well you're watching the cube and I knew that you knew that I'm John Walls we're here in Las Vegas it's re invent 22. Big Show AWS putting it on the Big Show here late in 2022 that's going really well we're at the executive Summit right now sponsored by Accenture and we're going to talk about that relationship between Accenture and AWS um kind of where it is now and where it's going you know even bigger things down the road to help us do that two guests Andy Tay who's a senior managing director and the Accenture AWS business group lead at Accenture Andy thanks for being with us thanks for having me and Sarah whose last name was one of my all-time favorites all good because it is it's all good right okay it's all good Sarah all good worldwide leader of accenture's AWS business group for AWS and thank you both again for being here so let's talk about the relationship just in general high level here 30 000 feet a lot of great things have been happening we know a lot of great things are happening but how's this all you think evolved how did how has this come about that you two are just inextricably linked almost here in the cloud space Sarah why don't you jump on that yeah I'd love to um I think one of the the strongest factors that causes that Synergy for us is we both work backwards from our customer outcomes and so just by consistently doing that taking those customer signals um really obsessing over our customers success we know what we're marching towards and so then we kind of extract those themes and really work together to think about okay when we look at this holistically how do we go bigger better faster together and accomplish and solve those customer problems yeah Andy yeah John let me just maybe add and you know to amplify you know what Sarah just touched on um we both have common to our culture this notion of working from the client's perspective first so really delivering to the clients values or um you know in aws's parlance it's you know customer and so that's at the core and when we keep that at the core everything else becomes really easy where we invest what we build key clients we focus on what our team structure is et cetera Etc that's really easy so that sort of core core pillar number one in terms of our sort of you know success factors the second thing that I think really helps us is our sort of scale geographically you know certainly from an Accenture standpoint as you know John we're north of 800 000 people globally um couple that with aws's strength we really do have you know a field depth and breadth across the board that allows us to sort of see and feel what's happening in the market and allows us really to see around the corners as we like to think and say um and and that helps us be intentional on what we do um and then the third thing is really us we might know what we do but we sort of need to then play to our strengths and as you know we're two very different companies one focus on the technology side the other you know focus on the technology Services although we'll touch on you know some of the changes we're looking at as we go forward but that sort of playing to strength is key as well for us as a third pillar of success and so keeping those three things at the core really helps us move you know day to day and year by year and that's what you see in this continued partnership so what are you hearing from your customers these days we've talked a lot already today and it's kind of the buzzword you know modernization right everybody's talking about this transformation I don't care if you're in Mainframe or where you are everybody wants a modernized right now um you know what are you hearing from customers in that regard and I'm sure everybody's in a different state different yeah frame of mind you know some are embracing some are dragging uh what what's your take on the state of play right now well and I think it's like especially in these macroeconomic moments that we're in um time to value is critical for our customers um and then we have the talent shortage but even with those our customers still need us to solve for sustainability and still focus on inclusion diversity and equity and so we can't lower the bar in anything that we've already been doing we need to just keep doing more and building with them and so I think um for us really getting to the to the meat of what our customers need modernization is a big one but we're still seeing just so many of our customers look at basic transformation right how how do I dip in how do I start to move my environment move my people and get ready for what I need to do next for my business and so that that is a challenge and like we said with with the markets as volatile as they are right now I think a lot of customers are just trying to work with us to figure out how to do that in the most optimized and efficient way I just want to kind of rub people on the head and say it's going to be all right I mean it's so volatile as you pointed out Sarah right yeah I mean the market up and down and we're worried about a recession and companies and their plans they want to be Forward Thinking yeah but they've got to you know keep their powder dry too in some respects and get ready for that rainy day you know John it's funny um because you would think you know you've got the one hand you know rub that you know it's gonna be all right and and then on the other end you'll you know maybe clients should sort of hold temper and you know sort of just pause but I think clients get it they see it they feel it they understand the need to invest and I think you know there's a recent study back in 2008 those clients you know Sarah and I were reading the other day those clients who didn't invest ahead of those you know major if you remember those macroeconomic downturn times they came out really on the bad side um and so clients now are realizing that in these times these are the moments to invest and so they get it but they're faced with a couple of challenges one is time Sarah touched on you just don't have time and the second is Talent so we're working in a very intentional way on what we can do to help them there and and as you'll hear later on from Chris Wegman and Eric Farr um we're launching our velocity platform which really helps to compress that type and and get them faster you know time to Value we're also being very intentional on talent and how we help their talent so you know rotate so that we're not just taking the technology Journey but we're also having the people journey and then the third thing Sarah and I really focus on with our teams is figuring out new ways new sources of value for our clients and that's not just cost that's value the broader set and so we find that in moments like this it's actually an opportunity for us to really bring the best of AWS and Accenture to our clients well you hit value and I always find this one kind of tough because there is a big difference between cost and value my cost is X right whatever I write on my chat that's my cost so but but how do you help clients identify that value so that because it's you know it can be a little nebulous right can it not I mean it's uh but you have to validate you got to quantify at the end of the day because that's what the CEO wants to see it's what the CIO wants to see yeah you've got to identify values so how many how do you do that yeah yeah I mean we we have many different ways right velocity which Andy kind of touched on I think is is really um it's our foundational approach to help customers really kind of enter into their Cloud journey and focus on those key factors for Success right so we've got ISB Solutions built in there We've Got Talent and change built in we've got kind of what we're calling the fabric right that foundational technology layer and giving our customers all of that in a way that they can consume in a way that they can control and you know different modules essentially that they can leverage to move it's going to be tangible right they're going to be able to see I've now got access to all these things that I need I can move as