(light upbeat music) >> Hey, everyone. Welcome back to theCUBE's day long coverage of Women in Data Science 2023. Live from Stanford University, I'm Lisa Martin. We've had some amazing conversations today with my wonderful co-host, as you've seen. Tracy Zhang joins me next for a very interesting and inspiring conversation. I know we've been bringing them to you, we're bringing you another one here. Dr. Irene Dankwa-Mullan joins us, the Chief Medical Officer at Marti Health, and a speaker at WIDS. Welcome, Irene, it's great to have you. >> Thank you. I'm delighted to be here. Thank you so much for this opportunity. >> So you have an MD and a Master of Public Health. Covid must have been an interesting time for you, with an MPH? >> Very much so. >> Yeah, talk a little bit about you, your background, and Marti Health? This is interesting. This is a brand new startup. This is a digital health equity startup. >> Yes, yes. So, I'll start with my story a little bit about myself. So I was actually born in Ghana. I finished high school there and came here for college. What would I say? After I finished my undergraduate, I went to medical school at Dartmouth and I always knew I wanted to go into public health as well as medicine. So my medical education was actually five years. I did the MPH and my medical degree, at the same time, I got my MPH from Yale School of Public Health. And after I finished, I trained in internal medicine, Johns Hopkins, and after that I went into public health. I am currently living in Maryland, so I'm in Bethesda, Maryland, and that's where I've been. And really enjoyed public health, community health, combining that aspect of sort of prevention and wellness and also working in making sure that we have community health clinics and safety net clinics. So a great experience there. I also had the privilege, after eight years in public health, I went to the National Institute of Health. >> Oh, wow. >> Where I basically worked in clinical research, basically on minority health and health disparities. So, I was in various leadership roles and helped to advance the science of health equity, working in collaboration with a lot of scientists and researchers at the NIH, really to advance the science. >> Where did your interest in health equity come from? Was there a defining moment when you were younger and you thought "There's a lot of inequities here, we have to do something about this." Where did that interest start? >> That's a great question. I think this influence was basically maybe from my upbringing as well as my family and also what I saw around me in Ghana, a lot of preventable diseases. I always say that my grandfather on my father's side was a great influence, inspired me and influenced my career because he was the only sibling, really, that went to school. And as a result, he was able to earn enough money and built, you know, a hospital. >> Oh wow. >> In their hometown. >> Oh my gosh! >> It started as a 20 bed hospital and now it's a 350 bed hospital. >> Oh, wow, that's amazing! >> In our hometown. And he knew that education was important and vital as well for wellbeing. And so he really inspired, you know, his work inspired me. And I remember in residency I went with a group of residents to this hospital in Ghana just to help over a summer break. So during a summer where we went and helped take care of the sick patients and actually learned, right? What it is like to care for so many patients and- >> Yeah. >> It was really a humbling experience. But that really inspired me. I think also being in this country. And when I came to the U.S. and really saw firsthand how patients are treated differently, based on their background or socioeconomic status. I did see firsthand, you know, that kind of unconscious bias. And, you know, drew me to the field of health disparities research and wanted to learn more and do more and contribute. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. So, I was curious. Just when did the data science aspect tap in? Like when did you decide that, okay, data science is going to be a problem solving tool to like all the problems you just said? >> Yeah, that's a good question. So while I was at the NIH, I spent eight years there, and precision medicine was launched at that time and there was a lot of heightened interest in big data and how big data could help really revolutionize medicine and healthcare. And I got the opportunity to go, you know, there was an opportunity where they were looking for physicians or deputy chief health officer at IBM. And so I went to IBM, Watson Health was being formed as a new business unit, and I was one of the first deputy chief health officers really to lead the data and the science evidence. And that's where I realized, you know, we could really, you know, the technology in healthcare, there's been a lot of data that I think we are not really using or optimizing to make sure that we're taking care of our patients. >> Yeah. >> And so that's how I got into data science and making sure that we are building technologies using the right data to advance health equity. >> Right, so talk a little bit about health equity? We mentioned you're with Marti Health. You've been there for a short time, but Marti Health is also quite new, just a few months old. Digital health equity, talk about what Marti's vision is, what its mission is to really help start dialing down a lot of the disparities that you talked about that you see every day? >> Yeah, so, I've been so privileged. I recently joined Marti Health as their Chief Medical Officer, Chief Health Officer. It's a startup that is actually trying to promote a value-based care, also promote patient-centered care for patients that are experiencing a social disadvantage as a result of their race, ethnicity. And were starting to look at and focused on patients that have sickle cell disease. >> Okay. >> Because we realize that that's a population, you know, we know sickle cell disease is a genetic disorder. It impacts a lot of patients that are from areas that are endemic malaria. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> And most of our patients here are African American, and when, you know, they suffer so much stigma and discrimination in the healthcare system and complications from their sickle cell disease. And so what we want to do that we feel like sickle cell is a litmus test for disparities. And we want to make sure that they get in patient-centered care. We want to make sure that we are leveraging data and the research that we've done in sickle cell disease, especially on the continent of Africa. >> Okay. >> And provide, promote better quality care for the patients. >> That's so inspiring. You know, we've heard so many great stories today. Were you able to watch the keynote this morning? >> Yes. >> I loved how it always inspires me. This conference is always, we were talking about this all day, how you walk in the Arrillaga Alumni Center here where this event is held every year, the vibe is powerful, it's positive, it's encouraging. >> Inspiring, yeah. >> Absolutely. >> Inspiring. >> Yeah, yeah. >> It's a movement, WIDS is a movement. They've created this community where you feel, I don't know, kind of superhuman. "Why can't I do this? Why not me?" We heard some great stories this morning about data science in terms of applications. You have a great application in terms of health equity. We heard about it in police violence. >> Yes. >> Which is an epidemic in this country for sure, as we know. This happens too often. How can we use data and data science as a facilitator of learning more about that, so that that can stop? I think that's so important for more people to understand all of the broad applications of data science, whether it's police violence or climate change or drug discovery or health inequities. >> Irene: Yeah. >> The potential, I think we're scratching the surface. But the potential is massive. >> Tracy: It is. >> And this is an event that really helps women and underrepresented minorities think, "Why not me? Why can't I get involved in that?" >> Yeah, and I always say we use data to make an make a lot of decisions. And especially in healthcare, we want to be careful about how we are using data because this is impacting the health and outcomes of our patients. And so science evidence is really critical, you know? We want to make sure that data is inclusive and we have quality data. >> Yes. >> And it's transparent. Our clinical trials, I always say are not always diverse and inclusive. And if that's going to form the evidence base or data points then we're doing more harm than good for our patients. And so data science, it's huge. I mean, we need a robust, responsible, trustworthy data science agenda. >> "Trust" you just brought up "trust." >> Yeah. >> I did. >> When we talk about data, we can't not talk about security and privacy and ethics but trust is table stakes. We have to be able to evaluate the data and trust in it. >> Exactly. >> And what it says and the story that can be told from it. So that trust factor is, I think, foundational to data science. >> We all see what happened with Covid, right? I mean, when the pandemic came out- >> Absolutely. >> Everyone wanted information. We wanted data, we wanted data we could trust. There was a lot of hesitancy even with the vaccine. >> Yeah. >> Right? And so public health, I mean, like you said, we had to do a lot of work making sure that the right information from the right data was being translated or conveyed to the communities. And so you are totally right. I mean, data and good information, relevant data is always key. >> Well- >> Is there any- Oh, sorry. >> Go ahead. >> Is there anything Marti Health is doing in like ensuring that you guys get the right data that you can put trust in it? >> Yes, absolutely. And so this is where we are, you know, part of it would be getting data, real world evidence data for patients who are being seen in the healthcare system with sickle cell disease, so that we can personalize the data to those patients and provide them with the right treatment, the right intervention that they need. And so part of it would be doing predictive modeling on some of the data, risk, stratifying risk, who in the sickle cell patient population is at risk of progressing. Or getting, you know, they all often get crisis, vaso-occlusive crisis because the cells, you know, the blood cell sickles and you want to avoid those chest crisis. And so part of what we'll be doing is, you know, using predictive modeling to target those at risk of the disease progressing, so that we can put in preventive measures. It's all about prevention. It's all about making sure that they're not being, you know, going to the hospital or the emergency room where sometimes they end up, you know, in pain and wanting pain medicine. And so. >> Do you see AI as being a critical piece in the transformation of healthcare, especially where inequities are concerned? >> Absolutely, and and when you say AI, I think it's responsible AI. >> Yes. >> And making sure that it's- >> Tracy: That's such a good point. >> Yeah. >> Very. >> With the right data, with relevant data, it's definitely key. I think there is so much data points that healthcare has, you know, in the healthcare space there's fiscal data, biological data, there's environmental data and we are not using it to the full capacity and full potential. >> Tracy: Yeah. >> And I think AI can do that if we do it carefully, and like I said, responsibly. >> That's a key word. You talked about trust, responsibility. Where data science, AI is concerned- >> Yeah. >> It has to be not an afterthought, it has to be intentional. >> Tracy: Exactly. >> And there needs to be a lot of education around it. Most people think, "Oh, AI is just for the technology," you know? >> Yeah, right. >> Goop. >> Yes. >> But I think we're all part, I mean everyone needs to make sure that we are collecting the right amount of data. I mean, I think we all play a part, right? >> We do. >> We do. >> In making sure that we have responsible AI, we have, you know, good data, quality data. And the data sciences is a multi-disciplinary field, I think. >> It is, which is one of the things that's exciting about it is it is multi-disciplinary. >> Tracy: Exactly. >> And so many of the people that we've talked to in data science have these very non-linear paths to get there, and so I think they bring such diversity of thought and backgrounds and experiences and thoughts and voices. That helps train the AI models with data that's more inclusive. >> Irene: Yes. >> Dropping down the volume on the bias that we know is there. To be successful, it has to. >> Definitely, I totally agree. >> What are some of the things, as we wrap up here, that you're looking forward to accomplishing as part of Marti Health? Like, maybe what's on the roadmap that you can share with us for Marti as it approaches the the second half of its first year? >> Yes, it's all about promoting health equity. It's all about, I mean, there's so much, well, I would start with, you know, part of the healthcare transformation is making sure that we are promoting care that's based on value and not volume, care that's based on good health outcomes, quality health outcomes, and not just on, you know, the quantity. And so Marti Health is trying to promote that value-based care. We are envisioning a world in which everyone can live their full life potential. Have the best health outcomes, and provide that patient-centered precision care. >> And we all want that. We all want that. We expect that precision and that personalized experience in our consumer lives, why not in healthcare? Well, thank you, Irene, for joining us on the program today. >> Thank you. >> Talking about what you're doing to really help drive the volume up on health equity, and raise awareness for the fact that there's a lot of inequities in there we have to fix. We have a long way to go. >> We have, yes. >> Lisa: But people like you are making an impact and we appreciate you joining theCUBE today and sharing what you're doing, thank you. >> Thank you. >> Thank you- >> Thank you for having me here. >> Oh, our pleasure. For our guest and Tracy Zhang, this is Lisa Martin from WIDS 2023, the eighth Annual Women in Data Science Conference brought to you by theCUBE. Stick around, our show wrap will be in just a minute. Thanks for watching. (light upbeat music)

(bright music) >> Hello, everyone. Welcome to theCUBE special presentation of International Women's Day. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. This is a global special open program we're doing every year. We're going to continue it every quarter. We're going to do more and more content, getting the voices out there and celebrating the diversity. And I'm excited to have an amazing guest here, LaDavia Drane, who's the head of Global Inclusion Diversity & Equity at AWS. LaDavia, we tried to get you in on AWS re:Invent, and you were super busy. So much going on. The industry has seen the light. They're seeing everything going on, and the numbers are up, but still not there, and getting better. This is your passion, our passion, a shared passion. Tell us about your situation, your career, how you got into it. What's your story? >> Yeah. Well, John, first of all, thank you so much for having me. I'm glad that we finally got this opportunity to speak. How did I get into this work? Wow, you know, I'm doing the work that I love to do, number one. It's always been my passion to be a voice for the voiceless, to create a seat at the table for folks that may not be welcome to certain tables. And so, it's been something that's been kind of the theme of my entire professional career. I started off as a lawyer, went to Capitol Hill, was able to do some work with members of Congress, both women members of Congress, but also, minority members of Congress in the US Congress. And then, that just morphed into what I think has become a career for me in inclusion, diversity, and equity. I decided to join Amazon because I could tell that it's a company that was ready to take it to the next level in this space. And sure enough, that's been my experience here. So now, I'm in it, I'm in it with two feet, doing great work. And yeah, yeah, it's almost a full circle moment for me. >> It's really an interesting background. You have a background in public policy. You mentioned Capitol Hill. That's awesome. DC kind of moves slow, but it's a complicated machinery there. Obviously, as you know, navigating that, Amazon grew significantly. We've been at every re:Invent with theCUBE since 2013, like just one year. I watched Amazon grow, and they've become very fast and also complicated, like, I won't say like Capitol, 'cause that's very slow, but Amazon's complicated. AWS is in the realm of powering a generation of public policy. We had the JEDI contract controversy, all kinds of new emerging challenges. This pivot to tech was great timing because one, (laughs) Amazon needed it because they were growing so fast in a male dominated world, but also, their business is having real impact on the public. >> That's right, that's right. And when you say the public, I'll just call it out. I think that there's a full spectrum of diversity and we work backwards from our customers, and our customers are diverse. And so, I really do believe, I agree that I came to the right place at the right time. And yeah, we move fast and we're also moving fast in this space of making sure that both internally and externally, we're doing the things that we need to do in order to reach a diverse population. >> You know, I've noticed how Amazon's changed from the culture, male dominated culture. Let's face it, it was. And now, I've seen over the past five years, specifically go back five, is kind of in my mental model, just the growth of female leaders, it's been impressive. And there was some controversy. They were criticized publicly for this. And we said a few things as well in those, like around 2014. How is Amazon ensuring and continuing to get the female employees feel represented and empowered? What's going on there? What programs do you have? Because it's not just doing it, it's continuing it, right? And 'cause there is a lot more to do. I mean, the half (laughs) the products are digital now for everybody. It's not just one population. (laughs) Everyone uses digital products. What is Amazon doing now to keep it going? >> Well, I'll tell you, John, it's important for me to note that while we've made great progress, there's still more that can be done. I am very happy to be able to report that we have big women leaders. We have leaders running huge parts of our business, which includes storage, customer experience, industries and business development. And yes, we have all types of programs. And I should say that, instead of calling it programs, I'm going to call it strategic