(gentle music) >> Hello, everyone welcome to "theCUBE's" live coverage here in San Francisco, California for VMware Explore not VMworld, it's VMware Explore. I'm John Furrier, your host of "theCUBE" with Dave Vellante. We're here with two sets. 12th year, Dave, covering VMworld, now VMware Explore, what a journey? I had a little reminiscing from Paul Maritz in 2010, who predicted the future but the timing was off. Raghu predicting the future, but is his timing right with multi-cloud or super-cloud? We're going to get into it. We got three days of wall to wall CUBE coverage, two sets. All the top execs from VMware coming on, including the CEO Raghu himself, Vittorio, Kit Colbert, the whole kit and caboodle of the executive group to talk about the future of VMware, where it's going, and of course the appearance of Hock Tan here from Broadcom, Dave, made an appearance. Michael Dell was also in presence. I get the vibe that there's something going on with Broadcom and VMware beyond just the acquisition. So a lot of people are curious. This event again is notable and historic from the sense of it's VMware Explore not VMworld, so they changed the name, and Broadcom's intent, and they're going to be buying VMworld. Dave, the keynote was anticipated by all, how it was going to go down, what was going to be said. Raghu set the table, I got a ton of notes, I know you do. What's your take? >> Well, you have to start with the Broadcom acquisition. You're right, Hock Tan was in the audience, he stood up, he got a little clap. >> Golf clap. >> He's paying $60 billion for VMware, he better be able to be recognized. And he was here yesterday with Michael Dell at the executive sessions. And their purpose I'm sure, they didn't let us in, but I'm sure the purpose was to make sure that customers were calm, they were comfortable with the direction. Of course, the narrative coming out of VMware is that, hey, they're investigating, they're going deep into our portfolio, and they like what they see, it's going to be all good, it's not going to be like the CA acquisition and de-levering and all that stuff. I still stand by what I wrote in my breaking analysis back in May. The fact is, Broadcom has promised $8.5 billion in EBITDA within three years. That's the only way they get there, is to cut, so that's going to happen. But the interesting dynamic in the market, I don't know if you've noticed this, VMware stock is trading at a 20% discount to what Broadcom is paying for it. So there's a big amount of fluff, if you want to do some arbitration. And I think it's due to the fact that it's a stock and a cash deal, it's a combination deal, and it's not going to close for a year. So there's maybe some skepticism around that. But that was an interesting dynamic. The keynote we'll get into it, but it's all around multi-cloud and what we call super-cloud. >> I have my conspiracy theories on Broadcom, actually they make chips. Looking at all the waves right now in the technology industry, silicon is hot, anyone who's doing custom silicon and putting software on the chip, making purpose built vertical applications is seeing performance gains in cloud and in these applications. So one, I'm really excited by the dots connecting there. But also the VMware story, Dave, is pretty interesting in the sense that timing's everything, the Broadcom acquisition, EBITDA focus might drive behavior. But notable for VMware, is Raghu has been on this vision for years. I remember in 2016 when I interviewed him with Andy Jassy, who was then the CEO of AWS, they had moved everything to Amazon Web Services. And that was the beginning of the vision of multi-cloud and cloud-native. VMware invested a ton, and so we're seeing some fruit come off the tree. If you will, bearing some fruit from that VMware investment in cloud-native across the board which was their bet prior to Broadcom buying them out. So the question is, does Broadcom harvest that, continue that nurturing of that "plantation of goodness" that could come out of that VMware? And again, it's probability, it's not guaranteed. Commentary on Twitter is pretty heavy on, can they win the Devs? Can the new Ops bringing around the front? So, VMware's and Broadcom in a tough position, they bought more than they thought in my opinion. And I think a lot of people are saying, does Broadcom recognize the strategic value of what's coming out of the oven, so to speak, or what's blowing off the tree from VMware? And is it real? That is the number one question. I talk to people in the hallway, that's what they're saying. They want to know what's going to happen with what's around the corner, that's on top of mind of everybody. >> It's a really important question because VMware's future is multi-cloud management, what we call super-cloud. And without Tanzu, and I speculated that Tanzu was probably going to be under the microscope and potentially on the chopping block because they spend a lot of money marketing it, but they're probably not today getting a lot of returns. But without Tanzu, without a cross-cloud PaaS we sometimes call a super PaaS. their strategy doesn't work, it basically fails. And I think what a lot of people are missing, and I saw you chime in on Twitter, is can they win the Devs? Can they win the Devs? This is table stakes. If you don't have a cross-cloud PaaS, and it's really about not necessarily just the Devs, it's about the ops, right? Because now it's about security. Yes, shift left, but shield right. But the DevOps team, the Ops team