(upbeat music) >> Welcome back to Las Vegas, we're at Reinvent 22, AWS's big show going on here at the Venetian. Several thousand, tens of thousands of folks packing that exhibit four and going to sessions and also learning a lot about what's going on in the cloud space. And today we're going to talk about speed, velocity, to be specific. And with me to do that is Chris Wegmann who's the global technology and business lead for the Accenture AWS business group. And Chris is with Accenture. And then Erik Farr immediately on my right, is the global technology leader again for the AWS business group, but at AWS. So very similar titles guys, you're making it tough on the host. But glad to have you with us here. Really appreciate the time. So let's talk about velocity, you know, what's that all about? And Erik, I'll let you jump in on that. And then Chris, you go from there. How about that? >> Yeah, so with velocity, it's really about innovation. It's really about trying to speed the way that we help our customers, not just innovate through the AWS services, but with Accenture. With their ability to come in and really just kind of bring their expertise in industries and in the technology underpinnings and kind of all of the aspects of what we do together as a partnership. >> Okay. Chris? >> Yeah, so when we came up with a concept around velocity, we worked backwards from the customers the traditional Amazon way, right? So, we looked across a lot of the programs we were doing with our customers as well as we were doing internally when we were building assets to take to the market on AWS. And we found we were spending way too much time, anywhere from six to eight months just getting all the foundation in place, all the integration in place, getting the services to the point where we could actually build on top of it or our customers could build on top of it. And we got challenged. We said, there's got to be a better way, right? And so we took a different look at it. We said, can we go build an application? Can we go build code versus accelerators or our blueprints or that type of stuff that really would allow us to walk into a customer or walk into one of our internal organizations that had a an idea around an application or solution to be built on AWS to take to our customers as a service. And said can we go through just a very simple set of checklist, predefined architectures, predefined solutions and that stuff, and can we just crank it out, right? Can we, and that's what we've built. We built this tool and platform based on that concept. So it's designed and it is helping us internally as well as our customers just go that much faster and get to that innovation that Erik talked about. >> So how did it happen between the two of you? >> Yeah. >> It's not easy, right? I mean, as good as your culture is there's still going to be some bumps along the way right? And so how did that evolve? What was that process like? >> Yeah, it's a great question. So I've been working with Accenture for over five years, working with Chris and other people at Accenture. And over those years we've spent countless discussions with our customers all around the world. And just like Chris said, we see all of the different scenarios that our customers are having to deal with. We see the pain points, we try to figure out how do we get better next time? How do we do this in such a way that allows them, those customers to really kind of innovate using AWS, which is what we're all trying to get to. And during that process we started to realize there's a few key themes that we're seeing, right? Not just the foundations, right, what you build off of at the base level, but the data aspects. Like how is a customer going and developing their data lake, so their data meshes, right? How is this happening? And what we've realized is that we are kind of doing that on a custom basis often and we realize we could actually speed that much faster, faster to value, faster to customer appreciation and additional usage and development of their solutions on AWS. >> So I look at it is, from the beginning we started the business group and the reason why we have very similar names is 'cause we represent each side of the organizations that are here. And when we started the business group seven years ago, the whole idea was better together, right? We should be able to come together and help our clients move that much faster, right? And that's what really was at the foundation of this, right? And how we built this, right? We came together, we both saw the problems, right? Obviously AWS has an immense set of services, has an immense set of capabilities. We had a lot of experience of implementing these. Came together, worked together to build this platform. And it's been a great journey, right? I mean, it's great to see the experiences from both sides come together. Some of the common problems, we each had different ways of addressing them and we had to go and debate, which was the best way. And we really are leveraging our joint customers here as well is to get inputs from them since we were working backwards for them. We've now taken this and pulled them into it and really gotten inputs from them on really what they're looking for above and beyond the services they have today. This is designed not just to be something we go use at the beginning of a journey, right? A cloud journey, it's to help customers continue through their journey as well. >> So, and I might have missed this, so I apologize if I did. But we always talk about speed, right? Everybody's about faster, quicker, more efficient and that. So what makes velocity a unique animal in that respect? What exactly is it delivering then for a customer that isn't just kind of baked into the services you'd be proposing to them anyhow? >> Yeah. So first off velocity is designed with automation at the core, right? So instead of having people going in and making changes or anything like that, it's all completely code backed and automated, right? So that alone allows for immense ability for us to go in and actually accelerate that journey for the customer. But in addition to that, because velocity was all developed to work together with this code, it actually allows these pieces and these components to be deployed together, to work together and to ultimately support that customer use case without actually having to go and recreate that every time. >> Okay. And can you gimme an idea, Chris, about somebody or at least how this has been put into practice then yeah? >> So I'll give you a couple examples. One, internally, right? So as part of our relationship, we're investing in these joint industry solutions, right? So industries, we're working with our different industry clients to solve industry specific problems, right? They're not thinking about, okay, let me go lay down a cloud foundation