(upbeat music) >> Welcome back to London everybody, this is Dave Vellante with The Cube, the leader in tech coverage, and we're here at AWS. We wanted to cover deeper the public sector activity. We've been covering this segment for quite some time, with the public sector summit in DC, went to Bahrain last year, and we wanted to extend that to London. We're doing a special coverage here with a number of public sector folks. Anjenesh Babu is here, he's a network manager at Oxford GLAM. Thanks very much for coming on The Cube, it's good to see you. >> Thank you.], thanks. >> GLAM, I love it. Gardens, libraries and museums, you even get the A in there, which everybody always leaves out. So tell us about Oxford GLAM. >> So we are part of the heritage collection side of the University. And I'm here representing the gardens and museums. In the divisions we've got world renown collections, which has been held for 400 years or more. It comprises of four different museums and the Oxford University Botanic Gardens and Arboretum. So in total, we're looking at five different divisions, spread across probably sixteen different sites, physical sites. And the main focus of the division is to bring out collections to the world, through digital outreach, engagement and being fun, bringing fun into the whole system. Sustainment is big, because we are basically custodians of our collections and it has to be here almost forever, in a sense. And we can only display about 1% of our collections at any one point and we've got about 8.5 million objects. So as you can imagine, the majority of that is in storage. So one way to bring this out to the wider world is to digitize them, curate them and present them, either online or in another form. So that is what we do. >> In your role as the network manager is to makes sure everything connects and works and stays up? Or maybe describe that a little more. >> So, I'm a systems architect and network manager for gardens and museums, so in my role, my primary focus is to bridge the gap between technical and the non-technical functions, within the department. And I also look after network and infrastructure sites, so there's two parts to the role, one is a BAU business as usual function where we keep the networks all going and keep the lights on, basically. The second part is bringing together designs, it's not just solving technical problems, so if I'm looking at a technical problem I step out and almost zoom out to see, what else are we looking at which could be connected, and solve the problem. For example, we could be looking at a web design solution in one part of the project, but it's not relevant just to that project. If you step out and say, we could do this in another part of the program, and we may be operating in silence and we want to breakdown those, that's part of my role as well. >> Okay, so you're technical but you also speak the language of the organization and business. We put it in quotes because you're not a business per say. Okay, so you're digitizing all these artifacts and then making them available 24/7, is that the idea? What are some of the challenges there? >> So the first challenge is only 3% of objects are actually digitized. So we have 1% on display, 3% is actually digitized, it's a huge effort, it's not just scanning or taking photographs, you've got cataloging, accessions and a whole raft of databases that goes behind. And museums historically have got their own separate database collection which is individually held different collection systems, but as public, you don't care, we don't care, we just need to look at the object. You don't want to see, that belongs to the Ashmolean Museum or the picture does. You just want to see, and see what the characteristics are. For that we are bringing together a layer, which integrates different museums, it sort of reflects what we're doing in out SIT. The museums are culturally diverse institutions and we want to keep them that way, because each has got its history, a kind of personality to it. Under the hood, the foundational architecture, systems remain the same, so we can make them modular, expandable and address the same problems. So that's how we are supporting this and making it more sustainable at the same time. >> So you have huge volume, quality is an issue because people want to see beautiful images. You got all this meta data that you're collecting, you have a classification challenge. So how are you architecting this system and what role does the Cloud play in there? >> So, in the first instance we are looking at a lot of collections were on premises in the past. We are moving as a SaaS solution at the first step. A lot of it requires cleansing of data, almost, this is the state of the images we aren't migrating, we sort of stop here let's cleanse it, create new data streams and then bring it to the Cloud. That's one option we are looking at and that is the most important one. But during all this process in the last three years with the GLAM digital program there's been huge amount of changes. To have a static sort of golden image has been really crucial. And to do that if we are going down rate of on premise and trying to build out, scale out infrastructures, it would have a huge cost. The first thing that I looked at was, explore the Cloud options and I was interested in solutions like Snowball and the Storage Gateway. Straightforward, loads up the data and it's on the Cloud, and then I can fill out the infrastructure as much as I want, because we can all rest easy, the main, day one data is in the Cloud, and it's safe, and we can start working on the rest of it. So it's almost like a transition mechanism where we start working on the data before it goes to the Cloud anyway. And I'm also looking at a Cloud clearing house, because there's a lot of data exchanges that are going to come up in the future, vendor to vendor, vendor to us and us to the public. So it sort of presents itself a kind of junction, who is going to fill the junction? I think the obvious answer is here. >> So Snowball or Gateway, basically you either Snowball or Gateway the assets into the Cloud and you decide which one to use based on the size and the cost associated with doing that, is that right? >> Yes, and convenience. I was saying this the other day at another presentation, it's addictive because it's so simple and straight forward to use, and you just go back and say it's taken me three days to transfer 30 terabytes into a Snowball appliance and on the fourth day, it appears in in my packets, so what are we missing? Nothing. Let's do it again next week. So you got the Snowball for 10 days, bring it in transfer, so it's much more straightforward than transferring it over the network, and you got to keep and eye on things. Not that it's not hard, so for example, the first workloads we transferred over to the file gateway, but there's a particular server which had problems getting things across the network, because of out dated OS on it. So we got the Snowball in and in a matter of three days the data was on the Cloud, so to effect every two weeks up on the Snowball, bring it in two weeks, in three days it goes up back on the Cloud. So there's huge, it doesn't cost us any more to keep it there, so the matter of deletions are no longer there. So just keep it on the Cloud shifting using lifecycle policies, and it's straight forward and simple. That's pretty much it. >> Well you understand physics and the fastest way to get from here to there is a truck sometimes, right? >> Well, literally it is one of the most efficient ways I've seen, and continues to be so. >> Yeah, simple in concept and it works. How much are you able to automate the end-to-end, the process that you're describing? >> At this point we have a few proof of concept of different things that we can automate, but largely because a lot of data is held across bespoke systems, so we've