>>from around the globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent 2020 sponsored by Intel and AWS. Yeah, welcome to the Cubes Live coverage of AWS reinvent 2020. I'm Lisa Martin and I have a Cube alumni joining me Next. Aaron Kelly, the GM of product marketing at AWS Aaron. Welcome back to the program. >>Thanks, Lisa. It's great to be here. >>Likewise, even though we don't get to all be crammed into Las Vegas together, uh, excited to talk to you about Amazon Connect, talk to our audience about what that is. And then let's talk about it in terms of how it's been a big facilitator during this interesting year, that is 2020. >>Great, yes, for sure. So Amazon Connect is a cloud contact center where we're really looking to really reinvent how contact centers work by bringing it into the cloud. It's an Omni Channel, easy to use contact center that allows customers to spin up contact centers in minutes instead of months. Its very scalable so can scale to 10 tens of thousands of agents. But it also scaled down when you when it's not in use and because it's got a pay as you go business model. You only pay when you're engaging with collars or customers. You're not paying for high upfront per agent fees every month. So it's really been a great service during this pandemic, as there's been a lot of unpredictable spikes in demand, uh, that customers have had to deal with across many sectors, >>and we've been talking for months now about the acceleration that Corbett has delivered with respect to digital transformation. And, of course, as patients has been wearing fin globally. I think with everybody when we're calling a contact center, we want a resolution quickly. And of course, as we all know is we all in any industry are working from home. So are they. So I can imagine during this time that being able to have a cloud contact center has been transformative, I guess, to help some businesses keep the lights on. But now to really be successful moving forward, knowing that they can operate and scale up or down as things change. >>Yeah, that's exactly right. And so one of the key benefits of connect his ability to very quickly on board and get started, you know, we have some very interesting and examples like Morrisons, which is a retailer in the UK They wanted to create a new service as you highlighted, which was a door, you know, doorstep delivery service. And so they needed to spin up a quick new contact center in order to handle those orders. They were able to do it and move all their agents remotely in about a day and be able to immediately start to take those orders, which is really powerful, you know. Another interesting example is the Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training. Which part of their responsibility is to deliver unemployment benefits for their citizens? Obviously a huge surge of demand there they were able to build an entirely new context center in about nine days to support their citizens. They went from a knave ridge of about 74 call volume sort of capacity per minute to 1000 call on capacity per minute. And in the first day of standing up this new context center, they were able to serve 75,000 Rhode Island citizens with their unemployment benefits. So really ah, great example of having that cloud scalability that ability to bring agents remotely and then helping citizens in need during a very, very difficult time, >>right? So a lot of uses private sector, public sector. What are some of the new capabilities of Amazon connected? You're announcing at reinvent. >>Yeah, So we announced five big capabilities this during reinvent yesterday that really spanned the entire experience, and our goal is to make it better for agents so they're more efficient. That actually helps customers reduce their costs but also create a better collar experience so that C sat could go up in the collars, can get what they need quickly and then move on. And so the first capability is Amazon Connect Voice I D, which makes it easier to validate that the person calling is who in fact, they say they are so in this case, Lee. So let's say you're calling in. You can opt in tow, have a voice print made of you. The next time you call in, we're able to use machine learning to match that voiceprint to know. Yes, it is Lisa. I don't need to ask Lisa questions about her mother's maiden name and Social Security number. We can validate you quickly as an agent I'm confident it's you. So I'm less concerned about things like fraud, and we can move on. That's the first great new feature. The second is Amazon Connect customer profiles. So now, once you join the call rather than me is an agent having to click around a different systems and find out your order history, etcetera. I could get that all surface to me directly. So I have that context. I can create a more personalized experience and move faster through the call. The third one is called Wisdom. It's Amazon Connect wisdom, which now based on either what you're asking me or a search that I might make, I could get answers to your questions. Push to me using machine learning. So if you may be asking about a refund policy or the next time a new product may launch, I may not know rather than clicking around and sort of finding that in the different systems is pushed right to me. Um, now the Fourth Feet feature is really time capability of contact lens for Amazon connect, and what this does is while you were having our conversation, it measures the sentiment based on what you're saying or any keywords. So let's say you called it and said, I want a refund or I want to cancel That keyword will trigger a