(upbeat music) >> Hello, welcome to theCUBE's presentation of Women in Tech, Global Event, celebrating International Women's Day. I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE here in Palo Alto, California. We got two great guests. Cindy Polin, head of Solution Architects for Public Sector in Mexico for AWS. And Fernanda Spinardi, who's also the head of Solution Architects for Public Sector in Brazil, both with AWS. Thanks for coming, appreciate your time. >> Thanks for the invitation. >> Thank you, John. >> So we're celebrating International Women's Day this week, and this month, and pretty much every day, I think we're going to be doing a lot of good stuff. But today's a special day. And talking about people's careers, their roles, the gender gap, is a big theme this year. These are all the topics that are going on and being discussed. So, it's a been a lot of fun when learning a lot, I have to ask you guys with AWS, Cindy we'll start with you. How is AWS addressing the gender gap in its technical teams? Because solution architects, they're technical. And we need more women in there. How is AWS addressing the gender gap with its technical teams? >> Yes, for sure, thank you very much. Let me start with a quick note about what is the situation in Mexico. Let me go first into a report published by IMCO, and this is talking about this gender gaps in a STEM career. So let me tell you that three out of 10 professionals who choose careers related with the STEM, with the science technology, engineering and mathematics, are women. So, can you imagine this difference, It's really critical because for sure, we have few women. And in the moment that you try to reach people, to be part of the company, it's difficult. So it's important for AWS to be very very supportive in this initiative and also to be supporting diverse teams. So, that's why we are very supportive in bringing diverse talent in the company. >> There's a lot of focus on getting people early into the pipe lining. Is that some another big area? Did the study show anything there? >> Well, basically it's that we are studying to push harder, to bring more information to the ladies, to the women in general. And also to start developing the technical skills. Because it's really difficult and in the moment that you try to do this, it start like seeing these behaviors or stigmas about this is only for men, it's not for women. So we are trying to start breaking this point in general. >> Fernanda, we had a great chat about Latin America reinvent on theCUBE with your leader over there and, we were talking about the broader community and how you guys are partnering with external organizations and customers. How is Amazon Web Services, AWS, aiming to foster better balance and gender balance and technology partnerships in Latin America? >> Sure, so while the situation in Brazil is not different from the situation that Cindy was mentioning in Mexico right? Our research shows that women only represent around 37% of the workforce where in the country we have over 51-52% of women as part of our population. While we can take this from a gap perspective, also, we can take it from an opportunity perspective. There is such a huge unexplored workforce that we can bring to be part of AWS in the technology world, right? So for us on AWS and Amazon, it's part part of our day one culture. So we are still learning, right? And we are still trying, experimenting to see how we can bring more women to the tech world. One of the things that we are investing in Brazil and in Latin America, are the early in career talent programs. This is something that we have the opportunity to work with the students. And in LATAM, it's a little bit different from the US. We have the opportunity to work with them for one year sometimes for two years in a role while they work they are still in the university and we prepare that talent really early in their career and bring them to be part of Amazon. So yeah, I'm super excited with those programs, I can, talk more about it, but this is one of the initiatives that we are betting that will maybe be a game changer for us in the technology. >> Yeah, those are very interesting stats, 37% of the workers in country where women represent over half of the population. So definitely a lot of work to be done. I got to ask both of you. Amazon has a leadership principle that says that they want to strive to be the world's, or earth's best employer earth being, Earth Day and all that sustainability as well. Diversity, inclusion and equity is a big part of that mission more. And also Amazon's also known for high performing work environment. So, so having the best diversity and inclusion you know, is a, is a, as some say and many are saying is a force multiplier in performance. How is that going in your areas? Can you talk about how the culture that you're in, the countries that you're in and the Amazonian leadership principles tie together? Can you share your thoughts and experiences? >> Sure. I can, I can get started maybe with that one. So, although we have a new leadership principle from my perspective, we have we have always had leadership principles that foster diversity and, and inclusion, right. Pick up, earn trust as an example like it says, listen carefully, right. And speak candidly, this is for me it's the baseline for any, any inclusion conversation. Right. And also you have things