needs consistency. It's like Adrian Cockcroft says, the Devs, they love to get married, the Ops, they got to clean up after the divorce. And so they need standard- >> You're implying that they'll use any tool for the job and not really worry about lock in. And I think today on the keynote, Deshaun was up there who submitted a comment, "You kids have it easy these days." Implying us old guys, when we coded, you had to do everything yourself. Kelsey Hightower mentioned her support pack desktop edition. The old days when had to build everything by hand, now it's all automated, all goodness. But in all seriousness, the focus there was DevOps has won, DevOps is what the developers are doing. The developers are in the clear right now, as far as I'm concerned. They're sitting on the beach right now, sunglasses on, sun shining, everything's shift left, CI/CD pipeline, cloud-native goodness. If you're a dev, things are much rosier than an Ops person. So DevOps is developer, security and DataOps, is where the action is. So it's not so much IT operations as it is security and data leveling up to the velocity demand of developers and also ease of use. So self-service in the motion of coding, in the pipelining, that's what the developers have to have. And if people don't build that experience from the upside, the new ops is not going to enable the develop, it won't be adopted in my opinion. >> You mentioned Paul Maritz before, his whole thing was any workload, any cloud, the software mainframe, they're talking about any Kubernetes, any cloud. And we got to go through some of the announcements real quick here. VMware Aria is the new multi-cloud management platform. That is the fundamental strategy for going cross-cloud or what we call super-cloud. The vSphere and vSAN 8 are big deals. And as relates to compute with vSphere, they're really pushing that whole DPU. You might remember Project Monterey. Well, Project Monterey is essentially like AWS Nitro, it's the future of computing architecture seven years after AWS introduced it. So AWS has a huge lead here. But it's critical that a company like VMware is able to offer that capability with XPU optionality, GPU, CPU, Arm based, Pensando capabilities, eventually NPUs, other capabilities to bring in and support new workloads, new data driven workloads. So the lot of talk about the whole DPU thing. As I mentioned, Tanzu new version of Tanzu, they talked about edge. They're basically bringing VMware to the edge with an eventual consistency model. >> Hold on, the vSphere thing, just to jump in there real quick. I always thought that that'd be higher up in the keynote. Clearly in the keynote, they flexed their cloud-native positioning, they had to address the Broadcom thing, talk about modern applications. So it felt like they were selling the dream on the front end. And they buried the lead in my opinion, which is vSphere 8. They don't do a lot of vSphere 8 announcements. If you look at the history of VMworld, every few years they got a new release. This was packed with a lot of goodness. And I thought they'd buried that in the keynote. >> I don't know, Raghu mentioned it. Yeah, they had a lot to cover. And then the other thing was they announced support for Red Hat OpenShift. So everybody's like, "Ooh, wow." And then Tanzu for all the Kubernetes versions from the cloud guys. So a lot of announcements, you got to always give VMware props. It's not like they stopped engineering, they have a great engineering culture. And so it's nice to see Project Monterey in particular, go from R&D to actual product. And so we like to see that. >> Even towards the end, now that we're doing the keynote review, Raghu said, "As proud as we are," this is when they started talking about the sustainability, implying they're real proud engineering, and that's a good call out there. I think that's what were trying to get across to Hock Tan, who was sitting in the front row. But Dave, in terms of keynote, my analysis is clear. Raghu was nervous, you can tell. But he's a product guy, he even said that on stage. He set the table at the beginning, I thought really well with modern applications. He had to address the name change, and I thought that was interesting. He actually said, "We built a community with VMworld, but now with multi-cloud, we're going to recall it Explore." Not sure I agree with that. I think VMworld community is still vibrant, and that's why they're here. So I thought that was nice, the way he balance that out, the messaging is good, the graphics and the branding of Explore is world class, I think it's phenomenal. I'm not a big fan of the name change, but I never go well with change there. Hock Tan didn't speak, he did stand up and wave. >> There's no way he's going to get up to speak. >> He didn't speak. So I thought that was interesting front end, so they got that right out of the way. And absolutely you saying last night. And then they got into this digitally smart concept, which I thought was on point. Did not like the great replatforming message. I'm not a big fan of that because it reminded me of the great resignation. And I think there's going to be a lot of memes on that. So not a big fan of the great replatforming. I did like the Cloud Universal pitch. But this whole multi-cloud pitch seems to me, and I want to get your thoughts on this, is that that's what it reminded me of, Paul Maritz. So when Raghu is clearly betting the ranch on multi-cloud, the question is timing. Paul Maritz in 2010 here at VMworld Moscone, he