>>from around the globe. It's >>The Cube with digital coverage of IBM think 2021 brought to you by IBM Well hi everybody john Wallace here on the cube. Thanks for joining us here. As we continue our initiative of IBM think a chance to look at what IBM thinks in terms of infrastructure, we're talking to you about a hybrid cloud kind of the new trend. The thought that's going to the hybrid cloud, what's the future look like and help us cover that waterfront. A couple of experts from Deloitte Terry Cobb, the IBM Alliance lead at Deloitte Terry. Thank you for joining us. We look forward to this time together. >>Thank you so much for having me. You >>bet. And also introduced Dave Knight quickly, your colleague who is a senior solution architect and IBM Alliance cloud leader at Deloitte. Dave good to see you as well. Thanks for being with us. >>Thanks for having me. >>Alright, so maybe it's just for the two of you set the table for our viewers here in terms of your specific roles of delight. I talked about IBM and your connections there, but in terms of what you're doing there, how you work together and ultimately what kind of service you're trying to provide your clients terry? Why don't you jump on that first? >>Sure. So I've been with Deloitte for 16 years, I believe, maybe a little longer and focusing on the IBM like our strategic partnership. Um and so what that means is I work day in day out with our practitioners to identify and understand where our clients what are some of the critical business needs. And so I work with are leaders and and collaborate with IBM and we we look for ways to solve really unique critical business issues. Um and so part of my my background, so I've come from, you know, at my 30 year background and strategy management consulting. So it's really exciting. I get to use my uh consulting skills, my strategy skills to, you know, look at where we are in the market, what's what's happening in the market because that's a great example. There was a huge impact on how businesses, you know, work, how they work differently and how they handle their workforce. So it was a very interesting time. And and so bringing these two great firms together to solve some of these critical business issues. As for me, it's, you know, it's it's critical and it has a positive impact on, you know, for our clients. >>All right, dave from your side of the fence. >>Yeah. So um I sit in a similar place within the firm. I actually joined the last century. I've been with the firm for 21 years, so uh in a variety of roles, but all with with sort of a technical last solution architecture um, slant. Right, So, so just like Terry mentioned in the alliance function, we try to find opportunities to work together specifically between IBM and the Deloitte, you know, go to market services, uh my role as a solution architect and then as the cloud lead is to make sure that we've got the right mix of technology that we solve the client's problems uh efficiently and cost effectively. Uh and then, you know, sort of translate those, those business problems into technical solutions and then those technical solutions back into business solutions. So the business sees the value and its valuable not only for Deloitte from the services perspective, but also for IBM. >>He just almost just blew me away when you said you've been there since the last century. I haven't heard it quite put that way. And it's really that was really good, uh >>1999, to be fair, but still, it >>certainly implies a lot of experience. That's for sure. That's it. But that was really, that was a unique twist. So, kudos to you, let's talk about your client's first a little bit. So you talk about problems and we're talking about obviously technology and deployments and what capabilities are. So today, right. You've got on primary got off Premier, you've got private cloud, you've got public cloud, you've got edge technologies, you've got this really just this maelstrom basically of opportunity, but also confusion a little bit right? Um with different kinds of capabilities, different kinds of challenges. So Dave if you would, you know, let's look at it from the macro level then, in terms of how you start dissecting these kinds of decisions that the, the C T O. S and with your within your client list have to make and and how you help them chart their course in terms of determining priorities and what the right steps are for them to take. >>Okay. So I mean you sort of summarized my points actually quite nicely. We we help customers find their path, what's there, right approach to their digital transformation journey. Um We do have assets that help them, you know identify workloads where they might might run the best. Um We certainly have approaches and experience in the market having done this for for years. Uh you know it's the number one cloud professional services firm globally. We we we've garnered a lot of experience working with customers again helping among this journey. Um What we've learned is that one size does not fit all. Um Clearly cloud and more specifically public cloud is a game changer. It's here to stay, but it's not necessarily the right answer for every workload for every customer even. Um And so what we're starting to see is is a shift towards hybrid discussions and hybrid architecture discussions. Um and just as a quick, very simple example, um you wouldn't go purchase a mainframe to be a web server, right, That's that's significant overkill. And similarly, um the cloud is great for its, you know, capacity and and all the things that come with an economics, that sort of thing, but it's not necessarily the best platform for a credit card clearing house. Right. The transactional volume is simply too great. Right? So, um and that sort of very simplified example. Hybrid we think is the answer. And we're seeing lots of customers now that they've shifted a lot of their workloads to cloud that our cloud suitable. Um starting to ask us the more difficult questions, right, the core of my business, it's a high risk move. Can you help me sort this out? And in many cases the answer is don't move it, it's too extended at the edge. It's to augment it with cloud technologies such as AI and and enhance your service rather than replace it or move it to a different location. >>So you recently published a report that you did the mainframe market poll survey where you're looking at really, I guess migration plans or an appetite right to make these evolutions to, to to explore this hybrid cloud model that you've already detailed for us. Um, give me an idea if you would and our our viewers an idea a little bit about some of the key summaries of that in terms of what the appetite is for that, what the desires are, you know, are we ready to cut the court on the mainframe and let it go? Is there too much involved? We want to hang on. Um, you know, what's kind of, what's the mood out there right now? >>Yes, so we, we commissioned the double blind survey, we had a belief that we really wanted to explore it further, um, and that belief was, you know, a little tongue in cheek. The death of the mainframe is greatly over exaggerated. Um, and so again, this double blind survey, we commissioned it and, and we, we found a lot of interesting results. First and foremost, um, the mainframe for many customers is not going away. The vast majority of our survey respondents uh, indicated that was the case. Um, there was a couple of other interesting to, that's that, that we, we found in the results as well. Um uh, the first one is this isn't just a technology issue um It's a human capital um issue as well with the aging workforce. Um You know, mainframe not being quite as sexy in the age of java but coming back to IBM investments in the platform. Um And then another key point that we we found was security continues to be a key concern of business I. T. Uh and business, you know, owners. Um and that mainframe is seen as is the pillar of security sort of, they hold it up as sort of the example of security in the industry. Um Another interesting too that we found was that Um you know, one specific question asked about future growth plans and um over just under 60%. So over half answered three questions um that most people would think are at odds with each other and that is you know, are you expanding your mainframe? Over 60 said Yes. Um, are you advancing into cloud? Just under 60 said yes. And then there was a hybrid question which over half said they were going to look at hybrid. So that sort of marriage of mainframe and cloud in a hybrid way was an interesting thing that we weren't exactly expecting, but still quite interesting to explore. >>So >>when >>you hear this right about these, I mean not conflicting, but certainly, you know, interesting of uh survey findings, um, what do you make of that? What what are you, how are you reading those tea leaves a little bit about what people are saying about not ready to leave, but yet they're interested. And and so the concerns that they've brought up about security, about the asian workforce, I mean, you know, a lot of challenging uh, positions here, they have to be considered for your clients. >>You know, for me it was very interesting and and I believe, you know, one of the reasons we launched the survey was really to find out what is really going on with our clients because we're hearing a lot of, you know, there's a lot of news around clients migrating all their all their applications, >>I say all >>to the cloud and but yet we were spending a lot of time with clients that had mainframes and we were solving some of their mainframe issues and so we we were a little confused, so that was part of the impetus from really getting out and enjoying market sensing and figure out what our clients really doing. And we didn't target, you know, the mainframe, you know, clients, we targeted main from clients but we didn't target mainframe users. We were looking at really the business users of the mainframe and the executives that have mainframes. And so we were, it was surprising to to get the information back and hear how important the mainframe, so us. Uh and and then when you start digging a bit deeper into, you know, what does cloud really mean? Your hybrid cloud comes to the surface and then you have people that have different meanings of hybrid cloud. So, really understanding what is hybrid cloud really mean and what does it mean for your business? And that's what we're solving today. It's like how do we how do we go to market around hybrid cloud and what benefits does it have work for our clients? >>Yeah, so, Dave yeah, to touch up on that, to