like have backbone, disagree and commit. Like you are empowering people to actually have an opinion and bring back that opinion and be heard. Right. So it was already there. I think the thing now is that we have a very specific leadership principle so that there is no, no room for interpretation. Right. It's right there saying that there is a mission a mission to, to be the best employer. Right. And, and I'm, I'm very excited about it. >> John: Cindy, share your thoughts too. I like that comment because you know, Amazon culture's known for, you know, debate then align. Okay. And now you got that cultural factor. Now it's in the leadership principle. What's your reaction? >> Yes. And, and let me add a comment on that about Fernanda's point is that this LP is giving us like the empower to give this environment to prepare, to to give this space to the team and also to be more creative. And also to be more diverse is really important for us to have this space with a lot of empathy, with the in the space to have a lot of fun. And it's important to keep all the time in mind that are we doing the right thing for our employees? Are we are empowering them to be the best of, of the world? So, that is something that is critical for us and, and well that is something that we are right now working on it. >> Okay. So first of all I'm very impressed by both of you. You're inspiring. And I can also tell you that being a solution architect is not an easy job. But it's also in high demand. A lot of people want to, they need solution architects. It's one of the most coveted positions in the industry right now. So how do we get more women in that role? What ideas do you guys have besides being great role models, yourselves? How do we get more solution architects? Because it's super valuable and everyone wants to hire them. >> Fernanda, did you want to start? >> It's you guys. >> You touched a very important point, John. It's about having, having good examples. Like, I mean, it's about you seeing yourself in the role right? You, you believing that it's, it's possible. It's for everyone. If you have a spirit where you, you want to build things if you have this spirit of exploring new possibilities if you like to experiment, well, then you have all that we need in a solution architect, right? It's just then a matter of, you know, know learning technical, learning technology, technical stuff. But this is, this is about having fun on your journey as as a solution architect as well. >> And, and let me tell you something that we are also investing in trainings. Training is online for the for the women that they are, that has this interest that they want to learn more about the technology. They want to have a deeper knowledge about the technical stuff. So we are supporting these initiatives and that is something that they can do background and in their own pace. >> And this is an important role because they need the leadership as head of solution architects. It's a good thing. Is, is there any ways that you found that's a best practice for identifying or advice for people to know if they have what it takes or they have an affinity towards technology? Sometimes it's math. Because cloud is great levels it out. I mean, cloud is new, is more jobs open now that didn't exist years ago, couple years ago. So anyone can rise to the top. >> Yeah. I think that's the beauty of the cloud. There is so much space when we say technology I think this is such a, a broad word, right? It means so much, right. It can be someone that likes to develop code. It can be someone that likes to work with infrastructure. It can be someone that likes machine learning or databases or someone that is inspired about applications for the education world or to research genomes or cure cancer. So, yeah, I don't think that there is like any more like a specific profile. I think it's very open for everyone to explore what they love doing. And even from a technology perspective AWS is working to simplify access to the technology. If we take our services on machine learning. For instance, they are for people, for business people like you don't have to know much about algorithms, right. To use some of the AWS services. So I think we're experiencing the democratization of the technology, and with that more opportunity for people to join us. >> A lot of people are changing careers into cloud. So Cindy, I want to ask you guys also if you can share how the mentoring process works there. Is there mentoring? How does that work? Do you match people? Have you found a nice formula for providing some mentoring and some pathways as people come in? >> Yes, we have many ways but one is very important, is that we have user groups. That is a way that we have like a community with internal and external people, and we share advices, guidance, best practices for the people that is interested in this matter. So for one side as I already mentioned, we have training online that you can reach. We have a lot of free courses. Maybe you can start jumping into artificial intelligence. IUT whatever you want to, to, to want that given them. But in the other hand, we have this option to have this kind of support. We have AWS Girl Chile user groups. We have AWS women, Colombian user groups girls in Argentina, we have many of them. We have four hundreds of user communities. So, that is the way that we can keep in touch. >> Any other programs? I