got 30 terabytes spread across sixteen hard disks, that's another use case in offices. We've got 22 terabytes, which I've just described, it's on a single server. We have 20 terabytes on another Windows server, so it's quite disparate, it's quite difficult to find common ground to automate it. As we move forward automation is going to come in, because we are looking at common interface like API Gateways and how they define that, and for that we are doing a lot of work with, we have been inspired a lot by the GDS API designs, and we are just calling this off and it works. That is a road we are looking at, but at the moment we don't have much in the way of automation. >> Can you talk a bit more about sustainability, you've mentioned that a couple of times, double click on that, what's the relevance, how are you achieving sustainability? Maybe you could give some examples. >> So in the past sustainability means that you buy a system and you over provision it, so you're looking for 20 terabytes over three years, lets go 50 terabytes. And something that's supposed to be here for three years gets kept going for five, and when it breaks the money comes in. So that was the kind of very brief way of sustaining things. That clearly wasn't enough, so in a way we are looking for sustainability from a new function say, we don't need to look at long-term service contracts we need to look at robust contracts, and having in place mechanisms to make sure that whatever data goes in, comes out as well. So that was the main driver and plus with the Cloud we are looking at the least model. We've got an annual expenditure set aside and that keeps it, sustainability is a lot about internal financial planning and based on skill sets. With the Cloud skill sets are really straightforward to find and we have engaged with quite a few vendors who are partnering with us, and they work with us to deliver work packages, so in a way even though we are getting there with the skills, in terms of training our team we don't need to worry about complex deployments, because we can outsource that in sprints. >> So you have shipped it from a CAPX to an OPX model, is that right? >> Yes >> So what was that like, I mean, was that life changing, was it exhilarating? >> It was exhilarating, it was phenomenally life changing, because it set up a new direction within the university, because we were the first division to go with the public Cloud and set up a contract. Again thanks to the G-Cloud 9 framework, and a brilliant account management team from AWS. So we shifted from the CAPX model to the OPX model with an understanding that all this would be considered as a leased service. In the past you would buy an asset, it depreciates, it's no longer the case, this is a leased model. The data belongs to us and it's straight forward. >> Amazon continues to innovate and you take advantage of those innovations, prices come down. How about performance in the cloud, what are you seeing there relative to your past experiences? >> I wouldn't say it's any different, perhaps slightly better, because the new SDS got the benefit of super fast bandwidth to the internet, so we've got 20 gigs as a whole and we use about 2 gigs at the moment, we had 10 gig. We had to downgrade it because, we didn't use that much. So from a bandwidth perspective that was the main thing. And a performance perspective what goes in the Cloud you frankly find no different, perhaps if anything they are probably better. >> Talk about security for a moment, how early on in the Cloud people were concerned about security, it seems to have attenuated, but security in the Cloud is different, is it not, and so talk about your security journey and what's your impression and share with our audience what you've learned. >> So we've had similar challenges with security, from security I would say there's two pots, one's the contractual security and one is the technical security. The contractual security, if we had spun up our own separate legal agreement with AWS or any other Cloud vendor, it would have taken us ages, but again we went to the digital marketplace, used the G-Cloud 9 framework and it was no brainer. Within a week we had things turned around, and we were actually the first institution to go live with and account with AWS. That is the taken care of. SDS is a third party security assessment template, which we require all our vendors to sign. As soon as we went through that it far exceeds what the SDS requires, and it's just a tick box exercise. And things like data encryption at rest, in transit it actually makes it more secure than what we are running on premise. So in a way technically it's far more secure than what we could ever have achieved that's on premise, and it's all taken care of, straight forward. >> So you've a small fraction of your artifacts today that are digitized. What's the vision, where do you want to take this? >> We're looking at, I'm speaking on behalf of gardens, this is not me, per say, I'm speaking on behalf of my team, basically we are looking at a huge amount of digitization. The collection should be democratized, that's the whole aspect, bringing it out to the people and perhaps making them curators in some form. We may not be the experts for a massive collection from say North America or the Middle East, there are people who are better than us. So we give them the freedom to make sure they can curate it in a secure, scalable manner and that's where the Cloud comes in. And we backend it using authentication that works with us, logs that works with us and roll-back mechanisms that works with us. So that's were we are looking at in the next few years. >> How would you do this without the Cloud? >> Oh. If you're doing it without the Cloud-- >> Could you do it? >> Yes, but we would be wholly and solely dependent on the University network, the University infrastructure and a single point. So when you're looking at the bandwidth it's shared by students using it network out of the university and our collection visitors coming into the university. And the whole thing, the DS infrastructure, everything's inside the university. It's not bad in its present state but we need to look at a global audience, how do you scale it out, how do you balance it? And that's what we're looking at and it would've been almost impossible to meet the goals that we have, and the aspirations, and not to mention the cost. >> Okay so you're going to be at the summit, the Excel Center tomorrow right? What are you looking forward to there for us from a customer standpoint? >> I'm looking at service management, because a lot of our work, we've got a fantastic service desk and a fantastic team. So a lot of that is looking at service management, how to deliver effectively. As you rightly say Amazon is huge on innovation and things keep changing constantly so we need to keep track of how we deliver services, how do we make ourselves more nimble and more agile to deliver the services and add value. If you look at the OS stack, that's my favorite example, so you look at the OS stack you've got seven layers going up from physical then all the way to the application. You can almost read an organization in a similar way, so you got a physical level where you've got cabling and all the way to the people and presentation layer. So right now what we are doing is we are making sure we are focusing on the top level, focusing on the strategies, creating strategies, delivering that, rather than looking out for things that break. Looking out for things that operationally perhaps add value in another place. So that's where we would like to go. >> Anjenesh, thanks so much for coming on The Cube. >> Thank you >> It was a pleasure to have you. All right and thank you for watching, keep right there we'll be back with our next guest right after this short break. You're watching The Cube, from London at Amazon HQ, I call it HQ, we're here. Right back. