(upbeat music) >> Narrator: From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of AWS Public Sector Online brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of AWS Public Sector Summit Online. I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE. I wish we could be there in person, but we're doing remote because of the COVID and the pandemic. We've got a great guest, Paul Grist. Worldwide Public Sector, Head of Education International for AWS. Paul, thank you for coming on remotely. >> Great to be here, John. >> There's a lot of disruption in the education space this year with universities and schools still uncertain about what the future will look like. What are some of the biggest trends you're seeing? >> John, what we've seen is the rapid adoption of technology and the growth of flexible online learning, learning that can take place anytime, anywhere. What we've seen is universities, national education systems, and schools rapidly migrating systems and content to the cloud, spinning up new applications. And we've seen companies that provide technology and content and platforms, the ed techs and publishers of the world, increasing their capacity, increasing their capability to deliver new applications to education. >> What is some of this research that you're finding out there? >> Yeah. You know, a time of much change and things happening very, very fast. We responded fast to the changes, John. Got a load of customer conversations together, looking at speeches by educationalists who were responding to the changes at some of the online events that spun up very quickly at places like the University of Buckingham, ASU, JSV, Inside Higher Education, places like Blackboard World. And really just talked to those leaders about their responses to the change, what kinds of things they were doing, and brought that together into the research. It's underpinned by some in-depth research and insights from education reports and articles too. >> Thanks Paul, really appreciate it. Having that research is critical. I know you guys do a lot of work on that. I know you got some news, take a quick plug for the new research that's coming out. You guys just put out today, just take a minute to quickly explain what it's about and how to find it. >> We're publishing today some new research that shows the seven key emerging trends in this new world of education. Check it out on the AWS website. Two key trends, flexible learning and the new world of employability. >> So you guys got a lot of data. It's great with Amazon, got a lot of customers. Good to see you guys getting that research. The question I have for you Paul is, what amount of the research shows really the COVID situation? Because there's before COVID, there's kind of during, and then there's going to be a post-COVID mode. Was that prior research in place with COVID or after COVID? Can you share kind of the update on the relevance of your research? >> Yeah, I think the sector has changed. The sector has gone through the fastest change it's ever gone through. And undoubtedly most of the issues, most of the challenges and opportunities in the sector, predate the pandemic. But what we've seen is COVID accelerate many of the challenges and the opportunities, but also bring new opportunities. >> Yeah, one of the things we've seen with education is the disruption, and the forcing function with COVID. There's a problem, we all know what it is. It's important, there's consequences for those. And you can quantify the disruption with real business value and certainly student impact. There's been downsides with remote education. More teacher-parent involvement and students having to deal with isolation, less social interaction. How do you guys see that? Or what is Amazon doing to solve these problems? Can you talk about that? >> Yeah. I think you know, education is very much a people business. And what we've been trying to do is partner with organizations to ensure that the people are kept at the center of the business. So working with organizations such as LS, sorry, Los Angeles United School District in the US to spin up a call center to allow students to contact their tutors. And parents to interact with tutors, to get questions answered. >> So one of the challenges these academic institutions are facing is speed, it's pace of change. What's going on with competition? How are they competing? How are universities and colleges staying relevant? Obviously there's a financial crisis involved. There's also the actual delivery aspect of it. More and more mergers. You're starting to see ecosystem changes. Can you talk about what's going on in the educational ecosystem? >> Yeah I mean, educational institutions are being forced to rethink their business models. It's an international marketplace in higher education. It's been a growing marketplace for many, many years. That suddenly stopped overnight, so every university has had to rethink about where their revenues are coming from, where the students are coming from. There's been some surprises too. I mean in the UK, actually international enrollments are up post-COVID because one of the strange side effects of COVID is without being able to travel, there's actually a cost saving for students. And so we've seen universities in the UK benefit from students who want to study, perhaps travel and the cost of study was too high previously. Now being able to study remotely. It's an unexpected and unintended consequence. But it kind of shows how there are opportunities for all organizations during this time. >> Many countries had to cancel exams altogether this year, which has been a big, huge problem. I mean people are outraged and people want to learn. It's been, you know, the silver lining in all this is that you have the internet (laughs). You have the cloud. I want to get your thoughts. How are universities and schools dealing with this challenge? Because you have a multi-sided marketplace. You've got the institutions, you've got the students, you got the educators, they all have to be successful. How are universities dealing with this challenge? >> Yeah