(upbeat music) >> Live in Washington, DC. This is day two of two days of coverage. I'm John Furr, your host. We're in person face-to-face event it's kicking off day two. Dave Levy's here, Vice President of US government Nonprofit and healthcare businesses for AWS Public Sector. Dave, great to see you again, welcome back. >> Dave: Great to see you, John. >> So, great time last time we were in person, 2019, looks like the event, the last year was virtual, what's new? >> Well, first of all, I think it's just exciting. I mean, I'm excited to be back and in-person and so much has happened in our personal lives in our communities and so I'm really glad that we can all be together and it's been great so far. >> I was talking yesterday with some folks and I saw people doing some networking. I heard someone, "Hey, I'm want to hire someone." So, the face-to-face is back, we're also streaming. Max Peterson told me they're pushing it everywhere on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, everywhere, Twitch, so free content, but still a lot of registrations here in person, good stuff. >> Yeah, great registrations. We're thrilled with the support from partners and customers. And also too, like you said, the connections that people are making, so it does feel good that things are flowing and people are having conversations and- >> Well, you got healthcare, nonprofits, US government, healthcare has been a big focus so far in this show. A lot of action, local governments, governments and healthcare seem to be like pandemic enabled to change. What's the update? What's the highlights so far for you? >> Well, I think the highlights are in those areas that, what we've been able to help our customers with is the ability to respond and that's what Cloud is all about and their ability to react and to respond to things that they don't necessarily know is going to happen and the big thing that none of us knew was going to happen was the pandemic. And so that ability and agility and preparedness to respond has really been great to see from a lot of those customers. >> You know, Max Peterson had the CIO from the Air Force up on stage and she's known for her comments about data and data's our data, the US Air Force and so data's big part of it. They are having a transformation and the how's that project going? What's the update there? What's your impression on that? >> Yeah, well, it was great to see the Air Force on stage and great to see Laura up there and we're really proud to support the DOD and the Air Force. And the Air Force has a lot to be proud of in their transformation journey and what they're doing with Cloud One is pretty substantial and amazing transformation for them. And then they've got 35 applications running on AWS. And so we think their progress is really good and they're thinking the right way in terms of their software factories and other types of projects. >> What's interesting is it's watching like who's adopting, it's like you look at like the pandemic has really opened up the view of the projects, which ones are doing well. And how do I say this politely? The projects that were being blocked or hidden, or the KPIs camouflaging the value were exposed because I mean, once that pulled back the curtain, people realized, "Oh my God, we're stuck," Or "we're inadequate, we are antiquated. We need to change," because now the pressure to deliver shifted to digital. I mean, this literally exposed the good, bad, and the ugly. >> It did and some were more prepared than others. There are great examples. We worked with the SBA to help expand the portal for the payroll protection program to get more lenders access faster. And that was a great project. They were able to respond really quickly and we were able to support them in that. Others, not so much. I think it you're right, it did expose that there's an opportunity. There's an opportunity to accelerate some of the things that they were doing already in terms of digital transformation. >> How about the GovCloud and the federal customers that you have, what's the traction point? How has that going? Is there a new generation here? >> GovCloud has been a great success. GovCloud it's our- >> John: 10-year anniversary. >> It's our 10-year anniversary, so we're thrilled to celebrate that. I can't believe it's 2011. >> EC2 is 15. Is that 315? I guess 15, too is SQS, the original building blocks. >> So, we've got a lot of great success through GovCloud and GovCloud was really something that was born out of what customers wanted, primarily federal customers. But we've also seen over the last few years, real adoption from regulated industry, real adoption from partners that are going into GovCloud that really want to take advantage of the security and compliance that federal customers need and the larger defense industrial base organizations need. So, GovCloud's been a fabulous success and expect I expect a lot of growth going forward. >> Yeah, is there a cultural shift in the federal government now? I can imagine some countries have been exploring this. I did talk briefly about it with Ms. Shannon Kellogg and John Wood, about how, if you're under the age of 40 and you work in the federal government, you got to be like, "Why aren't we doing this?" Like there seems to be like a cultural shift, younger generation coming in and be like, looking at the old way and be like, "Why are we still doing that?" >> Well, I think look bipartisan support for digital transformation, for making sure that we have the competitive edge for generations and generations to come in the US both in business and in defense and national security, I think is an imperative. I mean nobody I've talked to disagrees that we need to do this. And I think that younger workforce coming in behind I'm jealous of the 40-year olds, I wish I was under 40, but none of workforce really sees the obstacles that maybe previous generation saw these emerging technologies are becoming, the basic unit of computer's getting smaller, the cost to do these things is coming way down and I think that younger workforce says, "Why aren't we doing this?" >> Yeah and I think the Air Force projects are interesting too because that shows us not just about the CIA or the DOD that you have, they're leaning into production workloads, and the mission critical workloads too, the DOD is also now continuing to adopt. What else are you guys doing with the DOD? >> Well, we're partnering with GDIT on milCloud and that's going to give DOD mission owners access to a whole suite of AWS services. So, we're really excited about that. And those are available now. We're the only Cloud provider that's making that accessible to them on milCloud. And so this is going to open up the opportunity for them to start doing that mission work that you described. A good example of that are programs like