>> Instructor: From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of AWS Public Sector Partner Awards brought to you by, Amazon Web Services. >> Hello everyone, welcome to the special CUBE program. We are here with the Amazon Web Services public sector, partner awards program. It's a celebration of AWS, public sectors, partners and their end user customers, where there's been innovation. And we're pleased to have on the show here, the award winner for the most innovative AI, and ML artificial intelligence and machine learning solution. Axial3D is the newest partner and the end user is Belfast hospital. We got Roger Johnson, the CEO of Axial3D, and Dr. Tim Brown consulted transplant surgeon, at Belfast hospital, who has been doing amazing things, not only on the as an innovative partner, but really during COVID, making things happen, by solving the problem of the surgical gap and the number of surgeries that you're doing. Really high performance saving lives, congratulations. First of all, congratulations Roger and Dr.Tim Brown, thanks for joining me. >> We're pleasure. >> Okay, let's get into it. First of all, Dr. Tim Brown, I really want to commend you on the amazing work, that you're doing. Before we get, into some of the partnership awards conversations. You have been at the front lines solving a lot of problems around the gap, between the number of surgeries, that could take place with COVID. Tell that story real quick. I really think it's super important. Take a minute to explain. >> Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. And it's been an incredible roller coaster, for the last three months. And pretty much all of the transplant programs, across the world who have been affected, by COVID have shut down. But with some pretty innovative and real leadership and team working advances, we've managed to open a program up again and in Belfast, we have about 50 deceased donor transplants a year. Over the last three months, we've just done 90 kidney transplants and pretty much we've cleared, the whole waiting list in Northern Ireland pretty much, for people waiting for a kidney transplant in this time. And it's been a remarkable few weeks. But really is a testament to the critical care community, the people that work in intensive care, as to how much they support organ donation. And of course, our donors who have given so selflessly, at such a tragic time for them. So I'd like to pay tribute to all of our donors, and to the amazing amount of people, who have been involved in the teamwork and Belfast at this time. >> That's super amazing. Can you just I just want to pause for a minute just capture, the number of orders of magnitude, you said it was six to 10 a year and you did nine zero, 90? >> Yeah, so we have done two years work in six weeks, all in the middle of the night as well. So it's been it's been a hard work, so you can see the screen (mumbles). I'm trying to catch up with a minute. But it's been really, really satisfying, and an incredible outcome for our patients. The legacy of this program, is going to last at Belfast for 40 years. >> Brown I want to say congratulations, I'll give you my CUBE award for not changing the world, but saving the world, one person at a time. 90 interviews in six weeks. That's amazing. That's like clearing the waiting list. You're really changing lives there, congratulations. >> That's great, thank you very much. >> Roger, what a great partner and customer you have here. Talk about this award that you guys have, talk about the company. What is this all about? Why you guys in this position? Why are you winning? >> So I think our motivation for our company, is driven by our partners such as Tim, what they're doing transforms care, and even in these horrific situation are scenarios, we have the moment with COVID think you're hearing the start of an amazing story. Our job is to give surgeons like Tim, the best possible insight that he can have going into his surgeries. For the last 20 years, surgeons have relied largely on 2D imaging, so CT and MRI scans for being able to plan their surgeries, when in fact modern technology, should apply them much greater insight, before they actually perform their surgery. So we've created a technology, that platforms on AWS that allows us, to turn those traditional, hard to understand 2D images, into micromillimeter precise models of the patient's exact anatomy. The value hopefully to amazing colleagues like Tim, is that instead of trying to interpret what a 2D image CT or MRI scan might mean, he can actually see for the first time before, he opens the patient up exactly what he's going, to find when he starts the surgery, So he can really start planning, and complete that planning before, the surgery actually takes place. So hopefully, that allows a number of benefits result, whether that be shorter operations time, less surgical equipment needing to be brought, into the surgery, hopefully faster surgeries means less risk of infection, for patients means shorter time, means better outcomes the healthcare system but most importantly the patient. >> Awesome, Dr. Brown, I want to get your take on this. Can you describe the impact on your side because, you know, the future of work, which is everyone's been talking about, in the tech industry for many years. Now with COVID we were just talking about the successes, you're having and changing lives and saving lives. The notion of work workplace, workforces, work loads, work flows are all changing. Certainly the workplace people aren't as on site as they used to be. The workforce has to be protected. How does the AI and how does the Axial3D help you, in your workflows? Are you getting more done? Can you can you give specifics, around the impact to your job? >> Yeah, it's been a fantastic journey to date. And we're still learning our way. It's a journey. And we're trying to work out exactly where this lies. And the fact that COVID has not come along, which has changed our working practices means that, we have to look for different solutions. And this I think, is a very handy solution, to where it's come into my practice over the last three years has been, in terms of complex renal surgery and oncological surgery, where we have for example, a tumor in a kidney where we think my goodness, we're I have to take this kidney out and throw it in the bin because it's very badly diseased. So the index case that we were involved with, was involving a chap who wanted, to donate his kidney to his daughter. But when we worked him up, we find a tumor in his kidney, which ordinarily would have to be discarded. And but thanks to the imaging that Axial was able, to produce for us, we were able to plan well choose well cut well, and as a result, we took the kidney if we were able to plan, a removal of the tumor from the kidney itself, we were able to repair the kidney and then transplant into his daughter. So with the technology that was available, we were able to save two lives in one particular case. And it's really grown from there. And we've now been involved, in five or six different real complex cases, where the imaging has changed the outcomes for patients, who ordinarily wouldn't have been able to achieve them, as they comes, I think, the AI interface and the AI solution that we've, we've developed in our partnership with Axial. As I said, it's a journey, and we're still finding our way. But the two insights that I've really got are. The first is that what we want to do is reduce variability. And not just in our, in our observers from the way that we interpret imaging. Traditionally, as Roger said, we look at 2D images, we're now able to sit and look at this imaging in a three dimensional space on our desk. Rather than trying to reconstruct these things in our head. We can look at them and discuss the different images, with our colleagues in real time. As well as that, which I think is probably the most important thing, is that we're not able to engage our patients, in a partnership, before we've had a bit of an unfair advantage, that we're able to interpret these images. Because we've been trying to get 30 years of getting used, to doing this as professionals, and but the patients are presented, with some incredibly difficult decisions, to make by their own health. And with very little understanding, but my I can hand them a model of their own disease, they're able to understand. And that gives my patient the autonomy, to make the decisions about their own bodies back again, I think that's a hugely powerful, powerful tool for these guys to have, but potential decisions that they have, to make that will affect them for the rest of their lives. >> So the problem you were solving was one, of the technical problems, so you're trying to figure out manually get more insight, into the imaging and to the customer, or the patient in this case, customer the patient can make a better decision. Those are two problem statements. That seemed to be the big ones. Did I miss anything? >> Absolutely, no, he got one, yeah, absolutely. >> Okay, so Axial3D. You guys have a great solution. How did you get here? Tell us about your story. What's the big trajectory for you guys, in terms of this value proposition just seems to be amazing. And again highlights the advantages, how technology really solves a problem, but the outcome on the patient side is pretty phenomenal. >> So the chance for us is there, or the moment that we have made the leap we have made, is to be able to automatically turn these 2D images into 3D models. So we take each of the slices off of a MRI, or CT scan, using AWS machine learning, we construct 3D, micromillimeter precise representation of an anatomy. That's only possible, first of all, we train the algorithms that we created on the Amazon platform, using over a million pre labeled CT scans. So our system automatically detects a pixel level. What is bone, what is ligament, what is an artery or blood vessel? And with the training that we're able to perform, we've been able to with these million images, we've been able to, in effect train our system, to automatically detect the different parts of them, through this micro precise level, that hasn't been previously possible. And this technology, or the ability to create 3D models has existed for maybe 10, or 15 years. But it's needed experts like Tim to during effect, manually code, the 2D image at a pixel level and codify it so some software to turn that into 3D image, typically to either an RS of an expert like Tim to do, and the problem is Tim could only do one at a time. We estimate there are about three million, of these complex surgeries each year in the world, that need benefit greatly from this Enhanced Imaging. And we couldn't get three million months, he's selected that. So we have this process. Now on AWS platform, we have these models in parallel. And each model will take maybe a few minutes, to turn from the CT into the 3D representation. So through the power of the Amazon public cloud, we've been able to provide this powerful machine learning, automated solution that can actually scale, to the demand that we hope to see in the world. >> Dr. Tim Brown talked about the impact because I mean, Andy Jassy, the CEO of AWS always talks about this, when I interview him, he says, you know, we're here to help do the heavy lifting. This sounds like some pretty heavy lifting. What was just talked about? I mean, the manual work involved, you essentially have collective intelligence and supercomputer power with AWS. What's your take on this as this evolves? Why isn't everyone doing this? >> Yeah, well, I don't know why everyone is doing it. That's the key question it really is. From my perspective, there is no heavy lifting at all. And what I do is I push a couple of buttons, I input a bit of data and I send it off. And from my perspective, it is about as easy as it gets, it's probably as easy as sending an email, which we do hundreds of times a day. And so from my perspective, I'm delighted to say that there's no heavy lifting at all. I get a patient's data, I send the data through to Axial who will then fool me and say, listen, Tim, what is it exactly that you want? There's a great personal service from Axial, and a couple of days later, there's a delivery of a beautiful life size, 3D representation model, which I can then take to plan and treat a patient with. So the heavy lifting really has all been done. As Roger alluded to, in the past, it was hugely time consuming at work, that required a huge amount of training. But now basically, that's been replaced with pushing the button and these supercomputers taken all of my heavy lifting away. And I think this is one of the true representations, of high technology really, really advances, real world solutions. And my patients are the benefactors from this. >> Roger, Dr. Brown lay out the architecture, because first of all, pretend I want to take this every single friend, that I have here in California and around the world. I want to just deploy this what's the architecture and what's needed on the deployment side, say to Belfast as you deploy this, what's kind of involved, can you just take us through high level, I'm actually cloud scale is amazing. No doubt about it. We just talked about that but, what's involved in the architecture side, am I standing up on EC2 is there SageMaker involved me? What's the architecture and then deployment, What does that look like? >> Sure, so can you slide slight step back, one of the challenges when we as the med tech community try and introduce innovation into healthcare into hospitals, the hospitals IT infrastructure network definition, is often pretty locked down. So we're trying to bring new software and load it and install it into the hospital data system is a huge, often lengthy process that has, to jump through lots of hoops, in terms of a key network compliance, lots of different steps along the journey. And that often was for very good reasons, is a significant barrier, to the timely adoption of innovative technologies like ours. What platforming activity on AWS allies, were just another website. As Dr. Tim has said, his own though his only existence, with Axial3D in terms of interface, is dragging and dropping, the CT scan into our website, into our portal exists locally on the AWS instance, in whichever region we are working with, for example, in the US never leaves the US, we use the public cloud version. In US East, we take advantage of many features within AWS. But SageMaker is probably a core of what we do. It's not innovation that AWS introduced, you know, several years ago, that is the lightest to produce this, this machine learning trained set of algorithms, that allow us to give this disruption. >> And it sounds like the more you use it, the more get smarter is that as well. >> Absolutely, so our journey as Tim said, we're in a journey not only in terms of the technology, and you're very perceptive in terms of, yes, the more we train it, the more we train it, on specific anatomy types or pathology types or trauma types, the better our system gets, at recognizing the specific characteristics of those. But more importantly, this is about journey pipe. Having made this disruption we make the change and transformation of new standards of care pathways, Nazi innovation that we just enable. It's amazing surgical teams like Tim's, that make transformation. >> Dr. Brown now on your side you're sitting there I got a big problem trying to solve these problems. I got patients one but one better outcomes, they want to live. I don't want to throw away kidneys. I don't have to you just solve that problem. Now