>> Live from Las Vegas. It's theCUBE. Covering the AWS Accenture Executive Summit. Brought to you by Accenture. >> Welcome back, everyone to theCUBE's live coverage of the AWS Executive Summit here in Las Vegas. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. We have today, Mahmoud El Assir, he is the CTO and Senior Vice President of Global Technology Services at Verizon. And Annette Rippert, Senior Managing Director, Accenture Technology, North America. Thank you so much for coming on theCUBE. >> Great to be here. >> Thanks for having us. >> So we are talking today about Verizon's migration to the cloud, but Verizon is a company that many people have familiarity with, Mahmoud. Just lay out a few facts and figures for our viewers here. >> Sure, I'll say Verizon is Fortune 16 company. Last year we made $126 billion dollars from our, kind of, loyal customers. We are, today we deployed, we were the first people to deploy 5G. And we have 98% coverage in U.S., so we are America's fastest and most reliable wireless service. >> So it's a company that touches so many of our lives. >> Yup. >> Earlier this year, Verizon selected AWS as its preferred cloud provider. What was, one, what was the impetus for moving to the cloud? And two why AWS? >> Yeah, that's a great question. But I'd like to zoom out a little but more and talk about what is Verizon? What's our mission and how kind of tackling it? So when you think about Verizon, our mission is to deliver the promise of the digital world, right? Enable, deploy 5G and enable the 4th Industrial Revolution. And as part of this, it's all about empowering humans to do more, right? And in global technology solutions our winning aspiration is to develop products and services that our customers and employees love. And then we, and also to be the destination for world class technology talent. And be the investment innovation center for the company. So when it comes to digital transformation we look at the enables and where we want to invest our energy and how do you want to leverage the right partners. So the heart of our technology transformation is the public cloud. When you think about what the public cloud, it's like where you want us. It will allow us to spend more of our energy building solutions and for our customers. And creating value for our customers. Also public cloud will allow us, and or business, to experiment faster, better and cheaper. In technology our focus is to always save on efficiency, speed and innovation. So that is our kind of model and at the heart of this, public cloud is a key kind of element for our journey. >> Well I want to get into that journey a little bit more, but Annette, I want to bring you into the conversation here. So, Verizon is one of the leading communications companies that is migrating to the cloud at this scale. >> Yes. >> What are some of the lessons, as you have helped and observed and also helped this partnership grow, what are some of the key takeaways that you would say? >> Well, I think there is a couple you know, if you take a look at some of the lessons that our clients learn. You know when at Accenture we go into the market really helping our clients think about how do we leverage technology for achieving business outcomes. You just talked about some extraordinary business outcomes that you're looking to achieve and you'll do that through a variety of things, including leveraging technology. And so, just like that we encourage our clients to be thinking about what is the business innovation? What is the outcome? The disruption that we're looking to achieve through leveraging technologies like AWS, right? I think secondly, if you think a little bit about the importance in that journey of communicating that vision. Of what will it mean to be able to leverage that kind of technology? You just communicated a very strong vision. And that's so important to the change journey that many of these organizations go on. You know there is the importance of the investment strategy, but ultimately, the innovation that the organization itself the engineers within the organization are a part of delivering, you know, the kind of innovation that you'll be delivering is really, it will not only make such a big impact on those in your enterprise, delivering that. But, you know, to all of us who are consumers of your business strategy which will be fabulous. And I think, in the end, you know, one of the most exciting things, and it's really sitting Alexis, as we were talking a little bit about some of what Verizon is doing earlier in the day, one of the most important things is really thinking about how this provides an opportunity for the enterprise to change. So, you know, moving to be a much more agile enterprise, being able to respond to market changes, and certainly in the business that you're in, the market is changing everyday. And so by leveraging innovative products like AWS' platform, you know it really provides the opportunity to constantly leverage new technology in that environment. >> And that, as you said, the market is changing everyday and customers, they're demanding things and companies are providing customers with things they don't even know that they want until they have them in their hands. How, at a time when customer differentiation is such a key competitive advantage, how are you staying ahead of the game and making sure that you know you're sort of getting inside the heads of your customers? And then you're also delivering what they want and expect. >> Customers comes first at Verizon, right? So it's at the heart of our technology is also leveraging emerging technology. So cloud is one, scaling AIML is another one. One of the big programs we're doing is, how do you move personalization to one-on-one personalization? How do you make every customer feel they have their own network, our network. Like their own network that's personalized for their needs. There own experience, their own plans. Their own recognition. So that's key. So today when you think about most companies do segmentation or personalization at the cluster level. So one of the biggest things is we're shifting now from systems of engagement, and systems of records. We're inserting systems of insights. A system of insight allows to