ABMS, Air Force's Advanced Battle Management System. It's part of their effort around JADC2 and a great set of capabilities that they're delivering there. We're happy to have participated. We did some testing and some show intel, if you will at Ramstein Air Force Base and we're really proud to support that effort and we're excited about what the Air Force is doing. >> You know, I've always been impressed with the DOD when the tactical edge concept came out, that was very impressive because they're really using the data properly and I know Amazon has been doing well in this area because you've got things like Outpost, Wavelength, Snowball products. How's that edge piece developing? Do you see that becoming more critical now? >> It's absolutely critical. It's not becoming critical, it is critical and I think if you look at what the DOD and all of their partners are trying to accomplish, it's really moving all of that data around from the very edge in theater, back home to where it needs to be analyzed, doing it fast, doing it secure, being able to deliver on their missions and that's what this is all about. So, we see huge, huge opportunities to really innovate around the edge. >> Yeah, the data equation really is fascinating to me. Just when you think about things like words, highly available versus high availability means something 'cause you're going to want real time, not just on available data, you got to have it real time so the pressure around these projects are high. And so technically, you've got to have low latency on all this stuff. >> That's true, that's true. You've got to either have near real time or real-time availability and in many cases there's high stakes. So, the ability the DOD to pull this off is really, really important and we're a big supporter of that. >> Dave, I want to get your perspective because you've been in the industry, you've seen that the ways, we talked before cameras about the '90s and data centers and stuff. 10 years of GovCloud, look at public sector, just to look at the 10 years, interesting evolution. I mean, you couldn't give Cloud a wait 15 years ago. They weren't moving, glacier speed of adoption, now, massive adoption, uptakes there, the transformations are happening, migrations are huge, healthcare, which is like silo the data, HIPAA compliance lock everything down, everything's opening up. This is causing a lot of change. What's your reaction to that? >> Well, my reaction to that is I think customers are starting to connect what their outcomes are, whether it's a business outcome or a mission outcome or both to what Cloud can actually do. And I think that's freeing them up to make decisions about enabling Cloud in their environment, enabling experimentation, because that's what you want. You don't know what you're going to be faced with. We don't know what the threats are. We don't know if there's going to be another major pandemic. We hope there's not, but we don't know and if you set goals around your outcomes for mission and tie those, Cloud becomes such an enabler for that. And I see customers embracing that. Customers across the spectrum, nonprofit, healthcare providers, everybody, Homeland Security, VA, they're all thinking about, "What are the mission outcomes we're trying to drive?" >> Yeah, what's interesting too on that is that, just to point out is that the applications now aren't as complex to build relatively to the speed. In other words, you can get the time to value. So, the pandemic showed people that if you were in the Cloud and had that agility or optionality to be agile, you could write software 'cause software is the key in this, and not let's do the waterfall, 12-weeks assessment, 10-month rollout. Now people are doing it in 10 days, new applications. >> Sure, sure. Well, I tell customers a lot, "Think about McDonald's during the pandemic and think about customers like that who had to react to a new environment of delivery and your fast food fresh and how quickly companies like that are able to roll out capabilities." And I don't know that federal customers will be able to do it in a week or two weeks, but it's certainly possible. And it certainly will shorten that lead time that they have now in their software development. >> Well, great to see you, Dave. Is there any customers you want to highlight and you want to talk about, get a plug in for? >> Yeah, a lot of great customers here representing today and we're really appreciative also just want to say it was really great to see Max on stage for his first summit and think it was great to see Laura and others as well too. We've got some great customers coming here, The Veteran's affairs is going to be here as well as the Navy presenting on a lot of their capabilities today. So, I'm really excited about that. >> Yeah, a lot of action and education, healthcare, really blooming, really changing and modernizing. Big-wave migration, modernization, all kinds of the big wave. >> Yeah, it is. Yeah, big things coming and some of these systems are ready, so these systems are 40 and 50 years old and we're here to help these customers deliver on the agility and the extensibility of these systems to really serve citizens. >> What's your outlook for next year? What are you seeing next year so happening? How do you see everything unfolding? So you mentioned the pandemic, we're still in it, Delta Virus, who knows what's going to happen next, the world stage is changing, the global economy, space. >> I see customers really leaning in and starting to see the benefits of moving their data to the Cloud, number one, and then also to getting the insights using AI and ML to really drive the insights that they need to make the decisions on that data and I see more and more customers doing that. I did a panel this week, moderated a panel with some great customers around that and getting started is probably the biggest thing that I see and we're going to have more and more customers getting started. >> Yeah, getting into the Cloud. Congratulations to milCloud by the way, too. That was a good call out. All right, thanks for coming, I appreciate it. >> John: Yeah, thanks, Sean. >> Okay, keep coverage here. The Public Sector Summit, live in Washington, D.C. in-person event also hybrid we're streaming out. We're doing remote interviews and Amazon is streaming all the keynotes and key sessions for the digital folks out there. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