when they bring that over, what was it like over on your side of the house as a practitioner deploying it? You got two jobs going on. You're kind of doing IT integration on one hand and you're a surgeon on the other trying to make things happen. You know, what I see this is not a lot of it here. What's the deployment look like? >> Deployment to me is I don't know why ever as doing it, it's such a straightforward, easy situation. And it's, it's remarkable, really. It's such a good solution. I think, part of any sort of change management program, and this, again, is change management. It's challenging the way we think about things. That's challenging people's comfort zones. And anytime we need to change, we've got this anatomy of change. You've got innovators, we've got early adopters, we've got late adopters. And I think what we're going to see over the next five to 10 years is people recognizing that this technology, is a game changer, possibly being driven by their patients who say, I want a 3D model. And I want to see what this actually looks like. Because basically, that black and white picture you're showing me, doesn't make any sense to me. And I think there's going to be the two drivers is that the first is that we want to have consistency of care and the lack of variation in our care across all services. But as well as that the patience, I think, are going to drive this as well. So once once we get the innovators and the early adopters of this technology on board, then we'll see a tipping point. And that's, that's when it becomes an acceptable and normal thing for people, to do when they come into hospital. There'll be shown printout of their 3D printed model of their of their pathology, and that will be used to inform their decision making, for the treatment processes. And that's a true collaboration between doctor or surgeon and the patient. And that's, that's where we need to be in 21st century it's got to be a collaborative decision making process. And you talked about patient journeys, and, this is a really integral part. This is the roadmap of your journey to a large extent. So I think this I can see this, that's being rolled out worldwide, being driven by patients by correction and variability of health care provision. >> Its a great example, of an innovative award winner for the most innovative use of artificial intelligence and machine learning 3D images saving lives. Congratulations, Tim, Roger, it's phenomenal. Final question as we end this out. What's the scar tissue, pun intended? Well, what did you learn? What are some of the things that you could share with folks, as people look at this and say, this is an example of cloud scale and technology for good? What lessons have you learned? What can you share for folks, take a minute to explain each. But Roger, we'll start with you. >> Yeah, sure. So I think a number of lessons for us on this journey. As Tim says, this is a we're at the start of a journey, of understanding the power of what 3D imaging can bring to providing a consistent or less variable care, but also, as Tim also alluded to, in terms of the patient understanding, I think that patient understanding, is one of the huge leap forwards, that we didn't set out initially thinking, we're going to be able to help educate and better inform patients. But that was one of the derive benefits suddenly became apparent. So that was a great lesson. I think that incredible levels of adoption, that we're starting to see across the US across Europe. Because it's so easy to adopt, compared to traditional IT methods. Surgeons just register for a website, and they can start transacting and getting service from us, as opposed to having to have these huge IT programs. So I think we're now starting to really scratch the surface and start seeing the benefits of this isn't an administrative system. It's not the HR system. It's not a finance system, or maybe healthcare was comfortable in using public cloud. This is core hardcore clinical service, clinical diagnosis, clinical education, and the Amazon cloud is enabling that, just wouldn't be possible with this technology, (mumbles) the lessons we're learning are just (mumbles). >> Dr. Tim Brown and take us home and the segment, with your take, lessons learned and advice to others. >> I think the lesson learned are that doctors and healthcare providers are all extremely wary of change of new innovations. Because they feel that already, they're overburdened, and probably my colleagues in the States and across Europe feel like, we're a bit overburdened by all the things that we have to do. And this may potentially have been a more difficult or odds to your workload and actually fact, this makes your workload a lot easier and convincing people and getting people to understand that, this really does make your life a lot easier. It actually removes all the scar tissue it removes the difficulties that have been put in place by organizations. And once people realize that, that's what there is no heavy lifting. And this will make a huge difference to your practice and your patients understanding of your practice. And once that, once up, people really realize that, then the tipping point will be achieved. I'm looking forward to that date because this is going to be the new normal in the next five to 10 years. >> While the performance that you're putting up the numbers of 90 transplants successfully over six weeks, dwarfs the full year last year, really kind of shows the outcome is a game changer. And again, congratulations on your success. Roger, thank thank you for coming on. Congratulations on being the award winner, a diverse partner for the most innovative AI and machine learning solutions. Thanks for taking the time for part of this AWS partner awards program. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Okay, I'm John Furrier, we're covering the AWS public sector partner awards, program put on by the CUBE and AWS public sector partners. Thanks for watching. (bright upbeat music)

>>from the Cube Studios in Palo Alto and Boston connecting with thought leaders all around the world. This is a cube conversation. Welcome to the >>Special Cube program. We are here with the Amazon Web Services Public Sector Partner Awards program. It's a celebration of AWS public sectors partners and their end user customers where there's been innovation and we're pleased to have on this show here, the award winner for the most innovative AI and ML Artificial intelligence and machine learning solution. Axial three D is the partner, and the end user is Belfast Hospital. He got Roger Johnson, the CEO of actual three D, and Dr Tim Brown consulted transplant surgeon at Belfast Hospital, who has been doing amazing things not only on the as an innovative partner, but really during Covic making things happen by solving the problem of the surgical gap in the number of surgeries that you're doing really high performance saving lives. Congratulations. First of all, congratulations. Roger. Dr Kimberly. Thanks for joining me. >>Re pleasure. >>Okay, let's get into it. First of all, Dr Tim Brown, I really want to commend you on the amazing work that you're doing before we get into some of the partnership awards conversations. You have been at the front lines solving a lot of problems around the gap between the number of surgeries that could take place with Cove. It, um, tell that story real quick. I really think it's super important. Take a minute to >>explain. Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. And it's been an incredible rollercoaster for the last three months, pretty much all of the transplant programs across the world who have been affected by Coupet of shut down but with some pretty innovative on the grill leadership team Working advances with managed to open a program up again. And and Belfast, we have a bytes and 50 to 50 disease donor transplants year over the last three months, with just a 90 90 kidney transplants. Pretty much we've cleared the whole waiting list in Northern Ireland, pretty much for people waiting for a kidney transplant at this time. And it's been a remarkable few weeks, but it really is a testament to the critical care community. People that work in intensive care is the high marks, a support organ donation. Of course, our donors who have given so selflessly at such a tragic time for them. So I'd like to pay tribute to all of our donors into the amazing people who have been involved in the team. Mark belt faster this time. >>That's super amazing. Can you just I just want to pause from and just captured the number of order of magnitude. You said it was 6 to 10 year and you didn't 90 90. >>Yeah, so six weeks basically Teoh, two years work in six weeks old in the middle of the night as well. So it's been It's been hard of hard work, so you can see the sleeplessness. I'm trying to catch up with a minute, but it's been really, really satisfying. An incredible I come for patients and legacy of this of this, the program is gonna last about faster. 40 years. >>Well, I want to say congratulations. I'll give you my Cube Award for not changing the world but saving the world. One person at a time. 90 interviews and six weeks. That's amazing. That's like thinking clearing the waiting list. You really changing lives there. Congratulations. >>That's very kind of you. Thank you very much. >>Roger. Good. A great partner and customer. You have here. Talk about this award. You guys have talked about the company? What is this all about? Why you guys in this position? Why are you winning? >>Yes, So I think our motivation for our company is driven by our partners, such such as? In what they're doing transforms care And even in these horrific situation, our scenarios. We have the moment with Kobe. Think you're hearing the start of the amazing story our job is to give Surgeons liked him the best possible insight that he can have going into his surgeries For the last 20 years, surgeons of relied largely on two D imaging, so C, t and memory scans or for being able to plan their surgeries when it's murdered, technology should apply them much greater insight or they actually perform the surgery. So we've created a technology that platforms on AWS that allows us to turn those traditional hard to understand to the images into micro millimeter precise models off the patients exact anatomy. The value hopefully, two amazing colleagues like Tim is that instead of trying to interpret what a two D image CD or memory scan might mean he can actually see for the first time before he opens the patient up exactly what he's going to find when when he when he starts the surgery. So he immediately start to complete that planning before the surgery actually takes. So hopefully that analyze a number of benefits to results without the shorter operations. Find less surgical meeting we brought into the surgery. Hopefully, faster Surgeries names last risk of infection For patients being shorter Time means most >>awesome. Dr. Brian, I want to get your take on this. Can you describe the impact on your side because you know the future of work, which is everyone's been talking about in the tech industry for many years now, with code we were just talking about. The success is you're having and changing lives and saving lives. The notion of work workplace work, forces, work loads, work flows are all changing. Certainly the workplace people aren't as on site as they used to be. The workforce has to be protected. How does the AI and how does the actual three D help you and your work flows? Are you getting more done? Can you give specifics around the impact to your job? >>Yeah, it's a bit It's been a fantastic journey to date. We're still learning away. It's a journey. We're trying to work out exactly where this lies in. The fact that Kubla does not come along, which has changed, or working practices, that means that we have to look for different solutions on this, I think, is very 100 solution to amend. My practice over the last three years has been in terms of complex and real surgery on oncological surgery, where we have, for example, a tumor and kidney where we think, my goodness, we're gonna have to take this kidney I and throw it in the bin because it's very badly disease. So the index case that we were involved with that was building a child who wanted to donate his kidney to his daughter. But when we worked him up, we find a tumor in his kidney, which ordinarily would have to be discarded. But thanks to the imaging that Excel was able to produce for us, we were able to plan Well, geez, well cut well and as a result of kidney, I really plan a removal of the tumor from the kidney itself. We really repair kidney and then transplant it into his daughter. So with the technology that was available, we were able to save two lives on one particular case on, and it's really grown from there on. We've been involved in five or six different, really complex cases where the imaging has changed the outcomes for our patients who ordinarily wouldn't have been able to. Chief insight comes, I think, the AI interface on the AI solution we've developed in our partnership with the Excel. As I said, it's a journey and we're still finding our way. But to insights that I've really got our the first is that what we want to do is reduce variability, not just in our in our observers, from the way that we interpret imaging tradition is what you're saying is, look a two D images. We're now able to sit and look at this, emerging in a three dimensional space on our desk. Rather than trying to reconstruct these things in your head, we can look at them and discuss the different images with our colleagues in real time, a zealous that which I think is probably the most important thing, is that we're not able to engage our patients and a partnership. Before we had a bit of an unfair advantage that we're able to interpret these images because 20 or 30 years of getting used to doing this as professionals. But the patients are presented with some incredibly difficult decisions to make by their own health and with very little understanding that. But now I can handle the model of their own disease very easy to understand, and that gives my patient autonomy to make the decisions about their own bodies back again. And I think that's a hugely powerful, powerful tool for these guys have about potential decisions that they have to make that more effective for the rest of their lives. >>So the problem you're solving was one of the technical problem. So you're trying to figure out manually, get more insight into the the imaging and to the customer or the patient. This case customer, the patient. I can make a better decision. Those are two problems, statements that seem to be the big ones that I missed. Anything? >>Absolutely, absolutely. >>Okay, so actual three d you guys have a great solution? How >>did you >>get here? Tell us about your story. What's what's What's the big trajectory for you guys? In terms of the value proposition, it seems to be amazing and again highlights. The advantages of technology really solves the problem. But the outcome on the patient side is pretty phenomenal. >>Yes, so the chance for us is there or the development that we have made. The lately, we admit, is to be able to automatically turn these two D images into three D models. So we take each of the slices off of memory or cities. Using AWS is machine learning. We construct three D macro millimeter precise representation of For me. That's only possible. First of all, we treat the algorithms that we created on Amazon platform using over a 1,000,000 pre labeled CDs. Consume our system automatically detect. Yeah, it's