it's very complementary. We've got distribution set up to be able to enable us across this market. Because that's important for the markets and because of they they procure, we have to do everything uniquely for them. So I think there's going to be a lot of exciting stuff, and then as soon as we can get in process, with a lot of activity in the market to respond to. >> But you also, you touched on it, but you do healthcare and education as well. >> I do. >> Very quickly, what are the sort of similarities and differences there relative to-- >> I see a lot of similarity between all three verticals. They're all unique in their own way. But because they're unique, there's benefits of it being together for VMware. So a great example would be, our commercial healthcare business may not have FedRAMP, but they have special certifications for patient records and things that require engineering to build special products a certain way to support our healthcare market. So you can take the same processes and things that we put together and applied for federal and state and local, and then apply it to the healthcare market. The other piece I would say is some of the things we're doing first, and I would compliment AWS on this, is they really did a good job of standing up the government business, and it provided benefit to the rest of their business as a result of that emphasis in government. I think the same thing applies across VMware as we start to look at the verticals that have special needs, and then because you can handle different kinds of security requirements and things that are unique, it's easier to scale that back towards the other business, as a benefit. Like financials, think about it. If it's good enough for certain customers, CIA and things like that, it's good enough for them, right? Or patient care records. Things like that. So there's actually application of all that to the other pieces, and then there's this 20% that fed's different because they're fed. SLED's different 'cause they're SLED. And then healthcare's different 'cause it's healthcare. So we see a lot of great synergy. That's relatively new. Last year we merged the healthcare team into the new organization. >> Kind of like our kids do. >> Yeah, that's right. >> Well Lynn thanks so much for coming to theCube, it was great having you. >> I enjoyed it, thanks so much. >> All right, keep it right there buddy, we'll be back with our next guest. Dave Vellante for Stu Miniman, John Furrier's here as well. You're watching theCube from AWS Public Sector Summit, and we'll be right back. (techno music)

>> Live from Washington, DC. It's theCUBE. Covering AWS Public Sector Summit 2018. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services, and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to The District everybody. We're here covering the AWS Public Sector Summit, #AWSPSSummit. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. My name is Dave Vellante and I'm here with my co-host Stuart Miniman. Gus Hunt is here, he's the Managing Director of Accenture. Great to see you. >> Great, thanks. Dave, Stu, appreciate being here. >> Thanks for coming on. Last night we were at the Accenture Event, it was hosted by Teresa Carlson and Accenture, a jam packed high-level audience. It was really, really fabulous. You couldn't make it, cause you got stuck in-- >> Weather-wise, got trapped in Atlanta. >> Unfortunately, Gus, you missed a lot, it was very good. But bring us up to speed on just sort of the state of where we're at with Accenture. You guys are heavily involved with the CIA implementation. We can talk about that a little bit. But start with Accenture, what you guys got going on in the Government. >> So Accenture Federal Services, which is the part I'm within, supports all of our federal agencies across the board. And we do enormous amount of work in the Cloud Services. In fact, Accenture itself is the largest partner of AWS in the world, right, providing cloud services directly engaged with Amazon. We have our Accenture Amazon Business Group, for example, that we leverage across the board. So we are really heavily steep, both in what it takes to help companies and our federal clients move to the cloud, but also how to take real advantage of it, how to gain the efficiencies that they need, and how to do this very securely. Because so much of I think the concerns that get expressed by people are a misunderstanding about whether or not the cloud is secure, versus how to do it securely in the cloud, if you understand the nuance difference there. >> Right, right. So, well, explain that. Let's double-click on that nuance there. A lot of people so early on it was concerns about the cloud, and then it kind of flipped and said, well, obviously the cloud's going to be more secure than what I could do as an organization. We heard what the CIA said today. They said, "On the worst day in the public cloud, "security's far better than in it is "in my client service systems." So help us unpack that a little. >> So, I'll take you back a few years. I spent 20 years in Federal Government working for CIA. I retired from there as their Chief Technology Officer. And I led basically the C2S deal that we put together in order to bring cloud services into the agency. And we did that fundamentally for four reasons. One was velocity. We had to get our speed of abilities, delivery capabilities up to match that what was happening in the private sector, in the cloud. The second was efficiencies. We had to find a way to really tap into the extraordinary efficiencies being driven by the cloud world and the cloud environment, with this continuous drop in price and storage, and