Fernando Castillo, CloudHesive & Luis Munoz, Universidad de Los Lagos | AWS PS Awards 2021
(upbeat music) >> Hello and welcome to today's session of the 2021 AWS Global Public Sector Partner Awards Program. This session's award is going to be profiling the Most Customer Obsessed Mission-based Win in the education domain. I'm your host, Donald Klein, with theCUBE. And today we are joined by Fernando Castillo. He's the Business Development Manager at CloudHesive, and then also Luis Muñoz, who's the Information Director at the Unibersidad de Los Lagos. >> Okay, everyone. Welcome to today's session. All right. Fernando, thanks for taking some time out and joining us today. Wanted to start with you and wanted to hear a little bit of background about CloudHesive. Obviously, you're a company that had won an award last year, but you're back on this year, again. Want you give us some a little bit of the story of CloudHesive, and what kind of services you provide? (speaking in foreign language) >> Translator: Thank you very much, Donald. Yes, CloudHesive is a managed consulting service provider in the cloud. We are AWS Partner and since 2014 we have been providing solutions focusing on security, trustability, and scalability in the cloud. Accompany companies to their main objective, which is reducing operational costs and increasing their productivity as they move forward in the adaption of cloud services. >> Very good. Okay. And then Luis, I'm going to turn to you now, want you talk to us a little bit about your role there at the Unibersidad de Los Lagos, and how you started this project? (speaking in foreign language) >> Translator: Good afternoon. I belong to the academic department of the engineering department at the University of Los Lagos and the director of the IT of this school. For several years, for about five years, we've been analyzing the deployment of these automation at universities of Chile. Since it's not a common item in the country, we've done several benchmarking worldwide, especially in Spain, Mexico, Columbia, and places where it's more developed. And eventually, we have to take some demos that allowed us to make some decisions. This topic was not going to be considered in 2020, but it happened because of a political situation, social political in Chile in 2019. So we have to move forward the process, but we had already made a global analysis and this was one of the reasons why we have to get closer to AWS Partners and this allowed us to move this process forward within the university. >> Okay. Very good. All right. Well then, what I'm going to do now is I'm going to come back to you, Fernando, and I want you to talk a little bit about the overall goal of what you were trying to help the university with. (speaking in foreign language) >> Translator: Well, within the main objectives we had in the project was to have a platform that would support a concurrent load of thousands of students, especially in University of Los Lagos. They had requested to have around 15,000 students and the main complication or the main challenge was to keep a virtual attendance, which is now known as learning management system, but also having the possibility of having video classes in two days, something similar to what we are doing today, but with 50 or up to 100 students. This was one of the main objectives of the project. >> Okay, understood. So the goal is here to deploy this platform and open source platform and make it available for about 15,000 students. Okay. Now coming back to you, Luis, there was a time constraint here, correct? You needed to get the system going very quickly. Maybe you could explain why you needed to accelerate this program so quickly. (speaking in foreign language) >> Translator: Well, literally, the pandemic conditions in the country started to be more evident and more severe since the first week of March in 2020. And so we have to make the decision, the double-sided decision of choosing an infrastructure that we could not buy at that time, given the emergency, logistic emergency of the pandemic at the server's room and to keep a stable platform for that number of users, student and professors of university. So we started conversations to make this scale up and move everything to the cloud. This was the first decision. So we decided to use Amazon and with CloudHesive, we were able to organize the academics charter in the same platform. So as to move no longer than three weeks so that we could give classes, online classes with the students while we were learning this new normal, which was virtual distance education. This was very difficult of every morning, afternoon, and evening of work, but this allowed us not to fall behind in the first semester of the educational needs of the students. With this modality, we have around 5% more students that we used to last year in 2020, in March 2020. And this allowed us to have a more visible structure for those who were questioning this new modality and we were applied to take this new modality in the end. >> Okay. So because of the pandemic, you had to accelerate the deployment of this learning management system very quickly. And you had to learn how to manage the system at the same time that you were deploying it. Okay. Understood. So a lot of challenges there. All right. So then maybe coming back to you, Fernando. Wanted you talk about your role and how CloudHesive helped with this sort of this very rapid deployment of this LMS system. (speaking in foreign language) >> Translator: Well, talking about the challenges and how we were able to get to the objective, within the plan, deployment and development have