(upbeat music) >> Hi everybody, we're here in downtown Seattle covering AWS storage day. My name is Dave Vellante with the Cube, and we're really excited. We're going to talk about rethinking data protection in the 2020s. I'm here with Nancy Wong, who is the general manager of AWS backup, and Satish Lakshmanan, the director of storage business development at AWS. Folks, welcome. Good to see you again. So let's talk about the evolution of data protection. You've got three major disruptors going on. There's obviously the data explosion. We talk about that all the time, but there's cloud has changed the way people are thinking about data protection and now you've got cyber. What's AWS's point of view on all this. >> Great question, Dave. You know, in my role as the global head of storage business development and solution architecture for storage, I have the privilege of working with customers all around the globe, in every geography and every segment. And we recently talked to thousands of customers and we did a survey for about 5,000 customers. And many of them told us that they expect to see a ransomware attack once every 11 seconds. So it's top of mind for almost every customer so much so that if you remember earlier this year, the white house issued an executive order, you know, making the nation aware of across public and private sector about cybersecurity and the need for, for, for us to be prepared. Customers as a result, largely think of not only ransomware protection, but also recovery. And they have largely allocated budgets across every geography to make sure that they're well protected. And in the, in the event of an attack, they can recover from it. That's where Nancy's, you know, data protection services and backup services come into play. And maybe she'll add a few comments about how she approaches it from a technology perspective. >> Yeah, sure. Thanks, Satish yeah, as a general manager of AWS backup and our data protection services, it's really my team and my charter to help our customers centralize, automate, and also protect themselves from attacks like ransomware. Right? And so for example, you know, across our many services today we offer AWS backup as a secondary data collection and management across our many AWS regions and also across the aid of many AWS accounts that a single customer must manage, right. And if you recall having multiple copies of your data exist in backups is a core part of any customers ransomware protection strategy. And lastly, I just want to say something that we just launched recently called AWS backup audit manager also helps you operationalize and monitor your backups against any ransomware attack. >> So, the adversary, obviously, as we know, was well-equipped and they're quite sophisticated. And anybody who has inside access can become a ransomware attacker because of things like ransomware as a service. So, what are you specifically doing to address ransomware? >> Yeah. So, in talking to several thousand of our customers, what we have learned is customers are typically vulnerable in one or more of three scenarios, right? The first scenario is when they're not technically ready. What that means is either their software patches are not up to date, or they have too many manual processes that really prevent them from being prepared for defending against an attack. The second is typically around a lack of awareness. These are situations where IT administrators leveraging cloud-based services are recognizing that, or not recognizing per se, that they're easy to instances, Lambda instances have public access and same applies to S3 buckets. And the third is lack of governance and governance based practices. The way we are educating our customers training in enabling them and empowering them, because it's a shared security model, is really through our well-architected framework. That's the way we shared best practices that we have learned across all our customers, across our industries. And we enable it and empower them to not only identify areas of vulnerability, but also be able to recover in the event of an attack. Nancy. >> Yeah, and to add to that right, our team, and now my team and I, for example, watch every ransomware incident and because it really informs the way that we plan our product roadmap and deliver features that help our customers protect, detect, and also recover from ransomware. So there's an ebook out there, suggest you go check it out, of securing your cloud environment against ransomware attacks. And aside from the technical maintenance suggestions that Satish provided, as well as the security awareness suggestions, there's really two things that I usually tell customers who come to me with ransomware questions. Which is one, right, don't rely on the good will of your ransomware attacker to restore your data. Because I mean, just studies show over 90% of ransom payers actually don't successfully recover all of their data because, hey, what if they don't give you the full decryption utility? Or what if your backups are not restorable? Right? So, rather than relying on that good will, make sure that you have a plan in place where you can recover from backups in case you get ransomed. Right? And two, is make sure that in addition to just taking backups, which obviously, you know, as a GM of AWS backup, I would highly recommend you do, right. Is make sure that those backups are actually restorable, right? Do game day testing, make sure that it's configured properly because you'd be surprised at the, just the number and the sheer percentage of customers who when, let's say the attack happens, actually find that they don't have a good set of data to recover their businesses from. >> I believe it. Backup is, one thing as they say, recovery is everything. So you've got the AWS well-architected framework. How does that fit in, along with the AWS data protection services into this whole ransomware discussion? >> Yeah, absolutely. You know, the AWS wall architected framework actually has four design approaches that I usually share with customers that are very relevant to the ransomware conversation. And one is, you know, anticipate where that ransomware attack may come from. Right? And two, make sure that you write down your approaches whereby you can solve for that ransomware attack, right? Three, just like I advocate my teams and customers to do, right. Then look back on what you've written down as your approach and reflect back on what are the best practices or lessons learned that you can gain from that exercise. And make sure as part four, is you consistently plan game days where you can go through these various scenario tests or ransomware game day attacks. And lastly, just as a best practice is ransomware recovery and protection isn't just the role of IT Professionals like us, right. It's really important to also include HR, professional, legal professionals. Frankly, anyone in a business who might come and be compromised by ransomware attack, and make sure that they're involved in your response. And so Satish, I'd love to hear as well, how you communicate to customers and what best practices you offer them. >> Yeah, thanks Nancy. I think in addition to the fantastic points you made, Nancy, Dave, the well architected framework has been built on eight to 10 years worth of customer engagements across all segments and verticals. And essentially it's a set of shared best practices, tools, training, and methodology that we, you know, exchange with customers in order to help them be more prepared to fight ransomware attacks and be able to recover from them. Recently, there've been some enhancements made where we have put industry or use case specific lenses to the well architected framework. For example, for customers looking to build IOT applications, customers who are trying to use server less and Lambda functions, customers who may be within the financial services or healthcare life sciences, where to go, looking to understand best practices from other people who've implemented, you know, some of the technologies that Nancy talked about. In addition, as I talked about earlier, training and enablement is extremely critical to make sure that if companies don't have the skillset, we are basically giving them the skillset to be able to defend. So we do a lot of hands-on labs. Lastly, the well architected framework tool has been integrated into the console, and it gives customers who are essentially managing the workloads, the ability to look at access permissions, ability to look at what risks they have through malware and ransomware detection techniques. Machine learning capability is built into all the services that are native to AWS that allow them to then react to them. If companies don't have the skills, we have a vast network of partners who can help them basically implement the right technologies. And they can always reach out to our technical account manager for additional information as well. >> I love the best practice discussion. For customers, it's a journey. I mean, CSOs tell us their one problem is lack of talent and so they need help. So, last question is what can people expect from AWS? You're the experts. In particular, how you can help them recover from ransomware? >> Yeah, and that conversation is ever evolving, right? As hackers get more sophisticated then clearly we have to get more sophisticated as well. And so one of our mental models that we often share with customers is defense in depth, right? So if you consider all of the layers, including all of the constructs that exist natively on AWS, right? The first layer is through identity access management constructs. So building a trust radius around your workloads, around your applications, whereby you can deny permissions or access permissions to individuals who are not authorized to access your mission critical applications, right. Then beyond that first layer of defense, the second layer should be automated monitoring or observability. For example, if individuals were to penetrate within your security perimeter, and often times I, you know, that could be done through a delayed response where it gives your CSO or your security operations team, the ability to react to such a unauthorized access, for example. And so the third line of defense is if someone were to penetrate both first layer, as well as the second layer, is actually through backups. And this is where it goes back to what I was mentioning earlier is make sure that your backups are ready and able to be restored and have the RTO and SLA guarantees that help your business remain functional even after an attack. >> Excellent. Guys, we got to go. I love that, zero trust layer defenses, got to have the observability in the analytics and then the last resort RTO, and of course, RPO. Guys, thanks so much, really appreciate your insights. >> Good to see you. >> Thank you for watching. Keep it right there for more great content from AWS storage day. (upbeat music)

>>Welcome back to the cubes coverage of AWS storage. They were here in downtown Seattle, crisp downtown Seattle. Winter is coming we're to talk about the snow unintended and also the ever expanding cloud, the cloud it's in a way it's like the universe, it's moving out to the edge and to the data center, which is literally another edge node. If you think about it, Mark Curry is here as the general manager of AWS gateway and Sid Roy is the GM of AWS snow family. Folks. Welcome. Good to see you. Thank you. So mark, talk about how you think about on-prem and hybrid. >>That's an excellent question, Dave. So I represent a group of services called storage gateway, and that's exactly what storage gateway does. Is it bridges your on-prem applications with the cloud? And the way we do that is we deliver it with really four services that we all call it. We call it gateway is the first one being volume gateway. And what volume gateway does is give you a way to connect your block storage on prem with the cloud for file shares for backup is what popular application there. And, uh, for applications that can tolerate some latency and that's a traditional service, then we, uh, came out with something called virtual tape gateway, which I'm personally really excited about because we all know about, you know, the big clunky tapes that have been around for 50 years, that you have to have trucks pick up and go store in a mountain and all that, um, with the virtual tape gateway, what we can do is we all have our gateways install either as a software package on-prem or as an appliance hardware appliance, but we put the tape gateway on prem and the customer is able to back up their tapes to us. >>And we look like a tape drive, virtual tape dry. So what we're doing is we're allowing the customer to basically digitize in the cloud, all of their legacy tapes. And this I think is a huge industry and we've got some great customers there. One would be formula one. Um, they've used virtual tape library. Our gateway to, um, basically could reduce the recovery time from five days down to one. So big impact there. Uh, the next gateway is our file gateway. And what I felt gateway does, again, sits on-prem either the software package or as a hardware appliance and fell gateway exposed as both an SMB share for Microsoft traffic and then an NFS share for your NFS traffic. And basically what we do as we front end S3 with this gateway. And so the gateway caches, so your active workflow gets really great performance, but you can move your inactive data to the cloud in S3, uh, where you've got durable storage. >>It's, you know, it's over multiple regions. You can run all of our analytics on that, on that data as well. Um, a good example, there would be modernize. A company worked on the COVID vaccine. They used storage gateway the file version to move their instrumentation and scientific data into the cloud, where once it's up in S3 week, you know, we've got a really robust set of tools, allow them to do analytics on it. And then finally, but not least our last announcement was something called FSX gateway and FSX is a chemical product. So we offer FSX as a windows file system or file share in the cloud. Um, the, the gateway basically acts as a cache to that. So a customer can put our FSX gateway on prem in lieu of like a server of some sort, and we'll cash all the traffic for that active workflow again, and then push their inactive data back to the FSX file system in the cloud. >>Cool. Lots of ways to get data to the cloud compatibility >>Issues. So, excellent. Thank you for that. Mark said, >>We know about snowball snowcones snowmobile all the snows, where does that fit >>In? Yeah. So let me, let me talk about the AWS edge. First, the broader edge spectrum of AWS spans many things from snow to outpost, to IOT, where there's a lot of data being created at the edge within this edge spectrum. There's the rugged mobile edge, which is where snow plays, right? So snow's purpose is really to capture transform and optionally move the data from rugged edge to AWS, right? And in our portfolio we have different devices. Uh, so let me start with the stone device. We announced last year in 2020, uh, snow cone is a small, uh, tissue box sized device. You know, it, it, it is portable. It's highly mobile, portable, rugged. It can, it can capture data from rugged sensory and end points and industrial equipment. And once we capture the data, you can process the data locally right there. And then if you have to send the data back to AWS, you can ship the device back or use data sync to transfer the data back at VWs. >>Now, if you have higher compute needs, where you have what we call the core edge, where it's not portable, but you need to kind of process there. We have the snowball edge device now that can be single known or multi-node snowball edge devices in groups of clusters for storage at storage edge compute. There, you can process like large scale data capture and transform it right there with, you know, machine learning or other data management and analytics right there for real time and AI based edge local decisions. So I'll give you a couple of examples in each category. So for snowcones, for example, we are partnering with Facebook to deliver, uh, private, LTE based, uh, networks for, uh, remote and rural areas where the connectivity is not here there. Right? So, so, uh, we are serving those communities in partnership with Facebook to deliver private LTE networks. The second example I'll give you is with the snowball edge device, that multiple nodes, we, us air force recently demonstrated, uh, that ABM a system, which is the advanced battle management system, where they can do like a lot of data capture and local simulation with AI and ML on containers, right on the snow cone, uh, on the snowball edge devices. So those are two examples of how we're doing, uh, edge local processing and capture. >>Well, I think, I think you guys got it right. You got a lot of ways to get data on the on-ramps into the cloud, but I I'm particularly struck by your edge. You know, we didn't get into the it strategy, but the idea of processing locally, bringing machine learning, uh, you know, cause the future we think anyway is AI and for instance, where the data lives, right. And yet, like you said, if you want to bring it back and bring it back and we have ways to get it back. Right, exactly. I'll give you guys the last word. >>Well, I, I would just say, you know, our FSX gateways of relatively new announcement, it's got some really cool applications for, um, high-performance Microsoft applications, but also for remote offices that want to share files. >>Great. Well guys, mark said, thanks so much for coming on the cube. Thank you for sharing the insights and the data and really appreciate it. Okay. Thank you for watching. This is the cubes coverage of AWS storage day. Keep it right there.