initiatives, right? We are very thoughtful about how we engage our women. And not only how we hire, attract women, but how we retain our women. We do that through engagement, groups like our affinity groups. So Women at Amazon is an affinity group. Women in finance, women in engineering. Just recently, I helped our Black employee network women's group launch, BEN Women. And so you have these communities of women who come together, support and mentor one another. We have what we call Amazon Circles. And so these are safe spaces where women can come together and can have conversations, where we are able to connect mentors and sponsors. And we're seeing that it's making all the difference in the world for our women. And we see that through what we call Connections. We have an inclusion sentiment tracker. So we're able to ask questions every single day and we get a response from our employees and we can see how are our women feeling, how are they feeling included at work? Are they feeling as though they can be who they are authentically at Amazon? And so, again, there's more work that needs to be done. But I will say that as I look at the data, as I'm talking to engaging women, I really do believe that we're on the right path. >> LaDavia, talk about the urgent needs of the women that you're hearing from the Circles. That's a great program. The affinity circles, the groups are great. Now, you have the groups, what are you hearing? What are the needs of the women? >> So, John, I'll just go a little bit into what's becoming a conversation around equity. So, initially I think we talked a lot about equality, right? We wanted everyone to have fair access to the same things. But now, women are looking for equity. We're talking about not just leveling the playing field, which is equality, but don't give me the same as you give everyone else. Instead, recognize that I may have different circumstances, I may have different needs. And give me what I need, right? Give me what I need, not just the same as everyone else. And so, I love seeing women evolve in this way, and being very specific about what they need more than, or what's different than what a man may have in the same situation because their circumstances are not always the same and we should treat them as such. >> Yeah, I think that's a great equity point. I interviewed a woman here, ex-Amazonian, she's now a GSI, Global System Integrator. She's a single mom. And she said remote work brought her equity because people on her team realized that she was a single mom. And it wasn't the, how do you balance life, it was her reality. And what happened was, she had more empathy with the team because of the new work environment. So, I think this is an important point to call out, that equity, because that really makes things smoother in terms of the interactions, not the assumptions, you have to be, you know, always the same as a man. So, how does that go? What's the current... How would you characterize the progress in that area right now? >> I believe that employers are just getting better at this. It's just like you said, with the hybrid being the norm now, you have an employer who is looking at people differently based on what they need. And it's not a problem, it's not an issue that a single mother says, "Well, I need to be able to leave by 5:00 PM." I think that employers now, and Amazon is right there along with other employers, are starting just to evolve that muscle of meeting the needs. People don't have to feel different. You don't have to feel as though there's some kind of of special circumstance for me. Instead, it's something that we, as employers, we're asking for. And we want to meet those needs that are different in some situations. >> I know you guys do a lot of support of women outside of AWS, and I had a story I recorded for the program. This woman, she talked about how she was a nerd from day one. She's a tomboy. They called her a tomboy, but she always loved robotics. And she ended up getting dual engineering degrees. And she talked about how she didn't run away and there was many signals to her not to go. And she powered through, at that time, and during her generation, that was tough. And she was successful. How are you guys taking the education to STEM, to women, at young ages? Because we don't want to turn people away from tech if they have the natural affinity towards it. And not everyone is going to be, as, you know, (laughs) strong, if you will. And she was a bulldog, she was great. She's just like, "I'm going for it. I love it so much." But not everyone's like that. So, this is an educational thing. How do you expose technology, STEM for instance, and making it more accessible, no stigma, all that stuff? I mean, I think we've come a long way, but still. >> What I love about women is we don't just focus on ourselves. We do a very good job of thinking about the generation that's coming after us. And so, I think you will see that very clearly with our women Amazonians. I'll talk about three different examples of ways that Amazonian women in particular, and there are men that are helping out, but I'll talk about the women in particular that are leading in this area. On my team, in the Inclusion, Diversity & Equity team, we have a program that we run in Ghana where we meet basic STEM needs for a afterschool program. So we've taken this small program, and we've turned their summer camp into this immersion, where girls and boys, we do focus on the girls, can come and be completely immersed in STEM. And when we provide the technology that they need, so that they'll be able to have access to this whole new world of STEM. Another program which is run out of our AWS In Communities team, called AWS Girls' Tech Day. All across the world where we have data centers, we're running these Girls' Tech Day. They're basically designed to educate, empower and inspire girls to pursue a career in tech. Really, really exciting. I was at the Girls' Tech Day here recently in Columbus, Ohio, and I got to tell you, it was the highlight of my year. And then I'll talk a little bit about one more, it's called AWS GetIT, and it's been around for a while. So this is a program, again, it's a global program, it's actually across 13 countries. And it allows girls to explore cloud technology, in particular, and to use it to solve real world problems. Those are just three examples. There are many more. There are actually women Amazonians that create these opportunities off the side of their desk in they're local communities. We, in Inclusion, Diversity & Equity, we fund programs so that women can do this work, this STEM work in their own local communities. But those are just three examples of some of the things that our Amazonians are doing to bring girls along, to make sure that the next generation is set up and that the next generation knows that STEM is accessible for girls. >> I'm a huge believer. I think that's amazing. That's great inspiration. We need more of that. It's awesome. And why wouldn't we spread it around? I want to get to the equity piece, that's the theme for this year's IWD. But before that, getting that segment, I want to ask you about your title, and the choice of words and the sequence. Okay, Global Inclusion, Diversity, Equity. Not diversity only. Inclusion is first. We've had this debate on theCUBE many years now, a few years back, it started with, "Inclusion is before diversity," "No, diversity before inclusion, equity." And so there's always been a debate (laughs) around the choice of words and their order. What's your opinion? What's your reaction to that? Is it by design? And does inclusion come before diversity, or am I just reading it to it? >> Inclusion doesn't necessarily come before diversity. (John laughs) It doesn't necessarily come before equity. Equity isn't last, but we do lead with inclusion in AWS. And that is very important to us, right? And thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk a little bit about it. We lead with inclusion because we want to make sure that every single one of our builders know that they have a place in this work. And so it's important that we don't only focus on hiring, right? Diversity, even though there are many, many different levels and spectrums to diversity. Inclusion, if you start there, I believe that it's what it takes to make sure that you have a workplace where everyone knows you're included here, you belong here, we want you to stay here. And so, it helps as we go after diversity. And we want all types of people to be a part of our workforce, but we want you to stay. And inclusion is the thing. It's the thing that I believe makes sure that people stay because they feel included. So we lead with inclusion. Doesn't mean that we put diversity or equity second or third, but we are proud to lead with inclusion. >> Great description. That was fabulous. Totally agree. Double click, thumbs up. Now let's get into the theme. Embracing equity, 'cause this is a term, it's in quotes. What does that mean to you? You mentioned it earlier, I love it. What does embrace equity mean? >> Yeah. You know, I do believe that when people think about equity, especially non-women think about equity, it's kind of scary. It's, "Am I going to give away what I have right now to make space for someone else?" But that's not what equity means. And so I think that it's first important that we just educate ourselves about what equity really is. It doesn't mean that someone's going to take your spot, right? It doesn't mean that the pie, let's use that analogy, gets smaller. The pie gets bigger, right? >> John: Mm-hmm. >> And everyone is able to have their piece of the pie. And so, I do believe that I love that IWD, International Women's Day is leading with embracing equity because we're going to the heart of the matter when we go to equity, we're going to the place where most people feel most challenged, and challenging people to think about equity and what it means and how they can contribute to equity and thus, embrace equity. >> Yeah, I love it. And the advice that you have for tech professionals out there on this, how do you advise other groups? 'Cause you guys are doing a lot of great work. Other organizations are catching up. What would be your advice to folks who are working on this equity challenge to reach gender equity and other equitable strategic initiatives? And everyone's working on this. Sustainability and equity are two big projects we're seeing in every single company right now. >> Yeah, yeah. I will say that I believe that AWS has proven that equity and going after equity does work. Embracing equity does work. One example I would point to is our AWS Impact Accelerator program. I mean, we provide 30 million for early stage startups led by women, Black founders, Latino founders, LGBTQ+ founders, to help them scale their business. That's equity. That's giving them what they need. >> John: Yeah. >> What they need is they need access to capital. And so, what I'd say to companies who are looking at going into the space of equity, I would say embrace it. Embrace it. Look at examples of what companies like AWS is doing around it and embrace it because I do believe that the tech industry will be better when we're comfortable with embracing equity and creating strategic initiatives so that we could expand equity and make it something that's just, it's just normal. It's the normal course of business. It's what we do. It's what we expect of ourselves and our employees. >> LaDavia, you're amazing. Thank you for spending the time. My final couple questions really more around you. Capitol Hill, DC, Amazon Global Head of Inclusion, Diversity & Equity, as you look at making change, being a change agent, being a leader, is really kind of similar, right? You've got DC, it's hard to make change there, but if you do it, it works, right? (laughs) If you don't, you're on the side of the road. So, as you're in your job now, what are you most excited about? What's on your agenda? What's your focus? >> Yeah, so I'm most excited about the potential of what we can get done, not just for builders that are currently in our seats, but for builders in the future. I tend to focus on that little girl. I don't know her, I don't know where she lives. I don't know how old she is now, but she's somewhere in the world, and I want her to grow up and for there to be no question that she has access to AWS, that she can be an employee at AWS. And so, that's where I tend to center, I center on the future. I try to build now, for what's to come, to make sure that this place is accessible for that little girl. >> You know, I've always been saying for a long time, the software is eating the world, now you got digital transformation, business transformation. And that's not a male only, or certain category, it's everybody. And so, software that's being built, and the systems that are being built, have to have first principles. Andy Jassy is very strong on this. He's been publicly saying, when trying to get pinned down about certain books in the bookstore that might offend another group. And he's like, "Look, we have first principles. First principles is a big part of leading." What's your reaction to that? How would you talk to another professional and say, "Hey," you know this, "How do I make the right call? Am I doing the wrong thing here? And I might say the wrong thing here." And is it first principles based? What's the guardrails? How do you keep that in check? How would you advise someone as they go forward and lean in to drive some of the change that we're talking about today? >> Yeah, I think as leaders, we have to trust ourselves. And Andy actually, is a great example. When I came in as head of ID&E for AWS, he was our CEO here at AWS. And I saw how he authentically spoke from his heart about these issues. And it just aligned with who he is personally, his own personal principles. And I do believe that leaders should be free to do just that. Not to be scripted, but to lead with their principles. And so, I think Andy's actually a great example. I believe that I am the professional in this space at this company that I am today because of the example that Andy set. >> Yeah, you guys do a great job, LaDavia. What's next for you? >> What's next. >> World tour, you traveling around? What's on your plate these days? Share a little bit about what you're currently working on. >> Yeah, so you know, at Amazon, we're always diving deep. We're always diving deep, we're looking for root cause, working very hard to look around corners, and trying to build now for what's to come in the future. And so I'll continue to do that. Of course, we're always planning and working towards re:Invent, so hopefully, John, I'll see you at re:Invent this December. But we have some great things happening throughout the year, and we'll continue to... I think it's really important, as opposed to looking to do new things, to just continue to flex the same muscles and to show that we can be very, very focused and intentional about doing the same things over and over each year to just become better and better at this work in this space, and to show our employees that we're committed for the long haul. So of course, there'll be new things on the horizon, but what I can say, especially to Amazonians, is we're going to continue to stay focused, and continue to get at this issue, and doing this issue of inclusion, diversity and equity, and continue to do the things that work and make sure that our culture evolves at the same time. >> LaDavia, thank you so much. I'll give you the final word. Just share some of the big projects you guys are working on so people can know about them, your strategic initiatives. Take a minute to plug some of the major projects and things that are going on that people either know about or should know about, or need to know about. Take a minute to share some of the big things you guys got going on, or most of the things. >> So, one big thing that I would like to focus on, focus my time on, is what we call our Innovation Fund. This is actually how we scale our work and we meet the community's needs by providing micro grants to our employees so our employees can go out into the world and sponsor all types of different activities, create activities in their local communities, or throughout the regions. And so, that's probably one thing that I would like to focus on just because number one, it's our employees, it's how we scale this work, and it's how we meet our community's needs in a very global way. And so, thank you John, for the opportunity to talk a bit about what we're up to here at Amazon Web Services. But it's just important to me, that I end with our employees because for me, that's what's most important. And they're doing some awesome work through our Innovation Fund. >> Inclusion makes the workplace great. Empowerment, with that kind of program, is amazing. LaDavia Drane, thank you so much. Head of Global Inclusion and Diversity & Equity at AWS. This is International Women's Day. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE. Thanks for watching and stay with us for more great interviews and people and what they're working on. Thanks for watching. (bright music)