build the DNA for every customer and will allow us to personalize the customer experience for every customer at the customer level based on all the data, kind of, we know about them, from the data they use with us, and will allow us to personalize their experience at every touch point. >> So what, how would that look like? What will a personalized customer experience at Verizon look like in the future going forward? What are some of your goals and aspirations? >> Imagine you're like a, you've bought every iPhone, since iPhone one through like iPhone ten, right? >> I can imagine that. >> So you're an iPhone enthusiast, right? So, when you come up on our website recommend, like the iPhone, the next iPhone say, the next iPhone is up, the next iPhone red is up or so. So we know more about you and your history and we recommend right accessories, we recommend and so we tell you, hey this stuff is coming. So you feel we're watching out for you. You're like we know, we know you. We know you better than anybody. So at any touch point when you come to us we kind of tell you what's the next thing for you. And then even when you don't know we, like from a network kind of performance from everything we proactively, kind of cater for you. That's a big one. The other one, how do you, when you want to talk to us, how do you get leverage technology like Chatbots and conversationally AVRs and stuff. And make sure you feel you're like, we know you. If you have a different accent, we recognize the accent, then you say, hey do you want to speak in that language? >> (laughs) >> So imagine the power of doing that. Versus today you have to do, like you have Spanish AVR, you have to have a, or have a Spanish kind of call center. Imagine through a IML and Chatbots and stuff, you can recognize all the stuff and personalize the experience. Today at Verizon, we are known of our network superiority. And we have great customer experience but we want to be known also for our experience the same way we are known for our network. And we believe that at Verizon, there is always a higher gear. So we all aspire for the higher gear and aspire our customers to feel they have a Verizon for every customer. >> So this, that's from the customer experience. And as you said, the goal is to have the customer feel that the company empathizes with them and really gets them. What about the workforce changes? I mean Annette was talking about the importance of change management and the cultural shift that these kinds of transformations entail. Have you come up against any challenges at Verizon in terms of this migration? >> Sure I would say, at the heart of our kind of transformation, there are four main pillars. The first pillar is, enabling all these modern technologies. This is like cloud, Cloud Native, API, AI, ML. And especially go back to cloud, the time of enabling cloud was very important to get everybody on board at beginning of the journey. So one of our biggest thing is to get like the security team on board, as early in the process as possible, and make sure security team is a development team, not just a kind of a controls team. So having an engineering team on the security side is a big one to kind of automate all this kind of, all the security controls we need in the cloud so we have the right guardrails and have everything automated. Another thing, same thing like with the other teams. Get them on board in the journey have an advisory kind of board with the other team and security team and legal teams and everybody is onboarding on the journey. So that's I'd say key and pay lots of dividends investment upfront but pays lots of dividends so you can move faster. It's like more of a slow down to speed up. So that's a big one. The second one is, technology is one thing, but you need the culture. So you need to have sustainable momentum in this kind of movement. So the proxy we wanted to have is like have AWS certifications. Because you need 10% believers to have momentum. So our proxy to believers is AWS certifications. So we put a program in place we call it: Verizon Cloud Train. And that train basically is like a 12-week, six sprints, and we help our teams prepare for their certification. So last year we did more than a thousand, we have more than 1800 people probably right now certified with AWS. >> That is incredible. >> At the same time, we set up a dojo's, which are like emergent centers. So we have like 40, 50 seats in different cities and with like five six coaches. So if you are a team who wants to come in and move your application to the cloud, we help you do it. If you want to decompartmentalize your application to microservices we help you. If you want to do ABI's, we help you. So we helped you build deep expertise into these technologies we are doing. So that is like, transforming the teams, and up scaling, I would call it up scaling the talent, is key. Hiring great talent in key rolls is also key. The third pillar is changing the way we work from, what you call a project based, to outcome based. And this beyond agile. Agile is an enabler for this, but how do you change the model where everything is outcome based? Where you have the business and the technology team working together to move an outcome. If I want to increase my kind of video-on-demand revenue per customer, everybody making all the changes, experimenting, and making sure that's a need, is moving. It's not like I did my code, I delivered my, I did my testing, I deployed my app. It's what's a business and what's a customer kind of expectation. And fourth one is, how do you establish internal kind of communities and get out of a like the thiefdoms and stuff. And get a culture of kind of sharing and cheering for others. So we have like Dev Ops days internally within the company, bring in external, internal speakers. We have internal kind of intersourcing for some piece of code. So you have to fire on all cylinders I would say. And get as many kind of parties included as early in the process. And have also an objective to have everything as code. And it's a journey, so you have to always keep on exercising new muscles and more muscles and the more muscles you exercise, the faster you can go. >> So Mahmoud, Annette already shared with us her key learnings