Day 2 Intro
(upbeat electronic music) >> Okay thanks, Adam, and the studio. We're here on the floor in Cloud City, right in the middle of all the action, the keynotes are going on in the background. It's a packed house. I'm John Furrier. Dave Vellante's on assignment, digging in, getting those stories. He'll have the analysis, he'll be back on theCUBE, but I want to welcome Chloe Richardson, who has been holding down the main stage here in Cloud City with amazing content that she's been hosting. Chloe, great to see you. Thanks for coming on theCUBE, and kicking it off day two with me. >> No, not at all. Thank you for having me! It's very exciting! I love what you guys have got over here, very fun! >> We're inside theCUBE. This is where all the action is, and also, Cloud City is really changing the game. If you look at what's going on here in Cloud City, it's pretty spectacular. >> No, I mean, the atmosphere is absolutely palpable. Isn't it? You can just feel it. People walk in and see what the future looks like for the telecoms industry. Very exciting. >> And you've been doing a great job on the main stage, we're really loving your content. Let's get into some of the content here. After the keynotes are going on, we're going to have DR maybe fly by the set later, we're going to check that out. But let's check out this videotape. This is TelcoDR. You got to check out this reel, and we'll be right back, and we'll talk about it. (smooth electronic music) >> TelcoDR burst onto the global telecom scene this year, making headlines for taking over the huge Erickson space at MWC 21, and for building Cloud City in just a hundred days. But why did the company go to such trouble? And what is their unique offering to the telecoms industry? And what drives their dynamic CEO, Danielle Royston, or DR, as everyone calls her? Cloud City Live caught up with DR, away from the hustle and bustle of the city to find out. (upbeat instrumental music) >> Hi, I'm Danielle Royston, coming to you from beautiful Barcelona! I'm here for MWC 21. About a hundred days ago, I decided to take over the iconic Erickson booth to turn it into Cloud City. Cloud City has over 30 vendors, and 70 demos, to introduce telco to what I think is the future for our industry. We're going to have three awesome experiences. We're going to talk about the new subscriber experience. We're going to talk about what's in store for the new network, and the future of work. And I'm really excited to create a community, and invite awesome telco executives to see this new feature. It's been a really tough 18 months, and we didn't know what MWC 21 was going to be like in terms of attendance. And so from the get-go, we planned this amazing experience that we call Cloud City Live. At Cloud City Live, we have two main components. We have the speaker series, where we have over 50 speakers from Amazon, Google, Microsoft, as well as CSPs, and awesome vendors, talking about the public cloud in telco. The second part of Cloud City Live is theCUBE. Think of this as like an ESPN desk of awesome tech interviews focused on telco and the public cloud, hosted by John furrier and Dave Vallente. Dave and John are going to talk to a variety of guests focused on telco in the public cloud. It's a great way for our virtual participants to feel like they're at the show, experiencing what's going on here. So excited to have them as part of the Cloud City booth. There's a ton of innovation going on in telco, and 20 years ago, Elon Musk set on his mission to Mars. I, like Elon Musk, am on a quest to take telco to the public cloud. Every year at MWC, there's always a flurry of announcements, and this year is no different. At this year's MWC, Totogi, a startup that I invested $1,000,000 in, will be launching. Totogi is introducing two products to the market this week at MWC. The first is at planetary scale charger. More than a charger, it's an engagement, coupling your network data with charging information to drive subscriber engagement, and doubling your ARPU. The second product that Totogi is introducing is a planetary scale BSS system, built on top of the TM Forum Open APIs. Both of these products will be available for viewing in the virtual booth, as well as on the show floor. The public cloud is an unstoppable mega trend that's coming to telco! I'm super excited to bring to you the vendors, the products, the demonstrations, and the speakers, both to people here in Barcelona, and virtually around the world! (upbeat instrumental music) Well, that was a fascinating insight into the origins of TelcoDR, why public cloud is going to truly disrupt the telecoms industry, and why DR herself is so passionate about it. If you'd like to find out more, come and see us at Cloud City. (groovy electronic music) >> Okay, thanks. Just rolling that reel. Chloe, I mean, look at that reel, I mean, DR, Danielle Royston, she's a star. And I've seen a lot of power players in the industry. She's got guts and determination, and she's got a vision, and she's not just, you know, making noise about telco and cloud, there's actually a lot of real good vision there! I mean, it's just so impressive. >> No, it really is. And for me, it's almost like the next moonshot. It's the moonshot of the telco world! She's innovative, she's exciting. And if we've learned anything over the last 18 months, it's that we need that in this industry, to grow for the future of the industry. So, so exciting. I think she's a real inspiration! >> And I love the fact that she's so takes the tiger by the tail. Because the telco industry is being disrupted, she's just driving the bus here. And I remember, I did a story on Teresa Carlson, who was with Amazon Web Services, she was running the public sector, and she was doing the same exact thing in that public sector world in DC, and around the world. She opened up regions in Bahrain, which as a woman, that was an amazing accomplishment. And she wasn't just a woman, she was just a power player! And she was an exceptional leader. I see DR doing the same thing, and people aren't going to like that, I'll tell you right now. People are going to be like, "Whoa, what's going on here?" >> Now of course, it's always that way we pioneers though, isn't it? At the time, people thinking what is going on here, we don't like change, why are being shaken up? But actually, afterwards, in retrospect, they think, "Oh, okay. I see why that happened, and we needed it." So, really exciting stuff. >> Making things happen, that's what we're doing here on theCUBE. Obviously, the main stage's doing a great job. Let's go check out this highlight reel. If you're watching and you missed some of the action, this is obviously the physical event back since 2019 in February, but there's also a hybrid event, a lot of virtual action going on. So, you got theCUBE Virtual, you got a lot of content on virtual sites. But in person here, we're going to go show you a highlight reel from what we did yesterday, and what was happening around the show. Enjoy this quick highlight reel from yesterday. (groovy electronic music) (cheerful instrumental music) (groovy electronic music) Okay. We're back here in theCUBE. We're on the main floor out here with Chloe, who is emceeing, hosting, and driving the content on the Cloud City main stage. Chloe, it's been great here. I mean so far, day one, I was watching your presentations and fireside chats you've been hosting. Awesome content. I mean, people are like jazzed up. >> Yeah, no, for sure. We had Scott Brighton on yesterday, who was our opening keynote on the live stage, and his session was all about the future of work, which is so relevant and so pertinent to now. And he talked about the way it's changing. And in 10 years, it's going to be a trillion dollar industry to be in the cloud at work. So, really interesting! I mean, yeah, the atmosphere here is great. Everyone's excited. It's new content everyday. And that's the thing, it's not stale content! It's stuff that people want to hear. People are here for the new hot trends, the new hot topics. It's very exciting. >> Yeah, the next big thing. And also it's a fiscal event, so since 2019, this Mobile World Congress has been a massive event, and hasn't happened since February, 2019. That's a lot of time that's elapsed in the industry because of COVID, and people are glad to be here. But a lot of stuff's changed! >> Yeah. It's a different world, right? I mean, two years in the telco industry is like a hundred years elsewhere. Everything has changed! Digital transformation migration, obviously cloud, which is what we're talking about over here at Cloud City Live. I'm wondering though, John, I'd like to pick your brains on something. >> John: Sure. >> It has changed in the last two years. We know that! But what about the future of Mobile World Congress? How do you see it changing in the next few years. >> Oh, man. That's a great question. I mean, my observation, I've been coming to the show for a very long time, over a decade and a half, and it's been a nerdy show about networks, and telecom, which is basically radios, and wireless, and then mobile. But it's very global, a lot of networks. But now it's evolving! And many people are saying, and we were talking on theCUBE yesterday, Dave Vellante was commenting, that this show is turning into a consumer like show. So CES is the big consumer electronics show in the US, in Las Vegas every year. This show has got a vibe, because of all the technology from the cloud players, and from the chips, getting smaller, faster, cheaper, more capability, lower power. So people look at the chips, the hardware. It's less about the speeds and feeds, it's more about the consumer experience. We got cars. I was talking to a guy yesterday, he said, "Vehicle e-commerce is coming." I went, "What the hell his vehicle e-commerce?" And you could be on your app driving down the freeway and go, "Hey, I want some food." Instead of having it delivered to you, you order it, you pick it up. So that's kind of what can be happening now in real time, you can do all kinds of other things. So, a lot of new things are happening. >> Yeah, I think so. Do you see that as another disruption for the industry? That is, the fact that it's moving to be more consumer focused? Is there