>>Hello everyone. Welcome to the Cube's coverage of AWS Reinvent 22. I'm John Ferer, host of the Cube. Got some great coverage here talking about software supply chain and sustainability in the cloud. We've got a great conversation. Gunner Helickson, Vice President and general manager at Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Business Unit of Red Hat. Thanks for coming on. And Edon Eja Director, Product Management of commercial software services aws. Gentlemen, thanks for joining me today. >>Oh, it's a pleasure. >>You know, the hottest topic coming out of Cloudnative developer communities is slide chain software sustainability. This is a huge issue. As open source continues to power away and fund and grow this next generation modern development environment, you know, supply chain, you know, sustainability is a huge discussion because you gotta check things out where, what's in the code. Okay, open source is great, but now we gotta commercialize it. This is the topic, Gunner, let's get in, get with you. What, what are you seeing here and what's some of the things that you're seeing around the sustainability piece of it? Because, you know, containers, Kubernetes, we're seeing that that run time really dominate this new abstraction layer, cloud scale. What's your thoughts? >>Yeah, so I, it's interesting that the, you know, so Red Hat's been doing this for 20 years, right? Making open source safe to consume in the enterprise. And there was a time when in order to do that you needed to have a, a long term life cycle and you needed to be very good at remediating security vulnerabilities. And that was kind of, that was the bar that you had that you had to climb over. Nowadays with the number of vulnerabilities coming through, what people are most worried about is, is kind of the providence of the software and making sure that it has been vetted and it's been safe, and that that things that you get from your vendor should be more secure than things that you've just downloaded off of GitHub, for example. Right? And that's, that's a, that's a place where Red Hat's very comfortable living, right? >>Because we've been doing it for, for 20 years. I think there, there's another, there's another aspect to this, to this supply chain question as well, especially with the pandemic. You know, we've got these, these supply chains have been jammed up. The actual physical supply chains have been jammed up. And, and the two of these issues actually come together, right? Because as we've been go, as we go through the pandemic, we've had these digital transformation efforts, which are in large part people creating software in order to manage better their physical supply chain problems. And so as part of that digital transformation, you have another supply chain problem, which is the software supply chain problem, right? And so these two things kind of merge on these as people are trying to improve the performance of transportation systems, logistics, et cetera. Ultimately it all boils down to it all. Both supply chain problems actually boil down to a software problem. It's very >>Interesting that, Well, that is interesting. I wanna just follow up on that real quick if you don't mind. Because if you think about the convergence of the software and physical world, you know, that's, you know, IOT and also hybrid cloud kind of plays into that at scale, this opens up more surface area for attacks, especially when you're under a lot of pressure. This is where, you know, you can, you have a service area in the physical side and you have constraints there. And obviously the pandemic causes problems, but now you've got the software side. Can you, how are you guys handling that? Can you just share a little bit more of how you guys are looking at that with Red Hat? What's, what's the customer challenge? Obviously, you know, skills gaps is one, but like that's a convergence at the same time. More security problems. >>Yeah, yeah, that's right. And certainly the volume of, if we just look at security vulnerabilities themselves, just the volume of security vulnerabilities has gone up considerably as more people begin using the software. And as the software becomes more important to kind of critical infrastructure, more eyeballs are on it. And so we're uncovering more problems, which is kind of, that's, that's okay. That's how the world works. And so certainly the, the number of remediations required every year has gone up. But also the customer expectations, as I've mentioned before, the customer expectations have changed, right? People want to be able to show to their auditors and to their regulators that no, we, we, in fact, I can show the providence of the software that I'm using. I didn't just download something random off the internet. I actually have, like you, you know, adults paying attention to the, how the software gets put together. >>And it's still, honestly, it's still very early days. We can, I think the, in as an industry, I think we're very good at managing, identifying remediating vulnerabilities in the aggregate. We're pretty good at that. I think things are less clear when we talk about kind of the management of that supply chain, proving the provenance, proving the, and creating a resilient supply chain for software. We have lots of tools, but we don't really have lots of shared expectations. Yeah. And so it's gonna be interesting over the next few years, I think we're gonna have more rules are gonna come out. I see NIST has already, has already published some of them. And as these new rules come out, the whole industry is gonna have to kind of pull together and, and really and really rally around some of this shared understanding so we can all have shared expectations and we can all speak the same language when we're talking about this >>Problem. That's awesome. A and Amazon web service is obviously the largest cloud platform out there, you know, the pandemic, even post pandemic, some of these supply chain issues, whether it's physical or software, you're also an outlet for that. So if someone can't buy hardware or, or something physical, they can always get the cloud. You guys have great network compute and whatnot and you got thousands of ISVs across the globe. How are you helping customers with this supply chain problem? Because whether it's, you know, I need to get in my networking gears delayed, I'm gonna go to the cloud and get help there. Or whether it's knowing the workloads and, and what's going on inside them with respect open source. Cause you've got open source, which is kind of an external forcing function. You got AWS and you got, you know, physical compute stores, networking, et cetera. How are you guys helping customers with the supply chain challenge, which could be an opportunity? >>Yeah, thanks John. I think there, there are multiple layers to that. At, at the most basic level we are helping customers buy abstracting away all these data central constructs that they would have to worry about if they were running their own data centers. They would have to figure out how the networking gear, you talk about, you know, having the right compute, right physical hardware. So by moving to the cloud, at least they're delegating that problem to AWS and letting us manage and making sure that we have an instance available for them whenever they want it. And if they wanna scale it, the, the, the capacity is there for them to use now then that, so we kind of give them space to work on the second part of the problem, which is building their own supply chain solutions. And we work with all kinds of customers here at AWS from all different industry segments, automotive, retail, manufacturing. >>And you know, you see that the complexity of the supply chain with all those moving pieces, like hundreds and thousands of moving pieces, it's very daunting. So cus and then on the other hand, customers need more better services. So you need to move fast. So you need to build, build your agility in the supply chain itself. And that is where, you know, Red Hat and AWS come together where we can build, we can enable customers to build their supply chain solutions on platform like Red Hat Enterprise, Linux Rail or Red Hat OpenShift on, on aws. We call it Rosa. And the benefit there is that you can actually use the services that we, that are relevant for the supply chain solutions like Amazon managed blockchain, you know, SageMaker. So you can actually build predictive and s you can improve forecasting, you can make sure that you have solutions that help you identify where you can cut costs. And so those are some of the ways we are helping customers, you know, figure out how they actually wanna deal with the supply chain challenges that we're running into in today's world. >>Yeah, and you know, you mentioned sustainability outside of software su sustainability, you know, as people move to the cloud, we've reported on silicon angle here in the cube that it's better to have the sustainability with the cloud because then the data centers aren't using all that energy too. So there's also all kinds of sustainability advantages, Gunner, because this is, this is kind of how your relationship with Amazon's expanded. You mentioned Rosa, which is Red Hat on, you know, on OpenShift, on aws. This is interesting because one of the biggest discussions is skills gap, but we were also talking about the fact that the humans are huge part of the talent value. In other words, the, the humans still need to be involved and having that relationship with managed services and Red Hat, this piece becomes one of those things that's not talked about much, which is the talent is increasing in value the humans, and now you got managed services on the cloud, has got scale and human interactions. Can you share, you know, how you guys are working together on this piece? Cuz this is interesting cuz this kind of brings up the relationship of that operator or developer. >>Yeah, Yeah. So I think there's, so I think about this in a few dimensions. First is that the kind of the, I it's difficult to find a customer who is not talking about automation at some level right now. And obviously you can automate the processes and, and the physical infrastructure that you already have that's using tools like Ansible, right? But I think that the, combining it with the, the elasticity of a solution like aws, so you combine the automation with kind of elastic and, and converting a lot of the capital expenses into operating expenses, that's a great way actually to save labor, right? So instead of like racking hard drives, you can have somebody who's somebody do something a little more like, you know, more valuable work, right? And so, so okay, but that gives you a platform and then what do you do with that platform? >>And if you've got your systems automated and you've got this kind of elastic infrastructure underneath you, what you do on top of it is really interesting. So a great example of this is the collaboration that, that we had with running the rel workstation on aws. So you might think like, well why would anybody wanna run a workstation on, on a cloud? That doesn't make a whole lot of sense unless you consider how complex it is to set up, if you have the, the use case here is like industrial workstations, right? So it's animators, people doing computational fluid dynamics, things like this. So these are industries that are extremely data heavy. They have workstations have very large hardware requirements, often with accelerated GPUs and things like this. That is an extremely expensive thing to install on premise anywhere. And if the pandemic taught us anything, it's, if you have a bunch of very expensive talent and they all have to work from a home, it is very difficult to go provide them with, you know, several tens of thousands of dollars worth of worth of worth of workstation equipment. >>And so combine the rail workstation with the AWS infrastructure and now all that workstation computational infrastructure is available on demand and on and available right next to the considerable amount of data that they're analyzing or animating or, or, or working on. So it's a really interesting, it's, it was actually, this is an idea that I was actually born with the pandemic. Yeah. And, and it's kind of a combination of everything that we're talking about, right? It's the supply chain challenges of the customer, It's the lack of lack of talent, making sure that people are being put their best and highest use. And it's also having this kind of elastic, I think, opex heavy infrastructure as opposed to a CapEx heavy infrastructure. >>That's a great example. I think that's illustrates to me what I love about cloud right now is that you can put stuff in, in the cloud and then flex what you need when you need it at in the cloud rather than either ingress or egress data. You, you just more, you get more versatility around the workload needs, whether it's more compute or more storage or other high level services. This is kind of where this NextGen cloud is going. This is where, where, where customers want to go once their workloads are up and running. How do you simplify all this and how do you guys look at this from a joint customer perspective? Because that example I think will be something that all companies will be working on, which is put it in the cloud and flex to the, whatever the workload needs and put it closer to the work compute. I wanna put it there. If I wanna leverage more storage and networking, Well, I'll do that too. It's not one thing. It's gotta flex around what's, how are you guys simplifying this? >>Yeah, I think so for, I'll, I'll just give my point of view and then I'm, I'm very curious to hear what a not has to say about it, but the, I think and think about it in a few dimensions, right? So there's, there is a, technically like any solution that aan a nun's team and my team wanna put together needs to be kind of technically coherent, right? The things need to work well together, but that's not the, that's not even most of the job. Most of the job is actually the ensuring and operational consistency and operational simplicity so that everything is the day-to-day operations of these things kind of work well together. And then also all the way to things like support and even acquisition, right? Making sure that all the contracts work together, right? It's a really in what, So when Aon and I think about places of working together, it's very rare that we're just looking at a technical collaboration. It's actually a holistic collaboration across support acquisition as well as all the engineering that we have to do. >>And on your, your view on how you're simplifying it with Red Hat for your joint customers making Collabo >>Yeah. Gun, Yeah. Gunner covered it. Well I think the, the benefit here is that Red Hat has been the leading Linux distribution provider. So they have a lot of experience. AWS has been the leading cloud provider. So we have both our own point of views, our own learning from our respective set of customers. So the way we try to simplify and bring these things together is working closely. In fact, I sometimes joke internally that if you see Ghana and my team talking to each other on a call, you cannot really tell who who belongs to which team. Because we're always figuring out, okay, how do we simplify discount experience? How do we simplify programs? How do we simplify go to market? How do we simplify the product pieces? So it's really bringing our, our learning and share our perspective to the table and then really figure out how do we actually help customers make progress. Rosa that we talked about is a great example of that, you know, you know, we, together we figured out, hey, there is a need for customers to have this capability in AWS and we went out and built it. So those are just some of the examples in how both teams are working together to simplify the experience, make it complete, make it more coherent. >>Great. That's awesome. That next question is really around how you help organizations with the sustainability piece, how to support them, simplifying it. But first, before we get into that, what is the core problem around this sustainability discussion we're talking about here, supply chain sustainability, What is the core challenge? Can you both share your thoughts on what that problem is and what the solution looks like and then we can get into advice? >>Yeah. Well from my point of view, it's, I think, you know, one of the lessons of the last three years is every organization is kind of taking a careful look at how resilient it is. Or ever I should say, every organization learned exactly how resilient it was, right? And that comes from both the, the physical challenges and the logistics challenges that everyone had. The talent challenges you mentioned earlier. And of course the, the software challenges, you know, as everyone kind of embarks on this, this digital transformation journey that, that we've all been talking about. And I think, so I really frame it as, as resilience, right? And and resilience is at bottom is really about ensuring that you have options and that you have choices. The more choices you have, the more options you have, the more resilient you, you and your organization is going to be. And so I know that that's how, that's how I approach the market. I'm pretty sure that's exact, that's how AON is, has approaching the market, is ensuring that we are providing as many options as possible to customers so that they can assemble the right, assemble the right pieces to create a, a solution that works for their particular set of challenges or their unique set of challenges and and unique context. Aon, is that, does that sound about right to you? Yeah, >>I think you covered it well. I, I can speak to another aspect of sustainability, which is becoming increasingly top of mind for our customer is like how do they build products and services and solutions and whether it's supply chain or anything else which is sustainable, which is for the long term good of the, the planet. And I think that is where we have been also being very intentional and focused in how we design our data center. How we actually build our cooling system so that we, those are energy efficient. You know, we, we are on track to power all our operations with renewable energy by 2025, which is five years ahead of our initial commitment. And perhaps the most obvious example of all of this is our work with arm processors Graviton three, where, you know, we are building our own chip to make sure that we are designing energy efficiency into the process. And you know, we, there's the arm graviton, three arm processor chips, there are about 60% more energy efficient compared to some of the CD six comparable. So all those things that are also we are working on in making sure that whatever our customers build on our platform is long term sustainable. So that's another dimension of how we are working that into our >>Platform. That's awesome. This is a great conversation. You know, the supply chain is on both sides, physical and software. You're starting to see them come together in great conversations and certainly moving workloads to the cloud running in more efficiently will help on the sustainability side, in my opinion. Of course, you guys talked about that and we've covered it, but now you start getting into how to refactor, and this is a big conversation we've been having lately, is as you not just lift and ship but re-platform and refactor, customers are seeing great advantages on this. So I have to ask you guys, how are you helping customers and organizations support sustainability and, and simplify the complex environment that has a lot of potential integrations? Obviously API's help of course, but that's the kind of baseline, what's the, what's the advice that you give customers? Cause you know, it can look complex and it becomes complex, but there's an answer here. What's your thoughts? >>Yeah, I think so. Whenever, when, when I get questions like this from from customers, the, the first thing I guide them to is, we talked earlier about this notion of consistency and how important that is. It's one thing, it it, it is one way to solve the problem is to create an entirely new operational model, an entirely new acquisition model and an entirely new stack of technologies in order to be more sustainable. That is probably not in the cards for most folks. What they want to do is have their existing estate and they're trying to introduce sustainability into the work that they are already doing. They don't need to build another