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live from London, England, it's theCUBE, covering AWS Summit London 2019, brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Today, we're here at the AWS Summit live at the ExCel Center in London. I'm Susannah Streeter, and this is my cohost Dave Vellente, here today. Now, we've talked a lot about the benefits of Cloud and the opportunities, and also the challenges sometimes, for startups and other businesses. But, also, there has been massive growth of the use of Cloud services by public sector organizations. And our next two guests here on theCUBE today, really, this is your area of business isn't it? So, we have Johnny Hugill, who's from Public, but also Max Peterson, VP of Worldwide Public Sector, AWS. Thank you very much for coming on to talk to us. >> Thank you. >> Now it's really interesting, during the keynote speeches, I was really taken by one of the speeches from the Chief Digital Information Officer at the Ministry of Justice, Tom Read, and he says, "We don't innovate for professional advantage, we do it to take care of people." And, Johnny, this is what your business is about, isn't it? Trying to link up startups and public sector organizations, to ensure that more people are taken care of. >> Yeah, I mean, that's exactly right. I think what we've seen in sort of almost every other sector you can think of, is this big proliferation of startups, of new market entrant's of completely new companies, really kind of coming to dominate those markets. And we haven't quite seen as much of that as I would like to see in the public sector. So, what we're trying to do is help tech startups, help innovative new companies, to come in and ultimately to deliver better services for everyone. >> There is real concern, though, among traditional companies about this. For example, your local pharmacy concerned that a really big player is going to move in and take away what they do. How do you kind of bring them along and say, well actually, if you work with a startup, it could improve the way you do business and keep you in business. >> Totally. I think pharmacy is a really interesting example. Because, in the UK, we've seen a bunch of new digital-first pharmacies come in and completely transform how people can access their pharmacy. So, Echo is one example of a UK startup that, now, you can get door-to-door prescriptions, instead of having to go to your pharmacy, make appointments, you know, waste loads of time queuing. My view is that these organizations really have to kind of get up to speed with how things work in the wider digital economy. So, people have certain expectations for how services should be delivered, for how quickly they should be accessed, to be able to access things. I think government services are no different. That's pharmacies, that's schools, that's teaching, that's everything. >> We're here in London. How big is the UK in terms of the growth of your business? >> Max: Well, the UK has been a leader for a long time, so from the time that they undertook the government digital services business through the G Cloud, 11 iterations, with big ministries, like the UK MOJ that you heard, with big nonprofits, like Comic Relief, and everything in between, educational institutions, startups. We're very proud we've partnered with Public to help continue to encourage that kind of innovation in government technology. >> I think, when we last talked Max, you, John and I, I think we were in DC. >> I think it was. >> And you were helping us understand, look, this public sector is not just about DC. And you've got a number of activities. We interviewed several of theCUBE yesterday At AWS headquarters. One of the things we talked about was GDPR. We were having a conversation with a privacy expert earlier today. He said, you know, the big players really haven't, really weren't ready for GDPR. You made a point in DC last year, you said, day-one you guys were ready, end-to-end encryption, a number of other services. so, I wanted to circle back to you. >> Max: Sure. >> I said, okay, we gotta peel the onion. I gotta ask Max, put him on the spot. You guys really anticipated this, it's not like you were scrambling at the last minute. Is that fair to say, and I wonder, if, Johnny, if you could confirm or deny that. >> Well, I would tell you that at Amazon, we think security is job-zero. If we are not making sure that we are continuously raising the bar to improve customer security, security for small businesses, then we need to do a better job. A couple of examples: GDPR was a good one, where, two months before GDPR came into a lawful requirement, Amazon announced that we were GDPR compliant. So people could confidently build on top of Amazon. In the UK, early on in 2016, we delivered one of our advanced security services called AWS Shield, which gives everybody using the AWS Cloud in the UK and, in fact, around the world, automatic protection against DDoS. No additional cost. You get it by using the Cloud. Those are the types of security services that Amazon delivers, and probably one of the most important these days, when you're working with sensitive workloads, is encryption. On Amazon, it's check-the-box easy to implement encryption for your data on the fly or when it's at rest. >> So, I hear that a lot, about encryption, and how simple it is. You guys using encryption? Do you guys got it as part of your... >> So, we work with technology companies who want to work with government, so many of the companies we back are using encryption. As I'd say, some of the, sort of, particularly in policing and defense, and some of the more sensitive areas of the public sector, this stuff is really, really crucial. And you simply can't, kind of, get into government without being GDPR compliant, and without having all of the SAP security essentials. A lot of the companies we've backed, are using AWS Cloud, have gone on to win public sector business, so, in that sense, I'm sure everything's E-checked. >> Are there any special considerations, with regard to encryption, things like, out-of-scope requirements that I should think about as a customer, or is it really as simple as Max is saying, click a button and check a box and don't even worry about it, it's all taken care of. What's your advice to people on encryption, is it just encrypt everything? >> Yeah. >> Are there performance considerations or...? >> I mean, again, it totally depends on the scale of the contract, of the requirements that your kind of going off of. For big major contracts with Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Defense, there are a number of different performance, kind of requirements, that you need to consider. But, in general, I think, yeah, it's pretty quite straightforward. >> Yes, kind of a no-brainer. >> I think the answer is encrypt everything, everywhere, all the time. And that also means on premise, it also means on your devices, right? I mean it needs to be just the standard approach that people take to data protection these days. And, unfortunately, for many organizations internally, it's hard, and so that's why people are moving to Amazon so that they get that security built in. It actually is the number one reason why people are moving to AWS today. They want the built-in security and then, after that, they want speed and innovation. And there was a really interesting statistic today at the keynote. Did you hear that LSE, London School of Economics, just completed a study and they showed that 95% of all startups that happen today would not happen if they had to depend on legacy infrastructure, because it was hard and expensive, and that's, candidly, why being a startup in today's Cloud-based world, is a much better value proposition. You can focus on the problem rather than all of these important but complicated factors like encryption. >> The other thing there, the