(upbeat music) >> Narrator: Live! From Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE! Covering Microsoft Ignite. Brought to you by Cohesity. >> Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage of Microsoft Ignite, I'm your host Rebecca Knight, co-hosting alongside of Stu Miniman. We are joined by Frank Artale, the Managing partner at Prime Foray, thank you so much for coming on theCUBE Frank. >> Glad to be here. >> So before the cameras were rolling, we were talking about the energy of this place, you've been to many, many an Ignite, way back before it was even called Ignite. >> Oh yeah! Yes, this is, Ignite is the evolution of something that Microsoft used to call TechEd. So it was like back in, when I was in Microsoft, so even back in the '90s, we had to figure out a way to educate the technical community, and we decided to start this thing, and interestingly enough, the first one ever was here in O\rlando, much smaller venue, I think at The Swan and the Dolphin, but I've been coming to them on and off, you know for the past, 26 years or so. >> So tell us a little bit about what you're doing now at Prime Foray, what is Prime Foray? >> So we're a boutique and advisory consulting company, and we do work with what I call ISVs, so basically someone that makes software, but we engage with folks who are at some point on a journey to cloud, and that means both from a business and technical perspective. Whether they're just getting started, thinking about moving products, that maybe they had it from on premises, onto a cloud platform, or maybe they're well on their way and they're really looking to just like amplify and accelerate that. That's where a team of people that'll have experience from product, business development, sales and marketing, to really get those companies to the place that they want to be, relative to cloud, because as we know, cloud is still the future, and everyone wants to get there. >> All right, so Frank, bring us inside. Without giving away state secrets, dealing with Microsoft today is very different from the company that we grew up with, of Windows and Office. So what's it like working with Microsoft? Give a little bit of you know, where some of the key enablers are. >> Yeah, yeah so in the early days, if you think about it right, Microsoft is always great with evangelizing to an independent software vendor, around building to the platform. So back in the day, so much of the Microsoft actual market cap, was dependent upon the ISVs building to the APIs. And the APIs were the sort of the lock, right, until the ISVs were locked. But there never was a really, let's say a great channel program for someone that was an ISV. The channel programs are largely structured for people that sold stuff. And so what you're really seeing now for the first time, and this is not exclusive to Microsoft, with other cloud partners. But of course since we're at a Microsoft show, we can highlight some of the things that Microsoft is doing here, it really is creating super incentives for ISVs to come to the platform, such that the ISVs feel like they are selling side by side, side by side with Microsoft. There are some great incentives around that, they provide some great access to technology and tools, really great credits to get onto the platform, and so they focus as much on the business, like they always put more on the business now, than on the access to the technology, to the extent that it can work side by side with a company in building their business, well the folks that are the business owners really like that. The tech guys always like bits and bytes wherever they can go. >> So, describe how the partnership works. I mean what is, as you are now holding hands with companies that are going through a digital transformation, and some working closely with Microsoft, some may be just on the fringes of working with Microsoft, describe how the partnership is working. >> Yeah, so well, I would call it, I'd like to say that it's really in someways an evolution of the way Microsoft started working with ISVs, a number of years ago, and so at the core, the way Microsoft thinks about them, thinks about the ISVs is really, you know, an extension of their own product line. Right, so a platform is only as good as the things that, that stand atop it, right? And so, if Azure is a platform, or Business Apps is a platform, or Modern Workplace is a platform, you need applications that sit atop those things. And, one of I think the, one of the key things that Microsoft has done, has really enabled the ISVs to become connected with the Microsoft Sales Organization, without having intermediaries. So when, like in a lot of ways, when you're an ISV and you go work with a larger company that you want to have a partnership with, you have to find somebody that knows somebody that's the Account Manager for some large account. What Microsoft has done is they've automated that, once you've passed through a series of hurdles and certifications, you can actually enter into a program where you're opening leads into Microsoft and you get, and that partner, gets connected with the Microsoft Sales Team on the other side. So whenever I talk to people about things that they're doing, that's what I think the ISVs are most proud of. You'll hear them say things like, well, we are in X amount of accounts together with Microsoft. And, you know we're going, and from a business perspective, why ever enter into a partnership, if you were not going to just, to sell stuff? Again, you can do bits and bytes all day, it's a lot of fun for people like me, but at the end of the day, revenue has to come out the other side. And I think from a partner perspective, they've done a better than good job at that. >> All right. So Frank, when you look back to when you were inside Microsoft, give a little bit about how the roles have been changing as we've gone into this world of cloud and AI. >> Right, how the world has changed? >> And the roles inside of Microsoft, specifically, to, you know, fit the world. >> Right right. So when I was there, you know long ago, obviously it was a much smaller place, and you actually had, you know inside the house, you had product development, and you know, outside the house, you had channel development, and then you had, then you had direct sales, and you also OEM sales which was, which actually is a very very big piece to the puzzle. But, the linkage, right, between sales and channel, wasn't really there back then. And sometimes, like even the role that I had in program management, at times we had to be, we had to be glue for that. I think what, you know, in a sense now with the roles have changed is such a way, that you have, you have people, you know inside the house now that are really responsible for not just ensuring that a partner feels good about what they're doing, but that the partners are actually selling side-by-side with folks in the field. And that would've been, you know, an impossible thing, really impossible thing to do at the time. And so the other thing that's, I think that's really changed, is now that you have, you have an overlay sales organization, called Worldwide Commercial, and also a direct sales organization. So direct sales organization, are people that carry the bag and have quota right on the accounts. But then, you have another organization, that looks after the 500 largest accounts, and there are a lot of specialists in that organization, that by definition work with partners to move both the Microsoft products and the partner's products together in there. And so those are large organizations that plain and simply just didn't exist, and they may have not even made sense at the time, 'cause at the time a lot of what we were doing in the '90s we were still distributed computing, with still really a technical curiosity, and then it became trusted infrastructure. And it's really only in the last few years that cloud computing has moved beyond that, from being a technical curiosity, to trusted infrastructure. And the way it's taken to market, is so much different, because we took finished goods to market, we relied on people to carry boxes of stuff, we relied on people to do inventory. There's no more inventory, I mean it's just there, you turn it on and you go. So I think what you'll see also from again, from where the commerce engines are setup, and the kind of people that are deployed, are really being tooled for that kind of a go to market, which is significantly different. >> So we're really just scratching the surface when it comes to cloud. As you said so many of these companies are only at the beginning of their journeys. What do you think the future holds, in terms of trends in the marketplace and what companies are going to continue to want. And are there any blind spots, that you, as someone who's being at this industry for 36 years, sort of know are there? >> Right, so like today was an interesting one, to see ARC announced. And you know, it shows the natural evolution of the way that we think about a platform. So, if we go back to even like the late 80s right, we had to build servers, right? So you got a network operating system, and there was a set of network adapters, and a set of hardware it worked on, and you had to pay a systems integrator, to go put it all together, and then you kind of hope it worked. Well then we got this stuff call plug-and-play, in the early 90s, and it flattened the playing field, and you can take an operating system like Windows NT the one that I worked on, and as long as it'd adhere to a plug-and-play standard, it generally worked on that platform. But the operating system then grew, to become a collection of services. It was a file server, it was an identity server, eventually, things like transaction processing, networking was always in there. Now if you look at what something like ARC, or any of the services that are available on other clouds, they're really services on which applications are built. So now it's just natural to see that these services like from the cloud vendors, are being taken on to other cloud infrastructures. So today, we are here at Microsoft, you see ARC which is a set of Azure services, which are being made available and useful on other platforms like on-premises, as an example. To me that's no surprise, for Microsoft, they kind of led the way with that, with their IOT technology. How you see Azure services moving onto there. So now, from an opportunity perspective, as someone who's building applications, you can say OK, I can now go look at services that are I know will be available on all clouds. So I have a, let's just say I can, I can snap to that, and now I can go to my customer and also talk about a flexible, you know flexible opportunity about where and why you might want to deploy. So more opportunities around that though, what gets complex, management gets complex, security gets complex, we're sounding like the '90s again right, where whole industries grew up around things like performance and security, you know, and systems management, around that. And so, I think, you know from a, just strictly from an opportunity perspective, you know there'll be companies here that see that, and go take advantage of it to get out in front, and there'll be ones that are already incumbents, and hang on for dear life, saying things have to be different on each cloud, but I think, as you see companies that embrace the notion of sets of services that'll be running across clouds, those are where really the opportunities will be. Just like we saw in the '90s, folks that said hey, I'll run my application on Windows NT, on any piece of hardware, right? They didn't tie themselves to I'll just say like, you know Compaq, or Tandem, folks that don't exist anymore. (Rebecca laughs) Now they've got the folks we have here today. >> All right, so Frank you know you can't get through an interview with theCUBE without getting a question from John Furrier. >> Frank: Okay, is he on? >> So John's been watching, and he wants to know, how's the restaurant scenes doing in Seattle? >> Okay so, the Seattle restaurant scene's second to none. Obviously you need cuisine. Two restaurants that I'm personally involved with, one is downtown Seattle, and a one in, one in Bellevue Washington. Both completely different cuisines, one heavy on steak, one heavy on plants, and we like to say, we're up and to the right on both of those John, so thanks for asking. >> Great, excellent. Frank Artale, always a pleasure having you on. Thanks so much. >> Great, thank you. >> I'm Rebecca Knight for Stu Miniman, stay tuned for more of theCUBE's live coverage of Microsoft Ignite. (upbeat music)

>> from Seattle WASHINGTON. It's the Q covering AWS Imagine nonprofit brought to you by Amazon Web service is >> Hey, welcome back and ready Geoffrey here with the Cube. We're in downtown Seattle, actually, right on the water from the AWS. Imagine nonprofit event. We're here a couple weeks back for the education version of this event. First time to come into the non profit of it, and >> we're really excited to have our next guest. I knew a little bit about this organization before. Now we know a lot more. As he came off his keynote, he's brought Excuse me, Byron Hill, global head of >> technology for the Movember Foundation. By a great job on the keynote >> in the bay here to talk to you. >> And I think you came further than anybody did. Any other hands come up? I couldn't see the audience. 1000 miles, one >> I actually asked with from. So my whole stick around, you know, being from Australia 8140 miles to Seattle lost its appeal. If I'd said half Are you from 10,000 miles? >> Yes. Yes. We're glad we're glad you made it so that for the people that aren't >> familiar with them. Forgive him. Kind of a quick overview, Absolutely so in November >> is one of the world's largest men's health charities. We focus on three areas of men's health. Prostate cancer, mental health and testicular cancer. And every year we have annual fundraising campaign where we encourage men and women to fund. Rise for our cause is >> so Men's health is a really tricky situation. Let's met with GAL. She's like, Yeah, I'm going to do this. Start up. I'm gonna help. I'm gonna help all my male friends get to their doctor. Please. I was like, That's not the problem. The problem is, I never want to go in the first place. I don't want to talk about it. They want to acknowledge it. You know, they don't want to get their colonoscopy. They've heard horrible things about the prostate exam. So this is a really challenging thing to tackle. So how did you guys decide to go after it? How are you doing it a little bit differently so that you can have some success and he's not easy to operate areas. >> We realize that men's health was in a state of crisis. Men live on average sixties. Lesson. Women. And as you say, it's because way sit on the couch. We don't let things. We don't take action as opposed to women who always talk to themselves and should get out there and get something checked. So focusing on areas such as prostate cancer, where we know the family, history and ethnicity really important factors around these disease types and really targeting those populations and making sure we can have a big impact. We also spend a lot of time looking at survivorship. But how we can help people through that journey and understand what that journey looks like and help them actually have a really positive outcome At the end of it. My oh suicide is a huge area. Focus. One man every minute globally will die by suicide. And while that's not a uniquely mild disease, three out of four suicides a mile to really try to develop unique messaging, to talk to men in a very direct way is being one way we've I tried to get a cut through to really make a difference, right? >> So the mustache is in November in November, How did that come together? So you know, you've got these very serious diseases that we're trying to address a really big global problem. And you're coming at it with this kind of fun, kind of tongue in cheek thing. Movember. So for the folks that aren't familiar, what is movin, roll about? How did it come about? And really, what's the impact that actually, he has a huge impact with you outlined in the keynote? >> Absolutely So remember, started with two guys in a pub talking about fashion trends. They got onto the fact that the mustache had been the mainstay of seventies and eighties fashion and all but disappeared in the nineties. They just started to bring the mustache back as a gag. They got 30 mites, my yoga, robust ashes. They raise $0. They realized that papal complete strangers in the street. We're coming up to them asking about the mustache. What's that thing when you leave? And they realize the power of the mustache was something much more created conversations and allowed people to connect with one another to create an environment. We were able to talk about men's health. That's where we started. We never intended to become a men's health charity, but fast forward to 2009 and we've had over 6,000,000 people participating in a fundraising campaigns in the top 45 engineers globally and have funded over 1200 men's health programs. And again, all starting with two guys and pub. Having having a conversation about fashion trends >> you have, The numbers are amazing. I >> think you said S O start in 2004 and you guys were raising over $100,000,000 a year. How does it tie back to the mustache? Is just a conversation starter? No, by the way, this is why I'm doing it and please go go to the Web site. One of the mechanics. >> It's all about fun. Originally, the idea of the moustache was just fun. Just grow a mustache. Race and funds. That's it. We've really matured and progress in the last few years around really focusing in on the importance of men's health. So it started as a fun thing back in the day, and now we still try to maintain the fund. We also have a serious message to get through. So, quite literally, will ask people to grow a mustache last. Him too host and van will ask them to move. We've got a whole range of different fundraising ideas, and the idea is to absolutely get people raising funds in November. Getting as many people as we can to sign up and to grow moustache is and two doughnuts. So that's quite literally how we do it. And then we invest those funds back into women's health records. A >> great Well, I can assure you, after today we will be. The Q team will all be doing their best to get them. The mustache is there in a couple of months, but >> you had a >> lot of other really interesting messages within your within. You're talking about a culture of innovation, Mom. And everyone is always struggling. How do I and still a culture of innovation, especially in a large organization? You had a great quote. You're not the 1st 1 ever say it, but you said it with such passion, and clearly it's fall in love with the problem, not the solution to many people especially intact. Yeah, they want to talk about the attack. They don't want to talk about the problem. How do you know X ticket that? How do you instill that in your team. And how's that be really been a great driver for your success in development as a zone organization? >> Absolutely. So you're quite right. Paper will jump to the solution. And it's not just technical. People, like most people will come to you with a solution because I think they're actually helping. They think that they know exactly what the problem is to really just trying to position that to say, Well, let's get really clear and say Fall in love with problem Get really clear around the outcomes, withdrawn and deliver. Think about the experience is withdrawn. Give people here and then think about the technology. I talked about bringing the community into the conversation. Imagine the power you can have by bringing the community at the table when you're designing a new product. We try to do that all the time having a man in the room that suffered from prostate cancer. The insights they give you. We're very quickly highlight that you may have absolutely no idea of what the problem is. I talked a lot about assumptions. We form assumptions in her mind that crystallized. We have this bias and you have to challenge yourself to constantly go back to the coalface and look at those assumptions. Are they right? Are we solving completely the wrong problem Here you can deliver a great solution that completely misses a problem. So how do we do that? We encourage people to think about the problem. Immersed herself in the research. I talked about an example in testicular cancer. We spent three months on understanding the problem. Three months we spent four weeks on building a solution, and that was for a feeling that we didn't quite have the confidence that we knew what the problem. Waas. We wanted to know what itwas who wanted to delve into that research and really engage with people. Engage the community to get a deep seated understanding of what we were trying to solve. Right? >> Another PC talked about Is the community the importance of the community and really said the community is the why really powerful statement And I don't know people. Sometimes I think, think of community 10 gentle They're not really is the purpose for what? You know why you get up in the morning every day and why you do what you do. You have that come about. And how do you make sure that that stays, You know, clearly in focus for everyone. >> It's a really important point, and it's why we exist. And for us, it's a mobile rose and most sisters and the men that we serve. So how do we do it? We have to constantly anchor ourselves back to the point that there are means and means of men out there suffering from this desert diseases that we support. We want to create a better world for them so we can a line around the Y. If everyone in the organization understands why we're doing the work, it helps us deliver some amazing outcomes and again, the context of having people in the room, the community being part of the conversation that you're having gives that really sense of context. And it hasn't been easy. It's taken time to get there and you can't involve. I give an example of 20,000 people responded to a survey. You know, it doesn't have to be huge amounts of data. The voice of one or two people could be enough to provide unique insights. They give you a real sense of purpose and really give you a sense of what you're trying to change >> right? The third piece, he talked about the third leg of the stool, if you will. His culture. Onda geun driving, innovation of culture and your example you gave him the key note was phenomenal, which is when your team, you know, found a problem and asked you for approval on the $500 fixes. And you said, you know, empower your people to find the problem to solve the problems out Me and I think it's such a great message. And you spoken depth about learning about a screw up a failure and really identifying that as a terrific learning opportunity. You know, where did you learn about that kind of cultural approach? How do you keep that up? Because that is really the key to scale. And I think so many people are afraid to trust and afraid to have kind of blameless. Blameless postmortems is another phrase that we've heard so important to enabling your people to actually go out and accept. It's not easy, >> and how do we learn, Like all good things we did on the fly like if you're facing a situation where you've got a major piece of work that's kind of screwed up, and it doesn't do what you think it's gonna do. We had two choices. We could try to fix it, and I just knew we weren't gonna get there. It's a really using it as an opportunity toe positively reinforce what we should be doing that was learning. We had a really narrow opportunity to learn and learn in an in depth way. And how do we develop that culture we had to spend that time? It was really consciously thinking about when you got a team who are not feeling a lot of love there really worried. They actually concerned for their jobs, refocusing their their effort, giving them conference, telling them I've got your back and ultimately it helped us create this coach where people can proactively go out there and solve problems and my example of the business case or a showcase every single time we will go for the showcase, getting people to talk about how they're solving these problems, what is the problem and actually putting a proof of concept in or showing us that an example of what it looks like that's taken a long time to develop that culture, however, it's been absolutely worth it. >> Yeah, that's great. And you gave you gave the audience three challenges. At the end of the day, I was pretty interesting that weren't in there because they kind of encapsulated there kind of your key three themes that was, you know, really understand the problem you're trying to solve. I talked to people in the community. I like that. Don't presume you know what's going on. Talk to people. And then the last thing is encouraged. Three people to start working on the problem. Don't start working on it yourself. But again, you know you're going to have such a good grasp on engaging the team to the benefit of the whole great great messages >> over the year. Or didn't appreciate the homework I gave them to go. Go back to their desks on Monday morning and try these things. But I firmly believe that you know those three challenges and they're only small like this is not about trying to solve world hunger. This is just starting with something small in your business that you can look at. You can get two of your people 23 other people to focus on that validated the problem and look for ways around it. So it doesn't have to be a huge a group of people just getting a stock. And I've already talked to a number papal off to the canine who who really said that really resonated just starting that conversation. Small in that that I did a snowball and eventually growing as part of the organization. Right culture is something which takes a huge amount of time to get right, and I go in starting small one and letting that grow and permeate and do as much as you can do to reinforce that culture within your organization. Really living and breathing that cultures is important. But >> even those starting small your guys goals were huge. I mean, your goals are to cut to cut the prostate and the testicular percent, 50% and drop the suicides by 3/4. So, you know, it's a really interesting approach. Start small, you know, focus on the small, but but you clearly have a really big goal is my >> goal, and we know we can't achieve those goals by ourselves so way collaborate as much as we can with others who have similar missions and trying to band together. And we realized very early on that bringing together the best and brightest minds in the world to solve these problems was absolutely essential. We couldn't do it myself. So forming those network says global networks of experts researching constantly evaluating that research, making sure we're having to cut through and with nests in the process of scale in those programs that have shown great outcomes to reach the lives of means of men. So it's again starting small, proving these ideas out there looking to scour those ideas to reach frankly means in England. >> All right, Byron, we're almost out of time. We've got about 10 weeks until the month. Formally. No, it's November for >> me knowing this. So how do >> people get involved? What should people do? Give us give us some concrete tips for the audio? >> Absolutely, absolutely. So, first of all, you want to go to moveon dot com and you want to sign up, Sign up to be a mobile. Almost Easter, you can either grow a mustache. You can host in the van. You can move for Movember start donating, and it's like any people to die tonight. So grow a mustache and asking me to give you money. That's the 1st 1 to do it. Second tip is what sort of moustache gonna grow. There's so many styles. There's the >> little style guide on the course, But not everyone >> can go. We could, Tash, but, uh, we do have wards for the line, Mark. So some of those >> little lame of the Lane >> Mart I can always always recommend some augmentation of the mustache if you got a few gray hairs and maybe bush it out. A little bit of color lamentation. Something like that. Um, but above all else, it doesn't live. Use one message. It's about getting yourself checked. When things don't feel normal, go to the doctor, have that positive impact on your life. And, of course, Movember dot com is full of really useful tips and great content to help you on that journey. >> All right. Well, Byron, thanks to you very much. And again. Congrats on the keynote. Thank you. Seem really enjoyed the time. Excellent. Thank you. Alright, He's tired. I'm Jeff. You're watching The key were eight of us imagined nonprofit in Seattle, Washington. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time