follow up, I mean, so, how are you a Deloitte then taking these results and and kind of ingesting them and distilling them and deciding. All right, this is how we're going to define hybrid cloud perhaps. I mean, I don't know if that if that's a bold assumption, but I think you're probably trying to draw some parameters around it, Right? This is how our clients see it. So this is how we're gonna talk about it and then this is how we're going to take them on that journey. How instructive was this survey for that and actually what are you doing with it in terms of shaping your practice? >>Yeah, so it's a great question and it is driving um you know, not the survey by itself, but a lot of the market trends and including the surveys is driving um some reevaluation and refocusing quite frankly on on hybrid cloud um as an offering within the firm. Right? We we define hybrid cloud generally is, you know, seamless integration of data and applications across on and off premise. And with with the wave of five G that's coming at us, increasingly we're looking at architecture is that include edge uh into that that hybrid definition? Um you know, I've said this to a lot of folks uh for me, mainframe was the original cloud. So it's only natural that it should be part of solutions now. And what I mean by that is when it was released it was virtualized, it was virtually unlimited. Somebody else managed it for you. You you you you only paid for what you use. Those are all characteristics of the cloud as we know it today, but those were implemented in the 70s, the mainframe um and so, capturing those characteristics and newer technologies and then integrating those into architectures. I think it's going to be sort of the next wave of what we see in the industry and, and Deloitte is certainly positioning to help our customers on that journey. And >>before we sign off, I do want to touch on security issue again because you did bring it up a little bit earlier, but let's just talk about it holistically here, depending upon where you are, doesn't matter right edge on off private public. I mean security's gonna be first and foremost. And so what are you suggesting or what are you saying to your clients? You know, terry and dave on this. In terms of their security concerns, the awareness they have to have in that and the allocation of resources to make sure that, you know, whatever solutions they deploy, their their credible, they have integrity and and they're sustainable. So let's hit on security before we head out terry. If you don't mind jumping >>first, I'd like to address security. But even stepping back a little bit. So as clients for looking at moving applications to the cloud for hybrid cloud, it's really about, you know, making sure you have a strategy unless you address some of the underlying data infrastructure, you're gonna end up with you disparate data everywhere and you're not going to be able to, you're gonna have data silo issues, you're gonna have security issues. You also have complex architectural issues. So, you know, some of the work that we're doing with IBM and internally with our firm is trying to help clients understand like you take a step back and really evaluate their business requirements and making sure that they and your dave can you found on this. But it's really making sure they have the right strategy in place to address, you know, their data, where the data sets, how to innovate some of these applications and of course security, security is a huge concern. We see that from all of our clients and needs to be on prem and secure. Mhm. >>Just a final word. >>Yeah. Thanks. Just to add on to that. Right. So security is absolutely critical. As terry mentioned. Having a strategy is absolutely critical and having security be integral to that strategy is equally critical. Um As you said, it's everywhere, cloud on prem on the edge. I would even go so far as to say, you know, in your personal life and your professional life, it should be as pervasive as we like to think it is. I think the reality is that maybe isn't but that's part of the job of architects like me, is to make sure that it gets built in at its core. It's not an afterthought, it's integral. I've got some fantastic technologies around that, specifically in the Z space. Um you don't wanna get too too wonky here, but you know, Phipps 1 40 dash to level four encryption, which is unique in the market. Um, you know, data privacy, passports, pervasive encryption, all these things. Um, interestingly enough live in the mainframe but extended ideas cloud and um from my perspective, I think it's one of the unique uh, connections intersections where mainframe could actually help drive the growth of cloud um, in that hybrid model and even getting into future looking things like home, um, or fixed encryption, there's a raft of technologies coming out of IBM um, that help us ensure we have, you know, secure transactions, secure hybrid architectures as you put our security everywhere. >>Well, you can get a little wonky. That's okay. David terry, thank you for the time today. We certainly appreciate it. And thanks for shining light on your work at Deloitte and of course, that partnership you have. It's working so well with IBM. Thank you both. >>Thanks for having us. >>All right. We've been talking about hybrid cloud, the future of a hybrid cloud and the mainframe and it ain't dead yet. All right. John Wallace. Thanks for joining us here on the cube.

>> Announcer: From around the globe. It's theCube with digital coverage of AWS re:Invent 2020 special coverage sponsored by AWS Worldwide Public Sector. >> Hi, and welcome to theCube Virtual in our coverage of AWS re:Invent. I'm your host Rebecca Knight. Today we are joined by Shawn Snyder. She is the managing director at Deloitte and Cloud Migration market leader. Thanks for coming on the show Shawn. >> Thank you, Rebecca. I'm glad to be here. >> So we're talking today about cloud migration in the public sector in the COVID era, but I want to start by having you introduce yourself to our viewers tell them a little bit about what you do at Deloitte. >> Sure, I'm Shawn Snyder. I'm a managing director based out of Atlanta. I lead our cloud migration offering for our government and public sector clients. So that really means that I serve clients in the government, both public sector local government agencies, as well as federal agencies and helping them move to the cloud, and I'm also responsible for building out our capabilities, our tools, our resources, and people to help clients do that in a very fast and accelerated way. >> So even putting aside the pandemic for a second, shifting to the cloud is such a big and daunting undertaking for so many organizations, including federal agencies. How do you help CIOs and clients think through the processes and what they need to do and how they need to do it? >> Yeah, I mean, it all starts with where are they at on this journey, right? We actually have a show our clients like a typical journey to the cloud and, you know, we have a method and set of tools that we can work with them depending on where they are but if they're just in the initial stages of exploring, moving to cloud, it typically starts with a strategy and really understanding what, you know, how engaged is the mission and the agencies in supporting this. Are they really looking to continue to build their own talent? What is the end state look like? Do they want to build cloud skills and cloud engineering skills within their organization, or are they looking to do more of a managed service model? So a lot of these conversations happen and also around what platforms they want to use and then we typically look at their portfolio of applications. So it could be, you know, they're looking to move out of a data center and go more to a cloud virtual environment. It could be that they're looking to move a couple of mission critical applications that are highly complex with lots of data and sensitive information, so. It really kind of depends on what they're trying to achieve and what is the business result that they're looking to gain. >> And how do you help them think through the business case for this? Because I know that that is definitely an imperative. >> So we take a couple of, I can give you an example. So when we were working with a state in local agency, looking at a big mission critical integrated eligibility system, they wanted to be able to move because they were, the technology was getting a little dated. It was eating inflexible to maintain and when they were looking at the maintenance costs that they were spending on both the infrastructure and the application, it was starting to, you know, take up to 90% of the budget and so the lack of ability to be able to do new capabilities and new innovation when you're talking about especially post COVID, which I know we haven't gotten into, but when they're looking, there's actually more and more products and aid that's being made available. So they need more flexibility, and so what we did was we actually did a bunch of analysis around what does that technology stack look like? What's the cost drivers and then we built out what the future would look like on the, in this particular case was the AWS platform. How could they take advantage of some native services and reduce some of their licensing costs? How could they upgrade through our products? We have a seamless way to upgrade to cloud suitable operating systems. So in this case, they were on an outdated Windows and Linux platforms. We were able to update that to cloud suitable, which allowed them to, you know, save a lot of money in terms of their infrastructure costs to maintain some of that outdated infrastructure and then we get them on end state tools around security monitoring, around infrastructure monitoring and so they can really streamline some of those infrastructure costs as they are spending tremendous amount of money just on the tools when they're managing all of that on-prem, on a complex system. >> So thinking about now we are in this pandemic, which has changed everything about the way we live and the way we work, moving to the cloud was a business goal. Something that a lot of organizations sort of had, in they're two and three year, two and five-year plan. Now it is an absolute mandate. What are you seeing? What are you hearing? What are organizations saying to you now? >> There's just such a, there's such a demand for speed and doing it at scale very fast. So prior to COVID, like you said, it was a multi-year journey. We'll get to it when we can, but there were other priorities