laid out the vision, he was right. But timing was off, the top of the stack didn't materialize. But at the end of the day, ended up being the right architecture. Is VMware too early with multi-cloud, Dave? And that's the question, that's the question on the table. >> Well, so a couple things. So Maritz, the one mistake Maritz made was he really tried to go into apps, remember? So now at least I think Raghu, the current VMware thinking is, we're going to enable apps to be developed. And that is the right thinking. Are they too early or too late with multi-cloud? I think technically it just wasn't feasible, the customers weren't ready for it. VMware moves at the speed of the CIO we like to say. So I think the timing is actually really good because the technical capabilities are now there. You've got to have across-cloud paths, which Tanzu is about. And I think Tanzu was too immature before. They've got the pieces on the DPU side. And the other thing about the timing is now with Broadcom acquiring VMware, the whole non Dell ecosystem has got to be a lot happier. NetApp, guys like that, Cisco. >> Why is that? >> Because Dell, their thumb on the scale, they had the thing rigged, Dell was first in line for everything. When EMC owned VMware, that was the case. But they were required about it, Dell made no concessions. And they just came out and said, "We are going to be VMware first, we are the preferred partner, we do more business with anybody." They really drove a truck through that. And I think it caused a lot of the ecosystem to pull back, like HPE and others to say, "Okay, we're going to find some alternatives here." Now they can really lean in. It's like when HP broken two, that really changed the ecosystem posture with HPE. This is like that, but times 10. >> What did you think about the ecosystem floor last night? When I did a walk of the floor, I thought it was very vibrant, it was not a ghost town at all. >> No, not at all, we saw Alibaba Cloud was there, we saw a lot of- >> AWS. >> Smaller companies >> Microsoft. >> And so I thought it was better than I thought it would be. There's probably what, 7,000 people here I would say? So well off from the 15,000 pre-COVID highs, but still very robust, it's a good crowd. People are excited to be back in person obviously. And I think the messaging was right, John. I think cross-cloud, multi-cloud, super-cloud, that is the future. Well, David Floid took a stab at it and said, "I think it's going to be $100 billion market by the end of the decade." >> Super-cloud is a thing for sure. And I think that came out in Aria announcement, which was basically a rebranding. It's not a new product, essentially it's a cobble together management platform. I thought the Cloud Universal notes here were interesting. The Cloud Universal is the commercial cloud smart component. Meaning they're trying to make that the frame, Dave, for the hyperscalers to come in to a de facto consortium movement. I feel like that's next here. If this Cloud Universal could become the super-cloud consortium, that might give them a better shot. The ecosystem is buzzing, attendance is strong. It's interesting a lot of people were speculating, will this be an event? I thought they did a great job and I thought they came through well with this. >> You were saying about consortium, because have to have the cloud guys in any consortium. But is any one cloud going to drive it? VMware could be- >> AWS >> Could be the driver. >> I'm thinking if I had to make a prediction, looking at what I just saw in the keynote, we'll see what the VMware execs say, If I had to make a guess, I think you're going to have customers, "Let's still double down on VMware stuff." They're going to settle into vSphere and networking compute and storage, the normal stuff that they've got, the software to find data center core as a cloud operational platform. And then you're going to see a lot more AWS migration. You might see that if Broadcom doesn't nurture the fruit coming off the tree, as we mentioned earlier, I think you might see people go more cloud-native. But I think VMware's prepared for that with the hybrid. So it's going to be very interesting to see. I think the winners coming out of this will be AWS, maybe a little bit of trickle into Azure, Alibaba mostly for the European, I mean the China side. But I don't see them playing. Google is a wild card, we'll see it from them. >> I think the other big thing about the timing, to your earlier point is, VMware used to go to market with very bespoke, We got vSAN, we got NSX, we got vSphere, and now they're trying to bring that together. And essentially remember, they used to go to market and say, "Okay, hey, your ELA is up, time to renew." And they're talking to the wrong people. So now they're going forth with the Azure service model, they're going to move to a subscription model. And I think the timing is right for that. I would've liked to see it a little bit before hand, maybe pre COVID would have been better timing. But I think technically, the time is right now for that. >> And I think looking at the acquisition, speculating on that, I think let's discuss how we see things, how they might move forward. Again, we'll ask the guests as much as best as we can and the best they could answer. But let's take this forward. Okay, based upon what I'm seeing here, if I'm Hock Tan in the audience, I'm saying to myself, "Okay, I got more here than I thought I was buying." Maybe I thought I was getting some great EBITDA. I wonder