I think, you know, teaching and learning has been online for 20, 30 years. And I think a lot of organizations have adopted online teaching and learning. But I think assessment is the one big area of education that remains to be made available at scale at low cost. So most assessment is still a pen-and-paper-based. There's big trust and identity issues. And what we're seeing through this COVID change is organizations really getting to grip with both of those issues. So, having the confidence to put assessment online, to make it available at scale, and then also having the confidence to tackle trust and identity questions. So who is taking the exam, where are they sitting? Can we be sure that it's actually that person taking that exam? So you know, the rise of things like proctoring technologies giving organizations the opportunity to assess remotely. >> How has this crisis affected research at academic institutions? Because certainly we know that if you need a lab or something, certainly we're seeing students need to be physically in person. But with remote and all those changes going on with the scale and the pace of change, how has research at academic institutions been impacted? >> Yeah I mean, research has always been a really collaborative activity, but we've seen that collaboration increase. It's had to increase. Researchers have had to go remote. Many of them work in labs. They haven't been able to do that. They've needed to spin up applications and new technologies in the cloud to continue working. But what we're seeing is governments taking an increased interest in the research being applicable, making sure that it leads to innovation which is meaningful. Getting much more involved and insisting that the research is made available now. And of course there's no place that that's clearer than in health research and trying to find a cure for COVID. And then secondly, we're seeing that research is becoming much more collaborative not just across institutions but also countries. So one of the great projects we're involved in at the moment is with the University of Adelaide who are collaborating with researchers from the Breeding and Acclimatization Institute in Poland on a project to study the increase in crop yield of wheat. >> One of the things that's coming out of this, whether it's research or students is open online courses, virtual capabilities. But a concept called stackable learning. Can you explain what that is? >> Yeah. We're in a global marketplace in education and there's increased competition between universities and education providers to make new types of certificates and online badges available. We know that employers are looking for ever more agile methods of scaling and upskilling. And stackable learning is a concept that's been around for a couple of decades now, where learning is broken down into smaller chunks, put together in a more personalized way from a number of different providers. Spun up very, very quickly to respond to need and then delivered to students. We're seeing some of the big providers like edX and Coursera who, again have been around for over a decade become really prominent in the provision of some of these stackable credentials. Their systems run on the cloud. They're easy to access, in many, many cases they're free. We're seeing an increasing number of employers and education institutions adopt and embed these types of delivery systems into their curriculum. >> Totally a fan of stackable learning, it's called the Lego model, whatever I call it. But also online brings the nonlinear progressions. The role of data is super important. So I'm very bullish on education being disrupted by cloud providers and new apps. So you know, I wanted to call that out because I think it's super important. Let me get to a really important piece that it has to be addressed, and I want to get your thoughts on. Cyber security. Okay, cyber attacks and privacy of students are two areas that are super important for institutions to address. What's your reaction to that? >> Yeah, I mean the use of more technology becomes, you know again, a target for cyber attack and unfortunately it's an increasing phenomenon. Simply put, every organization needs to put security first. Needs to operate as a security-first organization. They need to adopt technologies, people and processes that can protect their investments. And work with data management vendors, cloud vendors who've got the compliances and the common privacy and security frameworks such as GDPR in place to make sure that they provide secure services. AWS's security offerings include auditing, login and identity management, data encryption capabilities that offer more transparency and control, to allow institutions protect student data. >> Super important, thanks for sharing. Finally, what's the steps institutions can take to close the digital divide because now some people are taking gap years. Research is changing. People might not even have PCs or internet connections. There's still, this exposes the haves and have nots. What steps can institutions take to do their part? >> Yeah, digital learning is here to stay, John. We've learned that many learners do not have access to technology necessary for online learning. Whether those are devices or a reliable internet connection. But again, you know governments, states, educational authorities have all turned their attention to these issues over the last few months. And we're seeing organizations partner with technology providers that can provide internet connections. Partners in AWS, such as Kajeet who've installed hotspot devices on buses to deploy in areas with no connectivity. You know whether that's a place like Denver, Colorado or whether it's a place, you know, in Nigeria in Africa, remote connection remains a problem everywhere. And we're seeing everybody addressing that issue now. >> Paul, great to have you on theCUBE and sharing your insights on what's going on in international education. Final question for you. In your own words, why is this year at the AWS Public Sector Summit Online important? What's