a level. What is bone? What is ligament? What is on our earlier vessel? With the training that we're able to perform, we've been able to with with these 1,000,000 images we've been able to in effect, tree and our system automatically detect the parts of me with this micro service level that hasn't been previously possible. This technology, or the ability to create three D models, has existed for maybe 10 or 15 years, but it's it's needed. Experts like him who were, in effect manually code the two D image pixel level and could affect so some software and turn it into a three D image. Typically, too, it's in ours, often expert like them to do. And the problem is, Tim could only do one of the time. We estimate there about three million of these complex surgeries each year in the world that need open effort from greatly from this enhanced imaging. And we couldn't get 33 million under these, especially. And that. So we have this process no on the AWS platform, with dozens of these models in parallel, and each more will take maybe a few minutes to turn from the CD into the into the three D representation. So through the park off the Amazon Public cloud, we've been able to provide this this powerful machine learning automated solution that can actually scale toe man >>Dr Brian talk about the impact because, I mean Andy Jassy, the CEO of AWS, always talks about this. When I interviewed him, he says, you know, we're here to help do the heavy lifting this sounds like some pretty heavy lifting. What was just talked about? I mean, the manual work involved. You essentially have a collective intelligence and supercomputer power with AWS. What's your take on this as this evolves? Why isn't everyone doing this? >>Yeah, well, I don't know why. Every minute. That's that's That's the key question. It really is. From my perspective, there is no heavy lifting at all, and what I do is I push a couple buttons. I put a bit of data, and I send it off. From my perspective, it is about as easy as it gets is probably a ZTE sending email, which we do hundreds of times a day. And so, from from my perspective, I'm delighted to say there's no heavy lifting until I get a patient's data. I send data through to excel, who will then fool me and say, Listen to what is it exactly that we want to have a personal service from actual on? A couple days later, there's a delivery of a beautiful life size three D representation model, will check and then take to plan on and treat a patient with. So the heavy lifting really has all been done. A Z Roger alluded to in the past. It was hugely time consuming work that required a huge amount of training. But basically that's being replaced with a push of a button on. These supercomputers have taken all of my heavy lifting away on, and I think this is one of the true representation. Zoff technology really, really advances real world solutions and my patients are benefactors. From this >>Roger Dr Brown. Lay out the architecture because, first of all, pretend I want to take this every single friend that I have here in California and around the world. I want to just deploy this. What's the architecture and what's needed on the deployment side? Say it to Belfast as you deploy this. What's kind of involved in you? Just take us through high level. I must be cloud scales. Amazing, No doubt about it. We just talked about that. But what's involved in the architecture side of my standing? A bunch PC two's Is there sage maker involvement? What's the architecture and then deployment? What does that look like? >>Sure, So again, a slight step back. One of the challenges when, when we is the MedTech community try and introduce innovation into health and hospitals that the hospitals i t. Infrastructure network definition is often very locked on. So we're trying to bring new software and load it and install it in the hospital data system. That is a huge, often lengthy process that has to be done through lots of hoops in terms off Hey, network a compliance. Lots of different steps along the journey and that often wants from a good reasons, is a significant barrier to the timely adoption off innovative technologies in the cars. What a what a platform a selfie on AWS allies were just another website, as Tennis said, is, uh, only that, though his only existence with actual three D in terms of the interface is dragging and dropping the CT scan into our website into a portal portal exists quickly on the AWS instance. In one of our region, we are working with a little in the US. Never leave the US We use the the public client version in US East. We take advantage of many features within AWS, but a sage maker is probably a core of what we do. It's not innovation that AWS introduced know several years ago that was like juice this this machine learning trained set of algorithms that allow us to give this disruption. >>And it sounds like the more you use it, the more get smarter. Or is that as well? >>Absolutely. So our journey is, As Tim said, we're on a journey not only in terms off the technology and you're very receptive. In terms of yes, the more we train it, the more we treated on specific anatomy types or pathology types or trouble types, the better our system gets recognizing the specific characteristics of those. More importantly, this is about a journey I having made this disruption, we make the change and transformation off new standards of care pathways. That's the innovation that we just enable. It's amazing. Surgical teams like hymns. Let me transformation >>Dr Brown on your side. You're sitting there. I got a big problem trying to solve these problems. I got patients one but one better outcomes. They want to live. I don't want to throw away kitty, so I don't have to you to solve that problem that when when they bring that over, what was it like over on your side of the house is a practitioner. Deploying it. You've got you've got two jobs going. You're kind of doing I t integration on one hand and you're a surgeon on the other, trying to make things happen. You know what I see? This is not a lot of I t here. What's the deployment? Looks like. >>Yeah, deployment means I don't know. Why ever announces doing that. Such a straightforward, easy situation. It's that's remarkable. Ready? It's such a good solution, and I think part of any sort of change management program, and this again is change management. It's challenging the way we think about things. It's challenging people's comfort zones on any time we need to do change. We've got this anatomy of change. You've got innovators go early, adopters will lead the doctors, and I think what we're going to see over the next 5 to 10 years is people are recognizing that this technology is a game changer, possibly being driven by their patients who say I'm on the three D model and I want to see what this actually looks like because basically not black and white picture you're showing me doesn't make any sense to me and I think there's going to be the two drivers is that the first is that we want to have a consistency of care on the lack of variation in our care across across old old services. But as well is that patients? I think we're gonna drive this as well. So once once we get the innovators and the early adopters of this technology on board, then we'll see a tipping point. And that's that's when it becomes an acceptable normal thing for people to do. When they come in the hospital, they'll be sure print tight off their three d printed like moral off their pathology. I'm not a huge demand for their decision making for treatment processes, and that's a true collaboration between doctor or surgeon on the patient. That's that's where we need to be in the 21st century. It's it's going to be a collaborative decision making process. You talked about the pressures, journeys and this This is a really integral part. This is the roadmap of your journey to a large extent. So I think this I can see this being rolled out worldwide, being driven by patients buying a correction and variability of healthcare provision. >>That's a great example is an innovative award winner for the most innovative use of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Three D images saving lives Congratulations, Tim Rogers. Phenomenal Final question As we end this out, what's the scar tissue pun intended? You know, What did you learn? What was some of the things that you could share with folks as people look at this and say This is an example of cloud scale and the technology for good. What lessons have you learned? What can you share for folks? Take a minute to explain the split. Roger. We'll start with you. >>Yeah, sure. So I think a number off lessons for us on this journey Assistances, This is Ah, we're at the start of a journey of understanding the power off the what three d imaging can bring just to providing a consistent use variable care, but also as a stem also alluded to in terms of off the patient understanding, I think that patient understanding is one of the huge leap forwards that way. Didn't set out initially thinking we're going to be able to help educate on better inform patients. But that was one of the derive benefits suddenly part. So that was a great lesson. I think there is incredible levels of adoption that we're starting to see across the US across Europe because it's so easy to adopt. Compared to traditional methods, surgeons registered for Canadian start transacting and instead of us almost as opposed to having to have these huge I t programs. So I think we're now starting to really scratch the surface and start seeing the benefits of this isn't an administrative system. It's not me. HR system. It's not a finance system. Or maybe a healthcare was comfortable. And using public like this is core hard core clinical services, clinical diagnosis. Clinical education on the Amazon cloud is enabling that it just wouldn't be possible with this technology we started. Actually, the lessons were learning or just just >>Dr Tim Brown and take us home and the segment with your take lessons learned and advice to others. >>I think the lessons learned are the doctors and health care providers are all extremely wary off change of new innovations because they feel that already they're overburdened. Probably my colleagues in the states and across Europe perfectly like they were a bit over, burdened by all the things that we have to do, and this may potentially have been more difficult or wants to your workloads. And actually, let's make your workload along each year convincing people and getting people to understand that this really does make your life a lot easier. It actually removes all the scar tissue, removes the difficulties that have been put in place by by organizations on once. People realize that, that's what that there is no heavy lifting. And this will make a huge difference to your practices, your patients understanding of your practice, and we'll stop so people really realize that the tipping point will be achieved. I'm looking forward to that day because this this is going to be the new normal in the next 5 to 10 years. >>While the performance that you're putting up the numbers of 90 transplant successfully over six weeks dwarfs the full year, last year really kind of shows the outcome is a game changer. And again, congratulations on your success. Roger think Thank you for coming on Corrections on being the award winner. Eight of his partner for the most innovative AI and machine learning solutions. Thanks for taking the time for this 80 s partner awards program. Thank you. >>Thank you. >>Okay, I'm John Furrier. We're covering the AWS Public Sector Partner Awards program put on by the Cube and AWS Public Sector Partners. Thanks for watching. Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

(upbeat music) >> Good afternoon and welcome back to Las Vegas. You're watching theCUBE's coverage of AWS 2021. My name is Dave Vellante. theCUBE goes out to the events. We extract the signal from the noise. Very few physical events this year doing a lot of hybrid stuff. It's great to be back in hybrid event... Physical event land, 25,000 people here. Probably a little few more registered than that. And then on the periphery, got to be another at least 10,000 people that came in, flew in and out, see what's happening. A bunch of VCs, checking things out, a few parties last night and so forth. A lot of action here. It's like re:Invent is back. Matt Coulter is here. He's a technical architect at Liberty Mutual. Matt, thanks for flying in from Belfast. Good to see ya. >> Dave, and thanks for having me today. >> Pleasure. So what's your role as a technical architect? Maybe describe that, we'll get into a little bit. >> Yeah so I am here to empower and enable our developers across the globe to rapidly deliver business value and solve problems for our customers in a well-architected way that doesn't introduce problems or risks, you know, later down the line. So instead of thinking of me as someone who directly every day, build software, I try to create the environment where other people can rapidly build software. >> That's, you know, it's interesting. because you're a developer, right? You can use like, "Hey I code." That's what normally you would say but you're actually creating frameworks and business model so that others can learn, teach them how to fish, so we speak. >> Yeah because I can only scale, there's a certain amount. Whereas if I can teach, there's 5,000 people in Liberty Mutual's tech organization. So if I can teach the 5,000 to be 5% better, it's way more than me even if I 10Xed >> When did you first touch the Cloud? >> Personally, it would have been four/five years ago. That's when I started in the Cloud. >> What was that experience like for you? >> Oh, it was hard. It was very different to anything that we'd done in the past. So it's because you... Traditionally, you would have just written your small piece of code. You would have had a big application that was out there, it had been out there maybe 20 years, it was deployed, and you were just adding a couple of lines. Whereas when you start putting stuff into the Cloud, it's out there. It's on the internet for anyone there to try and hack or try to get into. It was a bit overwhelming the amount that you needed to learn. So it was- >> Was it worth it? >> Oh yeah. Completely. (laughing) So that's the thing, that I would never go back to the way we did things before. And that's why I'm so passionate, enthusiastic about the stuff I've been doing. Because to me, the amount of benefits you can get, like now we can deliver thing. We have teams going out there and doing discovery and framing with the business. And they're pushing well-architected products three days later into production. That was unheard of before, you know, this year. >> Yeah. So you were part of Werner's keynote this morning. Of course that's always one of the keynotes that's most anticipated at re:Invent. It's on the sort of last day. He's awesome. This is you know, 10th year of re:Invent. He sort of did a look back. He started out (chuckles) he's just a cool guy and very passionate. But talk about what your role was in the keynote. >> Yeah so I had a section towards the end of the keynote, and I was to talk about Liberty Mutual's serverless first journey. I actually went through from 2014 through to the current day of all the major Cloud milestones that we've hit. And I talked through some of the impact it's had on our business and the impact it's had on our developers. And yeah it's just been this incredible journey where as I said, it was hard at the start. So we had to spark this culture within our company that we were