if his outlook changed on how he goes to market with the new VMware post acquisition. So that means in the around February timeframe, I would probably, if I was advising him to say, "Okay, let's keep it as is, let's not do the cut, cut, cut. Maybe trim a little bit here and there." But for the most part, he's got the solid customer base and he's going to have to keep the event. >> Here's the problem with that. They have a very high do-say ratio. They do what they say they're going to do. And as a result, they've promised 8.5 billion in EBITDA within three years out of VMware. And they return 50% of their free cash flow to investors. If they break that promise, their stock will get crushed. I don't think they're going to break that promise. So I think they're going to run. That's something I believe in their playbook that they're not going to change. Now, could they get there without massive cuts? I think it's going to be hard. Can they get there with price increases? Yes. And better efficiency, yes. But they don't have a lot of go to market synergies, John. Broadcom doesn't have a big sales force that they can say, "Okay, we're going to fire all the VMware sales force and you're going to go to market through our channel." Like Oracle would do with their big sales force or a Dell would do with an acquisition, they can't. And so I just don't see how they're going to around it. The only other thing I would say is, to me, I thought the application development piece, the Tanzu piece was very appropriate. And I think they got it. Whether or not they're going to succeed there, we can debate that. But I thought what was missing was there wasn't enough, in my opinion, on their security posture, their security strategy. I thought they gave it lip service with, "Oh yeah, we're going to shift left and dev security, et cetera." They did not go in depth. I think when you talk to someone like Tom Gillis, who really can go deep, I think talking about Barry and the lead, that was not, security is the number one issue of CIOs, CSO. >> Data and security >> At boards, it's number one. And data is the second thing. And those two stories in the keynote where quasi non-existent or/and weak. >> Again, the reason why I believe, and you're discussing it publicly at a high level, is super-cloud is real because it's not just SaaS on cloud, it's hybrid, it's DevOps, it's developer. And security and data operations are just absolutely now leveling up, and the edge is a complete wild card. We met a company last night, they're doing the edge cloud. The edge is going to open up all kinds of new use cases and challenges. And that's on the DataOps, data security side. DevOps, IT operations is already in the dev cycle. If companies aren't doing that, in my opinion, they're not really doing it right. So I think it'll shift to security and Ops and DataOps, that's going to be the action. In the cloud operational framework, that's super-cloud. To me, if I'm Hock Tan, I'm saying, "VMworld, VMware Explore, VMware has to be a core component of super-cloud of the future. Not multi-cloud just a state." I think multi-cloud will be a description of a state, of an architecture, and an outcome, but that's not super-cloud, that's not a functioning operating system, that's not a functioning business driven technology. So I think VMware has the opportunity. So I look at that and say, I got cheap options all the way up to the top of the stack. And super-cloud paths layer, as you describe, that I think is the way to go. >> When you think about how VMware got here, VMware was a $13 billion trailing 12 month revenue company. There aren't a lot of $13 billion software companies. And the way VMware got here, is through great software engineering. They identified problems that the customers had and they went and solved them. They did it with virtualization, they did it with private cloud, they figured out their public cloud strategy. So I think the question for Broadcom is going to be okay, how fast can we monetize that engineering? Can we turn that engineering R&D into dollars? And how fast can we do that? They have two choices in my opinion, keep innovating, which of course we hope that's the case, or act like a private equity firm and just squeeze as much cash out of VMware as possible. Which I don't think would be the right strategy because eventually that says, okay, what's going to happen to Broadcom? How are they going to continue to grow? Are they're going to have to just keep growing through acquisitions? So I think R&D is a really good spend when it's VMware. >> And I think as we wrap up our keynote analysis, one of the things that's going to come out of this as the conversation, no doubt in my mind will be, VMware isn't CA. And the question is, does Broadcom go off their playbook with VMware because of the fact that you look at the sponsorships for the show, we got a robust set of sponsorships for "theCUBE." With two sets, we're booked, fully loaded. Conversation's high, the floor is all about next level cloud operations. This is not a dying market, this is a growth wave coming. So the question, as super-cloud becomes that growth, and everyone's talking about super-cloud there. Some people who don't like the name, which is good, keep grace debate. But there's no doubt that that next wave is the super-cloud philosophy, the super-cloud mindset and architecture, and development environment. And we've documented that on supercloud.world if anyone's interested. But that wave is coming, and you can