I need to move and I'm not constantly you know looking around figuring out how to lock it all together we've given them that picture and that road map on how to really leverage this because we we need to be able to point to tangible outcomes and so that's critical yeah proof's got to be in the pudding and and you know to Sarah's point I think sort of we're entering into this sort of new dare I say new chapter of cloud and then you know sort of the first chapter was sort of those outcomes were around cost you know I've moved you into the cloud you can shut down your data center but now we've sort of got other sources of value now Beyond costs there's news new sources of revenue how do I become a platform company on top of the AWS cloud and then you know eke out new Revenue sources for myself how do I drive new experiences for my customers yeah um how do I maybe tap into the sustainability angle of things and how do I get greater Innovation from my talent how do I operate better in a Sarah said how do I become more Nimble more agile and more responsive to Market demands and so all those areas all those Dynamics all those outcomes are sources of value that were sort of really laser focused on and just ensuring that as a partnership we we help our clients on that Journey so what do you do about talent I mean you brought it up a couple of times UTP has um in terms of of training retaining recruiting all those key elements right now it's an ultra competitive environment right now yeah and there might be a little bit of a talent Gap in terms of what we're producing right so um you know how do you I guess make the most out of that and and make sure you keep the good people around yeah Talent is an interesting one John um and we were just touching on this uh before we got here um you know sort of from an Accenture standpoint um we're obviously focused on growing our AWS Talent um we've now got I think it's north of 27 000 people in Accenture with AWS certifications north of 34 000 certificates you know which is absolutely fantastic a small City it's just I mean it is very intentional in building that um as AWS rolls out new Services Adam touched on a whole bunch of them today we're at the core of that and ramping and building our talent so that we can drive and get our clients quicker to their value and then the second area of focus is what do we do to help our clients Talent how do we train them how do we enable them how do we you know get them to be more agile and you know being able to sort of operate in what we call that digital core operate in the cloud how do we do that and so we're focused um in in capabilities in fact our Accenture head of talent and people and change Christie Smith John is is here this week just for that and we're exploring ways in which we can get tighter and even more Innovative Around Talent and so I ultimately that that bleeds over to where the partnership goes right because if you can enhance that side of it then then everybody wins on that in terms of what you think you know where this is going yeah yeah it's already you know pretty good setup uh things are working pretty well but as the industry changes so rapidly and and you have to meet those needs how do you see the partnership evolving as well to meet those needs down the road we we have a very fortunate position in that our CEOs are both very engaged in this partnership and they push us think bigger go faster figure it out let's ride and there are definite pros and cons and some days I'm flying this close to the Sun but um it isn't a it's an absolute privilege to work with them the way that we get to and so we're always looking I mean Auntie said it earlier this is the relationship that helps us look around corners we've raised the bar and so we're constantly pushing each other pushing our teams just innovating together thinking it all through on where are we going and like I said reading those tea leaves reading those themes from our customers like hey we've just had five customers with the same similar feeling problem that we're trying to solve or we ran into the same issue in the field and how do we put that together and solve for it because we know it's not just five right we know they're more out there and so um I think you know it's it's leadership principles for us right at Amazon that guiding think big um you know insist on high standards that that'll always be core and Central to who we are and then you know fortunately Accenture has a really similar ethos yeah quick take on that Andy yeah I think as we look out you know I think um we're going to we've already seen but we're going to see this continued blurring of Industries um of um you know sort of clients moving into other Industries and yeah sort of this sort of agitation Market agitation um and so I think disruption you know disruption and and we're being you know focused on what do we need to be to do in order to help our clients on those Journeys and and to continue to you know get them you know faster Solutions is an area that we you know we are um really looking at and these are solutions that are either industry Solutions you'll hear a couple of them this week um you know we've got our insurance solution that we're we've developed as an intelligent underwriting capability leveraging AWS AIML to sort of be intelligent and cognitive um you know we've got other Solutions around the around Industries energy and Life Sciences but then also intelligent applications that might be touching you know areas I think earlier today Adam talked about AWS supply chain and that's an area that we are focused on and and proud to be a part of that and we're working very very closely with with Amazon on that uh to help you know our clients move ahead so I think we're going to see this continued blurring and we're going to obviously you know keep addressing that and just keep iterating well it looks like a relationship of trust and expertise right and it's worked out extremely well and uh if this is any indication where the interview went uh even better things are ahead for the partnership so thank you thank you for chiming in I appreciate your perspectives yeah thank you it's been great we continue our coverage here on thecube we're at re invent 22 we're in Las Vegas and you're watching thecube the leader in technical coverage foreign

>>From around the globe. It's the cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent executive summit 2020, sponsored by Accenture and AWS. >>Okay. Welcome back to the cubes coverage of 80 us. Re-invent 2020 virtual ecentric executive summit. The two great guests here to break down the analysis of the relationship with cloud and essential. Brian bowhead director ahead of Accenture. 80 was a business group at Amazon web services. And Andy T a B G the M is essentially Amazon business group lead managing director at Accenture. Uh, I'm sure you're super busy and dealing with all the action, Brian. Great to see you. Thanks for coming on. So thank you. You guys essentially has been in the spotlight this week and all through the conference around this whole digital transformation, essentially as business group is celebrating its 50th anniversary. What's new, obviously the emphasis of next gen post COVID generation, highly accelerated digital transformation, a lot happening. You got your five-year anniversary, what's new. >>Yeah, it, you know, so if you look back it's exciting. Um, you know, so it was five years ago. Uh, it was actually October where we, where we launched the Accenture AWS business group. And if we think back five years, I think we're still at the point where a lot of customers were making that transition from, you know, should I move to cloud to how do I move to cloud? Right? And so that was one of the reasons why we launched the business group. And since, since then, certainly we've seen that transition, right? Our conversations today are very much around how do I move to cloud, help me move, help me figure out the business case and then pull together all the different pieces so I can move more quickly, uh, you