to accompany the University of Los Lagos not only with the use of the platform, but also how to change management. One of the biggest challenges was to do a security audit, the deployment of scalable infrastructures. And one of the main topics was, one of the main challenges for CloudHesive that we can now talk about and obtained objective was to do the tests from the point of view of scalability and security getting into 15,000 students, concurrent students, stimulating the workload of the university, keeping 99.5 availability of the platform. Going back to the challenges, it's not only the scalability and stability. Nowadays, the University of Los Lagos platform can continue to grow, as Luis mentioned, without the need to look for new resources. But with our implementation, deployment and development, we already have a scalable resource as they increase the number of professors and students to their university. >> Okay. Understood, understood. Now, maybe talk a little bit just to continue with that point. Maybe talk for a minute about how you leverage the AWS platform in order to be able to accelerate this project. What aspects of your partnership with AWS enabled you to deploy the system so quickly? (speaking in foreign language) >> Translator: Well, talking about that, we based on a referential architecture of AWS, which is an open source middle platform, and within these competencies and within things, they belong to the education. We also have the problems, the presence of (indistinct), which allows us to deploy new solution and new integrations. So this allowed us as the team to, within weeks, to develop new features that would allow us to deal with each of the requirements of the universities, specifically. So within the first week, the University of Los Lagos had the connectivity with the academic sector. On the second week, they had the infrastructure to support out two-way videos. And on the third week, they already had the platform completely deployed with all the security safeguards that we already have in all of our products and services. So having worked hand-in-hand with AWS allowed us to have success in time with this platform. >> Wow. So that's fantastic. You were able to deploy this entire system from the connection with the academics to the video infrastructure to actually getting all the security implementations in place. You were able to do that in a three week cycle, is that correct? >> Yeah, that's correct. >> Fantastic. Okay. So Luis, coming back to you then, so working with CloudHesive as a partner to help deploy the platform on AWS gave you fantastic speed and agility to get the system working. Maybe talk a little bit now about the challenges of getting students and educators to adapt the system, and what kind of successes you had? (speaking in foreign language) >> Translator: First of all, they have to, we need to need to know the geography, the landscape of the university. The geography is very varied. We have mountains and lakes and so forth, and connectivity concepts are very difficult in this area. In addition, University of Los Lagos has the characteristic of receiving students from very poor sectors within the region. So this means that more than 80% have a free education, as there are few universities that exist in the country. So one of the technological challenges was for these students to receive the mechanisms and technology to have the connectivity they needed. After that, we had a very big training plan with the deployment company, CloudHesive, with the permissions, and eventually together, we were able to go beyond students and professors. And I remember we had 50% students and professors logged in to the platform, and nowadays, we have 100% students and professors logged in having classes in the platform. But most importantly, nowadays, we have an analytical control because of an integration with CloudHesive, with certain tools that allow us to gather data in real time. And we can do a follow-up of the student that is closer actually from the previous situation when we didn't have this technology. If the student is not logged in, we can reach them directly or indirectly to know, what is happening with his meeting, which is the kind of support, academic, social or economic support that they need. Before, it was harder to get this. So we have a communion between technology and social services that we can provide as a university. And of course, the adaptability of CloudHesive in as much as most of the requirements that we needed. So as to have a good response, they've been very providing, they provided a very robust service in this terms. >> Fantastic. So you were able to reach 100% percent of your target audience very quickly. Is that correct? Great. >> Yes. >> And maybe just to kind of follow up one more. Just talk a little bit about the future of your program. Now that you've worked so hard to establish the system and to connect your students and your teachers and to optimize the system, what is your plan to use it going forward? Are you looking to expand it? What would you say are your goals? (speaking in foreign language) >> Translator: First of all, for better or for worse, this modality came here to stay. The pandemic may end, but it generated opportunities that nationwide, it moved forward at least seven or eight times faster, these kinds of possibilities. So it's hard to use or waste this opportunity with the face-to-face classes. The university nowadays, thanks to the platform and the work done by CloudHesive and AWS, the university won ministry projects from the Ministry of Education in the country, have a strengthening