>>from around the globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent 2020. Special coverage sponsored by A. W s Global Partner Network. Welcome back to the cubes Coverage Cube. Virtual coverage of AWS reinvent 2020. We're not in person this year. We have to do the all the Cube interviews remote. But we've got two great guests from the Amazon Web Services Partner Network A W s a p N. Craig Wicks, senior manager of AWS Satisfactory. Todd Golden, Principal Cloud Architect, Global SAS Tech Lead Gentlemen, Thanks for joining the Cube. Appreciate it. >>Thanks, John. >>Um, first of all, I want to get in Craig with you and just take them in to explain what is the satisfactory. Because this is a unique and growing team within AWS. Um, we've been saying it for years, but the moves to the cloud houses has been obvious is mainstream. But your team, your role is doing some interesting things. Explain. What is the satisfactory? What do you guys do? >>Yeah, Thanks, John. Really delighted to be here today. Yeah, the satisfactory. Maybe for those that may be somewhat disappointing. There's no factory, no sort of easy button for SAS. There's no templates. There's no machinery. We wish we had it. But we're really a global team of subject matter. Experts in SAS that really help AWS partners transform their business right both business and technical to the Saas model and help them do that faster with greater confidence and all the best practices that our team has learned over the years. >>And Todd, your solution architect. So you're the partner. You have to help your customers get their, um, you know, being a solution architect really is like the mechanic of the business. You gotta lay out the engine of innovation and this is what clients are trying to strive for. Can you take him and explain how your role is involved in this? Obviously, SAS is not. It makes sense on paper, but making it happen is not trivial. What do you What do you what? Your role. >>Yeah, so I'm very much, in fact, connected to Craig. We're all part of the same organization, and we're sort of very much deeply involved with these organizations. We get very much, um, embedded with these these partners that we work with and really helped them through sort of the nuts and bolts of what it means to transform an application thio multi tenant sort of SAS models. That means helping them figure out how to map that two different AWS services. It means helping them figure out how to realize the sort of the business objective objectives of transforming to sass. But really, our goal is to sort of just get into the weeds with them, figure out their specific domain because there's no one size fits all. Versace figure out how that really connects toe, where they're at in their trajectory, in terms of where they're trying to get to end of the journey is a business and then find that alignment with a W S services. So there's sort of that trifecta of lining all those bits up and sort of formulating, Ah, technical strategy that really brings all those pieces together for them. >>Craig, I want to get your thoughts on the trends, and Todd, you can weigh in to want to get your reaction. Over the weekend, I was picking some folks on on the Internet, linked in and whatnot from eight years ago when that we did our first cube at reinvent with second year of reinvent, and nobody was there in the industry press, wasn't there were the first I think press to be there. Um and a lot of people have either moved on to big positions or companies have gone public. I bought me. Major things have happened in 2013 clouds certainly rose there. SAS became the business model. Everyone kind of knows that. But the dynamics today are different when you think about the on premises and you got the edge. A big part of the themes this week in the next couple weeks as we unfold here reinvent. This >>is >>different, but the same Can you share? What is the trend that people are riding on? What's the What's the wind of innovation? >>Yeah, and certainly I would say, First of all, just personally, I've been in SAS for some time. It was involved early on, in sort of, ah, model. We called the application service provider model, which was sort of a predecessor assassin, you know, the gray hairs out to remember that one. But, uh, you know, I think first of all, I would say SAS is everywhere and people wanted to be everywhere And so there's just We just see insatiable demand for sass from from customers out there, right? And I think the challenge problem we see is that organizations that we work with just can't transition fast enough, right? The rial technical challenges that air in front of them in terms of how they build an architect, Assaf solution and but most importantly, the business model that sort of underpins. That is a huge transformation for companies that they're going through. And that's one of the things that we just see. You know, Justin, my time in satisfactory native us. The range of organizations we worked with has just changed. So, you know, early on we're working with companies and infrastructure around security and storage and those areas, and the last few years it's just expanded to all sorts of industries, from public sector oil and gas. Um, sort of financial services. You know, everyone really wants to build this model, and that's really, you know, born around the customer demand they're seeing for South. >>That's interesting. You mention challenge. I wanna get your thoughts. You mentioned a SP application service provided you remember those days, you know, vividly, mainly a tech thing, but it's really a consumption model around delivery of software and services. And, you know, Web services came on in 2000. The rest is history. We've got Amazon Web services, but now, as you get more vertically expanded oil and gas and