new alert to my supervisor who can see that this call may be going in the wrong direction. Let me go help Aaron with Lisa. Maybe there's a special offer I can provide or extra assistance so I can help turn that call around and create a great customer experience, which right now it feels like it's not going in that direction. And then the last one is, um, Amazon Connect tasks where about half of an agents time is spent on task other than the call follow up items. So you're looking for a refund or you want me Thio to ship you a new version of the product or something? Well, today I might write that on a sticky note or send myself a reminder and email. It's not very tracked very well. With Amazon Connect task, I can create that task for me as a supervisor. I could then X signed those tax and I can make sure that the follow up items air prioritized. And then when I look at my work. You is an agent. I can see both calls, my chats and my task, which allows me to be more efficient. That allows me to follow up faster with you. My customer, Andi. Overall, it's gonna help lower the cost and efficiency of the Contact Center. So we're really excited about all five of these features and how they improve the entire life cycle of a customer contact. >>And that could be table stakes for any business in terms of customer satisfaction. You talked about that, but I always say, You know, customer satisfaction is inextricably linked to employee satisfaction. They need. The agents need to be empowered with that information and really time, but also to be able to look at. I want them to know why I'm calling. They should already know what I have. We have that growing expectation right as a consumer. So the agent experience the customer experience. You've also really streamline. And I could just see this being something that is like I said, kind of table stakes for an organization to reduce churn, to be able to service more customers in a shorter amount of time and also employee satisfaction, right, >>right that's that. That's exactly right. Trader Grills, which is one of our, you know, beta customers using some of these capabilities. You know, they're saying 25% faster, handle times so shorter calls and a 10% increase in customer satisfaction because now it's personalized. When you call in, I know what grill you purchased. And so I have a sense based on the grill, you purchase just what your question might be or what you know, what special offers I might have available to me and that's all pushed to me is an agent, So I feel more empowered. I could give you better service. You have, you know, greater loyalty towards my brand, which is a win for everyone, >>absolutely that empowerment of the agent, that personalization for the customer. I think again we have that growing demanded expectation that you should know why I'm calling, and you should be able to solve my problem. If you can't, I'm gonna turn and find somebody else who can do that. That's a huge risk that businesses face. Let's talk about some of the trends that you're seeing that this has been a very interesting year to say the least, what are some of the trends in the context center space that you guys were seeing that you're working Thio to help facilitate? >>Yeah, absolutely. So I think one of the biggest trends that we're seeing is this move towards remote work. So as you can imagine, with the pandemic almost immediately, most customers needed to quickly move their agents to remote work scenario. And this is where Amazon Connect was a great benefit. For as I mentioned before, we saw about 5000 new contact centers created in March in April. Um, Atiya, very beginning of the pandemic. So that was a very, uh, that's a very big trend we're seeing. And now what we're seeing is customers were saying, Hey, when I have something like Amazon Connect that's in the cloud, it scales up. It provides me a great experience. I just need really a headset in a Internet connection from my agents. I'm not dealing with VPNs and, ah, lot of the complexity that comes with trying to move on on premises system remote. We're seeing a huge, you know, search of adoption and usage around that the ability to very quickly create a new context center around specific scenarios are use cases has been really, really powerful. So, uh, those are the big trends moving to remote remote work and a trend towards, um, spinning of new context that is quickly and then spending them back down as that demand moves or or those those those situations move >>right. And as we're all experiencing, the one thing that is a given during this time is the uncertainty that remains Skilling up. Skilling down volume changes. But looking as if a lot of what's currently going on from home is going to stay for a while longer, I actually not think about it. I'm calling into whether it's, you know, cable service or whatnot. I think What about agent is actually on their couch at home like I am working? And so I think it's being able to facilitate that because is transformative, and I think I think I'll step out on limbs side, you know, very potentially impact the winners and the losers of tomorrow, making sure that the consumer experience is tailored. It's personalized to your point and that the agents are empowered in real time to facilitate a seamless and fast resolution of whatever the issue is. >>Well, and I think you hit on it earlier as well. Agents wanna be helpful. They wanna solve a customer problem. They wanna have that information at their fingertips. They wanna be on power to take action. Because at the end of their day, they want to feel like they helped