>> Narrator: Live from Washington DC, it's the CUBE. Covering AWS Public Sector Summit 2017. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services and its partner Ecosystem. >> Welcome back here on the CUBE, the flagship broadcast of Silicon Angle TV along with John Furrier, I'm John Wallace. We're here at AWS Public Sector Summit 2017, the sixth one in its history. It's grown leaps and bounds and still a great vibe from the show for us. It's been packed all day John. >> It's the new reinvent for the public sector, so size wise it's going to become a behemoth very shortly. Our first conference, multi-year run covering Amazon, thanks to Theresa Carlson for letting us come and really on the front lines here, it's awesome. It's computing right here, edge broadcasting, we're sending the data out there. >> We are, we're extracting the signal from the noise as John always likes to say. Government, educations all being talked about here this week. And with us to talk about that is Max Peterson, he's a general manager at the AWS and Max, thank you for joining us, we appreciate that. >> Thank you for the invitation. >> And I knew we were in trouble with our next guest, cause I said this is John, I'm John, he said, this is Max and I'm Max. I said no you're not, I know better than that. Andre Pienaar who's a founder and chairman of C5 Consulting, Andre, thank you for being here on the CUBE. >> It's great pleasure being here. >> Alright let's just start off first off with core responsibilities and a little bit about C5 too for our audience. First off, if you would Max, tell us a little bit about your portfolio-- >> Sure. >> At AWS and then Andre, we'll switch over to C5. >> I think I might have the best job in the world because I get to work with government customers, educational institutions, nonprofits who are all working to try and improve the lives of citizens, improve the lives of students, improve the lives of teachers and basically improve the lives of people overall. And I do that all around the world. >> That is a good job. Yeah, Andre. >> Max will have to arm wrestle for who has got the best job in the world, because in C5, we have the privilege of investing into fast growing companies that are built on Amazon Cloud and that specializes in cyber security, big data and cloud computing and helps to make the world a safer place. >> I'm willing to say >> Hold on I think we have the best job. >> we both have the best job. >> Now wait a minute, we get to talk to the two of you, are you kidding? >> Yeah, I've got the best, we talk to all the smartest people like you guys and it can't get better than that. >> You're just a sliver of our great day. >> That's awesome, we have established we all have great jobs. >> Andre, so you hit cyber, obviously there is not a hotter topic, certainly in this city that is talked about quite a bit as you're well aware so let's just talk about that space in general and the kinds of things that you look for and why you have this interest and this association with AWS. >> So the AWS cloud platform is a game changer for cyber security. When we started investing in cyber security, and people considered cloud, one of their main concerns was do I move my data into the cloud and will it be secure? Today it's the other way around because of the innovation that AWS has been driving in the cyber security space. People are saying, we feel we are much more secure having the benefit of all innovation on the cloud platform in terms of our cyber security. >> And the investment thesis that you guys go after, just for the record, you're more on the growth side, what stage of investments do you guys do? >> We're a later stage investor so the companies we invest in are typically post revenue but fast growing in visibility and on profitability. >> So hot areas, cyber security, surveillance, smart cities, autonomous vehicles, I mean there's a data problem going on so you see data and super computing coming back into vogue. Back when I was a youngling in college, they called it data processing. The departments and mainframes, data processing and now you have more compute power, edge compute, now you have tons of data, how is all that coming in for and inching in the business models of companies. This is a completely different shift with the cloud. But you still need high performance computing, you still need huge amounts of data science operations, how do companies and governments and public sectors pull up? >> I think just the sheer volume of data that's being generated also by the emerging internet of things necessitates new models for storing and processing and accessing data and also for securing it. When big enterprises and governments think about cyber security, they really think about how do we secure the most valuable data that's in our custody and our stewardship and how do we meet that obligation to the people who have provided that data to us. >> How would you summarize the intrinsic difference between old way, new way? Old way being non-cloud and new way being cloud as we look forward? >> I think that was a pretty good summary right there. New way is cloud, old way is the legacy that people have locked up in their data centers and it's not just the hardware that is the legacy problem, the data is the legacy problem. Because when you have all that information built in silos around government, it makes it impossible to actually implement a digital citizen experience. You as a citizen would like to be able to just ask your question of government and let them sort out what your postal code was, what your benefits information was, right? You can't do that when you've got the data, much less the systems, locked up in a whole bunch of individual departments. >> Well merging of data, sharing data as an ethos and the cyber security world, where there's an ethos of hey, you know, we're going to help each other out because the more data, the more they can get patterns into the analytics which is a sharing culture. That's not really the way it is. I got governance, I got policy issues. >> Well policing is a good example. In the Washington DC area, there are 19 law enforcement agencies with arresting powers and that data is being kept in completely separate silos. Whereas if we're able to integrate and share that data, you will be able to draw some very useful predictive policing conclusions from that which can prevent and detect crime. >> That's a confidence issue and that's where your security point weighs in. Let me get back to what you said about the old way, new way thing. Another bottleneck or barrier, or just hurdle if you will, in cloud growth, has been cultural. Mindset of management and also operational practices, you have a waterfall development cycles or project management versus agile, which is different. That's a different cultural thing so you got all the best intentions in the world, people could raise their hand put stuff in the cloud, but if you can't scale out, you're going to be on this cadence where projects aren't going to get that ROI picture generated so the agility, how are you guys seeing that developing? >> I would tell you the first thing that it takes is leaders and that's what this conference is about. It's about telling the stories of customers who have seen