going to empower and enable our developers and we were going to get them excited about doing this. And that's why we needed to make it safe. So there was a lot of work went down at the start to make the Cloud safe for our developers to experiment. And then the past two years have been known that it's safe, okay? Let's see what it can do. Let's go. >> Yeah so Liberty Mutual has been around many many years, Boston-based, you know, East Coast-based, my home city. I don't live in Boston but I consider it my city. And so talk about your business a little bit because you're an established company. I don't know, probably a hundred years old, right? Any all other newbies nipping at your business, right? Coming in with low-cost products. Maybe not bringing as much protection as you dig into it. But regardless, you've got to compete with them technically. So what are some of the drivers in your business and how are you using the Cloud to sort of defend your turf and grow? >> Yeah so first of all, we're 109 years old. (laughing) Yeah. So absolutely, there's an entire insurtech market of people here gunning for the big Liberty Mutual because we've been here for so long. And our whole thing is we're focused on our customers. So we want to be there for people in their time of need. Because at a point in time whenever you need insurance, typically something is going wrong. And that's why we're building innovative solutions like a serverless call center we built, that after natural disaster, it can automatically process claims in less than four minutes. So instead of having to wait on hold for maybe an hour, you can just text or pick up the phone, and four minutes later your claims are through. And that's we're using technology always focused on the customer. >> That's unbelievable. Think about that experience, to me. I mean I've filed claims before and it's, it's kind of time consuming. And you're saying you've compressed that to minutes? Days, weeks, you know, and now you've compressed that to minutes? >> Yeah. >> Tell us more about how you did that. >> And that's because it's a fully serverless solution that was built. So it doesn't require like people to scale. It can scale to whatever number of our customers need to make a claim at that point because that would typically be the bottleneck if there's some kind of natural disaster. So that means that if something happens we can just switch it on. And customers can choose not to use it. You can always choose to say I want to speak to a person. But now with this technology, we can just make it easy and just go. Everything, all the information we know in the back end, we just use it and actually make things better for you. >> You're talking about the impact that it had on your business and developers. So how do you quantify that? Maybe start with the business. Maybe share some ways in which you look at that measure. >> Yeah, so I mean, in terms of how we measure the impact of the Cloud on our business, we're always looking at our profitability and we're always looking, as I say, at our customers. And ideally, I want our Cloud bill to go down as our number of customers goes up because that's why we're using the serverless fast mindset, we call it. We don't want to build anything we don't have to build. We want to take the best that's out there and just piece it together and produce these products for our customers. So yeah, that's having an impact on our business because now developers aren't spending weeks, months, years doing all this configuration. And they can actually sit down with the business and understand how we write insurance. So now we can start being innovative with our products and talking about the real business instead of everything else. >> When you say you want your Cloud bill to go down, you know, it reminds me like in the old days of IT budgeting, right? It was always slash, do more with less cut, cut, cut, right? And it was kind of going in cycles. But with the Cloud a lot of customers that I talk to, they were like, might be going down as a percentage of revenues but actually it might be going up as you launch more projects because they're driving revenue. There's a tighter tie between revenue and Cloud bill. How do you look at that? >> Yeah. So I mean, with every project, you have to look at the worth-based development often and whether or not it's going to hold this away in the market. And the key thing is with the serverless products that are being released now, they cost pennies if they're low scale. So you can actually launch a new product into the market and it maybe only cost you $20 to see if that thing would fit in the market. So by the time you're getting into the big bills you know whether or not you've got a market fit and you can decide whether you want to pivot. >> Oh wow. So you you've compressed, that's another business metric. You've compressed the time to get certainty around product market fit, right? Which is huge because you really can't go to market until you have product market fit (laughing) >> Exactly. You have to be. Thoroughly understand if it's going to work. >> Right because if you go to the market and you've got 50% churn. (laughing) Well, you don't want to be worried about the go-to market. You got to get back to the product so you can test that and you can generate. >> So that's why, yeah, As I said, we have developers who can go out and do discovery and framing on a potential product and deliver it three days later which (chuckles) >> How has the Cloud effected developer satisfaction or passion? I guess it's... I mean we're in AWS Cloud. Our developers, we tell them "Okay, you got to go back on-prem." They would say, "I quit." (laughing) How has it affected their lives? >> Yeah it's completely there for them, it's way better. So now we have way more ownership over any, you know, of everything we ever did. So it feels like you're truly a part of Liberty Mutual and you're solving Liberty's problems now. Because it's not a case of like, "Okay, let's put in a request to stand up a server, it's going to take six months. And then let's do some big long acquisition." It's a case of like, "Let's actually get done into the nitty gritty of what we going to build." And that's- >> How do you use the Cloud developer kit? Maybe you could talk about that. I mean, explain what it is. It's a framework. But explain from your perspective. >> Yeah so the Cloud typically, it started off, and lot of it was done by Cloud infrastructure engineers who created these big YAML files. That's how they defined all the stuff that's going to be deployed. But that's not typically the development language that most developers use. The CDK is in like Java, TypeScript, .NET, Python. The language is developers ready known love. And it means that they can use everything they already know from all of their previous development experience and bring it to the Cloud. And you see some benefits like, you get, I talked about this morning, a 1500 line YAML file was reduced to 14 lines of TypeScript. And that's what we're talking about with the cognitive difference for a developer using CDK versus anything else. >> Cognitive abstraction, >> Right? >> Yeah. And so it just simplifies your living and you spend more time doing cool stuff. >> Yeah we can write an abstraction for our specific needs once. And then everybody can use that abstraction. And if we want to make a change and make it better, everyone benefits instead of everybody doing the same thing all the time. >> So for people who are unfamiliar, what do you need? You need an AWS account, obviously. You got to get a command-line interface, I would imagine. maybe some Node.js often running, or is it- >> Yeah. So that's it. You need an AWS account, and then you need to install CDK, which is from Node Package Manager. And then from there, it depends on which way you want to start. You could use my project CDK patterns, has a whole ray of working patterns that you can clone among commands. You just have to type, like one command you've got a pattern, and then CDK deploy. And you'll have something working. >> Okay so what do you do day-to-day? You sort of, you evangelize folks to come in and get trained? Is there just like a backlog of people that want your time? How do you manage that? >> So I try to be the place that I'm needed the most based on impact of the business. And that's why I try to go in. Liberty split up into different areas and I try to go into those areas, understand where they are versus where they need to be. And then if I can do that across everywhere, you can see the common thesis. And then I can see where I can have the most impact across the board instead of focusing on one micro place. So there's a variety of tools and techniques that I would do, you know, to go through that but that's the crux of it. >> So you look at your business across the portfolio, so you have portfolio view. And then you do a gap analysis essentially, say "Okay, where can I approach this framework and technology from a developer standpoint, add value? >> Yeah like I could go into every single team with every single project, draw it all out and like, what we call Wardley map, and then you can draw a line and then say "Everything blue in this line is undifferentiated, heavy-lifted. I want you to migrate that. And here's how you're going to do it I've already built the tools for that." And that's how we can drive those conversations. >> So, you know, it's funny, I spent a lot of time in the insurance business not in the business but consulting with heads of application development and looking at portfolios. And you know, they did their thing. But you know, a lot of people sort of question, "Can developers in an insurance company actually become cool Cloud native developers?" You're doing it, right? So that's going to be an amazing transformation for your colleagues and your industry. And it's happening as we look around here (indistinct) >> And that's the thing, in Liberty I'm not the only one. So there's Tommy Gloklin, he's an AWS hero, and there's Diali Mikan, who's an AWS hero. And Diali is in Workgrid but we're still all the same family. >> So what does it mean to be an AWS hero? >> Yeah so this is something that AWS has to offer you to join. So basically, it's about impacting the community. It's not... There's not like a checklist of items you can go through and you're hero. It's you have to be nominated internally through AWS, and then you have to have the right intentions. And yeah, just follow through. >> Dave: That's awesome. Yeah so our producer, Lynette, is looking for an Irish limerick. You know, every, say I'm half Irish is through my marriage. Dad, you didn't know that, did you? And every year we have a St Patrick's Day party and my daughter comes up with limericks. So I don't know, if you have one that you want to share. If you don't, that's fine. >> I have no limericks for now. I'm so sorry. (laughing) >> There once was a producer from, where are you from? (laughing) So where do you want to take this, Matt? What's your future look like with this program? >> So right now, today, I actually launched a book called the CDK book. >> Dave: Really? Awesome. >> Yeah So me and three other heroes got together and put everything we know about CDK and distilled it into one book. But the... I mean there's two sides, there's inside Liberty. The goal as I've mentioned is to get our developers to the point that they're talking about real insurance problems rather than tech. And then outside Liberty in the community the goal is things like CDK Day, which is a global conference that I created and run. And I want to just grow those farther and farther throughout the world so that eventually we can start learning you know, cross business, cross market, cross the main instead of just internally one company. >> It's impressive how tuned in you are to the business. Do you feel like the Cloud almost forces that alignment? >> It does. It definitely does. Because when you move quickly, you need to understand what you're doing. You can't bluff almost, you know. Like everything you're building you're demonstrating that every two weeks or faster. So you need to know the business to do it. >> Well, Matt, congratulations on all the great work that you've done and the keynote this morning. You know, true tech hero. We really appreciate your time coming in theCUBE. >> Thank you, Dave, for having me. >> Our pleasure. And thank you for watching. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE at AWS re:Invent. We are the leader global tech coverage. We'll be right back. (light upbeat music)

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

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

>> Instructor: From the Cube Studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a CUBE conversation. >> Over welcome to the special CUBE program. We are here with the Amazon Web Services public sector, partner awards program. It's a celebration of AWS, public sectors, partners and their end user customers, where there's been innovation. And we're pleased to have on the show here, the award winner for the most innovative AI, and ML artificial intelligence and machine learning solution. Axial3D is the newest partner and the end user is Belfast hospital. We got Roger Johnson, the CEO of Axial3D, and Dr. Tim Brown consulted transplant surgeon, at Belfast hospital, who has been doing amazing things, not only on the as an innovative partner, but really during COVID, making things happen, by solving the problem of the surgical gap and the number of surgeries that you're doing. Really high performance saving lives, congratulations. First of all, congratulations Roger and Dr.Tim Brown, thanks for joining me. >> We're pleasure. >> Okay, let's get into it. First of all, Dr. Tim Brown, I really want to commend you on the amazing work, that you're doing. Before we get, into some of the partnership awards conversations. You have been at the front lines solving a lot of problems around the gap, between the number of surgeries, that could take place with COVID. Tell that story real quick. I really think it's super important. Take a minute to explain. >> Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. And it's been an incredible roller coaster, for the last three months. And pretty much all of the transplant programs, across the world who have been affected, by COVID have shut down. But with some pretty innovative and real leadership and team working advances, we've managed to open a program up again and in Belfast, we have about 50 deceased donor transplants a year. Over the last three months, we've just done 90 kidney transplants and pretty much with with care, the whole wedding list in Northern Ireland pretty much, for people waiting for kidney transplant in this time. And it's been a remarkable few weeks. But really is a testament to the critical care community, the people that work in intensive care, as to how much they support organ donation. And of course, our donors who have given so selflessly, at such a tragic time for them. So I'd like to pay tribute to all of our donors, and to the amazing amount of people, who have been involved in the team mark and Belfast at this time. >> That's super amazing. Can you just I just want to pause for a minute just capture, the number of orders of magnitude, you said it was six to 10 a year and you did nine zero, 90? >> Yeah, so we have done two years work in six weeks, all in the middle of the night as well. So it's been it's been a hard work, so you can see the screen (mumbles). I'm trying to catch up with a minute. But it's been really, really satisfying, and