that automatic, always got in the way of that and also just the cost justification, right? When you're talking about migration and a lot of times these systems that's portfolio systems are outdated, they're not cloud suitable. So how do you have to refactor them? That can get pretty costly pretty quickly. Now our clients want to move fast and they have a virtual work workforce, they need more scale. They need more storage for some of the data. They need to be able to integrate with other partners, especially in the healthcare space, whether it's at the state and local agency level or in the federal space, that ability to create that ecosystem of being able to transmit and share data in a very secure way at a very large volume is becoming, you know, mission critical with combating COVID with being able to protect our citizens. >> Speed is the name of the game, as you're saying. So what, how is Deloitte investing in automation and what kinds of migration accelerators are you bringing to clients now? >> So a few different things. One, we are partnering with AWS, both on a professional services perspective, as well as with some programs. So we've integrated our methodologies and we've been certified by AWS for our methodology around migration acceleration program. So that's the map because of our qualifications of the amount of migrations we do globally, as well as our methodology and tool set, we're able to offer this joint map program, which allows us to team with AWS. Go on site in quickly use our tools to diagnose what applications are actually at cloud ready to move, how fast can they move? And it gives a lot of information around technical configurations, what servers they reside on, and all of basically the affinities, all of the information you would need to be able to move those applications and if it's not cloud suitable, we can detect if it, how quickly we could get it cloud suitable. What would need to be done is an application code, or is it database, or is it operating system? What are those things that need to get upgraded to move it to the cloud? And is it worth moving to the cloud? So we actually look at the business value that each of these applications are providing and saying, you know, this might be more suited to stay on-prem for now. So we work with them through this map program to really come up with that detailed migration schedule and plan and we then use that information that we collected during that diagnostic phase feeds into our migration tools. So the migration is actually automated with the information that was collected during the diagnostics and the landing zones, and all of the sizing of the infrastructures able to be sized appropriately based on the information that was collected. >> I want to ask you about innovation. In a lot of these Cube Virtual conversations that we're having, we're hearing from a lot of executives that the pandemic has been a forcing mechanism in sort of forcing people to think more resourcefully, more ingenuitively about how they solve these pressing problems. What have you experienced, and have you seen in particular examples of innovation that have been inspiring and exciting for you? >> Yes, absolutely. So I actually work in the federal health space most, and our ability to be able to stand up an application or a service, whether it's a Salesforce service, the AWS platform, but we've been able to stand up contact tracing for local agencies, for state agencies. We've been able to set up cloud native services that allow the data that's getting collected across these different organizations to be able to make meaningful information using machine learning and some of the other native services that are available within cloud and they can be stood up very quickly and very cost-effectively and I think that's the other value that cloud is unlocking for organizations and really now starting to realize that they can move towards innovation and start to spend much more money on innovation than what they were doing previously on spending most of the budget on maintenance. >> When you're talking to clients now about the future, what are they thinking? What's on their minds in this sort of this 12 to 24 month plan? Are they just thinking we just need to get through this next period and cope with this uncertainty? Or are they thinking about the future. >> Moving to cloud isn't just an infrastructure move. I think that's getting your head around what does it mean? What does your workforce have to look like? What does, how do you collaborate with the business? What are the, what is the future innovation use cases? What is going to, how do you actually start to use those use cases to demonstrate early value and start to do things much more in an agile and iterative way instead of, you know, delivering something in a, you know, several months or years. So it, it really is shifting, it's a transformation for how the office of the CIO or how they actually operate. It's creating integrated teams within the CIO organization. We're actually embedding different disciplines like engineering, infrastructure, IT operations, security operations, risk management, financial management, these disciplines as part of these, what we call DevOps DevSecOps type teams, and be able to deliver an end-to-end product on a particular platform in a very agile way. >> In thinking about the future of the workforce and how the pandemic is changing people's careers. I know that you serve as the technology campus champion at Georgia Tech, and you're very active in recruiting bright young business talent. Can you talk to our viewers a little bit about the changes that you foresee in terms of how people plan their careers and their professional development and anything in particular that Deloitte is doing to make sure that the pandemic does not have such a damaging effect, you know, from a lot of statistics that women are dropping out of the workforce in large numbers. >> Yes, so let me unpack your question a couple of ways. So, you know, first of all, you know, I'm really passionate about talent development and recruiting, and I've learned recruiting efforts at the undergrad for many, many years, and I've always been a technologist. So now, like just seeing how technology is embedded in all of the business that we do and it's so mission critical, you now, I'm very focused on making sure there's more women and more minorities going into technology oriented degrees. There's so much you can do with a technology degree and the of career careers that are available, you know, are unlimited. We can't hire enough people that have the right skills. There's just a war on talent for people that have the right security and cybersecurity skills, cloud engineering skills, and just the analytical skills. I mean, this is very complex stuff that you're trying to, you know, build stuff and create stuff that hasn't been created before. So I find it extremely fascinating and I hope that people can see the creative side of things and the scientific it's really bringing it both together and that's what I try to mentor a lot of the recruits on campus. In addition to that, so I think that there's tremendous amount of opportunity for folks going into those types of degrees, as well as for women I, you know, it's been a challenge because people are, you know, some schools aren't closed are not open. If you have a dual working family, it can be a big challenge if you're taking care of children or elderly parents, for example. So at Deloitte, we actually recently implemented a dependent care policy for folks that could take advantage of additional stipend to subsidize, you know, childcare or dependent care. So that's helped a little bit, we're also really focused on diversity inclusion. So, you know, really having candid conversations, individual conversations around what are your boundaries at work right now? Can, do you have to be off right now from, you know, dinner time till bedtime? What does that look like? And we're trying to really help people have the tools and feel comfortable about having those conversations, 'cause it's not just women, it's men, too. I mean, this, these are difficult situations that we're all, you know, co living with our spouses and our significant others and our children, and potentially, you know, extended family members and trying to work in the same environment and is very challenging, and so we're trying to create space for people to be able to have those conversations and make it work for them. >> Don't I know it's Shawn. So just in terms of thinking about the future and what is next for Deloitte, and you've just talked about how you are a technologist at heart, and you see so much excitement about bringing in different disciplines, different functions to solve these urgent and pressing problems. What do you foresee for yourself and for Deloitte over these next couple of years, as we emerge hopefully out of this crisis situation. >> I think Deloitte, you know, one reason I've stayed at Deloitte for so long is that we've always been really focused on how does the technology solve the business problem, the mission problem? And so we have a real opportunity to continue to be able to bring the IT and the technology enablement and make sure it aligns to the business strategy and so the business use cases, you know, we've invested a lot in our labs Capabilities where we're able to bring different disciplines, whether it's, you know, HR and talent thinking about workforce of the future, you know, that technology stack and the architects together, as well as the thinking about across the ecosystem, what are some of the future use cases that you're not even thinking about? So we're able to bring a lot of these different disciplines or subject matter experts together. Now I'll be in a very virtual way, but we've been able to take these lab concepts and it really helps kind of get that out of the possible defined and really strong alignment across these different constituents across the enterprise. So that is really exciting to me. I also think the investment that we're making in our cloud engineering practice, in our alliances with companies like AWS, it really gives us insight into where the technology is going and making sure our staff and our tools and our resources available to us are aligned to that more than investments are being made in the technology. >> So well Shawn thank you so much for coming on theCube Virtual. It's a pleasure having you on the show. >> Thank you very much Rebecca. >> I'm Rebecca Knight stay tuned for more of theCube Virtual's coverage of AWS re:Invent 2020.