mean, Amazon Web Service and Amazon has very strong representation of women. There's a lot of pockets of women groups in all over the world. How does it come together? Because you also have customers in the user groups. You have partners in the partner network. You have technologists learning. So you have this ecosystem of people. It's not just AWS. How are you guys extending that gap into those areas? >> Exactly. And those conversations are getting more and more constant with our customers, right? So we used to talk about technology, we used to talk about business problems, now we talk about diversity. We talk about improving representation and improving the sentiment of inclusion within our customers as well. And one of the things that I can bring, we have been working with a number of our customers in Brazil just to mention New Bank, one of our customers there in building programs. between AWS and the customer, where we train people, and we expose that people to the market, even if it's inside AWS, inside New Bank or any other partner in that ecosystem. So we are building talent not only for us, but for for the entire ecosystem to benefit from. >> Okay, so I have to ask you guys How did you guys get into the tech, Cindy? What was your way? Did it just jump at you? Did it grab you? Did you kind of discover it early? When did you kind of get into the tech? >> That's a good question. I was remembering this moment that when I was seven years old I just started like working with cars and also with that kind of companies, literally companies. And in that moment say, "I want to be part of this technology work." And after that in high school, I have the opportunity to touch a computer. In that moment I said, "This is the thing that I want to do in the rest of my life." >> Yeah. that's it right there. You got the diction, you taste it. Fernanda, what about you? What's your story? How did you get into it? What was the moment? Was there an exact moment or did it just surround you? >> Yeah, I think I was always curious about how things work. I was not thinking about a career in tech honestly. I was thinking about becoming a lawyer, but at some point in time just clicked, right? And I had actually to fight my way into the technical world literally because, I had this very important university close to my house, like maybe 15 minutes from my house. But at that point in time in Brazil, that particular institution was not accepting women. And believe me, it was not like a hundred years ago. Like it was.... (laughing) >> Yeah, you're young, it's just recently. >> Yeah, so I had to move out out of my hometown, back to the city, to Sao Paulo, which is our biggest city in Brazil to find a place for me on an university that would take women. So yeah, I had to fight my way into technology, but I am very proud of that I was able to. >> Yeah, you know what's great now is you have YouTube, you have all these resources, these videos are going to be going everywhere. We're going to put this out there. There's communities where people can learn and see people like themselves out in positions of leadership and technology. So more and more contents being out there. And I think hopefully no one will have to fight to get into tech. If they like it, they're in it. One of the leaders at AWS she said, "We're in a nerd native environment now, the young generation is natively technical." And, I believe that, I see that. I think that's going to be a really exciting trend and seeing leaders like yourselves out there is really wonderful, so thank you for spending the time with us here on theCUBE. Final question I'll ask you, what's next for you Cindy and Fernanda? What's next in your journey? >> Okay, I think the next for me is to keep pushing the women in Mexico to keep installing and also to start thinking into what is the next step in my career? Where should I go? So I think that is the point that I want to do. >> Cindy, what's next for you? >> I feel I'm just starting. (laughing) So much to do, so much to do. I mean, there is a big business for us to make happen in Brazil right now, and we are looking for talent. So, if the video's going to go on YouTube, I would like everybody there to know that yeah, we are looking for talents in Brazil with opportunities all over the world actually. And yeah, that's building, building and building. >> And there's some rig twitch channels by the way too on some developer programmings, tons of programming, it's all out there. Congratulations, and we're looking forward to following up with you both in the future to get an update and thank you for spending the time and sharing your your stories here on theCUBE I really appreciate, thank you. >> Thank you too. >> Thank you so much. >> Okay, theCUBE presentation of Women in Tech, Global Events celebrating International Women's Day. This is the beginning of more programming. We're going to see more episodes from theCUBE, I'm John Furrier, your host. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>>From around the globe. It's the cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent 2020, sponsored by Intel and AWS. >>Welcome back to the queue. It's virtual coverage of Avis reinvent 2020 I'm John furry, your host. Um, this is a cute virtual we're here. Not in, in remote. We're not in person this year, so we're doing the remote interviews. And then this segment is going to build on the quantum conversation we had last year, Richard moles, general manager of Amazon bracket and aid was quantum computing and Fernando Brandao head of quantum algorithms at AWS and Brent professor of theoretical physics at Caltech. Fernando, thanks for coming on, Richard. Thanks for joining us. >>You're welcome to be here. >>So, Fernando, first of all, love your title, quantum algorithms. That's the coolest title I've heard so far and you're pretty smart because you're a theoretical professor of physics at Caltech. So, um, which I'd never be able to get into, but I wish I could get into there someday, but, uh, thanks for coming on. Um, quantum has been quite the rage and you know, there's a lot of people talking about it. Um, it's not ready for prime time. Some say it's moving faster than others, but where are we on quantum right now? What are, what are you, what are you seeing Fernanda where the quantum, where are peg us in the evolution of, of, uh, where we are? >>Um, yeah, what quantum, uh, it's an emerging and rapidly developing fields. Uh, but we are see where are you on, uh, both in terms of, uh, hardware development and in terms of identifying the most impactful use cases of one company. Uh, so, so it's, it's, it's early days for everyone and, and we have like, uh, different players and different technologies that are being sport. And I think it's, it's, it's early, but it's exciting time to be doing quantum computing. And, uh, and it's very interesting to see the interest in industry growing and, and customers. Uh, for example, Casa from AWS, uh, being, uh, being willing to take part in this journey with us in developmental technology. >>Awesome. Richard, last year we talked to bill Vass about this and he was, you know, he set expectations really well, I thought, but it was pretty much in classic Amazonian way. You know, it makes the announcement a lot of progress then makes me give us the update on your end. You guys now are shipping brackets available. What's the update on your end and Verner mentioned in his keynote this week >> as well. Yeah, it was a, it was great until I was really looking at your interview with bill. It was, uh, that was when we launched the launch the service a year ago, almost exactly a year ago this week. And we've come a long way. So as you mentioned, we've, uh, we've, uh, we've gone to general availability with the service now that that happened in August. So now a customer can kind of look into the, uh, to the bracket console and, uh, installed programming concept computers. You know, there's, uh, there's tremendous excitement obviously, as, as you mentioned, and Fernando mentioned, you know, quantum computers, uh, we think >>Have the potential to solve problems that are currently, uh, uh, unsolvable. Um, the goal of bracket is to fundamentally give customers the ability to, uh, to go test, uh, some of those notions to explore the technology and to just start planning for the future. You know, our goal was always to try and solve some of the problems that customers have had for, you know, gee, a decade or so now, you know, they tell us from a variety of different industries, whether it's drug discovery or financial services, whether it's energy or there's chemical engineering, machine learning, you know, th the potential for quantum computer impacts may industries could potentially be disruptive to those industries. And, uh, it's, it's essential that customers can can plan for the future, you know, build their own internal resources, become experts, hire the right staff, figure out where it might impact their business and, uh, and potentially disrupt. >>So, uh, you know, in the past they're finding it hard to, to get involved. You know, these machines are very different, different technologies building in different ways of different characteristics. Uh, the tooling is very disparate, very fragmented. Historically, it's hard for companies to get access to the machines. These tend to be, you know, owned by startups or in, you know, physics labs or universities, very difficult to get access to these things, very different commercial models. Um, and, uh, as you, as you suggested, a lot of interests, a lot of hype, a lot of claims in the industry, customers want to cut through all that. They want to understand what's real, uh, what they can do today, uh, how they can experiment and, uh, and get started. So, you know, we see bracket as a catalyst for innovation. We want to bring together end-users, um, consultants, uh, software developers, um, providers that want to host services on top of bracket, try and get the industry, you know, rubbing along them. You spoke to lots of Amazonians. I'm sure you've heard the phrase innovation flywheel, plenty of times. Um, we see the same approach that we've used successfully in IOT and robotics and machine learning and apply that same approach to content, machine learning software, to quantum computing, and to learn, to bring it together. And, uh, if we get the tooling right, and we make it easy, um, then we don't see any reason why we can't, uh, you know, rapidly try and move this industry forward. And >>It was fun areas where there's a lot of, you know, intellectual computer science, um, technology science involved in super exciting. And Amazon's supposed to some of that undifferentiated heavy. >>That's what I am, you know, it's like, >>There's a Maslow hierarchy of needs