(lively music) >> Good afternoon and welcome back to beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada, where we're here live from the show floor, all four days of AWS re:Invent. I'm Savannah Peterson, joined with my co-host Dave Vellante. Dave, how you doing? >> Good. Beautiful and chilly Las Vegas. Can't wait to get back to New England where it's warm. >> Balmy, New England this time of year in December. Wow, Dave, that's a bold statement. I am super excited about the conversation that we're going to be having next. And, you know, I'm not even going to tee it up. I just want to bring Dilip on. Dilip, thank you so much for being here. How you doing? >> Savannah, Dave, thank you so much. >> Hey, Dilip. >> Excited to be here. >> It's joy to have you. So, you have been working at Amazon for about 20 years. >> Almost. Almost. >> Yes. >> Feels like 20, 19 1/2. >> Which is very exciting. You've had a lot of roles. I'm going to touch on some of them, but you just came over to AWS from the physical retail side. Talk to me about that. >> Yup, so I've been to Amazon for 19 1/2 years. Done pricing, supply chain. I was Jeff Bezos technical advisor for a couple years. >> Casual name drop. >> Casual name drop. >> Savannah: But a couple people here for that name before. >> Humble brag, hashtag. And then I, for the last several years, I was leading our physical retail initiatives. We just walk out Amazon One, bringing convenience to physical spaces. And then in August, with like as those things were getting a lot of traction and we were selling to third parties, we felt that it would be better suited in AWS. And, but along with that, there was also another trend that's been brewing, which is, you know, companies have loved building on AWS. They love the infrastructure services, but increasingly, they're also asking us to build applications that are higher up in the stack. Solving key, turnkey business problems. Just walk out Amazon One or examples of that, Amazon Connect. We just recently announced supply chain, so now there's a bevy interesting services all coming together, higher up in the stack for customers. So it's an exciting time. >> It was interesting that you're able to, you know, transfer from that retail. I mean, normally, in historically, if you're within an industry, retail, manufacturing, automotive whatever. You were kind as locked in a little bit. >> Dilip: Siloed a little bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. >> Because they had their own, your own value chain. And I guess, data has changed that maybe, that you can traverse now. >> Yeah, if you think about the things that we did, even when we were in retail, the tenants was less about the industries and more about how can we bring convenience to physical spaces? The fact that you don't like to wait in line is no more like likely, you know, five years from now than it is today. So, it's a very durable tenant, but it's equally applicable whether you're in a grocery store, a convenience store, a stadium, an airport. So it actually transcends any, and like supply chain, think of supply chain. Supply chain isn't, you know, targeted to any one particular industry. It has broad applicability. So these things are very, you know, horizontally applicable. >> Anything that makes my life easier, I'm down. >> Savannah: We're all here for the easy button. We've been talking about it a bit this week. I'm in. And the retail store, I mean, I'm in San Francisco. I've had the experience of going through. Very interesting and seamless journey, honestly. It's very exciting. So tell us a little bit more about the applications group at AWS. >> Yup. So as I said, you know, we are, the applications group is a combination of several services. You know, we have communication developer services, which is the ability to add simple email service or video and embed video, voice chat using a chime SDK. In a higher up in the stack, we are taking care of things that IT administrators have to deal with where you can provision an entire desktop with the workspaces or provide a femoral access to it. And then as you go up even higher up in the stack, you have productivity applications like AWS Wicker, which we just did GA, you know, last week in AWS Clean Rooms which we announced as a service in preview. And then you have, you know, Connect, which is our cloud contact center, AWS supply chain. Just walk out Amazon One, it just feels like we're getting started. >> Just a couple things going on. >> So, clean rooms. Part of the governance play, part of data sharing. Can you explain, you know, we were talking offline, but I remember back in the disk drive days. We were in a clean room, they'd show you the clean room, you couldn't go near it unless you had a hazmat suit on. So now you're applying that to data. Explain that concept. >> Yeah, so the companies across, you know, financial services or healthcare, advertising, they all want to be able to combine and pull together data`sets with their partners in order to get these collaborative insights. The problem is either the data's fragmented, it's siloed or you have, you know, data governance issues that's preventing them from sharing. And the key requirement is that they want to be able to share this data without exposing any of the underlying data. Clean rooms are always emerged as a solution to that, but the problem with that is that they're hard to maintain. They're expensive. You have to write complex privacy queries. And if you make a mistake, you risk exposing the same data that you've been, you know, studiously trying to protect. >> Trying to protect. >> You know, take advertising as an industry, as an example. You know, advertisers care about, is my ad effective? But it turns out that if you're an advertiser and let's say you're a Nike or some other advertiser and your pop, you know, you place an ad on the website. Well, you want to stop showing the ad to people who have already purchased the product. However, people who purchased the product,- >> Savannah: It happens all the time. >> that purchasing data is not accessible to them easily. But if you could combine those insights, you know, the publishers benefit, advertisers benefits. So AWS Clean Rooms is that service that allows you very easily to be able to collaborate with a group of folks and then be able to gain these collaborative insights. >> And the consumers benefit. I mean, how many times you bought, you search it. >> It happens all the time. >> They know. And like, I just bought that guys, you know? >> Yeah, no, exactly. >> Four weeks. >> And I'm like, you don't need to serve me that, you know? And we understand the marketing backend. And it's just a waste of money and energy and resources. I mean, we're talking about sustainability as well. I don't think supply chain has ever had a hotter moment than it's had the last two and a half years. Tell me more about the announcement. >> Yup, so super excited about this. As you know, as you said, supply chains have always been very critical and very core for companies. The pandemic exacerbated it. So, ours way of sort of thinking about supply chains is to say that, you know, companies have taken, over the years many, like dozens, like millions and millions of dollars of investment in building their own supply chains. But the problem with supply chains is that the reason that they're not as functional as they could be is because of the lack of visibility. Because they're strung together very many disparate systems, that lack of visibility affects agility. And so, our approach in it was to say that, well, if we could have folks use their existing supply chain what can we do to improve the investment on the ROI of what they're getting? By creating a layer on top of it, that provides them that insights, connects all of these disparate data and then provides them insights to say, well, you know, here's where you overstock, here's where you under stock. You know, this is the, you know, the carbon emission impact of being able to transfer something. So like rather without requiring people to re-platform, what's the way that we can add value in it? And then also build upon Amazon's, you know, years of supply chain experience, to be able to build these predictive analytics for customers. >> So, that's a good, I like that you started with the why. >> Yes. >> Right now, what is it? It's an abstraction layer and then you're connecting into different data points. >> Yes, that's correct. >> Injecting ML. >> Feel like you can pick in, like if you think about supply chain, you can have warehouse management systems, order management systems. It could be in disparate things. We use ML to be able to bring all of this disparate data in and create our unified data lake. Once you have that unified data lake, you can then run an insights layer on top of it to be able to say, so that as the data changes, supply chain is not a static thing. Data's constantly changing. As the data's changing, the data lake now reflects the most up-to-date information. You can have alerts and insights set up on it to say that, what are the kinds of things that you're interested in? And then more importantly, supply chain and agility is about communication. In order to be able to make certain things happen, you need to be able to communicate, you need to make sure that everyone's on the same page. And we allow for a lot of the communication and collaboration tools to be built within this platform so that you're not necessarily leaving to go and toggle from one place to the other to solve your problems. >> And in the pie chart of how people spend their time, they're spending a lot less time communicating and being proactive. >> That's correct. >> And getting ahead of the curve. They're spending more time trying to figure out actually what's going on. >> Yes. >> And that's the problem that you're going to solve. >> Well, and it ensures that the customer at the other end of that supply chain experience is going to have their expectations managed in terms of when their good might get there or whatever's going to happen. >> Exactly. >> I feel like that expectation management has been such a big part of it. Okay, I just have to ask because I'm very curious. What was it like advising Jeff? >> Quite possibly the best job that I've ever had. You know, he's a fascinating individual. >> Did he pay you to say that? >> Nope. But I would've, like, I would've done it for like, it's remarkable seeing how he thinks and his approach to problem solving. It is, you know, you could be really tactical and go very deep. You could be extremely strategic. And to be able to sort of move effortlessly between those two is a unique skill. I learned a lot. >> Yeah, absolutely. So what made you want to evolve your career at Amazon after that? 'Cause I see on your LinkedIn, you say, it was the best job you ever had. With curiosity? >> Yeah, so one of the things, so the role is designed for you to be able to transition to something new. >> Savannah: Oh, cool. >> So after I finished that role, we were just getting into our foray with physical stores. And the idea between physical stores is that, you and I as consumers, we all have a lot of choices for physical stores. You know, there's a lot of options, there's a lot of formats. And so the last thing we wanted to do is come up with another me too offering. So, our approach was that what can we do to improve convenience in physical stores? That's what resulted in just walk out to Amazon Go. That's what resulted in Amazon One, which is another in a fast, convenient, contactless way to pay using the power of your palm. And now, what started in Amazon retail is now expanded to several third parties in, you know, stadiums, convention centers, airports. >> Airport, I just had, was in the Houston airport and got to do a humanless checkout. >> Dilip: Exactly. >> And actually in Honolulu a couple weeks ago as well too. Yeah, so we're going to see more and more of this. >> Yes. >> So what Amazon, I think has over a million employees. A lot of those are warehouse employees. But what advice would you give to somebody who's somewhere inside of Amazon, maybe they're on AWS, maybe they're Amazon. What advice would you give somebody inside that's maybe, you know, hey, I've been at this job for five, six years, three, four years, whatever it is. I want to do something else. And there's so much opportunity inside Amazon, right? What would you advise them? >> My single advice, which is actually transferable and I use it for myself is choose something that makes you a little uncomfortable. >> Dave: Get out of your comfort zone. >> It's like, you got to do that. It's like, it's not the easiest thing to hear, but it's also the most satisfying. Because almost every single time that I've done it for myself, it's resulted in like, you don't really know what the answer is. You don't really know exactly where you're going to end up, but the process and the journey through it, if you experience a little bit of discomfort constantly, it makes you non complacent. It makes you sort of not take the job, sort of in a stride. You have to be on it to do it. So that's the advice that I would give anyone. >> Yeah, that's good. So something that's maybe adjacent and maybe not completely foreign to you, but also something that, you know, you got to go dig a little bit and learn. >> You're planning a career change over here, Dave? >> No, I know a lot of people in Amazon are like, hey, I'm trying to figure out what I want to do next. I mean, I love it here. I live by the LPS, you know, but, and there's so much to choose from. >> It is, you know, when I joined in 2003, there were so many things that we were sort of doing today. None of those existed. It's a fascinating company. And the evolution, you could be in 20 different places and the breadth of the kinds of things that, you know, the Amazon experience provides is timeless. It's fascinating. >> And, you know, you look at a company like Amazon, and, you know, it's so amazing. You look at this ecosystem. I've been around- >> Even a show floor. >> I've been around a lot of time. And the show floor says it all. But I've seen a lot of, you know, waves. And each subsequent wave, you know, we always talk about how many companies were in the Fortune 1000 and aren't anymore. And, but the leaders, you know, survive and they thrive. And I think it's fascinating to try to better understand the culture that enables that. You know, you look at a company like Microsoft that was irrelevant and then came back. You know, even IBM was on death store for a while and they come back and so they. And so, but Amazon just feels, you know, at the moment you feel like, "Oh wow, nothing can stop this machine." 'Cause everybody's trying to disrupt Amazon and then, you know, only the paranoid survive, all that stuff. But it's not like, past is not prologue, all right? So that's why I asked these questions. And you just said that a lot of the services today that although the ideas didn't even exist, I mean, walkout. I mean, that's just amazing. >> I think one of the things that Amazon does really well culturally is that they create the single threaded leadership. They give people focus. If you have to get something done, you have to give people focus. You can't distract them with like seven different things and then say that, oh, by the way, your eighth job is to innovate. It just doesn't work that way. It's like it's hard. Like it can be- >> And where were the energy come from that? >> Exactly. And so giving people that single threaded focus is super important. >> Frank Slootman, the CEO of Snowflake, has a great quote. He wrote on his book. He said, "If you got 14 priorities, you got none." And he asks,- >> Well said. >> he challenges people. If you had to give up everything and do only one thing for the next 365 days, what would that be? It's a really hard question to answer. >> I feel like as we're around New Year's resolution times. I mean when we thinking about that, maybe we can all share our one thing. So, Dilip, you've been with the the applications team for five months. What's coming up next? >> Well, as I said, you know, it feels like it's still day one for applications. If you think about the things, the news that we introduced and the several services that we introduced, it has applicability across a variety of horizontal industries. But then we're also feeling that there's considerable vertical applications that can be built for specific things. Like, it could be in advertising, it could be in financial services, it could be in manufacturing. The opportunities are endless. I think the notion of people wanting applications higher up in the stack and a little more turnkey solutions is also, it's not new for us, but it's also new and creative too. You know, AWS has traditionally been doing. >> So again, this relates to what we were sort of talking about before. And maybe, this came from Jazzy or maybe it came from Bezos. But you hear a lot, it's okay to be misunderstood or if we were misunderstood for a long time. So when people hear up the stack, they think, when you think about apps, you know, in the last 10 years it was taking on-prem and bringing it into the cloud. Okay, you saw that with CREM, email, CRM, service management, you know, data warehouses, et cetera. Amazon is thinking about this in a different way. It's like you're looking at the world saying, okay, how can we improve whatever? Workflows, people's lives, doing something that's not been done before? And that seems to be the kind of applications that you guys are thinking about building. >> Yeah. >> And that's unique. It's not just, okay, we're going to take something on-prem put it in the cloud. Been there, done that. That S-curve is sort of flattening now. But there's a new S-curve which is completely new workflows and innovations and processes that we really haven't thought about yet. Or you're thinking about, I presume. >> Yeah. Having said that, I'd also like to sort of remind folks that when you consider the, you know, the entire spend, the portion of workloads that are running in the cloud is a teeny tiny fraction. It's like less than 5%, like 4% or something like that. So it's a very, there's still plenty of things that can sort of move to the cloud. But you're right that there is another trend of where in the stack and the types of applications that you can provide as well. >> Yeah, new innovation that haven't well thought of yet. >> So, Dilip, we have a new tradition here on theCUBE at re:Invent. Where we're looking for your 30 minute Instagram reel, your hot take, biggest key theme, either for you, your team, or just general vibe from the show. >> General vibe from the show. Well, 19 1/2 years at Amazon, this is actually my first re:Invent, believe it or not. This is my, as a AWS employee now, as re:Invent with like launching services. So that's the first. I've been to re:Invent before, but as an attendee rather than as a person who's, you know, a contributing number of the workforce. >> Working actually? >> If you will. >> Actually doing your job. >> And so I'm just amazed at the energy and the breadth. And the, you know, from the partners to the customers to the diversity of people who are coming here from everywhere. I had meetings from people in New Zealand. Like, you know, the UK, like customers are coming at us from like very many different places. And it's fascinating for me to see. It's new for me as well given, you know, some of my past experience. But this is a, it's been a blast. >> People are pumped. >> People are pumped. >> They can't believe the booth traffic. Not only that quality. >> Right. All of our guests have talked about that. >> Like, yeah, you know, we're going to throw half of these leads away, but they're saying no, I'm having like really substantive conversations with business people. This is, I think, my 10th re:Invent. And the first one was mostly developers. And I'm like, what are you talking about? And, you know, so. Now it's a lot more business people, a lot of developers too. >> Yeah. >> It's just. >> The community really makes it. Dilip, thank you so much for joining us today on theCube. >> Thank you for having me. >> You're fantastic. I could ask you a million questions. Be sure and tell Jeff that we said hi. >> Will do. >> Savannah: Next time you guys are hanging out. And thank all of you. >> You want to go into space? >> Yeah. Yes, yes, absolutely. I'm perhaps the most space obsessed on the show. And with that, we will continue our out of this world coverage shortly from fabulous Las Vegas where we are at AWS re:Invent. It is day four with Dave Vellante. I'm Savannah Peterson and you're watching theCUBE, the leader in high tech coverage. (lively music)

>>Hey everyone. Welcome back to Las Vegas. The cube is live at the Venetian Expo Center for AWS Reinvent 2022. There are thousands and thousands and thousands of people here joining myself, Lisa Martin at Dave Valante. David, it's great to see the energy of day one alone. People are back, they're ready to be back. They're ready to hear from AWS and what it's gonna announce to. >>Yeah, all through the pandemic. Of course, we've talked about digital transformation, but the conversation is evolving beyond that to business transformation now, deeper integration of the cloud to really transform fundamental business operations and And that's a new era. >>It is a new era. It's exciting. We've got a couple of guests that we're gonna unpack that with. Anan. Beji joins us, the President Digital Business Services at HCL Tech and Prar, SVP and Global head of AWS business unit. Also from HCL Tech. Guys, welcome. Thank >>You. Thank you, >>Thank you. >>Let's talk about some of the latest trends anon. We'll start with you. What are some of the latest trends in digitalization, especially as it relates to cloud adoption? What are you hearing out in the marketplace? >>Yeah, I think you said it right. The post pandemic, every industry, every enterprise and every industry realize that for resilience, for their ability to change and adapt change and their ability to increase, you know, velocity of change so that they can move fast and keep up the expectations of their consumers, their partners, their employees, they need to have composability at the core and resilience at the core. And so, digital transformation became all about the ability to change, an ability to pivot faster. Now, it's easier said than done, right? Larger enterprises, especially as you move into complex regulated industries, you know, oil and gas, manufacturing, life sciences, healthcare, utilities, these are industries that are not easy to change. They're not adaptable to change, and yet they had to really become more adaptable. And they saw cloud as an enabler to, to all of that, right? So they started looking at every area of their business, business processes that make up their value chains and really look at how can they increase the adaptability and the ability to change these value chains so that they can engage with their customers better, their partners, better their employees better, and also build some of the composability. >>And what might mean that is that just kind of like Lego blocks, they don't have to make changes that are sweeping and big that are difficult to make, but make them in parts so that they can make them again and again. So velocity of change becomes important. Clouds become an enabler to all of this. And so if I look at the last four years, every industry, whether regulated or not b2c, B2B to C, B2B is adopting cloud for digital acceleration. >>I'm curious to what you're seeing on the front lines, given the macro headwinds. You mentioned business resilience and during the pandemic, it was a lot of CIOs told us, wow, we were, we were kind of focused on disaster recovery, but our business wasn't resilient. We were really optimizing for efficiency. And then they started to okay, build in that business resilience. But now you got the economic headwinds. Yes. People are tapping their brakes a little bit. There's some uncertainty, a longer sales cycle, even the cloud's not immune. Yeah. Even though it's still growing at 30% plus per year. What are you guys seeing in the field with the AWS partnership? How are customers, you know, dealing with some of those more strategic transformation projects? Yeah, >>Yeah. So you know, first off, one thing that's changed and is different is every industry realizes that there is no choice. They don't have a choice to not be resilient. They don't have a choice to not be adaptable. The pandemic has taught them that the markets and the macros are increasingly changing supply chains. It's changing customer behavior for their own industries. It's changing their pricing and their cost models. And for all of that, they need to continue on their digital journeys. Now, what's different though is they wanna prioritize. They wanna prioritize and do more with less. They want to adapt faster, but also make sure that they don't, they don't just try to do everything together. And so there's a lot of focus on what do we prioritize? How do we leverage cloud to move faster, you know, and cheaper in terms of our change. >>And also to decide where do we consume and where do we compose? We'll talk a little bit more about that. There are certain things that you don't want to invent yourself. You can consume from cloud providers, whether it's business features, whether it is cloud capabilities. And so it's, there is a shift from adopting cloud just for cost takeout and just for resilience, but also for composability, which means let's consume what I can consume from the cloud and really build those features faster. So squeeze the go to market time, squeeze the time to market and squeeze the price to market, right? So that's the >>Change and really driving those business outcomes. As we talked about Absolut ard, talk to us about how hcl tech and AWS are working together. How are you enabling customers to achieve what an was talking about? >>Oh, absolutely. I mean, our partnership has started almost 10 years back, but over the last one year, we have created what we call as AWS dedicated business unit to look at end to end stock from an AWS perspective. So what we see in the market as a explained is more drive from clients for optimization, driving, app modernization, driving consolidation, looking at the cost, sustainability angles, looking at the IOT angle, manufacturing platforms, the industry adoption. All this is actually igniting the way the industry would look at AWS and as well as the partnership. So from an HCL tech and AWS partnership, we're actually accelerating most of these conversations by building bespoke accelerated industry solutions. So what I mean is, for example, there is an issue with a manufacturing plant and take Covid situation, people can't get into a a manufacturing plant. So how can AWS help put it in the cloud, accelerate those conversations. So we are building those industry specific solutions so that it can be everybody from a manufacturing sector can adopt and actually go to market. As well as you can access all this applications once it is in the cloud from anywhere, any device with a scalable options. That's where our partnership is actually igniting lot of cloud conversations and playing conversations in the market. So we see a lot of traction there. Lisa, on >>That, incredibly important during the last couple of years alone. >>Absolutely. I mean, last couple of years have been groundbreaking, right? Especially with the covid, for example, Amazon Connect, we use, we used Amazon Connect to roll out, you know, call center at the cloud, right? So you don't have to walk into an office, for example. People are working in the banking sector, especially in the trading platform. They were, they were not able to get there. So, but they need to make calls. How do you do the customer service? So Amazon Connect came right at the junction, so call center in the cloud and you can access, dial the number so the customer don't feel the pain of, you know, somebody not answering. It's accessible. That's where the partnership or the HCL tech partnership and AWS comes into play because we bring the scale, the skill set capability with the services of, you know, aws, Amazon, and that forms a concrete story for the client, right? That's one such example. And you know, many such examples are in the market that we are accelerating in the, in the discussions. >>And connect is a good example. Lisa, we were talking earlier about Amazon doubling down on the primitives, but also moving up up market as well, up chain up the value chain. And it needs partners like HCL to be able to go into various industries and apply that effectively. Absolutely. And that's where business transformation comes >>In. Absolutely. Absolutely. I think some of the aspects that we are looking at is, you know, while we do most of this cloud transformation initiatives from an tech perspective, what we are doing is we are encompassing them into a story, which we call it as cloud smart, right? So we are calling it as cloud smart, which is a go-to market offering from Atcl Tech, where the client doesn't have to look at each of these services from various vendors. So it's a one stop shop, right? From strategy consulting, look, implementation, underpinned by app modernization, consolidation, and the operational. So we do that as end to end service with our offerings, which is why helping us actually accelerate conversations on the crowd. What happen is the clients are also building these capabilities more and more often. You see a lot of new services are being added to aws, so not many clients are aware of it. So it is the responsibility of system integrator like us to make them aware and bring it into a shape where the client can consume in a low cost option, in an optimized way. That's where I think it's, it's, it's working out very well