>> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCube covering AWS re:Invent 2017 presented by AWS, Intel, and our ecosystem of partners. (upbeat music) >> Okay, welcome back everyone. We're here live in Las Vegas. This is theCube's exclusive coverage of Amazon Web Services re:Invent 2017, our fifth year covering AWS re:Invent. I'm John Furrier the founder of SiliconANGLE Media with my co-host Stu Miniman. I'm so excited 45,000 people and boy, I remember when it was just a small, little, fast-growing company. We're here with Teresa Carlson who's been here with us the whole way. She's a Senior Vice President of Public Sector. Teresa, welcome to theCube, good to see you. >> I'm always glad to be here on theCube. >> So, you've been running public sector, you've been really, I've gotta say, I gave a tweet, not to sound that I'm fawning over you right now, but you've really grown the business in a significant way. As Andy was saying, a meaningful way. Take us through, because it's almost mind-blowing. We have already had a few guests on theCube. I went to your breakfast. You are changing the game, but not without scar tissue. You've done a lot of hard work to get there, so, one, congratulations, but give us a state-of-the-union right now for public sector, because you're winning, you're doing great, but it wasn't easy. >> No, it's not been easy, but it's been a lot of fun. I mean, it's been a lot of fun, in fact, as you said, this is our sixth year of doing re:Invent and yesterday or two days ago, we had a public sector breakfast and it was so full, we got shut down by the fire marshal. So that is when you know you've got customers and partners showing up, because they want to be there. We have grown significantly and that has been through the work of both working with customers and partners on security, compliance, policy, acquisition vehicles, to just make sure that we have the right balance of everything needed to really drive and grow the business in the right way. As I've talked about we didn't leave any stone unturned. We had to really go through all the hard processes to do this right and I think it really has paid off because you never want to take short-cuts. You wanna make sure you're doing the right thing in order for customers to have better technology, for us to help drive good government, good education. >> I gotta say, one of the big trends we're seeing here on siliconANGLE, theCube, and Wikibon is the public-private Partnerships are accelerating. You're seeing public sector help on security to the private sector, private sector helping government move faster and so you're seeing a balance and an equilibrium coming together, but also old guard companies sometimes have a federal division or a separate DNA culture. You guys don't, you have one culture at Amazon, but the striking thing for me, is that you're now enabling companies to get into public sector that couldn't before. So I wanted to ask you specifically, is it like that now, we're you're starting to see new people come in with solutions because you guys have done that heavy lifting where before they'd have to wait in line, get certified, are we seeing new solutions, are you enabling that, is that actually happening? >> It absolutely is happening and we never forget our roots of start-ups here at AWS, because they are really a huge reason why we exist and for public sector, I saw a change in my previous life I never had venture capitalists or private equity firms come and say we want our companies in government. We are creating new education tech companies, which was really not even heard of. >> It's a growth strategy for them. >> It's a huge growth strategy, so venture capitalist and private equity like Andreessen Horowitz, Madrona, C5, Bridgewater, we see tons and they come to us saying, we have this portfolio, can you help us talk to them about how they get into government? As a result of that, we do sales and marketing, we work with them on FedRAMP I-E slash security compliance. We ensure that they understand the elements and components of how they work in government and by the way, government loves that we are bringing in innovative new technologies. We can also do that through the marketplace, the AWS marketplace, which allows them to move faster, be more agile, and start getting that business. >> Teresa, I'm wondering if you could share a little more. You talk about innovation, we've been lovin' for years, I love when I talk about regional governments, education, you get non-profits under your umbrella, where it used to be, I didn't have the budget, I can't move fast. Now, we're seeing some great innovation from the private side as well as well as some of the public-private interactions. >> Definitely, in fact, I was in California about a month ago where we announced an innovation center with California Polytechnic University, CalPoly and the president there, Jeff Armstrong, it is amazing, they literally had been looking at what AWS was doing and they took the pillars that they'd been seeing us talk about for public sector and they created an innovation center to work on these opportunities and challenges and just as in public safety, health, agri, sex trafficking and child exploitation, through seeing what Thorn was doing in the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children. >> How is this leveling the playing field? Because everyone, citizens at least in the United States, I'm sure it's happening in other markets as well, they want the government to move faster. And you guys are like the freight train that's out of control speed-wise, just more and more services. How does the government keep up? Because I would imagine that if I am a government official or I'm the public sector, oh my God, I can't handle Amazon. I can't ride that beast, it's too strong. I mean do they say that, is that the wrong vibe, or are they more hey I want you to do, is it more your flywheel, do they have to get involved? What's the relation, what's the sentiment of the government? >> Well, they wanna move fast. In fact, in the U.S. government, the White House does have an entire initiative now on modernization. You're seeing countries like the U.K government go cloud native. You saw the country of Bahrain which is going all-in in the cloud and they've already established