(stirring music) >> Announcer: From Seattle, Washington, it's theCUBE. Covering AWS IMAGINE Nonprofit. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in downtown Seattle, Washington, actually right on the waterfront. It has been a spectacular visit here for the last couple of days. And we're back in Seattle for AWS IMAGINE. We were here a couple weeks ago for AWS IMAGINE Education. This is a different version of the conference, really focused around government and nonprofits, and we're really excited to kick off our day with the guy coming right off the keynote who's running this, he's Dave Levy. He's the vice president for U.S. Government and Nonprofit for AWS. Dave, great to see you, and congrats on the keynote. >> Thank you, thanks for having me, too. We're really excited. >> Absolutely. So as you're talking about mission and purpose, and as I'm doing my homework for some of the topics we're going to cover today, these are big problems. I couldn't help but think of a famous quote from Jeff Hammerbacher from years ago, who said, "The greatest minds of my generation "are thinking about how to make us click ads." And I'm so happy and refreshed to be here with you and your team to be working on much bigger problems. >> Yeah, well thank you. We're very excited, we're thrilled with all the customers here, all the nonprofits, all the nongovernmental organizations, all of our partners. It's just very exciting, and there are a lot of big challenges out there, and we're happy to be a part of it. >> So it's our first time here, but you guys have been doing this show, I believe this is the fourth year. >> Its fourth year, yeah. >> Give us a little background on the nonprofit sector at AWS. How did you get involved, you know, what's your mission, and some of the numbers behind. >> Well, it's one of the most exciting part of our businesses in the worldwide public sector. And we have tens of thousands of customers in the nonprofit sector, and they are doing all sorts of wonderful things in terms of their mission. And we're trying to help them deliver on their mission with our technology. So you see everything from hosting websites, to doing back office functions in the cloud, running research and donor platforms, and so it's just a very exciting time, I think. And nonprofit missions are accelerating, and we're helping them do that. >> Yeah, it's quite a different mission than selling books, or selling services, or selling infrastructure, when you have this real focus. The impact of some of these organizations is huge. We're going to talk to someone involved in human trafficking. 25,000,000 people involved in this problem. So these are really big problems that you guys are helping out with. >> They're huge problems, and at Amazon, we really identify with missionaries. We want our partners and our customers to be able to be empowered to deliver on their mission. We feel like we're missionaries and we're builders at Amazon, so this is a really good fit for us, to work with nonprofits all over the world. >> And how did you get involved? We were here a couple weeks ago, talked to Andrew Ko. He runs EDU, he'd grown up in tech, and then one of his kids had an issue that drove him into the education. What's your mission story? >> Well, on a personal level, I'm just passionate about this space. There's so much opportunity. It's everything from solving challenges around heart disease, to research for cancer, patient care, to human trafficking. So all of those things resonate. It touches all of our lives, and I'm thrilled to be able to contribute, and I've got a fantastic team, and we've got amazing customers. >> Right. It's great. Did a little homework on you, you're a pretty good, interesting guy too. But you referenced something that I thought was really powerful, and somebody interviewing you. You talked about practice. Practice, practice, practice, as a person. And you invoked Amara's Law, which I had never heard for a person, which is we tend to overestimate what we can do in the short term, but we underestimate what we can do in the long term. And as these people are focused on these giant missions, the long term impacts can be gargantuan. >> Yeah, I think so. Like you said, we're tackling some huge problems out there. Huge, difficult problems. Migrations, diseases. And, you know, it takes a while to get these things done. And when you look back on a ten year horizon, you can really accomplish a lot. So we like to set big, bold, audacious goals at Amazon. We like to think big. And we want to encourage our customers to think big along with us. And we'll support them to go on this journey. And it may take some time, but I'm confident we can solve a lot of the big problems out there. >> But it's funny, there's a lot of stuff in social now where a lot of people don't think big enough. And you were very specific in your keynote. You had three really significant challenges. Go from big ideas to impact. Learn and be curious, and dive deep. Because like you said, these are not simple problems. These aren't just going to go away. But you really need to spend the time to get into it. And I think what's cool about Amazon, and your fanatical customer focus, to apply that type of a framework, that type of way of go to market into the nonprofit area, really gives you a unique point of view. >> I hope so. And we're doing a lot of really cool things here at the conference. We've got a Working Backwards session. One of the things about working backwards that's really interesting is the customer's at the center of that. And it all starts with the customer. I can't tell you how many times I've been in a meeting at Amazon where somebody has said, wait a second. This is what we heard these customers say, this is what we heard about their mission. And it's all about what customers want. So we're really excited that our customers here and our nonprofits here are going to be going through some of those sessions, and hopefully we can provide a little innovation engine for them by applying Amazon processes to it. >> For the people that aren't familiar, the working backwards, if I'm hearing you right, is the Amazon practice where you actually write the press release for when you're finished, and then work backwards. So you stay focused on those really core objectives. >> Yeah, that's right. It's start with your end state in mind and work backwards from there. And it starts with a press release. And certainly those are fun to write, because you want to know what you're going to be delivering and how you're going to be delivering it, and frankly how your customers and how your stakeholders will be responding. So it's a really great exercise, helps you focus on the mission, and sets up the stage for delivery in the future. >> It's funny, I think one of the greatest and easy simple examples of that is the Amazon Go store. And I've heard lots of stores, I've been it now a couple times up here, in San Francisco, and the story that I've heard, maybe you know if it's true or not, is that when they tried to implement it at first, they had a lot of more departments. And unfortunately it introduced lines not necessarily at checkout, but other places in the store. And with that single focus mission