the potential and who are now leaders. It takes something, it takes a spark to start it and the most powerful spark that we've seen, are customer testimonials, who come forward and they explain, hey I was doing this the old way. A lot of times for a cost reason or a new mandate, they have to come up with a new way to invent and they made that selection of the cloud and that's what so often changed the opportunity that they can address. Here's just using that data as an example, transport for London in the UK has a massive amount of data that comes from all of the journey information. They started their journey to the cloud four years ago and it started with the simple premise of I needed to save costs. They saved money and they were able to take that money and reprogram it now to figuring out how do we unlock the data to generate more information for commuters. Finally, they were able to take that learning and start spinning it into how do I actually improve the journey by using machine learning, artificial intelligence and big data techniques? Classic progression along the cloud. Save some money, reinvest the savings and then start delivering new innovation on that point. >> I was going to ask you the use cases. You jumped right in. Andre, can you just chime in and share your opinion on this or anecdotal or story or data around use cases that you see out there that can point to saying, that's game changing that's transformative, that's disruptive. >> Well one of the customer stories that Max referred to that was a real game changer in cyber security was when the CIA said that they were going to adopt the AWS cloud platform. Because people said if US Intelligence community has the confidence to feel secure on AWS cloud, why can't we? AWS have evolved cyber security from being an offering which is on top of the cloud and the responsibility of the client to something which is inside the cloud which involves a whole range of services and I think that's been a complete game changer. >> The CIA deal, Dave Velanto is not here, my partner in crime as well, I call it the shot heard all around the cloud, that was a seminal moment for AWS in chronicling your guys journey over the years but I've been following you guys since the barely birth days and how you've grown up, that was a really critical moment for AWS in the public sector so I want to ask you guys both a question, right now, 2017 here at public sector conference, what's the perception of AWS outside of the ecosystem? Clearly cloud is the new normal, we heard previously, I agree with that. But what's the perception of the viability, the production level? What's the progress part in the minds of the folks? How far are we in that journey cause this is a breakout year, this year. That was the shot heard around the cloud, now there seems to be a breakout year, almost a hockey stick pick up. >> It's another example of how it takes leadership and it was the shot heard round the cloud, what we're seeing though is now many, many people are picking up that lead and using it to their advantage. The National Cyber Security Center in the UK told a story today that's pretty much a direct follow on. They're now describing to their agencies what they should do to be safe on the cloud. They're not giving them a list of rules that they need to try and go check off. It's very much about enabling and it's very much about providing the right guidance and policy. It's unlocking it instead of using security as a blocker in that example. Much more than just that one example, all over the world-- >> But people generally think okay this is now viable. So in terms of the mind of the people out in the trenches, not in the front lines like here, thoughts on your view on the perception of the progress bar on AWS public sector. >> John, one of the best measures of how the AWS cloud is perceived is what's happening in the startup scene. 90% of all startups today get born on the Amazon cloud in the US. 70% of all startups in France gets born in AWS cloud. This is the future voting for cloud and saying this is where we want to be, this is where we can scale this is where we can grow-- >> If you can believe APIs will be the normal operational interface subsystems and data, then you essentially have a holistic distributed cloud, aka computer. That's the vision. So what's the challenge? What do you guys see as the challenge, is it just education, growth? You only have 10,000 people here, it's not like it's 30 yet. >> Well you heard one of the, or you hit on one of the things that's key and that's policy. You really do have to break through the old government bureaucracy and the old government mentality and help set the new policies. Whether it's economic policies that help enable small businesses to launch and use the cloud. Whether it's procurement policies that allow people to actually buy tech and use tech fast, or whether it's the basic policy of the country. The UK now has a policy of being digital native, cloud native. >> The ecosystem's interesting, Andre, you mentioned startup, because I think for me, challenge opportunity is to have Amazon scale up, to handle the tsunami of Ecosystem partners that could be as you said, we just talked to Fugue here. Amazing startup funded by New Enterprise Associates, NEA, they're kicking ass, they're just awesome. You go back 10 years ago, they wouldn't even be considered. >> Absolutely. >> So you've got an opportunity to jam everyone in the marketplace and let it be a free for all, it's kind of like a fun time. >> It's a great time and in the venture capital world, being architect on the Amazon cloud has become a badge of quality. So increasingly venture capital firms are looking for startups that run on the AWS cloud and use them in an innovative way. >> Well on the efficiency on the product side, but also leverage on the capital side. >> Exactly. You need less capital. >> Been a provision of data center, what? >> You need less capital and secondly, also, you can fail much faster and then still have space and time to build it and restart. I think failing faster is something from an investment point of view that is really attractive. >> John: Final question. >> John: Failing faster? >> Failing faster. Because what you don't want are the long drawn out deaths of businesses. Because that's a sure way to destroy value of money. >> I think the other part though is fix faster. >> Fix faster. >> And that's exactly what the cloud does so instead of spending an immense amount of time and energy trying to figuring out precisely what I need to build, I can come up with the basic idea, I can work quick, I can fail fast, but I can fix it fast. >> Alright, well you mentioned the golden time, the golden era, and I think you both have captured it, so I think both your jobs would be up there at the top of the shelf. >> Thank you John. >> You mentioned 19 agencies by the way here in DC that can arrest, I have parking tickets from every one of them. >> Andre: I'm glad they haven't arrested you yet John. >> No, that's the price you pay for living in this city. >> Thanks John and John. >> Max, Andre thank you very much. >> John and John thank you. >> Cheers. >> Back with more here from AWS Public Sector Summit 2017, live, Washington DC, you're watching the CUBE.