>> Live from Washington, D.C., it's theCUBE! Covering AWS Public Sector Summit 2018, brought to you by Amazon Web Services and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back, everyone. This is theCUBE live in Washington, D.C. for AWS, Amazon Web Services, Public Sector Summit. This is the event for Global Public Sector, and I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante; next guest, Salman Al Khalifa, vice CEO of Bahrain, Information and eGovernment Authority, excited to have him on theCUBE, and dying to talk to you for over a year. Welcome to theCUBE; thanks for joining us. >> Thank you for having me, it's a pleasure to be here. >> So, one of the things we've been covering, and Terese has been really hot on this for over a year, and I think people are starting to figure it out, that the digital nation concept of digitizing and being a digital country is a moonshot kind of thinking, but it's reality for a lot of people. You guys have a story working with AWS, I think is super fascinating, so I want to get into it. How did it all start? What are you guys doing? Take a minute to explain what's going on in Bahrain, in your country. >> How did it start? Basically, every IT guy in government, is like bogged down, day in, day out, buying stuff, building stuff, and it's a constant race to just keep changing things over. We've got a really smart leader, and he has a vision. He said, "We're going to go to the cloud." It caught us off guard. What do you mean, take everything and move it to the cloud? That's crazy, but sitting down, really analyzing what the cloud will do for us, I was excited. I mean, take into consideration, 70% of our time is spent buying, installing, and re-buying, and re-installing stuff. So, I'm in a constant cycle of buying, tendering, and you know government bureaucracy. You can't pick up the phone and say "Hey, HP, "get us the server; get us this application." No, you need to put it in the public domain; you need to put in tender, evaluate it publicly, and then, write a contract and the contract... But it takes you to buy anything, six months. So, you're constantly, every month, issuing tenders. And, you're losing sight of what's really important. It's building applications that can help the citizen, not helping vendors. And I think the key thing is we need to focus our attention on building applications that serve the citizens. That's the bottom line; that's what we own. We own the business; we own the data, not the hardware. We don't want to keep buying hardware, so what the cloud gave us was the ability to innovate without having to go through all those hoops. And I think that is the real benefit to us as a government by moving to the cloud. >> Alright, so what's the status of the current situation? Amazon's the provider. >> Yep. >> Talk about the relationship with Amazon, and then we'll come into the cool things that are going on in Bahrain. >> Amazon is a strategic partner. They've opened up a region in Bahrain because the government saw this is the right approach. We've always seen where everything is going. In the 1970s, the government had the first satellite in the region. Lebanon, the war came on, and then the banks panicked. Where do they go? And they came where? The only region that was available and was able to take all the international banks at that time? Bahrain. And so, Bahrain was established as a banking sector. Now, we are betting on the cloud, and Amazon being the biggest and the best with more options for us. We're betting big on Amazon. We believe by having Amazon in Bahrain, they will help stimulate and stimulate innovation of our citizens because at the end of the day, we're not an oil-rich country. Our crowned jewel is the citizen, and the people are the innovators. They are going to be our future developers and entrepreneurs. And making them ready for the cloud is going to help us succeed. And that's where we see Amazon. >> What's the mission and vision of the eGovernment Authority and the modernization with digital? Is it to make citizens happy? Of course. Is it to attract business in? So talk about the mission of Bahrain because, obviously, when you stand up the cloud, Amazon regions, it's like a lot of things are going to start happening. You guys looking for more outward migration, inward migration, of talent and business. What are you guys trying to achieve? >> Business can work anywhere. But business wants to work in an environment where it's easy for them to establish. Without the bureaucracies, they can establish themselves in hours, not in weeks, or in months. That's what we want; we want people to come and establish their business in Bahrain and serve the region. That's the ultimate objective. And have a workforce that is competent enough to work in today's technology, not on yesterday's technology. And I think that is where we see it, as an innovative marketplace that is flexible enough to accommodate any international company coming in, and help stimulate local products, and that's the other part. >> So you have to have the infrastructure that attracts those people. >> Exactly. >> That makes them want to come to you. That's almost table stakes. Right now, talk about your journey. We saw this gentleman from the CIA talk about the icebergs today, that the part you see, maybe the software, maybe the licenses, but there's everything else that you talked about, the installation, the planning, the maintenance. How has that been affected or how do you expect that to be affected that below the iceberg that you see? >> So we've built up the below the iceberg. We're actually moving to the new iceberg, but that's the iceberg, is the cloud. So, we already have, there are a lot of smart people that work with us, and they've adapted their architecture and our applications to suit the cloud. And what they've done is they've come up with a master architecture for all the government agencies to follow. We don't need to reinvent the wheel. We tell them how to do it; this is how you're going to protect yourselves, and we have the team there to support all the 40 agencies that are moving to the cloud. So that's step one; we've got the right architecture, we've got the right security in place that is open to, that has so many options and flavors that allows them to innovate, as well-- >> You've got a lot of-- >> Down to single stack. >> You've got a lot of flexibility, but also, just to give you guys some credit, you're the first country to adopt a cloud first-- >> Yes. >> Policy. >> In the region. >> Yes. >> In the region; this is historic. What's the impact of that; what's been the feedback? Are people confused, are they happy, are they jumping up and down, what's going on? >> Truth? Panic. (laughing) To start. Like I