of no lines, cut back the SKUs, cut back the selection, and so when I went in it in San Francisco the other day, and it gave me my little time in the store, the Google search results? It was, I think, a minute and 19 to go in, grab a quick lunch, and then get back on my way. So really laser-focused on a specific objective. >> Yeah, and that's the point of the working backwards process. It's all about what customers want, and you can refine that and continue to refine that, and you get feedback, and you're able to answer those questions and solve those difficult problems. >> That's great. Well, Dave, thanks for inviting us here for the first time again. Congrats on the keynote, and we look forward to a bunch of really important work that your customers and your team are working on, and learning more about those stories. >> Thanks, we're thrilled. Very thrilled. >> All right. He's Dave, I'm Jeff. You're watching theCUBE. We're in Seattle at the AWS IMAGINE Nonprofit. Thanks for watching, we'll see you next time. (light electronic music)

>> Voiceover: Live from Washington D.C., it's the Cube. Covering AWS Public Sector Summit. (upbeat music) Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Welcome back everyone to the Cube's live coverage of the AWS Public Sector Summit here in wonderful Washington D.C. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight along with my co-host, John Furrier. We are welcoming Dave Levy to the program, he is the Vice President, Federal Government at AWS. Thank you so much for coming on the Cube. >> Yeah, thank you for having me. >> Rebecca: This is your first time, your first rodeo. >> It is my first time. >> Rebecca: Welcome. >> Glad to be here. >> You're now a Cube alumni, welcome to the Cube alumni club. >> Well exactly, right, exactly. So you have been with AWS for about two years now. AWS famously has this day one mentality. I want you to talk a little bit about the culture of the company and how the culture helps create more innovative products and services. >> Yeah, and it is always day one. You hear about that but truly working in my first two years, you really get the experience when you're here everyday, that excitement and that enthusiasm for customers. It's interesting and somebody was asking me the other day, how do you get influence inside of Amazon, how do you get you points across? And in large part because Amazon's not a PowerPoint culture, being charismatic or having some of those traits really doesn't carry the day. What really carries the day inside of Amazon is what customers want and so I can't tell you how many times in the first few years that I've been here that we have been in meetings, going through our customer working backwards process, where somebody has said, wait a minute, we heard customers say we prioritize these four things versus these three things. And that kind of sentiment carries a lot of currency inside of the business for what we prioritize and what's important to us and it's how we innovate on behalf of customers. So that's what happens everyday, it happens day one at AWS and it's been really exciting these first few years. >> That's been a great formula for Amazon. That long game as Bezos always says, Andy always says, customer first, customer-centric thinking. But this working backwards process we've learned, come to learn, it's really critical within Amazon. But also making sure customers have the right journey, right, they get what they need, they get value, lower costs, living with undifferentiated heavy lifting. I feel like I'm messaging for Amazon. (laughing) Got it memorized. I sit down and interview so many people from Amazon, I got the rap down but digital transformation is about the long game 'cause all the shifts that are going on now aren't incremental, small improvements, it's really moving the ball down the field, big time. So you're seeing major shifts within customer bases saying, like the CIA did in 2013, >> Dave: Sure. >> which was initially a hedge against big data, we heard on stage today, turned out to be a critical decision for their innovation, this modernization. Could you share some other customer experiences around this IT modernization trend that's, it's totally real, it's happening right now in D.C. in Public Sector. >> Sure, there are a lot of examples. IT modernization is something that takes on a lot of different forms and a lot of different agencies think about it in different ways but fundamentally, it's about taking the systems that are serving citizens or a war fighter and allowing for an ability and an agility to do things better and faster and cheaper and doing it in a way that continues to innovate. And you see a lot of examples of that. CMS has the 76 million records of Americans on AWS. You see large data sets starting to be hosted on AWS from agencies across the civilian sector. DOD is really starting to lean in on workloads that are traditional things like ERP. >> DOD is more than leaning in, they're really going big. There's a paper that they put out was very comprehensive-- >> Yeah, I think there's a tremendous advantage from this digital transformation and agencies are really just at the beginning of it. They're really beginning to see what flexibility it provides. I think the other thing that it's doing is it's really helping to modernize the workforce. It's allowing the IT workforce to start focusing on things that are really valuable instead of managing hardware or managing IT environment strictly. It's giving the ability to deliver solutions and that's really exciting, that's what modernization is doing. >> One of the things that comes up in the modernization talks, it's not that obvious on the mainstream press, but the whole red tape argument of government process. People process technology, again, we've done these conversations all the time but in each one, the process piece, there's red tape in all of them. People who go slower, the process has red tape in it but this idea of busting through and cutting the red tape. >> Dave: Yeah. >> All these bottlenecks, Teresa calls them blockers. >> Yeah. >> Right. That's her different word. >> Yeah, yeah. >> These are real, now people are identifying that they can be taken away, not just dealing with them. Your thoughts and reaction to that. >> Yeah, well, I agree. There's a lot of opportunity. Digitizing work flows gives you the opportunity to re-examine all of these operational processes which frankly, may have been in place for very sound reasons in the past but when you modernize and you digitize and you do it in a cloud way, you're going to start to see that some of those things and those processes that were in place, really aren't necessary any more. And it allows you to move faster, it gives you more speed and we're seeing that across customers and the US government. We're