>> from Seattle WASHINGTON. It's the Q covering AWS. Imagine by Amazon Web service is >> Hey, welcome back. You're ready. Geoffrey here with the Cube. We're in downtown Seattle at the AWS. Imagine Education event. It's a second year of the event. It's about 800. People were here last year, too, I think was 400 people. So it's growing quickly, like everything at a W s. It's all about education. That's that's public school, private school, university K through 12 community college, everything you can imagine. It's a really comprehensive kind of area that Amazon's focusing on. We're excited. Have our next guest really from the school district emanating from school district? He's Travis Pocky, the senior director Information Service is for Portland Public School. I'm a proud graduate of the Portland public school system. So, Travis, great to see you. Great to see you. Absolutely. So for stop impressions of the show, you said you weren't able to make it this year. I got to sit in the key notes this morning with Theresa and Andrew. A couple sessions just kind of your impressions of being at an event like this, >> you know, it's really fantastic tohave an event that ties together AWS and education. And in that education space. It's a great resource for people that are using AWS within the education community. So this has been fantastic. >> Yeah, it's good because the education is not necessarily touted as the most progressive in his street. Exactly. So the fact that they made this commitment is pretty significant. Exactly. So you had a recent a recent significant event within your kind of I d journey cloud during one of you could tell us what you guys just recently completed. >> Sure. So we recently migrated our peoples off application from our on Prem Data Center to the cloud. And, you know, one of the one of the real challenges we had was there was no extra money to do this work. So we had kind of come across the idea that the hardware was end of life. It was gonna be about a $500,000 replacement cost. In addition to that, we had several on staff positions that really weren't available. It had become such a niche skill set that we really had a lot of trouble trying to get those positions filled. So, in addition to that my boss came around the corner and said, By the way, we have a 10% budget cut. So how do we resolve all of that plus address? This really big problem with the system, not even >> time, was ticking, right? Your hardware time was >> ticking. It it was really bad. I mean, we were at a point where we were getting young 9 12th page refresh times. And, you know, the user community had kind of gotten to the point where our numbers for satisfaction looked really good because we didn't get complaints because the user community had gotten so disillusioned by making those complaints and not getting any results that they just gave up on complaining. So way were out of time, >> year out of time. So, you know, typically, a cloud migration of an old application is not necessarily the easiest place to get started on your cloud journey. Did you already have some experience with powder? Was this really kind of your first foray into this area? >> You know, I had worked at a start up a few years before, and we did our entire infrastructure on eight of us. So that was my my introduction to AWS and HBO Service's. And there was a lot of there's a lot of people that were looking away from that as a solution. It didn't seem like the viable thing to do. And yes, we were advised not to try the e r P first. But that was our use case. And if >> we were gonna do it, we were gonna do it big. So we did. He brought in some consultants. I would assume that helped out. Are you guys doing all in house? >> Actually, what we did was we looked for a managed service provider. So are our use case in that we had many positions that we couldn't get filled was that we needed the virtual infrastructure. But we also needed the people to do some of those tasks for us. So that was That was our partnership, was we work with a manage solution provider called High Street and High Street. Really helped us with that process. >> It So how long did it take? When did you get complete? >> Um, we went from idea to completion in four months. >> Idea to completion in four months. Yes. Wow. >> And that was That was unprecedented. No, nobody expected it to work. Certainly nobody expected it to work that fast. And when you do these migrations Ew, you I understand that it is going to be a high stress situation. And the one of the major things that AWS did for us was it gave us that virtual infrastructure so that we could run in tandem. We could actually continue to run completely as we were in production and run the new systems and run all the tests. So we were able to get cut over in no time with almost no stress. I think we had one problem when we went live. >> So then what did your boss say when he came around the corner? Good job, Travis. Okay, great. So you know, there's there's a whole bunch of components to cloud right that have a lot of benefits security. Like we said, it's actually a lot more secure than a lot of time on your own stuff. There's cost savings, and there's infrastructure leverage that you can get, but more importantly, and we've heard a lot of the stories here is it opens up on opportunity for innovation, opens up an opportunity to try any things to move fast. So I wonder if, if you know that kind of unintended consequence of this process or do you think you've kind of sold the house people that you know? Look, it worked. We did it fast. Assume it's close to budget or close two timing. And now, you know, sit here for two days and listen to all the crazy, cool, innovative things that people are doing with X, right, etcetera. So where do you go? Where do you go next? >> You know, one of the one of the unintended consequences of it was was granting us a D R process. So we had a We had a very basic deal, our system in place and by moving to the cloud, Not only do we make it insulated from any events that might happen in our primary building, which is also our primary data center, but it gave us that ability due to fail over and persist through through a significant event. One of the other things that's done those it's given our develop access to tools that they just didn't have access to before. So, one of the places where were expended experimenting pretty heavily. Yoon is is Lambda. So server lis functions trying to get to the point where we can enhance our existing software by making calls out to our Amazon vpc and data that exists out there without having to make hard core modifications to the internal systems right way were actually able to do a demo of that within 30 minutes. So that's that normal process would take about two weeks to >> write. So it was there, Is there new stuff on the horizon is just our use, like a kid in a candy store, like now, you know, look at the power flexibility that we have it. We just didn't have the kind of strapped payroll data center before. >> Absolutely, Right now we're trying. I think the biggest struggle is trying to figure out what we tackle next. There's a lot of things out there, you know. We have ah, data interchange platform. It would be great if we could replace that with AWS functions and lame duck calls. >> Um, it >> I think that's probably going to be our next biggest tackle. Is is that after that, we'd really like to start rewriting some of our in house written APS completely in AWS service is and I think that's gonna be a huge win for the district. >> Okay. And then do you guys purchase a lot of these other softer applications? Is a lot of companies here That blackboard is just the one that always comes into my head not to pick on them specifically, but you guys have a ton of those types of applications and installed as well. >> Way definitely tend to leverage bought first. Okay, But some of them likes women have been fantastic partners for us. And that's one of the ones that we've really leaned on because of how intricate some of our policies are school meant as the capability to implement that for us, >> right? Right. Well, sounds pretty exciting, but that's but the question is, when does the grand opening of the of Grant? That's what I wanted. I need the date. So afterwards you could wait a little. They just finished a beautiful remote. I don't even know how many millions and millions of dollars are spent, but a lot. Very yes, a lot. All right. Well, Travis, congratulations. Four months. The AARP move. I don't know. Throw that as a challenge. Maybe somebody else could beat it. That's pretty good. Absolutely. Alright. Thanks for stopping by. Thank you. Alright, He's Travis. I'm Jeff. You're watching the Cube. Where? Aws. Imagine education in downtown Seattle. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

>> from Seattle WASHINGTON. It's the Q covering AWS Imagine brought to you by Amazon Web service is >> Hey, welcome back already, Jeffrey. Here with the cue, we're in downtown Seattle at the AWS. Imagine, Edie, you event. It's a small conference. It's a second year, but it'll crow like a weed like everything else does the of us. And it's all about Amazon and a degree. As for education, and that's everything from K through 12 community college, higher education, retraining vets coming out of the service. It's a really big area. And we're really excited to have fresh off his keynote presentations where he changed his title on me from what it was >> this morning tow. It was the senator duties >> David Raymond, the director of what was the Virginia Cyber Range and now is the U. S. Cyber range. Virginia Tech. David, Great to see you. >> Yeah, Thank you. Thanks. So the Virginia cyber age actually will continue to exist in its current form. Okay, Well, it'll still serve faculty and students in the in the Commonwealth of Virginia, funded by the state of Virginia. Now the U. S. Cyber Angel fund will provide service to folks outside over, >> so we jumped ahead. So? So it's back up. A step ladder is the Virginia, >> So the Virginia Cyber Range provides courseware and infrastructure so students could do hands on cyber security, educational activities in Virginia, high schools and colleges so funded by the state of Virginia and, um provides this service at no charge to the schools >> and even in high school, >> even in high school. Yes, so now that there are now cybersecurity courses in the Virginia Department of Education course catalogue as of two years ago, and I mean they've grown like wildfire, >> I'm just so a ton of talk here about skills gap. And there's tremendous skills gap. Even the machine's gonna take everybody's job. There's a whole lot of jobs are filled, but what's interesting? I mean, it's the high school angle is really weird. I mean, how do you Most high school kids haven't even kind of clued in tow, privacy and security, opting in and opting out. It's gotta be a really interesting conversation when now you bring security into that a potential career into that and directly reflects on all those things that you do on your phone. >> Well, I would argue that that's exactly the problem. Students are not exposed to cyber security, you know. They don't want the curia potentials are they really don't understand what it is we talked about. We talked about teenagers being digital natives. Really? They know how to use smartphones. They know how to use computers, but they don't understand how they work. And they don't understand the security aspects that go along with using all this technology. And I would argue that by the time a student gets into college they have a plan, right? So I have a student in college. He's he's gonna be a doctor. He knows what a doctor is. He heard of that his whole life. And in high school, he was able to get certified as a nursing assistant. We need cyber security in that same realm, right? If we start students in high school and we and we expose them to cybersecurity courses, they're all elective courses. Some of the students will latch onto it, and I'll say, Hey, this is what I want to be when I grew up. And in Virginia, we have we have this dearth of cyber security expertise and this is true across the country. In Virginia, right now, we have over 30,000 cyber security jobs that are unfilled. That's about 1/3 of the cyber security jobs in this state. And I mean, that's a serious problem, not only in Virginia but nationwide. And one of the ways to fix that is to get high school students exposed to cybersecurity classes, give them some real hands on opportunities. So they're really doing it, not just learning the words and passing the test, and I mean really again in Virginia, this is this is grown like wildfire and really thinks revolutionized cybersecurity education in the state. >> And what are some of the topics that say, a high school level, where you know you're kind of getting versed on the vocabulary and the terminology vs when they go into into college and start to take those types, of course, is >> yeah, so in Virginia, there's actually cybersecurity courses across the C T E career pathways. And so SETI is the career and technical education curricula. And so there are courses like cyber security and health care, where students learn about personal health data and how to secure that specific specific kinds of data, they learn about the regulations behind that data. There's healthcare in manufacturing, where students learn about industrial control systems and you know how those things need to be secured and how they're different from a laptop or a phone. And the way those air secured and what feeds into all of those courses is an introductory course. Cyber security fundamentals, where students learn some of the very basics they learn the terminology. They learn things like the C I. A. Triad right, confidentiality, integrity and availability of the three basic components of security that you try to maintain for any system. So they start out learning the basics. But still they're doing that hands on. So they're so they're in a network environment where they see that you know that later on in the course during Capstone exercises, they might see someone trying to attack a computer that they're that they're tasked to defend and a defender of what does that look like? What are the things that I'm going to do? That computer? You know, I might install anti virus. I might have a firewall on the computer. And how do I set that up and etcetera etcetera. So high school start with the basics. As as students progressed through their high school years, there are opportunities to take further more advanced classes in the high schools. And then when they get to college, some of those students are gonna have latched onto cyber security as a potential career field. Now, now we've got him right way, get him into the right into the right majors and into the right courses. And our hope is that that's gonna sort of kick start this pipeline of students in Virginia colleges, >> right? And then I wonder if you could >> talk a little bit about the support at the state level. And it's pretty interesting that you had him from the state level we heard earlier today about supported the state level. And it was Louisiana for for another big initiative. So you know that the fact that the governor and the Legislature are basically branding this at the state level, not the individual school district level, is a pretty strong statement of the prioritization that they're putting on this >> that has been critical to our success. If we didn't have state level support, significant state level support, there's no way we could be where we are. So the previous governor of Virginia, Terry McAuliffe, he latched on to cyber security education as one of his signature initiatives. In fact, he was the president of the State Governors Association, and in that role he cybersecurity was one of his condition. So so he felt strongly about educating K 12 education college students feeding that cybersecurity pipeline Onda Cyberangels one of one of a handful of different initiatives. So they were veterans scholarships, and there were some community college scholarships and other other initiatives. Some of those are still ongoing so far are not. But but Cyber Range has been very successful. Funded by the state provides a service at no cost to high schools and colleges on Dad's Been >> critically, I can't help. We're at our say earlier this year, and I'm just thinking of all the CEOs that I was sitting with over the course of a couple of days that are probably looking for your phone number right now. Make introduction. But I'm curious. Are are the company's security companies. I mean, Arcee is a huge show. Amazon just had their first ever security conference means a lot of money being invested in this space. Are they behind it? Have you have you looked for in a kind of private company participation to help? Because they desperately need these employees? >> Definitely. So we've just started down that road, Really? I mean, our state funding has kept us strong to this point in our state funding is gonna continue into the foreseeable future. But you're right. There are definitely opportunities to work with industry. Certainly a DBS has been a very strong partner of our since the very beginning. They really I mean, without without the help of some, some of their cloud architects and other technical folks way could not have built what we built in the eight of us. Cloud. We've also been talking to Palo Alto about using some of their virtual appliances in our network environments. So yeah, so we're definitely going down the road of industry partners and that will continue to grow, I'm sure >> So then fast forward today to the keynote and your your announcement that now you taking it beyond just Virginia. So now it's the U. S. Cyber range. Have that come apart? Come about. What does that mean? >> Yes, So we've been We've been sharing the story of the Virginia cyber range for the last couple of years, and I goto national conferences and talk about it. And, um, just to just sort of inform other states, other other school systems what Virginia's doing. How could you? How could you potentially match what we're doing and what The question that I keep getting is I don't want to reinvent the wheel. How can I buy what you have? And that's been sort of a constant drumbeat over the last couple of years. So we decided fairly early on that we might want to try to expand beyond Virginia, and it just sort of the conditions were right about six months ago. So we set a mark on the wall, he said. In Summer of 2019 we're gonna make this available to folks outside of Virginia. And so, so again, the Virginia Cyberangels still exist. Funded by the Commonwealth of Virginia, the U. S cyber range is still part of Virginia Tech. So within Virginia Tech, but we will have to we will have to essentially recoup our costs so we'll have to spend money on cloud infrastructure and We'll have to spend salary money on folks who support this effort. And so we'll recoup costs from folks that are outside of Virginia using our service. But, um, we think the costs are gonna be very competitive compared to similar efforts. And we're looking forward to some successes here. >> And do you think you're you're kind of breakthrough will be at the high school level, the You know, that underground level, you know, where do you kind of see the opportunities? You've got the whole thing covered with state support in Virginia. How does that get started in California? How's that get started here? Yeah, that's a Washington state. >> That's a great question. So really, when we started this, I thought we were building a thing for higher ed. That's my experience. I've been teaching cyber security and higher ed for several years, and I knew I knew what I would want if I was using it, and I do use it. So I teach classes at Virginia Tech Graduate program. So I I used the Virginia side in my class, and, um, what has happened is that the high schools have latched onto this as I mentioned, and Most of our users are high schools. In Virginia, we have 180. Virginia High School is using the Virgin Cyber. That's almost >> 188 1 >> 180. That's almost half the high schools in the state using the Virginia cyber age. So we think. And if you think about, you know, higher. Ed has been teaching cybersecurity classes that the faculty members who have been teaching them a lot of them have set up their own network infrastructure. They have it set up the way they want it, and it ties into their existing courseware, and you know they're going to use that, At least for now. What we provide is is something that makes it so that a high school or a community college doesn't have to figure out how to fund or figure out how to actually put this network architecture together. They just come to us. They have the flexibility of the flexibility to use, just are very basic plug and play network environments, or they have flexibility to, um, make modifications depending on how sophisticated they themselves are with with, you know, manipulating systems and many playing the network so so Our expectation is that the biggest growth is going to be in the high school market, >> right? That's great, because when you say cyber range God, finally, Donna me use it like a target range. It's like a place to go practice >> where the name comes from, right? >> Absolutely. If I finally like okay, I get it. So because it's not only the curriculum and the course where and everything else but it's actually an environment, it depends on the stage things and do things exactly >> So students could d'oh offensive, offensive and defensive cybersecurity activities. And so early on, when we were teaching students howto hack essentially in colleges, you know, there were people who were concerned about that on the military case we make for that is you can't teach somebody how to defend unless they understand how they're gonna be attacked. The same is true in this case. So all of our all of our course, where has lots of ethics and no other legal and other other discussions embedded throughout. So students understand the implications of what their actions would be if they do it somewhere else. And, um, right, these are all isolated network environments their places where students can get hands on in a place where they can essentially do whatever they want without causing trouble on the school network or on the Internet. And it's very much akin to a rifle range, >> right? Like you said, you can have different scenarios. And I would imagine there's probably gonna be competitions of you think. Fact. You know what's going on in the robotics world for lots of all these things, right? Like white hat, black hat hacker. Well, very, very exciting. David, Congratulations. And it sounds like you're well on your way. Thanks. Great. Alright, >> He's David. I'm Jeff. You're watching The Cube were at Washington State Convention Centre just across the street at a W s. Imagine. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. >> Thanks.