go mainstream. But what >>are some >>of the challenges? Because as people get smarter, it's not just about self service or buy as you go. It's a business model you mentioned. Is it a managed services itself? Services has been embedded into the application. Can you share some of the new things that are emerging on the business model side that people should pay attention to? What, some of those challenges? Yeah, I >>think one of the first things is just a fundamentally are operating service, right? So that changes the dynamics to everything, for in terms of how you engage with customers to how you deliver. You know, the kind of simple thing E I often tell people is you know who's answering the pager now. If someone goes, if something goes wrong, it's not your customer. That's you right, and you have to manage and sustain that service and and really continue Thio provide innovation and value to customers. Right? That's one of the challenges we see is is organizations are now on a treadmill in terms of innovation where customers expect something from South model and you really have to deliver on that. And then one of the final points I would say is it really transforms how you think about going to market right sales and marketing your fundamentally transformed. And, um, you know, traditional ways of really selling software and technology. Um, largely go away and go away and some good ways. And SAS, where you can really put customers in experience right and have them evaluate your technology in a manner where they can have a trial experience, right in a way, toe really introduce them to technology very slowly. And then, um, they grow over time, right? As they see value in that software, which is very aligned, how we think about, you know, a AWS our own technology. >>Okay, Todd, I gotta ask you out. So you want to drive that car? The SAS car, What's under the hood with the right tires? What's the conditions? And it's a technical issues here. If I'm a customer, I'm in a PM, partner. Okay, I'm in there. I got a traditional business pandemic hits or just my business models forcing me. What's your advice? What have I got to do? What's the playbook on the technical side? How doe I go to the next level? >>Well, uh, you know, we're obviously gonna ask a lot of questions and probably the answer to that, sadly, like most technical people will say to you is it depends which is never the answer anybody wants to hear. But so we're definitely gonna ask a lot of questions you about, like where you're at. What are the immediate sort of pressures in your business? This is where the technical team people on our team tended wearing a little bit of a business hat here where we want to know before we sort of guide you down any one particular technical path, like water. Sort of the key sort of dimensions of getting you to a SAS till every model, but but probably as a theme generally were saying to people is, Let's look at how we can get you there incrementally. Let's get you into a SAS model as fast as we possibly can. So we have a lot of different sort of patterns and strategies will use that air about sort of incremental adoption of SAS, which are how can I sort of lift my existing environment, move it into a SAS model, present a SAS offering to the business, Let me operate and run, get the metrics and analytics, get the sort of operational efficiency and the Dev ops goodness of sass, and then sort of move after that into the insides of that sass application. And think about now, how can I begin to move that two more modern constructs? How can I move that into containers? Potentially? Or how can I begin to adopt server list technologies? How can I apply? I am another constructs to achieve Tenet isolation. Eso We're really just trying to put them in a position where they can sort of incrementally modernize their applications while still realizing the benefits of getting to market on a saas model. >>So you're saying that the the playbook is come in low hanging fruit is used existing core building blocks, you see two s three dynamo whatever and then hit the higher level services as you get more experience Or is there a certain recipe that you see working for customers? >>So it's it's probably less about that. It's probably It's not about necessarily where you're out in the service continuum and which services you're using. Um, well, we're gonna move you to a set of services that are probably a good set of services that are that way to move your monolith in most effectively into a saas model as a beginning point that could land you in to that could land you in containers. The more important thing we're going to do here is we're going to surround the that sort of experience with all the other moving parts that you have tow have billing metrics. We're gonna We're gonna build in on boarding so that you could get frictionless on boarding. Those are all gonna be net new things you have to build. We're probably gonna change your identity model and connect that up with cognito or one of our partners solutions eso for us. It's it's sort of grabbing your existing environment. Can we move it over effectively, maybe modernize it a little bit along the way, but more importantly, build all those horizontal concepts in leveraging the right AWS services for you, uh, to bring that to life. >>That's actually smart, aleck. The way you described it that way, it's almost as if it's the core tenant of what Amazon stood for. You standing up fast and you get value, right? So what you're saying is, whatever it takes is a variety of tools to stand it up. I mean, this is interesting, Craig, and talk if you can comment on this because one of the things that we've been reporting on, I've done probably a dozen interviews specifically around companies that have moved to the cloud early, proactively kind