plans for other kinds of services that were not incorporated before, like the idea of virtual library, research work, academic development work, of training and cultural transformation as well. But eventually, they are happening in this virtually environments. And the university won this possibility through the ministry, bridging the gap between the academic sector and the students. And in order to elaborate a little bit more from the previous question, we did a survey last year and ended not long ago. And most professors said that 80%, more than 80% said that the virtual environment was considered as good or very good. So we have a very good assessment in order to participate in this project that were won by the university and they are nowadays being applied. So this generates development in the academic sector, in research, in library, in content creation, global communication, working together with other universities with work postgraduate courses and other universities without the need of getting out of home. So this is a very competitive advantage that we didn't have before. And since 2020, we were able to develop. >> Fantastic. Well, congratulations on a really well put together program. And I'm excited to hear that you've won an award in your country and that you're planning to expand the system more broadly. I think that's a fantastic success story. So maybe just to wrap this up here with you Fernando, why don't you talk a little bit about, so obviously, you guys were very critical in helping this system be deployed very quickly, but very securely at the same time. How do you see your role going forward in enabling these types of situations, this distance learning type formats? (speaking in foreign language) >> Translator: Well, just as Luis said, taking this project with the University of Los Lagos, this showed the importance of looking at technological advances and to improve the universities and research centers and how to focus on innovation and bringing the future education down. For us, the data generated in this virtual interactions are very valuable and having a clear perspective, so as to organize this data for, to make more effective decisions that allow us to act in real time. This is what we are focusing on right now. So as to keep, I mean, prove, and being able to provide new tools, the research centers and universities to operate quickly, safely, and cost effectively. >> Okay, fantastic. So really, the real lesson learned here is by working with a partner like yourself, you were able take an open source learning management system and then deploy it very quickly, manage it, and then secure it in a way that allowed the university then to do their work. So I think that's a really great end-to-end delivery story. So I think, maybe if you want to make one last comment, Fernando, about your role in any kind of future expansion for this type of work. (speaking in foreign language) >> Translator: Yes, of course. I would like to thank Amazon and University of Los Lagos, of course for giving us the chance to work together and develop this project successfully. And answering your question, I would like to say that this is a good incentive to build more robust solutions, as long as we have our focus on our clients, when working and as a final comment, I would just would like to thank you and hope to see you again with a new project. >> Okay, well, congratulations to you both on winning this award. And for CloudHesive, this is your second year in a row of winning a Public Sector Award. So with that, I'm going to sign off today and I'm going to thank you both for attending. Today, we've had Fernando Castillo, the Business Development Manager from CloudHesive and then Luis Muñoz, the Information Director at the Uniberisdad de Los Lagos, and thank you both for attending. This is Donald Klein for theCUBE, until next time. (bright music)
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Leonardo Bracco, CloudHesive & Carolina Tchintian, CIPPEC | AWS Public Sector Partner Awards 2020
>> (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. >> Hi, and welcome back. I'm Stu Miniman and this is theCUBE's coverage of Amazon Web Services, Public Sector Awards for their partners. Really interesting, we get to talk to people around the globe, we talked to the vendors, the award winners as well as their customers who have some interesting projects. So happy to welcome to the program coming to us from Argentina. I have Leo Bracco. He is the Latin American Executive Director for CloudHesive and joining him, his customer Carolina Tchintian. She is the Director of the Political Institution Program at CIPPEC. Thank you so much for joining us. >> Thank you. >> Thank you for having us. >> All right, so Leo, first of all, let's start with you if we could. So CloudHesive first of all, congratulations, you were the Nonprofit Sector award winner for cybersecurity solutions. Of course, anybody that knows public sector, there's the government agencies, there's nonprofits there's education. The cybersecurity of course, went from the top priority to the top, top priority here in 2020. So if you could just give us a snapshot of CloudHesive for our customer. >> Well, CloudHesive is a US based company, started six years ago in 2014. And we decide a couple of years ago to move to Latin America and to start working with Latin America customers. Our offices are in Argentina right now. And one of the focus that we have in the solutions that we give to our customers is security. We work on services to help companies to reduce the cost, increase productivity, and what should the security posture? So