>> from Seattle Washington It's the Q covering AWS Imagine brought to you by Amazon Web service is >> Hey, welcome back there, buddy Geoffrey here with the Cube. We're in downtown Seattle Day Ws Imagine Edie, you event. It's their education event and every education Everything from K through 12. The higher education community College Retraining after service is a really great show. It's a second year. We're happy to be here. We've got somebody has come all the way from Spain to talk about his very special company. It's Ignasi. Nuclear is he is >> the CEO of click dot edu. Yeah, nice. You see? Welcome. >> Thank you are way really pleased to be with you. >> Great. So tell us, kind of what is clicky? Do you What? What is kind of your core value? >> It's ah, platform that makes all the things that the school needs seeing atleast in Spain. So it's a miss system also on elements also the communication with the family that Petra is Ah Wei Tau financial the school and also a lot of things that they are related on >> right? And you've been around for a while. So when did the company started? How was kind of some basic numbers on how many customers do you have? Could you operate in a lot of countries? A lot of schools? >> The as we have schools working with us already in all of Spain, Also in Chile, Colombia, Arneson, UK. On also in a little country in Europe that is called Andorra. So we're really happy because you have more than 1,000,000 off users working with us. >> 1,000,000. Congratulations. And is it mainly do you specialize between, say, K through 12 or higher education? Or we're kind of all over the place? >> Yes, we're focusing K 12 schools. So the one off the important parts are the communication with parents on dhe to follow all the things that the student. That's >> right. So you guys have a very special thing that you're announcing here at the show is really focusing on Alexa for K through 12 which nobody else is doing. That's really something unique that you guys, How did you get in that? What did you see in voice communication and Alexa that you couldn't do in the platform before that? You really saw the opportunity? >> Yes. All the people say is that >> the future or the present Now is the voice on all we will communicate by boys in the future over Internet. You see a lot off young guys doing all the things my boys know, right? Texting, etcetera. So we thought that it could be a nice idea that the communication between parents and also for a students to the school and be on in the other way, could be could be by boys. So we imagine how to do >> it on. We did it. It's really knew. >> When did you start it? When did you start that project? >> This project we began three months ago, >> three months ago. So, >> yeah, it's really, really knew the boy's idea, right? It was in >> a show that I have seen. Ah ah, law. A lot of people were talking about that, but there were, at least in Spain, in the Spanish. Nothing about so with it, we can be the first. So >> we leave. That's >> great. So before we turn the >> cameras on, we're talking about some of the issues that you have in one of the ones is integration to all these systems because, you know, I have kids. I might have multiple kids in a couple different grades. You have kids and a fine looking for access on their homework or their test scores. You know he's got integrate with all those different back ends to keep things private. But you're kind of in a good spot because your system is the one that's on the back end, right? Yeah, so that worked pretty well. And then the other piece, he talked about his two way voice. I don't think a lot of people think in voice communication, yet it's still more of an ask and get a reply asking and get a reply. But you guys are actually pushing notice vacations from the school, out to the families using voice. How's that working out? You know what are some of the use cases? Yeah, >> it's like it's like the parent can ask Toe elixir, for example, What's a home or for tomorrow for one of your son or daughter on DA on The Echo tell you about that. So it's really impressive, because in that moment the system goes to the school system to get that information on our system. Yeah, on Alexa translating voice So it's It's It's funny >> I just think it's funny that I get e mails from all my digital assistants telling me, suggesting things that I should ask them because it's really not native yet as as an interface to work with these machines. But, well, he's mentioned that the young people voices much more natural. So I wonder if there's been some surprises or some things you didn't expect in terms of people comfort level with voice as a way to communicate with me. >> Say, I think it's, ah most natural way also for us that we are not not if but off course. So we communicate better by boys and writing or texting. So, so off course. It's the future because it's another away. So the use off that systems goes up because off that. So I think it's the most the most thing that for for causes more surprising, >> right? And so will you guys supply the Alexa? It's for people's homes. Or is it something they can tap into their existing Alexa Yeah, >> uh, usually, ah, the case for using that is in your home or else on your phone so you can install licks on your phone and you can ask them. I'll see if the UK fun ankle, >> but handle it. But how do I look? How do I hook my existing echo? Yeah, yes, I bought into the school system. >> Yes, because sometimes some universities are They pulled their A coin. I don't know in the university, or but you can use your echo that you are using it for other things. Listen, music me Listen, missing music or whatever >> and you >> can use the >> same. Yeah, you can. You >> only have to, like, download an >> app for >> your phone. There >> is more less is the same us Alexa to >> install, click in the Web or a skill that it's cow. It's called right, and then you >> have it. So what's next? What's on the road? Map on the voice specifically, Where do you see this kind of evolving over the next little while? >> Yes, our our next goal in the parties that they can use the teachers in the school. The boy systems also so for doing what they do every day in ah Maur writing or whatever, we can do it by voice. For example, interview with the parents, a transcript or, for example, to say that somebody hasn't come to the school or toe tell to the Transportacion that something is company. These kind of things is what we are. Imagine it's in our next things that we will do it with voice. >> It'll be Lexa in the classroom, hoping, thinking, Yeah, right. What about privacy? I would imagine knows funny. In the early days of Cloud, security was a was was not good of the show stopper. People were concerned about 10 years later. Now security is a strength of cloud, right? It's probably more secure than most people's data centers or disgruntled employees. I would imagine privacy and security. This is probably pretty top of mind in the school district as well as a lot of personal information. Are they comfortable? Do they kind of get the security of cloud and cloud infrastructure, or is that still sticking point? >> You know that in Europe there are really strict low of our protection off that right, so we are really concerned about that. So we are talking with the school's what kindof systems. They will be comfortable because you want to use it, so we'll have to find >> the clue to do that. But It's really >> important, I think, all over the world, but in the stage or in Europe who are really concerned about that. So we'll see how to find it. But we can create a private skill, right? Yes, because there are birds shown off, Alexa, that is for business. So you can create your provide things on. You don't have to be for that. Somebody's listening. You >> right? All right. So the last last question here at the conference and you come last year? >> No. So what do >> you know? Just your impressions of the conference Has it nice to be with a bunch of like minded, you know, kind of forward thinking educators because because education doesn't always get the best reputation being kind of forward looking. But here you're surrounded. So I just wonder you could share some of your thoughts of the of the event so far. Yeah, >> I think this guy no five ins give you more motivation on you. Increase your you're way t to see that there are a lot of people that is pushing to innovate and do the things different. So really, really interesting to goto some machine learning. Ah, suppose is shown about California. What? They are doing that right? So I'm really interested. >> Good. Get all right. Look Nazi. Thanks for taking a few minutes. And, uh, congratulations on that project. That's really crazy. Thank >> you for your interest in. >> All right, >> Jeff, you're watching the Cube. Where it aws Imagine in downtown Seattle. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

>> from Seattle WASHINGTON. It's the Q covering AWS Imagine brought to you by Amazon Web service is >> Hey, welcome back already. Jeffrey. Here with the Cube. We're in downtown Seattle at the AWS. Imagine e do you conference? It's the second year of the conference, part of the public sector. Kind of a carve out with Andrew Coast Group. Really all about education on an education from K through 12 to higher education, community, college education, retraining of people coming out of the military. It's a huge segment, and we're really excited to have our next guest. He's going to give a keynote later this afternoon on a new pay for that he just published. So we welcome Richard Palmer, the practice leader for public sector for Open Richard, Great to see you. >> Good to be here. >> So tell us it's called reaching for the clouds. >> Yes. Look, what we found is that for many universities are moving into the cloud has proved to be difficult, that there are lots of barriers in the way and they get a part of the way along, and all of a sudden they hit a wall and it takes time. The big number that we keep looking at is only 30% of application workloads or in the cloud at this point. And after 67 years off the public cloud being available, it really suggests that there are various significant barriers. >> So what are some of those driving again? As you said, we were kind of well down this path. So whether it's just legacy stuff that's not worth moving. But I would imagine most of the new workloads are coming in. I mean, they've got to be getting with this program. >> Purchasing sess is an obvious ploy. It gets you right out of all of the problems that you had before. Look, the first thing that that bury that people find is the clouds different. So the skills that you've got in your team, the way that you were finances, your project methodologies everything is different to engage with cloud properly and the way that you design and build applications is different in the cloud. So taking a traditional organization trying to go cloud has everybody involved from the CFO with funding cycles to governance board, which are the most wonderful thing ever in higher education. Great away through to staff skills end the way that start. Think about applications. And if there's one thing in my time in hired that I saw it time and time again, it's the instant legacy problem. So somebody creates something and does it a special way because they know better than the vendor. And we had this infrastructure anyway. So why not reuse it? And they create an orphan that is neither manageable by the vendor nor manageable by the organization requires that individual to remain with the organization. We're well past their expiry date. Let's put it that way because they put things in that just unique to this single installation. And that's the transformation you see in the cloud. It's software as a service. That's it's a native thing. You don't look at how it's hosted. You don't care about anything but using it. But the danger point is in moving to infrastructure service or platforms. The service that you carry over that customization thinking right, which creates if you're like instant legacy, right s so so that that's one of the barriers that we say. >> I'm just curious because you have to really big things, you know, just the whole financing and the way you buy it, the way you budget is completely different than a big capital expenditure that you're appreciating over time. And then, as you said, the skill set. So in the enterprise space, right? Everyone's got big piles of money, and they hired the biggest size right to come help him. They have incident skills. They can bust him in by the many dozens and help them with some of that financial. How is the system integrator or the service is kind of industry evolving an education to help them make this transition. >> So they're there >> two ways and education bigger public sector enterprise has that awful problem that if you provide advice, often you can't provide. Service is we tend to beginning over that a little bit now. But the obvious way is most higher. Education institutions who have moved through that process have engaged a strategic partner to help them to plan right. That's the first piece on dhe there. There are lots of them around, and often they're very good at it, moderately expensive. But the thing that they don't tend to do as well is to find the right partners for the actual transition. So often engineers are trying thio, learn cloud technologies and apply them on and get it right the first time around. And, of course, we all know that in the experimentation you want tohave learn fast and then re learn when you you've come to something that you shouldn't have done. Great. But if engineers thrown into a life production style project, there's no time for that relearn re platform. You learn as you go, right. So having it not so much in a sigh about an implementation partners really important. And luckily, many of the the vendors or their networks are really quite good at doing those mid level implementation projects. Now it's a matter of finding the right one great, but certainly in my home Australian context for almost a LL moves the cloud. There's somebody who's who has done it several times before in education and has a good reputation. So I suspect in the U. S. That's multiplied 10 times. Larger economy is probably 10 times as many people who have done it well before, >> right? So the other piece of I'm curious if this came out right, so there's the cloud as a more efficient way to run to your infrastructure and in all that that means and cost savings. But much more importantly, in some of the things we're doing today is really to enable innovation to enable you to develop stuff faster, whether it's Alexa or some of these other things we're hearing about. I mean, how does that play in people, you know, kind of getting through the pain of getting through this process, because if you don't innovate and we just had just had somebody on before, he said. They're worried about competing with online and really having a good experience for the students on campus. Is that the driver? Is it the cost savings? Is it? How do you How do you see that kind of slicing? >> We've seen several drivers. Mum. That's most common is student success and retention that is ubiquitous in higher education to bring the cost down and to make sure that every intervention that the college or school does is meaningful and produces a positive outcome. So that's kind of the core business. And so things like analytics play into that, and now machine learning more and more the motivator. Yes, this competitive motivator but it actually works. The same for their up there on campus is their online that if you can help every student to be successful, you gain reputation. If you could do it efficiently, you drive down costs, so that's beneficial rate. But then, then you're asking about innovation. That's a step after you've put away pieces together to do core business well, right? And the key elements in doing core business well is shifting from traditional too agile. Because EJ, our projects have benefits on the business side as well as the technical side. One of the most important things is to be able in the edge. I'll space is to be able to interact quickly, and that is just a CZ. Important on the academic side is is on the technical side, because usually the academic or the administration, I don't know what they need until they've actually experienced it. Most times, when you're replacing the system, you ask the people on the front line what they want, and they answer exactly what the last system did, but better so that innovation cycle you do then measure and cycle through is part of the edge. I'll pace and the second part of it is being out to differentiate between what is actually going to make a difference for your students and what is just pure women. You know what we think might be better, but is actually gonna cost cost money, create legacy, move us away from state of practice and actually is gonna bring the benefit so really important to attach riel KP eyes to differentiating practices on get away from customization, which produces no benefit the Third Elements platforms. Once upon a time, we used to build their special systems from the code up way shouldn't do that anymore. We shouldn't be caring about what databases underneath application platforms are faster, more effective and require listen, Herr Skills to maintain a lifetime. So that's that's the third element. >> So one of the things that the Enterprise has been able to benefit from is, you know, we just leave the AARP alone, right? Just a lot of stuff. It's just not worth lifting and shifting. But, you know, it's it's kind of customer interaction applications, and there's a whole kind of class of applications that opened up the opportunity to leverage all this kind of platforms and fast, fast development, et cetera. How is that playing out on the public sector side? Because it before turning the cameras, you talked about just the pain of lift and shift, and you run into all kinds of issues. You don't get that that good, easy win that good fast win are our date. Are they thinking in terms of, you know, setting aside kind of an innovation development team that's working on some of these kind of new age things that that aren't kind of the core systems, that maybe he he don't necessarily want a lift and shift anytime soon? >> I'm a big fan of innovation teams when you're working directly with research. I'm not sure that that's the best model for mainstream innovation. It's much more useful to leverage the folks who are actually working directly with the business people like business analysts, and to shift those into thinking beyond the Monday because the business analyst usually has a very intimate relationship in the nice way with the business partner, and they can engage with what would make life better. What would make things more productive and then to quickly bring resources in behind that idea and a quick, quick proof of concept. But you've hit on another whole issue there that the idea of a ubiquitous engagement layer that both delivers a really high quality online digital student experience but also provides a whole lot of information that can be then analyzed to work out what was the best thing to do with student is really transformative, and we're seeing the best vendors move into that space, even with traditional systems and what they're doing on I'll use a couple student management system vendors is an example, without naming them but their traditional systems, they will either host them for you or you could do it on premises. But their new analysis engagement systems are cloud based, so it doesn't melt away. Your implementation is you can buy New software is a service that gives you really good analytics and a new communications collaboration. Engagement layer, often with Syria, and collaboration tools mixed in in a brand new platform, and that's really transformed it, so it allows you to keep your transactional system in place, but risk in it with the new engagement layer. And if you can clip your university service's into that engagement layer Then you get that 360 degrees view of the student with actually out having to shift major systems, right? And, as you said, that's just money spent to lift and shift the system because there's no strategic benefit except if it will lead you to upgrade for so many universities. They're stuck with an old version of the system, either because they're customized it, or they haven't got the infrastructure to host the new version or whatever it happens to be gay. So there is a strategic benefit to be able to stay with the latest version, particularly as most good vendors are providing new features pretty regularly on the most up to date. And are any doing maintenance releases for the previous version? >> It's pretty interesting that Andrew pulled out of the of the three themes for the show. You know, tomorrow's workforce roll of the melon innovation transformation that Bell got its own its own bullet point because it is such a kind of an underlying infrastructure that drives so much value across lots of applications. And and I just found it interesting that you get kind of to retrain academic institutions in the ways of big data because it's very different than maybe the way that they you grew up thinking about data, the quantity and the way that you deal with it and how much do you have and sampling of old data versus versus all the real time flow. >> So, yes, that the next generation is autonomous and whether it's self driving cars or student advisement, we're seeing the leading edge providers provide in the education space pretty much autonomous student advising there except to the point where you go out of the mainstream. But that rep erred Good advice from bots, basically. But when you get to the real world in autonomous systems, we're going to see a real shift in even the university sector off that interact with people and the environment. If you're doing self driving cars, you're talking sub millisecond responses. So that whole world of I O. T. Plus sensing technology plus Courts Campus all coming together in the next iteration and being paralleled in the service is and maybe even the academic world, that'll probably be a bit slower, but taking the same autonomous kind of thinking and moving beyond just supplementing human human transactions. >> All right, Well, Richard Thank you for taking a few minutes. Good luck on your keynote this afternoon and we'll look forward to dig it into the paper. >> It's been a pleasure. Thank you. >> Alright, He's Richard. I'm Jeff. You're watching the cube. Where? Aws. Imagine CTU in downtown Seattle. Thanks for watching. See you next time.