people, right? And so being able to give them that information safe from wisdom or being able to see your entire customer profile, Right? Right. When you come on board or know that you are Lisa, um, and have the confidence that I'm talking to Lisa, I'm not. This is not some sort of, you know, fishing, exercise, exercise. These are all really important scenarios and features that empower the agent, lowers cost significantly for the customer and creates a much better customer experience for you. The collar? >>Absolutely. And we all know how important that is these days to get some sort of satisfying experience. Last question. Erin, talk to us about, you know, as we all look forward, Thio 2021. For many reasons. What can we expect with Amazon? Connect? >>Well, we're going to continue to listen to our customers and hear their feedback and what they need, which what we certainly anticipate is continued focus on that agent efficiency, giving agents mawr of the information they need to be successful and answer customers questions quickly, continuing to invest in machine learning as a way of doing that. So using ML to identify that you are who you say you are, finding that right information. Getting data that I can use is an agent Thio. Handle those tasks and then automate the things that you know I really shouldn't have to take steps is a human to go do so if we need to send you a follow up email when when your product ships or when your refund is issued. Let me just put that in the system once and have it happened when it executes. So that level of automation continuing to bring machine learning in to make the agent experience better and more efficient, which ultimate leads to lower costs and better see set. These are all the investments. You'll see a sui continue for it next year. >>Excellent stuff, Erin, thank you so much for joining me on the program today, ensuring what's next and the potential the impact that Amazon connect is making. >>Thanks, Lisa. It's great to be here >>for Aaron Kelly. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the cubes. Live coverage of AWS reinvent 2020.

>> Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE! Covering AWS re:Invent 2018. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services, Intel, and their ecosystem partners. >> Hey, welcome back everyone! It's theCUBE's live coverage, day two, of three days of wall-to-wall coverage. Keynotes, amazing announcements, great vibe here. Again, 52,000 people here at Amazon re:Invent, I'm John Furrier, my co-host Dave Vellante, we're here again, 6th year, just an amazing amount of content, two sets Eron Kelly is the General Manager of the Enterprise Services Marketing Basically part of marketing for Lilac Groups a lot of the areas. Great to have you on theCUBE. Thanks for spending the time! >> It's great to be here John and Dave, I really appreciate it. >> Alright so, how hard is your job? (all men laugh) I mean we were just doing an analysis of Andy's keynote and there's so much to talk about you have so many things under your purview. You have a broad portfolio of Amazon services It's really crazy good for you guys, the business is going great, highly profitable How do you do it all? How do keep track of it? What's your favorite child? Tell us >> It's a great point, there's so much going on and the speed and the pace of innovation but it's exactly what builders are looking for, right? They want to be able to come to AWS and not have to compromise. Because they want to see every tool that they need for every job And so for me I have a pretty broad portfolio I've really been excited this week about a lot of our compute announcements, right? So our announcements around our new instance family with A1 based on some custom silicon AWS Graviton processor Really excited about that Bringing the Arm community to the Cloud for the first time, we're jazzed about that one. >> And that motivation there is lowering costs for Arm-based apps, right? >> It's really two-fold, right? It's bringing the Arm community to the cloud It's the first time we've got an Arm processor in a large Cloud provider, so giving them that scale-up, elasticity, pay-for-what-you-use kind of model but then the second thing is lowering costs for customers for scale-out workloads so things like web tiers containerized microservices and you know in the general purpose area customers, we think they can save up to 45% which is meaningful, so we're really excited about that. That's been a really neat announcement a neat project we've been working on for a while. I would also say in the area of Compute We've added 100GB networking to a couple of our Instance types. C5n based on Intel processors and that's really been the workhorse in the HPC community and now with 100 GB of networking we're going to be able to do even more processing, more power, more advanced scenarios there And it's kind of an interesting dialogue, right? The more data you have, the more compute you need and it creates this virtuous cycle and one of the gaps was networking, so bringing 100GB It really allows those Intel chips to run >> Well, Big Data guys are going to eat that up to, I would think I mean, the links between Big Data and HPC become clearer >> Exactly right. >> Talk about the latency thing Andy talked to me last Monday about this I had a long conversation with him about it Latency matters, you guys listen to customers. Networking, you mentioned a key part of the flywheel Compute storage networking obviously morphing with the Cloud while you guys are optimizing and raising the bar. How are you guys handling the latency