did. But once they understood what's at stake, oh they're loving it. We can't keep up, some agencies are faster than others, some are slower than others, and for different reasons. Obviously, the different stacks that they have. But in reality, now, fear has changed over to excitement. And I think, that I can see right now. We can't keep up, so we had to work with local partners to help other agencies move to the cloud faster. So, that is the positive side. So, as you already mentioned, you saw us start with the cloud first, but once you do that, they need to be educated, so we've set up sort of a program where we can re-skill the IT guys in government and say, "Here you go, here's the courses. "Go in, no charge. "We're going to help skill you up to the cloud," and they're loving it. Anybody, especially our developers, they're loving it. Anything away from operations, they're loving it. They don't need to deal with the operations guys. Because we've already started to establish a dev-ops, and with this dev-ops, the agility of moving, seamlessly, the application faster to the cloud becomes much smoother. >> Talk about startups in the region, the startup mentality. When John first told me about Bahrain, we were so excited to have you on. He's like, "Dave, this country "is like the startup mentality country." Talk about startups, cloud, and that mentality. >> In the region, previously, there's not much startups historically. But with the cloud, that is the ultimate catalyst for any startup. If you had an idea, and you wanted to develop it, you used to have to invest a lot of money into infrastructure, security, but with the cloud, with serverless, with all the tools that you've got, it's going to cost you nothing to establish an application. You have enough tools to compete against the big establishments out there. So we've got Careem, for example, which is basically a local taxi hire company, like Uber of the world. And it's doing incredibly well, shockingly well. And they are like the Cinderella Story of the region. And now, everybody's into it. Everybody's building applications. Last application that I heard was a guy who links up all the fishermen in the ports, and they can sell their fish to the locals without the middleman. And that's what you're going to see, some small guys coming up and girls coming up with applications that will innovate the way they do business, and we will see a lot more of it with the cloud. >> That's a motivational factor. People are seeing real advantages coming off this what was once a scary prospect of cloud to innovation actually happening. Okay, how do you continue it? What's the plan? How're you going to keep the train rolling, keep the momentum going? What's the focus, what's your plan? >> So we've got the economic development board, and the economic development board will handle that sector. Basically, their focus is stimulate the market regionally and locally and help innovators and entrepreneurs establish themselves on the cloud in Bahrain. And they are giving them every kind of support you can imagine: capacity building, capacity on the cloud, even accounting, business advice, all of that is free. And that is amazing. So as a startup, you know the tech, you know the problem. But you don't know how to establish that from the cloud. Alright, go to these guys, and they say, "Okay, "Here's enough credit through another organization. "Take it to the cloud. "You want to market your product? "Here's another company." And that is all embedded, and free of charge. That will, I believe, really help stimulate the small, but innovative companies and help them grow. >> So thoughts on the AWS partnership. Obviously, they chose to put a region in the region in your country. That's got to be huge, but what's the relationship like with AWS? Where do you want to see it go? >> Alright, so we're at the lift and shift stage of that. We just started, as you guys are aware. But already, in the pipeline, we're looking at innovations on the cloud. So, healthcare is a big deal for us, and we believe that the healthcare in the region has a lot of opportunities to improve. And by moving the healthcare system to the cloud and leveraging artificial intelligence, and helping things like oncology departments identify cancer better, treat cancer better, using technology, I think is the next frontier for us. I think that is an opportunity. I believe we'll see a lot of more innovation and simplifying government processes through mobile apps that are becoming much better. But I think we'll be more efficient. We will be able to continuously improve government services, for example, in the cloud at a faster rate. It used to take us two years for a change, now it's going to take us weeks for a change. That's the degree of flexibility and rapid response that we can give to our citizens, to our guests that come into the country, to satisfy their demands. >> And your developers. >> Yes, our developers love it. >> It's a huge economic opportunity to grow a new generation of citizens that are tech-savvy, and they don't have to be total nerds. Anyone can be programming, anyone can be developing big data. It should open up, I think, really good commerce for you guys, as well. I think that's a great opportunity. The question is, when is theCUBE going to come to Bahrain? When are we going to see theCUBE? >> We're getting you on the plane right now. (laughing) >> Salman, thanks for spending the time. Great to see you, final question: For the folks watching back at home and around the world, AWS Public Sector Summit here in Washington, D.C., what's your impression, the vibe? What's the content? For the people who aren't here, take a minute to share your color commentary on what's happening here. >> I think it's very difficult to express the enthusiasm. It's in the air, you can smell it, you can feel it, the way people are talking. It's not only the private sectors that are talking about moving to the cloud, it's government. And you feel it here. It's not a pipe dream; it's a reality. And I think coming here to really show people that the world is changing, and if they're not on the cloud, they're going to be left behind. That is my impression. >> It's a big opportunity. >> Absolutely. >> Salman, thanks for coming on theCUBE. We really appreciate it, great to see you on theCUBE. It's theCUBE, I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante bringing you all the action, most important stories happening here at AWS Public Sector Summit. Bahrain, cloud first policy, really going to pay off, a real investment in the future of their citizens. An example of being cloud first, creating value. Stay with us. More live coverage here in Washington after this short break. (techno music)