silo in order to create sustainability, right? And so there have to be, there has to be some common threads, there has to be some common platforms across the existing estate and your more sustainable estate, right? >>And, and so things like Red Hat enterprise Linux, which can provide this kind of common, not just a technical substrate, but a common operational substrate on which you can build these solutions if you have a common platform on which you are building solutions, whether it's RHEL or whether it's OpenShift or any of our other platforms that creates options for you underneath. So that in some cases maybe you need to run things on premise, some things you need to run in the cloud, but you don't have to profoundly change how you work when you're moving from one place to another. >>And that, what's your thoughts on, on the simplification? >>Yeah, I mean think that when you talk about replatforming and refactoring, it is a daunting undertaking, you know, in today's, in the, especially in today's fast paced work. So, but the good news is you don't have to do it by yourself. Customers don't have to do it on their own. You know, together AWS and Red Hat, we have our rich partner ecosystem, you know AWS over AWS has over a hundred thousand partners that can help you take that journey, the transformation journey. And within AWS and working with our partners like Red Hat, we make sure that we have all in, in my mind there are really three big pillars that you have to have to make sure that customers can successfully re-platform refactor their applications to the modern cloud architecture. You need to have the rich set of services and tools that meet their different scenarios, different use cases. Because no one size fits all. You have to have the right programs because sometimes customers need those incentives, they need those, you know, that help in the first step and last but no needs, they need training. So all of that, we try to cover that as we work with our customers, work with our partners and that is where, you know, together we try to help customers take that step, which is, which is a challenging step to take. >>Yeah. You know, it's great to talk to you guys, both leaders in your field. Obviously Red hats, well story history. I remember the days back when I was provisioning, loading OSS on hardware with, with CDs, if you remember, that was days gunner. But now with high level services, if you look at this year's reinvent, and this is like kind of my final question for the segment is then we'll get your reaction to is last year we talked about higher level services. I sat down with Adam Celski, we talked about that. If you look at what's happened this year, you're starting to see people talk about their environment as their cloud. So Amazon has the gift of the CapEx, the all that, all that investment and people can operate on top of it. They're calling that environment their cloud. Okay, For the first time we're seeing this new dynamic where it's like they have a cloud, but they're Amazon's the CapEx, they're operating. So you're starting to see the operational visibility gun around how to operate this environment. And it's not hybrid this, that it's just, it's cloud. This is kind of an inflection point. Do you guys agree with that or, or having a reaction to that statement? Because I, I think this is kind of the next gen super cloud-like capability. It's, it's, we're going, we're building the cloud. It's now an environment. It's not talking about private cloud, this cloud, it's, it's all cloud. What's your reaction? >>Yeah, I think, well I think it's a very natural, I mean we used words like hybrid cloud, multi-cloud, if, I guess super cloud is what the kids are saying now, right? It's, it's all, it's all describing the same phenomena, right? Which is, which is being able to take advantage of lots of different infrastructure options, but still having something that creates some commonality among them so that you can, so that you can manage them effectively, right? So that you can have kind of uniform compliance across your estate so that you can have kind of, you can make the best use of your talent across the estate. I mean this is a, this is, it's a very natural thing. >>They're calling it cloud, the estate is the cloud. >>Yeah. So yeah, so, so fine if it, if it means that we no longer have to argue about what's multi-cloud and what's hybrid cloud, I think that's great. Let's just call it cloud. >>And what's your reaction, cuz this is kind of the next gen benefits of, of higher level services combined with amazing, you know, compute and, and resource at the infrastructure level. What's your, what's your view on that? >>Yeah, I think the construct of a unified environment makes sense for customers who have all these use cases which require, like for instance, if you are doing some edge computing and you're running it WS outpost or you know, wave lent and these things. So, and, and it is, it is fear for customer to say, think that hey, this is one environment, same set of tooling that they wanna build that works across all their different environments. That is why we work with partners like Red Hat so that customers who are running Red Hat Enterprise Linux on premises and who are running in AWS get the same level of support, get the same level of security features, all of that. So from that sense, it actually makes sense for us to build these capabilities in a way that customers don't have to worry about, Okay, now I'm actually in the AWS data center versus I'm running outpost on premises. It is all one. They, they just use the same set of cli command line APIs and all of that. So in that sense, it's actually helps customers have that unification so that that consistency of experience helps their workforce and be more productive versus figuring out, okay, what do I do, which tool I use? Where >>And on you just nailed it. This is about supply chain sustainability, moving the workloads into a cloud environment. You mentioned wavelength, this conversation's gonna continue. We haven't even talked about the edge yet. This is something that's gonna be all about operating these workloads at scale and all the, with the cloud services. So thanks for sharing that and we'll pick up that edge piece later. But for reinvent right now, this is really the key conversation. How to bake the sustained supply chain work in a complex environment, making it simpler. And so thanks for sharing your insights here on the cube. >>Thanks. Thanks for having >>Us. Okay, this is the cube's coverage of ados Reinvent 22. I'm John Fur, your host. Thanks for watching.

>>Mhm Hello and welcome back to the cubes coverage of 80 of his public sector summit live for two days in D. C. In person. CuBA's here is an expo floor that people face to face down here. Adriana guest co founder and Ceo of Girls in tech cube alumni friend of the cube. We've known her for a long time. Watch their success really making an impact. Great to see you. Thanks for coming on. >>Wonderful to see you, john, thanks so much for having me. >>You know, one of the things that Sandy carter talks about matt max Peter talks about all of the Amazonian leadership that's about is skills training. Okay, this is a big deal. Okay, so getting talented to the industry is critical and also diversity and women attacking underrepresented minority groups are key. This has been a look at constant focus, you've been successful and and convincing folks about tech and working hard, what's the update, >>wow. So the reason why we're here, not only as Sandy carter are amazing chairman of the board of six plus years, but I heard we heard so many pain points from several of our partners as well as our good friends over at the White House and the Department of State and many other public sector agencies that there is a deficit. It's been very difficult to find diverse groups of talent and talent period to join their companies and populate those important I. T. Jobs stem jobs, whether it's very very technical or more data driven or more sort of design focus, product development focus across the board it's been very hard for them to find talent for those jobs. So girls in tech has partnered with AWS to create an initiative called the next generation public sector leaders and really focusing on creating awareness on career development opportunities for up and coming talent diverse talent that is curious and interested in job opportunities and educational opportunities within the public sector. So it has multi tiers, right? And it's something that we've devised based on the need and based on a lot of data and a lot of interviews from a lot of our partners and within the A. P. N. Network and we're doing a mentorship program which is a six month long program matching these amazing public sector executives, really accomplished leaders as well as our members from around the world um to connect and expose them and provide that nurturing, fostering mentality so that they can succeed in their careers. So >>eight of us getting behind this mission. Yes. And public sector is really fast growing changing. You start to see a lot of public private partnerships go on. So not just the old school public sector business, I mean the pandemic has shown the impact of society. So what does that do for the melting pot of talent out there? Have you seen anything out there? And how does that relate to this? Is that helped you at all or what's that does that mean for the mission? >>So there is a melting pot of talent. I just think we need to do a better job of creating awareness and really knowing where that talent lives. Like what are the blogs that they read? What are the videos that they watch and listen to? Where are they? Right. And we need to do the hard work and investigating and understanding like taking a more empathetic approach to really finding out what um how we can access them what their needs are. What are the things that interest piqued their interest within these jobs within the public sector um And customize it and market it so that they'll be eager and excited. Um And it would be more appealing to them. >>So I looked at the press release I just want to get your reaction to something you got evening with the experts. It's an in person event. >>Yes. When >>is that? Is that here is that going to be on your own event? What's that about? >>All the events that are going to be in person? Will be in D. C. Um There will be some virtual events as well. Our mentorship program is all virtual six month long program with curriculum and matchmaking on a platform that we use the evening with the experts which is a panel discussion with experts from a A. W. S. And beyond the A. P. N. Network. We'll talk about challenges and technology opportunities within a career development and also jobs. Um Well do recruitment like on the fly type of activities as well. Speed and speed interviewing, speed networking? Um We also have a few other programs, our webinar which is about the next gen public sector opportunities and this is more about the challenges that people face that companies face and the new technologies that will be launched very soon. And we're doing a widget on our jobs board to highlight the new career opportunity, new job opportunities from all of the public sector partners. We work with >>a very comprehensive, >>It's very comprehensive on the six >>month guided mentorship program. How does someone get involved in applications? How what's that going on there? >>It will be an application process and we will promote it to anyone who signs up to our newsletter. So go to Girls in tech dot org. Sign up for our newsletter and we will be posting and sharing more information on how people get involved. But we'll definitely send custom uh E. D. M essentially promoting to the people who are here at the conference and also through our Girls in tech D. C. Chapter as well. >>So I have to ask you, I know you've been really busy, been very successful. You've been out and about what's the trend line looked like? Well >>not for the last few years though, >>you've >>been in lockdown now. >>You've been working hard, you know have not not about now. You >>are not >>about what's the temperature like now in terms of the pulse of the industry relative to progress, what's what's what are you finding, what's the current situation >>progress for women in tech in the industry. So Since I started girls in tech in 2007, we've made A lot of progress, I would say it's a lot slower than I thought it would be, but you do see more and more women and people representing bipac actually apply for those jobs. We it is astronomically different than 2006, when I started in my first startup and there's a lot more mentorship, There are a lot more organizations out there that companies are more accountable with the R. G. Groups and they're changing their policies, are changing their training programs are having more off sites, there's now technologies that focus on tracking uh productivity and happiness of employees so that like all of that did not exist or I should say none of that existed, you know? And so we worked hard, we've worked hard, but it takes a village, it takes a lot of different people to create that change. And now one of girls in text mission is not just providing that education that community, that mentorship, we want to get the corporate involved, we want to teach the corporate about D and I training the importance of diversity, different tactics to recruit uh so on and so forth. And and it's been so amazing, so inspirational, I love, I started working more in partnerships and having our monthly calls with partners because I love it. I love collaborating to >>recruit good peer group around you to accelerate and create more territory of awareness and impact more people can get their hands involved. And I think to me that's what I think you're starting to see that with podcasts and media people are starting to go direct to tell their story, apps are out there now as you mentioned. So, but I feel like we're on a crossover point coming soon, totally thinks it's different. Um, but it's still a >>lot more work to do a lot more. We just got the service. I know, I know you've just scratched the surface, but we're so excited to be here. Aws is a huge supporter thanks to Sandy carter and her team. Um, it's been an amazing experience. >>Sandy's got great vision, she takes risks. So she's actually got the Amazonian concept of experiment, try something double down if it works and that's great to see that you guys have extended that relationship with, with her and the team. I like this idea of the fellowship cohort model of the or that program, you have the mentorship program. I think that's super cool. Um, that's something I think will be very successful. >>Uh, it's been successful so far. We typically over sell our mentorship are mentee spots. Uh, we only have 500 spots and last one we had over 2300 like a crazy amount, so we know that our members are really hungry for it around the world. And we know it will just be as just as popular for the public sector. So >>what's next for you? What's the vision? What's the next step was events are coming back in person? We're here in person. >>Yeah, there's just so much going on. I wish I could clone myself and we're busting at the seams. And I think the things that are really exciting to me are being able to produce our programs internationally, specifically in developing countries. So we're working um we haven't made an official announcement yet or anything, but we are working on expanding in african countries with Aws. They're doing some efforts and making some movements there. So places like Cameroon Ghana Nigeria Egypt. Uh we are looking to create chapters there for Girls in Tech and then expand our programming. Uh we're also, as mentioned earlier, we're working a lot with corporations to provide DNA training. So, training about policies, Inclusive leadership. Making sure they have the tools and policies to succeed and for their employees to feel comfortable, safe and productive in their work environment >>is great to see you. Congratulations Girls in tech dot org. Yes. Is the U. R. L. Check it out a great mission, very successful. Making progress any stats you can throw out there, you can share. >>Yeah, of course, you >>wrap it up. >>Yeah. So right now, girls in tech has 58 active chapters in 38 countries with over 70,000 active members. And by the end of the year we will have close to 100 active members. So hopefully we'll see you next year and that number will double or triple sign >>up. Tell him johN sent, you know, don't say that because you won't get no. Great to see you. >>Thank you. Nice to see you too. Thanks so >>much, john. Great to have you on cube coverage here at AWS public Sector summit in Washington, D. C. Is a live event. Were face to face. We had some remote guests. It's a hybrid event. Everything is being streamed. I'm john Kerry with the cube. Thanks for watching. Mhm. Mhm