for us. With the partnership of, so >>You curate those services that you know will fit the customer's business. You, you know, the ingredients that you could put together, the, the dinner. >>Absolutely. You're preparing a dish, right? So you're preparing a dish, you know where the ingredients are. So the ingredients are supplied by aws. So you need to prepare a pasta dish, right? So you, you how spicy you want to make it howland, you want to make it, you know what source you want to use. How do you bring all those elements together? That's what, you know, tech has been focusing on. >>And you use the word curation, right? Curation is really industry process down, depending on your industry, every industry, every enterprise, there are things that are differentiating them. There's a business processes that differentiate you and there are business processes that don't necessarily differentiate you but are core to you. For example, if you're a retailer, you know, you're retailing, you're merchandising, how you price your products, how you market your products, your supply chains, those differentiate you. How you run your general ledger, your accounting, your payables. HR is core to your business but doesn't differentiate you. And the choices you make in the cloud for each of these areas are different. What differentiates you? You compose what doesn't differentiate you consume because you don't want to try and compose what >>Telco Exactly. Oh my gosh. >>Our biggest examples are in Telco, right? Right. Their omnichannel marketing, you know, how they connect with their consumers, how they do their billing systems, how they do their pricing systems. Those are their differentiations and things that don't they want to consume. And that's where cloud adoption needs to come with really a curation framework. We call it the Phoenix framework, which defines what differentiates you versus not. And based on that, what are the architectural choices you make at the applications layer, the integration layer, the data layer, and the infrastructure layer all from aws and how do you make those choices? >>Talk about a customer example anon that really articulates that value. >>Yeah, I'll give you an example that sort of, everybody can relate to a very large tools company that manufactures tools that we all use at home for, you know, remodeling our houses, building stuff, building furniture. Their business post pandemic dramatically shifted in every way possible. Nobody was going anymore to Home Depot and Lowe's to buy their tools, their online business surge by 200%. Their supply chains were changing because their manufacturers originally were in China and Malaysia. They were shifting a lot of that base to Taiwan and Germany and Latin America. Their pricing model was changing. Their last mile deliveries were changing cuz they were not used to delivering you and me last mile deliveries. So every aspect of their business was changing. They hadn't thought of their business in the same way, but guess what? That business was growing, but the needs were changing and they needed to rethink every value chain in their business. >>And so they had to adopt cloud. They leverage AWS at their core to rethink every part of their business. Rebuilding their supply chain applications, modernizing their warehouse management systems, modernizing their pricing systems, modernizing their sales and marketing platforms, every aspect you can think of and all of that within 24 months. Cuz otherwise they would lose market share, you know, in any given market. And all of this, while they were, you know, delivering their day to day business, they were manufacturing the goods and they were shipping products. So that was quite a lot to achieve in 24 months. And that's not just one example is across industries, examples like that that we have. That's >>One of the best business transformation examples I think I've heard. >>Absolutely. Absolutely. And so cloud does need to start with a business transformation objective. And that's what's happening to the cloud. It's changing away from an infrastructure consolidation discussion to business task. >>Because I know you guys have a theater session tomorrow on, on continuous modern, it was experiencing cloud transformation and continuous modernization. That's the theme. Pre-cloud. It was just a, you'd, you'd live, you'd rip and replace your infrastructure and it was a big application portfolio assessment and rationalization. It was just, it just became this years long, you know, like an SAP installation. Yes. How has cloud changed that and what's, tell us more about that session and that continuous modernization. Yeah, >>So, so we are doing a John session with a client on how HCL Tech helped the client in terms of transforming the landscape and adopting cloud much faster, you know, into the ecosystem. So what we are currently doing is, so it's a continuous process. So when we talk about cloud adoption transformation, it doesn't stop there. So it, it needs to keep evolving. So what we came up with a framework for the all such clients who are on the cloud transformation part need to look at which we call it a smart waste cloud, cloud smart. Where once it is in the clouds, smart waste to cloud for cloud and in the cloud. So what happens is, when it is to cloud, what do you do? What are the accelerators? What are the frameworks? Smart waste for clouds? How do you look at the governance of it? >>Okay? Consolidation activities of it, once it is in the cloud, how do we optimize, what do you look at? Security aspects, et cetera. So the client doesn't have to go to multiple ecosystem partners to look at it. So he is looking at one such service provider who can actually encompass and give all this onto the plate in a much more granular fashion with accelerated approach. So we build accelerated solutions frameworks, which helps the client to actually pick and choose in a much lower cost, I think. And it has to be a continuous modernization for the client. So why we are calling it as a continuous modernization is we are also also creating what we call cloud foundries and factories. What happens is the client can look at not only in a transformation journey, but also futuristic when there are new services are adapted, how this transformation and factories helping them in a lower cost option and driving that a acceleration story. So we are addressing it in multiple ways. One on the transformation front, one on the TCO front, one on the AX accelerated front, one on the operational front. So all this combined into one single framework, which is what is a continuous modernization of clouded option from xgl tech. >>When you apply this framework with customers, how do you deal with technical debt? Can you avoid technical debt? Can you hide technical debt? Or is it like debt and taxes? We're always gonna have technical debt because Amazon, you know, they'll talk about, they don't ever deprecate anything. Yeah. You know, are they gonna, are we gonna see Amazon take on tech? How do you avoid that? Or at least shield the customer for that technical debt. >>So every cio, right? Key ambitions are digital cloud, TCO optimization, sustainability. So we have a framework for that. So every CIO will look at, okay, I wanna spend, but I want to be optimized. My TCO should not go up. So that's where a system integrator like us comes. We have AOP story where, which does the complete financial analysis of your cloud adoption as to what estate and what technical client already has. How can we optimize that and how can we, how can we overlay on top of that our own services to make it much more optimized solution for the client? And there are several frameworks that we have defined for the CIO organizations where the CIO can actually look at some of these elements and adopt it internally within the system. You wanna pick it from there? >>Yeah, I think, I think it's, it's, it's a great question. First of all, there's a generational shift in the last three years where nobody's doing lift and shift of traditional applications or traditional data systems to the cloud. As you said, nobody's taking their technical debt to the cloud anymore. >>Business value's not there. >>There's no business value, right? The value is really being cloud native, which means you want to continuously modernize your value chains, which means your applications, your integration, your data to leverage the cloud and continuously modernize. Now you will still make priority decisions, right? Things that really differentiate you. You will modernize them through composition things that don't, you'll rather consume them, but in both factors, you're modernizing, I use the word surround and drown enterprises are surrounding their traditional, you know, environments and drowning them over a period of time. So over the next five years, you'll see more and more irrelevant legacy because the relevance is being built in the cloud, cloud for the future. That's the way I see it. >>Speaking of, take us out here, speaking of business value and on, we're almost outta time here. If there's a billboard on 1 0 1 in Palo Alto regarding HCL tech, what's the value prop? What does it say? >>It's a simple billboard. We say we are super charging our customers, our partners, our employees. We are super charging progress. And we believe that the strength that we bring from learnings of over 200,000 professionals that work at hcl working with over half of, you know, 500 of the, the largest Fortune thousands in the world is, is really bringing those learnings that we continuously look at every day that we live with, every day across all kind of regulations, all kind of industries, in adopting new technologies, in modernizing their business strategies and achieving their business transformation goals with the velocity they want. That's kind of the supercharging progress mantra, >>Super charging progress. Love it. Guys, thank you so much for joining. David, me on the program talking about, thank you for having a conversation. Our pleasure. What's going on with HCL Tech, aws, the value that you're delivering for customers. Thank you so much for your time. Thank >>You. Thank you. Thanks. Have a great time. >>Take care for our guests. I'm Lisa Martin, he's Dave Valante. You're watching The Cube, the leader in live enterprise and emerging tech coverage.

(upbeat music) >> Welcome back to theCUBE's continuous coverage of AWS re:invent 2021. I'm here with my co-host John Furrier and we're running one of the largest, most significant technology events in the history of 2021. Two live sets here in Las Vegas, along with our two studios. And we are absolutely delighted. We're incredibly delighted to welcome a returning alumni. It's not enough to just say that you're an alumni because you have been such a fixture of theCUBE for so many years. Annie Weinberger. And Annie is head of product marketing for applications at AWS. Annie, welcome. >> Thank you so much, it's great to be back. >> It's wonderful to have you back. Let's dive right into it. >> Okay. >> Talk to us about Connect. What does that mean when I say Connect? >> Yes, well, I think if we talk about Amazon Connect, we have to go back to the beginning of the origin story. So, over 10 years ago, when Amazon retail was looking for a solution to manage their customer service and their contact center, we went out and we looked at different solutions and nothing really met our needs. Nothing could kind of provide the scale that we needed at Amazon, or could really be as flexible as we needed to ensure that we're our customer obsession could come through in our customer service. So we built our own solution. And over the years, customers were coming to us and asking, you know, what do you use for your customer service technology? And so we launched Amazon Connect, our omni-channel cloud contact center solution just over four years ago. And it is the one of the fastest growing services at AWS. We have tens of thousands of customers using it today, like Capital One into it, Bank of Omaha, Mutual of Omaha, Best Western, you know, I can go on and on. And they're using it to have over 10 million interactions with customers every day. So it's, you know, growing phenomenally and we just couldn't be more proud to help our customers with their customer service. >> So, yeah. Talk about some of the components that go into that. What are the sort of puzzle pieces that make up AWS Connect? Because obviously connecting with a customer can take a whole bunch of different forms with email, text, voice. >> Yeah >> What's included in that? >> So it's an omni-channel cloud contact center. It provides, you know, any way you want to talk to your customers. There's traditional methods of voice. There's automated ways to connect. So IVRs or interactive voice responses where you call with voice prompts, there's chat, you know. We have Lex Bots that use the same technology that powers Alexa for natural language understanding. And I think customers really like it for a few reasons. One is that unlike kind of other contact center solutions, you can set it up in minutes. You know, American Preparatory Academy had to set up a contact center, they did it in two days. And then it's very, very easy to customize and use. So another example is, you know, when Priceline was going through COVID and they realized their call volume went up 300% overnight, and everybody was just sitting near the queue waiting to talk to an agent. So in 20 minutes, we were able to go in and very easily with a drag and drop interface, customize the ad flow so that people who had a reservation in the next 72 hours were prioritized. So very, very easily. >> You just jumped the gun on me. I was going to ask this because we never boarding that Connect during the pandemic was a huge success. >> Annie: Yes. >> It was many, many examples where people were just located, disrupted by the pandemic. And you guys had tons of traction from government public sector to commercial across the board. Adam Solecki told me in person a couple weeks ago that it was on fire, Connect was on fire. So again, a tailwind, one of those examples with the pandemic, but it highlights this idea or purpose built, ready to go. >> Pre-built the applications. >> Pre-built application. This is a phenomenon. >> It's moving up the stack for AWS. It's very exciting. I think, yeah, we had over 5,000 new contact centers stood up in March and April of 2020 alone. >> Dave: Wow. >> Give it some scale, just go back to the scale piece. Cause this is like, like amazing to stand up a call center like hours, days. Like this is like incredible to, give us some stats on some examples of how fast people were standing up Connect. >> Yeah, I mean, you could stand it up overnight. American Preparatory Academy, as I mentioned did it in two days, we had, you know, this county of Los Angeles did theirs I think at a day. You could go and right now you don't need any technical expertise, even though you have some. >> theCUBE call center, we don't need people calling. >> We had everyone from a Mexican restaurant needed to take to go orders. Cause now it's COVID and they don't have a call. They've been able to set that up, grab a phone number and start taking takeout orders all the way to like capital one, you know, with 40,000 agents that need to move remote overnight. And I think that it's because of that ease to set up, but also the scale and the way that we charge. So, you know, it's AWS consumption-based pricing. You only pay for the interactions with customers. So the barrier to entry is really, really low. You don't have to migrate everything over and buy a bunch of new licenses. You can just stand it up and you're only charged for the interactions with customers. And then if you want to scale down like into it, obviously tax season they're bringing on a lot more agents to handle calls, when those agents aren't really needed for that busy time, you're not paying for those seats. >> You're flex. Take me through the, okay, that's a win, I get that. So home run, great success. Now, the machine learning story is interesting too, because you have the purpose-built platform. There's some customizations that can happen on top of it. So it's not just, here's a general purpose piece of software. People are using some customizations. Take us through the other things. >> Well, the exciting thing is they're not even real customizations because we're AWS, we can leverage the AML services and built pre-built purpose-built features. So there it's embedded and you know, Amazon Connect has been cloud native and AI born since the very beginning. So we've taken a lot of the AI services and built them into you don't need any knowledge. You don't have to know anything about AIML. You can just go in and start leveraging it. And it has huge powerful effects for our customers. We launched three new features this year. One was Amazon Wisdom. That's part of Amazon Connect. And what that does is, you know, if you're an agent and you're on the phone and customer's asking questions, today what they have to do is go in and search across all these different knowledge repositories to find the answer or, you know, how do I issue a refund? You know, we're hearing about this feature that's broken on our product. We're listening behind the scenes to that call and then just automatically providing the knowledge articles as they're on the call saying, this is what you should do, giving them recommendations so we can help the customer much more quickly. >> I love them moving up the stack. Again, a huge fan of Connect. We've highlighting in all of our stories. It's a phenomenon that's translating to other areas, but I want to tie back in where it goes next cause on these keynotes, Adam Solecki's and today was Swami, the conversations about a horizontal data plane. And so as customers would say, use Connect, I might want, if I'm a big customer I want to integrate that into my data because it's voice data, it's call centers, customer data, but I have other databases. So how do you guys look at that integration layer snapping it together with say, a time series database, or maybe a CRM system or retail e-commerce because again, it's all data but it's connected call center. Some may think it's silo, but it's not really siloed. So, I'm a customer. How do I integrate call center? >> Yeah and it's, you know, we have a very strong partner with Salesforce. They're actually a reseller of Connect. So we work with them very, very closely. We have out of the box integrations with Salesforce, with your other, you know, analytics databases with Marketo with other services that you need. I think again, it's one of the benefits of being AWS, it's very extensible, very flexible, and really easy to bring in and share the data that we have with other systems. >> John: So it's not an issue then. >> One of the conversation points that's come up is the, this idea that a large majority of IT Spend is still on premises today. In other words, the AWS total addressable market hasn't been tapped yet. And, you imagine going through the pandemic, someone using AWS Connect to create a virtual call center, now as we hopefully come out and people some return to the office, but now they have the tools to be able to stay at home and be more flexible. Those people, maybe they weren't in the cloud that much before. But to John's point, now you start talking about connecting all of those other data sources. Well, where do those data sources belong? They belong in AWS. So, from your perspective, on the surface it looks like, well, wait, you have these products, but really those are gateways to everything else that AWS does. Is that a fair statement? >> I think it's very, yeah. Absolutely. >> Yeah. >> The big thing I want to get into is okay, we're, I mean, we don't have a lot of people calling for theCUBE but I mean, we wouldn't use the call center, but there's audio involved. Are people more going back to the old school phones for support now with the pandemic? Cause you've mentioned that earlier about the price line, having more- >> I think it's, you know, when we talk to our customers too, it's about letting, letting any customer contact you the way they want to. You know, we, you know, I was talking to Delta, spoke with us yesterday in the business application leadership session. And she said, you know, when someone has a flight issue, I'm sure you can attest to this. I did the same thing. They call, you know, if your, if your flight got canceled or it's looking like it's going to keep pushing, you don't necessarily want to go, you know, use a chat bot or send an email or a text, but there's other use cases where you just want a quick answer, you know, if you contact, I haven't received my product yet, you know, it said it was shipped, I didn't get it. I don't necessarily want to talk to someone, but so, it's just about making that available. >> On the voice side, is it other apps are integrating voice? So what's the interface to call center? Is it, can I integrate like an app voice integrated through the app or it's all phone? >> Because for the agents, there's an agent UI. So they'll see kind of calls that they have in their queue coming up, they'll see the tasks that they have to issue or refund. They'll see the kind of analytics that they have. The knowledge works. There's a supervisor view, so they could go see, you know, we with contact lens for Amazon Connect, we had a launch this, you know, this week, every event around contact lens, it lets you see the trends and sentiment of what's going on the call. It gives them like those training moments. If people aren't using the standard sign-off or the standard greeting on the call, it's a training moment and they can kind of see what's happening and get real-time alerts. If two keywords of a customer saying they cancel into the call, that can get a flag and they can go in and help the agent if necessary. So. >> All kinds of metadata extraction going on in real time. >> Yeah. >> How do you, how would AWS to go through the process of determining what should be bespoke solution hearing versus something that can be productized? And we know there are 475 different kinds of instances. However, you can come up with a package solution where people could pick features and get up and running really quickly. How is that decision making process? >> Well, I mean, you know, 90% at least of what we do build, it comes from what our customers ask for. So we don't, it's the onus is not on us. We listen to our customers, they tell us what they want us to build. Contact center solutions are their line of business applications are purchased by business decision makers and they're used to doing more buying than building. So they wanted to be more out of the box, more like pre-built, but we still are AWS. We make it very, very extensible, very easy to customize, like pull in other data sources. But when we look at how we are going to move up the stack and other areas, we just continue to listen to our customers. >> What's the biggest thing you learned in the pandemic from the team? What's the learnings coming out of the pandemic as hybrid world is upon us? >> I mean, I think a few things with, you know, starting, as you mentioned with the cloud, that the kind of idea of a contact center being a massive building, usually in the middle of America where, you know, people go and they sit and they have conversations. If that was really turned on its head and you can have very secure and accessible solutions through the cloud so that you can work from anywhere. So that was really fantastic to see. >> That's going to be interesting to see moving forward. How that paradigm shifts some centralized call centers, but a lot of this aggregated work that can be done. >> I mean, who knows the, you know, gig economy could be in the contact center, you know. >> Yeah, absolutely >> Yeah >> Maybe get some CUBE hosts, give us theCUBE Connect. We get some CUBE hosts remote. >> That's important work, yeah. >> We need, we need to talk. I got to got my phone number in that list. Annie, it's been fantastic to have you. >> Thank you guys so much. I really appreciate it. >> For John Furrier, this is Dave Nicholson telling you, thank you for joining our continuous coverage of AWS reinvent 2021. Stick with theCUBE for the best in hybrid event coverage. (upbeat music)

>>Oh, welcome back to theCube coverage of AWS re:Invent Executive Summit presented by Accenture. I'm John,  your host of theCube. We're joined by two great guests, Leo Barella, Chief Technology Officer of Takeda and Don Heiliger Managing Director at Accenture. Gentlemen, welcome to theCube. >> Thank you. Great to be here.  >>Last year, Karl Hick joined us to discuss Takeda's cloud journey. I know a lot's gone by the pandemic. Didn't go away as fast as we hoped, but we're starting to see visibility of the future with cloud at narrow and seeing cloud scale. Um, it's refactoring of business models, new opportunities. How's it gone? >>Well, I think it's a, it's going wonderful, as planned actually.  I can, I can share with you that there are definitely some lessons learned, uh, what the plan was quite structured. We definitely discovered that  maybe we should have actually had about 50% of our time, uh, in the planning for organizational change management and communication. And because we definitely, uh, want to, uh, be able to kind of explain why, uh, moving to cloud is actually important to, to our business. Uh, and so, so if you were to actually do it again, uh, I think we would have probably put a lot more time in communicating the value of the program and wild visibly. Now, uh, we're going to be able to move a lot faster than a, than a year ago. Uh, seeing that the community of the Qaeda is, uh, is already, you know, kind of come around, uh, to, to truly understand the value of, uh, of, uh, moving to cloud >>No last year, any Jessie gave up on stage the keys to success for the cloud journey, you guys were in the middle of it. Um, what was the big takeaway, um, on the, on, on your, your journey, because a lot of people are having real situational awareness and doubling down on successes, identifying what's not working and being real agile. This has been the big aha. What's the big aha moments you had, uh, this year? >>Well, I can tell you that. I say from the, the migration of our applications to cloud, which, which is basically table stakes for elimination of our data centers. So at the end of the program, we're likely gonna retain only few application in our data centers, but move more than 80% of our application workloads to cloud. What actually most excited about is, uh, is really our new strategy around data as a digital platform enabler. Uh, so from now on we're, we're really going to be focusing on the value stream of the Qaeda at the understanding of, of digital platforms that we actually want to able to, to, to further consolidate, um, and, um, uh, you know, and globally expand, uh, the, the, the technologies that we have, but old built on a data foundation, uh, that, that is actually governed across the community of the Qaeda. So data actually becomes the center of our strategy. Uh, and then digital is basically just a way for us to actually interact with data, uh, which includes applications, such as machine learning and AI, which we were heavily investing in. And, uh, and we definitely plan on now leveraging more and more. >>And just to real quick, before we go to a central for a second, I want you to double down on that journey dynamics because we're seeing and maybe reporting, and the theme here this year at reinvent is multiple workloads in the cloud changing workloads. You have evolution of workloads, data as the center of it. And then this cultural shifts where you got the, you know, these modern applications at the top of the stack. So you were AIS contributing. So you've got three major innovation theaters kind of exploding. I mean, this is pretty, I mean, one of those is, is mindblowing. Nevermind, all three. >>Yeah. And I can tell you that, uh, you know, um, I'd like to achieve further expand the circle, uh, beyond the Qaeda. We don't necessarily believe that the digital transformation is just about, I don't want enterprise. That is definitely a fundamental, uh, but the digital transformation is truly about, um, connecting the Qaeda as a digital, uh, pharmaceutical company to the overall healthcare ecosystem and be able to basically transact with our partners, uh, in real time, which is the reason why we actually put data at the center because at the end of the day, uh, when other partners wants to interact with our data, the should in real time be able to transact as if they were transacting on their own systems with our own data, especially DCPS and patients, >>Don your, your reaction, because a lot of learnings, new opportunities, you're at the center of essentially doing a lot of great work. We've been documented a lot of it as well. What's your reaction? >>I mean, I just to amplify a lot of Leo's comments already, I think if I, if I think back and on this journey with, with the Qaeda and AWS and Accenture as the power of three, I think, you know, leaning in to that has been a recipe for success. So as Leo said, we've definitely had some lessons learned, but you know, being there with this power of three, I think has been, uh, enabling us to, uh, attack those challenges that have, uh, that have come up and, and really gotten ahead of those. I think the other thing you talked about is this, um, you know, all these different things coming together, you know, before the pandemic, we had, uh, done done some research at Accenture that kind of had two groups of companies with the leader leaders and the laggards. And, uh, it showed, know the difference in revenue growth of the leaders that adopt technology and those that are falling behind and really, um, that gap has widened, but there's a new