>> Announcer: From around the globe. It's theCUBE with digital coverage of AWS re:Invent 2020, sponsored by Intel, AWS and our community partners. (upbeat music) >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're coming to you from our Palo Alto studios today with our ongoing coverage of AWS re:Invent 2020. It's a virtual event, like all the events in 2020, but we've been going there since 2013. We're happy to be back this year and we're excited to have for the first time on theCUBE, our next guest, she's Kelly Herod the US SAP Offering Leader for Deloitte Consulting. Kelly, great to see you. >> Great to see you as well, Jeff, thanks so much for having me. >> Absolutely, so first time on, on theCUBE, you guys have a really interesting concept at Deloitte, you call it the Kinetic Enterprise. What is the Kinetic Enterprise all about? >> Yes. So if you think about the past, organizations built their technology infrastructures to be what we would call built to last, the future though is all about built to evolve. And that's exactly what the Kinetic Enterprise is. It's really how we're helping our clients create the right technology infrastructures that evolve with their business. And Kinetic Enterprise is focused on four key pillars. The first, that we're building a technology solution that's clean. That means we want to have reduced amount of custom code or things that we may have built that really rack up your technical debt. The second pillar is that it's intelligent. So we're leveraging all of the technologies, artificial intelligence, machine learning, to really automate and change the way in which an organization runs their business. The third pillar is that it's responsive, and that means it's on the cloud and this is where AWS comes in. And then the last pillar is that it's inclusive. So it uses all of the technologies and microservices available to really optimize and achieve a company's business value objectives. >> So that is a great summary, and I've got the list of the four pillars. It's just interesting you lead with clean. You know, there's a lot of conversation about digital transformation and move fast and be dynamic, you know, would be kind of an opposite to static. But clean, interesting choice of words. It runs with core... Core clean ERP with minimum technical debt. Why clean is such an important thing? I get kind of intelligent and responsive, but clean is an interesting attribute to pick. >> Absolutely, so if you take a step back and think... (Kelly hangs) when comes to ERPs, when ERPs came out, there was... (Kelly hangs) how you're going to run your entire organization on this one solution. What we've found is that as companies have put ERPs, they've gone through and created so much customization, that it's that which makes it very difficult to be able to keep up with technology changes or actually migrate to the next versions. So the concept here is if you're going to go in and put in brand new ERP, such as an SAP S/4HANA, this time around in order to achieve the promise of ERPs, let's make it clean. Let's stick to as much standard functionality as possible within the core, and then we innovate on the edges. And so that will allow us in the future to maintain that flexibility or dynamicism of a Kinetic Enterprise. >> Right. So I have to tease you Kelly 'cause SAP R/3 and ERP is not necessarily synonymous with digital transformation, speed, agility, and embracing change. So you've been involved in Deloitte's SAP practice for a long time. Why should people start to rethink about SAP in terms of being responsive, in terms of being able to change quickly and to your vocabulary, more kinetic? >> And you're right. You know, I've been doing SAP for 20 years. So I actually did start back in the R/3 days. And, you know, I would just say that things are changing, is evolving. You know, SAP themselves has been going through a transformation, a revolution. You look at the ERP landscape as a whole, all of the ERP players are moving to the cloud. The technology is the backbones are changing. Now the reality is, you know, going in and actually changing out your ERP, no matter what solution you're using, it's a big endeavor or undertaking. The goal here, and why we're partnering with SAP, partnering with AWS is really focused on how can we make this more efficient for our clients? More importantly, I like to think about it as how can we make this less of a one and done, and more of a let's keep transforming the technologies and the business as things are changing in the market, along the way. And using technologies to even change how we implement, allows us to do that. >> So, Kelly, another thing a lot of people probably don't think of is SAP and AWS, together in the same sentence. So I'm sure there's a lot of people that are much more intelligent about this, but for those that aren't as familiar, tell us a little bit about the relationship with SAP and AWS and then how you guys are leveraging that at Deloitte. >> Absolutely. So when you... There's a couple of things that I would bring up. One is SAP S/4HANA solutions, in particular, but any SAP environment that you're running on, one of the objectives most of our clients are focused on is how to move to the cloud, and that's where AWS comes in. You can absolutely run any of your SAP solutions on AWS. And what that brings you with is more flexibility, so that you can actually scale or contract your infrastructure that you're running SAP on based on your business needs. The second thing that we've been partnering with AWS to do is a little bit of what I just mentioned, which was a teaser around, how do you change the way you even go about implementing an SAP solution or start to migrate your business? So one of the things we asked ourselves was, could we radically change how you jumpstart an S/4 implementation? And what we decided to do is team up with AWS and leveraging machine learning, artificial intelligence, most importantly, standing up an environment on AWS. We actually created what we call Kinetic Finance Startup. Many of our clients are choosing to start with finance and specifically SAP central finance to begin their journey to the new S/4HANA environment. And what we've been able to do is create a touchless build solution, so over a weekend, we can actually connect to your existing ERP solution. Majority of those is starting with an ECC environment. We can extract the data, we can use harmonization rules to actually change and modify your data and optimize it for the future. And then we actually through completely touchless built-in automation, stand up a brand new AWS environment with S/4HANA on it and actually automate the configuration and testing of the basic financial transactions. So when you come in the next week and we start the conversation with the client, we're actually looking at a real life S/4HANA system on AWS with their mas... >> Oh, that's... >> So the whole concept is to change how we engage. >> Right. So again, I don't know that I were to think of finance as kind of a lead application, to start this journey. I mean, I can see on one hand, it is the system of record and it, you know, it has a lot of very important information that's got to eventually get into finance. On the other hand, it seems like there's less critical, maybe lower hanging fruit that's less risky. Is it because you can run it kind of in a parallel path for some period of time, but it strikes me that finance might not be the first place you go to look for some early wins. >> It's actually what you just said about the parallelism. So the reason we've seen that finance actually was one of the starting points is even if you look at the history of SAP's S/4HANA solution, way back before we got to that, it started with a concept called smart accounting or simple finance. And the theory here is, you could actually... If a company has, let's say multiple ERPs, as most do, you can actually grab the financial information, bring it into a new S/4 or central finance environment, and actually combine or merge the accounting information to get improved reporting, optimize a shared service organization. So it's actually a lower risk way to start the journey before going and touching the heart of the business or core operations, or manufacturing, for example, >> That's pretty interesting. So you run it in parallel for a while and then eventually does, is the plan that it takes over, from the old. So it is effectively kind of, I guess, a slightly delayed lift and shift, or maybe it's a reassemble and then a flip. I don't know how you would describe it because it's not really lift and shift. >> It's not really lift and shift actually, you have two options. You can either over time pull all of your business processes out of the underlying ERP solutions and bring them into the S/4HANA environment or multiple S/4HANA environments. Or some companies may choose to continue to... (Kelly hangs) Especially if you're in an industry where you do a lot of acquisitions or divestitures, you may not have an intention of ever combining all of your ERPs, but you may want to change each of them to S/4HANA underneath, and then have one environment in which you're pulling your data together to really consolidate your financial reporting. >> That's great. I want to follow up on something that you mentioned, which is the use of machine learning and artificial intelligence. And we talk a lot about, right? Those are hot buzzwords all over the place, but, you know, I'm pretty vehement in that, you know, general purpose AI and ML is kind of interesting, but where the real interesting stuff ends is where the rubber hits the road, is in applied. And it sounds like you've got a pretty interesting application where you're applying this technology to help make this move to cloud go a little bit smoother. >> Yes. One of the areas, you know, since we've been talking a bit about finance then I'll use it as an example. Is if you think about it, whenever we go in and we're typically working with... (Kelly hangs) especially in finance, you know, one of the topics is, how to optimize a chart of accounts? So over time we've done this hundreds of times, if we can look at different sectors, different industries, we can use benchmark chart of accounts. So instead of making this a paper-based exercise that individuals are doing, why not take that and actually use artificial intelligence machine learning to create data harmonization rules, so that technologies can actually do that same work. And so that's been one of the things we've been working on that I personally find very interesting just in my finance background. >> Right. And is this a relatively new thing, or have you guys been doing this for a while? >> Actually, it's something that over the last 12 months, we've been focused on building out in partnership with AWS. So it's fairly new. >> That's great. I want... I'd love to shift gears a little bit, and talk about COVID, and the impact of COVID on your business. Clearly in March, right? It was the light switch moment and everybody had to work from home and it was a quick rush to make sure that everybody was safe and we could support our remote workers, that said, can't help with the ba... All the bad stuff that's happening in hospitality and travel, and a whole lot of other industries. So that aside and that's bad stuff. In the tech industry, we were able to make the move, but now we know we're six, seven, eight months into this thing, and it's clear that, you know, we're going to have many elements of this going forward for a while. So I'm curious just from your business and your customer point of view, if you can share, you know, kind of the contrast of what happened in March and April to what you're seeing now and how this new reality, whatever this new reality is going to be, as we, you know, continue to evolve is impacting this digital transformation conversations? >> It is interesting. So if I pivot back to March, when this all occurred, you know, it truly did feel an instant going from in-person. And as consultants we travel and typically have a Monday through Thursday, or Monday through Friday type of travel schedule to an instant working from home overnight. And, you know, I'm really proud of our teams and how they seamlessly made that transition. Many, including myself, were actually leading clients through final cut overs in parallel to this happening. And we were able to really pivot and make those shifts, and I was reflecting with one of the executives I worked with, you know, she and I, you know, six months later, we're looking back at how we did that and how impressed we were