(upbeat music) >> Narrator: From around the globe. It's The CUBE, with digital coverage of AWS public sector online, (upbeat music) brought to you by, Amazon Web Services. >> Everyone welcome back to The CUBE virtual coverage, of AWS public sector summit online. I'm John Furrier, your host of The CUBE. Normally we're in person, out on Asia-Pacific, and all the different events related to public sector. But this year we have to do it remote, and we're going to do the remote virtual CUBE, with Data Virtual Public Sector Online Summit. And we have two great guests here, about Digital Earth Africa project, Clive Charlton. Head of Solutions Architecture, Sub-Saharan Africa with AWS, Clive thanks for coming on, and Aditya Agrawal founder of D4DInsights, and also the advisor for the Digital Earth Africa project with AWS. So gentlemen, thank you for coming on. Appreciate you coming on remotely. >> Thanks for having us. >> Thank you for having us, John. >> So Clive take us through real quickly. Just take a minute to describe what is the Digital Earth Africa Project. What are the problems, that you're aiming to solve? >> Well, we're really aiming to provide, actionable data to governments, and organization around Africa, by providing satellite imagery, in an easy to use format, and doing that on the cloud, that serves countries throughout Africa. >> And just from a cloud perspective, give us a quick taste of what's going on, just with the tech, it's on Amazon. You got a little satellite action. Is there ground station involved? Give us a little bit more color around, you know, what's the scope of the project. >> Yeah, so, historically speaking you'd have to process satellite imagery down link it, and then do some heavy heavy lifting, around the processing of the data. Digital Earth Africa was built, from the experiences from Digital Earth Australia, originally developed by a Geo-sciences Australia and they use container services for Kubernetes's called Elastic Kubernetes Service to spin up virtual machines, which we are required to process the raw satellite imagery, into a format called a Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF. This format is used to store very large volumes of data in a format that's really easy to query. So, organizations can just use NHTTP get range request. Just a query part of the file, that they're interested in, which means, the results are served much, much quicker, from much, much better overall experience, under the hood, the store where the data is stored in the Amazon Simple Storage Service, which is S3, and the Metadata Index in a Relational Database Service, that runs the Open Data CUBE Library, which is allows Digital Earth Africa, to store this data in both space and time. >> It's interesting. I just did a, some interviews last week, on a symposium on space and cybersecurity, and we were talking about , the impact of satellites and GPS and just the overall infrastructure shift. And it's just another part of the edge of the network. Aditya, I want to get your thoughts on this, and your reaction to the Digital Earth, cause you're an advisor. Let's zoom out. What's the impact of people's lives? Give us a quick overview, of how you see it playing out because, explaining to someone, who doesn't know anything about the project, like, okay what is it about, and how does it actually impact people? >> Sure. So, you know, as, as Clive mentioned, I mean there's, there's definitely a, a digital infrastructure behind Digital Earth Africa, in a way that it's going to be able to serve free and open satellite data. And often the, the issue around satellite data, especially within the context of Africa, and other parts of the world is that there's a level of capacity that's required, in order to be able to use that data. But there's also all kinds of access issues, because, traditionally satellite data is heavy. There's the old model of being able to download the data and then being able to do something with it. And then often about 80% of the time, that you spend on satellite data is spent, just pre processing the data, before you can actually, do any of the fun analysis around it, that really sort of impacts the kinds of decisions and actions that you're looking for. And so that's why Digital Earth Africa. And that's why this partnership, with Amazon is a fantastic partnership, because it really allows us, to be able, to scale the approach across the entire continent, make it easy for that data to be accessed and make it easier for people to be able to use that data. The way that Digital Earth Africa is being operationalized, is that we're not just looking at it, from the perspective of, let's put another infrastructure into Africa. We want this program, and it is a program, that we want institutionalized within Africa itself. One that leverages expertise across the continent, and one that brings in organizations across the continent to really sort of take the leadership and ownership of this program as it moves forward. The idea of it is that, once you're able to have this information, being able to address issues like food security, climate change, coastal resilience, land degradation where illegal mining is, where is the water? We want to be able to do that, in a way that it's really looking at what are the national development priorities within the countries themselves, and how does it also then support regional and global frameworks like Africa's Agenda 2063 and the sustainable development goals. >> No doubt in my mind, obviously, is that huge benefits to these kinds of technologies. I want to also just ask you, as a follow up is a huge space race going on, right now, explosion of availability of satellite data. And again, more satellites going up, There's more congestion, more contention. Again, we had a big event on that cybersecurity, and the congestion issue, but, you know, satellite data was power everyone here in the United States, you want an Uber, you want Google Maps you've got your everywhere with GPS, without it, we'd be kind of like (laughing), wondering what's going on. How do we even vote these days? So certainly an impact, but there's a huge surge of availability, of the use of satellite data. How do you explain this? And what are some of the challenges, from the data side that's coming, from the Digital Earth Africa project that you guys hope to resolve? >> Sure. I mean, that's a great question. I mean, I think at one level, when you're looking at the space race right now, satellites are becoming cheaper. They're becoming more efficient. There's increased technology now, on the types of sensors that you can deploy. There's companies like Planet, that are really revolutionizing how even small countries are able to deploy their own satellites, and the constellation that they're putting forward, in terms of the frequency by which, you're able to get data, for any given part of the earth on a daily basis, coupled with that. And you know, this is really sort of in climbs per view, but the cloud computing capabilities, and overall computing power that you have today, then what you had 10 years, 15 years ago is so vastly different. What used to take weeks to do before, for any kind of analysis on satellite data, which is heavy data now takes, you know, minutes or hours to do. So when you put all that together, again, you know, I think it really speaks, to the power of this partnership with Amazon and really, what that means, for how this data is going to be delivered to Africa, because it really allows for the scalability, for anything that happens through Digital Earth Africa. And so, for example, one of the approaches, that we're taking us, we identify what the priorities, and needs are at the country level. Let's say that it's a land degradation, there's often common issues across countries. And so when we can take one particular issue, tested with additional countries, and then we can scale it across the whole continent because the infrastructure is there for the whole continent. >> Yeah. That's a great point. So many storylines here. We'll get to climb in a second on sustainability. And I want to talk about the Open Data Platform. Obviously, open data, having data is one thing, but now train data, and having more trusted data becomes a huge issue. Again, I want to dig into that for a second, but, Clive, I want to ask you, first, what region are we in? I mean, is this, you guys actually have a great, first of all, we've been covering the region expansion from Bahrain all the way, as moves around the world, probably soon in space. There'll be a region Amazon space station region probably, someday in the future but, what region are you running the project out of? Can you, and why is it important? Can you share the update on the regional piece? >> Well, we're very pleased, that Digital Earth Africa, is using the new Africa region in Cape Town, in South Africa, which was launched in April of this year. It's one of 24 regions around the world and we have another three new regions announced, what this means for users of Digital Earth Africa is, they're able to use region closest to them, which gives them the best user experience. It's the, it's the quickest connection for them. But more importantly, we also wanted to use, an African solution, for African people and using the Africa region in Cape Town, really aligned with that thinking. >> So, localization on the data, latency, all that stuff is kind of within the region, within country here. Right? >> That's right, Yeah >> And why is that important? Is there any other benefits? Why should someone care? Obviously, this failover option, I mean, in any other countries to go to, but why is having something, in that region important for this project? >> Well, it comes down to latency for the, for the users. So, being as close to the data, as possible is, is really important, for the user experience. Especially when you're looking at large data sets, and big queries. You don't want to be, you don't want to be waiting a long lag time, for that query to go backwards and forwards, between the user and the region. So, having the data, in the Africa region in Cape Town is important. >> So it's about the region, I love when these new regions rollout from Amazon, Cause obviously it's this huge buildup CapEx, in this huge data center servers and everything. Sustainability is a huge part of the story. How does the sustainability piece fit into the, the data initiative supported in Africa? Can you share some updates on that? >> Well, this, this project is also closely aligned with the, Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative, which looks to accelerate sustainability research. and innovation, really by minimizing the cost, and the time required to acquire, and analyze large sustainability datasets. So the initiative supports innovators, and researchers with the data and tools, and, and technical experience, that they need to move sustainability, to the next level. These are public datasets and publicly available to anyone. In addition, to that, the initiative provides cloud grants to those who are interested in exploring, exploring the use of AWS technology and scalable infrastructure, to serve sustainability challenges, of this nature. >> Aditya, I want to hear your thoughts, on this comment that Clive made around latency, and certainly having a region there has great benefits. You don't need to hop on that. Everyone knows I'm a big fan of the regional model, but it brings up the issue, of what's going on in the country, from an infrastructure standpoint, a lot of mobility, a lot of edge computing. I can almost imagine that. So, so how do you see that evolving, from a business standpoint, from a project standpoint data standpoint, can you comment and react to that edge, edge angle? >> Yeah, I mean, I think, I think that, the value of an open data infrastructure, is that, you want to use that infrastructure, to create a whole data ecosystem type of an approach. And so, from the perspective of being able. to make this data readily accessible, making it efficiently accessible, and really being able to bring industry, into that ecosystem, because of what we really want as we, as the program matures, is for this program, to then also instigate the development of new businesses, entrepreneurship, really get the young people across Africa, which has the largest proportion of young people, anywhere in the world, to be engaged around what you can do, with satellite data, and the types of businesses that can be developed around it. And, so, by having all of our data reside in Cape Town on the continent there's obviously technical benefits, to that in terms of, being able to apply the data, and create new businesses. There's also a, a perception in the fact that, the data that Digital Earth Africa is serving, is in Africa and residing in Africa which does have, which does go a long way. >> Yeah. And that's a huge value. And I can just imagine the creativity cloud, if you can comment on this open data platform idea, because some of the commentary that we've been having on The CUBE here, and all around the world is data's great. We all know we're living with a lot of data, you starting to see that, the commoditization and horizontal scalability of data, is one thing, but to put it into software defined environments, whether, it's an entrepreneur coding up an app, or doing something to share some transparency, around some initiatives going on within the region or on the continent, it's about trusted data. It's about sharing algorithms. AI is also a consumer of data, machines consume data. So, it's not just the technology data, is part of this new normal. What's this Open Data Platform, And how does that translate into value in your opinion? >> I, yeah. And you know, when, when data is shared on, on AWS anyone can analyze it and build services on top of it, using a broad range of compute and data to data analytics products, you know, things like Amazon EC2, or Lambda, which is all serverless compute, to things like Amazon Elastic MapReduce, for complex extract and transformation processes, but sharing data in the cloud, lets users, spend more time on the data analysis, rather than, than the data acquisition. And researchers can analyze data shared on AWS, without needing to pay to store their own copy, which is what the Open Data Platform provides. You only have to pay for the compute that you use and you don't need to purchase storage, to start a new project. So the registry of the open data on AWS, makes it easy to find those datasets, but, by making them publicly available through AWS services. And when you share, share your data on AWS, you make it available, to a large and growing community of developers, and startups, and enterprises, all around the world. And you know, and we've been talking particularly around, around Africa. >> Yeah. So it's an open source model, basically, it's free. You don't, it doesn't cost you anything probably, just started maybe down the road, if it gets heavy, maybe to charging but the most part easy for scientists to use and then you're leveraging it into the open, contributing back. Is that right? >> Yep. That's right. To me getting, getting researchers, and startups, and organizations growing quickly, without having to worry about the data acquisition, they can just get going and start building. >> I want to get back to Aditya, on this skill gap issue, because you brought up something that, I thought was really cool. People are going to start building apps. I'm going to start to see more innovation. What are the needs out there? Because we're seeing a huge onboarding of new talent, young talent, people rescaling from existing jobs, certainly COVID accelerated, people looking for more different kinds of work. I'm sure there's a lot of (laughing) demand to, to do some innovative things. The question I always get, and want to get your reaction is, what are the skills needed to, to get involved, to one contribute, but also benefit from it, whether it's the data satellite, data or just how to get involved skill-wise >> Sure. >> Yes. >> Yeah. So most recently we've created a six week training course. That's really kind of taken users from understanding, the basics of Earth Observation Data, to how to work, with Python, to how to create their own Jupyter notebooks, and their own Use cases. And so there's a, there's a wide sort of range of skill sets, that are required depending on who you are because, effectively, what we want to be able to do is get everyone from, kind of the technical user, that might have some remote sensing background to the developer, to the policy maker, and decision maker, to understand the value of this infrastructure, whether you're the one who's actually analyzing the data. If you're the one who's developing new applications, or you're taking that information from a managerial or policy level discussion to actually deliver the action and sort of impact that you're looking for. And so, you know, in, in that regard, we're working with ITC in the Netherlands and again, with institutions across Africa, that already have a mandate, and expertise in this particular area, to create a holistic capacity development program, that will address all of those different factors. >> So I guess the follow up question I want to have is, how do you ensure the priorities of Africa are addressed, as part of this program? >> Yeah, so, we are, we've created a governance model, that really is both top down, and bottom up. At the bottom up level, We have a technical advisory committee, that has over 15 institutions, many of which are based across Africa, that really have a good understanding of the needs, the priorities, and the mandate for how to work with countries. And at the top down level, we're developing a governing board, that will be inclusive, of the key continental level institutions, that really provide the political buy-in, the sustainability of the program, and really provide overall guidance. And within that, we're also creating an operational models, such that these institutions, that do have the capacity to support the program, they're actually the ones, who are also going to be supporting, the implementation of the program itself. >> And there's been some United Nations, sustained development projects all kinds of government involvement, around making sure certain things would happen, within the country. Can you just share, some of the highlights, or some of the key initiatives, that are going on, that you're supporting, to make it a better, better world? >> Yeah. So this is, this program is very closely aligned to a sustainable development agenda. And so looking after, looking developing methods, that really address, the sustainable development goals as one facet, in Africa, there's another program looking overall, overall national development priorities and sustainability called the Agenda 2063. And really like, I think what it really comes down to this, this wouldn't be happening, without the country level involvement themselves. So, this started with five countries, originally, Senegal, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, and the government of Kenya itself, has really been, a kind of a founding partner for, how Digital Earth Africa and it's predecessor of Africa Regional Data Cube, came to be. And so without high level support, and political buying within those governments, I mean, it's really because of that. That's why we're, we're where we are. >> I need you to thank you for coming on and sharing that insight. Clive will give you the final word, for the folks watching Digital Earth Africa, processes, petabytes of data. I mean the satellite data as well, huge, you mentioned it's a new region. You're running Kubernetes, Elastic Kubernetes Service, making containers easy to use, pay as you go. So you get cutting edge, take the one minute to, to share why this region's cutting edge. Does it have the scale of other regions? What should they know about AWS, in Cape Town, for Africa's new region? Take a minute to, to put plugin. >> Yeah, thank you for that, John. So all regions are built in the, in the same way, all around the world. So they're built for redundancy and reliability. They typically have a minimum of three, what we call Availability Zones. And each one is a contains a, a cluster of, of data centers, and all interconnected with fast fiber. So, you know, you can survive, you know, a failure with with no impact to your services. And the Cape Town region is built in exactly the same the same way, we have most of the services available in the, in the Cape Town region, like most other regions. So, as a user of AWS, you, you can have the confidence that, You can deploy your services and workloads, into AWS and run it in the same in the same way, with the same kind of speed, and the same kind of support, and infrastructure that's backing any region, anywhere else in the world. >> Well great. Thanks for that plug, Aditya, thank you for your insight. And again, innovation follows cloud computing, whether you're building on top of it as a startup a government or enterprise, or the big society better, in this case, the Digital Earth Africa project. Great. A great story. Thank you for sharing. I appreciate it. >> Thank you for having us. >> Thank you for having us, John >> I'm John Furrier with, The CUBE, virtual remote, not in person this year. I hope to see you next time in person. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music) (upbeat music decreases)