>> From Seattle, Washington, it's the Cube! Covering AWS Imagine, brought to you by Amazon web services. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Rick here with the Cube. We're in downtown Seattle at the AWS Imagine EDU Conference, it's the second year of the conference, we came up last year, I think it was like 400 people, this year's like 800 people, like all the Amazons, it grows and grows and grows. Really again, specifically a carve out from the public sector group, all about education, that's K-12, that's higher education, it's community college education, it's retraining vets, it's a huge thing. We're really excited to have the ring leader this whole event, he's just coming off the keynote, he's Andrew Ko, he's a global education director for AWS, working for Teresa. Andrew, great to see you. >> Thank you very much for having us here. >> What an event! >> Yes! >> And good job on the keynote, you guys covered a lot of different segments. This education opportunity challenge-- >> Yah. >> Is so multifaceted. >> Yes. >> Now how do you kind of organize again, what are the ways that you kind of look at this opportunity? >> Well, that's a great point, we could go on for days and for so many of the important topics, but we've really broken it down into three themes that we've carried on from last year. Really wanted to help and assist when it comes to employability. As we talk about the growth of AWS Cloud, what we're finding is there's a tremendous amount of lack of skilled talent to really fulfill those demands. So workforce is one of those particular areas. Secondly, we're seeing a tremendous growth on machine learning. The way to really predict things, whether it's student success or research. Finally, we also have a third theme that is come around innovation and transformation. Not so much always about the IT, but how are people moving along quickly on their Cloud journey? And really enabling a lot of their stakeholders, like researchers, medical centers, as well as students, to really adopt and learn technology but also embrace it in very very new innovative ways. >> Right. It's it's funny, there was a video showed in the keynote with Andy and I just want to pull the quote where you said it's not about protecting today, the infrastructure-- >> Yup. >> And we've joked many times on air about if when the time machine and you pulled somebody from 1760 and they came here-- >> Andrew: Yah. >> The only thing they'd recognize is the schoolhouse, right? >> Andrew: Right. >> But you guys are really working to change that. Everything from really, Cloud as an infrastructure efficiency play-- >> Andrew: Right. >> All the way through Cloud as an enabler for innovation, doing some really crazy things with Alexa and some of the other projects that are underway. >> Absolutely. And and we always start with our customers first. They're really the ones that have that vision and want to ensure that it's improved, and so we're excited to be a part of that journey. And as just a couple examples on how that is starting to change, is through this adaptive way of looking at information and data, and as an example as I mentioned that we're going to have an incredible panel sessions of many of our speakers, and one of which I like to call out is with the California Community College. They have over 2.1 million students at any given year, and now with the technology, they can start to try to look at patterns of success for students, patterns of challenges, and really start to make education more interactive, which is a one-way like what you were mentioning maybe it was a hundred years ago. >> Right, with the chalkboard. (chuckles) >> So it's so funny with, we talk about ML and AI-- >> Yup. >> You know, everyone's talks in the paper about, you know, the machines are going to take all of our jobs, but if you go to the back pages of the paper, I don't know if they have that anymore-- >> Yah. (chuckles) >> There's a whole lot of open recs, right? >> Yup. >> People can't hire fast enough for these jobs-- >> Right. >> So it's actually that's a much bigger problem than them taking jobs away right now, so this re-skilling is really really significant. >> Absolutely. And we always say that there's not necessarily always a jobs gap, but it's really a skills gap that are going unfulfilled. So there is a change in a lot of the talents that are required, but that's why it's so important for us representing education. That's not just about the infrastructure but how do we better prepare not just the learners of today that need some re-skilling, but also the learners for tomorrow, and provide them a pathway in a way to be interested in it, but also more importantly, getting jobs. >> Jeff: Right. >> The end of day, it's not just about a learning thing, it's about an economic thing. And so we're finding all those announcements as you heard earlier, such as Brazil. With SENAI, they're going to now announce that this curriculum is going to be available for 2.5 million education learners across the entire country, working with 740 universities so we're really excited to be behind that, and we would love to take the credit but really it's our customers, it's our leaders, it's those individuals that are really cutting edge and making those things happen. >> Jeff: Right. So again, last year was a lot about the community college and the certification of those programs, the accreditation. This year you're introducing bachelor programs, and-- >> Yes. >> Really amazing statement in the keynote about the governor of the state of Louisiana-- >> Yes. >> Basically dictating the importance of having a four-year degree based on Cloud skills. That's pretty significant. >> It's exciting. I mean, and I would say, as living in Virginia we're excited to see Northern Virginia alongside with Santa Monica Community College and Columbus Day Community College jointly together created, it wasn't us that created it, it was actually the faculty members and we got together created it, and the governor of Louisiana just took it to the next level. He really, alongside with his leadership team, of the individual leaders of the state community colleges as well as the universities said not only are we going to adopt the two-year across the state but we're going to have it articulate, allowing for students to get credit at the four-year. >> Jeff: Right. >> And why that's important, Jeff, is that we want to make sure that the pathway has on-ramps of how and where you can intersect and to get re-skilled, but also off-ramps. Some of them may get jobs right away at community college, some of them want to go to a four-year and go have more deeper learning and a different experience so-- >> Jeff: Right. >> All those options are now open. >> Right. >> And having that governor just indicates that it's important at a massive massive scale. >> Jeff: Yah. So another thing, we we have to talk about Alexa right? I forget how many millions of units you said are sold-- >> Hundred million devices last time I checked, yah. 70,000 skills. >> Lots and lots of skills, right, the skills. So it's pretty interesting in terms of really kind of helping the universities, beside just be more efficient with the Cloud infrastructure but actually appeal to their customers' students-- [Andrew] Yah. >> In a very very different way. And a pretty creative way to use Alexa and what's what's fascinating to me is I don't think we've barely scratched the surface-- >> Andrew: That's correct. >> Of voice, as a UI. >> Andrew: Yah. >> We won't. We're old, we have thumbs. (chuckles) >> But the kids coming up, right? Eventually that's going to flip-- >> Andrew: Right. >> And it's going to be more voice than keyboards so you guys took an interesting tack from the beginning, opening up the API to let people program it, versus just learning-- >> Absolutely. >> Another method. So some exciting skills, what are some of the ones that that surprise you as you go around-- >> Well-- >> To visit these customers? >> There's so many of them, it's hard to announce and discuss all of them but I would definitely say yes, this next generation, not the old fuddy-duddies like me, learn very differently now. And they're expecting to learn very differently and I think voice and natural user interface is going to be the big thing that people are going to be comfortable to talk to things and have responses back, and some of the things that we announced with our partners, well actually a few weeks ago that we mentioned in the keynote, like Kahoot!, one of the larger interactive ways of young students learning from gamification. Now they can actually speak to it, and engage in much different ways rather than just typing on a keyboard or or coding or typing things in phones, so that's exciting. Or ACT. As you just mentioned earlier, you have a young rising sophomore in a university. They probably had to, she or he had to probably study in order to get into college. Well, what if there was a voice-enabled advisor of how to take the test and the examination and that's what ACT launched. >> Jeff: Right. >> Just some small examples, and now we want to extend that excitement by encouraging other education technology companies to enroll their application by South by Southwest that we're going to announce the winners there-- >> Jeff: Right. >> Next year. So to have a lot of energy, have the educators, and just build on that incredible momentum. >> Alright Andrew, so before I let you go, I know that you got a couple thousand people here waiting to talk to you. (chuckles) The other thing is you guys have gone outside the classroom, right? >> Mm-hmm. >> Really interesting conversation about helping active-duty marines learn how to use data. Really interesting conversations about bringing the big data revolution more heavily into research and more heavily into medical and more heavily into those types of activities that happen at top-tier universities. >> Andrew: Yah. >> Really different way to again apply this revolution that's been happening on the commercial side, the enterprise side into which we play, and and helping people adapt and and evolve and really embrace big data as a tool in solving these other problems. >> Absolutely. And I think you mentioned some very important points there. Number one for us, we always think of learners as individuals that are just growing up through the educational system. But we also have learners that are lifelong learners, that have changing careers or alternating changing, so we're excited to be a part of the announcement with Northern Virginia Community College where they created a special program for Marine Corps, so they can come out and learn data intelligence, that would be applied for all, but also focused with the Marine Corps individuals there to really learn another skill set and apply it to a new occupation. >> Jeff: In their active duty. This is not for when they come out-- >> Absolutely. >> For for re-train. This is in while they're in their >> Very important. >> In their existing job. >> Absolutely. And that so that when they come out they have now applied skills in addition to the skills that they've learned being in the Marine Corps, so that they can also become really productive right after their enlistment there. >> Jeff: Right. >> And then you mentioned about research, I mean that is also an exciting thing that people so often also forget, that education also extends out there, and so like UCLA, they've created a new department blending medicine as well as engineering to tackle very important research like cancer and genomics, and so those complicated facets are now no longer is IT a separate conversation, but it's an infused way where much more high-performance computing can handle some interesting research to accelerate the outcomes. >> Right. Well Andrew, well thanks for inviting us to be here for the ride. We've we've been along the AWS ride (chuckles) >> For a while, from summits in 2012 and reinvents so we know it's going to grow, we're excited to watch it, and we'll see you next year. >> Jeff, thank you very much, and the ride is just beginning. >> Alright. He's Andrew, I'm Jeff, you're watching the Cube, we're in downtown Seattle at the AWS Imagine EDU Conference. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: From Seattle, Washington it's The Cube covering AWS Imagine. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with The Cube. We're here in downtown Seattle at the AWS Imagine Education Conference. It's the second year of the conference. It's really successful so much now they have another education conference, excuse me, Imagine Conference coming up for nonprofits, but this is the education one. About 800 people and we're excited to have, I think they had representatives from like 40 countries here. It's amazing, such a small conference with such great global representation. We've got our first guest, all the way from Valencia, Spain. He is Inaki Bilbao Estrada and the Vice Chancellor for Internationalization and Innovation at the CEU Universidad Cardenal Herrera. It's a mouthful, welcome. >> Thank you very much. >> So first off, impressions from the show, from the keynotes this morning. >> It was very impressive, the keynote by Andrew Co Intersession by Amazon. We were impressed, we were included in the keynote and we are very proud of having been included in the keynote for our Alexa skill. >> Great, so before we get into kind of what they talked about, let's back up a few steps in terms of what you are trying to accomplish as an institution. So give us a little bit of background on the college, how big it was, and kind of what was going on and what you wanted to really do differently. >> We are a Spanish University. We belong with CEU San Pablo Foundation which owns three universities in Spain, Barcelona, Madrid, and Valencia. We are a not for profit universities and in Valencia, in our case, we are very proud that we used to be a local university with only 300 international students eight years ago and right now we have reached 2500 international students which represents around 30-33% of the population of the university. We are right now 8000 undergraduate students and 3000 graduate students. >> So that's pretty amazing. So as you said, you were really kind of a regional university and you decided you wanted more international students. Why did you want more international students and then once you made that goal, what were some of the major objectives at the beginning of this process or problems that you had to overcome? >> It was a trend in higher education institutions but for us it was very important for two reasons, one the sustainability of the university, but also and I think the main reason is that we wanted to have our students to have a global experience. We wanted to become a global university based in Valencia, but we have right now more than 80 countries represented on campus. >> Wow, so what were some of the big hurdles that you saw that were going to get in the way of attracting more of these international students? >> So it was very important for us to adapt all our processes to our students. For this we have a very helpful firm partnered on campus. It was the IT department with Jose Roch in charge of this department and through technology we have been able to escalate and automate, get the automation of all of this process in order to reach bigger number of international students. So we have adapted all the processes to the needed of our international students, our new population of international students. >> Right, so you were highlighted today for a very specific thing, for a very specific device, which is Alexa, and voice as an interface and we saw some of the Alexa stuff last year, in terms of the kids asking it, you know, when is my test, is my homework due, these types of things, but you guys are actually taking it to the next level. Explain to the folks what you guys have done with Alexa. >> So we have used Alexa to introduce a virtual assistant for all our students national and international students and one other things that have been highlighted in the keynote is that is not only in English, but also in Spanish. Like this we are covering the two most speaked language on campus, English and Spanish. >> So it's bi, so you've got a bilingual Alexa in the room. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. So for us it was very important as explained before that technologies had been asked to cover all the population of students, not only part of them. >> Right and using English is kind of universal language, regardless of what their native tongue is. >> Yeah, yeah. >> So did you have to build all this from scratch? How much was Amazon helping you to do the English to Spanish translation, was it written in Spanish, how did some of those logistics work out? >> So we began six months ago with the project with the help of Amazon, they were very, very, very helpful for us. With Ana Cabez and Juan Manuel Gomez from the UK team of Amazon and they guided us how to develop the Alexa skills for the goals that we set with them, what we wanted to achieve with the virtual assistant for our students. >> And yeah, so the skills are the things that you actually write, so how many different skills did you write especially for your students? >> So we, what we are doing is to build only one, but we are integrating all the services in one only skill. So we are integrating services related with what my next assignment on Blackboard, which are my grades, how can I book a room in the library or another space of the university, locations of the different services or professors of the university. We are integrating a lot of services, but in one skill because we don't want the students to have to switch between skills. >> Jeff: Right, right. >> So we're aiming to have one virtual assistant for the students in only one skill. >> So that's interesting, I didn't even think about all the integration points that you have. But you've got integration points in all these other systems. The room booking services, the library services, Blackboard and the other educational services. >> The learning management system. >> So how many points of integration are there? >> A lot we are working right now, we are focusing around five, seven integration points, because also we are integrating it with our CRM in order to have personalized message to different segments of our students, depending of if they are due to get some documentation to the registrar office. We think that integration with CRM allows us to give personalized message and notification to our students depending on the situations. >> Jeff: Right. >> So it's not a general notification for all of the students on campus. >> Right, that's awesome. Again, highlighted in the keynote really I think is the first kind of bilingual implementation of Alexa. So that's terrific. I want to shift gears a little bit about innovation and transformation. We go to a lot of tech shows, talk to a lot of big companies, everybody wants to digitally transform and innovate. Traditionally education hasn't been known as the most progressive industry in terms of transforming. You said right off the bat, that's your job is about transformation and innovation. Where's that coming from? Is that from the competitive world in which you live? Is that a top-down leadership directive? What's kind of pushing basically the investment in this innovation around your guys' school? >> So I believe that education can be disrupt in the next five, ten years. So what we think at the university is that we have to be closer to this disruption and in this sense we are working a lot to improve the students' experience of our students on campus because if not we think that it makes no sense to study on campus when you can go online. >> Jeff: Right. >> So that's why we're using technology to improve the students' experience on campus. So we are trying to avoid those things that have no value added for the students through technology and through the digital transformation. In order that we have more time for these value added interaction between the staff, academic and nonacademic staff, with the students. >> Right, and then how has the reception been with the staff, both the academic staff and the nonacademic staff because clearly the students are your customers, your primary customer, but they're a customer as well. So how have they embraced this and got behind it? >> So I seen all the institutions and you have a part of the institution that is not so in favor of these innovations, but the big number of professors and staff have seen the benefits of not to have to answer email Saturday night because the virtual assistant is 24 hours seven days a week. So they've seen the benefits of how technology can give them more time for these value added interaction with their students. For this in order to avoid only top-down decisions we have created digital ambassador programs which this program what we do is to share with our professors and with our nonacademic staff what we are planning and how they see the project. >> Jeff: Right, right. >> And we are integrating their opinions and their suggestions in the program. >> So you're six months into it you said since you launched it. >> Yeah. >> Okay, I'm just curious if you could share any stories, biggest surprises, things that you just didn't expect. I always like long and unintended consequences, you know, as you go through this process. >> So one of things is in Spain, Alexa was launched in November, last November so it's very new. >> Jeff: Very new. >> Very new in Spain. There's no voice assistant in the last nine months, it have exploded, but we didn't have before. So the students have been very impressed that the university were working at this level with the technology so new because it was even new for them, even if they are younger and they knew a lot about this technology. They were impressed that the university so quickly reacted to the introduction of the technology. The other point is through innovation, we are also using Alexa for the digital transformation of learning and teaching. We have launched an innovation program for quizzes for the students. And we have the huge amount of volunteers that they want to see how it works. >> Right, right, just curious too, to get your take on voice as an interface. You made an interesting comment before we turned the cameras on that email just doesn't work very well for today's kids. They don't use it. They're not used to using it. But voice still seems to really be lagging. I get an email from Google every couple of days saying, here ask your Google Assistant this or ask your Alexa this, you know, we still haven't learned it. From where you're sitting and seeing kind of this new way to interact and as you said get away from these emails in the middle of the night that ask, when's my paper due and I could ask the assistant. How do you see that evolving? Are you excited about it? Do you see voice as really the centerpieces of a lot of these new innovations or is it just one of many things that you're working on? >> So I think the difference is that usually higher education institutions would have use of email for communication with students with so massive amount of emails. I think what they feel with the voice assistants is that they have the freedom to choose what they want to know or not to know. So if they can ask voice, virtual assistant, as in one case, they have the freedom when they want the information. >> Jeff: Right. >> So I think its a big difference between emails, in an email you decide when you send the information to the students, with voice technologies, the student, it's the student who is asking when they want the information. >> Jeff: Right. >> So I think it's important for them. >> It's huge because they never ask for the email. >> No, they, and after they tell us that it wasn't important information that they didn't check the email. >> Right. >> They complain that they don't have the right information. >> Right, well Inaki, thank you for sharing your story and congratulations on this project. Sounds like you're just getting started, you've got a long ways to go. >> Thank you so much. >> All right, thank you. He's Inaki, I'm Jeff. You're watching the Cube, we're in downtown Seattle at AWS Imagine Education Conference. Thanks for watching. See you next time. 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>> From the Amazon meeting Center in downtown Seattle, it's theCUBE, covering IMAGINE: A Better World, a global education conference sponsored by Amazon Web Services. >> Hey, welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in Seattle, Washington at the first ever AWS IMAGINE education conference. I think they said there was 900 registrants. Teresa Carlson did the key note, just finished, really fantastic. 900 people, it's funny, she equated it to AWS Public Sector which, seven years ago, had 50 people. And this year it had, I think, 15,000 people. So I think we'll see a similar growth here. Really, application of all the things that AWS does for education specifically, and there's all the cost saving and shutting down data centers and all that kind of stuff. But much more importantly is educating the workforce and getting a new class of kids and educators involved in cloud computing 'cause, let's face it, it's the dominant paradigm going forward. I don't think there's much question about that. So we're excited to be here, talk to some of the great people, all educators. And our first guest is Dr. David Dimmett. He's the SVP and Chief Engagement Officer at Project Lead the Way. David, great to see you. >> Yeah, great, thanks for having us here. So we're excited to be here as part of this first ever education conference that AWS is hosting. So great event, lots of fantastic energy, excited to present later today on diversity inclusion and computer science education, a space where we're doing a lot of really great work. And want to share, and also here to learn. >> Great, so give us the overview on Project Lead the Way. >> Sure, so Project Lead the Way, we are a 20-year-old national nonprofit. We were started in upstate New York, and we're working today with over three million students in pre-K all the way through 12th grade in high school. And we work with them in computer science education, biomedical science engineering; our job is to inspire kids. We want them to have access to a lifetime of opportunity. We know these skills are essential. Students who have these skills have opportunities, have doors open to them. Students without these skills really, today, face a lifetime of consequences. >> Right, so how do you get the skills into the education? It's such a frustration, and typical K through 12 education, computer science has not been part of the standard curriculum. There's the math track, which you take trig and calc, and there's the science track with bio and physics and chem, but computer science really hasn't done a great job of weaseling its way into the standard curriculum that everybody takes. So how do you get this curriculum in? How do you get the education to the kids? >> Sure, and we're seeing some movement in this area, which is really exciting. AWS has been a big part of that. But what we look at, we for the last 20 years have really put an emphasis on testing students primarily in those subjects that are easy to test, so core academic content; we definitely need students to have knowledge in those areas. What's been missing for a long time is the connection to that core academic knowledge to real-world problem solving. And that's where kids come in to a Project Lead the Way classroom and get excited. So we're starting with them early as pre-K, working all the way through, and it's, like I said, all those career pathways. But they're applying what they're learning in their algebra class, they're applying what they're learning in their physics class. And we know the research indicates that students decide really early if they like or are good at math or science. And gone are the days where it's okay to just brush off those content areas. We need to rethink the way kids get excited and inspired at an early age. >> So do you pull them, then, into a separate classroom experience outside of their everyday at school? How does the mechanics actually work? >> Right, so we're working with about 14,000 programs all across the country this year, all 50 states. And there are a variety of implementation models. In the early grades, in pre-K through five, a lot of times that's integrating into the homeroom or into the primary classroom. So we're training teachers all across buildings in a lot of elementary schools all across the country. When you work your way into middle school and high school, students rotate through, sometimes as an elective. But increasingly we're seeing schools require those courses because it exposes students to some of the careers that they may not understand and opportunities that they don't know exist. >> Right, it's so funny, right? 'Cause technology, over and over and over again, back to the Luddites, right, destroys certain industries, creates new industries, right? You don't want to be the guy making buggy whips anymore; it's probably not a great industry. But there didn't use to be web developers. There didn't use to be integration specialists. There didn't use to be SEO people. So there's a whole new class of applications that continue to be created with each of these huge information technology transformations. >> Yeah, it really is, and we have an increasing gap, really, unfortunately, in equality of opportunity. Increasingly today, we see students who have access to these opportunities in their pre-K, 12 experiences. Those students have a chance to go on to all kinds of careers, whether it's AWS, Verizon, Toyota, Lockheed Martin, you can go down the list. Companies are recruiting students that have these skills. Students who happen to not get exposed to these opportunities early really struggle to catch up later in life or later in their education system. So we really look at a variety of on-ramps for students. We work in the school day primarily. We also support a lot of work outside the school day. One of the key things that we do is we help teachers gain confidence in these areas. We were talking earlier about the skills gap that exists for adults in getting into some of these careers; same thing exists for teachers. We have teacher shortages all across the country. And what we're really looking to do is inspire not just students but the teachers who teach them. We'll train over 10,000 teachers this summer and get them ready to go in and inspire and prepare their students. >> It's really interesting, especially you get smarter kids once they're in high school and college. And they're looking for that connection. "Come on, Dad, what am I taking in chemistry? "I'm not going to be a doctor, "I'm not going to be a chemical scientist. "How does it relate to what I'm going to do "or philosophy or whatever." But these types of skills are really, really cogent. And not to mention that, but the kids are interacting with these types of applications all the day. So the connection between what I'm doing at school versus what I might be doing when I get out of school has got to be so much tighter than when you take a philosophy class or an American lit class. >> Yeah, we're rolling out, and with AWS's support. AWS has provided us with subject matter experts with a lot of the technological tools to help us deliver a brand new cybersecurity course this year all across the country. We're really excited about that. And you look at what's happening in terms of the cybersecurity threats that our country faces, that other countries face. It's both an economic issue but also a national security issue. And we just don't have the skilled workforce to be effective in those areas. We're inspiring kids, through AWS's help, to get excited and not just get excited but to have the skills to go out and be successful. So what I love, too, is a lot of the advances that we anticipate in healthcare are not going to be necessarily biomedical advancements. They will be, but they'll also be technological advances. We've worked with Cerner to train teachers in our computer science courses; they're one of the world's largest medical records companies. How do we provide data and information, big data, to medical providers, so that they can provide the best targeted treatment to their students? And so one of the things that we thrive on in our work is the connection to business and industry. And we want to provide that talent, that workforce, of the future. >> Right, so let me just drill in on that a little bit in terms of the role. You said you've been around for 20 years, your foundation. The role of private companies in general, and AWS specifically in helping on some of these really big problems, these really big efforts. 'Cause we know the public school systems never have enough money, getting pulled in a ton of different directions. So what kind of impact does somebody like AWS coming in help you complete your mission? >> Right, so AWS, AWS Educate have provided us with a variety of supports, and they're really helping us do a lot of really great work for students all across the country. A couple of specific examples. I mentioned subject matter experts. Having AWS come in and help us not just with this cybersecurity course but also how do we infuse into our other computer science coursework cloud career skilled development? And so we're doing that now with AWS's support. And Ken Eisner and his team have really helped us for the last couple of years; it's a great partnership. Additionally, providing us with the infrastructure, the applications, the AWS ecosystem of supports are helping us do a variety of things to secure student data, to also drive down cost to schools. All of those things together provide a great opportunity to the students that we're serving, three million plus, all across the country. >> Three million plus, that's great. So there's a real specific program that I want to give you a chance to talk about, the Kentucky Cloud Careers Pathways. That's kind of an example; give us a little bit more color. And we talked before, I got a lot of family in Kentucky, so it touched me a little bit. And, of course, Teresa's from there as well. >> So Kentucky is one of our strongest states for Project Lead the Way and has been for a lot of years. The governor and his cabinet have really done a lot of work to advance career opportunities, workforce development, economic development. And what we have and what we announced last year in Kentucky is the Cloud Career Pathway program. And that is a partnership between AWS; Project Lead the Way; the community college system in Kentucky; the governor's economic, labor, development, education departments; all of us working together to get kids exposed to cloud careers early in their education experience. And we've started training teachers to that end this year. We think it's going to be a real model for the country. >> David, I think you said it in every one of your answers, adding the "and the teachers, too." Such an important part, right? Such a key enabler to make this thing actually go. It can't just be about the kids. >> Absolutely, teachers are the bedrock of what we do in education. I say that as a lifelong educator. We've got a lot of work to do, and teachers are under attack in some places. And you've seen this last year, the work that's happened to put teachers in a position to be successful. And we've got a lot of work to do there. But our job, we want to go out and inspire the country's best teachers to go in and work in some of the most difficult work situations that exist in our country and inspire kids and with limited resources. And teachers are pouring their hearts out to do that. We think we've got a great opportunity, but we trained 10,000 plus teachers this year alone. And we see those teachers gain confidence. They go back to their classrooms, they're excited, and they know more about the opportunities that exist for their students. And I say that as a lifelong educator. In fact, my wife and I met 20 years ago as first-year teachers, so that, to me, is really core to what we do. >> Well, I see the passion in your eyes. So thank you for following up on this mission and doing good work and spending a few minutes with us on theCUBE. >> Yeah, that's great, thanks Jeff. >> All right, he's David, I'm Jeff. You're watching theCUBE from AWS IMAGINE Educate. Thanks for watching. (electronic music)