with what the team pulled off. And since then, they've been able to do several other go lives, which is great. But I think that it was something we had to do quickly. I think many would have said it couldn't have been done that you would see the whole world move to a working from home environment, but we did. What it tells me is it gives me a lot of hope for a lot of the things that businesses can do in the future. In the past we used to constrain ourselves of, Oh, there's no way we could ever get XYZ done, or we can't make this type of change in the world, but we can. If I flash forward to now, I think we're very settled in kind of this new way of working, but I'm also hopeful for what the future is going to look like. I don't believe it will be a pivot all the way back to... Especially for consultants traveling on a regular basis of Monday through Friday. Instead, I think we're going to create models that give people and organizations the flexibility they need to really balance some of their personal responsibilities along with their work responsibilities. My hope and expectations is that also opens up options so that all organizations have access to more talent that they may not have had before. And I think that also means global talent. I think we're showing we can work as global teams, which means, you know, I could now have members from Japan joining, you know, my permanent leadership team in ways that I maybe never have thought of before. Those are just some examples of what I expect and hope for all of us that we'll see coming out of this. >> Hopefully and I know... Like you said, you've been a consultant for years and years and years, and you guys spend lots of time on airplanes, and hopefully you don't have to spend quite so much time on airplanes because you don't necessarily have to be there all the time. But you talked about an interesting thing and that's talent and opening up the opportunity to get more talent that maybe you wouldn't have ever considered. And along those same lines, right? Is the move in diversity and inclusion. And I just watched a show that you did a few months ago, called the... "A Chance for Change: Accelerating Business Recovery, Through Gender Diversity," on a Facebook interview, very cool panel, really enjoyed it. And I want to follow up on some of those things, 'cause you've made some really simple and poignant points. And one of the things that you said definitively, go back to the wide diverse talent and perspective equals winning in business, period. I love that. You know, we hear this all the time that, you know, not only is it the right thing to do, but it's also good for business. And isn't it nice when those two things can actually line up. And you just talked about, you know, in more of a generic sense, the ability to open up your talent window when there's a worldwide talent shortage, both for geography, but also the work in diversity and inclusion and to continue to hold the momentum that continues to build in this area. I wonder if you could, you know, kind of share your thoughts on that, and your position and what's going on with Deloitte. >> Absolutely. You know, I do think this is one of those key pivotal moments for all of us, and I believe we have, coming out of this an option to really move the needle on our diversity and inclusion, and equality efforts. You know, one example I think about women, women in leadership positions. You know, being in consulting, you know, one of the challenges has always been that we do travel a lot, and it can be difficult to balance all the responsibilities, professional and personally. I think with a move to more flexible work arrangements, less travel, or travel for purpose is what I would highlight for the future. I think it opens the door to many more women being able to have careers in consulting, if that's what they, you know, had desired. I also think it allows them to have... You know, spend their entire careers in consulting and in ways we never saw before. And that means you'll see as significant movement and women in leadership positions. I also think this applies to underrepresented minorities. I hope that from all of this, instead of there may be companies that focus on recruiting from, you know, schools that are local to them or within their surrounding areas. I think this gives us an opportunity to really open that aperture up and look at talent from any school or university, or geography, and being able to get the right skill sets in the door and the right talent. Therefore you can actually see movement and diversity within teams, as well as at the leadership levels for URMs. >> Right. Right. And really managing to the right things too. I think that's the other thing that's coming out of this, and we've had a lot of conversations on work from home or work from anywhere. You guys are a little bit different than the consultant 'cause your team is there, usually local at the client site for some period of time. But for a lot of people, it's the first time they are not sitting across from a desk or, you know, within close proximity. Now you too, in your teams. And so, the shift changes that now you have to judge output, (Jeff chuckles) and not activity. And you would think that that would be a great and easy thing to execute, but we're hearing more and more that it's not necessarily. And you really highlighted, I think, three leadership traits that are always important, but more important now than ever before in that other interview. And I just want to call them out 'cause I thought it was worth calling out. You know, empathy has never been more important. Resilience, and my favorite one you said at the end, calm in the storm. I just wonder again, if you could share, you know, kind of, as you've gone through it, both, you know, as somebody at Deloitte within the greater Deloitte group, but then also in managing your own teams, to maintain that calm in the storm and to maintain, you know, empathetic leadership, because I think you've said it before, right? This is a personal challenge that we're all going through. We all have different things going on at home, whether it's the spouses working, the kids are doing homeschool. People are taking care of older parents, this and that. It's a real personal thing, and so these leadership characteristics, these softer leadership characteristics have never been more important >> That's so true. And, you know, when I think about the empathy part, right now what we're going through is also about how is each of us as leaders also sharing a bit more about how we're experiencing this? I think the sharing of stories is what also helps many on the teams adapt, adjust. The reality is when you're working on camera all day and, you know, in the past, imagine that you maybe were having a tough day or you weren't feeling that great, you weren't on camera all day with every one of your coworkers. You we're actually, you know, sitting in an office, you may have to go to the conference room to do some meetings, but you didn't look... (Kelly hangs) like someone was kind of staring at you all day long. Now, when we're working from home virtually and we're on Zoom or Skype or WebEx, et cetera, all day, it does feel like you're under the lights when you're on camera. And there's a lot of pressure and people are trying to figure out how to manage their own emotions while doing that. And, you know, my message would say as an empathetic leader, it's okay for you to also share when you might be having a tough go that day. Maybe one of your children has been kind of acting out and they didn't really want to do the virtual school. It's okay to share in that because everyone's going through it, and it makes us all more human. >> Right. >> And it makes us all more connected. >> Right. Well, I will share with you a pro tip, we've done a few of these interviews and it is okay to let people turn off the camera. And I think as a manager, I think it's actually an okay thing to say, okay, everyone, let's just turn off our cameras and get a break from that camera that's got that eye on you all the time, because it is just another, you know, kind of a factor that we have to deal with. Well, go ahead. >> And I was going to ask, what do you actually, you know, I don't know what one of your techniques is, but I know mine is some of the meetings, it's actually just go back to traditional telephone calls (Jeff chuckles) and actually even just being on your cell, put on your air, you know, your earbuds, or your headphones and even walk. >> Right. >> So I think the other thing we're all missing is actually that movement, the steps to go to the coffee maker and back, or to lunch and back, we don't have them anymore. So you've got to work extra hard, actually getting those extra steps in calories and just mental breaks at times. >> Yeah, well then there's a whole another tranche on walking during meetings. And I used have a boss that I would only do one-on-ones while we took a walk. He always says, I get in there... 'Cause then there's, you know, you're not necessarily looking at each other. And if there's some sensitive things or tough conversations, sometimes it's easier if you're not just looking across the table at one another with all the silence. So there's a lot to be said for that as well. Well, Kelly, I really enjoyed this conversation and getting to meet you for the first time. It sounds like you're doing a lot of cool and exciting things and, you know, exciting speed and innovation with SAP, that's noble work and I'm sure a lot of people are really happy to have you help them out there. So thank you very much for your time and to have a great AWS re:Invent. >> Thanks, Jeff. It was great to discuss this with you. >> Absolutely. All right. She's Kelly, I'm Jeff. You're watching theCUBE's ongoing coverage of AWS re:Invent 2020. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. (upbeat music)

>> from the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. It's the Cube covering Cooper inspired 2019. Brought to You by Cooper. >> Welcome to the Q. But Lisa Martin on the ground in Las Vegas for Cooper Inspire. 19 Hot Vegas. Fresh Insight. I'm pleased to welcome Max Ground, the managing director from Deloitte to the program. Hey, Max. >> Good morning. Good afternoon. >> Good afternoon. Whatever time it is, Vegas Right here is this. It's a time warp. They don't like you see outside It's >> only place the world. The 25th hour. >> Right? So here we are. It inspired 19 kick Everything kicked off this morning with the general session. I was teasing Rob Bernstein a couple hours ago and I had him on that. I learned three things in the general session. He likes pizza, he likes kittens. And Cuba's platform now has 1.2 trillion dollars of spending data going through it. And I thought, man procurement is not what I thought. It wa ce and you have a really >> interesting story about procurement. I'd love for you to share with our audience >> because you said in your session earlier today you said people in this standing your morning session. How many of you wanted to be on procurement? Anybody that raises their hands of line tell me about the procurement of yesterday, the >> opportunities that it's given you and what it is now. >> So I think >> in the past, >> security has been something that had to happen. It was a must have not a place that people saw value. But was the rule enforcers right? So trying to do that and really adding value by discipline, where today, if you think about it, the value that they can add by driving savings authorization drops right to the bomb line. So all the savings that are out there, all >> the negotiations that are doing, it's really unique skill set >> and something that people really should move into finance folks when they're looking for a new opportunity. It's a great skill set to have. Lately I've come across a former attorneys are practicing law but now doing strategic sourcing, doing procurement, work, people from finance because the talent that you have to have is field work with people within their companies, understand their needs, negotiate with suppliers, do hard core analytics and, oh, by the way, we're talking about Cooper has helped in change and implemented technology like that. It's really fascinating. >> It's so much more than >> being a buyer or being somebody that's controlling a particular business unit's ability to buy and spend. >> One of the interesting things about Cooper is this platform that allows what started, I >> think, initially as more procurement corner invoicing is now expanded to also include payments and expenses and travel management