entrance of companies that have emerged, which is the, leapfroggers the ones that take advantage of all of the things that like AWS has to offer in terms of the AI capabilities, the data capabilities, the foundational elements that are enabling them to really do this compressed transformation journey in a much shorter timeline. >>I think that's been the element that, uh, you know, I think we know you and I have firsthand together with our AWS colleagues of us being able to really do this on a pace that I think has just been on, on the unseen or unmatched in the past. >>Well, we get to the innovation pilots you guys are doing. I want to just jump on that topic for a quick second time. If you don't mind, that's a really important point. I think the people who shifted to the cloud and replatformed, and then learned all the goodness and then refactored their businesses have done great. This notion of leapfrog is people who move and say, Hey, I don't need, I'm going to replatform and refactor at the same time, get the learnings from others. Okay. They get the best practice is so what's the scar tissue from all the pioneers who have been playing in the cloud, who got the benefits are also paving the path for others. This is actually a motivating, cultural and personal kind of impact motivation. People are happier. What's your guys' reaction to this culture of the cloud, this cloud reef, leapfrogging and refactoring. >>Yeah. I mean, uh, w what I'm saying, uh, and, and lovely, or your perspective on this too, but frankly, you know, I think, uh, you know, with, with the, uh, the war on talent right now, that's out there. I think, you know, companies are investing, whether they're leaders, whether they're leapfroggers in this digital, uh, you know, platform I think are attracting the best talent and actually making it a place where people can innovate. And I know we're going to talk about some of the innovations here in a second, but I think that is, um, you know, some, a way to differentiate, uh, right now in the marketplace, given everything that we're seeing around, uh, retention and attraction of talent. I mean, being able to be on the front edge of this is quite critical in any company's view, but, you know, especially when you're trying to attract the best talent in, in, uh, developing, uh, medicines that actually say lots, >>Leo jumping on this wave and moving leapfrogging, what's your perspective on this? >>Yeah. You know, I, I agree to, uh, you know, talent is that talent is key. Uh, and quite frankly, uh, you know, Takeda, we've been at, you know, pharmaceutical company for the past 240 years. Uh, and now what should you really, uh, you know, starting to become a digital, um, pharmaceutical, uh, power. Uh, and, and so, uh, part of the attractiveness of, uh, of joining Takeda for instance, is the fact that, uh, not only you actually get to, uh, you know, uh, be with a company that is investing heavily, uh, in, in, in digital re-skilling and actually training of people, but also you're connecting to the mission of, uh, of literally saving saving lives, right? So basically, uh, the, the, the connection of really this transformation to become a digital superpower, uh, and also, uh, the, the mission of, uh, of really finding new medicines were, uh, for people that actually experienced, you know, for instance, you know, order of disease, uh, it's quite exciting because it's, uh, it's the application of artificial intelligence machine learning, uh, where now you're actually really trying to find someone that is, that is struggling. Uh, and we're now actually connecting them to a cure that, that is drastically changing their lifestyle. >>It's interesting, the agile agility and the speed of innovation really kind of puts away the old analysis of like, what's the payback. I mean, if you, if you can't see the value right away, then you, then you don't know what you're doing. Basically people in the cloud that say I can contribute and leapfrog and get that value. This has been a big part of the business model. And one of the ways people are doing it is just getting involved, starting pilots, doing the projects. Um, so I'd like to have you guys share the project that you guys have got going on with nurse line. Can you share what you're trying to achieve and how has the cloud enabled you to, to innovate, but also capture the value and can, and can you see it, is there, is there a big analysis there's like a big payback it's like you're buying this 20 year project, or how do you guys look at this? >>I mean, the nimbleness of, uh, of cloud, uh, in our ability to come in and fail fast is what's extremely attractive to, uh, to, to the business, right? Because now all of a sudden we can quickly spin up a prototype. We can quickly actually put it out as a product and actually see how effective it is compared to traditional processes. Uh, so for instance, nurse line is actually what we, uh, it's one of the many, uh, innovation initiatives that we actually have going on, but specifically addressing, uh, one of our, um, uh, therapy areas, which is, uh, our plasma derived therapies, uh, plasma and other therapies is actually, uh, the supply chain actually really starts with, uh, the good wheel of a innovative individual like yourself, um, deciding to actually not donate plasma that eventually is being processed and fractionated to deliver medicines that are life savings in most cases is actually the, the literally life savings. >>Um, and, uh, so what we're trying to do is actually really make that experience as flawless as, uh, in, as seamless as possible. Uh, if you, if you, if you have ever experienced, you know, going into Amazon go, uh, where you kind of, you know, walk in, you get some groceries and walk out and don't pass through a register. And, uh, it's the same type of experience that we actually want to provide where, uh, in the past, um, when you're actually donating plasma, obviously it's a, it's a fairly invasive procedure because obviously you need to actually be in a, being a bad and your, your plasma is getting distracted, but there's a lot of paperwork that you need to actually fill in. And, uh, and what we actually did, uh, is now actually enabled that through a digital experience where a donor, uh, they do a short approaching the center can now actually initiate a chat with, uh, with Amazon connect the ILX. >>Uh, and then, uh, depending on the priority, uh, the donor is going to assign to a nurse that can actually be anywhere in the country. Uh, in all of a sudden the nurse can actually initiate, uh, through, through Amazon connect, um, a dialogue with the, you know, with, with the donor, uh, answering some of the questions in the, you know, in the regular questionnaire. So, so now all of a sudden the nurse is actually feeding up the people work for you. Uh, and, uh, and that is actually done through the initiation of a video call. Uh, and we're actually using chime, which is, again, a part of like, you know, the, the, you know, the, the Amazon AWS services. And then basically upon the, the completion of a, of the questionnaire that is action, analytic, Tronic signature, that has been applied to, um, you know, to the form. >>Uh, and so did, this is actually all happening while basically the person is actually walking through the center or walking into the center. Uh, and now all of a sudden, the only thing that they need to do is actually having a signed bat and, uh, and actually initiate the process of, uh, of plasma donation. So all of this is actually done through microservices. Uh, now everything that we do now is actually API enabled and, you know, obviously like many other companies right now, what I should really think about microservices and the usability of, of technology and, and reusable components. So we're extremely excited about the fact that now, uh, that experience can actually be carried on, uh, to, to other parts of the business and that, that, that can actually leverage these technologies. >>That's a great example of refactoring. What's next for you guys, a division Accenture, what's the plans? >>Well, again, uh, the Google got done. >>Well, I was going to say, I mean, I think, you know, we, we started touching on it, uh, experience, right. And, uh, how do we embed more technology experiences that we're all used to? I mean, you know, to get into some of the return to office, the easiest way for me to do some of the COVID testing has been using my, uh, my trusty iPhone. Right. And so, as, as Liam talked about that experience, uh, part of this beyond just the therapies and, and attracting donors is really key for any business to succeed and thrive. Um, yeah, I think it, you know, if you think about, um, you've got the natives that are really more technology-based, you've got the, the Peloton of the world that obviously have, you know, a platform, but also a product you're going to see product and specifically life sciences companies get more into platform enabled, uh, services that they can provide outside, uh, as a, uh, service to others. And I think, um, you know, the, the platform, uh, experience and the user experience, the donor experience, all that I'd say innovating in, in more use cases like, uh, some of the ones you just heard that's what's next, and being able to, uh, use those guys more even externally to, uh, to do even more good for society, >>Leah, your thoughts with that. >>Well, um, you know, what I should really just getting started, right? So it's not a, you know, this transformation is now cloud enabled, uh, but, but w we're systematically actually going through our value chain, uh, and trying to throw the, understand, uh, you know, our customers, you know, again, as a business, we don't actually sell directly to consumers. So we're, we're, we're basically brokering through, but primarily through CPS and hospitals, right, to basically be able to diagnose a disease that can actually be cured with our products. Uh, and we do feel that, uh, you know, there is actually a huge role that we can actually play because obviously we're are experts in the, of, uh, you know, of the disease that we actually cure with our products. So basically the interactions, like the one that I just described nurse line, uh, can actually be directed, uh, not only to the HCPs, but also to the patients, uh, and the access to communities. >>Uh, and so we want to actually continue to provide platforms by which, you know, people that experienced, you know, especially a rare disease can now actually already connect and, uh, and, and, and share, um, you know, th th the sense of community that, that the business is, is so, so very important, right? For someone that physically has, uh, you know, the diseases that we cure. Uh, so again, uh, I think that the systematic approach of API APIs, and actually making sure that the data is actually ready for say the FDA to actually consume, to accelerate the clinical trials or to an hospital to kind of already understand if there is maybe a clinical trial that can be applied to one of the patients that is, that is actually showing some, some side effects that, uh, you know, or, or symptoms that visibly can be cured with, you know, with our, with our products, I think is going to be, uh, you know, ultimately the, the value that we can provide to society. So >>You guys did a great work and a great example. And to me, and this really showcases the management philosophy of cloud and the culture of cloud, where you take something like connect, and you can refactor and reconfigure these existing resources in a way that creates value, that saves lives. And this is the new, this new playbook. Congratulations on an exceptional story. I appreciate it. Thanks for coming on the cube coverage rapist, reinvent executive summit presented by Accenture I'm John ferry, your host, thanks for watching.

(electronic music) >> Welcome to theCUBE. This is the AWS Executive Summit presented by Accenture and our coverage of this great event continues. Lisa Martin here, I've got two guests with me here to talk about Amazon Connect. Please welcome from Hawaiian Airlines, Will Van Devender, Senior Director of IT Engineering. Will, welcome to the program. >> Thanks for having me here. >> And from Accenture, Erich Chen is here as well, the Hawaii Regional Lead at Accenture. Erich, it's great to have you on the program. >> It's great to be here. >> I feel very overdressed. You can tell I'm on the mainland with my turtleneck and you guys are on Oahu, which is fantastic. And I'm excited that I have a seat on Hawaiian Airlines in just a few weeks. So you guys, let's talk about this technology solution that you put together. Will, I want to start with you. Talk to me about some of the challenges that Hawaiian Airlines was having prior to working with Accenture and Amazon. >> Well, nothing really unique to us. We had the challenges that everybody had with the pandemic and scaling out to work from home, as well as an old legacy stack that had been around for a long, long time. The specific ones that drove us to launch this particular project was we had been running into some talent acquisition issues. We're not of size where we have a huge telecom team that can specialize in IDRs and other things like that. So we need folks that can play a lot of different spaces. And in this particular case, we had a situation where we had really old technology and the people we were bringing in were a lot more savvy on Cloud and those kinds of things. And so AWS Connect was a way for us to take talent that traditionally wasn't inside the telephony space and use them and bring them to bear for that business need. So it kept us from having to scale up to do this. The other thing we had was a big issue with work from home that actually predated COVID. So we had been, we're in a hurricane zone, we had been doing hurricane preparedness exercises and we realized that we had a difficult time scaling our environment to large scale work from home. So even prior to COVID, we had been started looking at the technologies that we had, which ones worked well outside of an office for a distributed workforce. And we had been moving technology in that direction. And so telephony was one of the ones that we had to beef up. And so it was nice to have a good leg up on it when the pandemic hit us. >> Absolutely. I can't imagine how advantageous that was when it struck. And of course we all know how much the airlines were affected. Talk to me about an interesting catalyst for this solution in terms of challenge with talent acquisition and work from home. Interesting impetus for this solution. Talk to me about, are you long time partners, Hawaiian Airlines with Accenture? Talk to me about how you went about looking for the right solution with them as a partner. >> Ah, okay. So Hawaiian Airlines and Accenture had been partnering for many years, but in a much bigger way in 2019, when we solidified a new managed services deal. So Accenture came in to help us out with our day to day operations. And one of the big reasons for that was actually cloud adoption. So we needed a partner that was much more up to date technology wise. And as we started ramping up our engineering and architecture designs and releasing things on new stacks, we needed folks in the operation side that could keep up with that. And not only that, actually enable and push us in those directions. And so when we went out to RFP, Accenture kind of stood out in that area and that's been a good thing. We've had very little friction as we've been going out and acquiring new technology with being able to bring that out to our run and operation space. >> That's critical, especially given the tumultuous times in which we are still living. Erich, let's go ahead and bring you into the conversation. Now, talk to me about you guys at Accenture developed and deployed this solution quickly. We're talking an eight week timeframe. Talk to me about the solution that you architected, about that delivery, and what some of the challenges were along the way that you tackled and mitigated. >> Yeah. Thanks Lisa. I mean, it was, you know, eight weeks when you look back on it, it's hard to believe we did complete it in that timeframe, but, you know, we were able to do it with some strong experts from our side. Some of the challenges we ran into along the way were probably at the very beginning, just securing the right team for Hawaiian to deliver the kind of the proper designs and development upfront, and then helping to kind of manage through the delivery process itself. You know, they were great. They had some great people with some deep expertise, kind of from a business process side of things, kind of paired with our technical and then also industry knowledge of the airlines as well. It made for a really nice, you know, strong partnership where we could get it through in eight weeks. So it was pretty amazing. >> And then walk me through the actual, oh Will, sorry. Did you want to say something? >> Yeah, I was actually going to comment on that, that was exactly what we were looking for was that sort of wholesale partner. So when we went out to modernize our entire telephony stack, it wasn't just call centers. It was the conference rooms, it was the telephony, we went to new phone providers and circuit providers, we moved everyone off of Skype over on to Teams, all the desk phones. And so there was this scope of work that was simply larger than our team. And so what we were looking for from a partner was one, who's done this before, and then two, could you manage the whole piece of work? And so what was nice for Accenture, because they owned our existing operation space, they not only did the AWS Connect piece, they got on the old systems and they brought up all the specs of how the call queues worked, how the call flows worked, they found the old voice talent, they brought those, imported them without us having to do anything over onto the new stack, and then brought it over for testing. So it was just a very minimal lift from the Hawaiian Airlines side. And since they ran our operations, they then moved it over to the run space. And it was just very few man hours on the Hawaiian Airlines side expended for that outcome. >> Wow. It sounds fairly seamless. Erich, how did you guys accomplish that? >> I mean, that's a type of experience and partnership we like to have with our clients, more of an all-inclusive type service. But we're sometimes accused of not having the cheapest prices on the block, but you know, you do get a great, you know, a pretty holistic experience with us and we do try to make it as easy as possible for our clients and bring kind of the full breadth of Accenture to fill in a lot of gaps. >> Well, one of the things, Will, that you mentioned is we were looking for a partner that had done this before, where there's actual proof in the pudding, especially given the, like I mentioned before, the tumultuous market. Erich talk to me about, if we look at Hawaiian Airlines as an example, as a template here, how common or how often are you seeing these same challenges with respect to talent acquisition and work from home? Is that something that really skyrocketed in the last year and a half? >> Sure. I mean, it's maybe a blessing in the type of business that we're in, right. But whenever there are, you know, big, you know, kind of market issues and kind of pandemics as an example, right. Our clients do turn to us for, you know, support to help them through, you know, smaller times of need. And, you know, maybe very compressed issues. So we're very happy to, you know, reach into our larger organization to make sure that we can bring the best of Accenture to them and help them get through these tough times. >> Will, let's talk about how this solution is helping employees, agents get through these tough times. As we know, Hawaii had some really strict travel restrictions on COVID. And of course, one of the things that a lot of people lost during this time, was patience. Talk to me about how the workforce is improving, the employees, the agents, now that you have this solution implemented and a leg up probably on your competitors. >> Yeah, the whole pandemic hit us in a hard way. So we found ourselves, you know, all of a sudden one day waking up and finding that our customer facing support desks couldn't be staffed. People couldn't get into the office and actually get there. At the same time, as you and everyone else knows, flights were getting canceled and customers were calling at a level we'd never seen before trying to reschedule their flights or get credit back or get money back. And so AWS Connect was interesting in that it was one of the things we could ramp up new call centers very quickly. And so we knew we wanted something that was consumption-based because we didn't know how long it was going to last. And we wanted to be able to spin it up, get new agents going, respond to our customers, scale up to the volume, and then be able to decrease it out. So it was a good win there. What wasn't talked about much was the reliability aspect of it. Being on a really old system, our telephony was pretty stable, but our call center internal business facing ones were not. We had a series of outages out there and those outages directly impact our ability to get planes out in the air. There's the sort of customers calling about tickets and about help with flights, but there's also things like cruise, trying to get cruise scheduling done, trying to get staffing to a plane, trying to get things moved around in an airport. And there's a lot of internal desks that deal with those kinds of things. And having that on an incredibly stable technology and stack is key for us. And so we were able to get Connect deployed, and we were also able to front that with a number of other technologies that allowed us to have DR plans. So even if we lost that desk, how can we quickly move that over to manual calls and desk phones and those kinds of things. And so that's been, that part has been very well received. That has helped us out a lot. Our confidence, knowing that if anything should happen, our ability to recover and get back into full operations now is just night and day from where it was 12 months ago. And so thank you all very much for your assistance in getting us to this point. >> Getting that stability and that reliability during a time of chaos that's, and also in a time that can really affect brand reputation, it sounds to me like IT is really helping drive the business forward. This is something that you did in partnership with the business side, because of course during the last year and a half, so many brands have had challenges with reputation and the ability to not do things. Talk to me about that business IT relationship. And was this a facilitator of making that even better? >> Well, it's certainly better. Yeah, we have far better conversations internally than I can ever remember in my time here in Hawaiian Airlines. But you know, when these kinds of emergencies hit, I don't think about it as IT or business. I mean, there's a problem and you got to go fix it. And so we're all in there and IT is one piece of that. How do we get a solution stood up almost overnight in this, you know, very, very difficult pandemic business time? But you know, the business is trying to get talent together and trying to get agents trained and being able to do things like handle these customer calls is very, very skill intensive. So there's a lot of partnership coming in and getting solutions, demoing with the business, dialing them in back and forth, and a lot of collaboration there. And so that builds stronger teams. And that's one of the outcomes I like more than anything else, is we're working together and dialing in the IT and the business needs very much in unison. >> That's probably one of the best outcomes you can hope for. Erich, talk to me about, are you seeing similar things with customers in other industries? Are you seeing that business IT coming together, especially during these challenging times we've been living through? >> Yeah, to varying degrees, you know, that's always the crux of, you know, a successful IT department, right. You know, you're there to serve and support the business side of things, right. We don't do technology for technology sake. But yeah, I think the better ones are getting better, better at, you know, being more fully integrated and it's not a business or IT decision, right, it's a collective kind of team decision. And I think as long as you have people who respect and understand the other side of the coin sometimes, easier the conversation will go. And I think that's what our team was able to do is express, you know, very clearly and concisely kind of what the decisions they had to make were and they could make a decision a little bit easier that way. >> And talk to me, Erich, about the solution, what impressed you? What are you most excited about in terms of what Accenture has helped to accomplish for Hawaiian Airlines? >> Yeah, I was really happy that even, you know, within a short eight week period itself, you know, things always come up as you go throughout a project. And I think the business team was getting excited about the possibilities once they saw kind of the potential of the platform. And so some, you know, requests came up in the middle of the way, you know, in flight. And, you know, our team was able to accommodate a number of the kind of minor enhancements or tweaks to the system to make it even better and serve the business in a better fashion there. >> Gotcha. Will, what is next for Hawaiian Airlines, besides my flight on it in a few weeks? Talk to me about where you guys are going from an IT perspective. >> Well we've rolled out a solution quickly 'cause we needed to, but there's a lot still to be done to dial it in for the business. Where reliability and speed were key, we got those done, but there was some aspects of the old system that were still a little easier. For those call centers where people needed to dial in, get ahold of an agent, and then pass it onto an internal employee, there's still a disconnect between our call center technology, AWS Connect, and the internal collaboration, Microsoft Teams. And that's because Teams really wasn't up to all of the call center technology needs at the time we started this. Things like call recording and things like that just weren't there at the time. So we've got some of our internal desks that still need to be tweaked and integrated more seamlessly between the two platforms or maybe as Teams gets ready, moved back over onto that. So that's, again, the part of it, being able to have this deep conversation with the business, understand their needs, having a partner where you can quickly go respond and go dial it in. And so we don't look at it as our telephony migration is complete. We look at it as we got our first big hurdle done, moving off decades old tech onto our modern stack. And now we're looking at refining it with our partners over the future. >> Right. Phase one, it's always that journey that we talk about. Erich, last question for you. What are some of the things that are coming up next as you help Hawaiian Airlines to continue on this modernization journey? >> Yeah, so more broadly we're really excited because this effort was one of the first or probably more platform centric system integration type projects we've done for Hawaiian. We've been on the operation side, we've done some business consulting worked with them for various business functions already, but this was really more on the application modernization side of things. And, you know, we see that Hawaiian has a number of areas that they're looking to kind of modernize and improve along the way. And we're very excited about, you know, being a strong partner for them in that journey coming up. >> Awesome guys, great work. Congratulations on a huge transformation accomplished during a very chaotic world time period and done so quickly. We appreciate your comments, your feedback, and look forward to seeing what you dial in next. Thanks for joining me today. >> Thank you. >> Thanks very much. >> For Will Van Devender and Erich Chen, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE's coverage of the AWS Executive Summit presented by Accenture. (soft music)