question? Because this comes up a lot You got the On-premises piece now you guys are doing things in the Cloud How do you market that service? How do you handle the latency? Talk about the role of latency in the portfolio. >> There's a couple things in there The first one, what I would highlight is Latency within an HPC environment or a machine learning environment and so that's where again this 100GB networking has been really powerful. We've also announced a new networking feature or protocol, Elastic Fabric Adapter which actually allows you to go even faster now in some networking scenarios, which is particularly interesting, again, in HPC So we've really worked hard in reducing the latency throughout the data centers for these higher end compute scenarios. >> Well, you have the custom silicon I wanted to just take you through this because EC2 has always been great, but setting up an Instance could take 10 seconds. Lambda now you can do it in hundreds of milliseconds. By having the custom silicon, How does that impact the network stack? Because I would imagine that the performance gains on having kind of a custom silicon around EC2 and the Compute, would be a gamechanger for running things under the covers, for instance, like a Vmware or managing security boundaries issues, what's the... >> So we made these investments a few years ago with the Nitro system, Where we took a look at the current Instance environment and said hey if we can offload some of that computer networking to a purpose-built chips on those cards we can actually free up more capacity for those processors to run faster and give you more value basically for each Instance type. So that was part of the beginning of Annapurna Labs and the Nitro system was offloading this networking into those custom built chips. That's the start and then what we've done is the Nitro system has allowed us to innovate much faster So we've added three times more Instances this year than last year because we're building on the Nitro system Graviton processor is just one more example We've added new processors from AMD And of course we've continued to advance with our Intel chip set as well. >> Talk about, I just want to just change gears for a bit Because you're in product marketing Executive General Manager Andy talks about the new way the culture at Amazon Old guard, new guard... Traditional product marketing, you can take a product you can bring it to market, waterfall it out at the beach and then you do all the activities How do you raise the bar in your job where you got to go out and take not just products, this is services now so you have a series of, a lot of services How does that change how you do product marketing? And how's that different from people who might not know how you guys operate? Talk a little about the culture of product marketing at Amazon. >> Sure, yeah. So I would say first and foremost it's all about education, right? So we really want to make sure that whenever where there's a new service that comes out we're super clear on what does it do what is the benefit and how can customers take advantage of it. And we're trying to position it in a way We like to say internally, sort of a non-technical CIO can understand So whenever you look at a new service You look at our detail pages. We put a tremendous amount of rigor and clarity We make it very simple, make the value pop clear I think the second thing we're starting to do and we're seeing it reflected in our products as well Is how can we tell more aggregated stories? So today during the Keynote, You saw Andy talk about abstractions, right? And one of the first ones he mentioned was Control Tower, which is one of my products So I got a little passionate around it. But what's interesting about that is that customers are coming to us and saying OK, I love the AWS, I love all these tools I love the granularity of managing things at a certain level and setting policies at a certain level But you guys have thousands, millions of customers running AWS, what's the right way to set up my environment? Can you give me a blueprint to do it? To set it up and run it in a very secure and compliant way. So Control Tower is a great example of a both a service that helps you do that as well as a marketing message that says Hey, let's look at this now in totality Let's you set up these environments faster based on best practices and now you can control in a much easier way. >> So you're basically trying to simplify the message so it's not speeds and feeds >> Well, what I would say is we want to simplify the message so that everyone can understand but we don't want to lose track of those builders those tinkerers that get in there, they want the speeds and feeds, they want the nobs and part of their differentiation as a developer is understanding all the details So we want to have both. >> It's also trying to help people figure out what to use where. As your portfolio grows and grows and grows the complexity becomes amazing for some people And Tailgate helped me figure out mapping to my workload, what to use where what's the best cost solution sometimes it's hard to figure that stuff out, isn't it? >> Yeah, well, it's again, it's this balance between We want to be able to provide the right tool for the right job I think Andy had a nice analogy today in the Keynote Where he talked about building fixing a house with just a hammer, right? And instead you're going to want to have that right tool for that right job And so part of our job in Product Marketing is making it very clear When do I use this particular Instance type versus this versus this? What are