anything we should be worried about in that space? >> Well, I think the incumbents are going to lose their positions. So I think in any new shift, new brands come in out of nowhere. And it's the people that you don't think about. It's the the company that you don't see. (audience in background applauding) And we got DR on the main stage right here, look at this! We saw her walk out with the confidence of a pro. >> Chloe: Yeah, for sure. >> She just walked out there, and she's not afraid. >> Well, as she said in her video, she is ready to wake them up! And you can see as soon as she walks out, that is what she intends to do today. >> I love her mojo. She's got a lot of energy. And back to the show, I mean, she's just an example of what I was saying. Like in every market shift, a new brand emerges. >> Chloe: Yep. >> I mean, even when Apple was tainted, they were about to shut down, they were going to run out of cash, when Steve Jobs brought back Apple, he consolidated and rebooted the company, the iPad was a seminal, iPod, a seminal moment. Then the iPhone, and just, the rest is history. That kind of disruption is coming. You're going to see that now. >> Oh, it's exciting though, isn't it? To be future ready, rather than future proof! But actually I wanted to ask you something as well, because we are seeing all these cloud players getting hot under the collar about telco. Why are they so excited? What's the buzz about wire, as you're on AWS and Google Cloud, why do they want to have a slice of the pie? >> Well, I think they're hot and heavy on the fact that telco is a ripe opportunity. And it used to be this boring, slow moving glacier. It's almost like global warming now, the icebergs are melting, and it's going to just change. And because of the edge, 5G is not a consumer wireless thing, it's not like a better phone. It's a commercial app opportunity, because it's high bandwidth. We've all been to concerts, or football games, or sporting events where a stadium is packed. Everyone gets bars on their wifi, but can't get out. Can't upload their picture to Instagram. Why? Because it's choking them on the network. That's where 5G solves a problem. It brings a lot of bandwidth, and that's going to bring the edge to life, and that's money. So when you got money, and greed, and power, changing hands, if it's on the table, and the wheel's spinning, it could be double zero, or it could be lucky seven. You don't know! >> Oh, for sure. And that's certainly enough to get all the big players hot and bothered about getting involved! And I suppose it circles back to the fact that DR is really leading the charge, and they're probably thinking, "Okay, what's going on here? This is different. We want something new." You did notice it, OpenRAN is something that we've been talking about over the last day or so. We've had quite a few of us speakers over here at Cloud City Live mention OpenRAN. What is it all about, Don? Because why all the buzz if 5G is such a hot topic? Why are we get excited about it? >> That's a great thing. The 5G certainly will drive the main trend, for sure. OpenRAN is essentially an answer to the fact that 5G is popular, and they need more infrastructure. So open source, the Linux Foundation, has been the driver for most of the open source software. So, they're trying to make open software, and open architectures, to create more entrepreneurial activity around hardware, and around infrastructure, because we need more infrastructure, we need more antennas, we need more transceivers, we need more devices. That could be open. So in order to do that, you got to open up the technology, and you want to minimize the licensing, and minimize a lot of these, you know, proprietary aspects. >> What did we look at? So on Wednesday, we've got a great keynote from Phillip Langlois, who is CEO and founder of P1 Security. And he's coming to talk to us about cybersecurity within the cloud, and within telco. So you just mentioned that OpenRAN is all about having open source, about having that space where we can share more efficiently and easily more easily. What does that mean for security though? Is it at risk? >> I think it's going to increase the value of security, and minimize the threats. Because open source, even though it's open, the more people that are working on it, the more secure it could be. So yes, it could be more open in a sense that could be explored by hackers, but open can also protect. And I think we've seen open source, and cloud in particular, be more secure. Because everyone said, cloud is not secure, open source is insecure. And as it turns out, when the collective hive minds of developers work on things, it gets secure. >> And it is interesting, isn't it? Because we have seen that there has been an uptick in cyber security threats, but actually I was speaking to some leaders across various industries, and particularly in tech, and they were saying, actually, there's not been an uptick in attempted threats, there's been an uptick because with this open-source environment, we are able to track them, and measure them, and defend more efficiently. So actually, they're being batted away. But the number is probably the same as it always was, we just didn't know about them before we had this open source environment. >> There's more money in threats, and there's more surface area. So as the tide rises, so to the threats. So on a net basis, it's more, because there's more volume, but it's pretty much the same. And look it, there's money involved, they are organized. There's a business model on attacking and getting the cash out of your bank, or ransomware is at an all time high. >> Yes! >> So this is like a big problem, and it's beyond the government. It's around individual freedom. So, security is huge. And I think open source and cloud are going to be, I think, the answer to that. >> Yeah, for sure. And it's, again, about collaboration, isn't it? Which we talk about all the time, but without collaboration, the industries are going to have to work together to promote this environment. So yeah, it should be good to talk with Phillip on Wednesday. >> I'd just say on security, don't download that PDF, if you don't know who it came from. The phishing is always good. Well, we got some great stuff coming up. We're going to have a great day. We got a video here of Mobile World Live. We're going to show this next segment, and we're going to toss it to a video. And this is really about to give the experience, Chloe, for people who aren't here. To get a feel for what's going on in Barcelona, and all the action. And if you look at the video, enjoy it. >> Hi, I'm Daniel Royston, CEO and founder of TelcoDR. But you can call me DR! Ready for some more straight talk about telco? It's go time! Let's do it. Holy shit! It sure is a great time to be a tech company! I mean, if you're Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Grab, Twilio, Door Dash, or Uber, life's pretty great! Just look at these stock prices over the past five years, with their shareholder value going up and to the right. Totally amazing! But where's telco? Dare I add our stocks to this awesome chart? Let's compare these fabulous tech stocks to AT&T, Vodafone, Telefonica, TIM, America Movil, and Zain Group. Huh. Not so great, right? Yep. I'm talking directly to you, senior telco execs. I'm here to wake you up! Why is it that Wall Street doesn't see you as tech? Why aren't CSPs seen as driving all the tech change? Why is it always Apple, Amazon and Google who get the big buzz? But more importantly, why isn't it you? Before I came to this industry, I always thought of carriers as tech companies. I gave more of my money to AT&T than to Apple, because I really cared about the quality of the network. But I also wondered why on earth the carriers allowed all the other tech companies to take center stage. After spending the last few years in telco, I now understand why. It's because you are network people, you are not customer people! I get it. You have the security blanket. You're a network oligopoly. It's crazy expensive to build a network, and it's expensive to buy spectrum. It takes operational chops to run a killer network, and it takes great skill to convince Wall Street to finance all of it. You telco execs are amazing at all those things. But because you focus on the network, it means you don't focus on the customer. And so far, you haven't had to. Every Telco's KPI is to be less shitty than their next competitor. You don't have to be the best. Just don't be last. Everyone else's NPS is in the thirties too. Their mobile app ratings are just as terrible as yours. Everyone's sucks at customer sat. And it's widely acknowledged and accepted. Let's talk about the cost of that. The cost is not measured on market share against other MNOs. The cost is measured in lost ARPU that the tech guys are getting. Everyone knows about the loss of texting to WeChat, WhatsApp, and the other OTT apps. But it is not just texting. The total adjustable market, or TAM, of the mobile app disruptors is huge! Instead of remaining network focused, you should be leveraging your network into a premier position. And because you're network people, I bet you think I'm talking about coercive network leverage. That is not what I'm talking about! I'm talking about love, customer love. There is one thing the highly valued tech companies all have in common. They all crush it on customer love! They look at every interaction with the customer and say, how do we make the customer love this? Like Netflix has easy monthly cancellation, Amazon does no questions asked returns, Uber gives users a real time view into driver rating and availability. Compare those ideas to the standard telco customer interaction. The highly valued tech companies don't have the network oligopoly to fall back on like you do. To survive, they must make customers love them. So, they focus on it in a big way! And it pays off. Their NPS is close to 70, and they have app ratings of 4.5 or higher. A far cry from your thirties NPS, and app ratings of 3.5. If you want to have those huge tech multiples for yourself, you have to start thinking about these guys as your new competition, not the other telcos in your market. The crazy thing is, if you give up using