computing, and things like that. How do we leverage that to our advantage and enable us now instead of to keep pace in the world when we knew that data was doing like this, and that the ability to exploit data is what the business is all about, right? >> And that was going like that at the time. >> With the cost, what we didn't want was the cost to do this, right? This is where the cloud was going to play a critical role to enable us to really keep pace with the explosion of data big data, and yet through storage and compute in the cloud, be able to do this at a fairly level cost curve, that was the objective. The third was to drive innovation, right? So we had to be able to innovate as fast as the private sector was able to innovate, to deliver new capabilities continuously all the time, and do those things. And the final reason really was about security, right? To your point, we're getting back to, the question that was originally asked was that the cloud, when we investigated the cloud, it turned out that the cloud was much more secure as a basic platform than almost anything that anybody could deliver inside their own data center across the board. And if you leverage the cloud in a particular way, security, it becomes a much more secure environment for people to operate in and do work in, then you could possibly achieve inside of your own data centers, your own data center environments. >> Gus, I'm hearing things like speed, innovation and security. I'm thinking, can you tell us a little bit about developers inside the agency? Do they have a DevOps initiative, as part of achieving those goals? >> Absolutely. So we actually got started doing Agile Development back in 2005. And what happened was, curiously enough with Agile development using scrum techniques is what we applied. We were able to build software capabilities much faster than we could actually get them hosted. So we had an impedance mismatch, a velocity mismatch, between the ability to build capabilities with Agile Development and to go. Now, when we got started in the cloud world here, DevOps was a relatively new term, but now of course DevOps just permeates everything that gets done. Accenture Federal Services, we teach DevOps for the intelligence community across the board, we teach Agile Development, we're heavily engaged. But our big move now is into DevSecOps, right? So the new impedance mismatch is the fact that I can deliver and build software very quickly. I can host it very quickly in the cloud, but my problem is that my security people who have to credit and approve the ability to run these things, are not working in sync very well with what happens in the space there. It's not that they're not great people, it's just that the methodologies that have been applied, now are causing a delay. So this is where DevSecOps comes into play and this is our big push in Accenture Federal Services. all of our clients in the cloud is to adopt DevSecOps so that we can have security tied directly into the entire development cycle all the way through, so that there are no surprises, right? We know exactly what the status is all along, and if you know anything about cyber security, in particular, both things, security on at the end is the worst possible thing you can do. And fixing cyber security holes at the end is 30 times more expensive than having just done it up front in the beginning across the board. So we are heavily invested in driving both Agile Development and DevSecOps now, in support of our cloud customers. >> Can you talk, Gus, about just as an observer, you're obviously deep into federal, but just the delta between commercial and federal? Certainly within federal you see pockets of highly advanced, whether it's security or analytics, et cetera, but across the board the Federal Government systems are obviously a lot of money is spent on maintenance, a lot of time and effort. Is Federal still learning, the public sector still learning from the commercial sector? Is it flipping? What's your take on that? >> So it's interesting. So when I retired and went out to work, from the public sector into the private sector, there's this really interesting point of view that's out there. When I was in the Federal Government, we really thought that the private sector was way ahead of us. And so we spent lot of time working with the financial service people who were brilliant, and working with Amazon and all of the people and all of the things that they were doing, because they were brilliant. So it was a really interesting engagement. But when I got to the other side, it's looked at the other way, right? They want to know what's going on because, particularly from a cyber-security optic, from a security optic, the Federal Government is viewed in many ways and particularly the intelligence community itself, is viewed as being far ahead of what goes on in the rest of the world. And in terms of analytics and things, the federal government has terrific capabilities, and has built terrific systems to do these things. So it's an interesting optic. Each one looking at the other from the outside in, is observing things and the reality is, is that like anything in life, you have this distribution. There are those that are terrific on one end of the spectrum and those that are nascent on the other end of the spectrum. This is true in the public sector, it's true in the private sector across the board. And it's just getting people together. I think the most important thing is to find a way to get us together so we share information really effectively, so that we understand what's going on, we can educate and we can all elevate ourselves up the chain, to deliver