from your experience and your journey. What would you say, I mean you're hear at AWS reInvent, it's not your first rodeo, you've been to this conference many times before. When you're talking with other CTO's, CIO's and they're saying, hey, so how's it going for you? What's your advice for a company that is really just starting this, this process? >> Sure, I would say the movement to the public cloud is not just a cost play. I mean, cost needs to be, efficiency needs to be there, but that shouldn't be the primary kind of objective. The primary objective should be speed and innovation. At the same time, deliver a cost. Lots of people say, oh do I, is the same, you can't compare it same-for-same. Because it's different. On prem you can do like A, B testing. In the cloud you can do A to Z testing for much cheaper. You don't need everything you have on prem. You can experiment, so think about it as accelerating the speed of innovation. That's the key one. And I said it before, but I'll say it again. It's like all about having the right kind of, from like a security perspective, people will argue, oh public cloud is insecure? I would argue, public cloud can be more secure than on prem because you have all the tools to kind of automatically, kind of protect and detect and recover. And you have more tooling to allow you to be more secure. It's having the right kind of guardrails and the right controls, right automation and right teams. So it's, you have to build muscle across all these fronts. And have them as a front as possible. >> Great, and great note to end on. Thank you so much Mahmoud and Annette. >> Thank you. >> I appreciate it. >> Very good. >> Been really fun having you on the show. >> Thank you. >> Thank you for having us. >> We will have more >> Thanks, Ann. >> from theCUBE's live coverage of the AWS Executive Summit, coming up in just a little bit. (upbeat music)

>> Live, from Las Vegas. It's theCUBE. Covering the AWS Accenture Executive Summit brought to you by Accenture. >> Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage of the AWS Executive Summit. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. We're joined by Annette Rippert. She is the Senior Managing Director Accenture Technology, North America. Thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. >> Well, I'm happy to be here today. >> So, let's talk a little bit about Accenture's innovation for society initiative. Give our viewers a little background on it. >> Sure. Well, you know, for quite a while we've been known as a company around innovation. But I think one thing that doesn't always come forward is the fact that you know, since our very early days we've had this very tight coupling with corporate citizenship, with philanthropy. In fact we invest 1% of our pre-taxed dollars in philanthropic related initiatives. And you know, for a number of years we've had initiatives like Tech4Good that are part of the DNA of our organization. So, when you think about the innovation side of the organization, and then you think about our philanthropic desires and couple that now with all of the digital technologies, really the possibilities are almost endless when you think about ways that, really, we strive to be able to conquer, not only business problems but societal problems with technology. >> So how do you decide where you're going to focus your energy, your time, your resources. How do you choose the biggest most pressing problems? >> Yes. Well I think one of the things that's really important is we always start with the business process or the societal issue itself as opposed to thinking about how can we use a particular technology to instantiate something we start with really, what's the social problem. And one of the ways that we do this, we have a global innovation contest. Our people get so excited to be apart of this as you could imagine. And one of the tracks is really around Tech4Good and so, teams from around the world think of ways that they can use technology to solve a particular societal issue. And it's really exciting to see the kind of innovations that come out of that. In the end the winners globally are funded to be able to take that idea and actually develop it and put it out in to use. >> So talk about some of the winners and the most exciting entrants from your perspective. >> Well, there's one that I think is maybe a good place to start and that's really around the area of home care, elder care, you know striving to keep a connection together with somebody who's in that circumstance. And being able to provide sort of a real world interaction. So, one of the teams took, with that in mind, concepts around natural language processing, around AI, and really IoT as well. Connecting in sensors in the home, whether that be to doors or to beds or to stoves which can represent safety concerns. And this innovation was built around an Amazon Echo show and around the Amazon platform. And really enables a lot of freedom and a opportunity for the person who's home bound like that to be able to interface with family, with caregivers and really better enable an independent living situation that extends that home care environment. >> So particularly, as the world's population is aging, that's something that we're experiencing here in the US, you can see how that really would help to solve a social challenge. >> Yes, pretty exciting. >> Yeah, so. Talk to me a little bit more about how this contest works in terms of teams within Accenture working together, collaborating and do the self-form the teams? Does Accenture tell them how to ... >> We announce the competition and people self-form it can be an individual, it can be a team. They do this on their own time. They spend time really thinking about how they can apply new concepts. So for us, it's a opportunity for people to learn but then they also think about wanting to address something that's another part of them, you know doing social good. So, it's also an opportunity to contribute and give back through the process of this competition. >> I know that one of the parts of the innovation for social good is the skills to succeed initiative. Can you tell our viewers a little bit more about that? >> Sure, well this is a program really that has taken off like