your network as a crutch, and put all of your focus on the customer, the network becomes an asset worth more than all the super apps. Let's step back and talk about the value of super apps, and becoming customer centered! Retooling around the customer is a huge change, so let's make sure it's worth it. We aren't talking about 25% improvement. I'm going to show you that if you become customer centric, you can double your ARPU, double your valuation multiples, and drive big shareholder value, just like the tech companies on that chart! Now let's talk about the customer focused super apps. There are hundreds of companies in a variety of categories vying for your subscribers' disposable income. Movies, food delivery, financial services. Who are they? And why does Wall Street give them such high valuations and like them so much? Well first, look at what they are telling Wall Street about their TAM. They broadcast ridiculously huge TAMs that are greater than the telco TAMs. You know, who should have a ridiculously huge TAM? You! Hello? What I'm saying is that if you got what's yours, you double in size. And if you take the TAMs they throw around, you'd be five times as big. When I think about the opportunity to double ARPU, without having to double the cap ex to build out the network, I say to myself, hell yeah! We should totally go do it, and do whatever it takes to go get it. For example, let's talk about Grab. Grab is a Southeast Asian super app company with an expected $40 billion valuation. Grab's customer focus started in Rideshare, but then leveraged its customer love into wallet deliveries, hospitality, and investing. Their ARPU is now larger than a Telco's ARPU in countries where they compete, and they have a higher valuation than those telcos too. Imagine if you could combine a great user experience with the valuable services that helped grow your ARPU. That would be huge! So, how do you build a super app? I bet right about now, you're wishing you had a super app. Everyone wants a super app! A lot of money has been unsuccessfully spent by telcos trying to build their own. I bet you're saying to yourself, "DR, your pie in the sky sounds great, but it has no chance of success." Well, I'm betting things are about to change. There is a public cloud startup called to Totogi that is going to help carriers build world-class super apps. To have a successful super app, there is one key metric you need to know. It is the KPI that determines if your super app will be a success or a flop. It's not about the daily active users. It's not the average order value. It's not even gross merchandise value. It's all about the frequency of use per day by the user. That's the metric that matters. How many have you used that metric in your telco apps? Do you have a team driving up user app interactions every day? Most telco apps are used for top-up, or to check a bill. This is a huge missed opportunity. Super app companies excel at building great experiences and driving a huge amount of interactions. They have to, their business depends on it. They have to be customer focused. They have to keep bringing the user back to the app, every day, multiple times a day. And you know what? They do a great job. Customers love their super apps. They have great user experiences. Like Apple credit cards, no information required application process. They have high net promoter scores because of customer friendly policies. Like how Door Dash retroactively credits fees when you move to a better plan. And they have great app store ratings, because they do simple things, like remember your last order, or allow you to use the app, rather than forced you to call customer service. Customers of successful super apps love it when new services are added. And because of the customer love, every time something is added to the app, customers adopt it immediately. New services drive frequent daily user interactions. So our problem in telco is we have an app that is only open once per month, not multiple times per day. And without frequent opens, there is no super app. Hm, what do we have in telco that we could use to help with this problem? I wonder. While you don't currently have a mobile app that subscribers use multiple times a day, you have something that's 10 times better! You have a network. Subscribers already interact with your network. 10 times more frequently than any user with any of the super apps. But telcos don't leverage those interactions into the insanely valuable engagements they could be. Worse, even if you wanted to, your crappy, over customized, on-premise solutions, make it impossible. Thankfully, there's this new tech that's come around, you may have heard of it, the public cloud. When you bring the enabling technology of the public cloud, you can turn your network interactions into valuable super app interactions. And there's a special new startup that's going to help you do it, Totogi! Totogi will leverage all those network interactions, and turn them into valuable customer interactions. Let me repeat that. Totogi will leverage all those network interactions, and turn them into valuable customer interactions. Totogi allows the carrier to leverage its network, and all the network interactions, into customer engagement. This is something that super apps don't have, but will wish they did. But this magic technology is not enough. Telcos also need to move from being network focused to being customer focused. Totogi enables telcos to chase exciting revenue growth without that annoying, massive cap ex investment. Totogi is going to help you transform your sucky mobile apps, with the crappy customer ratings, into something your subscribers want to open multiple times a day, and become a platform for growth. I'm so excited about Totogi, I'm investing $100,000,000 into it. You heard me right. $100,000,000. Is this what it feels like to be SoftBank? I'm investing into Totogi because it's going to enable telcos to leverage their network interactions into super app usage! Which will lead to an improved subscriber experience, and will give you a massive jump in your ARPU. And once you do that, all those telco valuations will go from down here, (buzzes lips) to up here. And so I've been talking to some folks, you know, checking in, feeling them out, getting their thoughts. And I've been asking them, what do you think about telcos building super apps? And the response has been, "Click. Eh." Everyone says, no way. Telcos can't do it. Zero chance. Total goose egg. (egg cracking) One suggested I build a bonfire with a hundred million dollars, because then at least I wouldn't waste years of my life. Well, I think those people are dead wrong! I do believe that telcos can build super apps and make them super successful. The public cloud is changing all parts of telco, and Totogi and super apps are fundamentally changing the customer relationships. In one month at MWC, people will see what Totogi has to offer, and they will understand why I'm making this bold call. Because Totogi takes the value of the network, and the power of the public cloud, to help telcos move from being network centric, to being customer centric. Boom! If you want to make this transformation and reap all the financial benefits, you will have to compete for customers with a whole new set of players. You will no longer compete with the network focused guys, like the other telcos. Instead, you will be competing against the customer focused companies. These players don't have a network to fall back on like your old competitors, they know they have to make customers love them. Their customer loyalty is so off the charts, their customers are called fans. So if you want that big money, you will have to compete on their turf, and make the customers want to choose you. You need Apple level loyalty. That bar is uber high. We'll have to give up the security blanket of the network, and change. Instead of NPS at the thirties, it needs to be in the seventies. Instead of mobile app ratings in the threes, they need to get five stars. I'm betting big that Totogi will make that possible! I'm going to help you every step of the way, starting with my keynote next month at MWC. Join me, and I'll share the secrets to converting your super valuable network interactions to make your super app a massive success. We're going to have an amazing time, and I can't wait to see you there! >> Okay. We're back here in theCUBE here at Mobile World Congress in Cloud City. I'm John Furrier. Chloe Richardson's filling in for Dave Vellante who's out on assignment. He's out getting all the data out there and getting stories. Chloe, what a great keynote by Danielle Royston. We just heard her involving major action, major pump you up, punch in the face, "Wake the heck up cloud people, cloud is here!" She didn't pull any punches. >> No, I mean the thing is, John, there's trillions of dollars on the table, and everyone seems to be fighting for it. >> And you heard her up there, if you're not on the public cloud, you're not going to get access to that money. It's a free for all. And I think the cloud people are like, they might think they're going to walk right in, and the telco industry is going to just give it up. >> No, of course. >> And it's not going to be, it's going to be a fight! Who will win? >> Who will win, but also who will build the next big thing? (John laughing) >> Someone needs to die in the media conversations. It's always a fight. Something's dead. Something's dead but keeps the living. All that kidding aside, this is really about partnering. Think what's happened is Telco's already acknowledged that they need to change. And the 5G edge conversation, the chip acceleration. Look at Apple. They've got their own processors, Nvidia, Amazon makes their own chips, Intel's pumping stuff out, you've got Qualcomm. You've got all these new things. So, the chips are getting faster, and the software's more open source. And I'm telling you, the cloud is just going to drive that bus right down Cloud Street, and it's going to be in Cloud City everywhere. >> And it's going to be peepin' on the board as it drives down. (John laughing) John, I'm not a stalker, but I have read some of the things that you've written, and one of the things you mentioned that was