of in this way, not in a major radical way. But, you know, operationally they have been transforming, you know, piece by piece. How Todd you laid it out and then pandemic it. And they've had successfully position themselves to take advantage of the forcing function of necessity of dealing with, you know, remote work and all these things that just clobbered him so and again. They were on the wave at the right time. Kind of because they had to because they did the right work. This >>is a >>factor. This is gonna tell sign. Can you guys share your reaction? What you've seen with satisfactory because this >>is the >>benefit of moving to the club. Being positioned needs pandemic today. Tomorrow, its edge. What's after that? Right space. I mean, there's a lot of things. This is kind of the playbook. What's your reaction to that? Correct. >>Yeah. I certainly see, you know, organizations that we work with that have really delivering the SAS model, being more agile, right. The ability to sort of flex resource is and change the way they sell and work with customers and find ways to, um, sort of delivered to them. Um, that don't require, um, some of the things that we're really maybe some of the things that are holding them back from traditional software in terms of how fast they deliver new features and services and, you know, changing to sort of market and world dynamics very quickly. Right is a big part of that. And, you know, one of the things we talked about in the SAS model is really not just getting to sass, but being to deliver in that model, right? And dr Innovations to customers very quickly. Um, s O that you really getting sort of securing, you know, sort of them is the loyal customers and sort of a lifetime customer. Hopefully, um, you know, that's a big part of status. >>Yeah. And there's two types of organizations that you guys have been successful with. The startup, obviously, you know, category creators or disruptors will come in, you know, come in with a nap. Born in the cloud, kick some ass you've seen that movie happens all the time still going on. And then you got the existing organizations that have to stay in that innovation wave and not get crushed by the by the change can you guys share how the factories working? The satisfactory from a mix of of clients is Atmore establishes its startups in between. Give us a taste of What's the makeup? >>Yeah, it's range just to give you a range of some of the companies worked with from kind of legacy technology companies or companies that have been around in some time, like BMC, you know, f five alfresco we've all worked with over the past few years, and they've launched products with our team on a W s. You know, to kind of start ups like Matile. Ian. You know, Cloud zero. Cokie City, which just launched a data management service announced here at Reinvent um, two very kind of specific industry players. I think this is a trend we've seen most recently where, you know, we work with organizations like NASDAQ. I based tea in the aerospace, you know, area Emerson in oil and gas. We've seen in a number of oil and gas companies really come to us based on sort of dynamics, their industry and the constraints the customers are in in terms of how they could deliver the value they provide, >>is there. Is there a key thing that's popping out of all these deals that kind of has a is a tale sign of pattern or, um, a specific thing That's obvious on then, when you look at the data, when you zoom out, >>Yeah, I think one thing I would just say people underestimate the transformation. They have to go through continually. And we still have organizations that come to us, and maybe they come to Todd or others, and they're really they're envisioning This is a technical transformation, right? And they sort of want to talk all about the application and and sort of the new architecture er they they want to move to. But we really see theon pertinent A line business and technology around sass is a model, and that's really fundamental to getting it right. And so, you know, often we see organizations that really have unrealistic launch dates, you know, which is pretty common in software and services these days, but particularly a staff model. We just see that, you know, they underestimate the work in front of them and kind of what they need to bring with that >>Todd real quick for it against the announcements which are cool. Um, technical things that pop out of these organizations is there, Uh, the cream kind of rises to the top. When you look at the value proposition, what do they focused on? Technically, >>um, you know, it's interesting because to me, ah, lot of the focus tends to be more on the things that would surprise you. Like a lot of people are wanna sort of think about how to design the ins Thea click ation on the business logic of their application and take advantage of this scale on the sizing of AWS and those things, they're still all true. But but really an assassin organization with a really successful SAS organizations will see ah, lot more shift to the agility and the operational efficiency, right? So really good organizations will say we're going to invest in all the metrics and all the land analytics, all the tooling that lets us really have our finger on the pulse of what our customers are doing. And then they'll derive all their tech and their business strategy based on this really data driven experience. And I see that as the trend and the thing we certainly advocate a ton inside of the satisfactory is don't under invest in that data because that data is really especially in a multi 10 environment where everybody's running in this sort of shared environment. That data is essential to understanding how to morph your business, how to innovate, understand how your cost profile is really evolving. And