in the tech industry. You know, people say, Oh, why five people freak out when there's no wifi? You know, you can't get enough compute. Right. So, you know, um, compute is one of those things with machine learning is seeing the benefits and quantum there's so much benefits there. Um, and you guys made some announcements at, at re-invent, uh, around BRACA. Can you share just quickly share some of those updates, Richard? >>Sure. I mean, it's the way we innovate at AWS. You know, we, we start simple and we, and we build up features. We listen to customers and we learn as we go along, we try and move as quickly as possible. So since going public in, uh, in, in August, we've actually had a string of releases, uh, pretty consistent, um, delivering new features. So we try to tie not the integration with the platform. Customers have told us really very early on that they, they don't just want to play with the technology. They want to figure out how to, how to envisage a production quantum computing service, how it might look, you know, in the context of a broad cloud platform with AWS. So we've, uh, we launched some integration with, uh, other AWS capabilities around security, managing limits, quotas, tagging resources, that type of thing, things that are familiar to, uh, to, to, to current AWS users. >>Uh, we launched some new hardware. Uh, all of our partners D-Wave launched some, uh, uh, you know, a 5,000 cubit machine, uh, just in September. Uh, so we made that available on bracket the same day that they launched that hardware, which was very cool. Um, you know, we've made it, uh, we've, we've made it easier for researchers. We've been, you know, impressed how many academics and researchers have used the service, not just large corporations. Um, they want to have really deep access to these machines. They want to program these things at a low level. So we launched some features, uh, to enable them to do their research, but reinvent, we were really focused on two things, um, simulators and making it much easier to use, uh, hybrid systems systems that, uh, incorporate classical compute, traditional digital computing with quantum machinery, um, in the vein that follow some of the liens that we've seen, uh, in machine learning. >>So, uh, simulators are important. They're a very important part of, uh, learning how to use concepts, computers. They're always available 24, seven they're super convenient to use. And of course they're critical in verifying the accuracy of the results that we get from quantum hardware. When we launched the service behind free simulator for customers to help debug their circuits and experiments quickly, um, but simulating large experiments and large systems is a real challenge on classical computers. You know, it, wasn't hard on classical. Uh, then you wouldn't need a quantum computer. That's the whole point. So running large simulations, you know, is expensive in terms of resources. It's complicated. Uh, we launched a pretty powerful simulator, uh, back in August, which we thought at the time was always powerful managed. Quantum stimulates circuit handled 34 cubits, and it reinvented last week, we launched a new simulator, which actually the first managed simulator to use tensor network technology. >>And it can run up to 50 cubits. So we think is, we think is probably the most powerful, uh, managed quantum simulator on the market today. And customers can flip easily between either using real quantum hardware or either of our, uh, stimulators just by changing a line of code. Um, the other thing we launched was the ability to run these hybrid systems. You know, quantum computers will get more, no don't get onto in a moment is, uh, today's computers are very imperfect, you know, lots of errors. Um, we working, obviously the industry towards fault-tolerant machines and Fernando can talk about some research papers that were published in that area, but right now the machines are far from perfect. And, uh, and the way that we can try to squeeze as much value out of these devices today is to run them in tandem with classical systems. >>We think of the notion of a self-learning quantum algorithm, where you use a classical optimization techniques, such as we see machine learning to tweak and tune the parameters of a quantum algorithm to try and iterate and converge on the best answer and try and overcome some of these issues surrounding errors. That's a lot of moving parts to orchestrate for customers, a lot of different systems, a lot of different programming techniques. And we wanted to make that much easier. We've been impressed with a, a, an open projects, been around for a couple of years, uh, called penny lane after the Beatles song. And, um, so we wanted to double down on that. We were getting a lot of positive feedback from customers about the penny lane talk it, so we decided to, uh, uh, make it a first class citizen on bracket, make it available as a native feature, uh, in our, uh, in our Jupiter notebooks and our tutorials learning examples, um, that open source project has very similar, um, guiding principles that we do, you know, it's open, it's cross platform, it's technology agnostic, and we thought he was a great fit to the service. >>So we, uh, we announced that and made it available to customers and, uh, and, and, uh, already getting great feedback. So, uh, you know, finishing the finishing the year strongly, I