the trade-offs? And that's a key part of our job. >> And that resonates with people because there's a lot of redundancy in tools, too in the marketplace, people, a lot of them have the same tool the same hammer and you guys have a variety of services. So the question I got to ask you though As you look at the services and Amazon's role here at the event How would you summarize what's going on here? Because there's so much, Andy had a slide up there that said "Signal from the noise" and that's our phrase Extracting the signal from the noise which is kind of fun, but you have so much signal this noise and there's too much signal how would you encapsulate, for someone watching, what is happening this year? Where is Amazon for customers? What's the positioning? How should they think about, you mention builders? How would you summarize what the action is going on here? >> Right, so I would talk about it like this First and foremost, I would say we're adding more capability and building the broadest and deepest platform so that builders can always, they never have to compromise they always can find the right tool they need for the right job. So first and foremost, that speed of innovation that pace of innovation is continued and if there was one message that people should take away is Wow! They are still innovating like crazy they have an amazing amount of technology and so I don't have to compromise when it comes to datalinks. So that's kind of the first main message. Then I think the second thing I would say which kind of follows on that is OK but we also recognize that we've got a lot of services and now we need to start to build some services that bring these together and again Control Tower is a great example of that Lake Foundation is a great example of that for datalinks. And so that's sort of the second thing we are starting to create services that are abstraction layers that bring together a lot of the details to solve very specific problems. The third thrust that I would highlight is just the amazing focus around machine learning and AI and just how that has been such a key investment area for us and such a key ask for our customers and our mission there is to just democratize it. We want every builder to able to bring machine learning and add it to their solutions. And the number of services you saw announced today in the keynote as well as some earlier this week and last week just shows that our commitment and focus on that >> And extending EC2 to support some of that stuff >> Exactly right >> And the training and the like >> I'm a Star Trek fan so I always go to Scotty Scotty, more power! You guys are bringing more power to the table with each Compute and these abstractions. I want to get your thoughts on something that I talked with Andy about in depth last week before the show, and we were riffing on this notion of a new kind of Developer emerging and he talked about in the keynote, a new persona of developer, A new kind of developer is emerging. And he also kind of talked about net new workloads I wrote about it in my stories on SiliconANGLE in the forums about it, which is this all this goodness going on at the abstraction layer with a lot of horsepower enabling things that were hard to do. AI's a great example AI's been around since I was in college in the 80's and 90's and now it's rose up with power What are some of those persona developers look like? How do you look at that net new workloads? What's your reaction to that? Because this seems to be a big trend that's not your old school developer banging out code now there's OpenSource communities, we got that but in the working day and life of companies people are building apps. What's this new persona developer look like? >> Well, there's different personalities, right? There's the core tinkerer like you talked about there's now the data scientist that's coming in and taking advantage of these machine learning tools. You have kind of a cloud administrator that's kind of trying to look across everything and they want to build as well, right? They don't just want to sit there and manage the dashboards, they want to build as well and so we're seeing that in some of those personas. of course, app developers is another big part of it. >> Now you could talk to Firecracker too, right? >> We could talk a little bit, yeah >> So I met with Adrian yesterday and of course people used to poke at Amazon a lot hey, what about Open-source, you guys giving back to Open-source? And so Firecracker explain that and sort of what you guys are doing there and specifically in Open-source? >> So that's a great example of where we had some technology, and what Firecracker is it's a container for microservices that can run in a non-virtualized environment and we've used it as the underpinning for Lambda and Fargate And we looked at it and we said you know what? We want more people to be able to take advantage of this because it's about saving money it's about improving security. And so we decided to open-source it. And so that was one of our announcements on Monday was open-sourcing Firecracker and making it available to the community and so we're really excited about it. >> One of the things I want to ask you as we wrap up here, first of all great job on all the work you've done at Amazon impressive to see the level of services >> Thank you! That you guys are announcing and it's become a competitive advantage and you've got a great trajectory a lot of learnings and as Andy says there's time compression for experience and time which is good for a competitive strategy but as you look forward to 2019 What's your plan? What are your goals? How are you going to raise the bar? The term you guys use a lot. What's your goals? What are you trying to accomplish? >> You know the number one thing that we spend our time on is listening to customers and saying what's next? What do you need next, right? 