know, with less risk and really achieve my business outcomes. And I would say, you know, one of the things too, that's, that's really changed over the five years. >>And what we're seeing now is when we started, right, we were focused on migration data and IOT as the big three pillars that we launched with. And those are still incredibly important to us, but just the breadth of capability and frankly, the, the, the breadth of need that we're seeing from customers. And obviously as AWS has matured over the years and launched our new capabilities, we're Eva with Accenture. Um, and in the business group, we've broadened our capabilities and deepened our capabilities over the, over the last five years as well. For instance, this year with, with COVID, especially, it's really forced our customers to think differently about their own customers or their citizens, and how do they serve as those citizens. So we've seen a huge acceleration around customer engagement, right? And we powered that with Accenture customer engagement platform powered by ADA, Amazon connect. And so that's been a really big trend this year. And then, you know, that broadens our capability from just a technical discussion to one where we're now really reaching out and, and, um, and helping transform and modernize that customer and citizen experience as well, which has been exciting to say, Andy want to get your thoughts here. We've >>Been reporting and covering essential for years. It's not like it's new to you guys. I mean, five years is a great anniversary. You know, check is good relationship, but you guys have been doing the work you've been on the trend line. And then this hits and Andy said on his keynote, and I thought he said it beautifully. And he even said it to me, my one-on-one interview with them was it's on full display right now, the whole digital transformation, everything about it is on full display and you're either were prepared for it or you kind of word, and you can see who's there. You guys have been prepared. This is not new. So give us the update from your perspective, how you're taking advantage of this, of this massive shift, highly accelerated digital transformation. >>Well, I think, I think you can be prepared, but you've also got to be prepared to always sort of, I think what we're seeing in, in, um, in, in, in, in recent times and particularly in two 20, what, what is it I think today there are, um, 4% of the enterprise workloads sits at the cloud. Um, you know, that leaves 96% out there on prem. Um, and I think over the next four to five years, um, we're going to see that sort of, uh, acceleration to the, to the cloud pick up, um, this year as Andy touched on, I think, uh, uh, on Tuesday in his, I think the pandemic is a forcing function, uh, for companies to, to, to really pause and think about everything from, from, you know, how they, um, manage that technology, their infrastructure, to, to clarity to where that data sets to what insights and intelligence that getting from that data. >>And then eventually even to, to the talent, the talent they have in the organization and how they can be competitive, um, that culture, that culture of innovation, of invention and reinvention. And so I think, I think, you know, when you, when you think of companies out there faced with these challenges, it forces us, it forces AWS's forces, AEG to come together and think through how can we help create value for them? How can we help help them move from sort of just causing and rethinking to having real plans in action and that taking them, uh, into, into implementation. And so that's, that's what we're working on. Um, I think over the next five years, we're looking to just continue to come together and, and help these companies get to the cloud and get the value from the cloud. Cause it's, it's beyond just getting to the cloud attached to me and living in the cloud and getting the value from it. >>It's interesting. Andy was saying, don't just put your toe in the water. You've got to go beyond the toe in the water kind of approach. Um, I want to get to that large scale cause that's the big pickup this week that I kind of walked away with was it's large scale. Acceleration's not just toe in the water experimentation. Can you guys share, what's causing this large scale end to end enterprise transformation and what are some of the success criteria have you seen for the folks who have done that? Yeah. And I'll, I'll start in the end. >>You can buy a lawn. So you, it's interesting if I look >>Back a year ago at reinvent and when I did the cube interview, then we were talking about how ABG we're >>Starting to see that shift of customers. You know, we've been working with customers for years on a single of what I call a single-threaded programs, right? We can do a migration, we can do SAP, we can do a data program. And then even last year we were really starting to see customers ask. The question is like, what kind of synergies and what kind of economies of scale do I get when I start bringing these different threads together and also realizing that it's, you know, to innovate for the business and build new applications, new capabilities, well, that, that is going to inform what data you need to, to hydrate those applications, right? Which then informs your data strategy while a lot of that data is then also embedded in your underlying applications that sit on premises. So you should be thinking through how do you get those applications into the cloud? >>So you need to draw that line through all of those layers. And that was already starting last year. And so last year we launched the joint transformation program with AEG. And then, so we were ready when this year happened and then it was just an acceleration. So things have been happening faster than we anticipated, but we knew this was going to be happening. And luckily we've been in a really good position to help some of our customers really think through all those different layers of kind of the pyramid as we've been calling it along with the talent and change pieces, which are also so important as you make this transformation to cloud >>Andy, what's the success factors. Andy Jassy came on stage during the partner day, a surprise fireside chat with Doug Hume and talking about this is really an opportunity for partners to, to change the business landscape with enablement from Amazon. You guys are in a pole position to do that in the marketplace. What's the success factors that you see, >>Um, really from three, three fronts, I'd say, um, w you know, one is the, the people. Um, and, and I, I, again, I think Andy touched on sort of a, uh, success factors, uh, early in the week. And for me, it's these three areas that it sort of boils down to, to these three areas. Um, one is the, the, the, the people, uh, from the leaders that it's really important to set those big, bold visions point the way. And then, and then, you know, set top down goals. How are we going to measure you almost do get what you measure, um, to be, you know, beyond the leaders, to, to the right people in the right position across the company. We're finding a key success factor for these end to end transformations is not just the leaders, but you haven't poached across the company, working in a, in a collaborative, shared, shared success model, um, and people who are not afraid to, to invent and fail. >>And so that takes me to perhaps the second point, which is the culture. Um, it's important, uh, with finding food for the right conditions to be set in the company, not enable people to move at pace, move at speed, be able to fail fast, um, keep things very, very simple, and just keep iterating and that sort of culture of iteration, um, and improvement versus seeking perfection is, is super important for, for success. And then the third part of maybe touch on is, is partners. Um, I think, you know, as we move forward over the next five years, we're going to see an increasing number of players in the ecosystem in the enterprises state. Um, you're going to see more and more SAS providers. And so it's important