the most important story that people should walk away in this educational industry? >> The most important story, John, is it's a time of incredible change but also incredible opportunity. And we're seeing organizations who have wanted to change, who've wanted to deliver more to their students, who want to deliver a greater experience, who want to access more students and have much greater reach. Now with the appetite to do that. re:Invent is a great opportunity to work with AWS, to understand what's going on with our partners, with our customers. And look at some of the common solutions for the challenges that they're looking to solve. >> Paul Grist, thank you for coming on theCUBE. Really appreciate it. Worldwide Head of Education for International AWS. Thank you for sharing. >> Thanks John, great to be here. >> Okay, this is theCUBE's coverage of AWS Public Sector Online Summit. Remote, virtual, this is theCUBE virtual. I'm John Furrier, your host. Thanks for watching. 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>>Live from Orlando, Florida. It's the cube covering Microsoft ignite brought to you by Cohesity. >>Welcome back everyone to the cubes live coverage of Microsoft ignite. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my cohost. We are joined by Jeffrey Snuffer. He is a technical fellow, Oh three 65 intelligence substrate at Microsoft. Most famous for being the father of PowerShell and one of the key architects of the window server. Thank you so much for coming on, for returning to the show. Yeah, thanks. It's great to be back. So first of all, define your, you're relatively new to this role, so tell us a little bit about what you're doing and what is the intelligent substrate. >> Yes, so you know, a lot of people get this confused as intelligence substrate. There's all three 65 the Microsoft graph. And when I do, as I say, Hey, the best way to think about this as an analogy to an operating system, operating systems are complex, but at the end of the day, they're really, really simple. >>They only do three things. They manage and protect resources. They provide services for developers, right services, API APIs and common controls. And then they provide a base set of applications and a way to get additional applications. So windows manage, CPU, memory, the services when 32 API eyes and then the applications like the browser, et cetera. So all three 65 can really be viewed as an operating system. Sounds strange. Why? Because most operating systems have been operating systems for devices, an operating system for phone, an operating system for a PC and operating system for a server. This is an operating system for people and organizations. So when we think about those three responsibilities, resources and you know, protecting and managing resources, these are the resources for people in organizations. So it's their identity, their, their emails, their chats, their documents, services for developers. These where there's wind 32 for windows, we have ms graph, that's our public API, but then we have services to be able to create, collaborate and communicate documents and interactions. >>And then the applications are things like teams and outlook, et cetera. And so then, Oh, sorry. Then the substrate, the substrate, sort of at the core of it. That's one of our core services. It is storage and then a set of services to manage that and set of services. So the storage is basically a planetary scale, no sequel data store. So every time you create a chat and email document or whatever, it gets stored in the substrate and then three additional copies are created, one of them at least 250 miles away. That's why our date availability and high availability are one thing. So everything gets stored there and then that allows us to do common services like search against it. Does that make sense, >>Jeffrey? Well, one of the biggest challenge people have is when you learn about something and then it has changed an awful lot. Yeah. I think back to the first time I used Microsoft word, Microsoft Excel, it wasn't connected to the internet exactly. Let alone talking about the era of global scale in AI and all of these things that can do in. So maybe give us a fresh as if I'm a brand new person and I, you know, I don't have the, you know, all of the legacy history with the Microsoft office family. What, what is the new, you know, people O us that you're talking about? >>Yeah. So I like to think of it as a back to the original office 1.0, if you remember the original office 1.0, you'd had word, Excel and PowerPoint. And I like to joke, I say it was integrated with the advanced technology at that day of called cardboard, right? We just took the, the, the floppy disks from each one of those products, put it in a cardboard box and said it's a suite. But then it was a vision to a vision of how things should work together to help the individual. And then after that version one, then we reorganized the organization to have common technology teams. And that's when we started to get common controls, common user experience, et cetera, common file formats. Uh, and then it became a true integrated suite. Same thing happened when we went to the cloud. We had all these products that would have a front end couple to a back end, another front end, couple to a back end, another front end coupled a backend. >>Each one would have one or more SDKs, et cetera. And when we first brought them to the cloud, it was the same sort of thing, integrate it with an offering and a name. But there was a vision there. And then that vision drove the reality. And what we did was we said, Hey, let's figure out how to have a common storage for these things. Common backend, a common way to communicate, a common way to do messaging. And then that took a number of years. But that's what drives this consistency. And so that's why when you go and you say, I would like to search for something, you'll find that term, whether it's in your word documents or it's in your emails or your team chats or anything. It's that commonality that makes it answered question. It >>does. Um, so