London School of Economics study showed is the productivity gains for those companies that use Cloud. Now, there haven't been obvious productivity gains as a result of technology across the board. We're starting to finally see the uptick. Remember back in the PC days, you could see productivity, you could see upticks everywhere except in productivity, and then all of a sudden it shot up. And we've been predicting, for a couple of years now, you're going to start to see it, Cloud being one of the reasons, other new technologies, and so that was another key finding of that study that I found intersting. >> Well, Sainsbury was up on the stage today again, and what they have now found, right, was they have found a 60% to 70% improvement in productivity. That was their number up on the stage. >> Interesting, you're talking about kind of legacy companies. We've got Ministry of Justice, in fact there was a bit of a battle wasn't there? Yeah, well we've been balanced since 1170. (laughter) >> That was hilarious wasn't it? >> Sainsbury's only 150 years old. >> MOJ got up and said, "Well, in this battle of historical significance, our mission started in 1178. (laugher) >> But it's interesting to talk about those, but really, your bread and butter, Johnny Hugill, is the startups, isn't it, trying to spot talent out there and think, who could I partner these guys up with. >> Yeah, totally right. A really important thing to any organization that is trying to innovate today can do is to market horizon scanning, really understand what is out there, what the art of the possible looks like, what the new technologies that are going to change the game look like, what these companies are actually really capable of, where their sweet spot of innovation is. >> Susannah: And they might not know that themselves. >> But it's a really difficult thing to know, especially if you think about what the kind of day-to-day job of government is, which is really running the country, right? It's pretty difficult to ask them, by the way guys, you also need to really understand what the prospects of AI startups are looking like across the country, or across the world. You need to understand who the kind of BotChain innovators are. It's a big challenge, and it's something that we are really trying to help them along the way. As you said, a lot of that is partnering with bigger companies, and kind of forming the right ecosystems of smaller companies, large companies that can help them scale, and kind of taking government on that journey along with them. >> Well, and the pace of change is another challenge. Six months in this business now is an eternity it seems like. I remember crypto was so hot a year ago, I mean I'm a fan of a lot of the underlying technologies. It was interesting to see how Amazon dealt with that. You asked a lot of questions, like what do you really need to do this, you guys came up with a couple of solutions there, but, keeping up with the pace of change is one of the, I would think, one of the key values that you provide. >> It's really a challenge, and I think now, in infant tech, 15% of the financial revenue in the UK has come from startups founded in the last five years, right? So a big legacy market as important as financial services, has just been completely turned on its head, by Revolut, by Monzo, by all these new guys. And in government we are going to see the same thing at some point. >> Dave: I'd observe that in financial services those are good examples, but the industry still hasn't been disrupted yet. Healthcare still hasn't been disrupted. They're both ripe for disruptions and it's happening. >> Max: Yeah, but I think if you look at those, that's part of what Johnny was saying. Some of these early industries, like finance, have maybe been the initial disrupters, but I do believe that there is a wave of opportunity and disruption coming in this whole gov-tech space. One of them recently was at Zuna. Zuna came in and acquired a contract with UK government that completely upended an old way of doing job search. They had a better mousetrap. And, fortunately, in this case, government recognized it and they used them. >> [Johnny} Yeah, I mean, I would say that was a really momentous thing. The most used website in the entire UK Government, which is the kind of find-a-job search site. As Zuna came along, replaced an incumbent supplier who'd been doing it for years, probably quite badly, came along with their new AI-driven platform, using AWS Cloud and are now just delivering a service that everyone prefers. >> Dave: I saw NHS has announced, what, a half-billion pound almost, transformation project, modernization. And when you peel the onion, you see a lot of startups. Behind the startups, you see a lot of Cloud going on because the Cloud attracts startups, startups are where the innovation is, and if you're going to modernize and spend a half-billion pounds, you better look to the innovation engine. >> Yeah, one of the things about the Cloud computing and one of the things about government policy that's critical, is that it actually encourages that kind of innovation. Because a lot of small companies are the source of new ideas, but, procurement sometimes gets in the way. One of the things that we think, in fact, has worked well is the UK G Cloud contract, where on the UK G Cloud, over 90% of the suppliers on the G Cloud contract are in fact small and medium enterprises, and where 45% of the sales since inception on G Cloud have actually gone to SMEs. >> So it's really transformative. >> yeah. >> Well thank you very much for talking to us about this really fascinating space. I really appreciate it Max Peterson and Johnny Hugill. Thank you for joining us on theCUBE. >> Thank you. >> Thank you so much. >> Great talk. >> That's all from us for now from the Excel Center AWS Summit here in London.

(upbeat orchestral music) >> Hello and welcome to this special Cube Conversation. I'm John Furrier, host of the Cube, here in our Palo Alto studios. We're going to across the pond, across the United States, then the pond to Bill Mew, who is the founder of MEW ERA consulting. We're going to talk privacy. We're going to talk about, you know, the challenges with cloud, cloud scale, and also privacy. With the recent report Facebook behaving like digital gangsters, as the report from The Parliament came out. The huge focus on this big-tech data problem around privacy and user rights. So, Bill, welcome, good to see you. Thanks for coming on camera. I know you're in London area, so you're in the UK, so, great to see you. >> Well, it's really great to join you, and I'm glad the technology's allowing us to chat from this great distance. >> Well, we love to bring the conversations, which are very robust on Twitter, obviously, at @furrier, your @billmew. And all our friends Sarbjeet, Tim Crawford, Stu Minimin. The whole set of Cloud influencers, has been really talking a lot, lately, around digital transformation. You know, it's the classic, you know, cliché, oh digital transformation, blah-blah-blah-blah. It's really about Cloud. It's about Cloud scale, but data. But now, as people start to realize, the scale and some of these immediate benefits of DevOps and agile development. In comes the privacy conversation. In comes the, where's the data? Moving data around is expensive. Managing data and privacy is hugely expensive, and there are consequences. And one of the most obvious news stories, just from the past, you know, 24, 48 hours, is The Parliament report that says Facebook has been acting like digital gangsters. Now this puts it on the main stage. Unpack this for us. >> Well, I come from a Cloud background, and I'm not a sort of rabid privacy campaigner, by any stretch of the imagination. I've been passionate supporter of Cloud and worked with UKCloud, who've been almost unique, being a company that took on Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, in