we've been working a long time ago to many NPOs, and seeing how they can leverage the solutions and how they can give secure, how to be secure in the world. In the internet. >> All right, Carolina, if you could tell us a little bit about the CIPPEC and maybe then key us up as the project that you're working on. >> Okay, thank you. So CIPPEC is a nonprofit think tank, nonprofit organization, independent organization that aims to deliver better public policies in different areas. In economic development, in social protection and state and government. My particular program, the political institutions program goal is, or the mission is basically to promote evidence based decisions to improve democratic processes and to guarantee civil and political rights across all the countries. So we on issues such as improving election administrations, legislative work, representation, and that's our area of work. >> Wonderful. Sounds like a phenomenal project. Leo, if you could help us understand where did CloudHesive get involved in this project? Was there an existing relationship already, or was it for a specific rollout? that tell us about, obviously the security angles are a big piece? >> No, we didn't have a previous engagement with them. They come to us with a very short time to elections and they need a secure solution. So we first have to analyze the actual solution, how it works, acknowledging well the current infra that they have. Then we have to understand the challenge that they're facing. They have a very public site, they need to go public and they need to be very secure. And the last, we have to develop a fast migration strategy. We knew that AWS was the perfect fit for the need. So we just had to align a good strategy with the customer need. And all these it has been done in less than 72 hours. That was our deadline to elections. >> Wow, talk about fast. Okay, Carolina, help us understand a little bit. Had your organization, had you been using a Cloud before? Seventy-two hours is definitely an aggressive timeline. So help us understand a little bit as to what went into making your decision and obviously, 72 hours super short timeframe. >> Super, super short. Yeah, that was a big challenge. So let me tell you more about what we do and the context. So Argentina holds elections, national elections every two years. In each election year CIPPEC tries to generate and systematize analysis of provincial and national elections with the goal of informing key actors in the electoral processes. This is and decision makers, political parties, media, and general population. So as our first experience in 2017, with informed voter project, we had this collaboration with the National Electoral Authorities in which we created a landing page in our website where you could find as the voter, all of the information you need to go and cast your vote throughout the entire election process. Meaning from the campaign stage, election administration details, polling places, electoral offer, participation et cetera. So that was a landing page hosted in our website. And in 2017, we managed to have a button in every eligible voter in Argentina Facebook feed. So you could go click there and go to our website, right. And have all of the information summarize in a very simple way, straightforward way. So what happened in the 2017 election day is that the button was so successful that the landing page made our server to collapse in the first hours of the election day. So we learned a huge lesson there, which was that we had to be prepared in 2019, if we wanted to repeat this experience. And that is how we get to CloudHesive. >> Wonderful, Leo, if you could, help us understand a little bit architecturally what's going on there, what was CoHesive doing, what AWS services were leveraged? >> Perfect. Well we need great reliability, performance, scalability of course and the main thing security. We have no doubt about the Cloud and all the differentials of AWS. Our main question was about how do we align the right services to give the best solution to the customer? So we did kind of strategy with S3, CloudFront, and we, at the same time being monitorizing everything with CloudTrail and securing the public's access to all of these information. That give us a perfect fit for the solution, a very easy solution and very of course scalable, but more than anything, we could improve the customer experience in very small amount of time. So this is a very simple solution, that fits perfect for the customer. >> Wonderful. Carolina, if you could, tell us how did things go? What lessons have you learned? Anything along the way that you would give feedback to your peers or other organizations that were looking to do something similar? >> Yeah, well, the 2017 experience was a very tough experience for us because we've been preparing for election day during the 2016 and 2017. And the infrastructure was the limit we had in that point. So we couldn't afford ... We have a commitment with informing voters and informing key actors on election process. And these key actors are expecting that information on election day, before, and after. The lesson there is, we cannot be limited by the infrastructure. Assuming that in 2019, that the landing page would receive a similar amount or a huge amount of traffic volume visits on the election day, basically, we knew that traditional hosting service couldn't fulfill those needs so we had to go beyond traditional and the partner was critical to help us to the migration, to the Cloud. >> Yeah, Leo, maybe you could speak a little bit to that, the scalability, and of course, nonprofit's