so I see the really strong organizations building lots of the sort of foundational bits here, even ahead sometimes of building features and functions into their own products. >>It's not only moving fast and deploying tech is moving fast on the business model innovation as well. You're basically saying, Don't overplay your hand and try toe lock in the business model logic because it's gonna change with the data that what you're saying. >>Yeah, they're playing for for the innovation. They're playing for the agility they're playing for new markets, new segments that may evolve. And so they're really trying to put themselves in the position of being able to pivot and move. And they're really taking pride in the fact that their technology lets them do that. >>You know, that's not that's a business model That's not for the faint of heart. You know, when you have a market that has a lot of competitiveness to it and certainly was seeing the sea change happening over this year in the past few years, with cloud completely changing the playing field, winners and losers air emerging. And that's I think, this key it's you know, as I said in The Godfather, you know, you need a wartime conciliatory for these kind of times, and this is kind of what we're seeing, and I think that's a great point. Todd. Good stuff there. Um Okay. So announcements. You guys had some things on stage. Talked about Craig. You guys launching some new stuff? New programs? >>Yeah, absolutely mhm. Yeah, John, I guess our model is really to learn from a range of partners and experiences we have and then, you know, build tools and approaches to help everyone go faster, right? Because we certainly can't work with thousands organizations. And one of things that our team has had the opportunity over the last few years is published ton of articles, Blog's white papers, you know, very specific approaches to building SAS solutions. If you search Todd Golding out there on YouTube or anything, you'll find a bunch of things. But we wanted to bring on the altogether. And so we've created Central directory called Satisfactory Insights. Hug. And there's a right now over 70 unique pieces of content that our team is produced and curated. Whether you're starting on your staff journey right, you need socks one on one and business planning to level 400 right? 10 10 in isolation from Todd Golding, right. That's all there and available to you on the satisfactory program page. >>What? Some of the interesting things that came out of that that data from the insights you can share. >>Yeah, a couple things that we have we published most recently I would point to are really interesting. We just recently published a five case study where we go deeper in terms of their transformation. To really understand what was, you know, behind the scenes and that, um, we also published a white paper called the SAS Journey Framework, where for the first time, our team really broke down the journey. And what are the steps required? And what are some of the key questions you need to ask Onda Final piece I'd point to for people that Todd talks to is, we have, ah, white paper on SAS tended isolation strategies where we really go deep on on that particular challenge and what's there and that's also published and available on our satisfactory inside sub. Could you >>just define what is that mean tenant isolation strategies? What does that >>go to Todd with that for sure? >>Let's get that on the record. What is the definition of SAS tenant isolation? >>Sure, sure. So, you know, I think I've been in the room and with a lot of people that reinvent and basically have been in Chuck talks and said, You know what's tended isolation to you, and a lot of people will say Oh, that's authentication. Essentially, somebody got into the system. So now I know my system is isolated, but and a multi tenant environment right where we're running all this. These resource is in this data all co mingled from all of these different tenants. Um, it would be a huge blow to the business if one tenant somehow inadvertently exposed the resource or exposed to the resource is of another tenant. And so, fundamentally 10 of isolation is all of these techniques and strategies and architectural patterns that you use to ensure that one tenant can inadvertently get access to the resource is of another tenant s. So it's a sort of a layer of protection and security that goes beyond just the authentication and authorization schemes that you'll typically see in a cess architectures. >>So that's basically like having your own room lock and key doorway not just getting in, but no one can access your your stuff. >>Yeah, so it's a whole set of measures you could imagine. Identity and access management and other policies sort of defining tenant boundaries and saying, as each tenant is trying to access a resource or trying toe, interact with the system in some way, you've put these extra walls up to ensure that you can't cross those boundaries. >>Todd, I want to get your thoughts on this. Well, architected sas lens piece. What is this all about? >>Well, um, a WS has had for a long time the sort of the well architected framework, which has been a really great set of sort of guiding principles and best practices around how to design an architect solutions on top of AWS. And certainly SAS providers have been using that all along the way to sort of ask foundational questions of their architecture. Er But there's always been this layer of additional sort of SAS considerations that have set on top of that are that air SAS specific architectural patterns. And so what we've done is we've used this mechanism called the well architected lens that lets us essentially take our SAS architectural principles and extend the well architected framework and introduce all these concepts into the