better capabilities, both for our clients and our customers, and to the citizens of our country. >> Yeah, and that public private partnership really isn't formalized. Frankly, it's companies like Accenture that are the glue there, don't you think? >> Yes, exactly. I think that that's a key point. It's companies like Accenture, companies like Amazon, who have engagements across the spectrum and on a global basis, that are able to see and experience things that most companies can't do 'cause they don't have that global perspective. One of the biggest issues we see is that most companies view the world through their narrow optic of their local sets of problems and issues, and this is what catches up with them, particularly in the cyber realm, for example. Which is they're looking at the world through the their own little narrow soda straw. And the global view of an AWS and the global view of an Accenture can be brought to bear to help us with our federal clients, for example, to see the issues more broadly and engage more effectively in a public private sector discourse. >> So there are threats everywhere, obviously. Increasingly people are talking about the weaponization of social media. Obviously, there's critical infrastructure, which we've talked about for years. Where do you see the priorities going? Where is the focus, the spending? Is it on response? Is it on keeping the bad guys out? What do you sense? >> I would say that most of the spending today is focused on trying to keep bad guys out. And that model, while critically important, has got to change, right? Because as you notice while important to do and absolutely essential, it has been wholly insufficient in actually dealing with the problem. We have to move ourselves into a completely different posture in the world today. We have to adopt very much proactive capabilities, hunt for things, do critical reviews and pen testing, discover your vulnerabilities before the adversary does. Adopt cloud services because they can change the security game. If we write cloud native code and distribute it in multiple availability zones and fully leverage elasticity and software to find networking, we can turn it into a shell game where the adversary has to find me, not the other way around. We can become what I call the polymorphic attack surface, as opposed to us having to do with polymorphic viruses, and things like that, that we have to find that are constantly trying to hide themselves from us. And so, it's adopting those things that then drive us to a state of resilience, which have to get to. Resilience is the ability to have an event and keep on operating. As opposed to what happens today, where you have an event and everything gets shut down, and all hands on deck and panic ensues. >> So, Gus, we've talked a little bit about some of the constraints and why some people might be concerned. Wondering if we could talk about some of the opportunities. What kind of innovation are you seeing from partners and customers that you're working with, that they're driving when they do adopt cloud? >> Innovation just across the board, or? >> Yeah, any cool things they're doing, there's edge technologies, you got IOT. >> I would say that the big drivers of innovation, of course, are the ones that everybody else talks about. Which is really what's happening in the machine learning and AI space. And that is really critical because those are the things that will enable us to both deal and act with issues, particularly in my realm, the cyber realm at machine speed across the board, and stop things before they can actually become problematic. But it's also going to be the mechanism by which we can enable the human population across the board to better themselves. So you take that and you combine it with the Internet of Things, which is growing explosively across the board, to begin to automate and drive efficiencies and enable remote health care and all those things like that. We're really at the cusp, I believe, of a true renaissance, if you will, of enabling society in ways that we can't possibly begin to imagine, just looking at it from where we are today. >> A lot of talk, you know, about machine intelligence. I didn't say AI, so I don't have to do a shot. Where do you see that fitting in, generally, and then maybe specifically in cyber? And the second part of that question is you're seeing this DevOps and SecOps worlds coming together? >> Yeah, right. So we talked previously about DevSecOps. Just to go back to that real quickly. That's an absolute essential. We have to get the business, the beauty of Agile Development and DevOps was it got the business and the infrastructure people who had to run things successfully all the time, and the developers who needed to do things very quickly, all at the table to engage and ensuring that they could do that. The gap in there was the security people. So with DevSecOps, you've got the security people brought in right up front across the board there. That move into DevSecOps is more than just essential, it's a must-do, I believe, for all organizations here as they move themselves into the future, and to find a way to adopt it. How did you phrase it? You didn't use the word AI, you said? >> Machine intelligence. >> Machine intelligence directive. I think that those capabilities are maturing very, very rapidly, and I think that what you're going to see is a rapid shift in two ways. One is that while machine intelligence is great, the machine is only as smart as the data and the information that are fed to it, right? If you feed a machine a bunch of information that's highly biased, you're going to get highly biased information out. So