very sensitive to costs involved in these solutions. Help us understand that those underpinnings of leveraging, AWS specifically in CloudHesive. How this meets their needs and still is financially, makes sense. >> Perfect. When you have this kind of solutions, of course, your first concern is, okay, how do I make a scalable solution that fits on the, just on this moment that they need the behavior for so many infrastructure involved. And then at the other day, they need no infra at all, but you have another two big things that you have to focus on. One, is the security, you need to monitor all the behaviors of the content and pay attention to any external menace. You have one 24-hour day, so you need to be very responsibility and high sensitive information that the customer has on the set of data there. It's good to say that we have no security incidents, and no security breach during the most public stage of the operation, so that there was very good for us. The next thing is from the delivery perspective. You have a potential pick of people over the side to usually manage the content delivery network to answer all the requirements. You must be able to share the content in CloudFront, and so you have, and you can achieve your goals, right? And what I can say, it's about numbers, we achieve more than 99.5 efficiency hit rate you over the CDN, that's over CloudFront. And we kept server CPU such below 10% all the time. So this was a major success for us. Like we have no trouble, we use things at the most. And most of anything, the customer has the security, everything look from our perspective. (mumbles) >> Leo, what follow up if I could, if you look at 2020 being able to scale and respond to the changes in workload and be able to stay secure when bad actors, many people are working at home, but doesn't mean the bad actors aren't out there. We've actually seen an increase in security attacks. So just, do you have any commentary overall about what's happening more recently in what you see in your space? >> Yeah, well, we're very focused right now and while security is being each time bigger, right? One of the biggest menace in security is our own team, because we have to keep our teams auto align to the process and understanding the security as a first step doing things from the network perspective. Then we have a very good experience over this last two years, with all the security tools that AWS is seeking to the market. So we now have CloudTrail. We can do many things with WAF we're working towers of new good security solutions. And so I think this will be the future. We have to focus ourself in these two pillars. The first pillar is, okay, what we can do on our own network and the other pillar's, all the tools that AWS is giving us so we can manage security from a new perspective. >> Carolina, last question that I have for you is, look forward a little bit, if you will, are there things that you'll be looking to do in future election cycles or anything else from this project that you could expect going forward? >> Yeah, definitely. We're going to repeat this experience in 2021. Trying to think of the success was the 2019 election cycle. And in this particular informed voter project, we might want to keep doing this for the next election cycles, not only 2023 now, but for the future. >> All right then, Leo, last piece for you, first of all, congratulations, again, winning Best Cyber Security Solution for Nonprofit. Just talk a little bit if you would, about your partnership with AWS and specifically, the requirements and what you see in the nonprofit segment. >> Well, we see that the nonprofit are growing large too, they will need very good scalable solutions. We see that all the focus that we have in on security is the next need because we have been working on these towers to the future. The solutions kept growing each time. The networks are growing each time. And the traffic is growing. The focus on the security will be one of the appendix of our work in the future. And I think that's the biggest issue that we are going to have. Having good engineers, good hard work and manage the challenge and consolidate all the solution as a need. Right now, we're working on many projects with different NGO's and we're working towers that they have the solution that fits them. And of course, we try to keep, in all the public sector, we try to keep the cost at a range level that we can afford that our customers can afford. That's I think, a big problem that we're having. >> Well, Carolina, congratulations on the progress with your project. Thank you so much for joining us. And Leo, thank you again for joining us and congratulations to you and the CloudHesive team for winning the award. >> Thanks. >> Thank you very much. >> All right, stay tuned for more coverage, theCUBE, at the AWS Public Sector Partner Awards. I'm Stu Miniman. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)
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Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. She is the Director of the So if you could just give us a snapshot And one of the focus that a little bit about the CIPPEC and to guarantee civil obviously the security And the last, we have to develop as to what went into making your decision all of the information you and all the differentials of AWS. Anything along the way that and the partner was critical the scalability, and of course, And most of anything, the and be able to stay secure and the other pillar's, all for the next election cycles, the requirements and what you We see that all the focus and congratulations to you Thanks for watching.