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube covering upgrade twenty twenty, The NTT Research Summit presented by NTT Research. >>Welcome back. I'm stupid a man. And this is the Cubes coverage of Upgrade twenty twenty. Of course, it's the NTT Research Summit and happy to welcome to the program someone that watch the Cube for a long time. But first time on the program. Simon Walsh. He is the new CEO of NTT America's Simon. Great to see you and thanks so much for joining us. >>Thanks very much. Too good to be here. All right. See, >>A Zai mentioned your your previous companies that you've worked for are ones that the Cube and Cube audience are well aware of. Matter of fact, when I worked for some of those companies, NTT is one of the large global companies that I had the pleasure to interact with over the years. But if you could maybe let's start with just a little bit of your background. And as I said, it's only been a few months that you've been the CEO, so you know, what's it like coming into a role like this? You know, during the situation that we're all faced with in twenty twenty. >>Yeah, Thank you. I mean, my background is really in, You know, the platforms that enable the customers Thio run their technologies. Andi, Uh, you know, I spent some of my time in Europe and the media on then latterly the last five plus years in the Americas. I have to say I really enjoy It's a much better environment. If I think about it from a GDP and an economy perspective, it's, ah really dynamic place to work. I worked with companies headquartered from Europe running America's, and I've worked with companies that were headquartered in the Americas, running some of the European businesses. So I've crossed the continent's if you like. I recently joined NTT. I have to say, you know, it was a pretty lengthy process to explore, but that was partly, you know, interviews and due diligence because you want to make sure that, you know, you're you're buying into a company that, you know, number one, you can have ah, cultural compatibility with, but also somebody who you see really investing in technology that consult for, you know, the business agenda of the markets. So that's really a bit about my background and then, you know, joining. I mean, I literally joined last week of June, so my whole time has bean through, locked down in terms of employment. It's been very unique. Taking on a new post, exclusively remote. Andi I was a bit worried, you know, at a human level, just, you know, how do you connect with people? What I would comment is I've actually had the ability to really meet ah, lot more people in person because you can physically get to people's schedules a lot easier. So that's certainly helped, you know. And I've done my, uh, activities of meeting clients. Eso they've been very amenable to connecting talking to our business partners and spending, you know, considerable amount of time with my colleagues, uh, in the Americas and around the world. Andi, it's actually been very rewarding. I think, funnily enough, you probably physically closer because you're on a screen and you probably like twenty four inches away from each other. Whereas in a meeting room you'd be the other side of the table. So it's been unique, but so far so good. >>Well, yeah, absolutely. The the new abnormal is we. We have sometimes say what? We're all usedto looking in the screens all day talking to various people there. Uh, the impact on business, though, has been, uh, you know, obviously ah, lot of different things, depending on the company. But that discussion of digital transformation a few years ago it was like, Oh, I don't know if it's really is it a buzzword? But that the spotlight that's been shown here in twenty twenty is what Israel and what is not leveraging cloud services, giving people agility, being able to react fast because, boy in twenty twenty if we needed to react fast, so help bring us inside a little bit. And your time there, the discussion you're having with customers, that adoption moving along that journey for digital transformation, the impact that you're seeing and house NTT helping its customers as they need to accelerate and respond toe the realities that we see today. >>Yeah, so you're right into I mean, digital disruption has been ongoing for multiple years. Way used to call it technology and change, and now we call it digital disruption or digital transformation. So it's not necessarily new. I think the thing that's really accelerated in twenty twenty, You know, as a consequence of the pandemic is really the word distributed, uh, in that customers are undertaking their digital transformations understanding. You know what it is to modernize processes, you know, modernize the customer experience on Then they're finding that actually, they don't need in a board room and discuss, you know, the performance of the business so they now need to have distributed access to data on. I think the topics that we see very prevalent is the distributed nature off the workforce. Andi. Obviously there's always been a filled workforce, and we've had systems, crm systems and other systems that were built for a distributed workforce. But now we have toe think about our supply chain management systems and our HR systems, the P and L. And you know all of the activities that business undertakes with an entirely distributed workforce, and it's quite abnormal. And I think what we've learned is where is the data on how doe I amalgamate data from distributed systems. And so I see. And we're doing a lot of work with our clients relating to digital transformation, but really about how doe I join data from system a two system F in a distributed manner, most importantly, securely timely on in A in an interface that is usable on it sounds really easy is like Oh, great, yeah, it's just two different data points. Connect them together, make it secure, make it visible, create transparency. But we all know that the world is full of technical debt, legacy systems and platforms Very expensive and significant historical investments on those things Don't modernize themselves overnight. Quite often. The dollars to modernize them don't justify themselves. So we then end up layering on, you know, new technology. So you know what I'm seeing on in digital transformation is really about. How do we handle distributed data Distributed decision making on how we do that in a secure manner on through an interface that is, uh, user friendly? >>Yeah, way. Obviously know that there's had to be some prioritization. You know, the joke. I've had everybody came into twenty twenty with Okay, here. Here's what I'm gonna do for the first half of the year. Here's the objectives that I have, and we kind of throw those in the shredder rather early on Number one priority. I still hear it was probably that the number one priority coming into the year and it stays there, and you've mentioned it multiple times. Its security, you know, is absolutely front and center Still. How overall, though, How are your customers? You know, the c X So sweet. How are they adjusting their priorities? Are there certain projects that just go on hold? Are there certain ones that get front and center? Obviously, you know, that distributed work from anywhere. Telemedicine, uh, you know, teach and learn from anywhere have been top of mind. But any other key learnings you're finding or prioritization changes, some of which are gonna probably stay with us. Uh, you know, for the long term, >>Absolutely. We've definitely seems Thio customers re prioritizing. And I think there is obviously an inevitability to this, a za consequence of the pandemic. I mean, if you were undertaking a campus upgrade, you might just put that on pause for the moment. And we've absolutely seen that. But what we've really seen is a prioritization has been How do we get our information to our users? Whether the user is a customer or whether the user is an employee, you know, there's examples where there's lots of companies who are saying they've got, like, online detail, right. But now they've got to do curbside pickup because they've actually got inventory in the stores. But the stores couldn't open. So what you've seen is a re prioritization to say, Well, when we look out inventory management and the supply chain systems, are we factoring in that the inventory we have in a store could also be seen as inventory across the stores? And in fact, what we've really got now is a distributed warehouse. We've got inventory in the warehouse like wholesale, ready for distribution on. Then we've got inventory in a store retail ready for consumer consumption. What? We don't want that to be separate Infantry. We want that to be holistic on. Then how do we enable any any consumer anywhere to be able to arrange for curbside pickup, which we didn't used to do because we would come into the store or arrange for mail order? But the inventory may come from, you know, I may send something from San Francisco to somebody in Boston because it was in a storied inventory in San Francisco. Now, sure, it's got it's got some freight cost, but I've also got some other efficiency savings, and I'm reducing my working capital in my inventory expense. So we've seen prioritization for really how to take advantage of this. I come back to it. This word distributed is very simple in principle, but everything is now working on a new dynamic. So that's some of the prioritization we've seen. >>Um, you mentioned one of the things that might get put on hold is wait. If I was doing a corporate network update, that might not be the first thing. You know, we we Absolutely. We've gotten some great data on just the changing traffic patterns of the Internet, but the network is so critically important, everybody from home is, you know, dealing with Children doing their zoom classrooms while we're trying to dio video meetings. Um, NTT obviously has a strong, uh, you know, network component to what? Its businesses help us understand the services that are important there. What? What? You're working with customers. And how has this kind of transformed, uh, some of those activities? >>Yeah, Yeah, sure. Thank you. You're so right. I mean, I have to say I just like thio, pay my respects to colleagues and fellow workers around the world who are not just working from home but also home schooling in parallel. Uh, kids are fled the nest, you know, they're working for themselves now, so we don't have the extra activity of home schooling. But I can really have a lot of respect her colleagues who are trying to do both. It's a real fine art on. We've seen a lot of actually just talking of re prioritization. We've seen a lot of companies, including ourselves. You know, say to our colleagues, Look after your Children home, school them do everything you can to support your families on, then get to your work So that re prioritization. Justin behavior has been a key change that we've seen a lot of people do that flexibility to. You know, work is something you do not somewhere you go on. Therefore, as long as the work is done, we can flex around. You know your needs is a family, so that's one prioritization we've seen at, actually. But to your point on the network, it is quite amusing to me that we've been for years now talking about cloud on demand subscription services on Actually, the one asset that you need to really enable cloud is the network and its historically been the least cloudlike that you could possibly imagine Because you still need to specify a physical connection. You still need to specify a band with value you still need to specify. You know, the number of devices you get too attached to it. I think this is really a monstrous change that we're going to experience and really are experiencing the network as a service. I mean, we talk about I as has SAS. But what happened toe now, as I mean really, did we just think that everything was about computing software? The network is the underpin er on DSO. Really? We see a big change and this is where we've been very busy in the network as a service enabling customers tohave dynamic reallocation of resources on the network so that they can prioritize traffic, prioritize content, prioritize events, you know, a lot of customers are now doing activities such as hosting their own event, their own digital conference on. Do you want to prioritize what the user experience is when you host one of those events over perhaps a back office process that, quite frankly, wait a few days so we see a significant opportunity. This is where we've been very busy the last few months in really building out much more dynamic network of the service solutions. You know, the Cloud Network. And I think the whole software defined network agenda has materially accelerated. That's one major area on then. The other area has just been the phenomenal ship to I p voice on soft bone, actually almost the deletion of the phone in its entirety. Everybody using you know, teams or Skype or Google hangouts to really use as their collaboration mechanism on. Then you know, we're providing all the underlying transportation layer. But as I p voice, you know, that creates a much more integrated collaboration. Experience on git creates a cost saving because you're taking away classic voice services. >>Yeah, Simon Boy, I'm excited for that. I I remember when I got my first BlackBerry and they were trying to sell me some things. I'm like, Wait, this is an Internet endpoint. I can do all of these things there and of course you know it's taking taking it. The last dozen years. If If Ghana certain far, but and we always joke, it's like smartphones. We don't use them for phones anymore. We use them for all the messaging and all those services. So, uh, the the data and the network are so critically important, something I want to turn Thio, you know, upgrade twenty twenty. You know what? I'm excited about this. You know, we've talked about, you know, the major impacts of what's happened in twenty twenty, and we're looking at the here and now. But it's great in technology when we get to be able to look forward and look at some of the opportunities out there. So we'd love to hear from your standpoint, some of the areas. What's exciting? You what's exciting? That we can look forward to some of the areas and pockets of research that we see at the event. >>Yeah. Thank you. Strewn E. I think what I like about Aravind is the investment that we make to work with, You know, scientific community, academia, really invest in, you know, forward looking future proofing, how physics and different technologies might play a role in the future. And, you know, some of these investments and some of this research yields commercial products, and some of it doesn't. But it's still a very valuable opportunity for us to really look at you know where technology is going. I think the areas that particularly appealing to me on a personal level, just the whole thing of quantum computing. This is, uh, you know, I know we're already exploring the capabilities of quantum computing in, you know, some labs and Cem academia centers on really to understand, how can we take advantage of that? But I think if you then say and you take another area that we're exploring through the event Biosciences, if you then take the two together and you think Okay, how do we take quantum computing on? We take Biosciences on you think about health care, and then you think about the pandemic. You know? Are there things that we can do with simulations and technologies in the future that really would give us a greater comprehension and ability to accelerate understanding, understand, accelerate testing, and then really contribute to, you know, the health and welfare of society. Andi, I think that's really quite an exciting area for us. So that's a specific topic that I'm particularly interested in. I'm glad to see us doing a lot in that space quantum computing as well as you know, Biosciences. And I'd say, you know, one other area where I still think we're all trying to ascertain how it serves the business is really the area of Blockchain. I think this is, um, intriguing. I'm still mentally trying to master the subject. No amount of white papers has managed Thio overcome the topic of my brain yet, So I'm still working on it on. Then I think cryptography, I come back to the same subject security. I mean, we are dependent as citizens, businesses and nations on technology. Now, on our data is available how we secure it, How we make sure that it's encrypted is absolutely going to be critical. You see an increasing push nationally on globally to ensure that there is, you know, security of data on. I think the subject of cryptography and how we go forward with, you know, beyond one hundred and twenty eight bit is gonna be a very difficult and critical subjects. So these are the areas I'm very impressed with. >>Wonderful. Simon, I wanna give you the final word from update. Great. Twenty twenty. >>Yeah, thanks to you. Just thanks very much, Thio. Anybody that's attending what you'll find through various workshops. There's lots of insight from our strategic partners from research scientists from academia from ourselves. So thank you very much for participating. You know, we always value your feedback. So please tell us what we could do to improve the content to help you with your businesses. Onda, We look forward and hope that everybody stays safe. Thank you for connecting with us virtually >>well. Simon Walsh, Thank you so much. Great. Having a conversation and glad to have you in our cube alumni now, >>thank you very much to have a good day. >>Alright, Stay tuned. More coverage from upgrade twenty twenty. I'm still minimum. And thanks. As always, for watching the cube. Yeah,