and contingent workhorse management. So what the CPO now has the opportunity to do is get this visibility right across an entire business of all of the spending, to your point, make massive impacts to the bottom line. >> Yeah, I >> mean, data is so important, right? In the past, the vendors had all the information. Why? Because the sales people how to get commissions. They knew exactly what was being bought of that company. Today, you can reverse engineer saying, selling cells. I say it's reverse sales. I can't go in there and I tell them now I have the full picture. So if it's divided up that category by three or four different vendors, they're making assumptions about how much market share they have. I know it all. I can create a model, a pricing model on the reverse. Engineer it. It's really for sales. I'm telling them now why they should give me a great discount for the organization and >> I >> have the ability to actually enforce that and drive the savings that we have for the organization. It also helped them drive their numbers on sales. So it's a mutually beneficial relationship. They have more market share. I drive better value for the organization. It really works well, >> Well, one of the destructor is that you're kind of alluded to Is this consumer ization? You know, when you go to buy >> a car these days, you just walk in there. You have as a as a buyer of the consumer oven automobile. You have access to every piece of information possible, the whole transaction process. The sales process is different. So as consumers in our regular lives, we have so much expectation that weaken, find anything good Amazon, find anything that we want, get it delivered tomorrow and have all these information on what? Where's the best place I could get it? Who's selling it for what? How is this person that you know, more trustworthy supplier So this consumer ization element and how it's changing the role of the CPO in the CFO is >> really revolutionary. >> It really isn't so you think about it. Most of us go out to Amazon by something, and really the only control there for me, for example, is my wife has to approve it, right, so that's the only veto authority. So that's really the only difference between the two platforms. If you think about it is, there's controls in place, so you're doing the right thing. But from an end user perspective, if I go out there and find the right item and again in Amazon, I don't to go find the supplier. I don't know if that be on contract. Why don't you do that work? We shouldn't have to. I should just go out there and say, I need this And in the background, Cooper is working all those things, presenting the right products on the right contracts, driving right value and almost is important, minimizing the risk. So across all those different lenses, you see why the value of Cooper is for the end user. They're getting what they need for the organization, for the company we're reducing risk and we're increasing value, and then you have rich reporting on the back end. So it's just it's a great way of doing business. It really is taking what you used to do or what you do. It's Sunday afternoon like Rob, you say Monday at work, and I think that's really powerful thing of perspective. >> It is. And it can be so impactful if applied in the right way with an organization, whether it's a manufacturer or hospital or retailer that has a culture that is willing to embrace change, right? I mean, there's that right, Especially >> get him to get your >> perspective on when you're implementing Cooper at a large organization. Maybe have been around for many, many years versus maybe a more modern that we think might be more nimble organization. Culturally, Do you see massive differences in how they're leading procurement, and are you able to sort of level the playing field and show them doesn't matter what your culture is? Here's how your business, your body. >> So from a change perspective, I think there's a different perception. The newer, nimbler organization believes that they changed easy, but it still may have people the older organisation again still made people most people don't like to change. What I have learned is if you help them understand the value of it, how they're doing it, how their jobs are going to change and give them the tools to do it. Some people are gonna be early adopters. But finding that one person, the organization, no matter what level they are in that business unit or in that department that has that informal voice that people look to naturally, that the Nazi leader who's in a leadership position with leader from a personality perspective get them on board. And sometimes that's the hardest thing to do. They might be the most changed resistant, but was that person flips, They become your greatest greatest advocate out there. So it's a personal thing. This is hard work. That's why I talk about in our sessions, is going through. This requires a lot of work, but it's worth it. You can measure the value on the end that you got help. People understand why you're going on this journey and have have resource is there for help. >> So what were some of that? You said you did good Q and a session during your break out this afternoon. >> Tell me some of >> the things that that some of the audience said that you thought was really like they're getting it, >> Yes. So the whole point of our session was going live is not really the goal, right? That's just >> a guess, the exact right. >> And so most people focus on going live, and the answer is congratulations. You purchased the product, Kuba, and now it's working. So what? You don't have any real data? What do you do in the future? Some questions were as they're going through Supplier Neighborhood. The shift between procurement now taking a larger role in the relationships with the vendors. Well, that's great. It should be a balanced relationship. You know, there's a procurement role in that. And then there's the end. Users are the people in the organization from the business. You have to relate with those suppliers, so work together. If you were together in the past now it's a great time to do that. There's some other questions about if something is not working correctly. Post go live how quick It's not broken, but it could be optimized or you're getting complaints about. How quick should you change it? The answer is, I don't know, measuring yourself. I mean, obviously it's broken. Fix it. But it might be something around change. And maybe you have to help people understand why they're doing this new process. If people are giving feedback positive, negative, mostly native, was positive. We just go off our way. Welcome to Yelp. But if it's negative feedback, listen, don't get offended, understand that perspective and then measure it. Say, Is this something that we did is saying the platform, or is it just changed and work with it? What I tell our clients to is in Cooper, Just cause you can doesn't mean you should. I mean, that's really easy to build a field custom field, really easy to build, custom approval chance, really hard to maintain that stuff. So try to do it out of the not out of the box, but configured without as much customization as possible, and they can always improve it, understand it better. >> I think the key to adoption is the more customization that you have. I imagine the adoption funnel gets narrower and narrower. It's got >> interesting, so you customize because you think that's the way the process should go, because that's how we do it today. So if your goal is to take how you do your process today and put into Cooper, also tell clients congratulations. If you had a bad process now you're bad process that works faster. So take the time to say, Let's step back. Companies evolve, right? And so as they're evolving, if you haven't taken a really a view purposeful of you backwards and measure organization, where you're out from a charity model assessment, then you probably don't know where your gaps are. Take the opportunity when you're implying Cooper to use kind of leading practice that Cooper has start with that and said, Going back to what you're doing today, you know what a great example. That's improvers, right? So people like to have 10 approve er's because they think it reduces risk. So if I go back and look and I asked the audience, say, how many purchase order requests rejected? Very few. And how long do people actually have it open when they re prove it? So that's three seconds when they open it up and looked at it, do they really assess it from a risk perspective? Probably not. But if four people ahead of them approved it, that person's just gotta prove it, because I think it's okay because they're assuming someone else is looking at it, as opposed to in Cooper. Now I have the rich data to understand it. I could minimize risk that way instead of trying to do it. And what is a false sense of security? >> So getting people on board with bringing in automation and leveraging like I was saying in the beginning, the 1.2 trillion of spend that's going through the Cooper platform toe leverage that intelligence to not only have Cooper create the prescriptions for companies to be able to go. Okay, we don't we shouldn't your point. We shouldn't take a process that was clunky before and just do it faster. Still clunky, being able to have the automation thing. Analytics. Really, Those core enabling technologies can also be quite revolutionary. >> Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. So the coop insights now, and you're seeing that measured against others and its mass, but you see how you're doing it, So this is really powerful sitting your goals out there and seeing how you're doing. Adjusting those really question yourself is, if we're not getting is approved in the speed that we thought, How do we do it differently? Right, So and that's nice about Cuba. It is really sounds right, and they really do come out with three releases a year, which is powerful. And so it's always changing, which means you have to be nimble. Understand your organization, adopting the new technologies to come out. They're also looking at their acquisitions and seeing that fits into what you're doing. >> Exactly. Last question for you is the announcement of the expansion of their in the AWS marketplace today and thinking, Wow, the I t person is probably gonna finally all these Shadow I T units that are popping up in finance and marketing and engineering and whatnot. They now have the ability to see and manage the entire software from search to deployment and management through AWS. What advantage is that going to give Deloitte when you're working with Cooper customers on implementation? >> That's probably too soon to say on that one. All the expansions they're having really help us with another tool. Tell clients I would say that there's always measuring the benefit for that client in the risk. So even if you take Amazon, for example, just opened by for Cooper is managing that So Amazon. When they first came out with Amazon for business open by, you couldn't control the categories that were exposed to the client. Now you can, but you can't control the items. So having a process in place, having a category strategy and then maximizing it if Amazon works that client fantastic, AWS is gonna get them or visibility across their platforms to manage those better. Fantastic. I think it just gives another opportunity to bring clients back into Cooper. Have a look at the value for Cooper from an end and solution, and all these wraparound acquisitions are making our expansions with their clients, people pay and all those other pieces out there. It's just another thing for them to have a goal and understand make a decision from their business, whether they're going to use it or not. But there's there's value across the board. Every every client is different, >> Absolutely. But it's also that that consumer ization approach that if you can take a process that somebody does on their own time, whether they're buying soccer balls or pool and bring that to their business life, that consumer ization following them. You think with potential there to transform every industry, every function, every line of business. It's just infinite. So >> truly dot, >> dot dot to me. Continue. Absolutely Wish we had more time. But Max, thank you so much for joining me on the Cube today and talk doing talking to me about what's going on at Deloitte and congrats on having us standing. You're only sessions. That's good, right? Take for Max Ground like I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the Cube from Cooper Inspire 19. Thanks for watching.