really interesting was the difference between building and operating. Break it down for me, what does that mean? >> That means basically in mature markets, and growing markets, things behave differently, and certainly economics, and the people, and the makeup, and the mindset. So the telco has been kind of this mature market, it's been changing and growing, but not like radically. Cost optimization, make profit. You know, to install a lot of cable, you got to get the rents out of that infrastructure. And that's kind of gone on for too long. Cloud is a growth market. And it's about building, not just operating. And you've got operators, carriers are operating networks. So you're going to see the convergence of operators and builders coming together. Builders being software developers, new technology, and executives that think about building. And you want people on your team that are going to be, I won't say war time, you know, lieutenants or generals, but people who can handle the pace of change. Because the change and the nature is different. And some people want slow and steady, keep the boat from rocking. But in a growth market, it's turbulent, and the ride might not be quiet, first-class ticket to paradise. It's bumpy, but it's thrilling. >> No, of course. Is it similar to the old sales adage of hunter versus farmer? Are there parallels there? >> Yeah. I mean, there's a mindset. If you have a team of people that aren't knocking down new opportunities and building the next big thing, fixing your house, get your house in order, you know, refactor, reset, reboot, replatform with the cloud, and then refactor your business! If you don't have the people thinking like that, you're probably either going to be taken over, or go out of business. And that's what the telcos with all these assets, they're going to get bought, rolled into a SPAC, Special Purpose Acquisition Company, which is super hot in the United States. A lot of roll-ups going on with private equity. So a lot of these telcos, if they don't refactor, or replatform then refactor, they're going to be toast, and they're going to get rolled up, and eaten up by somebody else. >> Yeah, sure. It's interesting though, isn't it? Because when we think of telco in tech, we often think of, obviously we've got the triad, people, process, technology, and we think, process and technology really to the forefront here. But like you said there, people are also so important because if you don't have this right balance, you're not going to be able to drive that change. We had, obviously, Scott Brighton on the stage yesterday, and after his session, somebody came up to me and just said, "I'm interested to hear what that means for education." So how can we establish this new generation of tech and telco leaders from the grassroots with educational associations, establishments. How can we encourage that? I wonder, is this something that you talk about? >> Yeah. I mean, education's huge, and this highlights the change that telco's now part of. Telco used to be a boring industry that ran the networks, or moving packets around, and mobile was there. But once the iPhone came out in 2007, the life has changed, society has changed, education's changed, how people interact has changed. So, you start to see people now aware of the value. And if you look at during COVID, the internet didn't crash, the telcos actually saved our asses, and everyone survived because the network didn't break. Yeah, we had some bad Zoom meetings here and there, and some teleconferences that didn't go well, but for the most part we survived, and they really saved everybody. So, they should get kudos for that. But now they're dependent upon healthcare, education. People care about that stuff, so now you're going to start to see an elevated focus on what telecom is doing. That's why the edge has got trillions of dollars up for grabs. But education, there's negative unemployment in cybersecurity and in cloud. So for the people who say, "Oh, there's no jobs." Or, "I can't work." That's a bunch of BS, because you can just get online, get on YouTube, and just get a degree. You can get a degree. You can get an Amazon job. It pays a hundred thousand dollars a year! American. You can make a hundred thousand pounds, and be unemployed six months, and then be employed. So negative unemployment means, there's more jobs than people to fill them all, in fact. >> Yeah, it's interesting you mentioned that, because I was talking to a cyber security leader who was saying in something, I think there were now 3 million vacancies in cybersecurity. And there's such a skill shortage. There is nobody around to fill it! So it's an interesting problem to have, isn't it? Because it's reversed to what we've been used to for the last few decades! And obviously, telco is in the same space. But what can we do about it do you think, to actually -- >> I think it's going to take leadership, and I'm a big proponent of kids not going to university if they don't have to. Why spend the dough, money, if you don't have to? You can get online. I mean, the data's there. But to me, it's the relationships, the mentorship. You're starting to see a women in tech, and underrepresented minorities in the tech field, where mentorship is more important than curriculum. Community is more important than just going through a linear courseware. Nobody wants to sit online and go through linear courseware. Now, if they have to get a certificate, or degree, and accreditation, no problem. But the communities are out there, so that's a big change over, I'm a big fan of that. And I think people should, you know, get some specialized skills. You can get that online, so why even go to school? So, people are figuring that out. >> For sure. And also, even transferring. I mean, so many skills are transferable nowadays, aren't they, so we could easily be talking to people from other industries, and bringing them into telco, and saying, "Look, bring what you know from your retail background, or your healthcare background, and help us at telco to, again, drive forwards." Just like DR was saying, it's all about the next big thing. >> Well, Danielle is always also driving a lot of change. And if you think about the jobs, and the pedigree of going to a university, oh, Harvard, all the big Ivy Leagues, Oxford in your area. So it's like, if you go to the school like that, and you get a pedigree, you instantly get a job. Now the jobs that are available weren't around five years ago, so there's no like pedigree or track record. There's no like, everyone's equal. >> Yeah. >> So you could, the democratization of the internet now, from a job standpoint, is people are leveling up faster. So it's not about the Ivy League, or the big degree, or silver spoon in your mouth, you've got the entitlement. So you start to see people emerging and making things happen. Entrepreneurship in America, immigrant entrepreneurship. People are billionaires that have no high school diplomas! >> It's interesting you mention that, John, because we can't have more than five years experience in this space, we know that. But in telco, there is a problem. And maybe it's, again, it's a flipped problem where telco recruiters, or talent acquisition leaders, are now asking for kind of 10, 20 years experience when they're sending out job descriptions. So does that mean that we are at fault for not being able to fill all these vacancies? >> I think that's just, I mean I think there's a transition of the new skill set happening, one. But two, I think, you know, to be like a chip engineer, (laughs) you can't learn that online. But if you want to run a cloud infrastructure, you can. But I think embedded systems is an area that I was talking to an engineer, there's a huge shortage of engineers who code on the microprocessors, on the chips. So, embedded systems is a big career. So there's definitely paths you can specialize. Space is another area you've seen a lot of activity on. You see Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk is going to be here on a virtual keynote, trying to go to Mars. And you know, Danielle Royston always says, "What's going to happen first, Mars colony, or telco adopting public cloud?" And some people think Mars will happen first, but. >> What do you think, John? >> I think Telco's going to get cloud. I mean first of all, public cloud is now hybrid cloud, and the edge, this whole internet edge, 5G, is so symbolic and so important, because it's an architectural beachhead. And that's where the trillion dollar baby is. So, the inside baseball, and the inside money, and all the investors are focusing on the edge, because whoever can command the edge, wins all the dollars. So everyone kind of knows, it's a public secret, and it's fun to watch everyone jockey for the positions. >> Yeah no, it really is. But it's also quite funny, isn't it? Because the edge is almost where we were decades ago, but we're putting the control back in the hands of consumers. So, it's an interesting flip. And I wonder if, with the edge, we can really enhance this acceleration of product development, this efficiency, this frictionless system in which we live in. And also, I've heard you say hybrid a few times, John. >> John: Yeah. >> Is hybrid going to be the future of the world no matter what industry you're in? >> Hybrid is everything now. So, we're the hybrid CUBE, we've got hybrid cloud. >> Exactly. >> You got hybrid telco, because now you've got the confluence of online and offline coming together. That is critical dynamic! And you're seeing it. Like virtual reality, for instance, now you're seeing things, I know you guys are doing some great work at your company around creating experiences that are virtual. You got, companies like Roblox went public recently. Metaverse. It's a good time to be in that business, because experiential human relations are coming. So, I think that's going to be powered by 5G. You know, gamers. So, all good stuff. Chloe, great to be with you here on theCUBE, and we're looking forward to seeing your main stage. >> Great. >> And then we're going to send it back to the studio, Adam, and the team. We're waiting for DR to arrive here in Cloud City. And this is theCUBE, from Cloud City, back to you, Adam, and the studio.