>> From the Amazon Meeting Center in downtown Seattle, it's theCUBE covering IMAGINE: A Better World, a Global Education Conference, sponsored by Amazon Web Services. >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in downtown Seattle at AWS IMAGINE Education. First year of the show, 900 registrants, 20 countries represented, really all the public sectors show, but this one's just focused on education as its own track. A lot of really interesting innovation going on, and as part of the keynote, we saw a really cool concept video about bringing Alexa into the class. The Echo Dot talking, and so, we're excited to have kind of the guy driving this whole project. He's David Hakanson, the CIO of Saint Louis University. First off, what a great keynote you had this morning. >> Thank you, thank you, and we're really excited to announce this today. So, today we announced that we are putting an Amazon Echo Dot in every single residence hall room. So, over 2,300 devices that will be in every room awaiting students for this fall. The device will be essentially their virtual assistant. They can ask questions specific to the university, through our custom skill, or any other question that's normally through the Alexa platform. >> So, the voice of God is talking above us, but that's okay. So, it was interesting when you were starting your presentation earlier today, I'm like, what are the applications going to be? I mean, what are these kids going to do with this? Like, we've got a Dot at home. We ask it to play music all the time, but you really did your homework on trying to think through what are the different use cases, what types of information are going to help the kids get their information a little bit faster, a little easier? >> That's right. We want this to be valuable for our students, and our students are active inside and outside of the classroom. Our university does over a million hours of community service a year, so we attract a very active student. We don't want them to be spending time searching for information. We want them to get that information immediately. Whether it's something simple, such as when is the library closed? Or, what channel is their favorite show going to be on? We want them to be able to get very fast access to information because right now, they have to search through web pages or calendars to find out what's going on on campus or other key information, and that takes time. >> Right. Well, it's funny because there's a lot of conversation about the educational experience, and really trying to develop an engaging experience for the kids in school, for the students, but the question is always, you know, how do you define engagement, what is engagement, and what are the actual things, the physical activities, that are going to drive this? And you guys, amazing stat. You said you went from concept to delivery in three months, and in that process, really explored a lot of interesting concepts. I wonder if you can add a little bit more color to that development process. >> Absolutely. It started with a six week pilot program, where we tested different virtual assistant technology to see what did the students really like, and they chose the Amazon Echo system. And once we made that decision, we were able to go from that concept to completion in three months, which was fantastic for us because we wanted to make sure we were ready for the fall semester. To do that, we worked very closely with AWS and the Alexa for Business team, as well as the partner, the skill development partner, called Empowered. We were able to use the partner ecosystem to allow us to move very quickly, and through that process engaging our students, engaging our stakeholders to make sure that the device was going to meet their needs, not just be something that looked good on their desk. >> Right. So was voice part of the initial design criteria, or did that come when you were looking at different type of interactive devices? Because clearly, the kids today are super adept on their phone, and they can text with their eyes closed with one finger tied behind their back. Voice is still relatively new. At least, maybe it's not as new as I think, so how did you get to the voice as the main UI for kind of this new, cutting edge information system? >> So, we started with voice saying we want a virtual assistant that's voice based because we see that as the future. So, if you're on your smart phone looking for information, you're still having to go to a website or to different data sources to get that, whereas asking a question is much faster, and getting that answer, it's a much faster transaction. So, we started with that saying how can we use voice technology to help our students be more productive, and then, engaged our students in that conversation, and they were very excited about that. >> Right. So, one of the really cool things about Alexa and the Dot is the programmability, which, obviously, you guys took advantage of. So, a little color on kind of how you chose what to program, but I think even more exciting is what kind of opportunities that opens up as an individual student, as a CS project in the class, and as you said, your university has a lot more going on than just incoming students. You've got graduate degrees, medical things going on, so I wonder if you can shed a little light on kind of how you developed what you have for the launch date, but you know, some of the future things that you see down the road. >> That really goes to the Alexa for Business foundation that we chose, and Alexa for Business was the differentiator for us. It was a key area because through that tool and ecosystem, we could manage the devices, and we could group the devices. So, we could group a learning community of engineers, of students studying engineering, and give them specialized skills or allow them to develop a skill and have that only on their devices, not on everyone else's devices. So, the ability to manage these allowed us to really focus on that educational experience, allow students to start creating skills, and then be able to manage and deploy them at scale. >> That's great. I can't wait to come back a year from now and hear kind of what happened. I'm sure there's going to be all kinds of cool surprises, tough surprises, you know, upsides and downsides 'cause you said they're getting installed this week and the kids are showing up in a couple weeks. >> That's correct, that's correct. (laughing) We're moving very quickly. >> Alright David. Well again, I'm going to give you the last word as you touched on it a little bit, but you know, how working with Amazon and AWS specifically you know, kind of impacted this project and how does that help you, you know deliver your objectives more efficiently and faster? >> Yeah, the only way we could have gone from concept to completion in three months was by working closely with AWS and the partner ecosystem. We could not have done this at any scale or efficient timeframe without them. They were a fantastic partner, helping us all the way from choosing the right partner to develop the skill to helping us on how do we get all these devices to work on our network, to how do we get all these devices working on our network and installed within a couple days, and so, from beginning to end AWS has been instrumental in our success to bring this new innovative technology to our students. >> Okay, well we might have to have a field trip out to Saint Louis and check it out. >> You're welcome to come. >> Alright, he's David, I'm Jeff. We're at AWS in downtown Seattle at AWS IMAGINE. Thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) >> On the Amazon Meeting Center. In downtown Seattle. It's theCUBE. Covering Imagine a Better World. A global education conference, sponsored by Amazon Web Services. >> Hey welcome back everybody. Jeffrey here with theCUBE. We're in Seattle, Washington at the AWS Imagine education conference. It's the first one. Teresa Carlson just kicked off the keynote. About 900 registrants from over 20 countries worldwide. We saw it happen with the public sector before. They went from 50 people to 15 thousand, I think she said in seven years. I'm imagining that Imagine is going to have the same track. Cause education is so, so important. And we're excited our next guest came all the way from the other side of the pond. The other side of the Atlantic. He's Peter O'Rourke, Director of IT for the University of Suffolk. Peter, great to see ya. >> Thanks Jeff for the welcome. Yes it's been fantastic to be here with this exciting crowd. And as Teresa said it would be great to be here in seven years. At a huge event. >> A huge event, it'll probably be in Vegas. They like to have those big ones down in Vegas. So what brings you here? It's a long way, education is clearly super important. Digital transformation and cloud. We see it all over the place. But what's the application that you're looking at, what are you excited about in bringing kind of cloud economics to the University of Suffolk? >> Well Jeff, the key thing in education has got to be about students' experience. And that's the thing we've got to keep driving at all the time. What's exciting about partners like Amazon is the potential that they talk about. It's not what they're doing today. It's what they're talking about and going to do tomorrow and the day after. And as I've just said, this is day one. >> Right. >> This is an exciting journey to engage with. With these partners. >> So how have the student experience kind of expectations morphed over time? As you get kind of digital-native kids coming up into the school now and kind of, you know we've seen it on the business side. The consumerization of IT cause people expect their interactions with their companies, their banks and their retailers to be like it is with their phone and computer. How are you seeing the expectations change from your students on what they want and how they want to interact with all the services that you guys provide them. >> Good question. And again the mobile phone is the key here. People arrive at your organizations, whether they are universities or retail establishments. And they already know how they're going to work with you. And when you can't do that. That's a huge disappointment. So these people are using things in their daily life. To arrange trips, theater tickets, cinema. And when you can't work like that, there's a huge disconnect. >> Right, right. The other big issue that happens I've seen more and more is mobile. And you know, universities. You guys are always limited on space. >> Yeah. >> There's always lots of construction and new buildings and new labs and new academic offices and classrooms. So space is always an issue. How does you know, mobile specifically as you mentioned, enable you to provide a different experience, a better experience, a more varied experience when you've got all these other kind of constraints you're faced with. >> How mobile can help with that. It's about allowing your users to consume their content where and when they want to. It's exactly how they live their daily lives. So you know maybe you can't a lecture today. But why should that really matter? >> Right. >> You should be able to pick this up later. >> Right. And that last piece is the staff. And you know a lot of the teachers weren't necessarily educated in CS. That wasn't kind of why they got into the business. Especially if they are in say, history or philosophy. Or some of maybe the softer sciences. How are you seeing their adoption of technology to be, you know don't be afraid of it. This actually can be a great enabler to help you do your job better. How are you seeing their adoption of some of this technology in some of the softer academic areas? >> Well, again good question. But it's a huge challenge. I think for too long what we've tried to do from a technology perspective. Is to turn absolutely brilliant academic colleagues into technologists. And that's not why they came into education. >> Right. >> What's exciting about what's happening now is that we're able to enable them to use much, much simpler technology tools or interfaces that are actually doing amazing things in the background. And they don't need to understand how it does it. And that's the way it should be. >> Right. So last question. What are you expecting to get out of this conference for a day and a half here in Seattle? Ton of educators, ton of people from your indsutry. First ever event of this type for AWS. What are you hoping to take away? >> I'm hoping to take away a ton of exciting ideas. That are almost impossible to install. But there's going to be one or two gems in there that we can work with people like Amazon going forward. And we're going to come back in a year's time. And we'll want to talk about what we've done. >> Right. >> That's the exciting thing. >> That is the key right, what have you done? >> Yes. >> And now with cloud you can do, they've talked about a project in the keynote that was three months from ideation to actually starting to ship stuff. So we can do it. >> That's what we've got to do. >> Right alright Peter, well thanks for taking a few minutes of your day. And good luck with the rest of the conference. >> Thanks Jeff, thanks for talking to me. >> Alright, Peter, I'm Jeff. You're watching theCUBE. We're at AWS Imagine Education in Seattle, Washington. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> From the Amazon Meeting Center in Downtown Seattle, it's theCUBE. Covering Imagine: A Better World, A Global Education Conference sponsored by Amazon Web Services. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in Seattle, Washington, at the AWS, I think it's called the Meeting Space. There's a lot of AWS buildings around here. It's AWS Imagine: Education, first year of the conference, about 900 registered folks, 22 countries represented. Really excited, this thing is going to grow. We've seen it before with AWS. We saw it with Summit: Reinvent. AWS Public Sector. We're excited to be here for the very first time and our next guest is Dr. Scott Ralls. He is the President of Northern Virginia Community College. Scott, great to see you. >> Thank you, it's good to be here Jeff, appreciate it. >> A lot of mentions of NOVA, and that's you guys. >> That's us, yeah. >> That's not the PBS programming. You guys are kind of out front on some of these initiatives, with 3sa and AWS Public Sector. I wonder if you can tell us a little bit about the Veterans' Apprenticeship Program, which has been in place for a little while. >> Just a little bit about NOVA, we're a community college just right outside of the Virginia suburbs of D.C. We're the, I'd say, the biggest college that nobody's heard of outside of our region. We have about 100,000 students. >> 100,000? >> 100,000. >> And how many campuses? >> Six campuses. >> For us, our niche is information technology. It's where the internet runs through our region, and so that cloud computing, we have the highest concentration of cloud computing cyber degrees. That's why the AWS partnership is so key for us, because it's about the opportunity for our students. And for AWS, it's about filling those jobs. Also, we have a lot of employers in our region that hire based on AWS credentials. AWS is the backbone for them. That's why for us as a community college, being jobs-focused, filling that gap, that's why it's key for us. >> That's Tyson's corner, right? That's where AOL started-- >> That's right, that's right, that's right. >> and there's a whole history. >> You've got all the cyber right around there. One writer has said that we're the bullseye of the internet. It's a unique place, but it's a unique opportunity for our students. >> Right, and the smart money's on the AWS second headquarter being in that neighborhood, but we don't-- >> Knock on wood. >> Knock on wood. We would love to see that. >> I'm just curious then if you've been educating people to get jobs in this IT sector, how you've seen that evolve over time? Because it used to be there were a lot of sys admin jobs or a lot of jobs that now automation and cloud is taking away. On the other hand, there's a lot of new jobs that the technology's enabling, like happens every time. How are you seeing the landscape change? >> I really think that's the way it has been. 30 years ago, when I was breaking into this workforce and world, that same conversation was going on. Automation was going to take all the jobs. There's been all kinds of new opportunities that emerge and that's the same thing we see, and certainly in Northern Virginia we see that so, for us, as a community college, we're doing it two ways. You asked about the apprenticeship program, that was our first entree with AWS so we are one of their primary training providers, education providers for apprenticeship. Those are the veterans and others that are hired by AWS, they come to our college for the education component, the certifications, the IT skills. The second part for us is the new cloud degree which we introduced in February, which is a two-year, first cloud degree in the country that will help other students who are not those coming through apprenticeship to also break into this important area. >> This is an associate's degree like all the other degrees you guys offer >> That's right. as a two-year program. I'd be just curious, what are some of the curricula? What are some of the core classes that they take that are part of that degree? >> One of the things that we've been doing, we use a lot of data analytics on the workforce side that others do not so part of it's our engagement, talking with the AWS leaders about what's needed. Part of it's also watching what AW, what credentials, what skills AWS is hiring for and then others who use the AWS platform, so you will see certain types of credentials that are built in, security plus, Linux plus, AWS Solutions Architect built in. Also even programming language, it's like Python because of its importance in that regard. We kind of use that as the, using that intelligence, if you will, to be able to build out what the degree should look like. Because we're paying attention to how AWS hires and how the IT users of AWS, how they're hiring and what the skills are that they're looking for. >> How hard is it to get that through at the school, to actually have an associate degree based on cloud? Were they receptive of the idea, did everybody see it coming, was it a hard push? >> We did it within one year, we did it within one year. >> Did it in one year? >> Within one year. >> Everything in the cloud happens fast. >> We moved fast on this. It is built off of our IT degree, so it's a specialization of that degree, so it was really, I think what made it move faster for us was two things. One is AWS has a great program called AWS Educate, which essentially provides a lot of the curriculum content. It's the kind of things if you were starting a degree, you would have to go out and create on your own. Having that rich content. Other partners, like Columbus State, who is also, Santa Monica, others that are working on cloud degrees and we can partner with each other. Then having the apprenticeship as sort of a North Star to tack on with respect to how companies are hiring and what skills are needed. That allowed us to move fast. >> Beyond Educate and the actual materials and curriculum materials, what does partnering with AWS do for you guys? What has that enabled you to do as part of this program that you couldn't do or it'd be a whole lot harder? >> Not everybody looks at community colleges. Being partnered with AWS, who they are, is key for us, it's important for us. I think it's also they recognize how important it is for them. Not everybody recognizes that. One thing that's unique for us as a community college, we have a lot of students who come to us who already have four-year degrees to get that skills part. It's almost like a graduate school. The apprentices are that way. Most of the apprentices already have four-year degrees in computer science, and we're providing that finishing piece. I think AWS sees in us how to broaden the, to scale, to fill that talent gap. I really think the only way you're going to diversify the talent gap and scale the talent gap is through institutions like ours. >> It's really an interesting statement on the role of community colleges in this whole refactoring of education. One, as you said, a lot of people have four-year degrees, so this concept of ongoing education, continue to get new skills as the opportunities dictate. Have that very specific knowledge and these certifications that are not Intro Philosophy or English Lit 205. These are very specific things that people can apply to their job today. >> The curriculum changes so fast, so we have to be willing to change, our instructors have to be willing to get that new thing. The history curriculum doesn't change that quickly, but the IT curriculum and particularly as it relates to cloud and cyber and other areas. If we're not doing that, then we're out of the ballgame, and when we're out of the ballgame that means our students are out of the ballgame, and that's what it's all about. >> When you come to an event like this, what are you hoping to get out of an event like this? Flew across the country, unfortunately through all the terrible smoke and stuff we have on the west coast. What are some of the things you hope to gain here with some of the other educators? >> One thing that always happens at AWS events is the connections that you make. Part of it is you do hear people, like we heard this morning, that you wouldn't have the opportunity to hear before, on machine learning and other areas. A lot of it's about the connections, so actually tomorrow morning a lot of the community colleges and others who are creating cloud programs will be working together tomorrow. AWS does a great job of maximizing our time, so we're part of the program, but we're also breaking off to really partner and that allows us all to move quicker. When we can build off of each other and then have the resources like AWS makes available to us. >> Sounds like you're moving pretty quick-- >> We're trying, we're trying. >> To get all that done and to get it done in a year. >> We have to keep up with where they're going. >> It's not what academic institutions are generally known for, speed and change. >> We're not your average academic institution. >> There ya go, alright. He's Dr. Scott Ralls,-- >> Thank you, 'preciate it. thanks for taking a few minutes with ya. I'm Jeff Frick, you're watching theCUBE, we're at AWS public sector, Imagine, in downtown Seattle. Thanks for watching, catch ya next time. (electronic tones)