new policies and a cloud-first policy of moving. But I would tell you, if you look at groups like the intelligence community in the U.S. government, we just announced our secret region and that allows them to have top-secret capabilities, secret, unclassified in our GovCloud, so they have capabilities across the entire spectrum of workloads and what they've always said to us and our other customers is can we build cloud tools, can we build a cloud? Yes, but can we innovate at the rate and speed you're innovating? No, because we provide them innovation ahead of their demand. >> Yeah, Teresa, I remember when GovCloud launched and it was, like, wow, this is like AWS isn't just like a monolithic service around the globe and everything. It seems like secret region goes along that line. How does the dynamic between AWS as a whole and what you're doing in your organization, how do you work through that and kinda balance, I want services around the globe, yet meet the needs of your clients. >> On the GovCloud region, that was our first entre into doing something unique for government. That region has grown 185% every year since 2011 and we just announced a second region on the east coast for GovCloud, U.S. GovCloud. The interaction with our services team is amazing. Charlie Bell who runs all of our services, we have a tight relationship, we talk to our government customers in these regions, understand their priorities, then we roll them out and it's really that simple. They get the exact same thing in their classified regions as we give our other customers, it's just their network. >> Well, you got the date set, I'm looking at my picture here I took, June 20th and 21st, save the date, AWS Public Sector Summit, #AWSPSSummit as it's called on Twitter hashtag. Every year, you started out in a little conference room, in a ballroom, bigger hotel, now the convention center. Massive growth. >> And theCube was there this year, which I was happy. >> That makes it legitimate, and theCube's there, we'll be there this year, >> Good, yes. >> But of course, this is the growth. V.C.s, private equity, this is a growth market, this is not a unique, siloed market anymore. You guys have leveled the silos within Amazon, I mean you never had silos, but you are now agile to come to the government. What's next for you? You've done a great job, you're now cruising altitude, what's your growth strategy for Public Sector Summit, how are you going to take it to the next level? >> Well, even though we have grown a lot, thank you to our customers and partners, we really are just scratching the surface. It is day one still for us. Our customers are really just still getting going on a lot of mission critical workloads. They're moving in things they really hadn't thought about. They're starting to do things like higher more developers in government, so they can take advantage of the tools used, a lot you saw yesterday. But additionally, what we're seeing is we are spending a lot of time going into countries around the world, helping countries set a strategy for digital transformation. New jobs growth, new companies, economic development, how do they train and educate for a cloud-based workforce, we call it and that's really fun to go in and tell governments, look you really have to prepare your country for a digital transformation and again if you look at groups like Bahrain, what the U.K have done, they are doing that and they are making a massive transformation around this. >> Final question for you, what are you most proud of looking back since you joined AWS seven years ago. I think it was seven years ago you started? >> Yep, seven years ago this month. >> Congratulations, so what are you most proud of and then two, what do you think about the most as you execute day-to-day in growing the business? >> Well, I would say the fact that I have had an amazing brand to work with out of the gate Amazon was such a great brand, and the fact that, again, based on think big, Andy Jassy's leadership, really he and I having a conversation together saying, we can change the world and make it a better place and you've heard me say a lot in my openings, we have two themes that we talk about in public sector, which is paving the way for disruptive innovation and making the world a better place. And if I look back, it's really the things that we're helping to do this that we are driving new policies, companies are seeing results, agencies, and we are making the world a better place. I would say that's humbling and amazing and we're just getting going. >> As a chief of public sector, you're like, you've seen it grow and you're running it every day and you have a great team, do you ever have a pinch me moment once in a while? Kind of say, wow, what have you done? >> Well, I think the pinch me moments are when I hear the customers and partners tell me how fast they're moving and the results they have. We always have a goal of really working with our mission partners and we've hired now more than 17,000 veterans at Amazon and growing. It's things like that that we can do to really help that transformation and not just talk the talk, but walk the walk as a company. I would say for where we wanna go and what I sort of worry about our growth, I guess I worry and stay up a little late at night to make sure that we keep our hiring bar high, that we really maintain our focus on customer obsession, >> John: Security. >> Security is always on my mind. >> Do you sleep at all it must keep you up late a lot. >> No, I don't really, no. But the last thing I would say is just really thinking through ensuring that we're continually pushing hard, that we have a little bit of sharp elbows, going in we're trying to change policy, we don't give up on the things that really matter for doing this massive transformation, for countries, for state and local agencies, for feds, for educational institutions around cloud transformation. >> I really respect your results and I love your hard-charging style. It's fantastic, your success obviously speaks for itself. We'll see you at the Summit in June. This is theCube, Teresa Carlson The Chief of the Public Sector business, she's the Vice President of Public Sector. I'm John Furrier, Stu Miniman. More live coverage here at AWS re:Invent after this short break. (upbeat music)