(high intensity music) >> Everyone, welcome back to theCube coverage of AWS, Amazon Web Services, Public Sector Summit live in D.C. We're in-person, I'm John Furrier, the host of theCube. I'm here with Max Peterson, the Head of Public Sector, Vice President. Max, great to see you in in-person event. >> Great to be here. We're in-person and we're also live streaming. So, we're here, however customers, however partners want to participate. >> I got to say, I'm very impressed with the turnout. The attendance is strong. People excited to be here. We're not wearing our masks cause we're on stage right now, but great turnout. But it's a hybrid event. >> It is. >> You've got engagement here physically, but also digitally as well with theCube and other live streams everywhere. You're putting it everywhere. >> It's been a great event so far. We did a pre-day yesterday. We had great participation, great results. It was about imagining education. And then today, from the executive track to the main tent, to all of the learning, live streaming 'em, doing things in person. Some things just don't translate. So, they'll won't be available, but many things will be available for viewing later as well. So all of the breakout sessions. >> The asynchronous consumption, obviously, the new normal, but I got to say, I was just on a break. I was just walking around. I heard someone, two people talking, just cause I over walk pass them, over hear 'em, "Yeah, we're going to hire this person." That's the kind of hallway conversations that you get. You got the programs, you got people together. It's hard to do that when you're on a virtual events. >> Max: It's hard. The customers that we had up on stage today, the same sort of spontaneity and the same sort of energy that you get from being in-person, it's hard to replicate. Lisa from State of Utah, did a great job and she got an opportunity to thank the team back home who drove so much of the innovation and she did it spontaneously and live. You know, it's a great motivator for everybody. And then Lauren from Air force was phenomenal. And Suchi, our "Imagine Me and You" artist was just dynamite. >> I want to unpack some of that, but I want to just say, it's been a really change of a year for you guys at Public Sector. Obviously, the pandemic has changed the landscape of Public Sector. It's made it almost like Public-Private Sector. It's like, it seems like it's all coming together. Incredible business performance on your end. A lot of change, a lot of great stuff. >> We had customers we talked today with SBA, with VA, with NASA, about how they just embraced the challenge and embraced digital and then drove amazing things out onto AWS. From the VA, we heard that they took tele-health consultations. Get this from 25,000 a month to 45,000 a day using AWS and the Cloud. We heard SBA talk about how they were able to turn around the unemployment benefits programs, you know, for the unemployed, as a result of the traumatic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in a matter of weeks. And then, scaled their systems up just to unbelievable heights as President Biden announced the news. >> You had a lot of announcement. I want to get to a couple of them. One of them was the health equity thing. What is that about? Take us through that announcement. >> So the pandemic, it was hard. It was traumatic in a lot of different ways. It also turned into this little innovation laboratory, but one of the things that it laid bare more than anything else where the inequities associated with some of these systems that had to spring into action. And in particular, in the space of health, healthcare equity. We saw simply communities that didn't have access and weren't included in the same sorts of responses that the rest of the community may have been included in. And so we launched this global initiative today to power health equity solutions. It's a $40 million program. Lasts for three years. And it's open to customers or it's open to partners. Anybody who can contribute to three different areas of health equity. It's people who are leveraging data to build more equal, more sustainable health systems. Is people that are using analytics to do greater study of socioeconomic and social situational conditions that contribute to health inequities. And then finally, it's about building systems that deliver more equitable care to those who are underserved around the world. >> So, just to get this right, 40 million. Is that going to go towards the program for three years and are you going to dolo that out or as funding, or is that just a fund the organization? >> It's actually very similar to the development diagnostic initiative that we ran when COVID hit. We've launched the program. We're welcoming applications from anybody who is participating in those three developmental areas. They'll get Cloud credits. They'll get technical consulting. They may need professional services. They'll get all manner of assistance. And all you have to do is put in an application between now and November 15th for the first year. >> That's for the health equity? >> For the health equity. >> Got it. Okay, cool. So, what's the other news? You guys had some baseline data, got a lot of rave reviews from ACORE. I interviewed Constance and Thompson on the Cube earlier. That's impressive. You guys really making a lot of change. >> Well, you're hundred percent right. Sustainability is a key issue from all of our customers around the world. It's a key issue for us, frankly, as inhabitants of planet earth, right? >> John: Yeah. >> But what's really interesting is we've now got governments around the world who are starting to evaluate whether they're not their vendors have the same values and sustainability. And so that the AWS or the Amazon Climate Pledge is a game changer in terms of going carbon zero by 2040, 10 years ahead of most sort of other programs of record. And then with ACORE, we announced the ability to actually start effecting sustainability in particular parts around the world. This one's aim at that. >> But the key there is that, from what I understand is that, you guys are saying a baseline on the data. So, that's an Amazonian kind of cultural thing, right? Like you got to measure, you can't know what you're doing. >> The world is full of good intentions, but if you want to drive change at scale, you've got to figure out a way to measure the change. And then you've got to set aggressive goals for yourself. >> That's really smart. Congratulations! That's a good move. Real quick on the announcement at re:Invent, you've talked about last re:Invent, you're going to train 29 million people. Where are you on that goal? >> Well, John, we've been making tremendous progress and I'm going to use theCube here to make a small teaser. You know, stay tuned for our re:Invent conference that comes up shortly because we're actually going to be sharing some more information about it. But we've done digital trainings, self-training, online skills workshops. We just took a program called re/Start, which serves an unemployed or underemployed individuals. We launched that around the world and we're really excited. Today, we announced we're bringing it to Latin America too. So we're expanding into Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Brazil, and Argentina. And the amazing thing about that re/Start program, it's a 12 week intensive program. Doesn't require skills in advance. And after 12 weeks, 90% of the people graduating from that course go right onto a job interview. And that's the real goal, not just skills, but getting people in jobs. >> Yeah. The thing about the Cloud. I keep on banging the drum. I feel like I'm beating a dead horse here, but the level up, you don't need to have a pedigree from some big fancy school. The Cloud, you can be like top tier talent from anywhere. >> And you heard it from some of our speakers today who said they literally helped their teams bootstrap up from old skills like COBOL, you know, to new skills, like Cloud. And I will tell you, you know, right now, Cloud skills are still in a critical shortage. Our customers tell us all the time they can use every single person we can get to 'em. >> I'm going to tell my son, who's a sophomore in CS. I'm like, "Hey, work on COBOL Migration to AWS. You'll be a zillionaire." (John and Max laughs) No one knows what the passwords of the COBOL. I love that 80s jazzy jokes from two re:Invents ago. (John laughs) I got to ask you about the National-Local Governments, how they're monetizing Cloud of the past 18 months. What have you seeing at that level? >> Yeah. National and Local Governments, of course, were tremendously impacted first by the pandemic itself and the health concerns around it, but then all of the secondary effects, you know, unemployment. And immediately, you needed to put into action unemployment benefits systems. We work with the U.S. Small Business Administration, 15 other States across the U.S. You know, to have those systems in place in like weeks to be able to serve the unemployed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Then you saw things progress, to the point where we had States across the country, standing up call centers on Amazon Connect. Instantly, they could have a high scalable volume call center that was situated for their instantly remote workforce, as opposed to their old call center technology. So, across the U.S. we saw those. And in fact, around the world, as governments mobilized to be able to respond to citizens. But the final thing that I think is really incredible, is though is the way that the AWS teams and partners sprung into action to work with National Governments around the world. Over 26 National Governments run their vaccine management scheduling systems on AWS. The largest to date, being in India, where in a single day, the vaccine management system scheduled and conducted 22.5 million vaccinations. Which is more than the population of New York State in one week and one day. >> Wow. That's good. That's great progress. I got to say, I mean, that kind of impact is interesting. And we had Shannon Kellogg on earlier, talking about the Virginia impact with the Amazon $220 million being spread over a few Counties just in one year. The partnership between business... and governments with the Cloud, so much more agility. This really strikes at the core of the future of government. >> Max: I think so. People have talked about private-public partnerships for a long time. I'm really proud of some of the work that Amazon and the whole team is doing around the world in those types of public private partnerships. Whether they're in skilling and workforce with partnerships, like eight different States across the U.S. to deliver skills, training through community college based systems. Whether it's with healthcare systems. Like NHS or GEL over in the UK, to really start applying cloud-scale analytics and research to solve the problems that eventually you're going to get us to personalized healthcare. >> That's a great stuff. Cloud benefits are always good. I always say the old joke is, "You hang around the barbershop long enough, you'll get a haircut." And if you get in the Cloud, you can take advantage of the wave. If you don't get on the wave, your driftwood. >> And States found that out, in fact. You'd have customers who were well on their journey. They were really able to turn on a dime. They pivoted quickly. They delivered new mission systems with customers. Those who hadn't quite progressed to the same state, they found out their legacy. IT systems were just brittle and incapable of pivoting so quickly to the new needs. And what we found, John, was that almost overnight, a business, government, which was largely in-person and pretty high touch had to pivot to the point where their only interaction was now a digital system. And those who- >> John: Middle of the day, they could have race car on the track, like quickly. >> Well, we've got it. We do have race cars on the track, right? Every year we've got the artificial intelligence powered Amazon DeepRacer and Red River on the track. >> I can see it. Always a good showing. Final question. I know you got to go on and I appreciate you coming on- >> It's been great. >> with all your busy schedule. Looking ahead. What tech trends should we be watching as Public Sector continues to be powered by this massive structural change? >> Well, I think there's going to be huge opportunity in healthcare. In fact, this afternoon at four o'clock Eastern, we're talking with Dr. Shafiq Rab from Wellforce. He and folks at Veterans Affairs to tell you telehealth and telemedicine are two, the areas where there's still the greatest potential. The number of people who now are serviced, and the ability to service a population far more broadly dispersed, I think has dramatic potential in terms of simply making the planet more healthy. >> Like you said, the pandemics have exposed the right path and the wrong path. And agility, speed, new ways of doing things, telemedicine. Another example, I interviewed a great company that's doing a full stack around healthcare with all kinds of home, agents, virtual agents, really interesting stuff. >> It is. I think it's going to change the world. >> John: Max Peterson, Head of Public Sector. Thank you for coming on theCube, as always. >> John, it's my pleasure. Love the cube. We've always had a good time. >> Yeah. Great stuff. >> Peter: We'll keep on making this difference. >> Hey, there's too many stories. We need another Cube here. So many stories here, impacting the world. Here at the Amazon Web Services Public Sector Summit. I'm John Furrier, your host. Thanks for watching. (soft music)

(upbeat music) >> Welcome to the special CUBE presentation of the AWS Global Public Sector Partner Awards Program. I'm here with the leader of the partner program, Sandy Carter, Vice President, AWS, Amazon Web Services @Sandy_Carter on Twitter, prolific on social and great leader. Sandy, great to see you again. And congratulations on this great program we're having here. In fact, thanks for coming out for this keynote. Well, thank you, John, for having me. You guys always talk about the coolest thing. So we had to be part of it. >> Well, one of the things that I've been really loving about this success of public sector we talked to us before is that as we start coming out of the pandemic, is becoming very clear that the cloud has helped a lot of people and your team has done amazing work, just want to give you props for that and say, congratulations, and what a great time to talk about the winners. Because everyone's been working really hard in public sector, because of the pandemic. The internet didn't break. And everyone stepped up with cloud scale and solve some problems. So take us through the award winners and talk about them. Give us an overview of what it is. The criteria and all the specifics. >> Yeah, you got it. So we've been doing this annually, and it's for our public sector partners overall, to really recognize the very best of the best. Now, we love all of our partners, John, as you know, but every year we'd like to really hone in on a couple who really leverage their skills and their ability to deliver a great customer solution. They demonstrate those Amazon leadership principles like working backwards from the customer, having a bias for action, they've engaged with AWS and very unique ways. And as well, they've contributed to our customer success, which is so very important to us and to our customers as well. >> That's awesome. Hey, can we put up a slide, I know we have slide on the winners, I want to look at them, with the tiles here. So here's a list of some of the winners. I see a nice little stars on there. Look at the gold star. I knows IronNet, CrowdStrike. That's General Keith Alexander's company, I mean, super relevant. Presidio, we've interviewed them before many times, got Palantir in there. And is there another one, I want to take a look at some of the other names here. >> In overall we had 21 categories. You know, we have over 1900 public sector partners today. So you'll notice that the awards we did, a big focus on mission. So things like government, education, health care, we spotlighted some of the brand new technologies like Containers, Artificial Intelligence, Amazon Connect. And we also this year added in awards for innovative use of our programs, like think big for small business and PTP as well. >> Yeah, well, great roundup, they're looking forward to hearing more about those companies. I have to ask you, because this always comes up, we're seeing more and more ecosystem discussions when we talk about the future of cloud. And obviously, we're going to, you know, be at Mobile World Congress, theCUBE, back in physical form, again, (indistinct) will continue to go on. The notion of ecosystem is becoming a key competitive advantage for companies and missions. So I have to ask you, why are partners so important to your public sector team? Talk about the importance of partners in context to your mission? >> Yeah, you know, our partners are critical. We drive most of our business and public sector through partners. They have great relationships, they've got great skills, and they have, you know, that really unique ability to meet the customer needs. If I just highlighted a couple of things, even using some of our partners who won awards, the first is, you know, migrations are so critical. Andy talked at Reinvent about still 96% of applications still sitting on premises. So anybody who can help us with the velocity of migrations is really critical. And I don't know if you knew John, but 80% of our migrations are led by partners. So for example, we gave awards to Collibra and Databricks as best lead migration for data as well as Datacom for best data lead migration as well. And that's because they increase the velocity of migrations, which increases customer satisfaction. They also bring great subject matter expertise, in particular around that mission that you're talking about. So for instance, GDIT won best Mission Solution For Federal, and they had just an amazing solution that was a secure virtual desktop that reduced a federal agencies deployment process, from months to days. And then finally, you know, our partners drive new opportunities and innovate on behalf of our customers. So we did award this year for P to P, Partnering to Partner which is a really big element of ecosystems, but it was won by four points and in quizon, and they were able to work together to implement a data, implement a data lake and an AI, ML solution, and then you just did the startup showcase, we have a best startup delivering innovation too, and that was EduTech (indistinct) Central America. And they won for implementing an amazing student registration and early warning system to alert and risks that may impact a student's educational achievement. So those are just some of the reasons why partners are important. I could go on and on. As you know, I'm so passionate about my partners, >> I know you're going to talk for an hour, we have to cut you off a little there. (indistinct) love your partners so much. You have to focus on this mission thing. It was a strong mission focus in the awards this year. Why are customers requiring much more of a mission focused? Is it because, is it a part of the criteria? I mean, we're seeing a mission being big. Why is that the case? >> Well, you know, IDC, said that IT spend for a mission or something with a purpose or line of business was five times greater than IT. We also recently did our CTO study where we surveyed thousands of CTOs. And the biggest and most changing elements today is really not around the technology. But it's around the industry, healthcare, space that we talked about earlier, or government. So those are really important. So for instance, New Reburial, they won Best Emission for Healthcare. And they did that because of their new smart diagnostic system. And then we had a partner when PA consulting for Best Amazon Connect solution around a mission for providing support for those most at risk, the elderly population, those who already had pre existing conditions, and really making sure they were doing what they called risk shielding during COVID. Really exciting and big, strong focus on mission. >> Yeah, and it's also, you know, we've been covering a lot on this, people want to work for a company that has purpose, and that has missions. I think that's going to be part of the table stakes going forward. I got to ask you on the secrets of success when this came up, I love asking this question, because, you know, we're starting to see the playbooks of what I call post COVID and cloud scale 2.0, whatever you want to call it, as you're starting to see this new modern era of success formulas, obviously, large scale value creation mission. These are points we're hearing and keep conversations across the board. What do you see as the secret of success for these parties? I mean, obviously, it's indirect for Amazon, I get that, but they're also have their customers, they're your customers, customers. That's been around for a while. But there's a new model emerging. What are the secrets from your standpoint of success? you know, it's so interesting, John, that you asked me this, because this is the number one question that I get from partners too. I would say the first secret is being able to work backwards from your customer, not just technology. So take one of our award winners Cognizant. They won for their digital tolling solution. And they work backwards from the customer and how to modernize that, or Pariveda, who is one of our best energy solution winners. And again, they looked at some of these major capital projects that oil companies were doing, working backwards from what the customer needed. I think that's number one, working backwards from the customer. Two, is having that mission expertise. So given that you have to have technology, but you also got to have that expertise in the area. We see that as a big secret of our public sector partners. So education cloud, (indistinct) one for education, effectual one for government and not for profit, Accenture won, really leveraging and showcasing their global expansion around public safety and disaster response. Very important as well. And then I would say the last secret of success is building repeatable solutions using those strong skills. So Deloitte, they have a great solution for migration, including mainframes. And then you mentioned early on, CloudStrike and IronNet, just think about the skill sets that they have there for repeatable solutions around security. So I think it's really around working backwards from the customer, having that mission expertise, and then building a repeatable solution, leveraging your skill sets. >> That's a great formula for success. I got you mentioned IronNet, and cybersecurity. One of things that's coming up is, in addition to having those best practices, there's also like real problems to solve, like, ransomware is now becoming a government and commercial problem, right. So (indistinct) seeing that happen a lot in DC, that's a front burner. That's a societal impact issue. That's like a cybersecurity kind of national security defense issue, but also, it's a technical one. And also public sector, through my interviews, I can tell you the past year and a half, there's been a lot of creativity of new solutions, new problems or new opportunities that are not yet identified as problems and I'd love to get your thoughts on my concern is with Jeff Bar yesterday from AWS, who's been blogging all the the news and he is a leader in the community. He was saying that he sees like 5G in the edge as new opportunities where it's creative. It's like he compared to the going to the home improvement store where he just goes to buy one thing. He does other things. And so there's a builder culture. And I think this is something that's coming out of your group more, because the pandemic forced these problems, and they forced new opportunities to be creative, and to build. What's your thoughts? >> Yeah, so I see that too. So if you think about builders, you know, we had a partner, Executive Council yesterday, we had 900, executives sign up from all of our partners. And we asked some survey questions like, what are you building with today? And the number one thing was artificial intelligence and machine learning. And I think that's such a new builders tool today, John, and, you know, one of our partners who won an award for the most innovative AI&ML was Kablamo And what they did was they use AI&ML to do a risk assessment on bushfires or wildfires in Australia. But I think it goes beyond that. I think it's building for that need. And this goes back to, we always talk about #techforgood. Presidio, I love this award that they won for best nonprofit, the Cherokee Nation, which is one of our, you know, Native American heritage, they were worried about their language going out, like completely out like no one being able to speak yet. And so they came to Presidio, and they asked how could we have a virtual classroom platform for the Cherokee Nation? And they created this game that's available on your phone, so innovative, so much of a builder's culture to capture that young generation, so they don't you lose their language. So I do agree. I mean, we're seeing builders everywhere, we're seeing them use artificial intelligence, Container, security. And we're even starting with quantum, so it is pretty powerful of what you can do as a public sector partner. >> I think the partner equation is just so wide open, because it's always been based on value, adding value, right? So adding value is just what they do. And by the way, you make money doing it if you do a good job of adding value. And, again, I just love riffing on this, because Dave and I talked about this on theCUBE all the time, and it comes up all the time in cloud conversations. The lock in isn't proprietary technology anymore, its value, and scale. So you starting to see builders thrive in that environment. So really good points. Great best practice. And I think I'm very bullish on the partner ecosystems in general, and people do it right, flat upside. I got to ask you, though, going forward, because this is the big post COVID kind of conversation. And last time we talked on theCUBE about this, you know, people want to have a growth strategy coming out of COVID. They want to be, they want to have a tail win, they want to be on the right side of history. No one wants to be in the losing end of all this. So last year in 2021 your goals were very clear, mission, migrations, modernization. What's the focus for the partners beyond 2021? What are you guys thinking to enable them, 21 is going to be a nice on ramp to this post COVID growth strategy? What's the focus beyond 2021 for you and your partners? >> Yeah, it's really interesting, we're going to actually continue to focus on those three M's mission, migration and modernization. But we'll bring in different elements of it. So for example, on mission, we see a couple of new areas that are really rising to the top, Smart Cities now that everybody's going back to work and (indistinct) down, operations and maintenance and global defense and using gaming and simulation. I mean, think about that digital twin strategy and how you're doing that. For migration, one of the big ones we see emerging today is data-lead migration. You know, we have been focused on applications and mainframes, but data has gravity. And so we are seeing so many partners and our customers demanding to get their data from on premises to the cloud so that now they can make real time business decisions. And then on modernization. You know, we talked a lot about artificial intelligence and machine learning. Containers are wicked hot right now, provides you portability and performance. I was with a startup last night that just moved everything they're doing to ECS our Container strategy. And then we're also seeing, you know, crippin, quantum blockchain, no code, low code. So the same big focus, mission migration, modernization, but the underpinnings are going to shift a little bit beyond 2021. >> That's great stuff. And you know, you have first of all people don't might not know that your group partners and Amazon Web Services public sector, has a big surface area. You talking about government, health care, space. So I have to ask you, you guys announced in March the space accelerator and you recently announced that you selected 10 companies to participate in the accelerated program. So, I mean, this is this is a space centric, you know, targeting, you know, low earth orbiting satellites to exploring the surface of the Moon and Mars, which people love. And because the space is cool, let's say the tech and space, they kind of go together, right? So take us through, what's this all about? How's that going? What's the selection, give us a quick update, while you're here on this space accelerated selection, because (indistinct) will have had a big blog post that went out (indistinct). >> Yeah, I would be thrilled to do that. So I don't know if you know this. But when I was young, I wanted to be an astronaut. We just helped through (indistinct), one of our partners reach Mars. So Clint, who is a retired general and myself got together, and we decided we needed to do something to help startups accelerate in their space mission. And so we decided to announce a competition for 10 startups to get extra help both from us, as well as a partner Sarafem on space. And so we announced it, everybody expected the companies to come from the US, John, they came from 44 different countries. We had hundreds of startups enter, and we took them through this six week, classroom education. So we had our General Clint, you know, helping and teaching them in space, which he's done his whole life, we provided them with AWS credits, they had mentoring by our partner, Sarafem. And we just down selected to 10 startups, that was what Vernors blog post was. If you haven't read it, you should look at some of the amazing things that they're going to do, from, you know, farming asteroids to, you know, helping with some of the, you know, using small vehicles to connect to larger vehicles, when we all get to space. It's very exciting. Very exciting, indeed, >> You have so much good content areas and partners, exploring, it's a very wide vertical or sector that you're managing. Is there any pattern? Well, I want to get your thoughts on post COVID success again, is there any patterns that you're seeing in terms of the partner ecosystem? You know, whether its business model, or team makeup, or more mindset, or just how they're organizing that that's been successful? Is there like a, do you see a trend? Is there a certain thing, then I've got the working backwards thing, I get that. But like, is there any other observations? Because I think people really want to know, am I doing it right? Am I being a good manager, when you know, people are going to be working remotely more? We're seeing more of that. And there's going to be now virtual events, hybrid events, physical events, the world's coming back to normal, but it's never going to be the same. Do you see any patterns? >> Yeah, you know, we're seeing a lot of small partners that are making an entrance and solving some really difficult problems. And because they're so focused on a niche, it's really having an impact. So I really believe that that's going to be one of the things that we see, I