for companies and our joint clients out there to pick partners like, um, like AWS or, or Accenture or others, but to pick partners who have all worked together and built solutions together. And that allows them to get speed to value quicker. It allows them to bring in pre-assembled solutions, um, and really just drive that transformation in a quicker, it sorts of manner. >>Yeah, that's a great point worth calling out, having that partnership model that's additive and has synergy in the cloud, because one of the things that came out of this this week, this year is reinvented, is there's new things going on in the public cloud, even though hybrid is an operating model, outpost and super relevant. There, there are benefits for being in the cloud and you've got partners, APIs, for instance, and have microservices working together. This is all new, but I got, I got to ask that on that thread, Andy, where did you see your customers going? Because I think, you know, as you work backwards from the customers, you guys do, what's their needs, how do you see them? You know, where's the puck going? Where can they skate to where the puck's going? Because you can almost look forward and say, okay, I've got to build modern apps. I got to do the digital transformation. Everything is a service. I get that, but what do they, what, what solutions are you building for them right now to get there? >>Yeah. And, and of course, with, with, you know, industries blurring and multiple companies, it's always hard to boil down to the exact situations, but you can probably look at it from a sort of a thematic lens. And what we're seeing is as the cloud transformation journey picks up from us perspective, we've seen a material shift in the solutions and problems that we're trying to address with clients that they are asking for us, uh, to, to help, uh, address is no longer just the back office where you're sort of looking at cost and efficiency and, um, uh, driving gains from that perspective. It's beyond that, it's now materially the top line. It's, how'd you get the driving to the, you know, speed to insights, how'd you get them decomposing, uh, their application set in order to derive those insights. Um, how'd you get them, um, to, to, um, uh, sort of adopt leading edge industry solutions that give them that jump start, uh, and that accelerant to winning the customers, winning the eyeballs. >>Um, and then, and then how'd you help drive the customer experience. We're seeing a lot of push from clients, um, or ask for help on how do I optimize my customer experience in order to retain my eyeballs. And then how do I make sure I've got a soft self-learning ecosystem at play, um, where I, you know, it's not just a practical experience, but I can sort of keep learning and iterating, um, how treat my, eat, my customers, um, and a lot of that, um, that's still self-learning that comes from, you know, putting in, uh, intelligence into your, into your systems, getting an AI and ML, uh, in that. And so as a result of that, where it was seeing a lot of push and a lot of what we're doing, uh, is pouring investments into those areas. And then finally, maybe beyond the bottom line and the top line is how do you harden that and protect that with, um, security and resilience? Uh, so I'll probably say those are the three areas. John >>Brian on the business model side, obviously the enablement is what Amazon has. Um, we see things like SAS factory coming on board and the partner network I've see a, is a big, huge partner of you guys. Um, the business models there. You've got I, as, as doing great with chips, you have this data modeling this data opportunity to enable these modern apps. We heard about the partner strategy from Andy. I'm talking about yesterday now about how can partners within even a center. What's the business model side on your side that you're enabling this. Can you just share your thoughts on that? >>Yeah. And so it's, it's interesting. And again, I'm kind of build it in a build a little bit on some of the things that Andy really talked about there, right? And that we, if you think of that from the partnership, we are absolutely helping our customers with kind of that it modernization piece and we're investing a lot and that there's hard work that needs to get done there. And we're investing a lot as a partnership around the tools, the assets and the methodology. So in AWS and Accenture show up together as AEG, we are executing off a single blueprint with a single set of assets so we can move fast. So we're going to continue to do that with all the hybrid announcements from this past week, those get baked into that, that migration modernization theme, but the other really important piece here as we go up the stack, Andy mentioned it, right? >>The data piece, like so much of what we're talking about here is around data and insights. Right? I did a cube interview last week with, uh, Carl hick. Um, who's the CIO from Takeda. And if you hear Christophe Weber from Takeda talk, he talks about Takeda being a data company, data and insights company. So how do we, as a partnership, again, build the capabilities and the platforms like with Accenture's applied insights platform so that we can bootstrap and really accelerate our client's journey. And then finally, on the innovation on the business front, and Andy was touching on some of these, we are investing in industry solutions and accelerators, right? Because we know that at the end of the day, a lot of these are very similar. We're talking about ingesting data, using machine learning to provide insights and then taking action. So for instance, the cognitive insurance platform that we're working together on with Accenture, if they get about property and casualty claims and think about how do we enable touchless claims using machine learning and computer vision that can assess based on an image damage, and then be able to triage that and process it accordingly, right? >>Using all the latest machine learning capabilities from AWS >>With that deep, um, AI machine learning data science capability from Accenture, who knows all those algorithms that need to get built and build that library by doing that, we can really help these insurance companies accelerate their transformation around how they think about claims and how they can speed those claims on behalf of their policy holder. So that's, what's an example of a, kind of like a bottom to top view of what we're doing in the partnership to address these new needs. >>That's awesome. Andy, I want to get back to your point about culture. You mentioned it twice now. Um, challenge is a big part of the game here. Andy Jassy referenced Lambda. Next generation developers were using Lambda. He talked about CIO stories around, they didn't move fast enough. They lost three years. A new person came in and made it go faster. This is a new, this is a time for a certain kind of, um, uh, professional and individual, um, to, to be part of, um, this next generation. What's the talent strategy you guys have to attract and attain the best and retain the best people. How do you do it? >>Um, you know, it's, it's, um, it's an interesting one. It's, it's, it's oftentimes a, it's, it's a significant point and often overlooked. Um, you know, people, people really matter and getting the right people, um, in not just in AWS or, but then on our customers is super important. We often find that much of our discussions with, with our clients is centered around that. And it's really a key ingredient. As you touched on, you need people who are willing to embrace change, but also people who are willing to create new, um, to invent new, to reinvent, um, and to keep it very simple. Um, w we're we're we're seeing increasingly that you need people who have a sort of deep learning and a deep, uh, or deep desire to keep learning and to be very curious as, as they go along. Most of all, though, I find that, um, having people who are not willing or not afraid to fail is critical, absolutely critical. Um, and I think that that's, that's, uh, a necessary ingredient that we're