>> Welcome to the AWS Startup Showcase: New Breakthroughs in DevOps, Data Analytics, and Cloud Management Tools. I'm Lisa Martin. I'm pleased to welcome JT Giri, the CEO and founder of nOps, to the program. JT, welcome. It's great to have you. >> Thank you, Lisa. Glad to be here. >> Talk to me about nOps. This was founded in 2017, you're the founder. What do you guys do? >> Yeah. So just a little bit background on myself. You know, I've been migrating companies to AWS ever since EC2 was in beta. And you know, in the beginning I had to convince people like, "Hey, you should move to cloud." And the question people used to ask me, like, "Is cloud secure?" I'm glad no one is asking that question anymore. So, as I was building and migrating customers to the cloud, one of the things I realized very early on, is just cloud, there are so many resources, so many teams provisioning resources, then how do you align with your business goals? So we created nOps so that, for a mission, how do you are you build a platform where you make sure every single change and every single resource in the cloud is aligned with the business needs, right? Like we really helped people to make the right trade-offs. >> So you mentioned you've been doing this since EC2 was in beta, and we just celebrated, with AWS, EC2's 15th birthday. So you've been doing this awhile. You don't look old enough, but you've been doing this for awhile. So one of the things that I read on the website, I always love to understand messaging, that nOps says about itself, "The first cloud ops platform "designed to sync revenue growth across your teams." Talk to me about how you do that. >> Yeah. So one of the problems we see in the market right now, there are a lot of tools, there are a lot of dashboards that shows like, "Hey, you have this many issues, "here's the opportunity to fix issues. "And here are the security issues." We're more focused on how do we take those issues from a backlog and fixing those issues. Right? So our focus is more on operationalizing, so your teams could actually own that, prioritize, and actually remediate those issues. So that's where we focus our energy. >> Got it. Let's talk about cloud ops now, and how it varies or differs from traditional cloud management. >> Yeah, I think, like I mentioned, cloud management seems to be more like visibility. And everyone knows that there are challenges in their cloud environment. But when you focus more on the operation side, what we really try to do, from an issue, how do you actually fix that issue? How do you prioritize? How do you make the right trade-offs. Right? Trade offs is important because we make a lot of decisions in the cloud when you're building your infrastructure. Sometime you might have to prioritize for costs, sometime you might have to prioritize based on the SLA. You might have to add more resources to hit your SLAs. So we really help you to prioritize. And we build sort of accountability. You know, you can create roles. Most of the time, what we noticed, I truly believe that if it's everyone's responsibility, it's no one's responsibility. You know? So what we do is we help, within the tool, to establish clear roles and responsibilities. And we show audit log of people reviewing and fixing security issues. And we show audit log of people fixing and reviewing cost issues. That's one way we're trying to bring accountability. >> I like what you said, if everyone's responsible, then really no one is. And that seems to be a persistent problem that we see in businesses across industries, is just still that challenge with aligning IT and business. And especially with the dynamics of the market, JT, that we've seen in the last 18 months, things are moving so quickly. Talk to me about how you guys have been helping companies, especially in the last 18 months, with such change to get that alignment. So that that visibility and those clear roles are established and functional. >> Yeah. You know, what we really do is obviously listen to the customers. Right? And one of the challenges we hear over and over is like, you know, I know I have issues in the cloud environment that I really need help prioritizing. And they're really looking for a framework where they can come in and say, "Okay these are the people who are responsible for security. "These are the people who are responsible for the cost." So as part of onboarding with nOps, that's one of the things you do, you define your workloads. By the way, we automatically create your workload across all your accounts. And then we allow you to move resources around if you like. But then one of the first thing we do is assign roles and responsibilities for each one of these workloads. Oh, it's been incredible to see, when you have that kind of accountability, people actually do make sure that the resources are aligned with the business needs. >> So are you seeing, I mean, that's kind of a cultural shift. That changed management is a challenging process. How are you seeing that evolve in organizations who've been used to doing things maybe in a little bit of a blinders on kind of mode? >> Yeah. Well, changed management is an area where we spent a lot of time, because in cloud, changed management is almost like a fire hose. Right? There's so many changes and you could have 20 people or 20 different teams making changes. I think what people really want is sort of root cause analysis. Like, "Hey, this is what changed here. "Here's why it changed. "And here's how actions we could take, or you could take." So this is where we focus on this, where nOps focuses on. We really help people to show the root cause analysis, these three, four things, these three, four changes are related to this cost increase or these security issues. And we show like a clear path on taking action on those issues. >> That's critical. The ability to show the paths, to take the action to remediate or make any changes, course corrections. As we've learned in the last 18 months, real time is no longer for so many industries, a nice-to-have. The ability to be able to pivot on the fly is a survival and thriving mechanism. So that is really key. I do want to talk about the relationship with nOps and AWS. Here we are at the AWS startup showcase. Give me a little overview on the partnership. >> It's been an incredible. Like I said, I have a long history of working with AWS, and I started a consulting company, a very, very successful one. And so I have years of working with AWS partner teams. I think it's incredible. We were the first company in this, maybe not first, maybe very early. We were part of this Well-Architected framework. And when I came out of that training, the Well-Architected training, I was so excited. I was like, "Wow, this is amazing." You know? Because, to me, whenever you're building infrastructure, you really are making trade-offs. You know, sometime you optimize for cost, sometime you optimize for reliability. So it has been incredible to work with the Well-Architected team. Or Amazon also has this, another program, called