see it on the floor. Look at the sponsors, look at what people are talking about, Dave. This is not like Broadcom buying VMware and tucking it under and saying, "Okay, hope we can service the customer." There's a real market growth here story. So the question is, what do you do with that? >> Well, so you start with the base. VMware is a very good platform. The reason why they don't have a ton of competition and the reason why, okay, Nutanix can maybe trickle some away, but VMware is really good, it works, it's stable, it recovers from failures, it's got a super strong ecosystem. So you start by building there and then you identify the places where you can spend a dollar and make it 10. >> Well, I was very excited that when we had our super-cloud event, which was a virtual event as a test, we had great VMware support. And a lot of the catalog sessions up here, on Moscone West, where we're sitting, upstairs is all the sessions, they're crowded. And they overlay, Dave, with our narrative and the industry narrative. On the influencer side, you're starting to see the influencers meeting our editorial and pursuing a super-cloud with VMware and their ecosystem. Kind of agreeing super-cloud is real. And I think that is an important note because just last December, when we coined the term at Reinvent, I think it was Reinvent look what's happened. I want to get your thoughts and your reaction to why super-cloud has got so much traction, it's a great buzz with the name. But why is it that our super-cloud, the VMware, and the ecosystem are all aligning with this? Why do you think that's happening? Why do you think that the momentum is accelerating? >> The reason is that, as everybody knows, organizations have multiple clouds, it's a function of shadow Devs, M&A. And so they end up with all these different clouds, all these different projects, different primitives, different APIs, different tool sets. And they called it cloud chaos today. It's accurate, it is cloud chaos. So what's the problem with that? Well, that makes it harder to secure, it makes it harder to govern, it makes it harder to share data, it creates data silos. What's the answer? Well, if you can create a layer that's an abstraction layer that simplifies all that cross cloud data sharing and development and have a consistent set of APIs through a PaaS layer, we call it super PaaS and you are going to have a metadata intelligence that says, "Okay, I'm going to put this here or put that there. And I'm going to deal with latency, I'm going to optimize for whatever purpose, data sharing, or performance or whatever it is." You're going to solve a lot of problems. And you're going to make the CIO's life easier so that they can invest in their own business and their digital transformation and their digital strategy. So that's why people agree. They might not agree with the name, but they certainly agree with the concept of that abstraction layer. >> The name is certainly a better name than multi-cloud, multi-cloud sounds broken. But I think CIOs and CXOs, CISO, CSOs have to get buy-in from their teams. The organic dev relationship with Ops and SecOps and DataOps has to be symbiotic, not conflicting. And I love the chaos story because as Andy Grove, the legend at Intel once said, "Let chaos reign and then reign in the chaos." >> Chaos is cash. >> So in any innovation inflection point, chaos becomes the complexity, abstraction layers, and or innovation takes that complexity away. This is the formula for success. And I think VMware is right in the middle of it. And I think if I'm looking at VMware right now, I'm saying, hey, reign in that chaos right now and you win. So chaos is not a bad thing if you can reign it in, Dave. >> And that's what they've done. You think about what they did with virtualization, it was chaotic, it was wasteful. I think of what they did with private cloud. They said, "Hey IT guys, we're going to help you not get cloudified. We're going to cloudify your presence on-prem and not just throw everything into the cloud." They did a great job there. And now it's all about multi-cloud. >> Well, we're going to reign in the chaos, extract the signal from the noise. Super CUBE here at super-cloud event VMware Explore. Dave, great to kick it off again. Again, 12th year of CUBE coverage. It seems like a lifetime, Dave. Just yesterday we were 2010 >> Amazing, right. We've been in Moscone South, we've been in North, we've been in Las Vegas. Now we're here West, first time in west. >> Some of these developers were in elementary school when we started "theCUBE" here, I was just feeling old relics. Anyway, we're going to bring more action, three days of coverage, thecube.net, check it out. Join our community, join the conversation. As the influences are coming more onto the market, you're seeing a lot more conversations on Twitter, on LinkedIn, on the internet, check it out. Join the conversation. I'm John Furrier and Dave Vellante. We'll be back with more coverage here in San Francisco after this break. (gentle music)