seeing, um, our clients needing more off, um, because if you can't start and, and, and you can't iterate, um, you know, for fear of failure, you're in trouble. And I think Andy touched on that you, you know, where that CIO, that you referred to last three years, um, and so you really do need people who are willing to start not afraid to start, um, and, uh, and not afraid to lead. Yeah. >>It takes a gut-check there. I just said, you guys have a great team over there. Everyone at the center I've interviewed strong, talented, and not afraid to lean in and, and into the trends. Um, I got to ask on that front cloud first was something that was a big strategic focus for Accenture. How does that fit into your business group? That's, uh, Amazon focus, obviously their cloud, and now hybrid everywhere, as I say, um, how does that all work it out? >>We're super excited about our cloud first initiative, and I think it fits it, um, really, uh, perfectly it's it's, it's what we needed. It's, it's, it's a, it's another accelerant. Um, if you think of first, what we're doing is we're, we're putting together, um, a capability set that will help enable him to and translations as Brian touched on your help companies move, you know, from just, you know, migrating to, to, to modernizing, to driving insights, to bringing in change, um, and, and, and helping on that, on that talent. So that's sort of component number one is how does Accenture bring the best, uh, end to end transformation capabilities to our clients? Number two is perhaps, you know, how do we, um, uh, bring together pre-assembled as Brian touched on preassembled industry offerings to help as an accelerant, uh, for our, for our customers three, as, as we touched on earlier, is, is that sort of partnership with the ecosystem. >>We're going to see an increasing number of SAS providers in an estate in the enterprises States out there. And so, you know, parts of our cloud first and our AEG strategy is to increase our touchpoints and our integrations and our solutions and our offerings where the ecosystem partners out there, the ISV partners out there, and the SAS providers out there. And then number four is really about, you know, how do we, um, extend the definition of the cloud? I think oftentimes people thought of the cloud just as sort of on-prem and prem. Um, but, but as Andy touched on earlier this week, you know, you've, you've got this, the concept of hybrid cloud and that in itself, um, uh, is, is, is, uh, you know, being redefined as well, you know, where you've got the intelligent edge and you've got various forms of the edge. Um, so that's the fourth part of, of our, of our cloud first strategy. And, and, and for us was super excited because all of that is highly relevant for ABG, as we look to build those capabilities as industry solutions and others, and as we look to enable our customers, but also how we, you know, as we, as we look to extend how we go to market, uh, I joined tally PS, uh, in, uh, in our respective skews and products. >>Well, what's clear now is that people now realize that if you contain that complexity, the upside is massive. And that's great opportunity for you guys. We got to get to the final question for you guys to weigh in on, as we wrap up next five years, Brian, Andy weigh in, how do you see that playing out? What do you see this exciting, um, for the partnership and the cloud first cloud, everywhere cloud opportunities share some perspective. >>Yeah, I, I, they, you know, just kinda building on that cloud first, right? What cloud first. And we were super excited when cloud first was announced and you know, what it signals to the market and what we're seeing in our customers, which is cloud really permeates everything that we're doing now. Um, and, and so all aspects of the business will get infused with cloud in some ways, you know, it, it touches on all pieces. And I think what we're going to see is just a continued acceleration and getting much more efficient about pulling together the disparate, what had been disparate pieces of these transformations, and then using automation using machine learning to go faster. Right? And so, as we start thinking about the stack, right, well, we're going to get, I know we are, as a partnership is we're already investing there and getting better and more efficient every day as the migration pieces and the moving assets, the cloud are just going to continue to get more automated, more efficient, and those will become the economic engines that allow us to fund the differentiated, innovative app activities up the stack. >>So I'm excited to see us, you know, kind of invest to make those, those, um, those bits accelerated for customers so that we can free up capital and resources to invest where it's going to drive the most outcome for their end customers. Um, and I think that's going to be a big focus and that's going to have the industry, um, you know, focus. It's going to be making sure that we can consume the latest and greatest of AWS has capabilities and, you know, in the areas of machine learning and analytics, but then Andy's also touched on it bringing in ecosystem partners, right? I mean, one of the most exciting wins we had this year, and this year of COVID is looking at the universe, uh, looking at Massachusetts, the COVID track and trace solution that we put in place is a partnership between Accenture, AWS, and Salesforce, right? So again, bringing together three really leading partners who can deliver value for our customers. I think we're going to see a lot more of that. As customers look to partnerships like this, to help them figure out how to bring together the best of the ecosystem to drive solutions. So I think we're going to see more of that as well. >>All right, Andy final word, your take >>Of innovation is, is picking up. Um, the split things are just going faster and faster. I'm just super excited and looking forward to the next five years as, as you know, the technology invention, um, comes out and continues to sort of set new standards from AWS. Um, and as we, as Accenture bringing our industry capabilities, we marry the two, we, we go and help our customers super exciting times. >>Well, congratulations on the partnership. I want to say thank you to you guys, because I've reported a few times some stories around real successes around this COVID pandemic that you guys worked together on with Amazon that really changed people's lives. Uh, so congratulations on that too as well. I want to call that out. Thanks for coming >>Up. Thank you. Thanks for coming on. >>Okay. This is the cubes coverage, Accenture AWS partnership, part of the center's executive summit at Avis reinvent 2020. I'm John for your host. Thanks for watching.

>> Announcer: From around the globe, it's theCUBE. With digital coverage of AWS reInvent Executive Summit 2020, sponsored by Accenture and AWS. >> Hello and welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of AWS reInvent 2020. This is special programming for the Accenture Executive Summit where all the thought leaders are going to extract the signal from those share with you their perspective of this year's reInvent conference as it respects the customers' digital transformation. Brian Bohan is the director and head of Accenture, AWS Business Group at Amazon web services. Brian, great to see you. And Chris Wegmann is the Accenture Amazon Business Group technology lead at Accenture. Guys this is about technology vision this conversation. Chris, I want to start with you because you're Andy Jackson's keynote. You heard about the strategy of digital transformation, how you got to lean into it. You got to have the guts to go for it and you got to decompose. He went everywhere.