the cloud market. And beat them all at their own game. Here, in the UK, we have a procurement framework that the government hosts called, G-Cloud for public sector technology, and UKCloud captured something like 30, 35% of the market with Amazon way down on 12%. So, it was almost a unique instance. I can't think of a single other market anywhere in the world, where these guys are being beaten at their own game. Sort of in the public cloud market, with a very specific niche. And a niche that the cloud focused on, was differentiating themselves around data sovereignty, higher levels of assurance and security, and making sure that the really sensitive government data, be it your tax records, or possibly your criminal record, if you have one, or medical records, or whatever. All this data is kept safe, and it's really, it's been really interesting to see the news recently, and some of the hysteria around privacy. I've seen, as all of us have, the tech revolution of the cloud, and how all this has come to fruition and enabled so much. And now we are seeing the tech backlash, and I think that's at it's full force at the moment. >> One of the trends that we're seeing, and I want to get your thoughts on this, is that, you know, on the one extreme, is users own their own data and you got to see things, like Blockchain, and some interesting progressive solutions around the supply chain of users owning their own data. And then, just the natural trend of Edge Computing, where the data is closest to the, whether it's the people or the devices, you call it the Internet of Things or Edge Computing. It's now becoming part of cloud, and with the global distributed nature of how the cloud is built, the emphasis on regions. So, you see, you know, certain every country has, might have their own characteristics. How is this changing the digital transformation equation? Because, you know, on one hand, you see people saying, look at, you know, you picked the right cloud for the right job. And then the other one saying, no, it should be all vendor procurement decision, not so much a cloud decision. So, there's kind of like two camps going on here. One's saying, let procurement drive the decision. And the other one saying, let the apps or the workloads drive the architecture and cloud decision. Your thoughts on this kind of mega trend of data at the edge, ownership of data, cloud selection. It's kind of a nightmare, kind of confusing. Your thoughts. >> I think, I think we're definitely seeing an acceptance that we're in a multicloud world. I think there are hardly any companies out there that don't have an element of cloud in a number of different places and that. You may have dictated a strategic alignment about one particular cloud vendor, but you're bound to have some legacy stuff, as well. You may well have some SaaS applications. You may have Salesforce or any other things. And, therefore, by almost by default, almost every organization is in some form of a multi-cloud environment, anyway. And they're all ready to accept that as a reality. And as what we've seen is a cloud migration, and people taking various different workloads to the cloud. People have naturally started with the easy stuff. The low-hanging fruit. So, typically, you're taking virtualized workloads to easy the environments like a VMware Cloud or something like that. You're taking new, the sort of Greenfield developments into sort of cloud native environments. And those are the sort of places, where you're really breaking ground with all of this, and this is going to be leaving behind certain legacy applications, which is the sort of, the really difficult stuff that you'll leave till later. And a lot of people have already cracked, much of the easy stuff, the low-hanging fruit, and they're now having to face up to the more difficult stuff. But, I think one of the things you would need to be worried about, here, is that it's not just about a focus on applications and workloads. One of the things you find is that typically you may have a few new applications that you're developing. You may sort of have the odd so change, from time to time. But, typically, the number of applications you use, and the nature of those applications, doesn't actually change enormously. What does change, is the data volume. So, whilst, people are overly focused on, well, which applications are we going to be moving and in which order. And not enough companies are actually thinking really seriously about, well what are we going to do with the data? People have budgets that are either stationary or possibly in decline, and they have data volumes that are going through the roof. And the moment we have Edge, and the moment we have 5G, this is going to come home, to really haunt them. And you'd actually need to have a really sensible data strategy to get ahead of this problem, otherwise, you're going to be facing big ingress and egress charges, because getting data in and out of the cloud isn't cheap. And also, you're going to have integration problems. But on top of that, you have the privacy issue, because a large chunk of that data is going to be sort of personally identified, viable data. It's going to be the type of data covered by GDPR and possibly new regulations, or whatever is coming up next in the US. A lot of the data won't be covered this, because it will be data that isn't privacy sensitive. But, if you don't have a really sensible data strategy, first of all, you're not going to be able to deal with the massive growing volumes of data, which are just going to get worse with 5G and Edge, but, also, you're face real problems with privacy, if suddenly people say, I want this removed, or I want that taken down, or something like that. And you go, whoa, where the heck is it? How do I do that? >> Yeah, where's it stored? On what servers is it on? So, Bill, I got to get your thoughts on this. You mentioned migration tool. In the news today, Google acquired cloud migration platform, Alooma, which has only raise 15 million in funding, shows that Google is trying to catch up. Amazon pelts highly their migration tool for moving off Oracle. So, you're seeing migration is a big part of it. So, I want to get your thoughts on the cloud players. You got Google, nipping at the heels of Azure. Azure nipping at the heels of AWS. And, you got IBM and Oracle kind of in the back falling behind. I wanted to get your thoughts on the top three, and then IBM and Oracle. Do they have a shot? And your thoughts about IBM Think was just last week. Lot of conversations around IBM and the cloud with their, with their cloud private solution. Your thoughts. Amazon, Azure? >> Okay. >> Google, and then, >> I think >> IBM and Oracle. >> I'm going to take this in two different ways. First of all I'm going to say, well, here's what we're seeing in a general market level. And, secondly, I'm going to say, well, what have I seen on the ground? On the ground, maybe I'll start with that. I worked in the UK public sector and we've been out there competing and winning a lot of business, and doing really very well. One of the things that we've seen is that having established a lead in this market at a point we're the people everyone are gunning for, which is strange to be ahead of the big hyperscalers in this market. We've found that Amazon, and certainly Azure, are all over our accounts. We almost never see a competition or any sort of competitive bids from companies like Oracle or IBM. They're just not in the market. We don't see them at all. And, certainly for IBM, in the UK, the finance sector and the public sector are meant to be the main markets they're focused on, and we're not seeing them. We just got to worry about how credible they are in those markets. Now if you look at sort of a global scale. >> Hold on, just to interrupt. We lost you for a quick second. Got a little glitch in the screen on