it's, I think about, you know, the era of collaboration and, you know, there were competitors to Microsoft that came out that were built on the internet and you know, deliver those solutions. So this week we've talked to, we haven't dug deep deep into teams, but everyone we've talked to that's using it, it's like, no, really this is a really great product and almost like, you know, forget about some of the things you might have remembered through some of those iterations and changes and things not working together. You know, teams has been built and is allowing some great collaboration, communication with remote workers, smaller businesses, the likes. So it's tough because especially if you're using one tool and you've gone over to some other tool set, it's like, Oh, I don't, why would I go back to that? But it's a very different, uh, Microsoft productivity suite today than, than we might have used in the past. >>That's exactly correct. And then the, into the, uh, uh, intelligent substrate is this layer of AI on top of the substrate, right? So part of that is search, but then we're also doing natural language processing. So basically imagine you saw a store of file in in a one drive that gets stored in one drive and a workflow gets kicked off and that workflow then goes and analyzes the contents of that file and create search terms, et cetera. So we then have common search and then we've got natural language processing that'll go and find, Hey, what are the key points for that document? How do I summarize that document? So then if you see it somewhere you can say, Oh, show me the file card. And I'll say, here's this document. You don't have to read the whole thing. Here are the three key points about it. >>And so the, this is, so to answer the question, why would a, why would a platform guy be working in office? It turns out that to build this AI infrastructure, it's really sort of a platform play. There's key advances that need to be made in, in AI. But actually when you get involved in AI, what you realize is what we really need is more engineering than more science. We need more science, no doubt about it. But boy, is there a need for engineering? Like I need to figure out how to get three to five to seven orders of magnitude more volume of AI going through the system. So when you talk about these key advances in AI that need to be made in terms of of applying them to O three 65 describe them for us and talk about how they will change the future of work and the way we collaborate with our team members in the way we communicate with our team members and, and in our productivity. >>Yeah. So this is where I get so excited about Microsoft's play, right? Because when I decided at the end of last year that I was gonna make a new change, I had a number of opportunities both inside and outside the company. And so the, the thing that really made me say, this is where I want to go was, well, one, it was most important new technology, AI on our most precious business asset, our customers data. So that was very exciting for really got me over the edge was Microsoft's approach to AI. Microsoft takes a very different approach to AI than our competitors, right? The heart of most AI is trying to figure out you and you to achieve some result. Now our competitors do that to try and get you to click a button to buy an ad or to buy something you don't need or subvert some government that they want subverted, right? >>That's none of our peg objectives. We want to understand you for exactly one reason to make you successful, right? How do we, like in the past, people would throw the rock at Microsoft, say, Oh, you know, when I use Microsoft products, I got to understand the Microsoft org chart. You know, you ship my org chart. What they're really saying is that they have to understand the tools to get their job done. They have to navigate the tools. What we're trying to do is have the tools understand the person to help the person, help that person get their job done. So there's this great show, I think it was called the remains of day today, the movie with Anthony Hopkins, he played a Butler. And in that he did some research and he talked to the Butler of Buckingham palace who'd been there for 50 years and he said the essence of a great Butler is that he makes the room emptier when he enters. >>What's that mean? Well, when the, when someone sits down the magazine that they want, is there, the drink that they want is there. It just, it just all works out. Well, that's not my experience with computers today. I mean, how many times do you, you know, you end up at the end of the day and you're like, your spouse says, what'd you do to you day? You're like, wow, I dunno. I dunno. I'm just exhausted. Well, it shouldn't, doesn't have to be that way. What we want to do is to have the computer understand you, understand your objectives and not have some big splashy AI. It just, Oh, things just work. Oh, I'm coming to this meeting. Oh, the information I need for that meeting is just there. Oh, it prepped me and knew that I had a few minutes. And so it gave me a few minutes where it's a prep and things just flow. And at the end of the, you know, success will be when you end the day with more energy than you start it. Like that's a big tall tale, a big tall effort. But that's where we're going for that. Get stalled. >>Yeah. Well we, we found that the, the word that has summarized this week for us is one that Satya said over and over again and it was trust. So in today's day and age, there's a lot of cynicism and especially looking at big tech companies, you did a presentation talking about AI in social responsibility. You tease out a little bit of it there as to why you believe Microsoft is well intentioned with AI, but maybe share a little bit more about that vision for social responsibility and you know, where we need to go with AI as an industry as a whole. >>Yeah, exactly. So there's kinda two key points. First is I think there's a, a very vast, uh, misunderstanding of the state of AI Kang. It really is best understood as software 2.0 and we've been at