an incredible outcome for our patients. The legacy of this program, is going to last at Belfast for 40 years. >> Brown I want to say congratulations, I'll give you my CUBE award for not changing the world, but saving the world, one person at a time. 90 interviews in six weeks. That's amazing. That's like clearing the waiting list. You're really changing lives there, congratulations. >> That's great, thank you very much. >> Roger, what a great partner and customer you have here. Talk about this award that you guys have, talk about the company. What is this all about? Why you guys in this position? Why are you winning? >> So I think our motivation for our company, is driven by our partners such as Tim, what they're doing transforms care, and even in these horrific situation are scenarios, we have the moment with COVID think you're hearing the start of an amazing story. Our job is to give surgeons like Tim, the best possible insight that he can have going into his surgeries. For the last 20 years, surgeons have relied largely on 2D imaging, so CT and MRI scans for being able to plan their surgeries, when in fact modern technology, should apply them much greater insight, before they actually perform their surgery. So we've created a technology, that platforms on AWS that allows us, to turn those traditional, hard to understand 2D images, into micromillimeter precise models of the patient's exact anatomy. The value hopefully to amazing colleagues like Tim, is that instead of trying to interpret what a 2D image CT or MRI scan might mean, he can actually see for the first time before, he opens the patient up exactly what he's going, to find when he starts the surgery, So he can really start planning, and complete that planning before, the surgery actually takes place. So hopefully, that allows a number of benefits result, whether that be shorter operations time, less surgical equipment meeting we brought, into the surgery, hopefully faster. surgeries means less risk of infection, for patients means shorter time, means the healthcare system (mumbles). >> Awesome, Dr. Brown, I want to get your take on this. Can you describe the impact on your side because, you know, the future of work, which is everyone's been talking about, in the tech industry for many years. Now with COVID we were just talking about the successes, you're having and changing lives and saving lives. The notion of work workplace, workforces, work loads, work flows are all changing. Certainly the workplace people aren't as on site as they used to be. The workforce has to be protected. How does the AI and how does the Axial3D help you, in your workflows? Are you getting more done? Can you can you give specifics, around the impact to your job? >> Yeah, it's been a fantastic journey to date. And we're still learning our way. It's a journey. And we're trying to work out exactly where this lies. And the fact that COVID has not come along, which has changed our working practices means that, we have to look for different solutions. And this I think, is a very handy solution, to where it's come into my practice over the last three years has been, in terms of complex renal surgery and oncological surgery, where we have for example, a tumor in a kidney where we think my goodness, we're I have to take this kidney out and throw it in the bin because it's very badly diseased. So the index case that we were involved with, was involving a chap who wanted, to donate his kidney to his daughter. But when we worked him up, we find a tumor in his kidney, which ordinarily would have to be discarded. And but thanks to the imaging that Axial was able, to produce for us, we were able to plan well choose well cut well, and as a result, we took the kidney if we were able to plan, a removal of the tumor from the kidney itself, we were able to repair the kidney and then transplant into his daughter. So with the technology that was available, we were able to save two lives in one particular case. And it's really grown from there. And we've now been involved, in five or six different real complex cases, where the imaging has changed the outcomes for patients, who ordinarily wouldn't have been able to achieve them, as they comes, I think, the AI interface and the AI solution that we've, we've developed in our partnership with Axial. As I said, it's a journey, and we're still finding our way. But the two insights that I've really got are. The first is that what we want to do is reduce variability. And not just in our, in our observers from the way that we interpret imaging. Traditionally, as Roger said, we look at 2D images, we're now able to sit and look at this imaging in a three dimensional space on our desk. Rather than trying to reconstruct these things in our head. We can look at them and discuss the different images, with our colleagues in real time. As well as that, which I think is probably the most important thing, is that we're not able to engage our patients, in a partnership, before we've had a bit of an unfair advantage, that we're able to interpret these images. Because we've been trying to get 30 years of getting used, to doing this as professionals, and but the patients are presented, with some incredibly difficult decisions, to make by their own health. And with very little understanding, but my I can hand them a model of their own disease, they're able to understand. And that gives my patient the autonomy, to make the decisions about their own bodies back again, I think that's a hugely powerful, powerful tool for these guys to have, but potential decisions that they have, to make that will affect them for the rest of their lives. >> So the problem you were solving was one, of the technical problems, so you're trying to figure out manually get more insight, into the imaging and to the customer, or the patient in this case, customer the patient can make a better decision. Those are two problem statements. That seemed to be the big ones. Did I miss anything? >> Absolutely, no, he got one, yeah, absolutely. >> Okay, so Axial3D. You guys have a great solution. How did you get here? Tell us about your story. What's the big trajectory for you guys, in terms of this value proposition just seems to be amazing. And again highlights the advantages, how technology really solves a problem, but the outcome on the patient side is pretty phenomenal. >> So the chance for us is there, or the moment that we have made the leap we have made, is to be able to automatically turn these 2D images into 3D models. So we take each of the slices off of a MRI, or CT scan, using AWS machine learning, we construct 3D, micromillimeter precise representation of an anatomy. That's only possible, first of all, we train the algorithms that we created on the Amazon platform, using over a million pre labeled CT scans. So our system automatically detects a pixel level. What is bone, what is ligament, what is an artery or blood vessel? And with the training that we're able to perform, we've been able to with these million images, we've been able to, in effect train our system, to automatically detect the different parts of them, through this micro precise level, that hasn't been previously possible. And this technology, or the ability to create 3D models has existed for maybe 10, or 15 years. But it's needed experts like Tim to during effect, manually code, the 2D image at a pixel level and codify it so some software to turn that into 3D image, typically to either an RS of an expert like Tim to do, and the problem is Tim could only do one at a time. We estimate there are about three million, of these complex surgeries each year in the world, that need benefit greatly from this Enhanced Imaging. And we couldn't get three million months, he's selected that. So we have this process. Now on AWS platform, we have these models in parallel. And each model will take maybe a few minutes, to turn from the CT into the 3D representation. So through the power of the Amazon public cloud, we've been able to provide this powerful machine learning, automated solution that can actually scale, to the demand that we hope to see in the world. >> Dr. Tim Brown talked about the impact because I mean, Andy Jassy, the CEO of AWS always talks about this, when I interview him, he says, you know, we're here to help do the heavy lifting. This sounds like some pretty heavy lifting. What was just talked about? I mean, the manual work involved, you essentially have collective intelligence and supercomputer power with AWS. What's your take on this as this evolves? Why isn't everyone doing this? >> Yeah, well, I don't know why everyone is doing it. That's the key question it really is. From my perspective, there is no heavy lifting at all. And what I do is I push a couple of buttons, I input a bit of data and I send it off. And from my perspective, it is about as easy as it gets, it's probably as easy as sending an email, which we do hundreds of times a day. And so from my perspective, I'm delighted to say that there's no heavy lifting at all. I get a patient's data, I send the data through to Axial who will then fool me and say, listen, Tim, what is it exactly that you want? There's a great personal service from Axial, and a couple of days later, there's a delivery of a beautiful life size, 3D representation model, which I can then take to plan and treat a patient with. So the heavy lifting really has all been done. As Roger alluded to, in the past, it was hugely time consuming at work, that required a huge amount of training. But now basically, that's been replaced with pushing the button and these supercomputers taken all of my heavy lifting away. And I think this is one of the true representations, of high technology really, really advances, real world solutions. And my patients are the benefactors from this. >> Roger, Dr. Brown lay out the architecture, because first of all, pretend I want to take this every single friend, that I have here in California and around the world. I want to just deploy this what's the architecture and what's needed on the deployment side, say to Belfast as you deploy this, what's kind of involved, can you just take us through high level, I'm actually cloud scale is amazing. No doubt about it. We just talked about that but, what's involved in the architecture side, am I standing up on EC2 is there SageMaker involved me? What's the architecture and then deployment, What does that look like? >> Sure, so can you slide slight step back, one of the challenges when we as the med tech community try and introduce innovation into healthcare into hospitals, the hospitals IT infrastructure network definition, is often pretty locked down. So we're trying to bring new software and load it and install it into the hospital data system is a huge, often lengthy process that has, to jump through lots of hoops, in terms of a key network compliance, lots of different steps along the journey. And that often was for very good reasons, is a significant barrier, to the timely adoption of innovative technologies like ours. What platforming activity on AWS allies, were just another website. As Dr. Tim has said, his own though his only existence, with Axial3D in terms of interface, is dragging and dropping, the CT scan into our website, into our portal exists locally on the AWS instance, in whichever region we are working with, for example, in the US never leaves the US, we use the public cloud version. In US East, we take advantage of many features within AWS. But SageMaker is probably a core of what we do. It's not innovation that AWS introduced, you know, several years ago, that is the lightest to produce this, this machine learning trained set of algorithms, that allow us to give this disruption. >> And it sounds like the more you use it, the more get smarter is that as well. >> Absolutely, so our journey as Tim said, we're in a journey not only in terms of the technology, and you're very perceptive in terms of, yes, the more we train it, the more we train it, on specific anatomy types or pathology types or trauma types, the better our system gets, at recognizing the specific characteristics of those. But more importantly, this is about journey pipe. Having made this disruption we make the change and transformation of new standards of care pathways, Nazi innovation that we just enable. It's amazing surgical teams like Tim's, that make transformation. >> Dr. Brown now on your side you're sitting there I got a big problem trying to solve these problems. I got patients one but one better outcomes, they want to live. I don't want to throw away kidneys. I don't have to you just solve that problem. Now when they bring that over, what was it like over on your side of the house as a practitioner deploying it? You got two jobs going on. You're kind of doing IT integration on one hand and you're a surgeon on the other trying to make things happen. You know, what I see this is not a lot of it here. What's the deployment look like? >> Deployment to me is I don't know why ever as doing it, it's such a straightforward, easy situation. And it's, it's remarkable, really. It's such a good solution. I think, part of any sort of change management program, and this, again, is change management. It's challenging the way we think about things. That's challenging people's comfort zones. And anytime we need to change, we've got this anatomy of change. You've got innovators, we've got early adopters, we've got late adopters. And I think what we're going to see over the next five to 10 years is people recognizing that this technology, is a game changer, possibly being driven by their patients who say, I want a 3D model. And I want to see what this actually looks like. Because basically, that black and white picture you're showing me, doesn't make any sense to me. And I think there's going to be the two drivers is that the first is that we want to have consistency of care and the lack of variation in our care across all services. But as well as that the patience, I think, are going to drive this as well. So once once we get the innovators and the early adopters of this technology on board, then we'll see a tipping point. And that's, that's when it becomes an acceptable and normal thing for people, to do when they come into hospital. There'll be shown printout of their 3D printed model of their of their pathology, and that will be used to inform their decision making, for the treatment processes. And that's a true collaboration between doctor or surgeon and the patient. And that's, that's where we need to be in 21st century it's got to be a collaborative decision making process. And you talked about patient journeys, and, this is a really integral part. This is the roadmap of your journey to a large extent. So I think this I can see this, that's being rolled out worldwide, being driven by patients by correction and variability of health care provision. >> Its a great example, of an innovative award winner for the most innovative use of artificial intelligence and machine learning 3D images saving lives. Congratulations, Tim, Roger, it's phenomenal. Final question as we end this out. What's the scar tissue, pun intended? Well, what did you learn? What are some of the things that you could share with folks, as people look at this and say, this is an example of cloud scale and technology for good? What lessons have you learned? What can you share for folks, take a minute to explain each. But Roger, we'll start with you. >> Yeah, sure. So I think a number of lessons for us on this journey. As Tim says, this is a we're at the start of a journey, of understanding the power of what 3D imaging can bring to providing