seeing it really everywhere. >> And one of the things you were saying too about the digitizing the work flow, it's really about ensuring that citizens, civilians or members of the armed forces are interacting with government in a more meaningful way. That is the overarching problem that you're trying to solve here. >> It is and it can be as simple as citizens getting the kind of content that they need from a modern website, accessing it quickly, going to higher level functions around chatbots and things like that. So these modern cloud architectures are allowing agencies to deliver services faster, deliver things to citizens in a way they haven't before. Could be citizens that need assistive technology. It's giving agencies the opportunity to do things around 508 compliance that they haven't done before. So it's really opening up the aperture for a lot of agencies on what they can deliver. >> We've been doing a lot of reporting around Jedi, the DOD, actually been following a lot of the white papers from a cloud perspective. We're not really in the political circle so we don't know sometimes whose toes we're stepping on when we poke round but one thing that's very clear from the agencies that I report, even here in the hallways this week, CIA and other agencies I've talked to, all talk about the modernization in the context of one common theme, data. Data is the critical piece of the equation and it's multifold, this single cloud with the workload objective or multiple clouds in an architecture like the DOD put out. So there's clear visibility on what it looks like architecturally, multicloud, some hybrid, some pure public cloud based on workloads, the right cloud with the right job and people are getting that. But data is evolving, the role of data 'cause you got AI which is fed by machine learning. This really is a game changer. How is that playing out in conversations that you're seeing with customers and talk about that dynamic because if you get it right, good things happen, if you get it wrong, you could be screwed. It's really one of those linchpin, core items, your thoughts. >> Every agency, virtually every agency we talk to, every customer we're talking to is saying that data is the most important thing, their data strategy. Data, you know, we've all heard the sayings, data has gravity, data is the new oil. So there's a lot of ways to characterize it but once you have the opportunity to get your data both unstructured and structured, in a place, in a cloud, in an environment where you can start to do things with it, create data lakes, you can start to apply analytics to it, build machine learning models in AI. Then you're really starting to get into delivering things that you haven't thought about before. And up until then it's been tough because the data, in a lot of our customers, has been spread out. It's been in different data centers, it's been in different environments, sometimes it's under somebody's desk. So this idea of data and data management is really exciting to a lot of our customers. >> Now a lot of people don't understand that there's also down, and this is what we're getting, we're hearing from customers as well is that, they set up the data lakes or whatever they're calling it, data strategy, data lake, whatever, then there's downstream benefits to having that data just materialize and as an anecdote to what is, you look at the Ground Station after we've had a couple great interviews here about Ground Station which I love by the way. I think that's totally the coolest thing because of the, well, the real impact is going to be great back hog, IoT is going to boom, blossom from it but it only happens because you got Amazon scale. So again, data has that similar dynamic where as you start collecting and managing it in a holistic way, new things emerge, new value emerges. >> Yeah, I would say-- >> What are some of those things that you're seeing with your customers there? >> I would say there are real-world challenges that our customers have to deal with with data, right. When you start to have volumes, terabytes, petabytes of data, they've got decisions to make. Do they expand the wall, knock out a wall and expand their data center and buy more appliances which require more heating, more cooling? Maybe they do do that but there's an alternative now. There's a place for that data to go and be safe and secure and they can start doing the things that they want to do with that data. And like you said, downstream effects. There are some things that they can do with that data that they don't even know about today, right, and Ground Station's a good example of that. >> You talk to people in the military, for example, because we just had Keith Alexander, our General, the General was on. They think tactical ads using data, save lives, protect our nation, et cetera but there's also the other benefit of it that has nothing to do with the tactical, it's a business value. The enablement is a huge conversation >> Dave: Sure. >> that you hear in these modernization trends. Not just the benefits tactically, but the enablement setup, talk about that dynamic. >> Well, you think about the data that is collected. You think about the valuable data at the VA and that has potential implications for population health and so this day is just enormously valuable. I think we're at the very beginning of what we can do with some of these things across federal and you look at agencies like Department of Interior and some of the data sets they have are just fascinating. What we can do. We've got millions of visitors to our national parks every day and we don't know what's possible with a lot of those data sets. >> Talk about some of the tools and techniques that are being used to work with that data and talk about AI and machine learning and how they have been a real game changer for some of your federal customers. >> Well, ML and AI is really, we're really at the very beginning of this transformation. I think in the fullness of time, the vast majority of applications are going to be effused with machine learning and artificial intelligence. I think that day is not too far away and they're using tools on our platform like SageMaker to make predictions in this data. And one of the great things about having a platform that has really three, different parts to the stack which are machine learning, that's where you have your frameworks. I say that's where all the really, really smart people live, all the data scientists that we're all so desperate for and then you've got that middle layer which are tools like our SageMaker which everyday developers can use. So if you've got geospatial data and you're trying to determine what's in a given area, everyday developers can use SageMaker to build machine learning models. Those are some of the things they're doing, very