and go do that. They said, I've got a problem I want you to fix. Insurance is a great example, the underwriting processes and insurance, right? So our insurance teams really looked and said, okay, this is what we're going to go build. This is what we need to modernize that process. So instead of going back and going and building all the components they needed, building a data lake, right? Figuring out how data lake's going to work together, build the automation to create all the different EC2 instances and all the different services, security, all that stuff. You know, we were able to very quickly take velocity, go through a very short process with them, understand what they needed and use that code to create that entire environment. And it's not tied to that once it's created, right? So at that point you can still take the updates that we're giving on new services and things like that, but it's their environment, they're able to build on top of it. And it allowed them to rapidly create this insurance platform, right, that they're now taking out into clients. We're taking that same platform we use there and embedding it in every offering, every service that we give to our customers. So whether we're going out and build a cloud foundation, right? Whether we're rebuilding a cloud foundation because hey, it didn't stay up or keep up with the new services that came out from AWS, or we're going and building a data lake, right? Our customers want to take, they don't want to have to do all that heavy lifting in a lot of cases. They don't want it to go make a lot of those hard decisions, right? They want it kind of rebuilt. And what I love about velocity from the beginning, Erik talked about blocks, building blocks, right? And we also heard from our customers is, "I don't want to buy just one thing, right? And I have one size fits all. Hey, I'm really want something around data. Can you gimme that block? I really need something around compliance. Can you gimme that block?" Good example in Accenture, the compliance portion is an area that our internal organization really wanted. So we were able to give them that block. So we're hopeful that this just gives our clients that much more flexibility and move that much faster. >> So, go ahead EriK. >> Yeah, I was going to say I think to to the point too, the other aspect that we get with velocity is the idea and that the vision is that it's designed to be evergreen. And what that means is as AWS, as we release new services to the market, like we're doing this week right? We as the joint development group of velocity are taking those new services, those new features and updating them so that those functionalities are available to our customers that are already using velocity or that are going to use velocity into the future so that they're all taking advantage of it without having to go and do it into their own environments. >> That's what I was asking you about, about if there's a 2.0 down the road or I mean, how do you meet those growing needs and new capabilities that maybe don't exist now but they will a year from now, six months from now? Yeah so, what's on the drawing board right now? >> Yeah, so yeah, just I'll start. The one area that we're really looking at heavily, so the the velocity fabric is really just the underpinning technology that we've already been talking about. We've also got a set of activators, which is really the fact that we're kind of joint deploying this to our customers. But to answer your question, we have a concept of accelerators. So these accelerators are there to be developed over time and they're going to allow us to take those customer use cases that are typically kind of at a microservice level, right? Something smaller than an entire solution or an entire application. And use those to accelerate either the development of solutions into our customer environment or to accelerate our ability to create solutions to then take it out to our customers. So that's on the roadmap for '23 and beyond. >> So I'll build on what Erik was talking a little bit. A 2.0 is actually today, right? Multiple new services came out today, obviously through the site partnership, we had some insights on what's coming, right? And we could start building to those and start knowing customers are going to want to use those. And the idea of velocity is they don't have to go and figure that out themselves, right? So we'll be able to hand that off fairly shortly after those services are released to general availability. And the customers of Velocity will be able to start using 'em, right? And they don't have to go figure out how to integrate 'em and so on. So that's what's in the future. We'll continue to do that, right? We're committed to this. These industry solutions are going to grow, right? I mean that was one of the big reasons we built this. We knew we were going to be building a lot of these industry solutions. We already got several of 'em that are out in the market and we need this platform to do that. So you'll see a lot of velocity powered industry solutions coming out of Accenture. >> Who came up with the name? >> It's a great question. We wanted something around speed, right? 'Cause that's what it, further, faster. >> BLO did it, right? >> Exactly right. Everyone loves speed, right? And that's what we're talking about. So we really looked at lots of names, obviously, and Velocity is one of those ones that just stuck. It felt really right. It felt like it captured what we were trying to do in the market. You know, Accenture, we don't name a lot of things one off, right? They're really focused on what they do. And this was an exception to that because we thought, and we think that it's really going to drive the speed of our customers. And that was a challenge. And we're starting to see that. We're starting to see the improvement and speed that we can get our customers into the cloud. It's awesome. >> Yeah, it caught my attention right away. >> Yeah. >> So success on nicely done there. >> But I also think that velocity is not just about speed, it's speed in the right direction, right? >> Oh, sure. It's meant to design it in the way that our customers are leading and that we can then go along that journey with them. >> Right, yeah. The last thing you want is to go really fast in the wrong way. >> That's exactly right. That's exactly right. >> That's bad recipe. And you've had very few of those. You've had a lot of good recipes. Thanks for the time fellas, we appreciate. >> No, thanks for having us. >> All about Velocity and that offering going out to the marketplace in a, I guess a modernized version. Could you call it modernized now? By the way, it's only been around for couple years. It's all modernized. You are watching the executive summit sponsored by Accenture and also theCUBE, which is the leader in tech coverage. (upbeat music)