(chuckles) So what did you hear? What was striking about the keynote? Because he covered a lot of topics. >> Yeah. It was epic as always from Andy. Lot of topics, a lot to cover in the three hours. There was a couple of things that stood out for me. First of all, hybrid. The concept, the new concept of hybrid and how Andy talked about it, bringing the compute and the power to all parts of an enterprise, whether it be at the edge or are in the big public cloud, whether it be in an Outpost or wherever it'd be, right with containerization now. Being able to do Amazon containerization in my data center and that's awesome. I think that's going to make a big difference. All that being underneath the Amazon console and billing and things like that, which is great. I'll also say the chips, right? I know computer is always something that we always kind of take for granted but I think again, this year, Amazon and Andy really focused on what they're doing with the chips and compute and the compute is still at the heart of everything in cloud. And that continued advancement is making an impact and will make and continue to make a big impact. >> Yeah, I would agree. I think one of the things that really... I mean the container thing was I think really kind of a nuance point. When you've got Deepak Singh on the opening day with Andy Jassy and he runs a container group over there. When we need a small little team, he's on the front stage. That really is the key to the hybrid. I think this showcases this new layer. We're taking advantage of the Graviton2 chips, which I thought was huge. Brian, this is really a key part of the platform change, not change, but the continuation of AWS. Higher level servers, >> Yep. building blocks that provide more capabilities, heavy lifting as they say but the new services that are coming on top really speaks to hybrid and speaks to the edge. >> It does. Yeah. I think like Andy talks about and we talked about we really want to provide choice to our customers, first and foremost. And you can see that in the array of services we have, we can see it in the the hybrid options that Chris talked about. Being able to run your containers through ECS or EKS anywhere. It just get to the customers choice. And one of the things that I'm excited about as you talk about going up the stack and on the edge are things, most certainly Outpost, right? So now Outpost was launched last year but then with the new form factors and then you look at services like Panorama, right? Being able to take computer vision and embed machine learning and computer vision, and do that as a managed capability at the edge for customers. And so we see this across a number of industries. And so what we're really thinking about is customers no longer have to make trade-offs and have to think about those choices, that they can really deploy natively in the cloud and then they can take those capabilities, train those models, and then deploy them where they need to whether that's on premises or at the edge, whether it be in a factory or retail environment. I think we're really well positioned when hopefully next year we start seeing the travel industry rebound and the need more than ever really to kind of rethink about how we kind of monitor and make those environments safe. Having this kind of capability at the edge is really going to help our customers as we come out of this year and hopefully rebound next year. >> Chris, I want to go back to you for a second. It's hard to pick your favorite innovation from the keynote because, Brian, just reminded me of some things I forgot happened. It was like a buffet of innovation. Some keynotes have one or two, there was like 20. You got the industrial piece that was huge. Computer vision, machine learning, that's just a game changer. The connect thing came out of nowhere in my opinion. I mean, it's a call center technology so it's boring as hell, what are you going to do with that?(Brian and Chris chuckle) It turns out it's a game changer. It's not about the calls but the contact and that's distant intermediating in the stack as well. So again, a feature that looks old is actually new and relevant. What was your favorite innovation announcement? >> It's hard to say. I will say my personal favorite was the Mac OS. I think that is a phenomenal just addition, right? And the fact that AWS has worked with Apple to integrate the Nitro chip into the iMac and offer that out. A lot of people are doing development for IOS and that stuff and that's just been a huge benefit for the development teams. But I will say, I'll come back to Connect. You mentioned it but you're right. It's a boring area but it's an area that we've seen huge success with since Connect was launched and the additional features that Amazon continues to bring, obviously with the pandemic and now that customer engagement through the phone, through omni-channel has just been critical for companies, right? And to be able to have those agents at home, working from home versus being in the office, it was a huge advantage for several customers that are using Connect. We did some great stuff with some different customers but the continue technology like you said, the call translation and during a call to be able to pop up those keywords and have a supervisor listen is awesome. And some of that was already being done but we are stitching multiple services together. Now that's right out of the box. And that Google's location is only going to make that go faster and make us to be able to innovate faster for that piece of the business. >> It's interesting not to get all nerdy and business school like but you've got systems of records, systems of engagement. If you look at the call center and the Connect thing, what got my attention was not only the model of disintermediating that part of the engagement in the stack but what actually cloud does to something that's a feature or something that could be an element like say call center, the old days of calling the 800 number and getting some support. You got infra chip, you have machine learning, you actually have stuff in the in the stack that actually makes that different now. The thing that impressed me was Andy was saying, you could have machine learning detect pauses, voice inflections. So now you have technology making that more relevant and better and different. So a lot going on. This is just one example of many things that are happening from a disruption innovation standpoint. What do you guys think about that? Am I getting it right? Can you share other examples? >> I think you are right and I think what's implied there and what you're saying and even in the other Mac OS example is the ability... We're talking about features, right? Which by themselves you're saying, Oh, wow! What's so unique about that? But because it's on AWS and now because whether you're a developer working with Mac iOS and you have access to the 175 plus services that you can then weave into your new application. Talk about the Connect scenario. Now we're embedding that kind of inference and machine learning to do what you say, but then your data Lake is also most likely running in AWS, right? And then the other channels whether they be mobile channels or web channels or in-store physical channels, that data can be captured and that same machine learning could be applied there to get that full picture across the spectrum, right? So that's the power of bringing you together on AWS, the access to all those different capabilities and services and then also where the data is and pulling all that together for that end to end view. >> Can you guys give some examples of work you've done together? I know there's stuff we've reported on, in the last session we talked about some of the connect stuff but that kind of encapsulates where this is all going with respect to the tech. >> Yeah. I think one of them, it was called out on Doug's Partner Summit is a SAP Data Lake Accelerator, right? Almost every enterprise has SAP, right? And getting data out of SAP has always been a challenge, right? Whether it be through data warehouses and AWS, or sorry, SAP BW. What we've focused on is getting that data when you have SAP on AWS, getting that data into the Data Lake, right? Getting it into a model that you can pull the value out and the customers can pull the value out, use those AI models. So that's one thing we worked on in the last 12 months. Super excited about seeing great