focus on individual creators and companies who are really tightly aligned and not trying to do everything, if you will. I think that's one of the big trends. I think the second we talked about it a little bit, John, I think you're going to see a lot of focus on mission. Because of that purpose. You know, we've talked about #techforgood, with everything going on in the world. As people have been working from home, they've been reevaluating who they are, and what do they stand for, and people want to work for a company that cares about people. I just posted my human footer on LinkedIn. And I got my first over a million hits on LinkedIn, just by posting this human footer, saying, you know what, reply to me at a time that's convenient for you, not necessarily for me. So I think we're going to see a lot of this purpose driven mission, that's going to come out as well. >> Yeah, and I also noticed that, and I was on LinkedIn, I got a similar reaction when I started trying to create more of a community model, not so much have people attend our events, and we need butts in the seats. It was much more personal, like we wanted you to join us, not attend and be like a number. You know, people want to be part of something. This seem to be the new mission. >> Yeah, I completely agree with that. I think that, you know, people do want to be part of something and they want, they want to be part of the meaning of something too, right. Not just be part of something overall, but to have an impact themselves, personally and individually, not just as a company. And I think, you know, one of the other trends that we saw coming up too, was the focus on technology. And I think low code, no code is giving a lot of people entry into doing things I never thought they could do. So I do think that technology, artificial intelligence Containers, low code, no code blockchain, those are going to enable us to even do greater mission-based solutions. >> Low code, no code reduces the friction to create more value, again, back to the value proposition. Adding value is the key to success, your partners are doing it. And of course, being part of something great, like the Global Public Sector Partner Awards list is a good one. And that's what we're talking about here. Sandy, great to see you. Thank you for coming on and sharing your insights and an update and talking more about the 2021, Global Public Sector partner Awards. Thanks for coming on. >> Thank you, John, always a pleasure. >> Okay, the Global Leaders here presented on theCUBE, again, award winners doing great work in mission, modernization, again, adding value. That's what it's all about. That's the new competitive advantage. This is theCUBE. I'm John Furrier, your host, thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>>From around the globe, it's the cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent 2020 sponsored by Intel and AWS. >>Oh, great. To have you with us here on the cube, as we continue our coverage of AWS reinvent 2020, doing it virtually of course, uh, out of a necessity as I'm sure all of you can appreciate we're joined now by Alex Sanchez, who is the head of cross GDC networks and Fujitsu and Fujitsu provider of global it services and solutions. And so their footprint, um, again, is, is around the world. Uh, Alex, thanks for joining us here on the cube. We appreciate your time. And, uh, I'd like to hear a little bit more about your role first off before we jump in and tell us a little bit about Fujitsu for those who might not be familiar with it. >>Thank you very much, Sean. I really appreciate it. Uh, well, uh, first, uh, let me start by providing some background on Fujitsu. We're a global it digital transformation company offering a full range of technology products, solutions, and services. Uh, we exist to keep our customer's business running and we strive to give the best possible experience across every customer touch point. My role as head of cross CDC networks, uh, makes me in charge of standardizing technology networks across our global delivery centers. And for the past couple of years, I have been working on the standardization of our contact center platform across all of our global delivery centers. >>Yeah, yeah. I mean, you mentioned global delivery centers, so let's, let's jump into that. Uh, first off, what are they, um, you know, how have you structured your business in that respect and, um, ultimately what kind of service or a solution are they providing to your customers? >>Absolutely. So our global delivery centers are interconnected, integrated global teams. Uh, we deliver a broad portfolio of standardized services, which includes cybersecurity workplace and much more. We're based out of, uh, eight different key countries. We serve customers in over 100 and uh, different countries and we provide support in over 40 different languages. Uh, we enabled, uh, those CDCs enabled us to consistently and resilient provide services to our customers, uh, 24 seven 365 days of the year. Uh, the service, uh, that we offer, uh, as, uh, for you to global delivery teams are constructed from fully standardized components. Uh, it allows us to, uh, be configured to meet our customer needs and deliver a flawless global consistency services. >>You just, you were just talking about multiple languages, right? You've got to deal with countries, uh, environments, uh, continents, uh, businesses with different needs of, of all, you know, all over the, over the map. If you might say that, um, how do you balance that? Or how do you approach that when you do have so many customers in a wide variety of venues with a wide variety of needs and yet, you know, you want to provide for them that exemplary service that they expect when they come to Fujitsu? >>Uh, well, yes, as I mentioned, uh, we strive to evolve our contact centers so that it meets that global need that global expansion. And we adapt to our customers' needs. Uh, we have our GDCs with teams that are engaged and enabled so that we can provide customers with, uh, the best customer experience we like to help our customers reimagine their employee experience. >>Yeah. You mentioned, uh, you're talking about the contact centers and I know that you're going through this major transformation right now, in terms of, of, uh, how they're operating, um, before we get into that and, and, and jump a little bit deeper into what you've already touched on, what was the problem before, or, you know, there's always a problem, right? We're always trying to solve something, make something better, put a little finer point on that in terms of, of what you were doing before, you know, where were we? >>Well, uh, if we get to this global delivery organization, uh, tries to build trust at every opportunity we aim to deepen our customer relationships by adding a value of mix, uh, of rock, solid delivery, innovation and collaboration. However, some of our previous systems, the net always offer us the functionality and flexibility that we needed to provide a diverse range of, uh, services to our customers and what they required. So that is the basis of our, uh, challenges and, uh, what we were striving to overcome. >>So you've, you've turned AWS, um, uh, again, Amazon connect, I know that, uh, that you've got widely deployed. What was it that, that attracted you to that in terms of finding the value in it, and then what kind of efficiencies and what kinds of improvement in your operations is, is connect providing you >>Well, uh, being able to, uh, think about the art of the possible adding value to our customers. Introducing next generation features, uh, our road with AWS connected started as a two month proof of concept, uh, with over 150 different agents initially supported out of one of those global delivery centers, providing support and services to, uh, one of the regions. So, uh, we started as a way to innovate and provide next generation functionality. >>Yeah. Proof of concept periods are always interesting, aren't they? Because you, you think you're going to find out some thing and, and you might, but then you sometimes find out something else, right. That, that you're like, okay, well, the, uh, there's another application here. There's another service here. There's another layer here. Um, what was it in that period of time for you then, as far as your takeaways that convinced you that, you know, this is right, this is good. We need this. And, and so we're going to jump in. Absolutely. So, >>Uh, I would say that one of those things is that we made marked improvements in our customer experience. We were able to rapidly onboard new agents and provide automated features, such as call recording sentiment analysis, integrated callback features. We were able to help our customers faster while simultaneously improving the service quality. >>Yeah. COVID, uh, has been, um, certainly wreaking havoc in, in every facet of life. Right. Um, no question personally, professionally unit, multiple industries. So how about the impact on your, in your world first off, just from, from COVID-19, uh, how you've had to assess what your client's needs are, how you, what your needs are and, and first off, how you've, how have you balanced that >>In the past year? Yes, well, uh, Fujitsu was able to move, uh, 95% of our contact survey agents to remote work environment, equipped with the tools that they needed to provide, uh, services while remaining safe and productive. Our contact center agents and operations was not able to persist, but actually thrive during the COVID 19 pandemic and provide the much needed support that our customers were expecting and, uh, provided from, from us. How fast >>Was it, you know, I guess it required, what, how quickly did you have to respond? Cause, uh, you know, I mean, this certainly has caught a lot of, or caught a lot of people by surprise back in early March and April. Um, and I assume that that Fujitsu's no different, right? All of a sudden you have, uh, a pandemic on your hands and you've got to move nimbly and quickly. So just talk about that, if you would, that, that quick transformation that you had to make and in terms of responding to the >>Absolutely. So with AWS connect, we were able to automate and simplify the complex contact center flows that we had previously, a product of this is it's ability to now make ad hoc changes in seconds while avoiding multiple vendors to actually get those implemented. One example of this is that for you to help one of our customers move from 4,500 QS to less than 400 by actually doing call tagging attributes, instead of just creating independent flows for each one of those countries. And this mainly because of the needs from the operation to be able to quickly create reports based on countries and languages. Yeah. >>And I know you were involved or, and, and, and I might still be, I'm not sure a beta testing, uh, with some of the new, um, AWS connect features that were announced recently, you know, here at, uh, during re-invent what, what is, um, what's got you going there, you know, what, what, uh, what's caught your attention and what are you excited about seeing I go into practice on a, on a wider basis? >>Well, John, I would to say that introduction of ado list tasks has greatly helped us improve our agent productivity. We were able to see improvements of around 30% and we expect refine our customer experience even further by adding additional AWS integrations. >>Now, you mentioned, mentioned further, there's always a next step, right? Isn't there Alex. I mean, there's always, it's as good as you are now. You can't afford to sit still. I mean, that's the competitive nature of your landscape. So where do you see yourself in, in terms of rollouts in the future, or if there's an area that you think this is the next, uh, challenge for us, uh, in the, in the short term, what would that be? >>Well, that AC very good question for you to provide, uh, contact center services to around 300 diverse customers with agents speaking dozens of different languages. And we are continually looking to improve those services and experience for our customers, as well as our employees. We believe that if our employees are happy and safe and they have the tools that they need to do their work, that would result in an M in a much more improved, uh, service to our customers as such, uh, for you to source invest money, invest in heavily in the of transformation. Some of those elements would include a location agnostic delivery. This would actually allow us to create virtual teams with so employees working from Fujitsu offices while some will continue working from home. This approach will offer, uh, significantly and greater flexibility for our employees, as well as an improved efficiency of our services. >>Uh, the ability to introduce self service and automation by introducing, uh, virtual assistants, uh, robotics, uh, voice recognition, speech to text conversion, sentiment analysis. It will help us reduce the time it takes for agents or staff in repetitive tasks, allowing them to focus on the more important, uh, improvement, adding value to our customers. Being able to add, uh, tasks such as technology upgrades, uh, knowledge and data management, uh, that analytics business recommendations from our customers. This would then, uh, tied into what we're doing with improved planning, uh, as situation changes. And definitely COVID has been one example of that. Uh, Fujitsu needs to respond rapidly to ensure that we continue to provide support to all of our customers, uh, wrote a planning system, provides insights recommendations to help us deal with those changes as well as offering a level of flexibility for employees to align with their personal needs. And, uh, finally, and tying this up with those innovations that we're looking into, uh, being able to take those into employee engagement. We're introducing a proof of concept with gamification on some of our contact center, uh, desks to provide employees with a rewarding environment that offers an increase, uh, find while also doing the work reinforcing behaviors and enhancing customer satisfaction while there's certainly, um, a new >>Order, a new world, right? In, in terms of how we have to operate in a business environment. And I think you hit a key word there it's flexibility, right? Ultimately giving your employees the flexibility to still do their jobs in a very productive environment and a safe environment is critical. And it seems like Fujitsu is committed to doing that. So congratulations on that and thank you for the time today. We really appreciate it. >>Thank you very much, Sean. And thank you for the opportunity.

>>From around the globe. It's the cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent 2020 sponsored by Intel and AWS. >>Welcome back to the cubes live coverage of AWS reinvent 2020 I'm Lisa Martin and I have with me a cube alumni back, please. Welcome Scott Mullins, the worldwide financial services business development leader at AWS. Scott. Welcome back. Great to have you joining us, >>Lisa. It's great to be back on the cube and to be visiting with you today from virtual re-invent 2020. >>Yes. Reinventing reinvent. The last show that I got to host in-person for the cube was reinvent last year. And here we have this three week virtual event that started last week. So lots more even going on. I think I even saw a hundred thousand or so registered, so massive event, lots of news. So walk us through some of the highlights that have been announced at reinvent this year and some of the things that you're seeing the most interest from customers in. >>Well, I think one of the big highlights is 500,000 registrants that are reinvented 50,000 attendees last year to reinvent or 50,000 or so to 500,000 re registered for the event. So that's, that's, that's worth talking about in its own. Right. But I think, you know, one of the things, and you mentioned this, you know, more re-invent three weeks, uh, this year, as opposed to the four days that we normally spend in Las Vegas together, physically, when you do, when you do it digitally, you have the ability to actually include more things and more leaders talking about things. And so when we think about the announcements that are having impacts, uh, with financial services customers specifically I'd point to a couple of things and, you know, they're obviously gonna mention Andy's keynote, but there's going to be some things that you might go wait a minute. >>I didn't even see that announcement. Uh, and then maybe I could point you and the viewers to some other, other, um, keynotes or some other sessions that were announced. So obviously I think, uh, first and foremost in Andy's keynote, uh, hybrid, uh, was something that was a very, uh, big focus for him and I for a very long time, we've had the messaging of the right tool for the right job when it comes to any of your services. I think you could alter that today to say it's the right tool for the right job at the right time and in the right place. That makes sense for you and especially for financial institutions. Um, you could look at the announcements around containers, the announcements around Amazon EKS, distro, Amazon EKS, anywhere, and then also Amazon ECS anywhere, which allows our customers to actually, uh, put AWS container technology anywhere they would like to put it. >>You could look also at the additions of the one you and two you form factors to outposts. So no longer do you have to do the, the, the large for you, uh, foreign factor for outposts, smaller outposts for smaller spaces, uh, that particular will play well in the financial service industry. You may not have necessarily as much room for a full cabinet. You could also look from the hybrid perspective in the announcement we made, um, around red hat OpenShift on AWS, all of are giving customers the ability to choose how they actually want to deploy, um, and pursue a hybrid. I'd also point to some announcements we made around management and governance in the financial services, industry governance, uh, is a very important topic. Uh, we announced the management and government lens for the AWS well architected, um, uh, program, uh, that is focused on breath practices for evolving governance for the cloud. >>It has recommended combination of AWS services integrations with our partner network and vetted reference architectures and guidance for addressing regulatory obligations as well. I'd also point to some things we made around audits. I was specifically in Steve Smith's, um, session today, he talked about AWS audit manager. That's a new tool for continually assessing areas and environments for controls or risk compliance. That includes prebuilt compliance frameworks for things like PCI DSS and GDPR, uh, two things that are very important in the financial services industry and last, but certainly not least I'd point to the announcement around the AWS audit Academy. This is training for auditors to actually be able to audit clouds from an agnostic perspective. Any cloud, not specifically AWS that's tree, uh, digital training to do that. And then also an instructor led course specifically on how to audit AWS. So some very key announcements, both from the standpoint of services, uh, as well as additional layers of helping customers in the financial services industry in regulated industries actually use our services. >>So typical, re-invent typical in a lot of news, a lot of announcements, the 500,000 Mark in terms of registering. I hadn't heard that. That's amazing. Let's talk that this has been an Andy. Jassy had an exclusive with John furrier just a couple of weeks ago before. I think it was last week, actually. And we've been talking about this acceleration of digital business transformation because of COVID we've been talking about it, the entire pandemic on the virtual cube, talking about how companies it's really about right now, surviving and thriving to be able to go forward and companies that haven't accelerated are probably in some trouble. Talk to me about how AWS has been working with your financial services customers to help them pivot and move to the cloud faster, really to not just help them survive now, but thrive in the long-term. >>Yeah. Immediately when COVID hit and it hit at different times in different, in different parts of the world. Immediately when COVID hit, we saw the conversation that we were having turning from, Hey, what's my digital strategy to immediately, what are my digital capabilities? And what that really means is what do I have the ability to do tomorrow? Because tomorrow is going to really matter. I don't have necessarily the time to plan for the next several quarters or the next several years, what can I do tomorrow to, um, really, uh, support my, my own workforce and support my own customers and the obligations I have as a financial institution. The first thing we saw people do was to try and make sure that those who financial services work can work. You can look at the adoption of Amazon workspaces, as well as our, uh, Amazon connect, uh, call centers as a service. >>As two examples there at the RBL bank in India was able to move to Amazon workspaces in just 10 days to enable its teams to actually work remotely from home. When they couldn't come into the office, you can look at Barclays. Barclays is actually a presenter at re-invent this year. They'll have a session on how they use Amazon connect, which again is our call center as a service offering to enable 25,000 contacts and our agents to work from home when they can no longer work out of the, out of their traditional contact center. The second thing we saw a financial institutions joining was making sure that customer engagements could still be meaningful when digital was the only option, um, specifically here in the U S you could look at the work that each of us did with FinTech companies like biz two X or fins Zack, or BlueVine Stripe and cabbage in support of the care act in the U S you might remember that the cares act, um, hasn't provisions for funding for small businesses. >>This small business administration had a program called the paycheck protection program, and those organizations were active in providing funding, uh, to small businesses. Uh, through that program. I'll give you an example of cabbage cabbage had previously not been an SBA lender, um, but they were able to, in two weeks build a fully automated system for small businesses to access PPP funding using Amazon text track, to extract information from documentation that those folks submitted to get alone. That reduced approval times from multiple days to about a median of four hours to actually get approval, to get funding through the PPP program. And then just four months cabbage became the second largest PPP lender. They lent over $7 billion in funding, which was twice the amount of funding that they went last year in 2019 loans. So we were happy to support organizations like cabbage and those other FinTech companies, as they help small businesses in the U S get access to funding, uh, during this critical time. >>And as we know, as you said, critical time, but really life or death for a lot of businesses. And as we continue to go through these ways, but it's interesting that you talked about that the speed of facilitation that during such unprecedented times, AWS and this massive machine was able to continue moving at full speed ahead and helping those customers to pivot. You talked about the cloud connect. I had a conversation with a guest on the queue last week about that. And, and I now think about if I have to call in a contact center and that person might be from home. So, you know, we're fortunate that the cloud computing technology and people like you and AWS, or are able to power that because it's, it's literally essential, which is probably one of the words of the year, but being able to keep the machinery going and innovate at the same time has been, make or break for a lot of businesses. >>Absolutely. And you, you look at, you know, kind of one of the last year is that I'll point to is, um, financial institutions. Uh, anti-virus, we're were very much focused on making sure that that cannot fail, that they scaled. And so you can look at the work we did with, uh, with the, with FINRA FINRA is the primary capital markets regulator here in the U S and on a daily basis frame or processes about 400 billion market events on every night to do surveillance on our markets, that when COVID hit, we had unprecedented volume and volatility in the market. And FINRA was, was, um, looking at processing, uh, anywhere from two to three times, their normal daily market volumes that's anywhere from 800 billion market events to 1.2 trillion a night. And if you look at how they were able to scale, they're actually able to scale up compute resources in AWS. We're on a nightly basis. They're able to automatically turn on and off up to a hundred thousand compute nodes in a single day. That automatic ability to scale is, is the power you're talking about. Being able to actually turn things up when you needed it and turn things down when you, when you don't need it based on the volumes. >>Well, and that's going to be something key going forward. As we know that there will be one thing I think that I always say we can count on right now is uncertainty and continued uncertainty, but we've also seen I'm calling them COVID catalysts. You know, the, what you talked about with cabbage, for example, and how that business pivoted quickly, because of the power of cloud computing and emerging technologies, what are some of the things that you think as we go into 2021 in the financial services arena, what are some of the big tech trends that you think were maybe born during COVID that are going to be critical going forward? >>Well, you know, you, you, you had Melanie Frank from capital one on cube a couple of days ago, and she was talking about, you know, their shift to cloud and what that's really enabled, and it, and she kind of sums it up nicely. She says, look, we want to give our customers experience that are real time, and that are intelligent. And you just can't do that with legacy technology. That's sitting in, you know, kind of a legacy data center. And so I think that's going to be kind of the, the, the all encompassing statement for what's happening in the financial services industry. As I mentioned, you know, organizations overnight said, okay, wait a minute, let's take that strategy. And then let's put it aside. Let's talk about capabilities. What can we do? And I think, you know, necessity is the mother of invention. Um, and when you're faced with limitations and challenges, like we all have been faced with around the world and not just in the financial services industry, it, it breeds, um, invention and the, and the desire and the need to actually meet those challenges head on, in very engineered of ways. >>And I think you're going to see more invention and specifically more invention from the established players in the financial services industry. Cloud use is not just experimental on the edges anymore. You're going to see more organizations coming out of COVID. Um, having had those experiences where they actually stood up a context center and scaled it. And, and just a matter of a few days to, to thousands of agents, you're going to find, um, organizations saying, wait a minute, we, we can do remote work. We could, we have access to things like Amazon workspaces. So I think you're, you're gonna, you're going to see that, uh, be a, be a trend. I think you're also gonna see, um, w what Lori beer said in the keynote with Andy, you know, she, she made a very, very astute statement, and I don't know if people caught it, cause it's kind of neat in the middle of her conversation. >>She said, look, we're trying to infuse analytics into everything that we do at JP Morgan. I think you're going to see more and more financial institutions looking to do that, to actually leverage the power of analytics, to power everything we do as a financial institution. So I think those, those are a couple of things that you're going to see. Um, and then, you know, looking, uh, you know, kind of around the corner, I think you're going to continue to see more re-invention within the industry. And what I mean by that is you've seen many financial institutions over the last week, uh, with, uh, re-invent making announcements, you saw bank and we towel saying, Hey, look, we are completely transforming ourselves with AWS. Uh, just a few weeks before we even saw standard charter, the same thing HSBC said, the same thing, global payments earlier in the year said the same thing. And you're going to see more and more organizations coming out and talking about these strategic decisions to reinvent everything that they do to make the financial systems of the world work. And so we're really pleased to be partnering with those organizations to make those transformations possible. We're seeing a lot of invention within the industry, and we're very pleased to be a part of the reinvention of the financial systems around the world. >>It's interesting to hear that you, you see, even the JP Morgan, some of those legacy, big houses are going to be really pivoting. They have to, to be competitive and to be able to utilize analytics, to deliver those real-time services. Because as we all know, as consumers, our patients is wearing thin these days, but I agree with you. I think there's a lot of opportunity there that innovation is exciting and there will have to be reinvention of entire industries, but I think there's a lot of silver linings there. Scott. I wish we had more time, cause I know we could keep talking, but thank you for sharing your insights on this reinvented reinvent this year. >>I appreciate it. Thank you, Lisa. It's always a pleasure to be on the cube. >>Chris Scott Mullins, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the cubes coverage of AWS reinvent 2020.