the connectivity. But, did you mention Oracle, I mean, Google? What's Google like out there on the ground, anything? >> Okay. From a global perspective, there's obviously AWS, who are way ahead. You've got Azure, who are a very credible second player, and they got a lot of strength. I mean, they got a foot both in the public cloud, but also in the hybrid cloud. I think, you shouldn't overlook the strength of the Geostack offering. And, also, they've got an enormously strong partner ecosystem, with CSPs and MSPs. There they're going to take a lot of their technology forward. So, I think, they're going to be credible across the space. Google are in an interesting position. I think they're investing heavily. They have deep pockets. They are some distance behind. I'm not seeing them in any competitive bids that we're entering into. So, you got to worry about how much traction they're really getting in the market, but they've certainly got very deep pockets, and you shouldn't dismiss them. The likes of Alibaba, who, you know, they may not be present in this market at the moment, but, again, you can't dismiss them. The companies that you possibly might dismiss as serious cloud players, are maybe Oracle, and IBM, 'cause we're not seeing them in any of the shortlists that we're up against. We're not seeing them in the market. We're not seeing them put in the level of investment, the billions of infrastructure investment that you need to have to keep up in this market. And I actually think IBM are in a very strong position. When I said, earlier, we've moved a lot of low-hanging fruit, and then we're now getting onto difficult stuff. IBM have the services business to help the big companies with the complex migrations and the really challenging stuff. But I think that's where IBM is going to play, and I think they have a very strong role to play there. I just don't seem them as a cloud player. And, maybe we should just be describing them as a services company. >> I want to get your thoughts on, this might be a little bit tangent to the cloud, but it's kind of related, with multi-cloud on the horizon, or actually here, everyone has a lot of different clouds, when you put the connective tissue together for the multi-cloud, you can't help but ignore Cisco and VMware. Both have presence in enterprises. Thoughts around, you know, the network layer, get NSX on VMware, and you got, also, Cisco moving up the stack with their DevNet program, developer program. We're seeing a lot of action going on around the software-defined data center, as it relates to on-premise and multi-cloud. Your thoughts on that market? Can you share any insights there? >> Yeah, I mean, I've come from a company that was hosting possibly the largest VMware Cloud in Europe, and we're very familiar with some of these technologies, and I think VMware has had a very good position in the market. I'm not sure that they are going to be able to sustain that. We're seeing a lot of people who saw the ability to move virtualized workloads to, sort of VMware Cloud environment as a compelling proposition, but that's a one-off shift. And the moment they have the opportunity to go cloud native, they're going to take it off. And I don't see Vm are really holding the control point now, but that you certainly got VMware on all the different platforms, and it's being controlled by the likes of AWS and others, who can sort of assist their customers to get on to whichever environment within their estate that they want. I think Cisco are coming from an interesting position. Where they got some really great security portfolio, and, in fact, we've used a lot of their hardware, but I don't see them actually, again, having a particular control point in the market. >> Talk about, before we get close out here, I want to get your thoughts on what's going on on Twitter. Obviously, you're highly engaging, you're an influencer on Twitter, subject matter expert, great on camera, obviously, here at the Cube remote. What's the sentiment going on around digital transformation? Sarbjeet and the crowd, all talking, Stu Miniman and I, and Dave Vellante and the Cube team, and the whole community has really been chirppin', obviously 'cause IBM Think was last week, around the context of cloud on-premise, digital transformation. What's the general sentiment in the social media channels, that you're hearing. What's the top story? What's the most important story that's being discussed? >> You can't, you can't get away from the whole privacy debacle. I mean, we have seen the tech revolution. We're now seeing the, sort of, tech backlash, where certain companies, who have made big mistakes and many, many mistakes, I mean, Facebook, you can't avoid mentioning them. And, there are others, but Facebook are front and center. I think they have. >> Looks like we lost you little bit there, Bill. Okay, you're back. >> Yup. >> You're back. (Bill speaking faintly) So, the final question, final question for you. So, if Facebook's the digital gangster on social networking, is there a cloud gangster? >> I'm not sure. (John and Bill laugh) I don't want to point any fingers anywhere. (John laughs) I think there are companies that are the particularly muscular in the market and have a particular market position, and you can't avoid looking at Amazon, there. But, I think that there are some, there's going to be an enormous fragmentation and one side, if we're talking typically about a hybrid environment. You're talking about a mixture of public cloud and private cloud on perimeter age and whatever. In the public cloud, it's going to be concentrated down to possibly three players. And, therefore, they're going to have enormous control. Then you look on the other side of the hybrid equation to the private legacy whatever. That's going to be massively fragmented. I mean, I believe it's like IBM, who are going to be doing some of the complex migrations for some of the big organizations, using their massive services army may have a control on some of the big instances, but there's going to be a massively long tail with all sorts of MSPs and CSPs, providing bespoke solutions and value right down the chain. >> Yeah. >> And that's where I think the channel ecosystems come into play. And those companies that are cloud players also have a strong channel ecosystem? That they're going to be the ones that come out at the end of the day. >> I think the ecosystem is right on, great point. Bill, thanks for spending the time joining us here on the Cube Conversation. I'm John Furrier, here in Palo Alto for a conversation with the influencers, experts around cloud, privacy. This is the big deal. What are you doing with all that data coming in? How's it being managed? How's the value being created? This is the digital transformation challenge. It's the Cube Conversation, in Palo Alto. Thanks for watching. (upbeat orchestral music)