there's two things you have to have. One, the intelligence is going to grow inside the machines, but two, there's going to be and must be a parallel thread where you have to have some form of social consciousness and social awareness that ensures that the machines themselves don't develop unconscious biases that are then leveraged, and used to the disadvantage of citizens in society, or other people and things like that. And so machine intelligence is going to grow, but that same ability is emerging, and in fact it's something we talk about at Accenture and have written papers on, about the fact that we have to have this social conscience or social awareness around Artificial Intelligence, the machine learning, to ensure that it is most effectively used to the benefit of the citizens of the country. >> Right, well, in this notion of polymorphic attack surface, presumably it just can't be humans moving stuff around. >> No, that's where machinery and automation come into play, they have to act at machine speed. It's the only thing that can act at machine speed. Humans will always be involved. Okay, you're never going to get away from the human factor. What these things do is they do the heavy lifting, and then enable humans to focus on what their brains are really, really good at, which is making hard decisions about what's actually going on, and what they actually need to do in many cases. We can automate some things, but a lot of it is still going to require really smart people to engage. >> So when you look back at your original four objectives with respect to the cloud velocity, efficiencies, trying to keep the costs where they are or lower them, driving innovation and security, how would you grade, maybe the agency, the industry, whatever you feel comfortable attaching? >> Great question. I'm going to avoid giving you a specific answer like this. >> Fair enough. >> Again there's a spectrum of engagement, across the board. Some agencies are doing really well and have been leaders in the space, and I would argue that my old agency is one of those, really. There are others that are also leaders in the space and are engaging and adopting cloud services, they're pushing very heavily down these pathways we talked about. They're embracing these technologies because they realize what they can do. And then there are others that are lagging behind, but they are lagging behind for any number of several reasons that are out there. So first and foremost is the fact that there's a massive legacy set of workloads and capabilities out there, and it's very hard to figure out what are those that I want to engage in to move to the cloud and do things. So IT modernization dollars were put into play by the federal government in order to help federal agencies do this, modernize their IT with the goal of moving themselves to the cloud, so that they could drive the efficiencies and adopt the things that are going to be there. There's also the concerns we mentioned about security. There's too much fear, uncertainty and doubt, and I think misunderstanding about the cloud, and that was great. I missed the talk today from my old agency, but I'm glad to hear them talk about the fact that I've said this for the longest time, the basic cloud is much more secure than almost everything new. And if I apply and build and develop cloud native capabilities, I can actually leverage the cloud to my advantage to dramatically change the game and deliver cyber resilience into my customers set. So this is the messaging that we want to be able to do. The only way that people are going to do this in the end, because of this big backlog of capabilities, is they have to remember that they got into where their current state is one application, one system at a time. And the only way they're going to get out of it is one application, one system at a time. They just have to begin to think about what are the ones that matter and how they want to go about that. >> No quick fixes there, but a lot of hard work and thoughtfulness. Gus, thanks so much for coming to theCUBE. Really great to have you, appreciate you sharing your insight and your knowledge. >> Delighted, Dave. >> Pleasure. >> Stu, thanks so much. >> Okay, keep it right there everybody. Stu and I will be back, John Furrier is here as well with our next guest. We're live at the AWS Public Sector Summit. You're watching theCUBE. >> Thanks, guys.

>> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCube covering AWS re:Invent 2017 presented by AWS, Intel, and our ecosystem of partners. (upbeat music) >> Okay, welcome back everyone. We're here live in Las Vegas. This is theCube's exclusive coverage of Amazon Web Services re:Invent 2017, our fifth year covering AWS re:Invent. I'm John Furrier the founder of SiliconANGLE Media with my co-host Stu Miniman. I'm so excited 45,000 people and boy, I remember when it was just a small, little, fast-growing company. We're here with Teresa Carlson who's been here with us the whole way. She's a Senior Vice President of Public Sector. Teresa, welcome to theCube, good to see you. >> I'm always glad to be here on theCube. >> So, you've been running public sector, you've been really, I've gotta say, I gave a tweet, not to sound that I'm fawning over you right now, but you've really grown the business in a significant way. As Andy was saying, a meaningful way. Take us through, because it's almost mind-blowing. We have already had a few guests on theCube. I went to your breakfast. You are changing the game, but not without scar tissue. You've done a lot of hard work to get there, so, one, congratulations, but give us a state-of-the-union right now for public sector, because