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Leo Bracco & Carolina Tchintian V1
(upbeat music) >> Announcer: From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto, in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world. This is a CUBE conversation. >> Hi, and welcome back. I'm Stu Miniman and this is theCUBE's coverage of Amazon Web Services, Public Sector Awards for their partners. Really interesting, we get to talk to people around the globe, we talked to the vendors, the award winners as well as their customers who have some interesting projects. So happy to welcome to the program coming to us from Argentina. I have Leo Bracco. He is the Latin American Executive Director for CloudHesive and joining him, his customer Carolina Tchintian. She is the Director of the Political Institution Program at CIPPEC. Thank you so much for joining us. >> Thank you. >> Thank you for having us. >> All right, so Leo, first of all, let's start with you if we could. So CloudHesive first of all, congratulations, you were the Nonprofit Sector award winner for cybersecurity solutions. Of course, anybody that knows public sector, there's the government agencies, there's nonprofits there's education. The cybersecurity of course, went from the top priority to the top, top priority here in 2020. So if you could just give us a snapshot of CloudHesive for our customer. >> Well, CloudHesive is a US based company, started six years ago in 2014. And we decide a couple of years ago to move to Latin America and to start working with Latin America customers. Our offices are in Argentina right now. And one of the focus that we have in the solutions that we give to our customers is security. We work on services to help companies to reduce the cost, increase productivity, and what should the security posture? So we've been working a long time ago to many NPOs, and seeing how they can leverage the solutions and how they can give secure, how to be secure in the world. In the internet. >> All right, Carolina, if you could tell us a little bit about the CIPPEC and maybe then key us up as the project that you're working on. >> Okay, thank you. So CIPPEC is a nonprofit think tank, nonprofit organization, independent organization that aims to deliver better public policies in different areas. In economic development, in social protection and state and government. My particular program, the political institutions program goal is, or the mission is basically to promote evidence based decisions to improve democratic processes and to guarantee civil and political rights across all the countries. So we on issues such as improving election administrations, legislative work, representation, and that's our area of work. >> Wonderful. Sounds like a phenomenal project. Leo, if you could help us understand where did CloudHesive get involved in this project? Was there an existing relationship already, or was it for a specific rollout? that tell us about, obviously the security angles are a big piece? >> No, we didn't have a previous engagement with them. They come to us with a very short time to elections and they need a secure solution. So we first have to analyze the actual solution, how it works, acknowledging well the current infra that they have. Then we have to understand the challenge that they're facing. They have a very public site, they need to go public and they need to be very secure. And the last, we have to develop a fast migration strategy. We knew that AWS was the perfect fit for the need. So we just had to align a good strategy with the customer need. And all these it has been done in less than 72 hours. That was our deadline to elections. >> Wow, talk about fast. Okay, Carolina, help us understand a little bit. Had your organization, had you been using a Cloud before? Seventy-two hours is definitely an aggressive timeline. So help us understand a little bit as to what went into making your decision and obviously, 72 hours super short timeframe. >> Super, super short. Yeah, that was a big challenge. So let me tell you more about what we do and the context. So Argentina holds elections, national elections every two years. In each election year CIPPEC tries to generate and systematize analysis of provincial and national elections with the goal of informing key actors in the electoral processes. This is and decision makers, political parties, media, and general population. So as our first experience in 2017, with informed voter project, we had this collaboration with the National Electoral Authorities in which we created a landing page in our website where you could find as the voter, all of the information you need to go and cast your vote throughout the entire election process. Meaning from the campaign stage, election administration details, polling places, electoral offer, participation et cetera. So that was a landing page hosted in our website. And in 2017, we managed to have a button in every eligible voter in Argentina Facebook feed. So you could go click there and go to our website, right. And have all of the information summarize in a very simple way, straightforward way. So what happened in the 2017 election day is that the button was so successful that the landing page made our server to collapse in the first hours of the election day. So we learned a huge lesson there, which was that we had to be prepared in 2019, if we wanted to repeat this experience. And that is how we get to CloudHesive. >> Wonderful, Leo, if you could, help us understand a little bit architecturally what's going on there, what was CoHesive doing, what AWS services were leveraged? >> Perfect. Well we need great reliability, performance, scalability of course and the main thing security. We have no doubt about the Cloud and all the differentials of AWS. Our main question was about how do we align the right services to give the best solution to the customer? So we did kind of strategy with S3, CloudFront, and we, at the same time being monitorizing everything with CloudTrail and securing the public's access to all of these information. That give us a perfect fit for the solution, a very easy solution and very of course scalable, but more than anything, we could improve the customer experience in very small amount of time. So this is a very simple solution, that fits perfect for the customer. >> Wonderful. Carolina, if you could, tell us how did things go? What lessons have you learned? Anything along the way that you would give feedback to your peers or other organizations that were looking to do