SAS and to the architecture pillars that really ask the hard SAS architecture questions so security operations reliability all the sort of classic pillars that are part of the well architected framework now have a SAS specific context added to them. Thio to really go after those areas that are unique to sass providers. And this really gives developers, architects, consultants the ability to sit down and look at a SAS application and evaluate its alignment with these best practices. And so far we can really positive response. Thio the content. >>Great job, guys doing great work. Finally, there's something new that you guys are announcing today to make life easier. Preview building SAS on a bus. What's that? What's that about? >>Sure. Eso You know you can imagine. We've been working with thes SAS providers for a number of years now, and as we've worked with them, we've seen a number of different themes emerge on and and we've run into this pattern That's pretty common where we'll see these, uh, these customers that have a classic sort of installed software model. They're installing it on premises or in the cloud, but basically each customer's sort of has their own version of the product. They have one off versions. They have their potentially have customization that are different. And while this works for some time for these businesses, what they find is they sort of run into this operational efficiency and cost wall. Whereas they're trying to grow their businesses, they they just really can't. They can't sort of keep up based on the way that they're running their current systems, and this is sort of a natural draw to move them to sass. But the other pattern that we've seen here is that these organizations are sometimes not in a position where they have the luxury of sort of going away and just saying, Hey, I'll rewrite my system or modernize it and make all of these changes. There could be any number of factors competitive pressures, market realities, cost that just make that too much of, ah, difficult process for them to be able to just take the application and rewrite it. And so what we did is sort of try to acknowledge that and say, What could we do to give you, ah, more prescriptive solution of this, the sort of turn key, easy button, if you will to say, Take my existing monolithic application that I deliver in this classic way and plug it into an existing pre built framework. An environment that is essentially includes all these foundational bits of assassin Vyron mint. And let me just take my monolith, move it into that environment and begin toe offer a SAS product to to the universe. And so what we've done is we've printed something and were introduced. We've introduced this thing called a W s SAS boost So a W s ass boost. It's not on a W s service. It is an open source reference environment. So you essentially download it. You install it into your own A W s account. And then this installs all these building blocks of sass that we've talked about. And it gives you all this sort of prescriptive ability to say, How can I now take my existing monolithic environment lifted into this experience and begin toe offer that to the market as a sash products. So it has, you know, it has billing. It has metrics and analytics. All the things we've been kind of talked about here they're all baked into that from the ground up on. We've also offered this an open source model. So our hope here is that this is really just the starting point of this solution, which, which will solve one business case. But our hope is that essentially the open source community will lean in with us, help us figure out how to evolve and make this into something that addresses a broader set of needs. >>Well, I love the SAS boost. Firstly, I wanna take the energy drink business there. Right there. It sounds like an energy drink. Give me some of that sass boost by that at 7. 11. Craig, I wanna get the final word with you. You've been the SAS business for over 20 years. You've seen this movie before. There are a lot of people who know the SAS business, and some people are learning it. You guys are helping people get there. It's different, though. Now what's different today? Because it's it's It's not just your grandfather's sass. As the expression goes, it's different. It's new dynamics. What is, uh, the most important thing people should pay attention to Whether they have a SAS legacy kind of mindset or they're new to the game. Take us >>home. Yeah, I >>think certainly, you know, getting disaster is not the end of the journey. You know, we see really successful fast provider. Just continue to differentiate, right? And then one of the things that I think we've seen successful SAT providers do is really take advantage of AWS services to go faster. Right? And that's really key, I think in this model is to really find a way to accelerate your business and deliver value faster. Andi just sort of keep that differentiation innovation there. Um, but I would just say now that there's more information out there available than ever, you know, and not only from from our team, but from a host of people that really are our SAS experts and follow the space. And so lots of resources available. Everyone >>All right, gentlemen, Thanks for coming on. Great insight. Great segment on getting to sass, sass boost Just the landscape. You guys are helping customers get there, and that's really the top priority. It's necessity is the mother of all invention during this pandemic. More than ever, uh, keeping business model going and establishing new ones. So thanks for coming on. >>Thanks for having us, John. >>Okay, It's the cubes. Virtual coverage. We are a SAS business. Now we're virtual bringing you remote. Uh, SAS Cube and, uh, more coverage with reinvent next few weeks. Thanks for watching. Okay, yeah.