you're winning, you're doing great, but it wasn't easy. >> No, it's not been easy, but it's been a lot of fun. I mean, it's been a lot of fun, in fact, as you said, this is our sixth year of doing re:Invent and yesterday or two days ago, we had a public sector breakfast and it was so full, we got shut down by the fire marshal. So that is when you know you've got customers and partners showing up, because they want to be there. We have grown significantly and that has been through the work of both working with customers and partners on security, compliance, policy, acquisition vehicles, to just make sure that we have the right balance of everything needed to really drive and grow the business in the right way. As I've talked about we didn't leave any stone unturned. We had to really go through all the hard processes to do this right and I think it really has paid off because you never want to take short-cuts. You wanna make sure you're doing the right thing in order for customers to have better technology, for us to help drive good government, good education. >> I gotta say, one of the big trends we're seeing here on siliconANGLE, theCube, and Wikibon is the public-private Partnerships are accelerating. You're seeing public sector help on security to the private sector, private sector helping government move faster and so you're seeing a balance and an equilibrium coming together, but also old guard companies sometimes have a federal division or a separate DNA culture. You guys don't, you have one culture at Amazon, but the striking thing for me, is that you're now enabling companies to get into public sector that couldn't before. So I wanted to ask you specifically, is it like that now, we're you're starting to see new people come in with solutions because you guys have done that heavy lifting where before they'd have to wait in line, get certified, are we seeing new solutions, are you enabling that, is that actually happening? >> It absolutely is happening and we never forget our roots of start-ups here at AWS, because they are really a huge reason why we exist and for public sector, I saw a change in my previous life I never had venture capitalists or private equity firms come and say we want our companies in government. We are creating new education tech companies, which was really not even heard of. >> It's a growth strategy for them. >> It's a huge growth strategy, so venture capitalist and private equity like Andreessen Horowitz, Madrona, C5, Bridgewater, we see tons and they come to us saying, we have this portfolio, can you help us talk to them about how they get into government? As a result of that, we do sales and marketing, we work with them on FedRAMP I-E slash security compliance. We ensure that they understand the elements and components of how they work in government and by the way, government loves that we are bringing in innovative new technologies. We can also do that through the marketplace, the AWS marketplace, which allows them to move faster, be more agile, and start getting that business. >> Teresa, I'm wondering if you could share a little more. You talk about innovation, we've been lovin' for years, I love when I talk about regional governments, education, you get non-profits under your umbrella, where it used to be, I didn't have the budget, I can't move fast. Now, we're seeing some great innovation from the private side as well as well as some of the public-private interactions. >> Definitely, in fact, I was in California about a month ago where we announced an innovation center with California Polytechnic University, CalPoly and the president there, Jeff Armstrong, it is amazing, they literally had been looking at what AWS was doing and they took the pillars that they'd been seeing us talk about for public sector and they created an innovation center to work on these opportunities and challenges and just as in public safety, health, agri, sex trafficking and child exploitation, through seeing what Thorn was doing in the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children. >> How is this leveling the playing field? Because everyone, citizens at least in the United States, I'm sure it's happening in other markets as well, they want the government to move faster. And you guys are like the freight train that's out of control speed-wise, just more and more services. How does the government keep up? Because I would imagine that if I am a government official or I'm the public sector, oh my God, I can't handle Amazon. I can't ride that beast, it's too strong. I mean do they say that, is that the wrong vibe, or are they more hey I want you to do, is it more your flywheel, do they have to get involved? What's the relation, what's the sentiment of the government? >> Well, they wanna move fast. In fact, in the U.S. government, the White House does have an entire initiative now on modernization. You're seeing countries like the U.K government go cloud native. You saw the country of Bahrain which is going all-in in the cloud and they've already established new policies and a cloud-first policy of moving. But I would tell you, if you look at groups like the intelligence community in the U.S. government, we just announced our secret region and that allows them to have top-secret capabilities, secret, unclassified in our GovCloud, so they have capabilities across the entire spectrum of workloads and what they've always said to us and our other customers is can we build cloud tools, can we build a cloud? Yes, but can we innovate at the rate and speed you're innovating? No, because we provide them innovation ahead of their demand. >> Yeah, Teresa, I remember when GovCloud launched and it