SUMMARY :
We're here on the floor in Cloud City, I love what you guys have really changing the game. No, I mean, the atmosphere great job on the main stage, and bustle of the city And so from the get-go, we and she's not just, you know, It's the moonshot of the telco world! And I love the fact that she's so At the time, people thinking and driving the content on And that's the thing, and people are glad to be here. I'd like to pick your brains on something. It has changed in the and from the chips, That is, the fact that it's moving It's the the company that you don't see. She just walked out And you can see as soon as she walks out, And back to the show, I mean, the iPad was a seminal, have a slice of the pie? bring the edge to life, over the last day or so. and minimize a lot of these, you know, And he's coming to talk and minimize the threats. But the number is probably So as the tide rises, so to the threats. and it's beyond the government. the industries are going and all the action. And because of the customer love, "Wake the heck up cloud and everyone seems to be fighting for it. and the telco industry is the cloud is just going to drive that bus and one of the things you mentioned and the makeup, and the mindset. Is it similar to the old sales adage and building the next big Brighton on the stage yesterday, but for the most part we survived, And obviously, telco is in the same space. And I think people should, you know, all about the next big thing. and the pedigree of going to a university, So it's not about the Ivy for not being able to of the new skill set happening, and the edge, this back in the hands of consumers. Hybrid is everything now. It's a good time to be in that business, Adam, and the team.
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Andy Fang, DoorDash | AWS Summit New York 2019
>> live from New York. It's the Q covering AWS Global Summit 2019 brought to you by Amazon Web service is >> Welcome back. I'm stupid like co host Cory Quinn. And we're here at the end of a summit in New York City, where I'm really happy to welcome to the program first time guests, but somebody that has a nap, it's on my phone. So, Andy thing, who's the CEO of Door Dash, gave a great presentation this morning. Thanks so much for joining us. >> Absolutely happy to be here, guys. >> All right, so, you know, before we dig into the kind of your Amazon stack, bring us back. You talked about 2013. You know, your mission of the company will help empower local businesses. I think most people know, you know, door dash delivery from my local businesses. Whether that is a small place or, you know, chipotle o r like there. And I love little anecdote that you said the founders actually did the first few 100 deliveries, but it gives a little bit of the breath of the scope of the business now. >> Absolutely. I mean, when we started in 2013 you know, we started out of Ah dorm on Stanford campus and, like you said, we're doing the first couple 100 deliveries ourselves. But, you know, fast forwarding to today you were obviously at a much, much different level of scale. And I think one thing that I mentioned about it, Mikey No, a cz just We've been trying to keep up pays and more than doubling as a business every year. And it's a really fascinating industry that were in in the on demand delivery space in particular, I mean, Dara, the CEO of uber himself, said in May, which is a month and 1/2 ago. He said that you know, the food delivery industry may become bigger than a ride hailing industry someday. >> So just just one quick question on kind of food delivery. Because when I think back when I was in college, I worked at a food truck. It was really well known on campus, and there are people that 20 years later they're like stew. I remember you serving me these sandwiches, and I loved it in the community and we gather and we talk today on campus. Nobody goes to that place anymore, you know, maybe I know my delivery person more than I know the person that's making it. So I'm just curious about the relationship between local businesses and the people. How that dynamic changing the gig? Economy? I mean, yeah, you guys were right in the thick of it. No, it's a >> great question. I think. You know, for merchants, a lot of the things that we talk to them about it is you're actually getting access to customers who wouldn't even walk by your store in the first place. And I think that's something that they find to be very captivating. And it shows in the store sales data when they start partnering with the door dash. But we've also tried to building our products to really get customers to interact with the physical neighborhoods. Aaron the most concrete example of that as we launch a product called In Store in Star Pickup Chronic, where you can order online, skip the line and pick up the order yourself in the store, and I think a way we can build the AB experience around that, you know, you're gonna actually start building kind of a geospatial. Browse experience for customers with the door dash app, which means that they can get a little bit more familiarity with what's around them, as opposed to just kind of looking at it on their phones themselves. All right, >> so the logistics of this, you know, are not trivial. You talked about 325% order growth. You know, your database is billions of rose. You know, just the massive scale massive transaction. Therefore, you know, as a you know, your nap on. You know the scale you're at technology is pretty critical to your environment. So burgers inside that a little? >> Yeah. I mean, we're fortunate enough, and you and I are talking before the show. I mean, we're kind of born on the cloud way started off, actually on Roku. Uh, back in 2013 we adopted eight of us back in 2015. And there's just so many different service is that Amazon Web services has been able to provide us and they've added more overtime. I think the one that I talked about, uh was one that actually came out only in early 2018 which is the Aurora Post product. Um, we've been able to sail our databases scale up our analytics infrastructure. We've also used AWS for things like, you know, really time data streaming. They have the cloudwatch product where it gives us a lot of insight into the kind of our servers are behaving. And so the eight of us ecosystem in of itself is kind of evolving, and we feel like we've grown with them and they're growing with us. So it's been a great synergy over the past couple of years >> as you take a look at where you started and where you've wound up. Can you use that to extrapolate a little bit further? As far as what shortcomings you seeing today? That, ideally, would be better met by a cloud provider or at this point is it's such a simpatico relationship is you just alluded to where you just see effectively your continued to grow in the same simple directions just out of, I guess, happenstance. Yeah, it is a >> good question. I think there are some shortcomings. For example, eight of us just recently launched and chaos, which is their in house coffin solution. We're looking for something that's kind of a lot more vetted, right? So we're considering Do we adopt eight of us version or do we try to do it in house, or do we go with 1/3 party vendor? That's >> confidence. Hard to say no to these days. >> Yeah, exactly. And I think, you know, we want to make sure that we are building our infrastructure in a way that way, feel confident in can scale. I mean, with Aurora Post Chris, it's done wonders for us, but we've also kind of been the Pi. One of the pioneers were eight of us for scaling that product, and I think we got kind of lucky in some ways they're in terms of how it's been ableto pan out. But we want to make sure the stakes are a lot higher for us now. And so you know, when we have issues, millions of people face issues, so we want to make sure that we're being more thoughtful about it. Eight of us certainly has matured a lot over the past couple of years, but we're keeping our options open and we want to do what's best for our customers. Eight of us more often than not has a solution, but sometimes we have the you consider other solutions and consider the back that AWS may or may not. So some of the future problems. >> Oh yeah, it's, I think, that it's easy to overlook. Sometimes with something like a food delivery service. It's easy to make jokes about it about what you're too lazy to cook something. And sure, when I was younger, absolutely then I had a child. And when she wasn't going to sleep when she was a baby, I only had one hand. How do I How do I feed myself? There's an accessibility story. People aren't able to easily leave the house, so it's not just people aren't able to get their wings at the right time. This starts becoming impacting for people. It's an important need. >> Yeah, and I think it's been awesome to see just how quickly it's been adopted. And I think another thing about food delivery that you know people don't necessarily remember about today is it was Premier Li, just the very dense urban area phenomenon, like obviously in Manhattan, where we are today who delivers existed forever. But the suburbs is where the vast, vast majority of the growth of the industry has been and you know It's just awesome to see how this case has flourished with all different kinds of people. >> I have to imagine there's a lot of analytics that are going on for some of these. You said. In the rural areas, the suburban areas you've got, it's not as dense. And how do you make sure you optimize for people that are doing so little? So what are some of the challenges you're facing their in house technology helping? >> Exactly? Yeah. I mean, with our kind of a business, it's really important for us again to the lowest level of detail, right? Just cause we're going through 100 25% year on year in 2019 maybe we're growing faster in certain parts of the