>>From around the globe, it's the cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent 2020 sponsored by Intel and AWS. >>Oh, welcome back to the cube. As we continue our coverage of AWS reinvent 2020, you know, I know you're familiar with Moneyball, the movie, Brad Pitt, starting as Billy Bean, the Oakland A's general manager, where the A's were all over data, right. With the Billy Bean approach, it was a very, uh, data driven approach to building his team and a very successful team. Well, AWS is taking that to an extraordinary level and with us to talk about that as Matt Hearst, who was the head of global sports marketing and communications at AWS and Matt, thanks for joining us here on the queue. >>John is my pleasure. Thanks so much for having me. You >>Bet. Um, now we've already heard from a couple of folks, NFL folks, uh, at re-invent, uh, about the virtual draft. Um, but for those of our viewers who maybe aren't up to speed on that, or having a chance to see, uh, what those folks had to say, uh, let's just talk about that as an opener, um, about your involvement with the NFL and particularly with, with the draft and, and what that announcement was all about. >>Sure. We, we saw, we've seen a great evolution with our work with the NFL over the past few years. And you mentioned during the infrastructure keynote where Michelle McKenna who's, the CIO for the NFL talks about how they were able to stage the 2020 virtual draft, which was the NFL is much most watched ever, uh, you know, over 55 million viewers over three days and how they were unable to do it without the help and the power of AWS, you know, utilizing AWS is reliability, scalability, security, and network connectivity, where they were able to manage thousands of live feeds to flow to the internet and go to ESPN, to airline. Um, but additionally, Jennifer LinkedIn, who's the SVP of player health and innovation at the NFL spoke during the machine learning keynote during reinvent. And she talked about how we're working with the NFL, uh, to co-develop the digital athlete, which is a computer simulation model of a football player that can replicate infinite scenarios in a game environment to help better foster and understanding of how to treat and rehabilitate injuries in the short term and in the long-term in the future, ultimately prevent, prevent and predict injuries. >>And they're using machine learning to be able to do that. So there's, those are just a couple of examples of, uh, what the NFL talked about during re-invent at a couple of keynotes, but we've seen this work with the NFL really evolve over the past few years, you know, starting with next gen stats. Those are the advanced statistics that, uh, brings a new level of entertainment to football fans. And what we really like to do, uh, with the NFL is to excite, educate, and innovate. And those stats really bring fans closer to the game to allow the broadcasters to go a little bit deeper, to educate the fans better. And we've seen some of those come to life through some of our ads, uh, featuring Deshaun Watson, Christian McCaffrey, um, these visually compelling statistics that, that come to life on screen. Um, and it's not just the NFL. AWS is doing this with some of the top sports leagues around the world, you know, powering F1 insights, Buddhist league, and match facts, six nations, rugby match stats, all of which utilize AWS technology to uncover advanced stats and really help educate and engage fans around the world in the sports that they love. >>Let's talk about that engagement with your different partners then, because you just touched on it. This is a wide array of avenues that you're exploring. You're in football, you're in soccer, you're in sailing, uh, you're uh, racing formula one and NASCAR, for example, all very different animals, right? In terms of their statistics and their data and of their fan interest, what fans ultimately want. So, um, maybe on a holistic basis first, how are you, uh, kind of filtering through your partner's needs and their fans needs and your capabilities and providing that kind of merger of capabilities with desires >>Sports, uh, for AWS and for Amazon are no different than any other industry. And we work backwards from the customer and what their needs are. You know, when we look at the sports partners and customers that we work with and why they're looking to AWS to help innovate and transform their sports, it's really the innovative technologies like machine learning, artificial intelligence, high performance computing, internet of things, for example, that are really transforming the sports world and some of the best teams and leagues that we've talked about, that you touched on, you know, formula one, NASCAR, NFL, Buena, Sligo, six nations, rugby, and so on and so forth are using AWS to really improve the athlete and the team performance transform how fans view and engage with sports and deliver these real-time advanced statistics to give fans, uh, more of that excitement that we're talking about. >>Let me give you a couple of examples on some of these innovative technologies that our customers are using. So the Seattle Seahawks, I built a data Lake on AWS to use it for talent, evaluation and acquisition to improve player health and recovery times, and also for their game planning. And another example is, you know, formula and we talk about the F1 insights, those advanced statistics, but they're also using AWS high-performance computing that helped develop the next generation race car, which will be introduced in the 2022 season. And by using AWS F1 was able to reduce the average time to run simulations by 70% to improve the car's aerodynamics, reducing the downforce loss and create more wheel to wheel racing, to bring about more excitement on the track. And a third example, similar to, uh, F1 using HPC is any of those team UK. So they compete in the America's cup, which is the oldest trophy in international sports. And endosteum UK is using an HPC environment