a consistent or less variable care, but also, as Tim also alluded to, in terms of the patient understanding, I think that patient understanding, is one of the huge leap forwards, that we didn't set out initially thinking, we're going to be able to help educate and better inform patients. But that was one of the derive benefits suddenly became apparent. So that was a great lesson. I think that incredible levels of adoption, that we're starting to see across the US across Europe. Because it's so easy to adopt, compared to traditional IT methods. Surgeons just register for a website, and they can start transacting and getting service from us, as opposed to having to have these huge IT programs. So I think we're now starting to really scratch the surface and start seeing the benefits of this isn't an administrative system. It's not the HR system. It's not a finance system, or maybe healthcare was comfortable in using public cloud. This is core hardcore clinical service, clinical diagnosis, clinical education, and the Amazon cloud is enabling that, just wouldn't be possible with this technology, (mumbles) the lessons we're learning are just (mumbles). >> Dr. Tim Brown and take us home and the segment, with your take, lessons learned and advice to others. >> I think the lesson learned are that doctors and healthcare providers are all extremely wary of change of new innovations. Because they feel that already, they're overburdened, and probably my colleagues in the States and across Europe feel like, we're a bit overburdened by all the things that we have to do. And this may potentially have been a more difficult or odds to your workload and actually fact, this makes your workload a lot easier and convincing people and getting people to understand that, this really does make your life a lot easier. It actually removes all the scar tissue it removes the difficulties that have been put in place by organizations. And once people realize that, that's what there is no heavy lifting. And this will make a huge difference to your practice and your patients understanding of your practice. And once that, once up, people really realize that, then the tipping point will be achieved. I'm looking forward to that date because this is going to be the new normal in the next five to 10 years. >> While the performance that you're putting up the numbers of 90 transplants successfully over six weeks, dwarfs the full year last year, really kind of shows the outcome is a game changer. And again, congratulations on your success. Roger, thank thank you for coming on. Congratulations on being the award winner, a diverse partner for the most innovative AI and machine learning solutions. Thanks for taking the time for part of this AWS partner awards program. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Okay, I'm John Furrier, we're covering the AWS public sector partner awards, program put on by the CUBE and AWS public sector partners. Thanks for watching. (bright upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Hi everybody, welcome back to London. You're watching The Cube, and we have a special coverage here of the pre-day at AWS headquarters in London. I'm Dave Vellante and The Cube, we go out to the events, we extract the signal from the noise. Alastair Allen is here, the chief technical officer of Healthcare Kainos Software. It's a Belfast based company, publicly traded company. Alastair, welcome to The Cube. Great to see you, thanks for coming out. You were downstairs earlier addressing the audience, we're gonna talk about that. But first of all, tell us about Kainos. >> So Kainos, Belfast based company, formed in the late '80's a spin out of Queens University in Belfast. We've grown to now over 1300 people and we build digital technology to help people work faster, smarter and better. There's two things we do. We provide digital services, bespoke services for public and private sector organizations across the world, and we provide digital platforms for work day customers and also for healthcare organizations. >> So, when you say digital platforms. What exactly do you mean by that? Tell our audience. >> So, our digital platforms in healthcare is something that we can talk about. So platforms to enable both hospitals to digitize their workflow and also regions, so CCG's , STP's within the NHS. To bring information together using a platform and normalizing that data and making it available to clinicians and patients. >> And this is, your flagship product is called Evolve. Correct? >> Correct. >> And you're one of the sort of founders or inventors of Evolve. Tell us more about Evolve. >> So Evolve, originated just over ten years ago, our first customer was Ipswich Hospital and Ipswich had a big problem with paper, with a large medical records library and they asked us to come in and help them digitize that and make it available in an easy to view, accessible format for their clinicians. >> So tell me more about that. So you digitize it, you take all this mounds of paper and what does that do? Other than reduce the amounts of paper. Does it make it searchable? >> Yeah, we index the content, we apply metadata whenever we capture it, trying to make it accessible for clinicians. I think when you digitize paper , the one good thing paper had going for it was you could pick it up and it was tactile. So we've done a lot of work to try and make it mobile, make it accessible, make it searchable and increasingly now with some of the services that AWS provide, we're able to look at taking that even further and getting more information out of that content. >> Add some color to that. So how has the AWS cloud affected your ability to deliver these capabilities to your customers? >> Well I think, the breathe and depth of services that AWS provide, enables us to be able to innovate quickly, to use services like I've mentioned like comprehend medical. That take the heavy lifting, away from us and helps us focus on delivering better applications for our customers. >> So part of what you do, is you architected the software that's running on the cloud. Can you talk a little bit about the architecture? What you guys have built. Presumably the cloud allows you to scale. >> Alastair Allen: Yeah. >> And take advantage of more innovations. But discuss the architecture if you would. >> So, the product that I originally talked about in 2009 and about four years ago in 2015, we decided to re-platform for the cloud. And that was in response to a number of problems that we were seeing in the market. And moved to patient centered care, a drive to try and standardize care away from the variable nature that was there and also to get away from closed silos of information. And we decided at that point to create our platform natively in the cloud and using the services of Amazon web services. So we created a microservices based architecture that runs in multi-candidate cloud native way. With a AWS. That allows us to adopt disciplines like continuous delivery and cultures like DeVops. We've been able to release value quickly and often to our customers. >> So it was a total rewrite of the platform? >> Yes. So we started again from scratch and we developed that using the modern cloud services. And we've used that then for all use cases as well so we've moved beyond just settings within a hospital. And been able to take that beyond the walls of a hospital, out into the community, into primary care, mental health. And delivering solutions like that, across regions within the NHS, to join up information. Where before clinicians would simply not have had access to those. >> In a sense you're migrating your existing install base to the cloud based platform, as I presume it's a SAS based platform. Is that right? >> So, Evolve Integrated Care is a platform it's a SAS based platform. So we run it, we monitor it, we maintain it and we deliver that as a service to our customers. >> And so your existing customers now have an opportunity to migrate and how does that all work? >> Yeah, so we're talking to our existing customers, how they can leverage the cloud based platform and the breathe of different services that it provides. We very much see an opportunity for helping to digitize a hospital. So how do you optimize the flow of patients through a hospital and making sure that clinicians have access to the information. Many of customers have hundreds of applications, information spread across their estate, bringing that together and orchestrating the workflow for particular pathways or particular conditions. >> Plus they have to manage their own infrastructure, I presume. >> Absolutely, and we want to build applications quickly, they want to focus on delivering healthcare. They don't want to focus on managing ten and server rooms within their hospitals. So, our move to the cloud really came about because of our customers telling us that they're struggling to manage this infrastructure. They wanted us to take some of that burden away from them and to help them with some of their security challenges, availability challenges. Quite often their local infrastructure was not very resilient. And by moving to AWS, we were able to use native cloud services to address many of those challenges. >> So you're taking away that heavy lifting for them. AWS takes it away for you. >> Alastair Allen: Yeah. >> In a large regard as well. While your engineers can obviously program the infrastructure. But how have you seen the customers that have moved and taken advantage of this. What has it done for their business specifically? What's the impact? >> So, what I think, it frees up people within their organization to scale up in other areas to do other things. It frees up physical space as well in many cases. It takes away risks and we've all heard of some of the recent security incidents. Wanna Cry was a huge thing in the NHS not so long ago. Coming around from just simple things like not patching servers and work stations. So, by taking on that responsibility we're freeing up those hospital systems to focus on what they do best. >> How do they do that? Do they kind of retrain folks? What's that been like? I presume it wasn't frictionless but it's an opportunity for people to advance their careers. Do you have any visibility on how your customers have handled that? >> To be honest, not a huge amount. It has, I agree, there has been some friction there. It's not always an easy journey, there's a whole mindset change of what people used to do before and the types of activity that they'll do tomorrow. And it's something that our customers are still on a journey on. And so we're quite early on in that process. >> But I would say to folks in the IT community of your expertise's of managing storage arase, there's probably a better future for you if you can move up the stack and learn more about applications , data, machine intelligence. >> Absolutely, higher up the value chain and getting closer to the user, closer to the customer. >> I mean, that's where the difference is. And it's particularly in healthcare right? You try to balance the cost of healthcare, everybody's aware of the rising cost of healthcare with the patient outcomes. And technology is a way to address that problem. Isn't it? >> Absolutely, and I think never before. I think it's just a great time to work in health IT. We've now got access to some fantastic services the rise of artificial intelligence, the machine learning has never before been so available. And really having organizations such as ourselves to really solve those problems that our customers have and introduce those efficiencies and ultimately better patient outcomes. >> So how are you using the data that lives in Evolve, I presume you're looking at applying artificial intelligence and the like, talk about that. But also, how do you ensure security, privacy, etcetera? >> So, a couple things on data, I think one of the things we've done recently is the adoption of the FHIR standard within healthcare and all the data that we aggregate from the various clinical systems, we normalize that down into a single FHIR data profile and that really helps us then have a common data model that our application can use. But that's only the start, that creates the potential then to use that for secondary usage, such as publishing health data analytics and ultimately machine learning. And we're looking at a number of errors in machine learning, I think there are some ethical challenges there to be aware of and we've started with a recent examples of understanding how we can use machine learning to try and get that structured data out of the documents, that's something that we're working on with data with the AWS team at the minute, to leverage a lot of that scanned content that we have and evolve and be able to create the structured outcome. Really to make it easier for clinicians to find information within the medical record. >> So the AWS reinvent last fall, you know Sage Maker was of course buzzing. Is that something that you're looking at? >> It's something, so we haven't used it in Evolve so far but within Kainos we have an AI practice and we have a group of guys that are focused on the AI capability. Evaluating those tools, working with AWS and helping us understand how we can use that technology to solve the problems of our customers. >> Yeah, it's early days. So you talk about helping solve the problems of the customers. Summarize for us the key problems that you see machine intelligence, AI solving. >> I think there's probably different categories of how you could use it. There's the diagnostic sort of use case where you could use AI to help process imagery, to help with the diagnostic process. There's being able to add personalization to whether that be to patients or to clinicians, helping to provide insight into whatever the use case may be and all the use cases similar to that. >> Last words, so you're addressing the pre-day healthcare reform that's going on here at AWS. What's that like, what's going on downstairs, what did you tell the audience? >> Yeah, great day. So we had a group of healthcare professionals across the NHS in Ireland, very interesting group. We spoke this morning, I spoke with our customer Gloucester CC chief and we talked about the shared care record solution that we've delivered into Gloucester. So that's bringing information together for over 600,000 patients across the region and providing information in a single joined up view that was not available before. So great feedback, great interaction, lots of questions afterwards so looking forward to going back down and chatting some more to the group. >> Excellent. Hard to do that without the cloud I would imagine , accommodating all of the 600,000 customers right. >> Not possible. >> Alastair thanks so much for coming to The Cube. >> Thanks, Dave. >> Appreciate having you. Alright, thanks for watching everybody. Keep it right there, we'll be back with our next guest. You're watching The Cube from AWS headquarter in London. We'll be right back. (upbeat music)