exciting. >> Hey, I want to get your thoughts on a comment that Teresa Carlson just made earlier today. I'm not sure she said this on camera or not but it was memorable. She said, "It used to be an aha moment with the cloud "but this year it's not, it's real, people now recognize "that cloud adoption is legit, proof is in the--" >> Rebecca: Cloud is the new normal. >> The proof is in the pudding, it's right there. You can start seeing evidence, all the doubting people out there can now see the evidence and make their own judgment, it's clear. >> Yeah. >> Cloud is of great benefit, creates disruption. As this continues to increase, and it is, numbers are there, see the business performance, what are the challenges and drivers for continued success? >> Yeah. I think the first conversation starter, so Teresa's spot on as she always is. I think the first conversation starter is always cost savings. That was the way everybody thought about the cloud in the beginning and I think there are cost savings that customers are going to realize. But I think the real value, the real reasons why customers do it is, there's an agility that happens when you move to cloud that you don't necessarily have in your other environments, there's the ability to move fast, to spin up a lot of capability in just a few minutes, in just even minutes and change the experience for users, change the experience for citizens. I think the other thing that cloud is delivering is this whole breadth of functionality that we didn't really have before. We talked about machine learning and AI but there are tools around IoT now. There's Greengrass on AWS which is simply AWS IoT inside. And places like John Deere, we have hundred thousands of telematically enabled tractors sending data back to planters. So customers are getting involved because there's this huge breadth of functionality. I think, and so that's exciting, those are the enablers, that's what's driving. I think some of the things that are getting in the way is, we've got a workforce by and large, especially in the federal government, well, this is new and that learning is happening, that enablement is happening about cloud. We're teaching about security in the cloud. It's a shared responsibility model. So it's the new normal, we know what can be done in the cloud but now there are some new paradigms about how to do it and AWS and a lot of our partners are out there talking about how to get that done. >> I want to get a double down on that because one of the things that we're doing a report on, I've been investigating, is kind of a boring topic but it's your world right on which is how Amazon bare-knuckled their way into this market through cost saving which for the federal government, I would say, is a great lead 'cause they care about cost savings. A financial institution in Wall Street might not care about cost savings. They might want arbitrage on the other side but again, government's government. You guys have earned, done the work to get all the certifications. Your team, Teresa's team has done that and now you're at the beginning of the next level. But procurement is really broken, right. I was talking to an official in an interview off the record and he said, I won't say his name till I can say it here, he said, "You know, we're living procurement in the 80s. "We still have a requirement to ship a manual "on a lot of these things." So the antiquated, inadequate procurement process is lagging so much that the technology shifts are happening in a shorter period of time. Amazon which produces thousands of new services every year and reinvents Jace's big slide thousands, next year it'll be probably 5000, who knows but it'll be a big number. That's happening, all this is happening right now, really fast but procurement's lagging behind it, really stunting the innovation equation, >> Dave: Yeah. >> the growth of innovation. Your thoughts on fixing that, how you get around it, all these old tripwire rules. >> Well, first I'll say, procurement reform is something that's on everybody's mind. This is, it's not just a blocker for cloud, it's a blocker for everybody. Technology is far outpacing what our federal government can do. So I don't, there's nobody that I talk to that thinks that we're headed in the right place with procurement reform, even our customers inside of the government. So I think what I'd say is it's really collective approach. It's an industry approach that's going to be taken to change a procurement, to help them adapt to modern laws. Do we need changes in the far perhaps, yes, but I think we need fundamental policy changes, a legislative approach to change procurement for technology. It's only going to move faster, you're right. Indie announced in 2018 I think, nearly 2000 services so you can expect there's going to be more this year. Part of that is understanding new models. Our marketplace, for example, is a way to buy and access software quickly, fast, even by the hour if necessary. That's a total-- >> Rebecca: Like Ground Station >> Yeah. >> in that way, yeah. >> By the minute if necessary. >> Yes, yes, yes. >> So it's a totally new paradigm. As far as how we're approaching now, it takes having good partners. We have good partners that are helping us with respect to contract vehicles. I think we're being transparent around how we bill, how these services translate, what's in the services that they're getting charged and I think agencies are starting to feel more comfortable with that. >> I learned a term from Charlie Bell, Engineer Lead for Amazon, did an interview, a term you guys use internally at Amazon called, dogs not barking. >> Dave: Yes. >> And it means that everyone, the barking dog everyone hears and they go after, they solve that problem. It's what you don't see, the blind spot, aka blind spots. What do you see in federal that's not barking >> Yeah, what are our dogs? >> that you're aware of? What keeps you up at night? >> What are our dogs not barking? >> John: Yeah. >> I would say, it really is our customer workforce. I think our customers really need to get enablement and training and support from us and the partner community on how to make this transition to cloud. It's incumbent upon us and it's incumbent upon the agencies to really deliver it. That does keep me up at night because this is new. This is new for, the ATO process is a little bit different. The accreditation process is different. So there's a lot of new things out there and if there's a dog that's not barking, it's somebody needs help and they're not really letting us-- >> They might not even know they need it. >> They don't know they need help or they're not saying that that they need help and they don't know where to go. >> Right. >> Right. >> They should come to you. >> Well, thanks for coming on. (laughing) >> Dave, thank you so much for coming on the Cube. >> Yeah, thank you, all right. >> Thank you, thank you. >> I'm Rebecca Knight for John Furrier. We will have more from the Cube AWS Public Sector Summit, stay tuned. (upbeat music)