>>from >>around the globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent 2020 sponsored by Intel, AWS and our community partners. >>Hi. >>And welcome to the Cube. Virtual in our coverage of aws reinvent 2020. We have a cube virtual, and I'm your host, Justin Warren. And today, my guest is Shauna Wolverton, executive vice president of product at ZENDESK. And she's coming to us from Oakland, California. Shauna, welcome to the >>Cube. Thanks so much for having me. It is >>It is lovely to be here. How's the weather over there? In Oakland, >>we just suddenly went from summer to winter, which, uh, after the weather we've had is no complaints. >>All right, Well, as as a resident of Melbourne, where we have four seasons in one day, I am very familiar with rapid weather changes. So, uh, hopefully it's not too cold for you, and you get a little bit of nicer weather just before you go fully into winter. Absolutely. Now Zendesk and Amazon have a pretty close relationship is my understanding, and we know that Amazon is famous for its customer center at attitude. Wonderful thing about customers, of course, is that they're never really happy with everything that we have. So zendesk fit in with that with that relationship with Amazon. And how is your approach to customer? >>Yeah. I mean, the relationship we have with them is I'm really excited. Really Have gone all in on our move to the cloud. There are sole provider on DWI run all of our services, um, on AWS. And in addition, we have some great partnerships with, uh, Jacob Amazon Connect, which allows us to provide great telephony and call center services to our customers. We have a great partnership around event bridge and a zwelling app connect. So I think there is a fantastic relationship that we have where we're able to deliver not just our basic services, but to really take advantage of a lot of the services that Amazon on AWS provide s so that we can sort of accelerate our own roadmap and deliver great new features to our customers. >>Now, a lot of people have gone through a pretty similar adoption of the cloud of the moment. Unfortunate reason for doing so. But it certainly has driven the adoption very, very quickly. Uh, zendesk, of course, as you say, has been has been doing this for quite some time. So what have you noticed that stayed the same eso from last year to this year? What were you already doing that you're now noticing? Everyone else's discovering. Actually, this is pretty good. >>Well, you know, I think you know the rumors of of the call center and and the telephone as a channel. Their demise are greatly exactly. I think, um, for us. Much as we're all excited about chat and messaging and all of the different ways that we can connect with our customers, there's something about having a phone number and allowing people to pick up the phone and talk to a human that refuses to go out of style. And so I think, um, you know, our partnership with, uh with Amazon connection has been hugely powerful and even, you know, recently when a lot of this sort of acceleration has picked up, we've seen, um, you know, we saw a customer who had a power failure kind of massive failure of their own phone system. Be able thio, come to us, get, get, connect up and running incredibly quickly and start taking thousands of calls a day and that kind of sort of quick time to value fast start ability for our customers. Just this hugely important. Um, now. But really, you know, that's always been true, right? >>Yeah. I mean, when people want to call you and they want to talk to you, then they're not really happy If they can't get through that and particularly right now, being able to make that human human connection for me, I know that that that's been a really important part of getting through this. I work remotely most of the time. So actually, speaking to humans as we're doing now is is really refreshing change from just seeing everything on on a text screen. Um, so yeah, so it's It's interesting that the phone has actually has been so resilient, even though we were here from Ah, lot of young people say, Oh, we never answer the phone when someone calls, uh, but a lot of people are actually calling into businesses when they wanna make contact or when they when they don't see things on the website. So >>how does >>zendesk help, too, to integrate with what people are doing in their online and digital channels through to what they're doing with phone system. >>Yeah, but I think fundamentally people want their questions answered. One of my favorite studies that we did was around our benchmark study and we talked to Millennials. They said the first place they go to get help to their phone, but when you push it a little deeper, it was clear that they actually didn't know that the phone was for making phone calls. It was just all of the other help centers like like the first way that a lot of people today are looking for. Answers is, you know I wanna google it. And for that you need a really great help center has all that information out there and then you want toe have, you know, communities where people can talk to each other and get help. And then, you know, Mawr and Mawr. We're seeing the rise of messaging as a channel, both through the social channels like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger Aziz Well, Azaz native messaging kind of ongoing conversations. He you ordered your dinner. It hasn't arrived. It's so great to be able to go into those applications and just message to the business and figure out what's what's going on and get that sort of instantaneous response as well, >>right? And you shared some stats with this regarding how much has moved across to some of these things phone based messaging channels. So tickets coming in has risen about 50% on DCA, paired to some gains on on live chat. So people are really embracing the idea of being about a message, not just individual talking to your friends in the group chat, but actually using that to engage with with the companies that they would normally use websites or or phone. It's like text chat is a thing. >>Yeah, I mean, it was funny to me. You know, I think we're still, uh, in the U. S. Not quite as far along as a lot of our international friends. When I when traveling was a thing that we did, you know, I was always like it was cool to see that there were billboards and ads that had what that phone numbers on them is a really, you know, way that businesses were wanting to engage. I mean, you think about be wanting to be where your customers are today. So many of us, um do have you know what's happened? Wechat and line and vibrant. They're all in our pocket. And being able to provide all of those two businesses is a new way to engage. I think we're finding is hugely powerful, >>right? So with with all of these dynamic changes that have been happening, and it sounds like it's actually just sort of riding the wave of what customers were already doing, we're just doing it just that little bit mawr. But have you noticed any other larger changes? Possibly ones that aren't related thio a pandemic, Just general shifts that have been happening that you've seen in your customer base? >>Yeah. I mean, like I said, I think so much of what we're seeing is that people, uh, in general want answers quickly, and whether it's a phone call is great. And like I said, people are not going to stop calling. But I think people want to make sure less than like, I need a human to have a conversation I want. I want the answer quickly, and that's where we're really focused in both thinking about how we provide tools around automating some of getting those answers using, uh, a i N m l so that people can come to us, ask questions and we can get them the best answer very quickly without, um, having Thio engage a person. I think things idea of quick resolution is clearly becoming one of the most important things in customer sentiment. I think we know that, um, Mawr and Mawr. This idea of how quickly I can get my question's resolved or how easy it is for me to do business with you is a huge differentiator in how people make buying >>choices. Mm. On that. That automation has long been a new track tive idea. I mean, I'm I'm old enough to remember expert systems and and having a go at doing this kind of heavily automated way of resolving particularly common issues. And I mean, we were familiar with Coulson, a chat scripts. Where there's here are the top three issues and or it will be in the I V. R. Where it's like we're currently experiencing this particular problems, so that resolves your question quite quickly. But there's been a big rise in things like chatbots and and the use of AI. How far advanced. Is that because I still remember some of the early forays into that were a little bit flaky, and that could actually exacerbate the poor customer experience. I'm already having a problem, and and now you're chatbots getting in the way. Have they gotten a lot better? Are they Are they up to the challenge? >>Yeah. I mean, I think what's really critical when you're thinking about automation? Um, in the conversations you're having with customers, it's it's two things. One Don't try to hide that. That you're a computer. No, no, my name is Chad. I am. I am a human. Um, you're not in the vault. Yeah, there's not anyone. Um, so I think being really clear. And then, um e think surfacing how thio very easily opt out of those flows. I think, um, you know, automation is great, but it's not away. You shouldn't think of it as a way to frustrate your users to keep them tied up until you can get to them. It really is. Give them some quick options. And if they don't? If those don't solve their problems, really make sure that your you've got an escape valve, right? We were putting out a new sort of flow build their product zendesk. And we have all of the different, uh, words that someone could say that air like smashing the zero button. That means please transfer me to a person, right? You're driving me crazy. Let me connect you to an agent. Eso We're really making sure that it's easy, um, for customers to provide the solution where their customers can get the help they need rather than I >>really like that. That's That's something I think that gets a little bit lost in the focus on computers and and on automation is that the reason we do this is to help the humans. So when we have these AI systems, it's not actually to replace. The human interaction is to make it better. It's to make mean that we can then get to that genuine connection. Computers a fabulous and when they work, it's when they don't when they frustrate things that that bothers us. And that's generally why we're calling is that something has already gone wrong and we're a bit frustrated. So adding more frustration, doesn't it? Sounds like a good approach. It sounds like zendesk really got that? That dolled in very, very well. Is that something that you've you've always had? Is it something that you've refined over time? And can you teach it to a bunch of other companies? >>Way would love to teach each other. People know, I think e think we have always thought about how the machines can help the humans. And I think one it's how can they help the customers, of course. But the other side that I don't think people talk about quite a much is how can we use computers to help agents? Right. So you're talking to a person, and how can we take sort of the best answers that they've given Thio other customers and surface those, um, when When a new agent is coming on board, how do we suggest, um, you know, the different kinds of work flows that they might want to use to solve this problem in a more dynamic way. So I really like to think of the computers never as a replacement but really as a sort of hidden superpower, Um, that organizations have to make every agent one of their best >>agents, right? Yes, it is a kind of external cyborg thing. I mean, I can't remember anything these days. I constantly right less and they all live in computers. But they are. That's the kind of society that we live with today. And I think we should remember to embrace that side of things. That ah, lot of life has actually gotten a lot better through the use of these computing systems. It's not all terrible. It's, um, and I think more companies could probably learn from zendesk. And the approach that you've taken to center the humans, both the customers and and your internal staff, the call center and and the people who are providing this service. No one enjoys it when things are breaking and and things have gone wrong being able to resolve that quickly. Thanks a better experience for everybody. >>Yeah. I mean, I think we find over and over again sometimes you know, if you can handle an issue that's gone wrong, Um well, you can actually induce more loyalty than you know. If someone never contacted. You'd also if you could really take advantage of the times you have, unfortunately, maybe messed up on bake those customers happy. You really do you know, put so much in the sort of loyalty piggy bank for later. It's really great. >>So for some of the companies that have maybe struggled with this a little bit and particularly under very trying conditions, is there's some advice that you could give to them. Is there some places that they should should start to investigate this when they want to improve the way that they handle customer service, perhaps with things like Zendesk. >>Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of what what we're focused on right now is the this channel that's coming. Like I said, we think a lot about social messaging, but also in native messaging. Andi, how you can have a sort of ongoing long term conversation for a long time customer service, sort of Holy Grail was chat, and you could have a agent online and a human online, and you could solve their problem and then move on right And and sometimes those things take a little longer to solve. Or, you know, you might have a big issue and a whole bunch of people who have an issue and maybe not enough agents to solve them. And so, with messaging. We've really changed the dynamic. So chat was this completely synchronous, Almost like a phone call. Kind of experience and more messaging. You're able to live in this sort of duality where we can have a conversation if we're both here. But just like with your friends, right? Sometimes you throw a message out to offend you. Put it in your pocket, you pick it up, and you could pick up the conversation right where you left off. So bring that paradigm into your customer support experience really allows you to take some of that fear out of handling the volume that might come from chat. To be able to sort of have these ongoing sort of back and forth conversations over time. Andi also and give that that persistent so that we're always both in the same place when we show up again together >>embracing what the technology does well and avoiding what it doesn't do. Well, that that sounds like a plan. >>Shawna, >>this has been fabulous. It is. It is always very edifying for me. Thio here, when companies are doing well and centering the humans to make the technology improve all of our lives. Um It has been wonderful to have you here on the Cube. >>Thanks so much. It was a lot of fun, right? >>And thank you for joining in and and watching us here of the Cube virtual and our special coverage off AWS reinvent 2020. Do come back and look for more coverage off. Reinvent 2020 right here on the Cube. Next time I've been your host, Justin Warren, and we'll see you again soon.

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent 2020 sponsored by Intel and AWS. Yeah, okay. Welcome back to the cubes. Live coverage here. Reinvent 2020 for a W s amazing content happening here within across the industry on digital transformation and more, more important than ever in the public sector has been mawr impacted by anyone during the cove and pandemic. And we're here remotely with the Cube Virtual because of the pandemic. Got a great guest, Kim, a jurist. She's the leader on the U. S. Education, state and local government for a W s public sector Kim, great to see you. Thanks for coming on. Remotely, at least we get to have a remote interview. >>Well, thank you for taking the time. This is This is our world these days, so it's good to be able to connect. >>Well, thanks for coming on. We're doing some specialty programming around public sector, mainly because it's such an important area. Uh, Andy Jassy Esquina, which is for the best conference at large at reinvent talks broadly, but I think it highlights what's going on in your world and that is this facing the truth. Um, this digital transformation has been forced upon us. It's accelerated and it's get busy, busy building or get busy figuring out how it might unwind and mawr education virtual remote if we >>didn't >>have video conference, and this could have been a disaster even further, but certainly has impacted everybody in the government education. How is it impacting share with us? What's going on? >>You know, I think that difficult partisans. When we turned on the news early days there in Cove it it was clear that students weren't learning and citizens couldn't get in contact with their government to ask for support. Um, I would say it was that moment in time where the technical debt that whether your state, local or education, you had to quickly realized that you need to connect with your students and your citizens. But I take a look at how quickly they were able to turn across the US Many of them realized what usually took years, literally turned into innovating overnight to support students as well as those filing for on unemployment claims. And I think that's what we heard a lot of, and those were some of the opportunities that Amazon really took, uh, to our customers said, Hey, we can help you solve these problems with great services such as connect >>you know, Connect came up in the keynote multiple times, and he really spend time on that as a as a disruption slash enabler for value. Can you share how cloud has scaled up some of your customers? I know connects, been pretty prominent in the public sector for Covic support and really has changed in saves lives in many cases. Can you share an example of how it's worked out? >>Absolutely. I mean, Rhode Island is is a great example. They use Amazon connect. They helped the state literally address this massive surgeon of unemployment insurance applications due to Cova 19. But literally the call times and the vines were cut down in What they were able to do is answer the call, not just have it be on a fast busy or a disconnect. Whether it was Department of Labor at Rhode Island, whether it was the state of Kentucky or the state of West Virginia, all those authorities use had to deal with that surge, and they were able to do it successfully and literally, in some cases, overnight to support citizens. That's how quickly they were able to innovate and hit those call centers, Um, effectively. But it's not just about the call center, because keep in mind they would go into those call centers with connect. They were able to actually take those calls from home, and we saw that in education as well. Take a look at L. A unified school district. What they had to do to quickly transition from in person training to supporting these students remotely. They had to do it overnight, and they use connect their asses well, not only to support the students, the teachers or the staff, but they took that opportunity to really continue educating and continue serving. >>You know, one of the things I was talking anti about in my one on one interview before reinvent was necessity is the mother of all invention in these days, and I think that came from a quote from one of your customers, like interviewed when asked, You know how the innovation strategy come about, and that's what they said. They said we needed it really bad, and we had to move quickly and then Andy said in his keynote that everything is on full display right now, meaning that the pandemic is forced one and you can see who's winning and who's not based on where they are in the cloud journey. So have to ask you leaderships a big part of this. What is the trend that you're seeing within your world because, you know, government not known for moving fast. And this is a speed game at this point. Healthcare. A big part of that. You got education. Government. What's >>the >>leadership mindset on innovating right now? And can you share because, yeah, you got some easy, you know, examples. Now the point is, hey, way have connect with people were like productivity opportunity that's now the new normal. So even in life does come back. There's new new things that have been discovered. Is that resonating with your your customers? And can you share the leadership mindset? >>Absolutely. So make no mistake. It was never a question of if it was a question of when the pandemic clearly is accelerating it. But, you know, we've been working with over 6500 government agencies and collaborating with them to really focus on some of their mission critical, um called based services. So and this is the new normal. They recognize it. And it's the foundation that during the pandemic that it's been said to say, Hey, we're going to push and we're gonna push quicker because they were actually able to demonstrate that they could do it. I'll give you an example. It's It's a heartbreaking one from my perspective. Being a mom, um, l. A. County Department of Child and Family Services, They operated their analog child protection hotline. Now the numbers are are unfortunate and staggering. But when you took a look at the peak before the pandemic, the call center received as many as 21,000 reports of child abuse and neglect in a month. During those pick times, up to 100 staff members would log in and literally take 120 back to back calls per hour. Now, when you think about that legacy environment with Amazon connect, they were able to continue the service, continue the support to help these Children and available 24 7, and they were able to do it from their homes. So e mean it gives me chills, just thinking about three unfortunate situations. But they were able to quickly move and and continue to support. Yeah, >>and the thing to I want to just bring up also had a customer I interviewed from Canada. I think they were partner with a censure. They had unemployment checks, they couldn't get out, and entitlement things that were literally checks and connect stood up that in like, record time. He was convinced. He's like he was kind of Amazon fan, but he was kind of still out of Amazon. He was like, I'm convinced we're gonna use Amazon going forward. It was a tipping point for him. There's a lot of these tipping points going on right now. This has been a big theme of this reinvent so far. Yeah, cloud transition, two full cloud value. This is the new normal What? What what what can clients get when they have budget or trying to get budget when they say the benefit? The clouds are what? >>Well, I mean again, use another use case. I'll go back to another example in L. A county. So when you think about l. A county itself, um, I won't give you the exact numbers because I don't know him off the top, but approximately 10 million residents and employs over 100,000 staff again. Look at the cost savings that they saw. So, you know, technical data is a problem. Being able to invest is a challenge because of budgets, but they were able to save 60% in one year from there on prem environment and licensing costs. But the cost is one piece. If you could take 17% fewer calls and you're solving those challenges by using a i N M l. Through the technology of what they were gathering through those calls, it made a huge impact and improved their service to their citizens. So you know it. The cost savings air there. And there are so many examples that states air, recognizing that they need to move quicker because they could take advantage of those costs, especially with some of the budget challenges we're going to see across the U. S. >>And the machine learning examples are off the charts. So, Kim, I gotta ask, you going forward now in reinvent what's the big focus for you and your teams and your customers because you guys are very customer focused. You're working backers from the customers. We hear that on and on what is going on in your customer base? One of the priorities, >>um, priorities for us will always remain on the mission to which our customers are focusing on. If we think about education, the question is, how are they re imagining the the delivery and the success in this new world that we're dealing with? So we'll continue to work and innovate with our partners and with amazing All right, a text that are in our business take a look at blackboard, right? They were able to scale 50 times their normal capacity globally, literally within 24 hours they're looking at How do they continue to innovate to serve? We're gonna work with K through 12 through academic medical centers and research, because when you think about what we need is we need to find that vaccine we need to find the ability to treat and serve. We're focused on those missions with the states, the research and the education teams. >>It's been unusual year learning is changing remote learning, remote work, the workforce, the workplace, the workloads. They're all changing. Onda clouds a big part of it. Um, final question for you. What's the take away for reinvent this year means different. You mentioned some of those highlights. What's the big take away for your audience? >>I think for state local education is it's available. It's now, and they have to serve their students and citizens quit. Um, what they've been able to do in the cloud again? A zay said at the start of the interview. They can now do overnight within minutes and hours and and support their citizens. And they have to do it quickly. So, >>uh, coyote to coyote goodness for the state and local governments to >>absolutely it's going to continue. And I think the important part is focused on the opportunity of innovating and supporting the mission >>Can Great to see you. Thanks for the insight. Thanks for the update. Appreciate it. We'll be following it. A lot of great successes. You guys have been having the Cuban involved in a bunch of them and we'll continue to follow the transformation. Thanks for coming on. >>Thank you. Enjoy Sena. >>Okay. This is the Cube Virtual. I'm John for your host. Thanks for watching more coverage. Walter Wall reinvent 2020 Virtual. Thanks for watching. Yeah,

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent 2020 sponsored by Intel and AWS. Yeah, welcome to the Cubes Live coverage of AWS reinvent 2020. I'm Lisa Martin and I have a Cube alumni joining me Next. Aaron Kelly, the GM of product marketing at AWS Aaron. Welcome back to the program. >>Thanks, Lisa. It's great to be here. >>Likewise, even though we don't get to all be crammed into Las Vegas together, uh, excited to talk to you about Amazon Connect, talk to our audience about what that is. And then let's talk about it in terms of how it's been a big facilitator during this interesting year, that is 2020. >>Great, yes, for sure. So Amazon Connect is a cloud contact center where we're really looking to really reinvent how contact centers work by bringing it into the cloud. It's an Omni Channel, easy to use contact center that allows customers to spin up contact centers in minutes instead of months. Its very scalable so can scale to 10 tens of thousands of agents. But it also scaled down when you when it's not in use and because it's got a pay as you go business model. You only pay when you're engaging with collars or customers. You're not paying for high upfront per agent fees every month. So it's really been a great service during this pandemic, as there's been a lot of unpredictable spikes in demand, uh, that customers have had to deal with across many sectors, >>and we've been talking for months now about the acceleration that Corbett has delivered with respect to digital transformation. And, of course, as patients has been wearing fin globally. I think with everybody when we're calling a contact center, we want a resolution quickly. And of course, as we all know is we all in any industry are working from home. So are they. So I can imagine during this time that being able to have a cloud contact center has been transformative, I guess, to help some businesses keep the lights on. But now to really be successful moving forward, knowing that they can operate and scale up or down as things change. >>Yeah, that's exactly right. And so one of the key benefits of connect his ability to very quickly on board and get started, you know, we have some very interesting and examples like Morrisons, which is a retailer in the UK They wanted to create a new service as you highlighted, which was a door, you know, doorstep delivery service. And so they needed to spin up a quick new contact center in order to handle those orders. They were able to do it and move all their agents remotely in about a day and be able to immediately start to take those orders, which is really powerful, you know. Another interesting example is the Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training. Which part of their responsibility is to deliver unemployment benefits for their citizens? Obviously a huge surge of demand there they were able to build an entirely new context center in about nine days to support their citizens. They went from a knave ridge of about 74 call volume sort of capacity per minute to 1000 call on capacity per minute. And in the first day of standing up this new context center, they were able to serve 75,000 Rhode Island citizens with their unemployment benefits. So really ah, great example of having that cloud scalability that ability to bring agents remotely and then helping citizens in need during a very, very difficult time, >>right? So a lot of uses private sector, public sector. What are some of the new capabilities of Amazon connected? You're announcing at reinvent. >>Yeah, So we announced five big capabilities this during reinvent yesterday that really spanned the entire experience, and our goal is to make it better for agents so they're more efficient. That actually helps customers reduce their costs but also create a better collar experience so that C sat could go up in the collars, can get what they need quickly and then move on. And so the first capability is Amazon Connect Voice I D, which makes it easier to validate that the person calling is who in fact, they say they are so in this case, Lee. So let's say you're calling in. You can opt in tow, have a voice print made of you. The next time you call in, we're able to use machine learning to match that voiceprint to know. Yes, it is Lisa. I don't need to ask Lisa questions about her mother's maiden name and Social Security number. We can validate you quickly as an agent I'm confident it's you. So I'm less concerned about things like fraud, and we can move on. That's the first great new feature. The second is Amazon Connect customer profiles. So now, once you join the call rather than me is an agent having to click around a different systems and find out your order history, etcetera. I could get that all surface to me directly. So I have that context. I can create a more personalized experience and move faster through the call. The third one is called Wisdom. It's Amazon Connect wisdom, which now based on either what you're asking me or a search that I might make, I could get answers to your questions. Push to me using machine learning. So if you may be asking about a refund policy or the next time a new product may launch, I may not know rather than clicking around and sort of finding that in the different systems is pushed right to me. Um, now the Fourth Feet feature is really time capability of contact lens for Amazon connect, and what this does is while you were having our conversation, it measures the sentiment based on what you're saying or any keywords. So let's say you called it and said, I want a refund or I want to cancel That keyword will trigger a new alert to my supervisor who can see that this call may be going in the wrong direction. Let me go help Aaron with Lisa. Maybe there's a special offer I can provide or extra assistance so I can help turn that call around and create a great customer experience, which right now it feels like it's not going in that direction. And then the last one is, um, Amazon Connect tasks where about half of an agents time is spent on task other than the call follow up items. So you're looking for a refund or you want me Thio to ship you a new version of the product or something? Well, today I might write that on a sticky note or send myself a reminder and email. It's not very tracked very well. With Amazon Connect task, I can create that task for me as a supervisor. I could then X signed those tax and I can make sure that the follow up items air prioritized. And then when I look at my work. You is an agent. I can see both calls, my chats and my task, which allows me to be more efficient. That allows me to follow up faster with you. My customer, Andi. Overall, it's gonna help lower the cost and efficiency of the Contact Center. So we're really excited about all five of these features and how they improve the entire life cycle of a customer contact. >>And that could be table stakes for any business in terms of customer satisfaction. You talked about that, but I always say, You know, customer satisfaction is inextricably linked to employee satisfaction. They need. The agents need to be empowered with that information and really time, but also to be able to look at. I want them to know why I'm calling. They should already know what I have. We have that growing expectation right as a consumer. So the agent experience the customer experience. You've also really streamline. And I could just see this being something that is like I said, kind of table stakes for an organization to reduce churn, to be able to service more customers in a shorter amount of time and also employee satisfaction, right, >>right that's that. That's exactly right. Trader Grills, which is one of our, you know, beta customers using some of these capabilities. You know, they're saying 25% faster, handle times so shorter calls and a 10% increase in customer satisfaction because now it's personalized. When you call in, I know what grill you purchased. And so I have a sense based on the grill, you purchase just what your question might be or what you know, what special offers I might have available to me and that's all pushed to me is an agent, So I feel more empowered. I could give you better service. You have, you know, greater loyalty towards my brand, which is a win for everyone, >>absolutely that empowerment of the agent, that personalization for the customer. I think again we have that growing demanded expectation that you should know why I'm calling, and you should be able to solve my problem. If you can't, I'm gonna turn and find somebody else who can do that. That's a huge risk that businesses face. Let's talk about some of the trends that you're seeing that this has been a very interesting year to say the least, what are some of the trends in the context center space that you guys were seeing that you're working Thio to help facilitate? >>Yeah, absolutely. So I think one of the biggest trends that we're seeing is this move towards remote work. So as you can imagine, with the pandemic almost immediately, most customers needed to quickly move their agents to remote work scenario. And this is where Amazon Connect was a great benefit. For as I mentioned before, we saw about 5000 new contact centers created in March in April. Um, Atiya, very beginning of the pandemic. So that was a very, uh, that's a very big trend we're seeing. And now what we're seeing is customers were saying, Hey, when I have something like Amazon Connect that's in the cloud, it scales up. It provides me a great experience. I just need really a headset in a Internet connection from my agents. I'm not dealing with VPNs and, ah, lot of the complexity that comes with trying to move on on premises system remote. We're seeing a huge, you know, search of adoption and usage around that the ability to very quickly create a new context center around specific scenarios are use cases has been really, really powerful. So, uh, those are the big trends moving to remote remote work and a trend towards, um, spinning of new context that is quickly and then spending them back down as that demand moves or or those those those situations move >>right. And as we're all experiencing, the one thing that is a given during this time is the uncertainty that remains Skilling up. Skilling down volume changes. But looking as if a lot of what's currently going on from home is going to stay for a while longer, I actually not think about it. I'm calling into whether it's, you know, cable service or whatnot. I think What about agent is actually on their couch at home like I am working? And so I think it's being able to facilitate that because is transformative, and I think I think I'll step out on limbs side, you know, very potentially impact the winners and the losers of tomorrow, making sure that the consumer experience is tailored. It's personalized to your point and that the agents are empowered in real time to facilitate a seamless and fast resolution of whatever the issue is. >>Well, and I think you hit on it earlier as well. Agents wanna be helpful. They wanna solve a customer problem. They wanna have that information at their fingertips. They wanna be on power to take action. Because at the end of their day, they want to feel like they helped people, right? And so being able to give them that information safe from wisdom or being able to see your entire customer profile, Right? Right. When you come on board or know that you are Lisa, um, and have the confidence that I'm talking to Lisa, I'm not. This is not some sort of, you know, fishing, exercise, exercise. These are all really important scenarios and features that empower the agent, lowers cost significantly for the customer and creates a much better customer experience for you. The collar? >>Absolutely. And we all know how important that is these days to get some sort of satisfying experience. Last question. Erin, talk to us about, you know, as we all look forward, Thio 2021. For many reasons. What can we expect with Amazon? Connect? >>Well, we're going to continue to listen to our customers and hear their feedback and what they need, which what we certainly anticipate is continued focus on that agent efficiency, giving agents mawr of the information they need to be successful and answer customers questions quickly, continuing to invest in machine learning as a way of doing that. So using ML to identify that you are who you say you are, finding that right information. Getting data that I can use is an agent Thio. Handle those tasks and then automate the things that you know I really shouldn't have to take steps is a human to go do so if we need to send you a follow up email when when your product ships or when your refund is issued. Let me just put that in the system once and have it happened when it executes. So that level of automation continuing to bring machine learning in to make the agent experience better and more efficient, which ultimate leads to lower costs and better see set. These are all the investments. You'll see a sui continue for it next year. >>Excellent stuff, Erin, thank you so much for joining me on the program today, ensuring what's next and the potential the impact that Amazon connect is making. >>Thanks, Lisa. It's great to be here >>for Aaron Kelly. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the cubes. Live coverage of AWS reinvent 2020.