live from Las Vegas it's the cube covering AWS reinvents 2018 brought to you by Amazon Web Services inhale and their ecosystem partners hey welcome back everyone this the cube live day 3 coverage of Amazon Web Services AWS reinvent 2018 we're here with two cents Dave six years we've been covering Amazon every single reinvent since they've had this event except for the first year and you know we've been following AWS really since its inception one of my startup said I was trying to launch and didn't ever got going years ago and he went easy to launch was still command-line and so we know all about it but what's really exciting is the global expansion of Amazon Web Services the impact that not only the commercial business but the public sector government changing the global landscape and the person who I've written about many times on Forbes and unhooking angle Theresa Carlson she's the chief a public sector vice president of Amazon Web Services public sector public sector great to see you hi hi John I checked great to be here again as always so the global landscape mean public sector used to be this a we talk to us many times do this do that yeah the digital environment and software development growth is changing all industries including public sector he's been doing a great job leading the charge the CIA one of the most pivotal deals when I asked Andy jassie directly and my one-on-one with them that this proudest moments one of them is the CIA deal when I talked to the top execs in sales Carla and other people in Amazon they point to that seminal moment with a CIA deal happen and now you got the DoD a lot of good stuff yeah what's do how do you top that how do you raise the bar well you know it still feels like day one even with all that work in that effort and those customers kind of going back to go forward in 2013 when we won the CIA opportunity they are just an amazing customer the entire community is really growing but there's so much more at this point that we're doing outside of that work which is being additive around the world and as you've always said John that was kind of a kind of a pivotal deal but now we're seeing so many of our government customers we now have customers at a hundred and seventy four countries and I have teams on the ground in 28 countries so we're seeing a global mood but you know at my breakfast this week we talked a lot about one of the big changes I've seen in the last like 18 months is state and local government where we're seeing actually states making a big move California Arizona New York Ohio Virginia so we're starting to see those states really make big moves and really looking at applications and solutions that can change that citizen services engagement and I achieve in these state local governments aren't real I won't say their course they're funded but they're not like funded like a financial services sector but that's women money they got to be very efficient clouds a perfect opportunity for them because they can be more productive I do a lot of good things I can and there's 20 new governor's coming on this year so we've had a lot of elections lots of new governors lots of new local council members coming in but governor's a lot of times you'll see a big shift when a governor comes in and takes over or if there's one that stays in and maintains you'll see kind of that program I was just in Arizona a couple weeks ago and the governor of Arizona has a really big fish toward modernization and utilization of information technology and the CIO of the state of Arizona is like awesome they're doing all this work transformative work with the government and then I was at Arizona State University the same day where we just announced a cloud Innovation Center for smart cities and I went around their campus and it's amazing they're using IOT everywhere you can go in there football stadium and you can see the movement of the people how many seats are filled where the parking spaces are how much water's been used where Sparky is their their backside I've got to be Sparky which was fed but you're seeing these kind of things and all of that revs on AWS and they're doing all the analytics and they're gonna continue to do that one for efficiency and knowledge but to also to protect their students and citizens and make them safer through the knowledge of data analytics you know to John's point about you know funding and sometimes constricted funding at state and local levels and even sometimes the federal levels yeah we talked about this at the public sector summit I wonder if you could comment Amazon in the early days help startups compete with big companies it gave them equivalent resources it seems like the distance between public sector and commercial is closing because of the cloud they're able to take advantage of resources at lower cost that they weren't able to before it's definitely becoming the new normal in governments for sure and we are seeing that gap closing this year 2018 for me was a year that I saw kind of big moves to cloud because in the early days it was website hosting kind of dipping their toes in this year we're talking about massive systems that are being moved to the cloud you know big re-architecting and design and a lot of people say well why do they do that that costs money well the reason is because they may have to Rio architect and design but then they get all the benefits of cloud through the things that examples this week new types of storage new types of databases at data analytics IOT machine learning because in the old model they're kind of just stagnated with where they were with that application so we're seeing massive moves with very large applications so that's kind of cool to see our customers and public sector making those big moves and then the outputs the outcome for citizens tax payers agencies that's really the the value and sometimes that's harder to quantify or justify in public sector but over the long term it's it's going to make a huge difference in services and one of the things I now said the breakfast was our work and something called helping out the agents with that ATO process the authority to operate which is the big deal and it cost a lot of money a lot of times long time and processes and we've been working with companies like smartsheet which we helped them do this less than 90 days to get go plow so now working with our partners like Talos and Rackspace and our own model that's one of the things you're also gonna see check and Jon you're taking your knowledge of the process trying to shrink that down could time wise excessive forward to the partners yes to help them through the journey these fast move fast that kind of just keep it going and that's really the goal because they get very frustrated if they build an application that takes forever to get that security that authority to operate because they can't really they can't move out into full production unless that's completed and this could make or break these companies these contracts are so big oh yeah I mean it's significant and they want to get paid for what they're doing and the good work but they also want to see the outcome and the results yeah I gotta ask you what's new on the infrastructure side we were in Bahrain for the region announcement exciting expansion there you got new clouds gov cloud east yeah that's up and running no that's been running announced customers are in there they're doing their dr their coop running applications we're excited yes that's our second region based on a hundred and eighty five percent year-over-year growth of DEFCON region west so it's that been rare at reading I read an article that was on the web from general Keith Alexander he wrote an op-ed on the rationale that the government's taking in the looking at the cloud and looking at the military look at the benefits for the country around how to do cloud yes you guys are also competing for the jet idea which is now it's not a single source contract but they want to have one robust consistent environment yeah a big advantage new analytics so between general Keith Alexander story and then the the public statement around this was do is actually outlined benefits of staying with one cloud how is that going what how's that Jedi deal going well there's there's two points I'd like to make them this first of all we are really proud of DoD they're just continuing to me and they're sticking with their model and it's not slowing them down everything happening around Jedi so the one piece yes Jedi is out there and they need to complete this transaction but the second part is we're just we're it's not slowing us down to work with DoD in fact we've had great meetings with DoD customers this week and they're actually launching really amazing cloud workloads now what's going to be key for them is to have a platform that they can consistently develop and launch new mission applications very rapidly and because they were kind of behind they their model right now is to be able to take rapid advantage of cloud computing for those warriors there's those war fighters out in the field that we can really help every day so I think general Alexander is spot on the benefits of the cloud are going to really merit at DoD I have to say as an analyst you know you guys can't talk about these big deals but when companies you know competitors can test them information becomes public so in the case of CI a IBM contested the judge wheeler ruling was just awesome reading and it underscored Amazon's lead at the time yeah at Forrest IBM to go out and pay two billion dollars for software the recent Oracle can contestant and the GAO is ruling there gave a lot of insights I would recommend go reading it and my takeaway was the the DoD Pentagon said a single cloud is more secure it's going to be more agile and ultimately less costly so that's that decision was on a very strong foundation and we got insight that we never would have been able to get had they not tested well and remember one of the points we were just talking earlier was the authority to operate that that ability to go through the security and compliance to get it launched and if you throw a whole bunch of staff at an organization if they they're struggling with one model how are they gonna get a hundred models all at once so it's important for DoD that they have a framework that they can do live in real first of all as a technical person and an operating system which is kind of my background is that it makes total sense to have that cohesiveness but the FBI gave a talk at your breakfast on Tuesday morning Christene Halverson yeah she's amazing and she pointed out the problems that they're having keep up with the bad actors and she said quote we are FBI is in a data crisis yes and she pointed out all the bad things that happened in Vegas the Boston Marathon bombing and the time it took to put the puzzle pieces together was so long and Amazon shrinks that down if post-event that's hard imagine what the DoD is to do in real time so this is pointing to a new model it's a new era and on that well and we you know one of the themes was tech4good and if you look at the FBI example it's a perfect example of s helping them move faster to do their mission and if they continue to do what they've always done which is use old technologies that don't scale buying things that they may never use or being able to test and try quickly and effectively test Belfast recover and then use this data an FBI I will tell you it is brilliant how they're the name of this program sandcastle one Evan that they've used to actually do all this data and Linux and she talked about time to mission time to catch the bad guys time to share that analysis and data with other groups so that they could quickly disseminate and get to the heart of the matter and not sit there and say weight on it weight on this bad guy while we go over here and change time to value completely being that Amazon is on whether it's commercial or government I talk about values great you guys could have a short term opportunity to nail all these workloads but in the Amazon fashion there's always a wild card no I was so excited Dave and I interviewed Lockheed Martin yesterday yeah and this whole ground station thing is so cool because it's kind of like a Christopher Columbus moment yeah because the world isn't flat doesn't have an edge no it's wrong that lights can power everything there's spaces involved there's space company yes space force right around the corner yep you're in DC what's the excitement around all this what's going on we surprised a lot of with that announcement Lockheed Martin and DigitalGlobe we even had DigitalGlobe in with Andy when we talked about AWS ground station and Lockheed Martin verge and the benefit of this is two amazing companies coming together a tub yes that knows cloud analytics air storage and now we're taking a really hard problem with satellites and making it almost as a service as well as Lockheed doing their cube stats and making sure that there is analysis of every satellite that moves that all points in time with net with no disruption we're going to bring that all together for our customers for a mission that is so critical at every level of government research commercial entities and it's going to help them move fast and that is the key move very fast every mission leader you talk to you that has these kind of predators will say we have to move faster and that's our goal bringing commercial best practices I know you got a run we got less than a minute left but I want you to do a quick plug in for the work you're doing around the space in general you had a special breakout ibrehem yours public sector summit not going on in the space area that your involvement give it quick yeah so we will have it again this year winner first ever at the day before our public sector summit we had an Earth and space day and where we really brought together all these thought leaders on how do we take advantage of that commercial cloud services that are out there to help both this programs research Observatory in any way shape app data sets it went great we worked with NASA while we were here we actually had a little control center with that time so strip from NASA JPL where we literally sat and watched the Mars landing Mars insight which we were part of and so was Lockheed Martin and so his visual globe so that was a lot of fun so you'll see us continue to really expand our efforts in the satellite and space arena around the world with these partnership well you're super cool and relevant space is cool you're doing great relevant work with Amazon I wish we had more time to talk about all the mentoring you're doing with women you're doing tech4good so many great things going on I need to get you guys and all my public sector summits in 2019 we're going to have eight of them around the world and it was so fantastic having the Cuban Baja rain this year I mean it was really busy there and I think we got to see the level of innovation that's shaping up around the world with our customers well thanks to the leadership that you have in the Amazon as a company in the industry is changing the cube will be global and we might see cube regions soon if Lockheed Martin could do it the cube could be there and they have cube sets yes thank you for coming on theresa carlson making it happen really changing the game and raising the bar in public sector globally with cloud congratulations great to have you on the cube as always more cube covers Andy Jasmine coming up later in the program statements for day three coverage after this short break [Music]