United States and growing slower and others, and that's definitely the case. And so, uh, one of the awesome things that we've been able to leverage from our cloud infrastructure is just the ability to support riel, time data access and our business operators across Canada. In the United States, they're constantly trying to figure out how are we performing relative to the market in our particular locality, meaning not just, you know, the state of New York. But Manhattan, in which district in Manhattan. Um, all that matters with a business like ours. Where is this? A hyper local economy? And so I think the real time infrastructure, particularly with things like with Aurora the faster up because we're able to actually get a lot of Reed. It's too these red because because it's not affecting our right volume. So that's been really powerful. And it's allowed our business operators to just really run in Sprint. >> So, Andy, I have to imagine just data is one of the most important things of your business. How do you look at that as an asset is their, You know, new things. That new service is that you could be putting out there both for the merchants as well for the customers. Absolutely. I think one of >> the biggest ones we try to do is you know, we never give merchant direct access to the customer data because we want to protect the customer's information, but we do give them inside. That's how they can increase their sales and target customers. I haven't used them before, So one of the biggest programs we launched over the past few years is what we call Try me free so merchants can actually target customers who've never place an order from their store before and offer them a free delivery for their order from that store. So that's a great way for merchants acquire new customers. And it's simple concept for them to understand. And over time we definitely want to be able to personalize the ability to target the sort of promotions on. So we have a lot of data to do that on. We also have data in terms of what customers like what they don't like in terms of their order behavior in terms of how they're raiding the food, the restaurant. So that kind of dynamic is something that is pretty interesting Data set for us to have. You know, you look at a other local companies out there like Yelp, Google Maps. They don't actually have verified transaction information, whereas we d'oh. So I think it's really powerful. Merchants actually have that make decisions. >> It's a terrific customer experience. It almost seems to some extent to be aligned with the Amazons Professor customer obsession leadership principle to some extent, and the reason I bring that up is you mentioned you started on Hiroko and then in 2015 migrated off to AWS. Was it a difficult decision for you to decide first to eventually go all in on a single provider? And secondly, to pick AWS as that provider It wasn't >> a hard decision for us to go to. Ah, no cloud provider. That was, you know, ready to like showtime. It's a hero is more of a student project kind of scale at that time. I don't know what they're doing today. Um, but I think a doubt us at the time was still very, very dominant and that we're considering Azure and G C P. I think was kind of becoming a thing back then made of us. It was always the most mature, and they've done a great job of keeping their lead in this space. Uh, Google, an azure have cropped up. Obviously, Oracle clouds coming up Thio and were considered I mean, we consider the capabilities of something like Google Cloud their machine. Learning soft service is a really powerful. They actually have really sophisticated, probably more so than a W s kubernetes service is actually more sophisticated. I guess it's built in house at Google. That makes sense. But, you know, we've considered landscape out there, but AWS has served a lot of our knees up to this point. Um, and I think it's gonna be a very dynamic industry with the cloud space. And there's so much at stake for all these different companies. It's fascinating to just be a part of it and kind of leverage. It >> s o nd I'm guessing, you know, when you look at some of your peers out there and you know, when a company files in s one and every goes, Oh, my God, Look at their cloud, Bill. You know, how do you look at that balance? You send your keynote this morning. You know, you like less than a handful of engineers working on the data infrastructure. So you know that line Item of cloud you know, I'm guessing is nontrivial from your standpoint. So how do you look at that? Internally is how do you make sure you keep control and keep flexibility and your options Yet focus on your core business and you know not, you know, that the infrastructure piece >> of it that was such a great question, because it's something that way we think about that trade off a lot. Obviously. In the early days, what really mattered ultimately is Do we have product market bid? Do we have? Do we have something that people will care about? Right. So optimizing around costs obviously was not prudent earlier on. Now we're in a such a large scale, and obviously the bills very big, uh, that, you know, optimizing the cost is very real thing, um, and part of what keeps, you know, satisfied with staying on one provider is kind of a piece of set up. And what you already have figured there? Um and we don optimization is over the years wear folks on financing now who basically looking at Hey, where are areas were being extremely inefficient. Where are areas that we could do? Bookspan, this is not just on AWS with is on all our vendors. Obviously eight of us is one of our biggest. I'm not the biggest line item there. Um, and we just kind of take it from there, and there's always trade offs you have to make. But I know there's companies out there that are trying to sell the value proposition of being ableto optimize your cloud span, and that is definitely something that there's a lot of. I'm sure there's a lot of places to cut costs in that we don't know about. And so, yeah, I think that's something that way we're being mindful of. >> Yeah, it's a challenge to you See across the board is that there's a lot of things you can do programmatically with a blind assessment of the bill. But without business inside, it becomes increasingly challenging. And you spoke to it yourself. Where you're not going to succeed or fail is a business because the bill winds up getting too high. Unless you're doing something egregious, it's a question of growth. It's about ramping, and you're not gonna be able to cost optimize your way to your next milestone unless something is very strange with your business. So focusing on it in due course is almost always the right answer. >> Yeah, I mean, when I think about increasing revenue or deep recent costs nine times out of 10 we're trying to provide more value, right, so increasing revenues, usually they go to option for us, but they're sometimes where it's obvious. Hey, there's a low hanging fruit and cutting costs, and if it's relatively straightforward to do, then let's do it. I think with all the cloud infrastructure that we've been able to build on top of, we've been able to focus a lot of our energy and efforts on innovating, building new things, cementing our industry position. And, yeah, I think it's been awesome. On top >> of what? Want to give you the final word? Any addressing insights in your business? You know, it's like I like food and I like eating out and, you know, it feels like, you know, we've kind of flatten the world in lot is like, You know, I think it was like, uh, like, 556 years ago. The first time I went white and I got addressed to Pok. Everybody in California knows, okay, but I live on the East Coast now. I've got, like, three places within half an hour of me that I could get it. So you know those kind of things. What insight to you seeing you know what's changing in the marketplace? What? What's exciting you these >> days? Yeah, I mean, for us, we've definitely seen phenomenon where different food trans kind of percolate across different areas. I'm going to start in one region and then spread out across the entire United States or even Canada. I would say I don't way try to have as much emergence election on a platform. It's possible so that no matter what the new hot hottest trend is that more likely than not, we're gonna have what you want on the platform. And I think what's really exciting to us over the next couple years is you know, last year we actually started way started satisfying grocery delivery. So, uh, in fact, we power a lot of grocery deliveries for Walmart today, which is exciting, and a lot of other grocers lined up as well. We're gonna see how far we can take our logistics capabilities from that standpoint, But really, we want to want to have as many options as possible for our customers. >> Anything. Thanks so much for joining us. Congressional Congratulations on the progress with your death for Cory Quinn. I'm stupid and we'll be back here with more coverage from eight of US summit in New York City. 2019. Thanks is always watching. Cute