>> From the Amazon Meeting Center in downtown Seattle, it's theCUBE! Covering IMAGINE: A Better World, a global education conference sponsored by Amazon Web Services. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in Seattle, Washington at the AWS IMAGINE education event. First time ever as part of the public sector series. Theresa Carlson kicked it off earlier today. 900 registered people watched this thing grow, like every other Amazon event that we've ever covered. And really, this is all about education. We're excited to be here. Our next guest has been working on this for awhile, He's Lou Pugliese, he's the Senior Innovation Fellow and Managing Director of Technology Innovation at Action Lab, Arizona State. Welcome. >> Thanks for letting me interview here. >> Absolutely. So just before we get started, kind of general impressions of this event? >> You know, it's amazing. I was just saying just a few minutes ago that you go to a lot of conferences, and you know, you go to so many conferences that the goal is to sort of try to meet 80% of the time new people. And you don't ever do that. Here you do, you know. And so there's a lot of people here that I've known for years, that I haven't seen. And there are a lot of new faces here too, so it's great. >> Right. It's really interesting, we cover a lot of conferences and kind of the lifecycle as they grow. But when they're small like this and just getting started you know, it's so intimate. There's so much hall conversations going on, there's so much just genuine sharing of best practices 'cause everybody's still trying to figure it out. >> Exactly, exactly. That's what you're doing here now. >> Absolutely. So, one of the things you're involved in, that caught my eye doing the research for this, is working on research based approach to really understand what works for the student learning experience. So there's all kinds of conversations we can have about higher education. Does it work, does it not work, is it broken? There's a lot of interesting things. Here, you know, it's been really interesting to focus on community colleges specifically and this kind of direct path between skills and getting a job. And it almost feels like the old apprenticeship model, kind of back in the day. You're at a big four year institution and really exploring. What is changing in the education interaction between kids and teachers, kids and curriculum, and how that stuff gets communicated and what's effective? 'Cause it's a new world, it's not the old world. >> No, it is. And you know, at ASU, what's interesting is is that there's a significant digital presence. You know, 35 thousand students very historically, back to 2009. So with that comes a significant amount of footsteps, digital footsteps, that students have taken. And so now you have the ability to be able to analyze that at a much higher level. And so now what we can do, and the part of what we're doing at the Action Lab is: looking specifically at the efficacy of these digital programs, finding out what course design elements do work, and what needs to be changed. And that gives us the ability to sort of feed that information back into the instructional design process, and continue to iterate on that improvement. The unique thing about the lab is that, it's a persistent lab. Most universities are sort of stop and start research initiatives, and they learn a lot and they publish a lot of papers. We've been around for three years, and we'll be around for 10 more, and it's a persistent examination of what we're doing at a digital environment, and we're taking it one step further, we're trying to understand how students behave in a digital environment. We know a lot about how students behave in a classroom or traditional learning setting, but we don't know how they how they learn in a digital environment. >> Right. I love, you said digital footprints, not digital exhaust, (both laugh) and it kind of reminds me of kind of these older you know, long term longitudinal studies, because it's still pretty early days in trying to figure out how these educational tools and mobile and stuff are impacting the way these kids learn. But we know they spend so much time on them, that is their interface to the world. It's almost like your remote control to life is actually this little thing that you carry around in your hand. So I'm curious, what are some of the things you've discovered that are working? What are some of the things that maybe that were kind of surprising that didn't work? What's some of the early findings that's coming out of that research? >> Sure, so in the early studies, we looked specifically at how demographic populations succeed or don't succeed in an environment. And what we found out is: there are certain demographics of students that flourish in an online environment, and consistently perform well. There are some that don't. The second thing we learned specifically is: what types of design features within a course, like the interaction within students, or exposing learning objectives, or getting students to really understand what rubrics of measurement, how content is being used and paced throughout our curriculum. A lot of really detailed information that faculty need to reorient and redesign their instruction, and so we can see a direct predictive value of improvement based on those changes. >> Right. So are you getting stuff out now that's impacting curriculum development? Or are you still kind of pulling the data together and there has not been enough time to really implement it? >> We are doing that, absolutely. One of the elements that we're introducing into the research now is: this notion of, it sounds like a fancy term, non cognitive or social and emotional learning; things that are a predispositions of learning about a student in their, you know, sort of soft skills world. Grit, determination, goal orientation, a variety of different soft skills, and their disposition, and how that impacts how they learn, and how they succeed in a classroom. >> And how important is that? I would imagine it's got to be super important. >> It's a field that is just still early in its science, but we're learning a lot. Not necessarily just about how students will succeed in a course environment, but those types of social/emotional learning skills that are required for them to be successful in a workplace environment. >> Right, right. And then the other factors that were discussed earlier in the key note are some of the, you know, what's happening at home? You know, there's all these other factors that are in a student's life that aren't directly tied to their education, but it can have a significant impact on their ability to learn, either temporarily, or-- >> They're all predispositions, yeah absolutely, yeah. >> Yeah, or full time. That's great. So, as you look forward now, and I think it came up too in the keynote, there's no shortage of data (chuckles) in this education environment. It's really been the time to grab it, analyze it, and put it to work. So, how are, you know, your engagement with Amazon kind of helping you to move your objectives forward? >> Well the Amazon engagement allows us to sort of off load all of the technological constraints, and gives us ultimate possibilities of not necessarily focusing on the tough stuff; the hardware, the integration, the specific tool sets that are required to extract data and analyze data, and focusing specifically on the research. So ultimately, it allows us to redirect our focus in what's really important in our world, because it's not necessarily about the technology, it's how the technology can point and draw a direct line between what the data says and how we create an intervention with students. >> Right. So I'm just curious to get your perspective. You said before we turned on the cameras, you've been involved in this field for a long time, trying to figure out how people can learn, how they can learn better, more effectively. Are there some big, kind of macro themes, that maybe people don't think about enough, that you've seen repeated time and time again, that people should be thinking about when they think about effective education and how to get kids to actually learn what we're trying to teach them? >> Sure, so a couple things. I mean, what we're focused on is not necessarily what we call big data, what we typically know big data as, it's really more about small data, which shows us causality. So for instance, one of the things that we are learning is that peer-to-peer engagement is really, really important in many courses in engaging in asynchronous and synchronous organizations within the course to learn from peers. Also avenues specifically to faculty, so faculty can actually look at the map of the entire classroom and understand who's achieving and focus just only on those people. >> Interesting. Well, good stuff, and, I'm sure, as you get more and more of the digital footprints, the insights will only increase by leaps and bounds. >> Absolutely. >> Alright, Lou, well thanks for taking a few minutes of your time >> Thank you. and we'll look forward to catching up next year and getting some new information. >> Thanks. >> He's Lou, I'm Jeff, thanks for watchin', we're in Seattle, signing off from AWS IMAGINE educate, See ya next time. (upbeat techno music)

>> From the Amazon Meeting Center, in downtown Seattle, it's theCUBE. Covering Imagine a Better World, a global education conference, sponsored by Amazon Web Services. >> Hey welcome back, everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in downtown Seattle at AWS Imagine Education. About 900 people from 20 countries really coming together for the first ever AWS summit from public sector group, really focused just on education. We've got a little bit of a twist here, our next guest really coming from more of the artsy side of the house, which is always great to hear from. We've got Linda Drew, she's the Vice Chancellor, and Andy Cook, the Chief Operations Officer, both from Ravensbourne University in London. Welcome. >> We're really pleased >> Thank you. to be here, really excited. >> For the people that aren't familiar with Ravensbourne, give us a little overview of the school. >> We're in the center of London in Greenwich, which is right by the river. We have about two-and-a-half-thousand students and about 250 faculty. We specialize in design, media, and technology, and the interaction, and all that kind of stuff. >> Pretty fun space to be right now. >> Absolutely gorgeous place to be. >> There's so much talk about IT and the tech and IT in operations, but there's so much neat stuff happening really more on the creative side and in the arts. Leveraging technology in all different, new ways. >> Absolutely, it's kind of hand and glove, really. All the innovation that's happening is happening with the way that tech is disrupting what's happening in the creative workspace, and vice versa really. The two things are effecting each other. >> The channels of distribution now, being so open, there's no greater time to be an artist, a creator, because your path to publishing, your path to your audience is really, really short and direct, assuming you can get their attention. >> Absolutely, I think we recognize there's a huge opportunity there for us in terms of developing a competitive advantage in the sector using new, emerging technologies to forge a new path for the institution and help educate and bridge the skills gap for industry. >> What are the things you guys do, one of the classes is broadcast production, and we were talking to all of our guys behind the cameras that nobody can see, and that again is an evolving space and you guys, it's kind of an interesting play, on one hand you're talking about Shakespearian plays, on the other hand you're looking at the newest, latest, greatest way to get that out to consumers, to viewers, to schools, while training the people in the middle with the latest and greatest tools. You guys have started a AWS Elemental Experiment. I wonder if you can give us a little bit of color on that project. >> I can start, and I'll tell you about the impact that it has, and Andy might be able to follow up on some of the technical stuff. We've had a project going with the Royal Shakespeare Company in England, and it's one of their education programs where what we do is a three-way relationship between them, their plays being shot in Stratford-upon-Avon or in London, and one aspect of what happens is that what we do is host the live program that is shot in our TV production studio and jointly the recorded program and the live action is streamed to schools, several hundred schools at a time. Some of our recent shows have been reaching upwards of 85,000 school students at a time. >> 85,000? >> Absolutely. >> That is great reach. We'd been using the more traditional technology before and that was having some issues with school teachers and others that were saying they weren't getting a great service out of the live stream, and our students were a bit frustrated with what they were learning about the streaming technologies. Since having moved to AWS Elemental, that's really increased the satisfaction both of what our students are learning but also in what they're delivering in terms of the live streamed program and because they're streaming more than one thing, because we know that they're also streaming not just the content but also the British sign language. They're also streaming signed content as well. >> Great, great. Andy, you're on the hook for actually getting these systems up and working, right? >> (laughs) Well, I'm not sure about that, but I think Linda said it all, I think the previous stack of technology that we were using in this area were not reliable, we were getting a lot of jump outs with the streams, lots of complaints from our schools. This shift to Elemental has been transformational. Lots of really complimentary feedback from the schools that are taking part in this exercise. It's been really good. >> That's good, the story over and over with cloud basically anything is that the amount of scale and resources and expertise and hardware and software that Amazon can bring to bear on your behalf compared to what you can do on you own, it's just not the same and you're a relatively small school. It's that same scale delta whether it's a medium-size company, a big company, or multi-national. These guys have that massive scale across so many customers, and you get that delivered to your doorstep. >> As you well know, there's a massive shift taking place in the broadcast industry away from the, towards IP-driven technologies, so we see this as a real opportunity to develop our curriculum, add cloud technologies in to our existing courses and go on that journey away from the more traditional technologies to a cloud-based approach. >> I'm just curious if you've adopted cloud stuff in more your standard IT practices, or where are you on that journey? Or was the client satisfaction issue on these broadcasts what accelerated that adoption faster than your normal stuff? >> I think it's been quite closely related, in some ways. It's a bit kind of chicken and egg. We were already looking at ways of enhancing our infrastructure and this kind of stuff came along at the same time, so we just say how quickly can we get to move some of this stuff for our standard operational focus. >> I think most universities are in some sort of hybrid state running on premise services with some, putting their feet gently into the water of cloud technologies, but I think we're looking at really accelerating that journey towards AWS now for our infrastructure. >> I'm curious, were you here for the keynote this morning? >> Yeah, definitely. >> Did you see the Alexa movie with the kids in the dorm room? >> Yeah. >> Really exciting. Very exciting. >> I think one of the slides really sums up our journey and thoughts around working with Amazon. It's the IT transformation piece, then there's a adoption of machine learning in terms of improving the student experience, and then there's adopting cloud courses into our curriculum, so those three areas are really where we're looking to build a relationship with Amazon. >> It's interesting to see what defines this new education experience, because the kids have different expectations, they've all grown up with apps and mobile. To your point on the attention, if something's not working, they're used to flipping to another channel, switching to another input, so if it doesn't work, you only have their attention for a short period of time. I think it is really interesting to rethink what are the actual activities that define this new engagement and this new student experience while they're in your institution, and I thought that was a really pretty slick demo. >> That was a great example, really good demo. Some of the really exciting things that have come out of us adopting this technology thus far includes some students coming to us with ideas of setting up our very own television channel that we can broadcast on campus using this technology and a way of streaming it to students' phones and tablets so that they've got content about the university and it's activities on a regular basis. >> The ROI calculation for you to execute that when it's cloud-based is very, very different, right? >> Absolutely, yes >> It's pretty simple. (all laughing) Just buy a new rack of servers and the whole to-do. I'll give you the last word, what are you hoping to get out of these couple days here, what have you seen so far, any hallway conversations that are really getting your attention? >> Hopefully, not just a deeper relationship with AWS, but the traction to help us work towards innovating on creativity and technology into the future. >> Great. >> Brilliant. >> Andy goes I'm going to go with the Chancellor, smart man. (all laughing) >> Absolutely. >> Linda and Andy, thanks again for taking a few minutes-- >> Thank you very much. >> Absolute pleasure. and hope you enjoy the rest of your time here. >> Thank you. >> (mumbles) thank you. >> She's Linda, he's Andy, I'm Jeff, you're watching theCUBE, we're at AWS Imagine Education in downtown Seattle. Thanks for watching. (electronic tones)