software 1.0 for about 75 years and I don't think anybody thinks we're doing a particularly great job at event. I think we've started to make progress starting around the 1990s with the, with the core principles of, of uh, the worldwide web. That's when we started to really make some progress. But we still have lots of world's problems. So we're at software 2.0 we're at the very beginning of the beginning of the beginning. Now here's the point. The innovators set the field, the innovators set the path. And in AI it's important for Microsoft to be one of the key innovators here because of our approach, because we're standing up and saying, wait, there's great promise. >>There's great challenges, right? There are privacy challenges. There's data bias challenges, there's inclusivity challenges. There are things that really need to be addressed by governments, local legislation and global governments. Brad Smith has been particularly vocal on this and the need for a digital, the only way you're going to solve the problem of autonomous killer robots, which is a real thing, is by a digital Geneva convention. We, Microsoft can't solve that. IBM can solve that. Google can't solve that. Governments need to solve that. And so Microsoft is being very proactive in engaging the communities around these problems. For myself, for instance, I've been working with some of the security researchers to say, okay, well, software 2.0 how do you do threat model on machine learning? Nobody knows. Like literally nobody knows. And so we've been working over the course of the last year to produce a taxonomy of attacks. Now this is the initial thing, but it sparks a conversation as we've shown it to various government people and other, uh, competitors. Uh, they're very excited about this, about trying to join this in, to identify the class of attacks. Because once you can understand the class of attacks, then you begin understanding, well, how do I defend against those? But literally it doesn't exist. So, >>so talking about autonomous killer robots, I'm very worried now. So how do you, Jeffrey said you're talking about Microsoft's more measured approach and as you said, you are working with governments and work in reaching out to policy makers and regulators to talk about these things. Maybe unlike some other technology companies that aren't doing that. How do, are you a tech optimist at the end of the day or are you, but does it keep you up at night these, these, Nope. Nope, >>not at all. Not at all. No. I'm a wild Technomic dumbest people like are very pessimistic and I just like, yeah. You know, no. Like, let me give you an example, right? There's this, this thing that says, Oh, an autonomous car turns the corner at a high speed and it has to decide between killing two old man and a and a woman in a baby carriage. Right? And it's wide. This is a Philip philosophic philosophy problem called the trolley problem. Oh, a trolley driver has to pull a switch a, uh, and it was like over a hundred years old in the a hundred plus years that that's upon posited, there's been exactly zero trolley drivers ever put in this position. Just, it's just not an issue. Look, there are real issues. We do have to work these things. I'd say the biggest worry is not these killer robots or the autonomous cars going wild. >>It is complacency. It is overconfidence. It says, Oh, I got something to work. Let's just ship it. Like there's a lot of brittleness in these AI systems, right? Like, Oh, this works and it can be spectacular, but then this is a complete disaster and that's a complete disaster. So how do we get that taxonomy of like, Hey, when do we know when we're done? How do we test these things? How do I have like a, a secure supply chain for the data models as well as the code itself? You know, so. So I think that software one no doubt does not provide us any of the answers to the challenges of software 2.0 but I do believe that software 1.0 and its challenges tell us the areas that we need to apply our, our mindset to. And that's what we're doing. So >>Jeffrey, before we let you go, we do need to get the update on PowerShell. I have to say, ever since I've first talked to you, I feel like more and more when I go to shows, I hear people just talking about how it's helping their career, helping their business and in doing it, I don't know if it's just because you know, it was brought to the front of the mind and it's like, Oh no, I'm used to seeing that car model out there. But can you give us the latest on power shell even though you're no longer in that group? Oh yeah. I continue to meet with them all the time. >>I'm very active in PowerShell. So we took power shell and made a cross platform to run analytics. We've talked about that and I don't know where we were when we talked about that, but basically we sort of did it for our own purposes, right? We need to manage the world's estate and so we want to have a common infrastructure for doing that. And the joke was that the point is like, look, we're not confused. We don't think that the Unix people are going to greet us as liberator's. Like all, thank heavens, you know, I've been dying under this bash and such. Thank God Microsoft came to save us, right? There's no confusion. We'll surprise. We shifted and then the vast majority, the numbers are crazy. How many Linux people are using PowerShell. It's just insane and we don't really understand it. We're out there talking to people, but they just love it. >>So anyway, so PowerShell version seven is coming out. It'll come out officially at the end of the year, beginning of next year, and this really is the tool that then you can use to manage everything. Both windows and Linux. We have parallel for each, so you can do massive scale. But that's the one that really just brings all the pieces together and gains the critical mass. So we're very excited about it. always a scintillating conversation when you come on the show. Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you. I'm Rebecca Knight for Stu Miniman. Stay tuned for more of the cubes live coverage of Microsoft ignite.