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Global Summit 2019 brought to you by Amazon Web service is And we're here at the end of a summit in New York And I love little anecdote that you said the founders actually did the first few 100 deliveries, I mean, when we started in 2013 you know, we started out of Ah dorm on Nobody goes to that place anymore, you know, You know, for merchants, a lot of the things that we talk to them about it is so the logistics of this, you know, are not trivial. We've also used AWS for things like, you know, really time data streaming. provider or at this point is it's such a simpatico relationship is you just alluded to where you or do we try to do it in house, or do we go with 1/3 party vendor? Hard to say no to these days. And I think, you know, we want to make sure that we are building our It's easy to make jokes about it about what you're too lazy to cook something. Yeah, and I think it's been awesome to see just how quickly it's been adopted. And how do you make sure you optimize for people that are doing so little? meaning not just, you know, the state of New York. is that you could be putting out there both for the merchants as well for the customers. the biggest ones we try to do is you know, we never give merchant direct access to obsession leadership principle to some extent, and the reason I bring that up is you mentioned you started on Hiroko That was, you know, s o nd I'm guessing, you know, when you look at some of your peers out there and you know, And what you already have figured there? Yeah, it's a challenge to you See across the board is that there's a lot of things you can do programmatically I think with all the What insight to you seeing you know what's changing in the marketplace? And I think what's really exciting to us over the next couple years is you know, Congressional Congratulations on the progress with your death for
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Joe Berg & Parul Patel, Slalom | AWS Summit New York 2019
(upbeat music) >> Announcer: Live from New York, it's the Cube, covering AWS Global Summit 2019. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Welcome back, we're here in New York City at AWS Summit, one of the regional summits. Over 10,000 people in attendance. I'm Stu Miniman. My cohost is Corey Quinn and happen to welcome Slalom to the program for the first time. So, Slalom, like Amazon themselves, is based in Seattle, yet, also has a presence here in New York City. And representing that, to my right, we have Parul Patel, who is the managing director of middle market for Slalom, based here in New York City. >> That's right. >> World Trade Center, I believe that's where your office is. >> That's right. >> That's excellent. And Joe Berg is the managing director with Slalom based out of Seattle. Thank you so much for joining us. >> Yeah, thank you. >> All right, so, I did walk by the booth this morning. Build as a service is the big takeaway. But for our audience that might not be familiar with Slalom, give us the bumper sticker. >> Yeah, so, the way we like to tell the story is Slalom is a modern consulting company focused on strategy, technology and business transformation. As a part of the technology work that we've been doing for clients for the last couple decades, we started to see a shift in that really with the advent of cloud and companies like AWS. Really changing the technology landscape and what was really possible. You mentioned the build as a service tagline. That's really what the operating model that we built to serve those customers at the scale and at the velocity that they're starting to execute on their most mission critical digital initiatives today. So build as a service is really how we dig in and leverage platforms like AWS and provide value for customers. All right, so, Parul, one of the things we like about these regional summits is it's not just little bit rinse and repeat when you go to the environments-- >> Parul: Right. >> But they do speak to the local market. So when you look at that, some of the customers in the keynotes, you expect to see some financial services-- >> Parul: Right. >> Being here in New York City. A startup like Door Dash, where they were here. Give us your viewpoint, what is special or unique about the greater metropolitan region here in New York City that you see with your customers. >> Sure. So I think as we think about New York as a market, a lot of industries, a lot of companies that are based here. Certainly financial service is one of the big ones. But the buzz in the market is all about cloud. What are we going to do, how are we going to get into the cloud? The question we like to ask our customers is, why. Why do you want to be in the cloud? And what we're seeing, especially in financial services, is a lot of innovation. So as we think about what Joe does from a build as a service perspective, we have a client in financial services who they wanted to figure out, how do we generate more revenue? So we built them, with our build as a service capability, an AWS platform that helped them bring data together and figure out how to monetize that data across different business units and innovate. And so I think it's things like that that we ask that question of why. We can leverage cloud to really do that transformation. >> That's great. We always talk about IT can't be the organization of no. Or, as a friend of mine, Alan Cohen, said, that there's the triangle of no and slow and we need to move up to the top, which is go. >> Right. >> So how does cloud help with that move forward. That love story you talk about, how do I monetize data, how do I move that forward. There's been that promise of that but how do I turn it from a lofty goal into actual reality? >> Yeah, maybe Joe, I'll let you answer that with a little bit of how we bring it to life with our build as a service. >> Honestly, we look at cloud, it's not just an enabler of business today. It's almost fueling business today. And the reality is, the customer consumer demand out there for digital experiences is exponentially growing, right? Organizations are trying to transform themselves into these modern technology companies. Doesn't matter what industry, financial services-- >> Parul: That's right. >> Or otherwise, they're really trying to transform themselves. And cloud is really allowing them to get out of the procurement game, out of the infrastructure game, out of the data center game and really start to lean into, how do I just make use of this in a meaningful way that's going to translate into those revenue streams that Parul talked about. >> It's deceptively complex. Sorry, it's deceptively simple, I suppose, to take a look at what cloud represents, of, okay, now whatever you want instead of buying it, waiting six weeks for it to show up, if you're lucky, and then racking it. Suddenly, it's an API call away. The technology piece is interesting but how does that impact the cultural change, the processes, the governance story about it? The cost control, speaking as a cloud economist, how do you find that this is revolutionizing these companies as they are migrating into this brave new world and transforming? >> Joe: Yeah. >> When I think about cloud, so to me, it isn't a technology play at all across a business. It's about changing your business that starts with changing your mindset. So, being in the cloud, and leveraging cloud, is about how do I do things different? And that means, I'm looking at my fundamental operating model. I'm looking at who my customers are and then changing the mindset of my people. And culturally, we're going to become faster, we're going to iterate a lot more. And having things like cloud, which I can spin up instances at the click of a button, makes it easier for me to do that. But it comes with, I've got to think about my people, right? And I always tell our clients, explain to your people why this is important to them and why it's important to the business because they're going to be able to learn new skills. They're going to be able to do more and become more marketable out there. And so, to me it's a company transformation, not necessarily a technology play at all. >> Yeah, and I'll just maybe piggyback on the back of that. When you take your strategy and you start to think about translating how we're going to do things in a digital business environment and you start to think about the demands that consumer base has on how fast you release features, how quickly you are procuring new experiences for them. It is absolutely about an operating model that can translate strategy and do initiative and budgeting planning into execution very quickly. It's also, then, about when they move into the actual execution. IT organizations were not built to build technology products. They were there to build technology projects. And the confluence of those events of this becoming mission critical and part of their external facing strategy has really required that transformation and cultural shift as well, in terms of how do we build things very fastly and quickly-- >> Parul: That's right. >> Get them out to market in a iterative way that has impact and benefit and value to consumer. And I think that is the holistic complexity that organizations are dealing with, with something that is making technology very simple but the actual then motion of getting that technology to be useful is complex. >> Yeah, and it becomes very challenging to get to a point of people who are used to the old way of doing things. they're seeing the skillset that's required continue to evolve. And it's very challenging for a large-scale company to say, okay, I'm going to go out this week and hire 2,000 new people who are all up to speed on a cloud provider. >> Parul: Yeah. >> That's something that's almost impossible for people to do. So there has to be a bridge. There has to be a story that isn't, well, we're going to replace you with a younger version. >> Right. >> There has to be something that opens a door and a way to get there. And doing that both culturally and on an individual level seems like it's something a lot of companies are struggling with right now. Is that something you're seeing in your customer base? >> Absolutely. I love that question because it gives me an invitation to talk about build as a service. >> That's right. >> And build as a service, we're playing on the as a service language that companies like AWS establish, right? And the idea about build as a service is it's instantly available. You've got idea, you need to go start executing quickly. Maybe competitor A has already built an experience out there that is surpassing you in the