>> From Seattle Washington, it's theCUBE, covering AWS Imagine, nonprofit. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're actually on the waterfront in Seattle at the AWS Imagine nonprofit event. We were here a couple weeks ago for the AWS Imagine education event. This is really about nonprofits and solving big, big problems. So Dave Levy and team have you know dedicated to some of these big problems. And one of the big problems in the world is human trafficking, and problems that people are encountering and all kinds of nasty situations all over the world. And we're really excited to have someone who's tackling that problem, and really trying to bring a voice to those people that wouldn't otherwise have a voice. And she's Hend Alhinnawai, she's the CEO of Humanitarian Tracker. Hend, good to see you. >> Thank you Jeff, good to be here. >> Absolutely. So before we jump into it, impressions on this event? >> Wonderful event bringing together technologists, people in nonprofits, really creating synergies for people to collaborate and talk to each other and network and learn how they can advance their organizations. >> Such important work. >> Yes. >> So give us kind of the background on what you're up to, what Humanitarian Tracker's all about. >> So Humanitarian Tracker's a nonprofit forum. It was created to connect and empower citizens using innovation and technology, but specifically for humanitarian events. We were among the first to combine crowdsourced reports with data mining and artificial intelligence and apply them to humanitarian disasters, conflicts, human rights violations, disease outbreak. All the way to tracking the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. Really giving a holistic view of what's happening. >> It's interesting, you know, it's probably like the middle eastern spring, I can't remember the exact term that people use, where it was kind of the first use of regular people using their mobile phones to kind of grab a ground swell of action. You're not looking at the politics specifically, you're looking more at humanitarian disasters. But pretty amazing kind of what a connected phone represents to anyone anywhere in the world now to communicate what's happening to them. To share that story. We really didn't have anything like that before. To get that personal event on the ground. >> No it's really a new way of consuming, creating and consuming information. So the cell phone has really given people on the ground a chance to tell their own story. But it's not enough. If you have an event that happens to you. Something happens to you. And you record it, it stops there. But the unique thing with Humanitarian Tracker is it gives people that forum to show the world and tell them what's happening to and around them. >> Right, but it's not just about the individual. And what you guys are doing is using cutting edge technology, obviously you're here as part of the AWS event. In terms of machine-learning and big data to grab a large number of these reported events and distill it into more of an overarching view of what is actually happening on the ground. How did you do that, where did you get that vision, how are you executing that? >> Well, we're all about empowering the citizen. And in our line of work we deal with a lot of data, a lot of information, most of it is unstructured, most of it is crowdsourced. So we use machine-learning to help us extract important details. Information on time. Event location, what is happening. And at the same time we really cared that this reporter, stays anonymous for their own safety. We, privacy and security is utmost importance to us. So that's always our focus. So in that space, we de-identify them. We take out any information that could be identifiable, that could lead to their arrest, or could lead to someone identifying that it was them that reported. >> And how do you get this information to the people that are suffering this activity ground? How do they know about you, how do they know that you are anonymizing their information so there's not going to be repercussions if they report. You know, how do, kind of I guess your go-to-market, to steal a business terms, in making sure that people know this tool's available for help? >> It depends on the situation. For example in the conflict situation, we rolled it out, and we kept it low key for awhile. Because we didn't want government attacks, we didn't want people to be arrested, or to be tried. So we rolled it out. And it was word of mouth that spreads. And people started submitting supports. Actually the first project we did with conflict, we weren't sure if we were going to get one report, zero reports. The first week we got nothing. And then slowly as people learned about it they started submitting their reports. And we see our job as really elevating the otherwise marginalized voice. So you submit a report to us, we then take it. We verify it. We make it public. And that, we welcome, we encourage, we want people to consume it. Whether you're a student, whether you're a journalist, whether you're a government, whether you work in a nonprofit, the UN. It's been used to address human rights violations, it's been used to identify humanitarian hotspots. The data's phenomenal, and what you get from it. It's not just collecting data. We're not just about collecting the data. We want to make sure it's meaningful, and we want to derive insights. So we want to know what is the data actually telling us? >> Right, right. So just to be clear for people that don't know, so you're making that data available, you're cleansing the data, you're running some AI on it to try to get a bigger picture, and anyone with a login, any kind of journalist can now access that data in support of whatever issue or topic or story they're chasing? >> That's it Jeff. >> That's phenomenal. And just kind of size and scope. You've been at this I think you said since 2011. You know kind of how many active, activities, crisis, I don't know, what the definition is of a bucket of these problems. Are you tracking historically at a given point in time? Give us some kind of basic sizing type of dimensions. >> It really ranges, because it could, when we were tracking conflict for example, we were really focused on one area, and the surrounding countries. Because you had refugee population, you had displacement, you had all sorts of issues. But it could be anywhere from five projects, it just depends. And we want to make sure that each project we're taking on we're giving it our full attention, full scope. And I like to run the organization like a two-team pizza team. And so I