>> Narrator: Live from Santa Clara in the heart of Silicon Valley. It's the Cube. Covering Cloud Foundry Summit 2017. Brought to you by the Cloud Foundry Foundation and Pivotal. >> Welcome back, I'm Stu Miniman joined by my cohost, John Troyer. There's nothing we love more when we're at the User Conference is to actually be able to dig in and talk with the users. I want to welcome to the program Opal Perry who is a divisional CIO at Allstate. Did the keynote this morning. A really good community here. I know they were excited to hear your story and thank you so much for joining us. >> Thanks, it's great to be here with you. >> So Opal, we hear this term the digital transformation. Some people think it's just a buzz word but you talked in your keynote about the transformation that's going on in your world. Why don't you give us a quick overview of your role and what this transformation has been. >> Sure, so I've been with Allstate almost six years and I'm one of the vice presidents on the technology leadership team so we both work together as a whole team on initiatives that affect the entire enterprise. And then my particular day-to-day focus is Divisional CIO of Claims. We're a large insurer. The number publicly held insurer in the U.S. We support claims for auto, property, Allstate business insurance. It's a outstanding time to be in the business because there's just so much going on in technology. There's so many immersion areas and particularly when we are able to knit them together to serve our customers from insurance protection, restoration standpoint. It's really powerful. We do say and hear transformation so much that it feels sometimes like an overused term but I haven't found a better word for it yet because I think things really are transformative. We've been used to, for many years in the industry, change. Right, continuous improvement. We're always trying to change and get better. But what's happening now with this conversions of forces is truly transformative. We're not just replacing one way of doing things with a slightly improved way. We're changing the way people interact and serve the customer. >> And Opal, what was the driver for the change? Was there a pain point or competitive pressure? What drove this change? >> At Allstate, it's all about the customer opportunity. As I mentioned this morning, we've got 16 million customer households and that's just a tremendous responsibility and also a tremendous opportunity. To us, it was thinking about how do we bring the forces of this great 86-year-old company to bear and use the digital and technology changes emerging and really do that in support of giving our customer a better and better experience. How do we protect them? How do we restore them? >> As you are making this transformation to... We're here at the Cloud Foundry Summit, so interested in the Cloud Foundry story, how some of that decision process, obviously the tech is really cool, A. So was this coming out of the developers first, the technologists first or was it more of a needs analysis from the top-down that like a platform instead of technologies like Cloud Foundry? It could be what we need. >> It really came from a number of quarters but the tipping force was from our infrastructure area. As we looked like a lot of large companies do at what's the future of infrastructure, both in the data center, themes that have been emerging for many years in Cloud. There were a number of us that are leaders at Allstate that came from a banking background so we had seen previous era changes. Prior to Cloud Foundry been instantiated, I'd worked more in home-grown paths and seen that opportunity both from the developer but also from the infrastructure and so when Andy Zitney had joined us, he's with McKesson now, but he had joined and was our CTO for a period of time and had background from Chase and PayPal and various areas. He came in and build our platform team and really looked through their selection process, determined Cloud Foundry was a great option for us and something that we could grow with over time to start meeting the needs. But it was really an interest of saying hey, let's let infrastructure get out of the way, provide the foundation for the developers, and let the developers innovate great software for the business. But let's let the platform take care of things. He brought early awareness to a lot of those factors. >> Yeah, I think the joke is that nobody should be righting their own cryptographic software anymore (Stu chuckles). Nobody should be writing a distributed key-value ParaStore anymore. The Cloud Foundry people will tell you nobody should be writing their own platform anymore. That's hard enough, let somebody else take care of it. >> Yeah, maybe if you're a PhD student (interviewers chuckling) or researching the next great idea but in terms of being within an enterprise, whose primary role is to serve customers in a different way. Again, it just takes care of a lot of the lifting. That took a while when we introduced it for some people to understand. People would say to me why are you adding another layer? Getting them to understand the power of the abstraction and that's what we're really doing. We're lifting up above so we don't have to be worried so much about the exact infrastructure we're sitting on. >> That upscaling process that you're talking about, that training process. Both from the developer side and the operational side, there's a learning curve. Some people embrace it and some maybe not so much. Can you talk a little about how people have gotten trained up on the new skills, how you're helping people do that? >> Yes, in our platform team, it really started with Matt Curry who joined us a few years ago. He's a awesome engineer but also a great leader. He really set the tone culturally for the platform team to be learning environment and for people to share a lot. So a lot's really happened where he's led the hiring and training and seating of the platform team. From a developer perspective, when we looked across the enterprise and realized we've got a couple thousand developers that have worked for us for decades across different areas, we needed to do something more to reach scale more quickly. Initially, we were pairing with Pivotal and that was effective in getting some good results but we thought in order to make that scale and scale more quickly, we wanted to take a different approach. We partnered with Galvanize and brought in-house a 12-week bootcamp-style approach. >> Opal, one of the things that really resonated in your keynote, you talked about painting a picture as to how this technology really impacted your customers. There was a tree, there was a sun, there was your lab's environment and roots. Maybe if you could tease that out a little bit for us and explain how this technology really impacts your users. >> Yes, well, one I think in using that metaphor, it kind of acknowledges the environment is somewhat organic, right? The platform is still growing a lot, the ecosystem we're in, we have the chance to both contribute to the community and to take from it as it develops. To me, that's a really strong notion. The notion that particularly in leadership, we're kind of we're gardeners in a way, right? We're fostering the growth and so I thought that it's a really good example of thinking about as a tree or any plant really grows. It needs a variety of factors so I said our customers are like the sun to us, they're the reason for existing, and that's what we're all orbiting around. But the air represents all the business opportunity. The winds of change have been blowing mightily for years. The soil in which the tree is planted is like all the great Cloud Foundry instances. It's the training, it's the new role definition, it's the holistic program that really defines how we work as a digital product team. We put all that together and we need constant leadership support on a number of grounds to really make sure we take and cement the change. >> What about the developers? Where do they fit in this natural, organic analogy. >> They're the growing, thriving, strong plant itself. I think both. We aim for each individual product team and each individual, whether it's developer, product manager or designer to be continuously growing and using their creativity, discipline, strength, to bring us great business results. And then when you kind of back out and look at our network or product teams, that's a really important thing to me. An enterprise of our scale is very few breakthroughs will occur, I believe, because of a single digital product innovation. It's really in the ability to knit together different products to provide an end-to-end service or experience to the customer. >> How do you look at the public cloud? You know, Cloud Foundry allows? We were talking about BOSH, a multi-cloud environment. Where does your applications and deployments live today and how do you look at the public cloud? >> You know, we're still exploring some of the possibilities. Matt and his team have been very active looking. We started with on-premise installation for Cloud Foundry. And for myself, leading a development team, it's great as the platform is a look to kind of burst out into a multi-cloud environment. It'll be transparent to my team as long as we're operating to run on our Cloud Foundry instance, they can take us wherever we need to go. They've been doing a lot of work with our security team and other areas of the company to determine what's the right way to forge the path forward. I had a meeting with them Friday and they've got some great design things in the works. I think the next six moths to a year, are going to be looking at some real strong expansion of our cloud strategy. >> How does security fit into this whole picture? Obviously, a major concern for every CIO these days. >> Yeah, absolutely. I mean, to us, we've taken a real security-first approach. We're been our CISO team has been working really closely with Matt and the Cloud engineers and they're just defining how do we want to segregate parts of our environment? How do we follow the principle of trust no one and build security in from the get-go? Again, it's a little bit like the platform itself. I'm confident when they get a solution in place, they'll minimize the burden on my developers and we can just have a security-first mindset but have a lot of the hygiene taken care of by the platform implementation. >> Again, something you don't want to differentiate on. You want to be built into the foundation, or the roots, maybe of our metaphor here. >> Opal: Yes. I heard ya. >> Opal, can you talk a little bit about the apps? Obviously, we've already used words like scale here today. Allstate's a big company. You've got lots of apps. Legacy apps, many different kinds of stacks, generations of technology. How are you choosing what ends up being is this greenfield or things that are being moved? How are you all looking at different applications inside the company? Where they live on which cloud and how they get modernized? >> We're lighting the business needs and strategy, really drive how we prioritize. It really is a matter of a lot, at this point, triage and prioritization. We've got a rich set of opportunities. When we're building new apps in-house, we're certainly looking to take a cloud-first approach. Again, a lot of that's within our own walls today but we know that with the Foundry, it offers us the option to burst out at a later date and leaves us some optionality. The Allstate Corporation, the Allstate brand of insurance is what's best known but in Claims, I also support we have a brand called Encompass Insurance so we're looking to provide support for multiple companies and build technology that can serve everyone. There are a lot of cases too, in an ecosystem like ours, where we're working with third party vendors and they're increasingly offering cloud-based solutions. Again, we do a lot of work with them from the security and compliance perspective to make sure that their strategy is consistent with ours. To make sure we take appropriate care of our customer data. And then I personally get really excited by the refactoring opportunities. I'm really fortunate in Claims that our core claims system was implemented just about 10 years ago. I call it legacy now, but it's not, (John chuckles) as far back to the dark ages as some of the other systems that you'll find within the walls of enterprises. It was build as our last big monolithic implementation and we've been doing decoupling there. So whenever we know we're going to do a decoupling, we look for what opportunity to implement new cloud native microservices and again just stand that up in our environment with the platform team. >> I wanted to ask also about culture and technology adoption. We're sitting here in the middle of Silicon Valley. This cloud phenomenon driven a lot from Silicon Valley. Sometimes people think this cloud native stuff, it's for startups, it's for the kids, it's for whatever. You're based in the Midwest and I also, I'm an Illinois boy myself. You get sometimes, kind of a inferiority complex about the coast, both coasts. But this does not seem to be a coastal phenomenon. This does not seem to be something that only a startup can learn. This is Allstate, a mature company and with a Midwestern base, can you kind of talk a little about was there anything about that in terms of people saying we can't do that here or that sort of thing? >> No, no, I mean, in fact, I think it's a global phenomenon. I was living for almost two years in Belfast, Northern Ireland. We have a division there, Allstate Northern Ireland and we saw a lot of Foundry activity among different companies there. Of course, there's a European summit every year, as well, so I think it's just good common sense. A lot of us, again, before Cloud Foundry came through were working with the different predecessor technologies and Spring and Vmware, you know various aspects and kind of knitting together which felt like reinventing the wheel. So it's just good business sense, good common sense when there's a solution that you can leverage. I think it's just like you were commenting earlier, right? If it's there and you can use it and you can allow the focus to be on what really differentiates you as a business to your customers. That's the way to go. >> Opal, the last question I have for you is there either commentary on any of the announcements that were made this week or are there any things that you're hoping really, for either Pivotal, the fFundation in general, your ecosystem that would make your life easier that's kind of on your to-do list from the vendor side? >> There's so much to take in. I think it's probably still going to take me a week to absorb all the implications. It's great to watch the dynamics going on. I think Microsoft joining the Foundation, that's a very good move 'cause we have so many different technologies within our enterprise so to understand how different vendors are working and playing together in some way is really good. I think Abbey and the Foundation, they've been fantastic about always soliciting input from members like us and members of the community about what we want to see. For me, it's always a big eye-to-word scale. Again, we're a huge enterprise. There are even larger enterprises here that have started running and when this really becomes the we all achieve the aspirational goals and it becomes the day-to-day backbone. It's just making sure this is really hardened to run at true enterprise weight. I think that the enterprise scale of the future is going to be even bigger than what it has been historically because with all these new products, we're driving an appetite towards greater and greater customer interaction. I saw that in banking ten years ago and I think we're going to see it in insurance more and more so we just want to know that we're all working together to get that strength and that power that the customer needs. >> Opal Perry, really appreciate you sharing Allstate's digital transformation with us and our audience, for John and myself. We'll be back with more coverage here from the Cloud Foundry Summit. Thanks for watching the Cube. >> Opal: Thank you. (gentle lively music)