>>the >>globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of AWS >>reinvent 2020 >>sponsored by Intel, AWS and our community partners. Everyone welcome back to the cubes. Virtual coverage of AWS reinvent 2020 Virtual I'm John for your host. Got a great segment here with two analyst day Volonte and Zia's Carvell who's head principles of zk research dot com. Guys. Great to see you A W s Kino. Thanks for >>coming on. Let's be back in the cube. >>Welcome back. Great to see you guys. Wanna get your thoughts? Um, it's mainly you because we talked with the enterprise a lot. You are leading analyst. You cover a broad range from networking all the way up to the C suite for enterprise buyers and and technology trends. Um, Andy Jassy laid down, in my opinion, what was directionally his next 20 mile stare. The next conquest for Amazon. And that is global. I t spend they locked in the infrastructures of service pass kicking ass. There. Check check. Hello, Enterprise. Different ballgame. What's your thoughts? >>Yeah, they have so much in different areas, obviously. You know, they have dominated cloud instances right there. Mawr compute storage memory. You know insists that anybody but you can see him, um, spreading their wings now, right? I think one of the more interesting announcements was actually what they're doing with Amazon connect. That's their contact center platform. And this is something that I think, Even last year, a lot of people weren't really even sure if they'd be in a long primary in the pocket. People about this market, they were asking, If you really think Amazon's in this, there's something they're experimenting. But we're here to stay. And I think one of the interesting things that they bring to market is, you know, almost unprecedented scale with their cloud platform as well as all the machine learning algorithms. And I think if if you believe that machine learning artificial intelligence is changing, I t. Forever and that's everything from the infrastructure to the network through the applications, then they have an inherent advantage because they have all those machine learning albums built into this stuff that they dio and so they can constantly look at these different markets and disruptive, disruptive, disrupt and take more and more sharing that and that's what they've done. E think that's you know, the context and announcements were great example that they're not doing the telephony things, and, you know, they're kind of bare table stakes. They do that pretty well, but they've just unloaded a whole bunch of ai based features that >>Dave, what's your take on this context center? Because it's not just call centers. I mean, there was a whole industry around call center, unified communications. That whole world. This is about the contact. It's about the person. This is not just a nuanced thing like telephony or, you know, PBX is in the old days. Remember those days? Things is not about the call. It's about the contact. This is what Jazzy saying. >>I think that way had Diana or on early. And I said, I like the fact that their AWS specifically is going after these solutions because several years ago it was just sort of. Here's a bunch of tools. Go figure it out. I think the contact center is I mean, everybody can relate Thio the pains of going through getting rerouted, having to restate all your credentials, not knowing who you are. And so between machine learning, Alexa, Natural language processing, better work flows. I mean there's this huge opportunity toe reinvent the whole call center contact center. So, uh, yeah, I think you called it John. It's a no brainer for a W s toe Really disrupt that >>business. Well, it also puts him in a position. You know, news is breaking on the day of and yet his keynote here at reinvent that, uh, you got Salesforce spying slack for 27 close toe, $28 billion. That's a 55% premium over when they announced it. And that's like a 30 x or 50 x on on revenue. Massive number to confess the message board software. I mean, so So. So. If Amazon can come in and get the context center model, which is not just voice, it's chat, it's machine learning. It's bots. And the innovation to create a step function kind of brings it back into the that integration of user network compute. You know, I just think that it feels very edgy in the sense of edge computing, because if I'm a person, I'm mobile. If I'm a person at work or at home, so there's a whole redefinition Zs, what's your take on this edge? Play from Amazon in context toe the enterprise software landscape. That seems to be, you know, focus on buying companies like Salesforce. >>Well, I think edges really the next big foray for computing. If one of the things and you ask we talked about this, you know, was that the compute, the unit of Compute, has gotten smaller and smaller, Right? We went from data centers to servers to virtual machines, the virtual machines and clouds. Now we're talking about containers and containers on edges, and this requires, um if you if you believe in the world of distributed computing where we're gonna have mawr containers running in MAWR, places on MAWR edges, right. The value proposition where companies is now they can move their data closer to the customer. They could move data closer to the user. And so, if I'm a retailer and I'm trying to understand what a customer is doing, I could do that in store. If I'm Tesla and I'm trying to understand what the drivers doing, I could do that in car, right? If I'm a cellular provider, I could do it by cellular edge. So the edge, I think, is where a lot of the innovation is going to be at Amazon has the luxury of this massive global network. You know, they just announced the number another a number of other local nodes, including Boston and a few other places. So they've got the footprint in place. And this this is what makes Amazon's are difficult to compete with, right? They built this massive network and this all these, no doubt for their e commerce business. And now they're leveraging that deliver I t services. You can't just go build this from the ground up the variety, right? You have to be able to monetize it another way. And they've been doing that with the commerce for a long time. And so it makes them. It makes it very, very difficult for them to capture Google could with Daniel forget about the item. Oh, yeah, so good. Microsoft. Possibly. But they I think that the more distributed compute becomes the more favors Amazon, >>I would add to that if I could, John, I mean, look good. Look at the prevailing way in which many of the infrastructure the old guard is Andy. Jesse calls them. Companies have pursued the edge they've essentially taking, taking x 86 boxes and, you know, maybe made him rugged and throwing them over the fence to the edge. And that really is not gonna play the edges. Now there's not one edge. I mean, there's a very highly specific use cases and factories and windmills. And maybe maybe it's small retail organizations, and whatever it is that those are gonna be really unique situations. And I think the idea of putting a programmable infrastructure at the edge is gonna win. I also think that the edge architecture is gonna be different. It's going to require much more efficient processing to do a I Influencing a lot of the data is gonna be, uh, stay at the edge. A lot of it's not gonna be persisted. Some of it's gonna come back to the cloud. But I think most of it is actually gonna gonna either not be persisted or stay at the edge and be affected in real time. When you think of autonomous vehicles so totally different programming model, >>well, I think that's the point of what I was saying earlier Zeus was talking about Is that it's It's the edges is just different. I mean, you got purpose built stuff. I mean, they were talking by the way they have snowball. So they have, ah, hard edge device. And they got out outpost now in multiple flavors and sizes. But they also were talking about computer vision and machine learning. We're going together for that. The panoramic appliance. I think it was where there's all these different cases to your point, Dave, where it's just different. At the edge, you have the zones for five G. I mean, if you go to a five g tower, that's essentially an edge. Just there's equipment up to this. Radios is transceivers and other back haul equipment. So when you look at the totality of what it is, the diversity, I think that's why this whole idea of Lambda and Containers is interesting. Toe Zia's. When you were saying about the compute sizes being small, because if you could put compute at the edge on small pieces to match the form factor that becomes interesting. I think that's what this Lambda container announcement I found interesting because I see that playing directly into that your reaction to >>that. It actually, um, makes it. If not done correctly, it could make I t much more complex because, um, containers air interesting because they're not like virtual machines. First live in perpetuity. Containers you They're very ephemeral, right? You spin them up to 30 seconds, you spin them up for a couple of minutes that you deprecate them. So at any given point in time, you could have thousands of containers, a handful of containers, millions of containers, Right? But it necessitates a common management. Uh huh. Underlay that could be used to visualize where these containers are, what's running on them. And that's what AWS provides. You know, all the stuff they're doing Lambda and Eks and things like that that lends itself to that. So a customer can then go and almost create a container architecture that spans all their cloud's edges, even on Prem. Now, uh, when Amazon has but still be able to manage it and simplify it, I think somebody's trying to do it themselves. They're gonna find that the complexity almost becomes untenable. Unless you have a Nike organization the size of Amazon companies don't. So we're >>gonna here, we're gonna hear from Deepak singing in a few sessions. He did the eks anywhere. That's essentially kubernetes service on the data center. But look at what they did with eks anywhere and then CCS, which has a common control plane to your point, that's compelling. And so, you know, if you're a developer or you're an enterprise, you might not have If you want to go with this. I t world. We talked about earlier zeros before you came on on our last segment. Most I t is not that built out in terms of capabilities. So learning new stuff is hard, so operating Amazon might be foreign to most I t shops. This is a challenge. Did you agree with that? Or or how do you see that? >>Um, well, a lot of Amazon used, obviously just the interviews and numbers of fucked that right. Um, but I think the concept of in a world where you have that common operating layer that spans it's no longer geographically limited to a data center or to a server. You know, it's it's now distributed across your entire multi cloud or distributed cloud environment. And so one of the important things right people remember is the world is becoming more dynamic and or distributed, and your I t strategy has to follow that. If you're doing things that are counted that you're not only standing still, you're actually going backwards. And so what Amazon is doing is they're allowing companies to be is dynamic distributors. They need to be to be able to maintain that that common operating layer that actually makes it management, because without it, you just you wind up in a situation. Like I said, that's incredible. A lot of people facing that today. And that's why that's why there's this big divergence, right? This five native cos they're going fast and legacy companies that can. >>Guys, I want to spend the next 10 minutes we have getting into more of the business side from this keynote because because I know your research on digital transmission first. I know you know the networking side up and down the stack and all that good stuff, but you've been doing a lot of research around the digital transformation with the cloud. Dave, you just put out a great great breaking and else think your 55th, um, episode on digital transformation with the cloud. It's very clear that Jackie is basically preaching, saying, Hey, Clay Christensen is former professor who passed away. He brought up this whole innovator's dilemma kind of theme and saying, Hey, if you don't get the reality that you're in, you better wake up and smell the coffee. It's a wake up call. That's what he's basically saying That's my take away. This is really this business management lesson. Leadership thinking is super important, and I know we've We've talked about people process, technology. Uh, let's Covad eyes this real quick. Bottom line. What is the playbook? Do you agree with jazz? His point of view here? Um, he's pretty being hardcore. He's like, literally saying adapter die in his own way. What, you guys thoughts on this? This is a true forcing function. This cove, In reality, >>I mean I mean, if you talk about the business transformation, digital transformation, business transformation, you know, what does that mean? I, like, said earlier that the last 10 years about I t transformation, I think the next 10 is gonna be about business transformation, organizational industry transformation, and I think what that means is the entire operational stack is gonna get digitized. So your sales you're marketing your your customer support your logistics. You know you're gonna have one interface to the customer as opposed toe, you know, fragmented stovepipe siloed. You know, data sets all over the place, and that is a major change. And I think that's ultimately what a W. S is trying to affect with its model and has obviously big challenges in doing so. But But that, to me, is what digital transformation is ultimately all about. And I think you're going to see it unfold very rapidly over the next several >>years. What's your reaction? What's your view on on the on Jackie? >>And he talked about his eight steps toe reinvention. Um and e think what digital transformation to me is the willingness to re invent disruptive own business even in the face that it might look horrible for your business, right? But understanding he is there something that I think is true. And a lot of, um, business leaders don't fully by this that if something is good for your customer, they're going to do it, and you can either make it happen, or you gonna watch it happen and then have the market taken away from me because there's a lot of cases you look at how slow you know, A lot of the banks, you know, operated until you know, the a lot of these, uh, cloud native, uh, money exchange systems came around the cape. Alan Ben more and things like that, right? Even retailers Amazon completely disrupted that model. You could say that Amazon killed, you know, Toys R us, but 20 rescue Toys R Us E. And I think there's got to be this hard willingness to look at your business model and be willing to disrupt yourself. And what Kobe did, John, I think, is a taught us a lesson that you have to be prepared for anything because nobody saw this coming. And sure you can. And a lot of companies thrived out of this, and a lot of one's gone away, but that the ability to be agile has never been more important. But you're only is Angela's. Ike lets you be, and that's what that's what. The W. Is going to sell us the ability to do anything you want with your business. But the staff, you have to have the business because they're willing to do that. >>You know, that's a great point. That's so smart. It's crime that's worth calling out. And we were talking before we came on live about our business with the Cube. There's no virtual, there's no floor anymore. So we had to go virtual if we weren't in the cloud. If we weren't doing R and D and tinkering with some software and having our studio, we'd be out of business. Dave. Everyone knows it. Now Get the Cube virtual. We have some software were position, and this kind of speaks directly to what Andy Jassy said. He said. Quote. If you're not in the process of figuring out as a company, how you're going to reinvent your customer experience in your product and reinvent who you are, you are starting to unwind. You may not realize it, but you are. What he's saying is you better wake up and smell the coffee and I want to get your guys reacted. You, particularly you around your experience and research. I've noticed that some customers that had cloud going on did well with co vid and said ones that didn't are still struggling not to catch up. So you're kind of intense. You got some companies that were that were on the wave, Maybe kind of figuring it out, that we're in good position and some that were flat footed and are desperate. Um, seems to be a trend. Do you agree with that? And what's your view on this idea of being ready? What does that even mean to be? Have readiness or >>take, you don't get the data points that Andy threw up there, right? That 50% of the companies that were the global fortune $500.2000 or are no longer here, Right? That Zatz Pretty shocking statistic. And that does come, uh, you know, from the willingness to disrupt your business. And if you got you're right. The companies that had a good, solid class raging in place, we're able to adapt their business very quickly. You could you look at retailers. Some had a very strong online presence. They had online customer service set up those companies didn't find other ones, were really forced to try and figure out how to let people in the store had a mimic. You know, the in store experience, you know, through from, uh, you know, support interface or whatever. Those are the ones that really struggling. So you're right. I think companies that were on the offensive plug to Dover companies that were fully in the cloud really accelerated their business and ones that didn't buy into it. I think they're struggling to survive in a lot of They're gone. >>Yeah, and all that. John, When Jesus was talking about his view of digital transformation, I was just writing down some of the examples to your point. The folks that were sort of had were cloud ready, covert ready, if you will. And those that weren't But think about think about automobiles. You know, there's testily even a manufacturer of automobiles or they software company. Personal health has completely changed over the last nine months with remote. You know, uh, telehealth automated manufacturing. You think about digital cash, e commerce and retail is completely, you know, accelerated. Obviously toe online. Think about kids in college and kids in high school and remote learning farming. You know, we've done a great job in terms of mono crops and actually creating a lot of food. But now I think the next 10 years is gonna be how do we get more nutritious food to people and so virtually every industry is ripe for disruption, and the cloud is the underpinning of that disruption. >>Alright, guys, got a few more minutes left. I want to get your thoughts quickly on the keynote. What it means for the customers that we're watching again. This is not a sales and marketing conference as they talk about. But if you're sitting in the audience, you guys, we're watching and we're virtual um Did it hit home with you? If you're a customer, what did he what? Give us Give the grades. Where do you Where do you hit a home run? Where he missed. Did he leave anything out? What's your take Zia's? We'll start with you. >>Um, I thought it was actually really good Keynote. I thought you did a good job of making the case for AWS. They talked about the open. They have more instances than anybody. So you could do almost any kind of compute in their cloud. I think one of the important lessons variety to is the importance. You can't just do everything. The software right? Hardware Still important silicon still important that, and to meet the needs of very special he needs from things like machine learning and AI. Amazon's actually spending their own silicon very much like Athens doing with their computers. And so if you are going to be a customer service focused company, you need to think of the I T. Stack and everything from the silicon, the hardware through the software, and build that integrated experience to Amazon's giving a tools to do that Now E. Do I would like to see Amazon be a little more, um, a supposed the cloud competitive friendly. The one thing I hear from customers all the time is they love the Amazon tools. They love the optimization capabilities, but you know, if they are adopting some kind of multi cloud strategy, the Amazon tools don't work in Azure and the capital don't work in Amazon. The same with Google, and it would be well within the best interests of those three companies. They find a way to get together and allow their common framework to work across clouds. Amazon's already got a lead that they could do that, and I don't think it's gonna be, but that that is something I think that's still missing from this world is they make it very difficult for customers to move the multi cloud. >>Well, some would say some people are saying, saying that the number one in the cloud I mean, got cloud wars Bob Evans over there saying Microsoft is dominating number one position over everybody else, multiple quarters in a row Now he's looking at revenue and granted. You got a lot of propping up there you got. You know, Windows server and sequel. You got a bunch of professional services, But clearly the I as in past side of the market, Microsoft is, like, way behind um So, yeah, they've got the numbers little legacy in their Microsoft should, and they got a little base. If I'm Amazon, I'm not. I'm worried about Microsoft more than anybody. I think you know, I looking at the Civil War between the Seattle forces. I mean, this is really Microsoft's gotta greatest all base, and they could flip that license deals and >>the cloud is good enough. I mean, it's myself doing very, very well with its classic Microsoft. You know >>they your point. Microsoft is the king of good enough, right? They put out features. They market heavily to the I t pro on. They put out licensing packages, so you're almost foolish to not at least fry their products. And then they do roll it out. So it's good enough and then you live with it for a while. But ultimately, whenever people use Microsoft, they do have an alternative under in there for a very special case. But e don't wanna >>the king of good enough. That's a great line. I love that. I'm gonna use that. But this Babel fish thing for Aurora that is a huge dagger. Potentially, it's an escape valve for customers. They wanna leave Microsoft. But clearly, if Microsoft you're gonna get penalized by running your license on Amazon. >>If our CEO our i t c t, I'd say, Okay, I definitely want to do business with with Amazon. That's what I heard today from Jassy, and I would want to hedge my bets either with Microsoft, especially if I'm a Microsoft shop or with Google's from analytics heavy unquestionably. I'd want to hedge my bets and have some kind of 70 30 80 20 mix. >>Look, if you're Andy Jassy and he's told me my interview, do it directly. I asked this question. He was very forthright. He doesn't hide from the fact that, uh, customers have multiple clouds, but they have a primary and secondary, but they're not gonna have, like, five or six major clouds. Yeah, it's hard to get these teams trained at to begin with. So there's a hedge. There's a supplier leverage. I get that. He's totally gets that. But if you're Amazon, you're gonna have your annual conference. You really don't wanna be in the business of talking about the other guys cloud, you say hybrid, right? It's on my show. You know, like you're competing. This is there's definitely competition between Microsoft and A W s. So you gotta respect that. But yeah, of course. There's multiple clouds called hybrid eks everywhere. Uh, container service. I mean, >>especially global, right? Different cloud providers of different strengths in different regions. You know, Microsoft, very strong in the Gulf. AWS isn't you know. So if you're a global company, um, you know, then you almost by default, have to go multi cloud multiple cloud vendors because of geographic differences. Obviously, China, with its own set of cloud providers. So, you know, smaller midsize businesses could get away with one, but As soon as you become global, you have to use more. >>Well, I'm a big fan of distributed computing. I loved the large scale concept of distribute computing. You got regions. Now you've got local zones. You got I O t edge. You got cloud going on Prem Edge. It's really an edge game at this point. Greater now distributed hyper Put hyper next to anything hyper cloud on your sounds better Piper >>Cube. And the opportunities the cloud providers and Amazon, you know, certainly is leading. This is the ability to take this complex, hyper distributed world and use their management tools toe create a normalized operating simplify What would be an overly complex world about it? >>Okay, we got a break. Just quick plug. There's a big salesforce event coming up on December 10th. Check it out on the Amazon site that that plug in you watching the cube stay tuned for more coverage after this break