(Upbeat music) >> Okay, welcome back everyone, to theCUBE's Coverage of Red Hat Summit 2021 virtual I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE got two great guests from Deloitte Consulting Dave Knight who manages the Red Hat Relationship, Lee he's the lead there, and Mike Bourgeois who's the Public Sector Managing Director both from Deloitte Consulting LLP official name. Guys, great to come on, and we were just talking before camera about all the stories. Great to have you on theCUBE, thanks for coming on. >> Yeah, thanks for having me. >> Like I said we were just talking about all the stories from the transition from pre-COVID, COVID. Now we've got a view into post-COVID. I want to dig into that 'cause there's a lot of things happening. You guys have been in the trenches, front lines bringing solutions, but before we get into that, can you guys just introduce yourself share your roles at Deloitte and give us a quick overview of what you work on. >> Yeah, so again, thanks for having us John Dave Knight I'm a solution architect and Global Red Hat Alliance Manager for Deloitte. I've got responsibility for making sure that play nicely in the sandbox together or we've got a joint customer and solutions to deliver to those customers. >> Hi everyone, thanks for having us John, I'm a Managing Director Mike Bushwa out of Boston Texas. I am coming up on year 20 and Public Sector Consulting. My area of expertise is large state government systems that serve the needs of millions of citizens and thousands of state workers, good to be here. >> Yeah. Great to have you. And I wanted to chime in with you right away because Mike you are living in probably one of the hottest markets Public Sector. I've been following that for many, many years, generations actually from the early computer industry GSA contracts, all these contracts you've got all the Public Sector, they move very slowly but now the pandemic, there was no place to hide. Everything got pulled back, disruption, you can't just shut down critical infrastructure and critical services. People had to move fast. What was your experience and how is it now give us a taste of some of the challenges and the landscape. >> You bet John, so we talked a little bit before we started this, but my 20 year consulting career, I can't think of anything really in close to this, other than maybe Y2K and as Dave mentioned the Affordable Care Act Legislation in 2009, though that was a much smaller scale as it turned out to be. So I would be remiss not to share examples of extraordinary challenges our clients have had related to the pandemic. Department of Labor and Health and Human Service Agencies for example, responded to the pandemic in rapid timeframe that were rarely seen in government. Citizens that were used to coming in appealed offices, We're now required to do most things virtually. Deloitte has been privileged to assist clients with digital solutions across the country in response to this unprecedented event. And so I'd like to share just a couple of examples. The first is for Department of Labor, the pandemic contributed to millions of layoffs throughout the country Department of Labor workers found called volumes increasing by a 1000% in some cases, the amount of increased volume required agencies across the country hire temporary workers to help out. Millions of new unemployment claims needed to be filed in benefits rapidly provided to citizens of name. So the big challenge was the agency had to figure out how to rapidly file claims into the unemployment system, rather than requiring new citizens to use an external web application they were really unfamiliar, the agency needed more efficient approach. The approach we used was to create an internal web application that enabled workers to file unemployment insurance claims on behalf of citizens. Workers collected the necessary data from citizens and claims were filed into the system. The application enabled workers to focus on filing claims rather than sort of a technical support role showing how to people use an external web application. More citizen were served in much less time, claims are filed efficiently by train workers which resulted in benefits being received in a much more timely fashion. And so a second example is, with Department of Human Services. So one stay as mentioned Citizens were used to going into field offices but suddenly they were told you can't come into the field office. So once they provided a 100% virtual application and the important part here is certification solution for the Disaster Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or DSNAP for short. this application was stood up in two weeks, families who needed food assistance can now apply and be certified for benefits remotely. Today over 50,000 cases have certified and citizens receiving food nutrition assistance. Back to you John. >> So, I mean obviously there's some great use cases you got, basically I got to work at home, new architecture there you got to have a new workflows. I mean, this poses some real challenges. How did you guys put it together? I mean, Dave take us through where this all fits in with the Red Hat, because obviously now it's new deployment new capabilities have to be deployed for the pandemic. How does this bring together the partnership with Red Hat? >> Yeah, so great question and it really plays to the strength of both Deloitte and Red Hat, right? The success stories that Mike has illustrated show how we can quickly pivot as a firm to delivering these types of solutions and help our customers think through innovative ways to solve the problems. So, I mean the prime example that Mike just gave, everything used to be done in offices. Now it's all done remotely cause you can't go to the office even if you want to. And that is very much aligned with the innovation we get with our partnership with Red Hat, right? They've led the way in open source and some of the technologies that we've leveraged that our solutions include, answerable for automation, some of the middleware products, and I would say one of the cornerstones is the OpenShift Platform. Now that allows us to greatly accelerate the development and delivery of those solutions to our customers. Sort of again, aligning our innovative thinking with Red Hats Innovative Technologies. >> What would you say if someone said, "what's the partnership strengths and what needs specifically are you addressing with customers and customer needs?" >> So I, again, I think our lean towards innovation is a common thread across both firms and where we have our greatest strength. We like to take our customers on a journey but it's not our journey, it's their journey, right? So we help them figure out where they want to go and how they want to get there in a way that aligns with their business goals, their budgets all the sort of factors that drive those things and Red Hat is very open to that approach. They sort of invented the crowdsourcing of open source they made it into a business model. They've developed that from literally nothing. And that aligns very nicely with us. That's one of the key strengths. We also are firm believers in open source again to the degree that our customers like the leverage that to drive their journeys. And we're seeing that, especially in the Public Sector Space as being a key driver of the technologies they employ. >> Mike, I want to come back to you on this open ma component open question, open source, open to technology open innovation out in the open as Red Hat calls it. How does Red Hat open source software, address the needs for your customers for security and on-premise considerations. >> I'll talk a little bit about open source principles in general still the open source principles of transparency meritocracy community problem solving and collaboration. These are on its of both software innovation as well as organizational transformation. One of the highest demand transformation needs that I'm seeing in the market is the desire to adopt innovative technology, and most importantly, moving workloads to the cloud. It's no longer a thought, it is an imperative moving workloads to the cloud, on new deals hosted in the cloud, on an existing, is it large systems let Deloitte help us get to the cloud. So I believe the key to success embracing the cloud is recognizing first the need for change in people, processes and technology. The vehicle for this transformation is DevSecOps and innovative open source platforms, such as the OpenShift platform that Dave mentioned. OpenShift focuses on people, processes and technology and the security conversation becomes even easier. I mean, I see Linux was around for years, and we've always used Linux on our Java based workloads now we can have the conversation about saying, Hey, well that se Linux operating system we've been using for years now, there's this really cool Container Management Platform that we can solve real problems like auto scaling, in my Health and Human Services career, I can remember every year when open enrollment comes around systems engineers are teed up, and ready to manually add those to a BMR cluster or something like that. Well, now we don't have to do these things. We can rely on Kubernetes so auto scale, and then and get rid of those instances when workload demands seven resolved. So it's a really cool technology kind of behind the scenes. It's not the dog and pony show sometimes but in the end it helps the clients and Deloitte remain consistent with those service level agreements. >> That's a great example about the open enrollment illustrates the fact that, you got to provision more stuff to take that load on it. It's always hard in Public Sector you might not have the speed. So I got to follow up and ask you, you guys have had wins in the Public Sector lately with Red Hat, you guys Deloitte and Red Hat working together and get some wins under your belt, on around cloud and cloud and technology obviously with the pandemic has needs there. Are you guys seeing any particular sector challenges specifically around Public Sector as it goes this next level a lot of modernization happening we're seeing that, but any challenges that you're seeing, can you give some examples of how these challenges are being addressed? First talk about the challenges and then give some examples of how they're overcoming them. >> So I can jump in here with this one then, and Mike I think you probably have some maybe Public Sector specific examples, but one of the things that I think is common across all industries is resource constraints, right? And particularly as we look for human resources and not in the HR sense, but developers, CIS admins those types of resources as Mike said, the cloud is here to stay, right? And it's not something that people are thinking about it's de facto part of the conversation. And that's great, but it leads to silos of skills which puts further sort of strain on a limited pool of resources within most sites IT organization. So something like an OpenShift, something like an Ansible solves problems related to resource constraints, because they're skills that are portable across cloud environments, right? If you can manage OpenShift you can manage OpenShift on-prem, you can manage it recently released AWS version of that ROSA on the Azure version of that. So it's no matter where you're running it you've got a common set of skills and access sort of a force multiplier, same thing with Ansible automation, right? If you can write scripts, with an Ansible you can do those repeatable tasks in a much more efficient fashion. And again sort of multiplying the capacity of your existing workforce. >> So you've got an operating leverage there. I mean, this is what you're getting at is that, Public Sector and other commercial areas they kind of got to get used to this fact that, you get some leverage here, you get some operating leverage. >> More or less has always been a thing in IT. And it's not relenting that's for sure. >> It's been