was, like, wow, this is like AWS isn't just like a monolithic service around the globe and everything. It seems like secret region goes along that line. How does the dynamic between AWS as a whole and what you're doing in your organization, how do you work through that and kinda balance, I want services around the globe, yet meet the needs of your clients. >> On the GovCloud region, that was our first entre into doing something unique for government. That region has grown 185% every year since 2011 and we just announced a second region on the east coast for GovCloud, U.S. GovCloud. The interaction with our services team is amazing. Charlie Bell who runs all of our services, we have a tight relationship, we talk to our government customers in these regions, understand their priorities, then we roll them out and it's really that simple. They get the exact same thing in their classified regions as we give our other customers, it's just their network. >> Well, you got the date set, I'm looking at my picture here I took, June 20th and 21st, save the date, AWS Public Sector Summit, #AWSPSSummit as it's called on Twitter hashtag. Every year, you started out in a little conference room, in a ballroom, bigger hotel, now the convention center. Massive growth. >> And theCube was there this year, which I was happy. >> That makes it legitimate, and theCube's there, we'll be there this year, >> Good, yes. >> But of course, this is the growth. V.C.s, private equity, this is a growth market, this is not a unique, siloed market anymore. You guys have leveled the silos within Amazon, I mean you never had silos, but you are now agile to come to the government. What's next for you? You've done a great job, you're now cruising altitude, what's your growth strategy for Public Sector Summit, how are you going to take it to the next level? >> Well, even though we have grown a lot, thank you to our customers and partners, we really are just scratching the surface. It is day one still for us. Our customers are really just still getting going on a lot of mission critical workloads. They're moving in things they really hadn't thought about. They're starting to do things like higher more developers in government, so they can take advantage of the tools used, a lot you saw yesterday. But additionally, what we're seeing is we are spending a lot of time going into countries around the world, helping countries set a strategy for digital transformation. New jobs growth, new companies, economic development, how do they train and educate for a cloud-based workforce, we call it and that's really fun to go in and tell governments, look you really have to prepare your country for a digital transformation and again if you look at groups like Bahrain, what the U.K have done, they are doing that and they are making a massive transformation around this. >> Final question for you, what are you most proud of looking back since you joined AWS seven years ago. I think it was seven years ago you started? >> Yep, seven years ago this month. >> Congratulations, so what are you most proud of and then two, what do you think about the most as you execute day-to-day in growing the business? >> Well, I would say the fact that I have had an amazing brand to work with out of the gate Amazon was such a great brand, and the fact that, again, based on think big, Andy Jassy's leadership, really he and I having a conversation together saying, we can change the world and make it a better place and you've heard me say a lot in my openings, we have two themes that we talk about in public sector, which is paving the way for disruptive innovation and making the world a better place. And if I look back, it's really the things that we're helping to do this that we are driving new policies, companies are seeing results, agencies, and we are making the world a better place. I would say that's humbling and amazing and we're just getting going. >> As a chief of public sector, you're like, you've seen it grow and you're running it every day and you have a great team, do you ever have a pinch me moment once in a while? Kind of say, wow, what have you done? >> Well, I think the pinch me moments are when I hear the customers and partners tell me how fast they're moving and the results they have. We always have a goal of really working with our mission partners and we've hired now more than 17,000 veterans at Amazon and growing. It's things like that that we can do to really help that transformation and not just talk the talk, but walk the walk as a company. I would say for where we wanna go and what I sort of worry about our growth, I guess I worry and stay up a little late at night to make sure that we keep our hiring bar high, that we really maintain our focus on customer obsession, >> John: Security. >> Security is always on my mind. >> Do you sleep at all it must keep you up late a lot. >> No, I don't really, no. But the last thing I would say is just really thinking through ensuring that we're continually pushing hard, that we have a little bit of sharp elbows, going in we're trying to change policy, we don't give up on the things that really matter for doing this massive transformation, for countries, for state and local agencies, for feds, for educational institutions around cloud transformation. >> I really respect your results and I love your hard-charging style. It's fantastic, your success obviously speaks for itself. We'll see you at the Summit in June. This is theCube, Teresa Carlson The Chief of the Public Sector business, she's the Vice President of Public Sector. I'm John Furrier, Stu Miniman. More live coverage here at AWS re:Invent after this short break. (upbeat music)