>> Announcer: From around the globe, it's "theCUBE" with digital coverage of AWS Public Sector Partner Awards, brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Welcome to the AWS Public Sector Awards Program. This year, AWS partnered with "theCUBE" to interview a selection of the award winners and their clients. My name is Jeff Frick. I'm the GM and host of "theCUBE" and to share more on the award program and this year's winners, I'd like to introduce Sandy Carter, joining us from Seattle. She is the VP Worldwide Public Sector Partners and Programs for AWS. Sandy, great to see you. >> So great to see you too, Jeff. Everything's going well. >> Yeah, exactly. How are you doing? So you're in Seattle, you're sheltering in place, but you're getting through and business moves on and you guys are doing a lot of exciting things based on some of the challenges that have come from COVID. >> Absolutely. And we're even making our logo signs out of Legos to support our home offices. So we're having a blast and we're really helping a lot of our customers and our partners through this time as they are helping us as well. >> Right. So let's jump into it. So you run Partners and Programs. Share with everyone why partners are so important to Amazon and AWS specifically and public sector specifically? >> Yeah, Jeff, the partner business, of course, is critical to public sector. For us, partners represent that overall customer experience. They're often subject matter experts at raising awareness, helping customers evaluate AWS and some of the workloads. They help accelerate procurement, deploy services, and most important, our partners support our customer missions. And mission is almost everything in public sector. Now for us, public sector is not just government, but it's also education, nonprofits, healthcare, depending upon where you are in the world, it could also be travel and transportation or oil and gas. It's a really big mission that our partners go on every day with us in the field and the real world. >> Right, so one of the things that comes up all the time, if anyone's spent any time listening to Amazon content, whether it's Bezos or Andy, talks about customer obsession and this constant drive around customer obsession. Now, I noticed you've got 18 awards and people can see all the awards later today or they can go to the website, but I noticed like a third of your awards are customer obsession. So you've really kind of taken that customer obsession theme, if you will, and pushed it in and through all these awards and award categories. So talk about customer obsession in the context of these awards. >> Well, customer obsession for us is everything. Everything that we do starts with the customer and then works backwards. So if you think about what's been happening during these COVID times, like call center wait times are astronomical, too long. Customers are waiting too long. We've been helping States and local governments and countries really implement artificial intelligence and have that ability to answer calls quickly. That's one example of working backwards from a customer. Another example might be having limited access to data. So Jeff, we've always said, and I know "theCUBE's" always said that data is queen or king, but during COVID, data became so essential. So working backwards from our customers, leaders needed to make emergency decisions and did not have immediate access to data. So we had a lot of partners who said, "Hey, I can help you with that. "I can build a data lake. "I can use analytics to help you get to that data." So those were just some examples of how our partners did some extraordinary things, working backwards from their customer. >> Right, well, the other thing obviously is COVID, we've been at this now since mid-March and there was a lot of challenges that came out of COVID. But the other thing that came out of it is this light switch moment for digital transformation and initiatives that were potentially running or thought about running or moving slow. Suddenly digital transformation came to the top of everybody's priorities because of COVID and they had no other choice. And I noticed you've got a couple of COVID-19 specific winners in your list. I wonder if you can speak to some of the challenges that arose that they responded to, to earn some of these COVID awards. >> Yeah, it was funny, Jeff, I'm sure you saw it too on social media. There was a slide that said, "Who drove your digital transformation? "Was it your CEO, your CIO, your chief marketing officer, "or was it COVID?" And, of course, everybody picked COVID. So some of the areas that our partners focused in on was the failure of some legacy systems that occurred, decade old mission critical systems and websites, failed under the stress because they couldn't go up for the demand like the cloud can. We also saw limited remote access. You and I were chatting before, how do you do remote work? How does that work? So employees had limited access to systems, to tools, to data that they needed. And so our customers were really, again, really in want of a solution for remote work. And we had a lot of partners who really stepped up. And then of course, looking at the tech skills that existed, I'm sure you had people call you. I had people call me saying, "I don't really know how to get on Zoom or WebEx or Chime. "Can you help me?" And our customers experience the same thing. Employees don't have the same level of technical skills. And so we saw partners step up with training systems, for example. I was really impressed with the scrappiness of our partners and the way that they always started with the customer, working backwards. But they pivoted because COVID really did create some of these new opportunities in the marketplace. >> Right. So we've got a full program running at the conclusion of this conversation which people will get to see the winners and see some of the solution providers. And we've got three tracks, like you said, the government, nonprofit and education, and there's 18 award winners. And I wouldn't ask you to pick your favorite kid, but I'm going to ask you to share a couple of favorites amongst these award winners that really jumped out to you. >> Okay, I will but first I'll just say, Jeff, that we did have 18 winners and amongst them, they had over 45 customer references. They averaged over six years of experience with AWS and they spread across every single geo. So I thought that was pretty amazing. They also spanned across a couple of different areas, a set of technical capabilities like AI-ML, migration, you know, having a skill for Amazon Connect, which is our call center. They spread a cost missions that you talked about for education, healthcare, DOD. And then they also had a lot of special focus on migration. This was one of Andy's really big, big themes at re:Invent. And so we wanted to reinforce that as well with our partners. So a couple of highlights. So I'm going to start with migration because that was a really big one for Andy at re:Invent, as well as Teresa, our head of public sector. So one of our award winners is around migration is the Navy and SAP NS2. They were asked to migrate 26 ERPs across 50 landscapes with 60,000 users accessing the data from around the globe or another one of my favorites was the Accenture Award where they help the government of Canada and they help them through some of the employment and social development areas that they need to focus in on, really launching a 2,600 person contact center to help deal with some of the spikes in call volumes and other areas. And then let me see. I would also call out Maxar. Maxar set up a high performance computing or HPC environment for a number of weather prediction areas for NOAA, which was also very essential because it wasn't just COVID. Right now, we're in the midst of hurricane season. And how can you optimize that performance and cost even more? Or my last one I'll do, I promise, Jeff, is mission-based, which is Tyler Technologies and they help the city of Alvin in Texas and their municipal courts. Like how do you continue to do court systems? How do you implement a virtual court? And that's exactly what Tyler technology helped to have happen in Texas. So those are just some of the favorite ones that I have today, Jeff. >> (laughs) That's great. And again, everybody can watch interviews with the selection of these people. They'll be running, starting at the bottom of the hour and really get to meet the solution providers as well as the customers that put some of these things in. I've been fortunate to cover a couple of the AWS IMAGINE shows, which are really small public sector shows around nonprofits and education. And it's pretty amazing, once you get out of the commercial space, some of the things that are being enabled by cloud generally and AWS specifically around things that people aren't thinking, missing children, community colleges and education for quick employment. And there's just so many really meaningful, you said mission type of activities going on out there that you guys support. So that's really exciting to keep up with. So before we close out and let everybody watch the award winners, your priorities for 2020? We're kind of halfway through, it's a very strange year. I'm sure every plan that was written and approved in January got ripped up to shreds (Sandy laughs) by April. So Sandy, what are some of your priorities for what you're working on with partners and programs and public sector for the balance of the year? >> Yeah, I would start out by reemphasizing migration. I think migration is really crucial, taking something that's on premises and moving it to the cloud. And the reason that's so important, moving forward, is that the discussion we just had, Jeff, around digital transformation, the cloud provides you so much on-demand capacity. You can just scale and do so many more things. We're also seeing a big focus on cyber security. A lot of our customers across the globe now need to secure remote education, their call centers, their portals, their elections. So cyber security will continue to be really important. As well as our Amazon Connect area. So Amazon Connect, this amazing call center that we've integrated with salesforce, one of our other award winners continues to grow rapidly as we see more and more demand for that as well. And Jeff, I would be remiss to also not call out the mission areas. So whether that's helping with public safety or whether that is assisting in healthcare or our new telemedicine, just providing that, not just the technology, but the mission help too, really understanding what's required and delivering that will be really important. And Jeff, we can't end the key without talking about #techforgood either, right? >> Right, right. Something that's close to both our hearts. >> (chuckles) So we did have some really cool award winners that I think one, because of that #techforgood. So Axial3D, for instance, really helped out Belfast Hospital. And they won an award for AI-ML because of the way that they help surgeons save lives. And this is, your intro here was really important to me. It's not just about your super power for profit. That's important because you have to stay in business, but that super power for purpose is equally as important. We didn't do an award this time for startups, but we have also been working with Hello Alice who set up an entire, saying a website is too small, but they've used AI and ML through SageMaker to tag stories and help for small businesses and other startups that are diverse either through gender or race or be in veteran-owned. They're doing an amazing thing. So we continue, at Amazon to focus on #techforgood, as I know, you guys do at "theCUBE" as well. >> Right, right. Well, we used to call it a word and the triple line accounting. So it's not only just for profitability, but also for your employees and your constituents, which include your customers and your partners, but also the broader community and doing well for the broader community. And I do think, the younger people today that are entering the workforce have really forced that conversation and raised the status of mission-based activities. And really trying to think beyond just the bottom line, you still need to make money cause you got to pay the bills and keep the lights on, but that shouldn't be the only thing. And it shouldn't be really at the expense of everything else. So that's great to hear. And again, I think that the tech for good angle is a really, really important one. It probably doesn't get enough pub compared to some of the other stuff that we see in the news. So Sandy, congratulations to you and the team for weeding through all the applicants, selecting these 18 lucky winners. And thank you for giving us the opportunity to interview a few of them and share their stories on "theCUBE" and on this program. And, that's what we love, love to do since we can't be together in person as we have been so many times in the past. >> Yeah, so Jeff, if we could just show that slide real quick as we end. As we end, I want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart to all of these partners who were here. All 18, you're going to get to hear most of them. I don't want to take away from their thunder, but I know that "theCUBE" has been doing interviews with them and their customers, see and hear the amazing stories that they have and how they really have helped customers beyond what we can normally even expect because they are award winners. So Jeff, thank you and "theCUBE" for helping us to find a way to get their stories out. Because it's not normal times, we didn't have our public conference, but this is a great way to celebrate each and every one of these 18. So I want to say, thank you, congratulations. And from the bottom of my heart, I appreciate all the great work that you're doing. And to the rest of our partners, I hope that I see you on this list in our next award ceremony. >> Alright, well, thank you Sandy, for those kind words. And without further ado, we will end this segment, this kickoff and people can jump into the award-winner segments and learn lots. And hopefully, it won't be too long, Sandy, till we can actually meet again in-person. So thank you for watching this portion and enjoy the rest of the show. (calm music)

>> Announcer: From around the globe, it's "theCUBE" with digital coverage of AWS Public Sector Partner Awards, brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Welcome to the AWS Public Sector Awards Program. This year, AWS partnered with "theCUBE" to interview a selection of the award winners and their clients. My name is Jeff Frick. I'm the GM and host of "theCUBE" and to share more on the award program and this year's winners, I'd like to introduce Sandy Carter, joining us from Seattle. She is the VP Worldwide Public Sector Partners and Programs for AWS. Sandy, great to see you. >> So great to see you too, Jeff. Everything's going well. >> Yeah, exactly. How are you doing? So you're in Seattle, you're sheltering in place, but you're getting through and business moves on and you guys are doing a lot of exciting things based on some of the challenges that have come from COVID. >> Absolutely. And we're even making our logo signs out of Legos to support our home offices. So we're having a blast and we're really helping a lot of our customers and our partners through this time as they are helping us as well. >> Right. So let's jump into it. So you run Partners and Programs. Share with everyone why partners are so important to Amazon and AWS specifically and public sector specifically? >> Yeah, Jeff, the partner business, of course, is critical to public sector. For us, partners represent that overall customer experience. They're often subject matter experts at raising awareness, helping customers evaluate AWS and some of the workloads. They help accelerate procurement, deploy services, and most important, our partners support our customer missions. And mission is almost everything in public sector. Now for us, public sector is not just government, but it's also education, nonprofits, healthcare, depending upon where you are in the world, it could also be travel and transportation or oil and gas. It's a really big mission that our partners go on every day with us in the field and the real world. >> Right, so one of the things that comes up all the time, if anyone's spent any time listening to Amazon content, whether it's Bezos or Andy, talks about customer obsession and this constant drive around customer obsession. Now, I noticed you've got 18 awards and people can see all the awards later today or they can go to the website, but I noticed like a third of your awards are customer obsession. So you've really kind of taken that customer obsession theme, if you will, and pushed it in and through all these awards and award categories. So talk about customer obsession in the context of these awards. >> Well, customer obsession for us is everything. Everything that we do starts with the customer and then works backwards. So if you think about what's been happening during these COVID times, like call center wait times are astronomical, too long. Customers are waiting too long. We've been helping States and local governments and countries really implement artificial intelligence and have that ability to answer calls quickly. That's one example of working backwards from a customer. Another example might be having limited access to data. So Jeff, we've always said, and I know "theCUBE's" always said that data is queen or king, but during COVID, data became so essential. So working backwards from our customers, leaders needed to make emergency decisions and did not have immediate access to data. So we had a lot of partners who said, "Hey, I can help you with that. "I can build a data lake. "I can use analytics to help you get to that data." So those were just some examples of how our partners did some extraordinary things, working backwards from their customer. >> Right, well, the other thing obviously is COVID, we've been at this now since mid-March and there was a lot of challenges that came out of COVID. But the other thing that came out of it is this light switch moment for digital transformation and initiatives that were potentially running or thought about running or moving slow. Suddenly digital transformation came to the top of everybody's priorities because of COVID and they had no other choice. And I noticed you've got a couple of COVID-19 specific winners in your list. I wonder if you can speak to some of the challenges that arose that they responded to, to earn some of these COVID awards. >> Yeah, it was funny, Jeff, I'm sure you saw it too on social media. There was a slide that said, "Who drove your digital transformation? "Was it your CEO, your CIO, your chief marketing officer, "or was it COVID?" And, of course, everybody picked COVID. So some of the areas that our partners focused in on was the failure of some legacy systems that occurred, decade old mission critical systems and websites, failed under the stress because they couldn't go up for the demand like the cloud can. We also saw limited remote access. You and I were chatting before, how do you do remote work? How does that work? So employees had limited access to systems, to tools, to data that they needed. And so our customers were really, again, really in want of a solution for remote work. And we had a lot of partners who really stepped up. And then of course, looking at the tech skills that existed, I'm sure you had people call you. I had people call me saying, "I don't really know how to get on Zoom or WebEx or Chime. "Can you help me?" And our customers experience the same thing. Employees don't have the same level of technical skills. And so we saw partners step up with training systems, for example. I was really impressed with the scrappiness of our partners and the way that they always started with the customer, working backwards. But they pivoted because COVID really did create some of these new opportunities in the marketplace. >> Right. So we've got a full program running at the conclusion of this conversation which people will get to see the winners and see some of the solution providers. And we've got three tracks, like you said, the government, nonprofit and education, and there's 18 award winners. And I wouldn't ask you to pick your favorite kid, but I'm going to ask you to share a couple of favorites amongst these award winners that really jumped out to you. >> Okay, I will but first I'll just say, Jeff, that we did have 18 winners and amongst them, they had over 45 customer references. They averaged over six years of experience with AWS and they spread across every single geo. So I thought that was pretty amazing. They also spanned across a couple of different areas, a set of technical capabilities like AI-ML, migration, you know, having a skill for Amazon Connect, which is our call center. They spread a cost missions that you talked about for education, healthcare, DOD. And then they also had a lot of special focus on migration. This was one of Andy's really big, big themes at re:Invent. And so we wanted to reinforce that as well with our partners. So a couple of highlights. So I'm going to start with migration because that was a really big one for Andy at re:Invent, as well as Teresa, our head of public sector. So one of our award winners is around migration is the Navy and SAP NS2. They were asked to migrate 26 ERPs across 50 landscapes with 60,000 users accessing the data from around the globe or another one of my favorites was the Accenture Award where they help the government of Canada and they help them through some of the employment and social development areas that they need to focus in on, really launching a 2,600 person contact center to help deal with some of the spikes in call volumes and other areas. And then let me see. I would also call out Maxar. Maxar set up a high performance computing or HPC environment for a number of weather prediction areas for NOAA, which was also very essential because it wasn't just COVID. Right now, we're in the midst of hurricane season. And how can you optimize that performance and cost even more? Or my last one I'll do, I promise, Jeff, is mission-based, which is Tyler Technologies and they help the city of Alvin in Texas and their municipal courts. Like how do you continue to do court systems? How do you implement a virtual court? And that's exactly what Tyler technology helped to have happen in Texas. So those are just some of the favorite ones that I have today, Jeff. >> (laughs) That's great. And again, everybody can watch interviews with the selection of these people. They'll be running, starting at the bottom of the hour and really get to meet the solution providers as well as the customers that put some of these things in. I've been fortunate to cover a couple of the AWS IMAGINE shows, which are really small public sector shows around nonprofits and education. And it's pretty amazing, once you get out of the commercial space, some of the things that are being enabled by cloud generally and AWS specifically around things that people aren't thinking, missing children, community colleges and education for quick employment. And there's just so many really meaningful, you said mission type of activities going on out there that you guys support. So that's really exciting to keep up with. So before we close out and let everybody watch the award winners, your priorities for 2020? We're kind of halfway through, it's a very strange year. I'm sure every plan that was written and approved in January got ripped up to shreds (Sandy laughs) by April. So Sandy, what are some of your priorities for what you're working on with partners and programs and public sector for the balance of the year? >> Yeah, I would start out by reemphasizing migration. I think migration is really crucial, taking something that's on premises and moving it to the cloud. And the reason that's so important, moving forward, is that the discussion we just had, Jeff, around digital transformation, the cloud provides you so much on-demand capacity. You can just scale and do so many more things. We're also seeing a big focus on cyber security. A lot of our customers across the globe now need to secure remote education, their call centers, their portals, their elections. So cyber security will continue to be really important. As well as our Amazon Connect area. So Amazon Connect, this amazing call center that we've integrated with salesforce, one of our other award winners continues to grow rapidly as we see more and more demand for that as well. And Jeff, I would be remiss to also not call out the mission areas. So whether that's helping with public safety or whether that is assisting in healthcare or our new telemedicine, just providing that, not just the technology, but the mission help too, really understanding what's required and delivering that will be really important. And Jeff, we can't end the key without talking about #techforgood either, right? >> Right, right. Something that's close to both our hearts. >> (chuckles) So we did have some really cool award winners that I think one, because of that #techforgood. So Axial3D, for instance, really helped out Belfast Hospital. And they won an award for AI-ML because of the way that they help surgeons save lives. And this is, your intro here was really important to me. It's not just about your super power for profit. That's important because you have to stay in business, but that super power for purpose is equally as important. We didn't do an award this time for startups, but we have also been working with Hello Alice who set up an entire, saying a website is too small, but they've used AI and ML through SageMaker to tag stories and help for small businesses and other startups that are diverse either through gender or race or be in veteran-owned. They're doing an amazing thing. So we continue, at Amazon to focus on #techforgood, as I know, you guys do at "theCUBE" as well. >> Right, right. Well, we used to call it a word and the triple line accounting. So it's not only just for profitability, but also for your employees and your constituents, which include your customers and your partners, but also the broader community and doing well for the broader community. And I do think, the younger people today that are entering the workforce have really forced that conversation and raised the status of mission-based activities. And really trying to think beyond just the bottom line, you still need to make money cause you got to pay the bills and keep the lights on, but that shouldn't be the only thing. And it shouldn't be really at the expense of everything else. So that's great to hear. And again, I think that the tech for good angle is a really, really important one. It probably doesn't get enough pub compared to some of the other stuff that we see in the news. So Sandy, congratulations to you and the team for weeding through all the applicants, selecting these 18 lucky winners. And thank you for giving us the opportunity to interview a few of them and share their stories on "theCUBE" and on this program. And, that's what we love, love to do since we can't be together in person as we have been so many times in the past. >> Yeah, so Jeff, if we could just show that slide real quick as we end. As we end, I want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart to all of these partners who were here. All 18, you're going to get to hear most of them. I don't want to take away from their thunder, but I know that "theCUBE" has been doing interviews with them and their customers, see and hear the amazing stories that they have and how they really have helped customers beyond what we can normally even expect because they are award winners. So Jeff, thank you and "theCUBE" for helping us to find a way to get their stories out. Because it's not normal times, we didn't have our public conference, but this is a great way to celebrate each and every one of these 18. So I want to say, thank you, congratulations. And from the bottom of my heart, I appreciate all the great work that you're doing. And to the rest of our partners, I hope that I see you on this list in our next award ceremony. >> Alright, well, thank you Sandy, for those kind words. And without further ado, we will end this segment, this kickoff and people can jump into the award-winner segments and learn lots. And hopefully, it won't be too long, Sandy, till we can actually meet again in-person. So thank you for watching this portion and enjoy the rest of the show. (calm music)