running on Amazon, easy to spot instances to design its boat for the upcoming competition. And they're depending on this computational power on AWS needing 2000 to 3000 simulations to design the dimension of just a single boat. Um, and so the power of the cloud and the power of the AWS innovative technologies are really helping, uh, these teams and leagues and sports organizations around the world transform their sport. >>Well, let's go back. Uh, you mentioned the Seahawks, um, just as, uh, an example of maybe, uh, the kind of insights that that you're providing. Uh, let's pretend I'm there, there's an outstanding running back and his name's Matt Hearst and, uh, and he's at a, you know, a college let's just pretend in California someplace. Um, what kind of inputs, uh, are you now helping them? Uh, and what kind of insights are you trying to, are you helping them glean from those inputs that maybe they didn't have before? And how are they actually applying that then in terms of their player acquisition and thinking about draft, right player development, deciding whether Matt Hertz is a good fit for them, maybe John Wallace is a good fit for them. Um, but what are the kinds of, of, uh, what's that process look like? >>So the way that the Seahawks have built the data Lake, they built it on AWFs to really, as you talk about this talent, evaluation and acquisition, to understand how a player, you know, for example, a John Walls could fit into their scheme, you know, that, that taking this data and putting it in the data Lake and figuring out how it fits into their schemes is really important because you could find out that maybe you played, uh, two different positions in high school or college, and then that could transform into, into the schematics that they're running. Um, and try to find, I don't want to say a diamond in the rough, but maybe somebody that could fit better into their scheme than, uh, maybe the analysts or others could figure out. And that's all based on the power of data that they're using, not only for the talent evaluation and acquisition, but for game planning as well. >>And so the Seahawks building that data Lake is just one of those examples. Um, you know, when, when you talk about a player, health and safety, as well, just using the NFL as the example, too, with that digital athlete, working with them to co-develop that for that composite NFL player, um, where they're able to run those infinite scenarios to ultimately predict and prevent injury and using Amazon SageMaker and AWS machine learning to do so, it's super important, obviously with the Seahawks, for the future of that organization and the success that they, that they see and continue to see, and also for the future of football with the NFL, >>You know, um, Roger Goodell talks about innovation in the national football league. We hear other commissioners talking about the same thing. It's kind of a very popular buzz word right now is, is leagues look to, uh, ways to broaden their, their technological footprint in innovative ways. Again, popular to say, how exactly though, do you see AWS role in that with the national football league, for example, again, or maybe any other league in terms of inspiring innovation and getting them to perhaps look at things differently through different prisms than they might have before? >>I think, again, it's, it's working backwards from the customer and understanding their needs, right? We couldn't have predicted at the beginning of 2020, uh, that, you know, the NFL draft will be virtual. And so working closely with the NFL, how do we bring that to life? How do we make that successful, um, you know, working backwards from the NFL saying, Hey, we'd love to utilize your technology to improve Clare health and safety. How are we able to do that? Right. And using machine learning to do so. So the pace of innovation, these innovative technologies are very important, not only for us, but also for these, uh, leagues and teams that we work with, you know, using F1 is another example. Um, we talked about HPC and how they were able to, uh, run these simulations in the cloud to improve, uh, the race car and redesign the race car for the upcoming seasons. >>But, uh, F1 is also using Amazon SageMaker, um, to develop new F1 insights, to bring fans closer to the action on the track, and really understand through technology, these split-second decisions that these drivers are taking in every lap, every turn, when to pit, when not to pit things of that nature and using the power of the cloud and machine learning to really bring that to life. And one example of that, that we introduced this year with, with F1 was, um, the fastest driver insight and working F1, worked with the Amazon machine learning solutions lab to bring that to life and use a data-driven approach to determine the fastest driver, uh, over the last 40 years, relying on the years of historical data that they store in S3 and the ML algorithms that, that built between AWS and F1 data scientists to produce this result. So John, you and I could sit here and argue, you know, like, like two guys that really love F1 and say, I think Michael Schumacher is the fastest drivers. It's Lewis, Hamilton. Who's great. Well, it turned out it was a arts incentive, you know, and Schumacher was second. And, um, Hamilton's third and it's the power of this data and the technology that brings this to life. So we could still have a fun argument as fans around this, but we actually have a data-driven results