more at the more, with less has always been kind of a tagline for budget cuts, right? You can squeeze more out of the investment. Here it's kind of like do more with less than the sense of there's more net new things happening with leverage. So, I mean, do you agree with that? What's your take on that? >> Yeah, I think that's exactly right. It's more with less from a resource perspective, right? Typically it was budget, but no money is just another resource. Now we're getting into the personnel side of it. The other thing I would say is, something like an OpenShift Platform allows the Mike's point around DevOps, it allows the developers to develop, right? I have an article in wired.com about this, where developers are saddled with meetings and they have to become concerned with infrastructure and they have traditionally and security. And I am I doing all these things that aren't related to development. If you have a good DevOps Platform in place the security folks can build guard rails into the platform and the developers can just go develop which is what they want to do in the first place. Yeah exactly, that's another riff on the more, with less, again in a resource, the human resource way versus the budget way. >> Yeah, and that really is where OpenShift ties in. Mike what's your take on this? Because with this kind of program ability infrastructure as code DevSecOps kind of modern developers, Public Sector loves that, because they just want to build the new apps. They got to modernize. So change the infrastructure once. And then a lot of ma many benefits on top of it. It's almost like, it sounds like an operating system to me. >> Yeah, lots of thoughts going around my head right now but I'll say the more with less to me when I'm having client conversations is imagine a world of higher innovation, more technology at lower costs, right? I mean, so CIO is light up when I explained to them the orders of magnitude cost savings on top of the innovation introduced to their environment. So when moving workloads to the cloud is not as easy as just packaging up a binary and dropping in on a name, your cloud provider, right? There's an entire, a blueprinting strategy. There's a Cloud Native Architecture, modernization discussion, so we do those sorts of things, at Deloitte and we work with clients very closely to do that. I want to say teaming with Red Hat allows us to be proactive with our design and reference architecture validation. The Collaborative Partnership in Relationship allows us to connect senior engineers from Deloitte and Red Hat. So we have low level strategic discussions, we validate our assumptions and optimize to use a Red Hat technology. What we're doing in Public Sector is separating the monolithic application into layers. And whenever it comes to technologies like Ansible, like OpenShift, like Jenkins, all of these things that any application needs and Public Sector, we're saying out to the account teams across the country, look this is a slower layer DevOps Platform. And by the way, you can run any .Net or Java based workload on it. So we're trying to make opinionated reference architecture so that regardless of the solution, we can just go to market with that platform that tried and true production application. So I'll give a quick example John, if now's a convenient time regarding, well, one of the things that we've done for particular state client. >> Definitely yeah, give the use cases we love those. >> Yes so one of the impactful modernization that struck my mind was the State of Washington. They've mentioned the affordable care act earlier, there are two major things that came out of that. One was the eligibility and enrollment systems had to be modified across all 50 states. But the second thing and the primary driver behind the affordable care act was health insurance exchange. A way for millions of citizens to have access to healthcare using Subsidized Health Insurance Plans. So in Washington and health benefits exchange is that health insurance exchange, State of Washington has been a client of Deloitte since 2012. The solution was originally designed using closed source proprietary products. There are three drivers for change. The first is the API gateway was end of life and needed to be replaced. Number two was the client wanted it to move health benefit exchange to the cloud from an on-premise hosting arrangement. And third is reducing cost of those solution with innovative products. So the agency was looking for a platform that provided flexibility, auto-scaling and performance and lower cost of ownership. So we worked with the agency and we evaluated a variety of API Management and Integration Platforms after reviewing the outcomes for each proof of concept the agency decided to move forward with Red Hats, three skill API Management Platform, Red Hat Fuse for Integration and OpenShift Container Platform that offered the auto-scaling continuous integration tools and out of the box monitoring and reporting capabilities proactively monitor the health of the solution. I often describe a little bit of OpenShift as a data center or DevSecOps in the box. It just is all there. You don't need to add layers on top of OpenShift install and configure it, tune it and just you're off and running in a short amount of time. So three outcomes I'll mention, go ahead, John. >> NO continue, I thought you were finished. So on the outcomes side, the first outcome the agency substantially lower the cost of ownership using commercially supported open source while increasing access to innovative emerging technology. So the agency wanted a solution not only to meet their current needs, but extend the solution going forward. The beautiful thing about OpenShift is you can drop a container images into the platform without installing an operating system. It's all just there and it's spreading to be extended. The number two outcome cloud migration. Deloitte work collaboratively with the agencies and infrastructure and managed services team to successfully migrate the health benefit exchange to the cloud. And the last thing a bit obvious, but that's successful release, working collaboratively with our client. We were able to migrate the solution within 100 days from making the products decision. The cut over to the new solution was seamless with minimal downtime and zero production issues or exceptionally proud of that. >> Great stuff, great use case. And again, those are great business examples. Dave, I want to get this last question to you and Mike can chime in too. As Red Hat Summit evolves, and we're hearing the theme here at the event about transformation is the innovation, Innovation is about scale. When you hear the words like in a box or Hybrid Cloud you hear about an operating environment. So it's an opportunity to set the table for the next generation, this is what I see. What do you guys see as people talk about Hybrid Cloud and soon to be Multiple Cloud? Because you guys you said have tough relationships. You deal with IBM and Red Hat and you probably deal with other people. Clients want, from what we hear they want back to the Multi Vendor Open Connection Distributed Environment. That's what they want. So how does your relationship evolve, given all this is happening? How do you see the future, please chime in. >> Thanks, that's a fantastic question. I actually think the market is coming catching up to where I've been thinking for quite a while. And that is the Hybrid is kind of where it's at. A lot of customers have been in some sort of Hybrid mode as part of the step or a journey to the cloud, getting all the way to the cloud. But I think we're seeing some transition. I know customers are starting to ask me more and more about Hybrid solutions for a variety of reasons, right? The easy workloads for the most part have either been moved or be are being moved, or at least there's a strategy and a plan to get them moved. And now we're starting to be asked about some of the more difficult architecture type questions, right? The workloads that are a little bit more sticky to the on-premise model. And so Hybrid becoming more of the endpoint as opposed to a step along the journey. The other big thing is some repatriation, right? Workloads coming off of cloud. Maybe they seem like good candidates but for whatever reason, the cost drivers or other things weren't realized, let's get them back on premise. Maybe it's a regulatory thing and new regulations are making folks uncomfortable. So I see Hybrid as a pretty interesting next wave of cloud, Deloitte as a far or we're skilling up or tooling up in order to address the needs of our customers, again are starting to ask us these really challenging questions about Hybrid Cloud and Hybrid Cloud Architectures. >> Yeah and just the key point there is that you think about it like with the way you're discussing it, it's a platform, not a tool, right? So if you think about it like a platform then you can move things around and look at architectures and changes of how resources and workloads are deployed and then what data you're getting from it. Whether you bring it to a factory, for instance you say, Hey, okay, we're going to put it on prem because it's a factory or whatever, and you need more data. What was the changeover? This is like a day to operations kind of mindset. What's your comment on that? >> Well I mean I have actually going back three years now, one of the marketing lines that we developed internally, was moved to a platform, not a provider. But because you get that flexibility, now, the reality is what works stay where they're put for a variety of reasons. But I think one of those reasons could be, because they're put in places where they tend to not want to move, right? So if we could put them into a platform where, there is some portability built into the platform, I think we might have a different sort of outcomes for customers. And I think architecture is absolutely the key, right? That to me is the secret sauce here. >> Mike set up for you to close us out here, platform, Public Sector, Hybrid, that's what they want. It's an ideal scenario for anyone in Public Sector and in general, and why wouldn't you want to have a great platform that's it can be programmed, and rearchitected at will for the benefit of the business powered by software. What's your thoughts? >> Yeah, all good points and I will agree with Dave that Hybrid is certainly evolving. Eight years ago, Hybrid was consuming and address validation API in the cloud and not custom coding that, but today I do agree that Hybrid Cloud is all about a vehicle a way of moving workloads across data centers. It's an architecture that is encapsulated by something like an OpenShift so that you can federate your workloads across data centers. You can put them in one or easily moved them to the other. Maybe that's for a variety of reasons. It could be compute and storage is being reduced by one provider versus the other. So the solutions were we're designing today, they are data center agnostic, we're not being tied to data centers anymore. The best design solutions, you can just let them move in their easy manner. So that that's my take on Hybrid Cloud. And I would say the and Red Hat are making investments to help us advance that thinking help us advance those solutions. We had Deloitte have created a Red Hat OpenShift lab environment, and we've done this purposely to validate reference architectures to show account teams the way we have delivered the very very large accounts to show them what DevSecOps to means from a product perspective and to give them opinionated processes to be successful in delivering these large type solutions. >> Dave, Mike, thanks for coming on, and I appreciate you guys coming on theCUBE and sharing the perspective on the Red Hat Relationship with Deloitte Consulting. Thanks for coming on. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, John. >> This is CUBE Coverage of Red Hat Summit 2021, am John for your host, thanks for watching.