don't take on more than I could handle. >> Right, right. So then how did it morph from the conflict to the Global Sustainability Goal? So we've worked with Western Digital, they're doing a lot of work, ASP's doing a lot of work on kind of these global sustainability goals. How did you get involved in that, and how did the two kind of dovetail together? >> So the elasticity of the cloud has helped our operation scale tremendously. And in 2016 we were selected as a top 10 global innovation, that could be applied to the Sustainable Development Goals, and-- >> So they found you, the UN find you, or did you get nominated? How did that happen? >> We were nominated, and from over 1,000 solutions we were chosen. >> Congratulations. >> Thank you. And we were showcased at the Solutions Summit which is hosted at the United Nations. And just based on that experience of meeting people that were doing really cool things in their respective communities, we launched the Global Action Mosaic. Because we wanted to create one place where people that are doing projects in their communities could submit it, and have it showcased. And the goals are not only to crowdsource the SGD's, but to also be a part of the effort to track what's happening. Who's doing what where, make it easy for people to search say, Jeff you decided to get involved in a project with education. You can go onto our Global Action Mosaic, search projects on education in your community or in other parts of the world and then get involved in it. So it's really creating a centralized place where people can get information on the global goals. >> Awesome. So that's pretty much the Global Action Mosaic. It's pretty much focused on the UN global goals versus your core efforts around the Humanitarian Tracker. >> Yes. >> That's great. So we're here at AWS. Have you always been on AWS? Is this something new? How does being on kind of the AWS infrastructure help you do your mission better? >> We are, we've been partners in running AWS since we actually started. >> Since the beginning. >> Yes we have Yusheheedi as one of our partners, development partners, AWS. And because one of the core, one of the most important things to us is privacy and security, we want to make sure that whatever data is being handled and received is stored securely. >> Right, right. >> And that information transmitted, handled is also being done so in a secure way. Like I mentioned, the elasticity of the cloud has helped us scale our mission tremendously. It's affordable, we've been able to us it, we've learned their machine-learning stock to de-identify some of the data that comes in. So we're firm believers that AWS is essential to how we run our operation. >> Because do the individual conflicts kind of grow and shrink over time? Do you see it's really a collection of kind of firing up hotspots and then turning down versus one long, sustained, relatively flat, from kind of a utilization and capacity point of view? >> Yeah, no it definitely, it flares up and you'll have like a year, months, weeks sometimes where it's just focused on one area. But one of the things we focus on, it's not just. So what is the data actually telling us? So say you're focusing on point A. But just down the street in location B there is a dire humanitarian emergency that needs to be addressed. The crowdsourced reports, combined with the data mining and the AI, helps us identify those hotspots. So everybody could be focused here, but there could be an emergency down the street that needs to be addressed as well. It just depends. >> And do you have your own data scientists or do you, do other people take your data and run it through their own processes to try to find some of these insights? >> We have both. >> You have both. >> Yeah. >> So what's been the biggest surprise when you anonymize and aggregate the data around some of these hotspots? Is there a particular pattern that you see over and over? Is there some insight, that now that you've seen so much of it, from kind of the (muffled speaking) that you can share and reflect on? >> I think it' very unique to each project to do. But there is one thing that I strongly support, that I don't see enough of, and that's the sharing of data within the organizations. And so, for example just getting to that culture where sharing your data between organizations is encouraged and actually done. Could help create a, create a pool of knowledge. So, for example we worked with 13 different organizations that were all tackling humanitarian events. The same one, in Syria. And the 13 did not share data and did not talk to each other. And so we found that for example, they were all focused on one area. When just a few miles down, there was a need that wasn't being addressed. But because they don't share information, they had no idea. >> Right. >> It was only when we were able to take a look at it, kind of from the, from an overarching view, looking all their data, we were able to say you know, it would be helpful, it would actually, you could save on resources, and less time, and less effort, and you guys are tackling a small funding pool to begin with. If you shared information and tackled different things, instead of focusing on one area, because you don't know what the other guys doing. >> And were they using crowdsource data, is there source data, or were they just trying to collect their own from the field? >> They were collecting their own. >> So I assume that the depth, and the richness, and the broadness of data is nothing like you're collecting. >> Well you get a different kind of, you get different kind of information when the individuals actually telling you what's happening versus you asking a very direct question like, "Are you healthy? Yes or No?". Whereas you give them the chance, they might tell you that they haven't eaten, and their diabetic and you know, give you other pieces of information. Where they're living, are they refugees? Are they healthy? Are they not healthy? Do they go to school? Do their kids go to school? How many kids they have? Are they a female-run household? All this information could help guide development in the proper way. >> Right, right. All right. So give you the final word, how should people get involved if they want to help? >> You can go to humanitariantracker.org if you want to volunteer with us. And if you're doing a project that is related to the UN's Sustainable Development Goals, I would like you to go to globalactionmosaic.org, and map it there, and be part of our community. >> So Hend, thank you for taking a few minutes to share your story, and for all the good work that you're doing out there. >> Thank you Jeff it was a pleasure. >> All right, she's Hend, I'm Jeff, you're watching theCUBE, we're at AWS Imagine nonprofit. Thanks for watching we'll see you next time. (techno music)