think, um, looking forward to 2021, you know, looking forward to some really cool technology it's on the horizon, uh, from a hardware point of view, making it easy to use, um, you know, and always, obviously trying to work back from customer problems. And so congratulations on the success. I'm sure it's not hard to hire people interested, at least finding qualified people it'd be different, but, you know, sign me up. I love quantum great people, Fernando real quick, understanding the relationship with Caltech unique to Amazon. Um, tell us how that fits into the, into this, >>Uh, right. John S no, as I was saying, it's it's early days, uh, for, for quantum computing, uh, and to make progress, uh, in abreast, uh, put together a team of experts, right. To work both on, on find new use cases of quantum computing and also, uh, building more powerful, uh, quantum hardware. Uh, so the AWS center for quantum computing is based at Caltech. Uh, and, and this comes from the belief of AWS that, uh, in quantum computing is key to, uh, to keep close, to stay close of like fresh ideas and to the latest scientific developments. Right. And Caltech is if you're near one computing. So what's the ideal place for doing that? Uh, so in the center, we, we put together researchers and engineers, uh, from computer science, physics, and other subjects, uh, from Amazon, but also from all the academic institutions, uh, of course some context, but we also have Stanford and university of Chicago, uh, among others. So we broke wrongs, uh, in the beauty for AWS and for quantum computer in the summer, uh, and under construction right now. Uh, but, uh, as we speak, John, the team is busy, uh, uh, you know, getting stuff in, in temporary lab space that we have at cottage. >>Awesome. Great. And real quick, I know we've got some time pressure here, but you published some new research, give a quick a plug for the new research. Tell us about that. >>Um, right. So, so, you know, as part of the effort or the integration for one company, uh, we are developing a new cubix, uh, which we choose a combination of acoustic and electric components. So this kind of hybrid Aquacel execute, it has the promise for a much smaller footprint, think about like a few microliters and much longer storage times, like up to settlements, uh, which, which is a big improvement over the scale of the arts sort of writing all export based cubits, but that's not the whole story, right? On six, if you have a good security should make good use of it. Uh, so what we did in this paper, they were just put out, uh, is, is a proposal for an architecture of how to build a scalable quantum computer using these cubits. So we found from our analysis that we can get more than a 10 X overheads in the resources required from URI, a universal thought around quantum computer. >>Uh, so what are these resources? This is like a smaller number of physical cubits. Uh, this is a smaller footprint is, uh, fewer control lines in like a smaller approach and a consistent, right. And, and these are all like, uh, I think this is a solid contribution. Uh, no, it's a theoretical analysis, right? So, so the, uh, the experimental development has to come, but I think this is a solid contribution in the big challenge of scaling up this quantum systems. Uh, so, so, so John, as we speak like, uh, data blessed in the, for quantum computing is, uh, working on the experimental development of this, uh, a highly adequacy architecture, but we also keep exploring other promising ways of doing scalable quantum computers and eventually, uh, to bring a more powerful computer resources to AWS customers. >>It's kind of like machine learning and data science, the smartest people work on it. Then you democratize that. I can see where this is going. Um, Richard real quick, um, for people who want to get involved and participate or consume, what do they do? Give us the playbook real quick. Uh, so simple, just go to the AWS console and kind of log onto the, to the bracket, uh, bracket console, jump in, you know, uh, create, um, create a Jupiter notebook, pull down some of our sample, uh, applications run through the notebook and program a quantum computer. It's literally that simple. There's plenty of tutorials. It's easy to get started, you know, classic cloud style right now from commitment. Jump in, start simple, get going. We want you to go quantum. You can't go back, go quantum. You can't go back to regular computing. I think people will be running concert classical systems in parallel for quite some time. So yeah, this is the, this is definitely not a one way door. You know, you go explore quantum computing and see how it fits into, uh, >>You know, into the, into solving some of the problems that you wanted to solve in the future. But definitely this is not a replacement technology. This is a complimentary technology. >>It's great. It's a great innovation. It's kind of intoxicating technically to get, think about the benefits Fernando, Richard, thanks for coming on. It's really exciting. I'm looking forward to keeping up keeping track of the progress. Thanks for coming on the cube coverage of reinvent, quantum computing going the next level coexisting building on top of the shoulders of other giant technologies. This is where the computing wave is going. It's different. It's impacting people's lives. This is the cube coverage of re-invent. Thanks for watching.