success with customers. A lot of customers had ideas. They want to do this, they had different models. What we've done is made it very simplified. Framework which allows customers to do it very quickly, get the data out there and start getting value out of it and iterating on that data. We saw customers are spending way too much time trying to stitch it all together and trying to get it to work technically. And we've now cut all of that out and they can immediately start getting down to the data and taking advantage of those different services that are out there by AWS. >> Brian, you want to weigh in as things you see as relevant builds that you guys done together that kind of tease out the future and connect the dots to what's coming? >> I'm going to use a customer example. We worked with, it just came out, with Unilever around their blue air, connected, smart air purifier. And what I think is interesting about that, I think it touches on some of the themes we're talking about as well as some of the themes we talked about in the last session, which is we started that program before the pandemic, but Unilever recognized that they needed to differentiate their product in the marketplace, move to more of a services oriented business which we're seeing as a trend. We enabled this capability. So now it's a smart air purifier that can be remote managed. And now when the pandemic hit, they are in a really good position, obviously, with a very relevant product and capability to be used. And so, that data then as we were talking about is going to reside on the cloud. And so the learning that can now happen about usage and about filter changes, et cetera can find its way back into future iterations of that picked out that product. And I think that's keeping with what Chris is talking about where we might be systems of record like in SAP, how do we bring those in and then start learning from that data so that we can get better on our future iterations? >> Hey, Chris, on the last segment we did on the business mission session, Andy Tay from your team talked about partnerships within a century and working with other folks. I want to take that now on the technical side because one of the things that we heard from Doug's keynote and during the partner day was integrations and data were two big themes. When you're in the cloud technically, the integrations are different. You're going to get unique things in the public cloud that you're just not going to get on-premise access to other cloud native technologies and companies. How do you see the partnering of Accenture with people within your ecosystem and how the data and the integration play together? What's your vision? >> Yeah. I think there's two parts of it. One there's from a commercial standpoint, right? Some marketplace, you heard Dave talk about that in the partner summit, right? That marketplace is now bringing together this ecosystem in a very easy way to consume by the customers and by the users and bringing multiple partners together. And we're working with our ecosystem to put more products out in the marketplace that are integrated together already. I think one from a technical perspective though. If you look at Salesforce, I talked a little earlier about Connect. Another good example technically underneath the covers, how we've integrated Connect and Salesforce, some of it being pre-built by AWS and Salesforce, other things that we've added on top of it, I think are good examples. And I think as these ecosystems these ISVs put their products out there and start exposing more and more APIs on the Amazon platform may opening it up, having those pre-built network connections there between the different VPCs of the different areas within within a customer's network and having them all opened up and connected and having all that networking done underneath the covers. It's one thing to call the APIs, it's one thing to have access to those and that's not a big focus of a lot of ISVs and customers who build those APIs and expose them but having that network infrastructure underneath and being able to stay within the cloud, within AWS to make those connections that pass that data. We always talk about scale, right? It's one thing if I just need to pass like a simple user ID back and forth, right? That's fine. We're not talking massive data sets, whether it be seismic data or whatever it be, passing those large data sets between customers across the Amazon network is going to open up the world. >> Yeah, I see huge possibilities there and love to keep on this story. I think it's going to be important and something to keep track of. I'm sure you guys will be on top of it. One of the things I want to dig into with you guys now is Andy had kind of this philosophical thing in his keynote talk about societal change and how tough the pandemic is. Everything's on full display and this kind of brings out kind of like where we are and the truth. If you look at the truth it's a virtual event. I mean, it's a website and you got some sessions out there, we're doing remote best we can and you've got software and you've got technology and the other concept of a mechanism, it's software, it does something It does a purpose. Accenture, you guys have a concept called Living Systems where growth strategy powered by technology. How do you take the concept of a living organism or a system and replace the mechanism staleness of computing and software? And this is kind of interesting because we're on the cusp of a major inflection point post COVID. I get the digital transformation being slow. That's yes, that's happening. There's other things going on in society. What do you guys think about this Living Systems concept? Yeah. I'll start. I think the living system concept, it started out very much thinking about how do you rapidly change your system, right? And because of cloud, because of DevOps, because of all these software technologies and processes that we've created, that's where it started making it much easier, make it a much faster being able to change rapidly. But you're right. I think if you now bring in more technologies, the AI technology, self-healing technologies. Again, you heard Andy in his keynote talk about the systems and services they're building to detect problems and resolve those problems, right? Obviously automation is a big part of that. Living Systems, being able to bring that all together and to be able to react in real time to either when a customer asks, either through the AI models that have been generated and turning those AI models around much faster and being able to get all the information that came in the last 20 minutes, right? Society is moving fast and changing fast and even in one part of the world, if something in 10 minutes can change. And being able to have systems to react to that, learn from that and be able to pass that on to the next country especially in this world of COVID and things changing very quickly and diagnosis and medical response all that so quickly to be able to react to that and have systems pass that information, learn from that information is going to be critical. >> That's awesome. Brian, one of the things that comes up every year is, oh, the cloud's scalable. This year I think we've talked on theCUBE before, years ago certainly with the Accenture and Amazon. I think it was like three or four years ago. Yeah. The clouds horizontally scalable but vertically specialized at the application layer. But if you look at the Data Lake stuff that you guys have been doing where you have machine learning, the data is horizontally scalable and then you got the specialization in the app changes the whole vertical thing. You don't need to have a whole vertical solution or do you? So, how has this year's cloud news impacted vertical industries? Because it used to be, oh, oil and gas, financial services. They've got a team for that. We got a stack for that. Not anymore. Is it going away? What's changing? >> Well. It's a really good question. I think what we're seeing, and I was just on a call this morning talking about banking and