(upbeat music) >> Live from Washington, D.C., it's theCUBE, covering Inforum D.C. 2018, brought to you by Infor. >> Well, back here on theCUBE, we are at Inforum '18. We're in Washington, D.C. here in the Walter Washington Convention Center. Not far from the White House. It's about a mile that way, and Capitol Hill's about a mile that way, I think. I know we're right in here, but I know we are smack dab in the middle of it. Dave Vellante and John Walls and Kevin Curry, who's the SVP of the global public sector at Infor. Good to have you with us. Good to see you, sir. >> Great to be here. Thanks for your time. >> So public sector, you're in the heart of it here, and you were telling us before we went on the air that you've got more than 700 clients here at the show this week? >> We do, we do. It's the best attendance we've had yet for Inforum, and I joined about six and a half years ago. And we built this business pretty much from the ground up. So it's been a great experience, and now we're starting to get a lot of adoption within the government, across the government, from federal to state to locals. >> What's the process been like, especially across those three, because I assume they're all different? You know, local, state, federal, everybody has different pain points and there's different tolerances. >> They do, they do. I mean, there's different micro-verticals within each of those statements. As an example, if you look at local governments, it could be anything from transit agencies to K-12 schools, to public works, to police, to fire. They all have all different requirements. State's the same thing, whether it's Department of Transportation or Department of Health and Human Services. And then when you get the federal side of it, then it's from the intelligence community to Department of Defense, healthcare within Defense, like the VA and DoD and Defense agencies as well. So it's a pretty wide swatch of use cases and business cases that you need to be able to sell to. >> Charles said something interesting in the keynote today. I want to ask you about it. He said, "We made a strategic decision to go to the cloud. "We didn't want to compete with Google "and Amazon and Microsoft for CloudScale. "That didn't make any sense for us." And he said, "When we were an on-prem software vendor, "we weren't managing servers for our customers." Now what struck me there is if you look back at the software company back in the day, they really didn't care about the server, right? It was just sort of infrastructure. It was kind of irrelevant to them. The cloud feels different. It seems like a more strategic relationship with Amazon. You know, we talk about Teresa Carlson and what a force she is in the government. AWS in the GovCloud has been a huge force. They had a giant lead. So have you been able to draft off that or is it just another sort of infrastructure platform? >> No, they're a major strategic partnership there with AWS and NN4. At the company level, and especially for me, with the government, they've made the right investments at the right time, I mean, and they actually have cloud environments that are very specific to different segments of the government and to different geographies. So as an example, in the federal government they have an intelligence cloud called C2S, which we work with them on. There's a very large procurement out right now for the Department of Defense called Jedi, which Amazon's going after, as well as the other larger cloud providers, so we're obviously riding that horse with AWS. And also for local governments, and they've done all of the compliancy for the government, whether it be FedRAMP, whether it be CJIS for those departments that are worried about the justice type of requirements. And as you get outside of the U.S., they're putting clouds and we're a global company as well, putting clouds in all the right places. They have a G-Cloud offering in the U.K. and as we talked about earlier when we sat down, they're opening a cloud in the Middle East right now too, in Bahrain that I think traces on oil over there as we speak. >> Right, right. The first Middle East country to claim cloud first. But it just seems like there's a strategic advantage there. And even with the other cloud suppliers. I mean, you know, Google's got its niche, big niche, you know, Microsoft, with its software state, but it seems like Amazon, they talk about that flywheel effect, brings certain technologies that, you know, when you talk to Soma, you guys have been able to take advantage of. It just feels a lot different than the old traditional server manufacturer. Oh, it's a Unix box and there's no difference between vendor A, B and C. >> Absolutely correct. And for us, we've taken advantage of the tools that Amazon has and obviously, we're doing all the compliancy on our applications and they've got whole the infrastructure piece of it, so the two work very well together. >> And that has allowed you to focus on your knitting, if you will. >> Yes. >> The things that you do best, which is a micro-verticals, suite across the application portfolio, bringing AI to the equation, automation, we heard a lot about robotic process automation, which is probably a hot topic in the government. >> Yes. I mean, Charles famously, he may have had a quote. I'm sure you heard it. It's friends don't let friends build data centers. >> Great quote. >> You know, that's not a business we're in. We're a software company. >> Right. >> So the public sector, obviously a different animal than the private sector. Very different needs, different constituents, you got tax payers, you got all that. When you bring the technology into the public sector, what does that do for it or how does that have to be, I don't know, re-conformed or adapted? And ultimately, what's the payoff, right? What's the return on that investment? >> So it was actually pretty shocking how quickly the government has adopted and moved towards the cloud. Typically, they're laggards. Everything happens in the commercial market and then government's a little bit of a late adopter, right? But we're seeing them very quickly go to the cloud and there's a lot of reasons for that. One being, you have an aging workforce. Okay, so the baby boomers are all retiring so a lot of that intellectual knowledge is going out the door. Two, is there's some economies of scale to be realized by doing that because once you're in the cloud, I mean, it's up to the vendor who's maintaining it to maintain that for you. So, you know, the people behind the scenes, they have to do it. You know, when you upgrade your software to go from one release to the other, it's automatically done for you. I mean, so there's real cost savings to be had, you know, from a care and feeding perspective there as well. Also a lot of the, on the ERP side of the things, a lot of the systems that are out in the marketplace today that governments have bought, like the Oracles or the SAPs, a lot of these systems are at end-of-life and the companies are no longer supporting them. So it's a re-implementation for them. You know, and so now they're looking, okay, if we have to re-implement and we have to look at our new options, we're going to do it in a cloud. >> So when you've been around as long as I have, Kevin, >> Right. >> you've seen the pendulum swing. You don't have to agree so vehemently. (laughing) But from mainframe to client server and so you're back to the cloud, and now with IoT, it seems like the pendulum is swinging back to a distributed environment. So help us understand where IoT fits to the cloud and even your on-prem business. >> Okay, so like I say, cloud is a pretty broad topic, okay? We have multiple applications that would run in that environment. So when I look at IoT, I think of things like our asset management platform. We have a very strong enterprise asset management platform that runs in the cloud or runs on-prem. And if you think about infrastructure as an example, which government has a lot of, okay. Think about the ability to have sensors on different pieces of equipment and being able to read that information. Think about using drone technology, okay, to be able to do physical inspections under bridges, so you're not having people having to climb around underneath there. I mean, so being able to do live feeds of data and be able to streamline the way you do business and have that automatically captured within an application. So yes, that is one area where we see it. I mean, I think you're going to see more and more of robotics and artificial intelligence and all the things come into play. I think you heard a lot about that here and it's here. I mean, they were things we saw in movies before but now the technology's here today. >> Well, the other thing we heard this morning that Charles has always talked a lot about the data. You guys always talked about your data lake. I like to think of it as a data ocean. You