90% of our innovation comes from customer input and so now we got a new wave of services we're introducing we're going to spend time with customers they're going to give us feedback we're going to make those services better and then we're going to find new places where they want us to go so next year is going to be just as exciting as this year and next year when I see you guys here we're going to be talking about a whole new wave of things coming out, it's been fun. >> You're certainly running hard and the other thing I've noticed in learning how Amazon works and getting deeper under the covers there you got a growing field, great professional services and a sales force that is not trying to grab the wallet from the customer you guys have a long game perspective >> That's right >> Carla, had a great conversation with her about this you have to service that How are you going to enable these guys You mentioned education earlier this is a big part of your plan, right? The integration with the field how does that work? You going to provide the messaging all the tools...how..cuz that's grow you've got to service that What's your perspective on the field >> Oh for sure, you're highlighting my Q1 goals right now It's really important to dial up that connection because as we get more and more services our field sellers, what's great about our field teams is that they're so aligned to customer needs So they don't carry specific quotas on individual products and things like that they're really focused on hey, what do ya need? And how can use the full portfolio to help you out? And so part of our challenge as a product marketer is not only educating customers on our products but educating the field on our products and which ones are most viable for which scenario and so that's a big part of our focus as well within the product marketing function is hey how do we really nail these scenarios very crisp, very compelling both for the customer and field seller to say ooh I saw that pattern in a customer! Let me go bring this technology forward and talk to them about it, so really excited about next year and you hit on something else that I think is really important which is this long term view, is our sales teams have always taken a long term view with customers they're not sitting there at the end of the Quarter trying to, you know, close the deal it's all about that long term view And it's allowed us to make some of these investments we've had, we've made >> You guys also use your own technology too I noticed a lot of the different groups You've got all the goodness of Cloud. You got to use some of that tech You've probably got some machine learning waiting around the AI bots and all kinds of cool tools you're integrating in dog-fooding or what do they call it? >> I mean, the reason why we're able to add so many services every year is that we build on our own platform, right? So you can have a very small team we talk about the two pizza team A very small team is able to build these services because they use AWS and in its entirety. And so it's very very exciting as these things get connected Like last week we talked about a predictive auto-scaling, so one of the features Auto-scaling's been a pretty popular feature over the years where people can scale up and scale down a large fleet of EC2 Instances but now we've added machine learning to that where it will now predict when the scaling should happen. So it allows you to scale up your EC2 Instances ahead of time based on historical patterns. So there's ML coming into everything we do. >> And server-less is booming too you know, that's going to be a big part of your focus by the way, you mention the Fleets I love this, we haven't talked about it much on theCUBE, but this notion of fleets is pretty powerful Having just a bunch of fleets of servers ready to go >> Ready to go and being able to manage across the different pricing models is also very, very powerful. I want to really ramp up very very quickly take advantage of those spot instances in those moments with really big cost savings as well as ramp back down >> Hey, keep adding functionality keep removing all the barriers lowering the price, making it high performance and I love that business model a lot of companies don't have that so Congratulations! >> You know, we just always want to add more we want to give customers more tools so they can have the right tool for the right job we want to give them the most powerful platform so they can do the highest end things as well as give them scenarios where hey, it's a little bit lower cost and it's for smaller workloads we don't want to overpay and be over-provisioned that's a key part of our strategy. >> I want it all and I want it now >> That's right! >> Well, you did a good job on the messaging Andy wants to mention builders and right tool for the job I think there's a drinking game going on on that he mentioned multiple times Congratulations Eron Kelly, Thank you! >> Thanks John and Dave, Really appreciate your time on theCUBE. >> General Manager Amazon Product Marketing here inside theCUBE, breaking down what's going on, what's his goals how Amazon keeps up with the pace Good insight I'm John Furrier, Dave Vellante Stay with us for more coverage after this short break. 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