capital markets and I do think the challenges are still pretty sector specific. But what we do see is the kind of commonality when we start looking at the, and we talked about this, the industry solutions that we're building as a partnership, most of them follow the pattern of ingesting data, analyzing that data and then being able to provide insights and then actions, right? So if you think about creating that kind of common chassis of that in just the Data Lake and then the machine learning, and you talk about the nuances around SageMaker and being able to manage these models, what changes then really are the very specific industries' algorithms that you're writing, right, within that framework. And so, we're doing a lot and Connect is a good example of this too, where you look at it and yeah, customer service is a horizontal capability that we're building out, but then when you stamp it into insurance or retail banking, or utilities, there are nuances then that we then extend and build so that we meet the unique needs of those industries and that's usually around those models. >> Yeah. I think this year was the first reInvent that I saw real products coming out that actually solved that problem. I mean, it was there last year SageMaker was kind of moving up the stack, but now you have apps embedding machine learning directly in and users don't even know it's in there. I mean, cause this is kind of where it's going, right? I mean-- >> You saw that was in announcements, right? How many announcements where machine learning is just embedded in? I mean, CodeGuru, DevOps Guru, the Panorama we talked about, it's just there. >> Yeah. I mean having that knowledge about the linguistics and the metadata, knowing the business logic, those are important specific use cases for the vertical and you can get to it faster. Chris, how is this changing on the tech side, your perspective? >> Yeah. I keep coming back to AWS and cloud makes it easier, right? All this stuff can be done and some of it has been done, but what Amazon continues to do is make it easier to consume by the developer, by the customer and to actually embed it into applications much easier than it would be if I had to go set up the stack and build it all on them and embed it, right? So it's shortcoming that process and again, as these products continue to mature, right, and some of this stuff is embedded, it makes that process so much faster. It reduces the amount of work required by the developers the engineers to get there. So, I'm expecting you're going to see more of this, right. I think you're going to see more and more of these multi connected services by AWS, that has a lot of the AI ML pre-configured Data Lakes, all that kind of stuff embedded in those services. So you don't have to do it yourself and continue to go up the stack. And we always talk about Amazon's built for builders, right? But, builders have been super specialized and are becoming, as engineers were being asked to be bigger and bigger and to be be able to do more stuff and I think these kind of integrated services are going to help us do that >> And certainly needed more now when you have hybrid edge that they're going to be operating with microservices on a cloud model and with all those advantages that are going to come around the corner for being in the cloud. I mean, I think there's going to be a whole clarity around benefits in the cloud with all these capabilities and benefits. Cloud Guru I think it's my favorite this year because it just points to why that could happen. I mean that happens because of the cloud data.(laughs) If you're on-premise, you may not have a little Cloud Guru. you are going to get more data but they're all different. Edge certainly will come in too. Your vision on the edge, Chris, how you see that evolving for customers because that could be complex, new stuff. How is it going to get easier? >> Yeah. It's super complex now, right? I mean, you got to design for all the different edge 5G protocols are out there and solutions, right? Amazon's simplifying that. Again, I come back to simplification, right? I can build an app that works on any 5G network that's been integrated with AWS, right. I don't have to set up all the different layers to get back to my cloud or back to my my bigger data set. And that's kind of choking. I don't even know where to call the cloud anymore. I got big cloud which is a central and I go down then you've got a cloud at the edge. Right? So what do I call that? >> Brian: It's just really computing.(laughing) Exactly. So, again, I think is this next generation of technology with the edge comes right and we put more and more data at the edge. We're asking for more and more compute at the edge, right? Whether it be industrial or for personal use or consumer use, that processing is going to get more and more intense to be able to maintain under a single console, under a single platform and be able to move the code that I developed across that entire platform, whether I have to go all the way down to the very edge at the 5G level, right, or all the way back into the bigger cloud and how that processing in there, being able to do that seamlessly is going to allow the speed of development that's needed. >> Wow. You guys done a great job and no better time to be a techie or interested in technology or computer science or social science for that matter. This is a really perfect store. A lot of problems to solve, a lot of change happening, positive change opportunities, a lot of great stuff. Final question guys. Five years working together now on this partnership with AWS and Accenture. Congratulations, you guys are in pole position for the next wave coming. What's exciting you guys? Chris, what's on your mind? Brian, what's getting you guys pumped up? >> Well, again, I come back to Andy mentioned it in his keynote, right? We're seeing customers move now, right. Five years ago we knew customers were going to do this. We built a partnership to enable these enterprise customers to make that journey, right? But now, even more we're seeing them move at such great speed, right? Which is super excites me, right? Because I can see... Being in this for a long time now, I can see the value on the other end. We've been wanting to push our customers as fast as they can through the journey and now they're moving. Now they're getting the religion, they're getting there. They see they need to do it to change your business so that's what excites me. It just the excites me, it's just the speed at which we're going to to see the movement. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. I'd agree with that. I mean, I just think getting customers to the cloud is super important work and we're obviously doing that and helping accelerate that. It's what we've been talking about when we're there all the possibilities that become available, right? Through the common data capabilities, the access to the 175 somewhat AWS services. I also think and this is kind of permeated through this week at Re:invent is the opportunity, especially in those industries that do have an industrial aspect, a manufacturing aspect, or a really strong physical aspect of bringing together IT and operational technology and the business with all these capabilities and I think edge and pushing machine learning down to the edge and analytics at the edge is really going to help us do that. And so I'm super excited by all that possibility because I feel like we're just scratching the surface there. >> It's a great time to be building out. and this is the time for reconstruction, reinvention. Big theme, so many storylines in the keynote and the events . It's going to keep us busy here at SiliconANGLE on theCUBE for the next year. Gentlemen, thank you for coming on. I really appreciate it. Thanks. >> Thank you. All right. Great conversation. We're getting technical. We're going to go another 30 minutes A lot to talk about. A lot of storylines here at AWS Re:Invent 2020 at the Accenture Executive Summit. I'm John Furrier. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)