think about all the data out of GT Nexus and, you know, your customers that are providing data to inform. The data model starts to really expand and you guys have seemed to really take advantage of that. Talk about the data, the importance of data, the importance of securing data to the government. >> Well, think about that. I mean, there's islands of information that governments have that if they were able to consolidate that data and put some intelligence into it, be able to make business decisions versus, you know, one system sitting over here, one system sitting over here and none of them ever communicating or talking to each other. You know, the ability to, You could do from anything from, just think about crime statistics, okay? The ability to deploy resources where the crime is and then as it moves, be able to further deploy resources. You know, New York, years ago, did things like that with CompStat when they were cleaning up Times Square and so forth. But just think of that as a concept, realtime being able to manage data. >> So you've got, here at the show, we were talking about earlier, 700 and some odd clients, 725. You've got the federal forum for the first time. Why now? And what are you getting out of that or what do you hope to get out of that at the end of the week? >> So the whole executive team and our board of directors have made significant investments in this marketplace because they understand that government is a very large beast, if you will, and there's a lot of opportunity for deployment of our solutions and there's a real need to solve problems for constituents here as well. So they've made very significant investments in things for security like FedRAMP, compliancy. You know, some companies are doing it on some of their solutions. We're doing it across the board on all the products that we take to the government marketplace. So we're invested in it. You've probably heard today, Charles talked about the fact that we're going to have a federal cloud suite, which we are. So that means federal financials, okay? Actually being able to solve all the problems for the federal government and comply to all their needs and all the things that are part of mandated accounting for the federal government. They made all the right investments and human capital management would be another area. If you think about, we've got an application called Talent Science. The ability to hire the right people for the right job and retain those people. Just think about, ICE is a good example. You heard that they have to hire thousands of people to deploy on the borders, right? How do you quickly ramp and hire these right people if you don't have the right tools to do it? >> You were quoted in TIME magazine, Marc Benioff's new publication, about America's crumbling infrastructure. What role do you see technology playing generally and specifically in for software and helping with that problem? >> So we do a lot today around infrastructure. As an example, we have a very strong presence in transit agencies here in the U.S. New York City runs us, amounts to about a trillion dollars worth of assets there. So anything moving in, out or around the city, so subways, buses, trains, tunnels, bridges, Metro-North, Long Island Rail Road. L.A. runs us, San Francisco runs us, Chicago runs us, Dallas runs us and many others. So we're managing all of that infrastructure. So you hear a lot about infrastructure bills coming out of the federal government. And they're right. I mean, a lot of these tunnel, a lot of these bridges and tunnels and even roadways were built back during World War II, right? And they're aged, you know, they are starting to crumble and there's going to be a lot of money spent to do that and when it comes to rebuilding those types of things, there's a lot of assets that are going to need to be managed, you know, to do that. So we think there's a real opportunity for software such as what we bring to the marketplace to help with that process. >> How about talent retention? I mean, obviously, as administrations come and go, you know, people move, but there's been a lot of brain drain. I mean, take the Patent Office, people in commercial industry stealing some of the best and brightest out of government. Can software play a role in helping better retain, train, you know, evolve growth paths and careers? >> Yes. I guess, in a couple different ways. I mean, number one, I think the applications of today versus the applications of yesterday have changed so much. I mean, you look at, you know, the applications you have on your mobile phone. The ability to have that look and feel, I mean, our kids today are going to go into the workforce and they won't settle for anything less. They're going to want to have that look and feel. They're going to want to have those intuitive type of applications that help them do their job. And that's the kind of offering we're bringing to the marketplace. Then from just actually bringing the right people and we have an application called Talent Science, as an example, where actually there's multiple different areas of your personality that it can determine and map it back to your top performers in your company. And determine the right people for the right job where they'll fit into that environment and then they would thrive hopefully. And it should increase retention on the staff. In government, we've actually sold it to Department of Health and Human Services for hiring case workers. Okay? Or to police departments for hiring of law enforcement. So there's a real opportunity to take those types of applications and do some pretty creative things. >> What's, I hate to say, the pain side of it. But dealing with the government obviously contracts is an issue, right? And a challenge sometimes maybe for you. I'm curious, in a quickly evolving space such as yours, how do you help them keep up with you and their regulatory oversight and whatever mandated restrictions they have? All those things, you know, that come with government. It just doesn't square up with what you do. >> It is, it's a very, again, to your point, it's a different, it's a different industry with different requirements. And everything here is very open and above board. It's open procurements. Everything is competitively bid. There are contractual vehicles that you competitively bid for that'll allow you to be able to do business a lot easier in the future. I mean, in the feds you have things like the GSA 70 Schedule. U.K., you have something called the G-Cloud contract. A lot of states have vehicles where you can bid for it, so all states and local can buy off of those contracts without having to go to a competitive offering. So there's ways that the business can get done without having to go through a lot. >> Every hoop and every, yeah, right. >> The major pain process. But then there's also competitive RFPs, which, you know, well, they'll put a bid out, it'll be very detailed. You have to answer 3,000 requirements. And then after that you'll end up going into an orals and a demo process and, you know, nine months later, they're going to pick a winner. (laughs lightly) Then you go through, but then you have to go through a very painful contract negotiation process. >> That's the process I was talking about. (laughing) Exactly what I was talking about, right. >> Right. >> Yeah, yeah. Well, Kevin, thanks for being with us. We appreciate the time. >> It's my pleasure. >> And it sounds impressive, right, with the turnout you had, so I'm sure you're very, very pleased with the response you've had here on the show for so far. >> I am and I thank you for your time and >> You bet. >> have a good show. >> Look forward to seeing you down the road. Alright, sir, thank you. Back with more here live on theCUBE. We're at Inforum '18 and we are in Washington, D.C. >> I'm quite sure they got me pinned up back here, but I can't-- (upbeat music)