wildfire and we've been doing it for many, many years and it's targeted with extending technology skills to individuals who come from lesser than means. It's a way of extending skills and capability and coaching to provide them the ability to really re-enter the work force. Re-enter the work force with skills and get on their feet. It's been something, it is pervasive across our business. Most of our people have participated in some way whether through coaching or other initiatives and it's been very successful. >> So you go in to these communities and coach marginalized communities? >> Yes, and then it provides an opportunity for them to be able to re-enter, whether re-enter the work force whether with us or any other organization. We look most to provide them with skills. We also provide them with other things that you don't think about when somebody is trying to re-enter the work force, whether that happens to be clothing or other capability to be able to get back on your feet. >> So let's talk about this moment in time in the technology industry. So we have this explosion of digital technologies, as you were saying, AI and machine learning and big data, data analytics and we have companies sort of coming together saying hey, there are a lot of pressing global challenge, societal challenges. We need to harness these technologies to solve them. I mean, do you think that, can you describe, since you are really on the ground, your boots on the ground in the middle of this, what it's like to be in this environment. Do you think that other companies are sort of following Accenture's lead? How would you describe what's going on? >> Well, I think that for a very long time, as I was mentioning, part of our mission statement as a company is to help the way the world works and lives. And so it's been kind of core to the way that we operate the business in our core values. But I think what's happening now is there's a lot more awareness of social good. And instead of supporting a charity or being a partner together with a charity, now we find ways we can really amplify our ability to make a difference. And that is by leveraging our capability around technology to help take that devotion of time, that interest, and really step it up in a pretty significant way. To bring that technology in a way that really's disruptive to changing the societal issue. >> But at the same time you don't want to necessarily start with the technology itself. You want to make sure you're starting with the problem. >> Well that really comes back to the way that we address business problems and the way we address the societal problems, is all of our people are taught concepts around designed thinking. Around human centered design. And so that concept of starting with what is the human problem, is a very natural course because that's the way that we solve all of our business problems. And so, I think that that's a, in thinking about how we solve those issues or collaborate in order to do that I think really drives a lot more complete answers in fact, to the kind of problems that we look to solve. And that's why starting with the societal issue and really what's at risk. What are we trying to address? And then thinking of creative ways to be disruptive around that. Some cases it's not even around the technology. It's about, you know, thinking in a new way about how to address those issues. >> And a cultural shift and getting people to, yeah exactly, collaborate differently. So I know you've just came from a hackathon and you were helping charities think different, think about a problem they wanted to solve and then think about how we could use technology to solve it. Tell our viewers a little bit more about the hackathon here. >> Sure, well you know, our interest in this area is, you can tell I'm very passionate about it. We invest a lot of time from a corporate standpoint and we're helping to sponsor this hackathon here at AWS re:Invent and we're doing that together with several organizations. For example, Girls Who Code, let me see, GameChanger, Compassion, and Goodwill are all other organizations that are participating in the hackathon. And had really interesting problems that they brought to the table. In fact, one of the problems that we talked about today, that the teams are over hacking away thinking about, is there are many organizations that sponsor very under privileged children and create, in this organization situation, they create a one to one relationship between a sponsor and a child and they were looking for ways to be able to connect those two parties by using natural language processing, they wanted to facilitate a near real time kind of dialogue across the boundaries of language in a way that ensures protection of the child and that there's nothing malicious that could happen through that direct connection. Of course we expect everyone to be well-meaning in that but part of the innovation is also protecting the children too. So the teams are over hacking away looking at this and several other kind of problems, social problems, Tech4Good type of initiatives throughout the day today. >> So at next year's, let's look in to our crystal balls here and think about what we're going to be talking about at next year's AWS Executive Summit. What is on the table for this year and what kinds of things are most exciting you that you're ... >> Well I think all the innovation, just further enables it, the way that we think about how we're using today, artificial intelligence, and you couple that together with so many other things around, whether, the example I just gave, around natural language processing and you couple that together with the societal and business problems that are here. I mean, it's really quite explosive. So you think about all of the new innovation that's being announced this week. I think the opportunity to be able to drive that even deeper into, whether it happens to business or societal problem, will be even more interesting next year. >> We'll end that, thank you so much for coming on theCUBE. It was great talking to you. >> Thank you. >> A really fun conversation. >> Enjoyed it. >> I'm Rebecca Knight. We will have more from the AWS Executive Summit coming up in just a little bit. (electronic music)