>>From the cube studios in Palo Alto, in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world. This is a cute conversation. >>Everyone. Welcome to the cube conversation here from our Palo Alto studios. I'm John furrier, host of the cube. We're here with our remote crew, getting all the interviews, getting all the stories that matter during this time were all sheltering in place during the COVID crisis. We've got a great returning guest, John Madison, EVP of products and chief marketing officer. Fordanet John. Great to see you, uh, looking good with the home studio. They're getting used to it. Yeah, indeed. Good to be here again, John. Thanks for coming. I really appreciate it. We're hearing a lot about sassy, which has a secure access network adjuncts, zero trust network access. Uh, what does that all mean now these days? What does this sassy? Well, there's definitely a lot of hype around the word sassy, which is the security of the age. Uh, for us actually it confirms a strategy that we've had since the beginning of the company. >>And two important concepts. One is, uh, the coming together of, uh, networking and security. We could refer to it as security driven networking, and we've been doing it using ACX and appliances for a long time. Uh, we're now going to expand it to a cloud as well as that's one concept, again, bringing together networking and security or converging them in a way. And then the second concept is more around a platform approach. So if you look at the definition of sassy, it includes, it includes web gateway as a service you a trust Caz B, a wife, et cetera. And so bringing those together in a platform approach, we refer to it as the fabric. So we're actually really happy about those two concepts coming together. Maybe the name itself could be, could be different, but definitely the concepts and the technologies play really well to our strategy. >>Yeah, it's sassy. S a S E not two ways, not like SAS softwares of service. Wait for one noses cloud. Yeah. I tried using the full name and I've reverted back to sassy again. So short and sassy, keep it short and sweet. Um, okay, well this is a super important relevant topic for multiple reasons. One is COVID is kind of accelerated the future for everybody. And you know, we've been kind of riffing on Twitter and throughout the industry I've been calling it the big IOT, uh, experiment because the unforecasted disruption of COVID is forced everyone to work at home. So the notion of work changes workplace is now home workforce, the people, how their interaction with the networks, workloads, workflows, all changing new expectations, new experiences. This is the real deal. And the edge is where the action is. That's the big, new obvious architectural highlight here. >>Yeah, so we talked last time. I think it would just be getting this work from home, uh, element, but, um, we're still here. And I think what it says is that what is forced is that, uh, enterprises and customers need to look at their edges and they're increasing. So we always, the one edge was a new one over the last two years. As we introduced us the, when they had a data center edge, they had an endpoint edge and now you have a home edge. And so you've got to apply security as a cloud edge as well. You've got to apply security to these edges. And the key is the flexibility to apply the security you want and you need against this agent. And so we're seeing some customers right now, look at setting up mini enterprise networks to protect that home age again, in that, in the homes of their executives or developers. >>And we reported with the news. You guys had a couple of months ago around just as such been a feeding frenzy for hackers and bad actors to go after the home environment. Um, as well as the it guys who are working from home, you have the cloud consumption's shifted as well. You're seeing the cloud players doing extremely well because now you have more cloud, you have more vulnerabilities at the edge with the home. This is changing completely increasing the attacks. >>Yeah. The tack factors, you know, predominantly, still actually, you know, a lot of fishing, but then if you're on the network, that attack factor is very important. So for us, and, you know, we did an acquisition last week of opaque networks because that gave us an additional consumption model and different additional form factor. So if somebody going from the home straight into the cloud, or the pairing off a branching off an SD Wang connection straight into the cloud, we can now apply that cloud edge security throughout our sassy capabilities. And so again, the ability to have security at all, these edges has become very important going forward. So for us now we've got appliances, we've got virtual machines, we've got cloud delivery, and this is becoming very important to customers. I'm not saying, and customers are not saying they're going to go to just cloud only going forward. They're going to be hybrid. And so having those options is very important. >>You mentioned opaque networks, we reported that acquisition. Congratulations. What does that mean for Fordanet and where does that technology fit? And you mentioned software. Can you just take a minute to explain the acquisition impact Affordanet and where does the tech fit? >>Well, as I said, we've been driving a lot of this conversion, sassy conversions through our appliances. Um, but it's sometimes makes sense to put that security closer to the cloud during points or wherever. And so opaque, we really liked their model of building out these hyper hearing stations and making sure they got high-speed security there as well as edges. And so, um, we bring, we're going to bring that inside our environment, uh, update it to include some of our technology, uh, but it gives us now great flexibility, uh, of applying that security at the SD wan edge, the data center agent now without edge or longer-term roadmaps will integrate orchestration capabilities. It also includes a zero trust network access capability as well. So really when we looked at our, uh, of sassy framework, uh, we had most of the things in place. This now adds firewall as a service as well as zero trust network access, giving us the most complete sassy framework in the marketplace. >>What is the security component of the work at home? You mentioned earlier, there's more networks and companies are looking to kind of up level the capabilities. Can you give an example and take us through what that like and what companies are thinking about, because it's not just, here's some extra money for your home bandwidth, your people are working there. It's like, it's gotta be industrial strength edge. Now it's not just, um, you know, temporary and their kids are home too. So you got they're gaming, they're watching Netflix, people zooming in and doing WebExes all day long. >>Yeah, it can be as simple as putting a zero trust network access, you know, an agent on there and doing some security locally, and then going back through a proxy in a, we believe actually that it's, it can be even better than that. That can apply many enterprise security in your house through a next gen firewall, give high availability through SD wan, uh, then, you know, expand out their secure access and switching and end points. And we can do that today. I think what's going to be key going forward is as you're dealing as it, uh, teams have to deal with more of a consumer approach remotely in the homes, we're gonna have to simplify the way things get set up, such that you can easily separate out, maybe home usage from corporate enterprise users. So that will be something we'll be working on over the next 18 months. >>I mean, just the provisioning, the hardware, okay, here you go. Plug it in it. Should it be plug and play? And this is kind of back to the future of where SAS is going. I mean, the old days was plug and play was the technology. Now you've hit that concept. It has to be auto configured. You have to provision pretty quickly. What's the future of sassy in your mind. >>Yeah. And so, you know, if you think about, you know, coming back to the home usage, then people have dumbed down those routers and the security is very simplistic. So we, people can just plug and play. If you, it needs to be a bit more sophisticated. Uh, you're going to need to put some tools in place. We believe longterm that the sassy model, once you've got the platforms in place, once you've got SD wan in place, your Cosby or your sassy zero trust and longterm, you're going to need an orchestration system. That's more AI driven. So we've done a lot of work on AI around security and making sure we can see things very quickly. Um, but the longterm goal, I think will be around AI ops, AI network ops, uh, where the system and the big data systems are looking across your network, across these different components to see where there may be an issue. Maybe there's a certain length has gone down across a certain ISP. We need to bring that back up. Maybe there's a certain cure or as to an application in the cloud somewhere. So we need to change the OnRamp. Uh, so once everything's in place and you have that console and policy engine that can look across everything, and then we need to get smarter by looking at the data and the logs, et cetera, and applying some of that AI technology. >>You know, John, we've been following Fordanet as you know, for many, many years and watching the evolution of you guys as a company. And also as the industry, the new waves are coming in. Um, a lot of the stuff you're doing with the fabric and now the secure driven networking has been kind of on the playbook. So I want to get your thoughts before we get into those topics and define them and kind of unpack them. But generally customers are looking at, um, a slew of vendors out there and you have 10 of two approaches. You have a platform, and then you have the we're an application or fully full stack or SAS or something. And this there's trade offs between the two. And how should customers understand the difference? Because there's different value propositions for each platforms, more enabling out of the box, SAS or point solution can solve a particular thing, but it may not have that breadth. How should customers think about a platform approach or fabric and how should they think about the value and how to engage with that longterm? >>Yeah, I'm definitely seeing more customers look towards a platform going forward. They just can't manage all the different point solutions and you don't have to train an individual in that product. You have to have a separate management console, you have to integrate it. And so more and more I'm finding customers wanting to converge, which is the basis of sassy consolidate applications onto a platform of security applications. What's important over that platform is that the consumption model is flexible enough to be an appliance, to be a virtual machine and to be cloud delivery does as a customer's networks move and their orchestration systems move into different, more cloud, or they've got their IP enabling their factories, for example, then they need that security to be flexible. So yes, you need to be a platform as the way forward. Um, but two things. One is you need a flexible consumption model for it. You know, clients, virtual machine and cloud. And also that platform needs to be very open. It needs to have connectors into the main orchestration systems that needs to allow people to build API and automation. So, uh, yes, you, you need a platform, but it needs to be open and it needs to be flexible. >>Great, great insight there. And that's exactly what the marketing, especially with cloud the kind of scale, second follow up question to that is how do you tell the difference between a tool camouflage is a platform. So I have a tool I want to sell you a tool, but no, it's a platform. So a lot of people are peddling tools and saying their platforms. How do you know the difference? >>Well, to me, a platform that has much greater scope across the attack surface festival, they attack factors whether that be email or application the network, the end point. So platforms not just of a specific attack back to go across the complete surface. And then also a platform is Wednesday organically built, allows those products to communicate. So then you can build automation across it. It's very hard to build automation across two or three different vendors. They have different scripts. So been able to build that automation. And then of course, on top of that, to have a single view, single visibility capability, as well as longterm applied that AI ops across it. So platform is very, very different from the, some of the tools I've seen in the marketplace. >>I want to get to your reaction to a comment that your CEO said about security driven, networking, and underscores what we've been saying for years, blah, blah, blah. He goes on in this era of hyperconnectivity and expanding networks with the network edge stretching across the entire digital infrastructure, um, networking and security have to be kind of be their, their convergence. You mentioned describe how you view hyper-connectivity and expanding networks and how the edge stretches across the digital infrastructure. What's what does that look like? Can you share your vision of that? >>Well, when you think about networking, if you go back 20 years, when you have these 10 megabit per second connections, learning, networking, and routing and switching, they haven't really changed that much over the last eight years, 20 years, they've just got a lot faster, gone to now to 400. You give us a second, but the basic functionality is the same. And so it's allowed them to go a lot faster. Um, security is very different, even though it started off with firewalling than VPN, and then next gen firewall, SSL inspection, all these functionalities IPS have been added, making a lot harder for it to keep up in the network. And so one of the fundamental principles of security and networking is bringing these two things together, but accelerating them either using a six and now cloud through our acquisition, uh, to allow those to run in a converged format. >>And that's very important because as I said, there's now more, you can look at it two ways. You can say the perimeter has expanded because it used to be a very narrow perimeter. The data center across these areas, or at the edges have formed as well. There's new edges sitting at the OT environment, sitting at the wan edge, sitting at the home mattress. I talked about seeing the cloud edge. And so the ability to apply that security in very high performance, very high quality security, not just a small sampling of security, a full enterprise stack, but those edges is going to be critical going forward. And the flexibility to apply in different ways is going to be very important. >>I think the convergence piece is totally relevant and honestly it consolidating into a platform is very key point there. Um, while I got you here, I would just like you I'd like you to define what is security driven networking and what does it mean to be security driven? So define security, driven, networking, and give an example of what it means. >>Yeah. And so I think it's, I think the one edge was one of the best examples of it. I mean, actually go before that next gen Fila was where you bought firewalling and then content inspection to go there. But I think the latest one is definitely the one edge or secure SD land where you had a networking function, which was to get the users to the right applications. And so they got this application now steering that goes out through there. Well, you also want to apply security to that because security into the wham, you've also got to protect the land. And so the ability to run a security stack there, whether it be IDs, right, patient control is very important. So getting all those networking functions, working at high speed, getting all the security functions, working at high speed, uh, is that it's the kind of the Genesis of security driven networking, and you can apply it there. We can also apply it in other places at the age, in the cloud. Now the home, uh, it's a very, very important concept, uh, to be able to run networking and security together. But high speed, >>Everyone has their own kind of weird definition of sassy, depending on when you're building your own or different analyst firms. Uh, I noticed you guys have a different take on this. Even Gartner has a different view on this. How do you guys diff differ from that, that definition and what should people be aware of when they hear that? What is the right definition? >>Yeah. You know, it's unfortunate. I mean, I think Ghana does some good work there and that they define it and I've come up with sassy, but this is like acronym soup. And, you know, I want a bit of next gen firewall on my sassy. It's just, it's just so many different terms. It confuses the customer. Then what makes it more confusing is that vendors look at their portfolio and go, Oh, sassy is a hot topic. I've got a sassy as well. And really, it should be very clear what the definition from Gardner is. It is bringing together security and networking. Now their definition is that they, uh, you should do that in the cloud, which we agree with as well, but it can only be in the cloud. The reason it's in the cloud is because not many people have got the ability to run on an appliance very fast. >>So we believe our different stairs that you should be able to run it on an appliance virtual machine in cloud. And then the second kind of differences that they've defined the components of Sassies being Estee, wagon, Cosby, firewalls, a service zero trust. We also think that the land age is very important. So we would add into that definition, that secure access of wifi and Ethan at switching as well. And so we try and point out, you know, the gun definition and we also point out where we differ and I think that's fair to the customer can make a good decision. >>I think it is fair. And I think one of the things I've been saying for years, and I love garden, I love the guys over there and gals. I just don't think that their business model is real time as much, but they ended up kind of getting it right down the road. But you brought up a good point. And again, I've been saying this for years, cloud changes Gartner's model because there's, if you have quadrants, it implies silos and implies categories. And one of the best things about cloud is it does horizontally scale. So some of the best vendors actually have multiple capabilities that might fall on different quadrants that may or may not be judged on a criteria that meets what cloud's doing. So, yeah, for instance, Asics, you mentioned right. That's in there too. You get cloud and ACX is that where they've got two different categories? You add the edge in there. If you do all three, really great as an integrated, converged and consolidated platform, you're technically awesome, but you might not fit in the quadrant. >>Yes. That's a really good point. I have this conversation with them all the time in that traditionally enterprises have a networking teams and security teams, and they've been in silos or I've had a networking team that just does switching or just this routing, just this SD wan. And I have a security team that