FTR: Foundational Technical Review. We've been working closely with that team. So yeah, it's been amazing to collaborate with AWS. >> It sounds pretty synergistic. Have you had a chance influence infrastructure, and some of the technical direction? >> Oh, absolutely. Yeah. We work very closely. One of the cool thing about AWS is that they do take customers' feedback very, very seriously. And, Lisa, also other way around. Right? If AWS is going to build something, having that insight into the roadmap is very beneficial. Because if they're doing it, there's no point of us trying to reinvent the wheel. So that kind of synergy is very helpful. >> That's excellent. Let's talk about customers, now. I always loved talking about customer use cases and outcomes. You guys have a great story with Uber. Walk us through what the challenges were, how nOps came in, what you deployed, and how the business is being impacted positively. >> Yeah, I think Uber and all the enterprises, they sort of have the same challenge, right? There are many teams provisioning infrastructure. How do you make sure all those resources are aligned with your business needs? And in addition to that, not only you have different teams provisioning resources, there are different workloads. And these workloads have different requirements. Right? Some are production workloads, some are just maybe task workloads. So one of the things Uber did, they really embraced sort of nOps' way of managing infrastructure, building accountability, sharing these dashboards with all the different teams. And it was incredible, because within first 30 days they were able to save up to 15%. This was in their autonomous vehicle unit. And they spent a lot of money. And having to see that kind of cost saving, it was just amazing. And we see this over and over. And so like when customers are using platform, it's just incredible how much cost savings are there. >> So Uber, you said, in their autonomous vehicle department saved 15% in just the first 30 days alone. And you said that's a common positive business outcome that you're seeing from customers across industries, is that immediate cost savings. Tell me a little bit more about that as a differentiator of nOps' business. >> Yeah. Because as I mentioned earlier, one of the things we do, we bring accountability. Right? Most of the time when people, before nOps, maybe there are resources that are not accounted for. There is not clear owners, there's no budgets, there's no chargebacks. So I do think that's a huge differentiator of nOps, because, as part of onboarding, as you establish these roles and these responsibilities, you find so much unaccounted resources. And sometimes you don't even need those resources, and you shut them down. And those are the easiest next steps. Right? Like, you don't need to architect, you just shut it down. Like no one needs these resources. So that, I do believe, that's our strength. And we were able to demonstrate this over and over, this, on average, 15-30% cost saving in the first month or so. >> That's excellent. That's a lot of what customers, especially these days, are looking for, is cost optimization across the organization. What are some of the things that you've seen, that nOps has experienced in the last 18 months, with so much acceleration? Anything that surprised you, any industries that you see as really leading edge here, or prime candidates for your technology? >> Yeah. A couple of things. We see a lot of partners, a lot of other consulting company, leveraging nOps as a part of their offering. That's been amazing, we have a lot of partners who really leverage nOps as a go to market and ongoing management of their customers. And I do see that shift from the customer side as well. I think the complexity of cloud continues to kind of increase, like you just mentioned, it sounds like from last 18 months, it accelerated even more. How do you stay up to date, you know? And how do you always make sure that you're following best practices? So companies bring in partners to help them implement solutions. And then these partners are leveraging tools like nOps. And we've seen a lot of momentum around that. >> Tell me a little bit about how partners are leveraging nOps. What are some of the synergistic benefits on both sides? >> Yeah, so normally partners leverage nOps, you know, they will use it for Well-Architected assessments. And, you know, I've personally done a lot of these Well-Architected assessments. And, you know, early on, I kind of learned that, assessments are only good if you're able to move forward with fixing issues in the customer's environment. So what we really do, we really help customers, or sorry, we really help partners to actually do these Well-Architected assessments automatically. We auto discover issues, and then we help them to create proposals so they can present it to the customers like, "Hey, here are the five things we can help you with, "and here's how much it will cost." And, you know, we really streamline that whole process. And it's amazing that some partners used to take like days to do these assessments. Now they can do it an hour. And we also increase the close rate on SoW's because they are a lot more clear. You know, like here are the issues and here's how we can help you to fix those issues. >> You got some great business metrics there, in terms of speed and reduction in cost, reduction in speed. But it sounds like what you're doing is helping those partners build a business case for their customers far more efficiently and more clearly than they've ever been able to do before. >> Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. And... >> Go ahead. >> Yeah, so absolutely. Before nOps, everyone is using spreadsheets most of the time. Right? It's spreadsheets to collect information, and emails back and forth. And after the partner's start using nOps, they use nOps to facilitate these assessments. And once they have these customers as ongoing customers, they use nOps for checks and balances to make sure they're constantly aligned. Right? And we have a lot of success of having real revenue impact on partners' business, by leveraging nOps. >> Excellent. That's true value and true trust there. Last question. Where can you point folks, a CTA or URL that you want people to go to to learn more about nOps? >> Yeah. Basically just go to nops.io and just put on signup. Yeah. I love doing this stuff. I love talking to the customers. Feel free to reach out to me, as well: jt@nops. I would love to have a conversation. But yeah, just nops.io is the best place to get started. >> Awesome, nops.io. And I can hear enthusiasm for this, and your genuineness comes through the zoom screen here, JT. I totally thought that the whole time. Thank you for talking to me about nOps, how you guys are helping organizations really embrace cloud ops and evolve from traditional cloud management tools. We appreciate your time. >> Thanks, Lisa. >> For JT Giri, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the AWS Startup Showcase.