marketplace. You don't time to think about, how do I pull all these things together? How do I upskill my resources in terms of skillsets and capabilities to then get to the point where I can execute? I need to do that now. But, I'm also on this journey of transforming my internal culture and my people and my skillsets. So how do I get a jumpstart in that. We have built a model to help our customers instantly tap into that. And these multidisciplinary teams that really holistically are bringing solution to customer, but we're also doing this in what we call a co-creation model. How do we help them learn and adopt those same principles that are going to help them build modern technology, software and products when we're gone and they're becoming self-dependent. And I think that is part of the journey of how you can leverage a company like Slalom. >> And that's why I would add, Joe, as we think about our offering, it is about getting to velocity in the software engineering space in the cloud. But this co-creation concept, I think, is one that we've heard from our clients that not a lot of people do. It's easy for partners to come in and say, here, we'll just do it for you. And our model is, we want to do it with you to the point where, when you have an agile team, we've got a mixed team of Slalom team members and client team members where we're helping the client team members learn along the way because these are all new technologies that are evolving so fast that it's hard to keep up, for anyone. >> It give me hope to hear what you're saying here, 'cause we all have the scars of listing through. It's like, okay I did a big rollout. Oh how'd it go? Well, you know, it was six to 12 months later than we thought and we all did the corporate mandated training. Yet, a month later, we're all lookin' at each other sayin, oh my gosh, how do we deal with what we have? And of course, it is no longer just waterfall and throw things over there. It is constantly changing. Therefore, co-creation is a term we love-- >> Joe: Yeah. >> And help us walk through. How long is an engagement like this? How much is there the ramp up? And then, as a service, so I'm assuming there is maintenance and you're staying engaged as after we are through some of those milestones. >> Sure, sure. Well, I always kind of start with, we moved from, as I said earlier, a project mindset into a product mindset. So each of these we consider its own piece of software. And product really starts way out here on the ideation site. So Parul talks a lot with customers about the strategy of what new revenue streams you need be thinking about. how do you engage with experiences? Once we move into this I know what I want to build. Now I just don't know how I'm going to get there to the finish line, as you were talking about earlier, Stu. That's really where we enter in with this build as a service model. And we start with a short four to six week discovery phase. So we can start to establish the foundation of what we're going to build together with our customers. That's where co-creation starts, right? What are other priorities? What are the features? How do we do agile together, which is usually a term companies use but it's not a term they know how to use, or a motion they know how to exercise well with. And so, how do we establish those things that we're going to create together? And then we scale into what we would call an MVP release cycle. Our whole idea is that we help you get to an MVP. We help you get to more viable product and then you start to become the owners of those future releases. That's that co-creation piece, where we can bring you alongside us, establish culture, actually create business value by actually getting something out the door. And then, you start to own it yourself. Depending on the competency and the abilities of the customers we work with, that can vary in terms of when those transitions happen. But we look at that as typically anywhere from a 10 to 14 week exercise to get that first iteration out. And then we start to iterate faster than that. >> Are most of your customers, are they just dealing with the people that they have in house? Or are they having to bring in new people to help with that transition along the way? I'm assuming it's a bit of a mix. >> I think it is a bit of a mixed bag and I think one of the keys, what I like about our philosophy, is that, we're all about how do we get you working software as quickly as possible. While we can do a four to six week discovery, we have client in a startup in the healthcare space, where we got them through discovery within four weeks. We do two week sprints. After three sprints, we had software up and running. And so, within 10 weeks, we said, here's what you need, and here's some working software. That I think, in a lot of ways, people say, hey, we're agile, we work fast. People typically are not delivering software in 10 weeks. And that to me, is the differentiator for the way we approach our problems, is we want to get to that working software as fast as possible. >> Right, at some point it almost feels like agile stopped meaning agility and started meaning we have a lot of meetings every morning. >> Parul: Yes. >> Joe: That's right. >> And that doesn't work. >> Yeah. >> That's right. That's a great way to say it, yeah. >> All right, a lot of customers here. Tell us what are some of the top things you're hearing from people. What bring them to your booth? What are some of those things that kind of set off the, oh this is a good fit for working with Slalom. >> Sure, well, I get asked all the time, what industries do you guys work in? Where is this most relevant, especially when you're talking about build as a service. And the reality is, it just slices horizontally right through every industry. Because, I don't know of an industry, whether it be healthcare, financial services, retail, manufacturing, I don't know of one that isn't on that journey. They're at different places on that journey, and the adoption curve, but usually we seem them coming. I think there's a stat out there that says 80% of the enterprise customers have adopted cloud. But only about 10% of the work clothes are on cloud, right? >> Parul: That's right. >> So they're coming to us with saying, hey we know we're on this journey of moving to the cloud, but we're stuck in really getting the most value out of the cloud and how can you help us accelerate the value that we believe is there with a platform like AWS? And that's where we're really entering in and finding those critical experiences that are going to create value, not only internally in terms of momentum, but externally in terms of their business. >> Yeah. And I would say that as we think about when companies look at us and why they picked Slalom as an organization to work with, one of the key differentiators is we like to work with people that we enjoy working with. So we truly want to partner with our clients and so companies say, you know what? We want people that we enjoy working with. we want people that are going to challenge us and be innovative. And that's what you're going to get. When you get Slalom, if you're lookin' for someone to be innovative and challenging a little bit, we're probably not the best fit for your company, right? That's just being honest out there. But I think the other piece of it is that we want to accelerate your journey and enable you to do it. So, we're not in the business. While we have long-term capabilities, like as a service, etc, we're not in the business of taking over your business or being in the outsourcing space. And so, our mindset is all about how do we make you better? And help you realize your vision? And I think that's why we work across a lot of different industries and a lot of different types of companies. >> Joe and Perul, really appreciate you helping share how you're helping customers through that journey, through great adoption in the cloud. Thanks for sharin' and all the updates on Slalom. >> Thank for having us! >> Yeah, thanks for havin' us. >> All right. for Corey Quinn, >> Take care. >> I'm Stu Minimann. We'll be back here with lots more coverage from AWS Summit in New York City. Thanks for watchin' the Cube. (upbeat music)
SUMMARY :
Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. And representing that, to my right, we have Parul Patel, And Joe Berg is the managing director with Slalom Build as a service is the big takeaway. Yeah, so, the way we like to tell the story in the keynotes, you expect to see some financial services-- that you see with your customers. and figure out how to monetize that data and we need to move up to the top, how do I move that forward. Yeah, maybe Joe, I'll let you answer that And the reality is, the customer consumer demand out there and really start to lean into, but how does that impact the cultural change, And so, to me it's a company transformation, And the confluence of those events Get them out to market in a iterative way to get to a point of people who are used to the old way So there has to be a bridge. And doing that both culturally and on an individual level to talk about build as a service. that are going to help them build modern technology, software And our model is, we want to do it with you It give me hope to hear what you're saying here, And help us walk through. of the customers we work with, that can vary to help with that transition along the way? And that to me, is the differentiator we have a lot of meetings every morning. That's a great way to say it, yeah. What bring them to your booth? and the adoption curve, but usually we seem them coming. accelerate the value that we believe is there And so, our mindset is all about how do we make you better? Joe and Perul, really appreciate you helping All right. We'll be back here with lots more coverage
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