through that to say, Hey, this is actually how it, how it ranked based on how everything works. >>You know, this being such a strange year, right? With COVID, uh, being rampant and, and the major influence that it has been in every walk of global life, but certainly in the American sports. Um, how has that factored into, in terms of the kinds of services that you're looking to provide or to help your partners provide in order to increase that fan engagement? Because as you've pointed out, ultimately at the end of the day, it's, it's about the consumer, right? The fan, and giving them info, they need at the time they want it, that they find useful. Um, but has this year been, um, put a different point on that for you? Just because so many eyeballs have been on the screen and not necessarily in person >>Yeah. T 20, 20 as, you know, a year, unlike any other, um, you know, in our lifetimes and hopefully going forward, you know, it's, it's not like that. Um, but we're able to understand that we can still bring fans closer to the sports that they love and working with, uh, these leagues, you know, we talk about NFL draft, but with formula one, we, uh, in the month of may developed the F1 Pro-Am deep racer event that featured F1 driver, uh, Daniel Ricardo, and test driver TA Sianna Calderon in this deep racer league and deep racers, a one 18th scale, fully autonomous car, um, that uses reinforcement learning, learning a type of machine learning. And so we had actual F1 driver and test driver racing against developers from all over the world. And technology is really playing a role in that evolution of F1. Um, but also giving fans a chance to go head to head against the Daniel Ricardo, which I don't know that anyone else could ever say that. >>Yeah, I raced against an F1 driver for head to head, you know, and doing that in the month of may really brought forth, not only an appreciation, I think for the drivers that were involved on the machine learning and the technology involved, but also for the developers on these split second decisions, these drivers have to make through an event like that. You know, it was, it was great and well received. And the drivers had a lot of fun there. Um, you know, and that is the national basketball association. The NBA played in the bubble, uh, down in Orlando, Florida, and we work with second spectrum. They run on AWS. And second spectrum is the official optical provider of the NBA and they provide Clippers court vision. So, uh, it's a mobile live streaming experience for LA Clippers fans that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to visualize data through on-screen graphic overlays. >>And second spectrum was able to rely on, uh, AWS is reliability, connectivity, scalability, and move all of their equipment to the bubble in Orlando and still produce a great experience for the fans, um, by reducing any latency tied to video and data processing, um, they needed that low latency to encode and compress the media to transfer an edit with the overlays in seconds without losing quality. And they were able to rely on AWS to do that. So a couple of examples that even though 2020 was, uh, was a little different than we all expected it to be, um, of how we worked closely with our sports partners to still deliver, uh, an exceptional fan experience. >>So, um, I mean, first off you have probably the coolest job at AWS. I think it's so, uh, congratulations. I mean, it's just, it's fascinating. What's on your want to do less than in terms of 20, 21 and beyond and about what you don't do now, or, or what you would like to do better down the road, any one area in particular that you're looking at, >>You know, our, our strategy in sports is no different than any other industry. We want to work backwards from our customers to help solve business problems through innovation. Um, and I know we've talked about the NFL a few times, but taking them for, for another example, with the NFL draft, improving player health and safety, working closely with them, we're able to help the NFL advance the game both on and off the field. And that's how we look at doing that with all of our sports partners and really helping them transform their sport, uh, through our innovative technologies. And we're doing this in a variety of ways, uh, with a bunch of engaging content that people can really enjoy with the sports that they love, whether it's, you know, quick explainer videos, um, that are short two minute or less videos explaining what these insights are, these advanced stats. >>So when you see them on the screening and say, Oh yeah, I understand what that is at a, at a conceptual level or having blog posts from a will, Carlin who, uh, has a long storied history in six nations and in rugby or Rob Smedley, along story history and F1 writing blog posts to give fans deeper perspective as subject matter experts, or even for those that want to go deeper under the hood. We've worked with our teams to take a deeper look@howsomeofthesecometolifedetailingthetechnologyjourneyoftheseadvancedstatsthroughsomedeepdiveblogsandallofthiscanbefoundataws.com slash sports. So a lot of great rich content for, uh, for people to dig into >>Great stuff, indeed. Um, congratulations to you and your team, because you really are enriching the fan experience, which I am. One of, you know, hundreds of millions are enjoying that. So thanks for that great work. And we wish you all the continued success down the road here in 2021 and beyond. Thanks, Matt. Thanks so much, Sean.