something similar? >> Yeah, well, the 2017 experience was a very tough experience for us because we've been preparing for election day during the 2016 and 2017. And the infrastructure was the limit we had in that point. So we couldn't afford ... We have a commitment with informing voters and informing key actors on election process. And these key actors are expecting that information on election day, before, and after. The lesson there is, we cannot be limited by the infrastructure. Assuming that in 2019, that the landing page would receive a similar amount or a huge amount of traffic volume visits on the election day, basically, we knew that traditional hosting service couldn't fulfill those needs so we had to go beyond traditional and the partner was critical to help us to the migration, to the Cloud. >> Yeah, Leo, maybe you could speak a little bit to that, the scalability, and of course, nonprofit's very sensitive to costs involved in these solutions. Help us understand that those underpinnings of leveraging, AWS specifically in CloudHesive. How this meets their needs and still is financially, makes sense. >> Perfect. When you have this kind of solutions, of course, your first concern is, okay, how do I make a scalable solution that fits on the, just on this moment that they need the behavior for so many infrastructure involved. And then at the other day, they need no infra at all, but you have another two big things that you have to focus on. One, is the security, you need to monitor all the behaviors of the content and pay attention to any external menace. You have one 24-hour day, so you need to be very responsibility and high sensitive information that the customer has on the set of data there. It's good to say that we have no security incidents, and no security breach during the most public stage of the operation, so that there was very good for us. The next thing is from the delivery perspective. You have a potential pick of people over the side to usually manage the content delivery network to answer all the requirements. You must be able to share the content in CloudFront, and so you have, and you can achieve your goals, right? And what I can say, it's about numbers, we achieve more than 99.5 efficiency hit rate you over the CDN, that's over CloudFront. And we kept server CPU such below 10% all the time. So this was a major success for us. Like we have no trouble, we use things at the most. And most of anything, the customer has the security, everything look from our perspective. (mumbles) >> Leo, what follow up if I could, if you look at 2020 being able to scale and respond to the changes in workload and be able to stay secure when bad actors, many people are working at home, but doesn't mean the bad actors aren't out there. We've actually seen an increase in security attacks. So just, do you have any commentary overall about what's happening more recently in what you see in your space? >> Yeah, well, we're very focused right now and while security is being each time bigger, right? One of the biggest menace in security is our own team, because we have to keep our teams auto align to the process and understanding the security as a first step doing things from the network perspective. Then we have a very good experience over this last two years, with all the security tools that AWS is seeking to the market. So we now have CloudTrail. We can do many things with WAF we're working towers of new good security solutions. And so I think this will be the future. We have to focus ourself in these two pillars. The first pillar is, okay, what we can do on our own network and the other pillar's, all the tools that AWS is giving us so we can manage security from a new perspective. >> Carolina, last question that I have for you is, look forward a little bit, if you will, are there things that you'll be looking to do in future election cycles or anything else from this project that you could expect going forward? >> Yeah, definitely. We're going to repeat this experience in 2021. Trying to think of the success was the 2019 election cycle. And in this particular informed voter project, we might want to keep doing this for the next election cycles, not only 2023 now, but for the future. >> All right then, Leo, last piece for you, first of all, congratulations, again, winning Best Cyber Security Solution for Nonprofit. Just talk a little bit if you would, about your partnership with AWS and specifically, the requirements and what you see in the nonprofit segment. >> Well, we see that the nonprofit are growing large too, they will need very good scalable solutions. We see that all the focus that we have in on security is the next need because we have been working on these towers to the future. The solutions kept growing each time. The networks are growing each time. And the traffic is growing. The focus on the security will be one of the appendix of our work in the future. And I think that's the biggest issue that we are going to have. Having good engineers, good hard work and manage the challenge and consolidate all the solution as a need. Right now, we're working on many projects with different NGO's and we're working towers that they have the solution that fits them. And of course, we try to keep, in all the public sector, we try to keep the cost at a range level that we can afford that our customers can afford. That's I think, a big problem that we're having. >> Well, Carolina, congratulations on the progress with your project. Thank you so much for joining us. And Leo, thank you again for joining us and congratulations to you and the CloudHesive team for winning the award. >> Thanks. >> Thank you very much. >> All right, stay tuned for more coverage, theCUBE, at the AWS Public Sector Partner Awards. I'm Stu Miniman. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)
SUMMARY :
leaders all around the world. She is the Director of the So if you could just give us a snapshot And one of the focus that a little bit about the CIPPEC and to guarantee civil obviously the security And the last, we have to develop as to what went into making your decision all of the information you and all the differentials of AWS. Anything along the way that and the partner was critical the scalability, and of course, And most of anything, the and be able to stay secure and the other pillar's, all for the next election cycles, the requirements and what you We see that all the focus and congratulations to you Thanks for watching.
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