does web gateway, and then they like to separate them all into different components. When you look inside those Nike quadrants, they're all different, even at the same vendor, the different products. And what we like to do is bring it all together. You a single operating system, a single appliance or cloud virtual machine. Sometimes it's not quite, it doesn't quite fit the model, but in the end, you're trying to do the same thing. Know, and COVID-19 >>One of the real realities that everyone's dealing with is it does expose everything and an expose. And again, it's been a disruption unforecasted, but it's not like an outage or a flood or a hurricane. If it happened and it's happening, it really puts the pressure on looking at the network. It's looking at how you can have continuous operations. How are you working with your people and workloads, workforces apps. You got to have it all there. And if you're not digitally enabled, you're going to be on the wrong side of history. This is what companies are facing every day. And they've got to come back and double down on the right project. So every CXO I talk about, that's the number one challenge I need to come out of the pandemic with a growth strategy and an architecture. That's going to allow me to take advantage of the new realities. Hey, it's really good for people to work at home. That's cool. Some people are going to continue to do that. Maybe that's normal. Maybe that's a new tactic >>And it's going to vary by industry as well. So if I'm a retail outlet, I absolutely need it 100% of the time, but those retail outlets cause people are ordering online and then they're driving up. And so it has changed the dynamics. It's for me working at home, I have to be on all the time. And so the ability to do really good, high quality networking, high availability, high IQ of as, with this integrated security across the different edges is super critical. >>I was talking with a network friend of mine. Again, we were having a few zoom cocktails and do a little social networking online. And we were like, and we've, and we've mentioned it before in the queue, but we keep coming back to the land is the new land. And meaning that it's in the old days, land was everything, everything, the local area network, and you were inside the data center, everything was great on premises. When is the new land? So if you think about it that way you go, okay, when edge I got a, now Atlanta at home, you got to SD wan and your house, of course you worked for Fournette. So it's a little bit beneficial for you, your, your, your, your geek there, but this is the new normal where it's all one network. It's not just a land link, it's a system. Can you react to that? What's your take on that? When is the new land kind of ref, >>First of all, it can't be too picky. He goes on the CMO as well. So there's no talk about the geekiness. Um, but, um, it's just, it just makes as a skip saying, it's, it's, it's making sure that wherever you may be, uh, you know, you're doing less traveling these days, but that may come back at some point or where they are at a branch office or a campus environment or wherever applications, and then moving around in different clouds, in different areas, in terms of consumption of workloads, um, wherever that's happening, you gotta be able to be flexible and applying that security to the different edges, land edge, one edge home edge data center edge. And so the ability to do that, uh, while providing high speed and connectivity, uh, is very important. And then again, as you go forward and you implement that platform approach. So not just the point product now, three or four products working together, uh, being able to apply that policy orchestration and AI ops is going to make sure that they get that user in the end. It's all about the user experience. Do I have a high quality of experience, whatever application I'm using? That's the key measurement in the end? >>You know, one observation I would have, if you look back at the whole virtualization trend, going back to the early days of VMware, that kind of enabled Amazon and kind of having a large scale kind of infrastructure, hyperconvergence really kind of collapsed everything together. And now you seeing things with Amazon, like outposts, you seeing, you know, these non premises devices, which is basically one cloud operations kind of highlights what you're saying here. And I want to get your thoughts on this because the combination of Asics with cloud, it's not a bug, it's a feature for you guys. That's a value proposition and it's kind of consistent with some of the big players like AWS. When you look at what they're doing and apprenticeships, for instance, what they're putting in the servers, having that combination of horsepower Asex with cloud is a guiding principle of the future architecture. Can you share your thoughts was also, you guys are, are announcing that and have that feature. >>Yeah, well, w another reason why I like the opaque acquisition as they were their major appearing pubs into the different cloud service providers that were using hardware and that hardware, uh, we, we can run hardware and with our Asics almost 50, a hundred times faster than equipment CPU. So I've got a firewall application I've gone on appliance. There, I may need a hundred virtual machines and, and CPU they're running the same thing. So again, we're coming back to our definition of security driven, networking in our minds. It can be basic, it can be virtual machine and it can be cloud. Now, imagine if we can take the best benefits of basic and combine that with cloud, uh, that's a great model going forward again, given that flexibility. So when people think cloud something has to run on something, it doesn't run in fresh air. So, you know, the big cloud vendors are putting in some Asex to accelerate some of the AI stuff, and we're going to use the same thing in some of our major, what we call 40 sassy. You know, our naming methodology is 40, whatever it does or going forward to provide us that performance and high availability now. Yeah. So you're always going to need some flexibility of virtual machines in certain areas, but we think the combination of both, it gives us a great advantage. Yeah. >>And there's definitely evidence that, I mean, there's a, there's kind of two schools of thought on hardware. Are you a box mover, you know, commodity general purpose, or are you using the hardware and a system architecture, acceleration has been a huge advantage, whether I've seen companies doing accelerated Kubernetes processing, you know, for clusters and some, you know, see GPS are out there. It's, it's, it's how you use the hardware. Yeah. That's the, really the key it's and again, back to the architecture. So, okay. So wrapping up, if you, if you believe that, and you look at the fabric that you guys are having out there, and as it evolves, what's the, what's the next level for 400. How do you see this going forward? You've got security driven networking, and you got the fabric. What's next? What are you guys working on the product side? >>I know you're public, you can't reveal any future earnings, but give us a taste of kind of the direction on the roadmap. I think, you know, we've got now all the, all the kind of component that underlying components of the platform in terms of the ability to apply appliances, deliver it by appliances or virtual machine or cloud. Um, we've got a very broad portfolio from endpoint, uh, all the way into, to the cloud and the networks, all those things that are in place. Obviously you always need some features here and there as you go forward and nest it when and next gen firewall, et cetera. Um, but I think the longterm, I think a goal for his nine is to, again, to apply a bit more intelligence, uh, both from a security perspective and from a network perspective, such that we can predict things, we can automatically change things. >>We can build automation and react to things much more quickly. So I think the building blocks are in place. Now. I think it's the ability to provide a bit more smarts across it, uh, which of course takes big data and very specific application programming. And I think, uh, definitely our customers are asking us about that. And we look very closely with our customers to build out that, to make sure it meets their needs going forward while it's great to see the platform continue to grow and, and fill in a holistic view of the, of the landscape from edge to throughout the enterprise. So a great strategy and thanks for the update, John Madison, the VP of product and CMR for that. John. Great to have you on. Thanks for coming on extra. Okay. This is the cube conversation here in Palo Alto studios. I'm Chad for a year hosting the cube. Thanks for watching.

>>From Miami beach, Florida. It's the cube covering a Chronis global cyber summit 2019 brought to you by Acronis Kabran. >>Welcome back to the cube coverage here in Miami beach at the Fontainebleau hotel four Kronos is global cyber summit 2019 I'm John 42 days of coverage. We're on J to learning a lot about the global security, cybersecurity and protection marketplace and solutions. Our next guest is Alex Amir Shenko, also known as Alex Miro. Great to have you on and great chatting with you prior to coming on camera. Thanks for coming on. So vice president of cyber infrastructure at Krones. Essentially looking at your platform, that's essentially the hyperconverged stack underneath the platform software. You're enabling kind of the critical infrastructure for it. >>Yeah, that's the one we did a lot of way to describe it. It is infrastructure. We provide the complete stack all the way, whatever you run on top of the standard commodity get hardware, including the virtualization layer to keep that bit different around this, the standard container workloads and essentially optimized for, you know, they all work for the cyber platform. >>You know, your interesting background, we were talking before we came on camera about your, your background. Certainly you've seen waves of innovation, you've been a high performance storage enterprise infrastructure, um, you know engineer and developer and a executive and lot's changed in the past couple of years and certainly the past decade if you're on the V San wave, you saw that storage wave. Now we're in a cloud wave, now we're on premise with hybrid. So hybrid certainly now a big part of the operating model. So the operating system is not just storage anymore, it's, it's a system view. What's your personal opinion on where storage is now? I've heard software defined data center from VMware for years we've been joked about software defined storage, software defined compute, I mean everything software defined but but software is the game scales a game. High performance is a requirement. What's changing storage right now? >>Well and like everything and nothing at the same time. As I said, like, you remember going back to like 30 years ago, I was like, Oh gosh, you know, if the storage is exploding, you know, sooner we're going to have like two gigabytes, you know, company server. Oh my God. You know, and uh, was like, Oh, or you know, where's it going to come in through all like imagining when people started recording music or you know, like they seeing this MP3 thing coming up. So, uh, it's the same game different year, but it's just like, it's, >> it's like this exponential curve. It's like the shape of the curve stays the same. And to be honest, like I like part of me, like never believes that I was like, Oh, come on, how much bigger can it get? And now everybody's like, Oh, we've got IUT line. >>We've got like those cameras streaming things 24, seven, every possible thing you can think of. And of course we've got to store everything. Well, I'm not certain know what to do with it. But um, so from that point of view of the demand keeps growing and you need to have technologists, your handle that appropriate plan. And again, it just not a matter of of kind of throwing the bid somewhere and forgetting about them, it's just keeping them in the predefined water and actually being able to process that. And says in the business of a Cypress perfection and some people say, Oh, you guys just like a up got pain. Yeah. That's the fundamental part of that. But as you pointed out again in our pre game chat is, is uh, the traditional data protection guys be the backup, you know, you can think about as the various, like a raid as a way to protect your data. >>They are all about defending against like physical disruption as a cold. Right? Okay. My DS guy, you know, it was like my data center die like my followup in towels. So, so what do I do? I was the day dependent defendant does not protect it, what I call a logical destruction. I mean back in the, like the classic law school disruption, >> disruption, logic to say destruction, disruption disrupt the same thing. I mean ransomware is pretty much destructive. I mean it's hostage at that point. But I mean you are logical, meaning nonphysical, not like an event like as hurricane or outage or something like that. You removed the wrong file, the right file and you didn't notice that and then you answered several backup cycles and then you realize, Oh I want my file back. But then you like the backup that it had, that file is gone. >>I mean, you know, what are you going to do? Right? Nothing got disrupted and destroyed. Then you files gone. That's a logical disruptions or destructions that happen that's happening. Certainly security points that out. But the secret is, the big thing though is what did, people didn't think about it back. Definitely not like me. Like, like 20 years ago is like the, so what happens if your system got hacked or like people, you know, you know like ransomware, right? It's specifically the product designed to like, you know, knock Vizio storage and I'll lay encrypted, deleted or whatever they want to do there. Um, and again, next thing you know, you like Becking up junk that Villa kid by rest somewhere and then you go to your backups and it's like, Oh my God, where w where does everything, because it's all, it's all that and people have a really strong backup and recovery, but they're recovering malware that they stored. >>Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Basically it's like, that seems like an office problem, but um, like nobody, but a Chronos is actually provides an integrated solutions to build as that, I mean there are different, I mean, people know what the problem is and the, there are companies out there where like, will scanning your backup archives, you'll find them all the way back. Fine. Great. But then anybody could try to like really deal was the restore in a critical situation knows that even it was out. The malware, it concerns, it's, uh, it's stressful. yeah. And it's not always predictable and as old as predictable. Right. Uh, that if the malware isn't wold it's, you know, it becomes an extremely expensive and sometimes, uh, you know, impossible operation that chronic state takes care of that because, you know, weight can actually monetary backups, you know, we can uh, find out where was the last time your, you know, you're clean, it gets into post hoc in a wearable sleeve practical suit gun, that real time scanning for viruses. >>It's a multilevel cyber protection and which is terribly, you know, I think it, I think it's unique in the industry. >> Well I think it's interesting how you guys have brought data protection, uh, concepts and paradigm and practice by the way into cyber was much more holistic view. Right? And I think that's like an operating system kind of thinking and thinking holistically is about systems and systems has consequences. Something goes wrong over here. It's affecting it hopefully to write software for that. And you know, we have a very strong system background photo DNA as they sometimes like to say that. And then in fact they first virtualizer a virtualization solution and containers for that matter were build by the Chronos engineering team. A building 15 years ago, way before, like anybody in the Linux roles knew how to spell container and what they hoped with the name. >>Um, so that's like our storage layer, software defined storage. It's fully blown the HCI product completely around understanding how to build that. That's, it gives us a unique advantage in the security companies. You know, I've gotta ask you a question. I'm, I'm a, I'm fascinating. I'm a student of history and also student of competitive advantage when it comes to technology platforms. And the one thing I always say is, and see it as entrepreneurs, whether they're young or old, is that there's two types of entrepreneurs. There's a systems thinker and a coder, right? And I think with platforms you can't shortcut a platform because there's trajectory benefits of condoms of scale for putting the work in. You can't put a platform out there overnight. You gotta have a, you gotta gotta build it and it takes time. So people try and accelerate platforms. Some, I've done the work, you guys have done it for a long time. What's your view on that whole, well, I'm gonna throw a platform out there. What are some of the things that get exposed when I try to, you know, push a platform too fast? Uh, well the platform presumes that you have an ecosystem, people actually using it and building stuff on top of that. >>Like everybody have you talked about the coders, right? So everybody program or a software developer are, you must have them, at least they dream of two things. They're right. You are like at creating a new programming language. Finally, the one that gets goes for the other guy and guys like, I'm going to write any operating the system. I went through that phase most elaborate in the system long time ago. And it's, you know, it's a process. I mean, whatever you build has to actually serve the purpose. If you would like. There are lots of platforms in all areas of technology and then people's like, Oh, we can a greatest set of API APIs and anybody can plug in into us. It's like, unless you solve a real problem and really simplify life, people, uh, they're not gonna do that happen. I mean, right. They not going to do like you as a platform for the sake of using the platform. >>Our cyber platform is different because we essentially expose, uh, our API to our technology that's out there and people have been using, I mean, I don't know if you saw the keynote, uh, yesterday, there was the demos the way how to write let's go with a plug in for the sake of a better term for purpose of this interview when people can add, uh, you know, their own policies to a cyber protect workflow, which could be specific to what they're doing, you know, you know, they notarized and things like that, that kind of platform makes sense because it's already out there and that's a respond to customer demands. Like, you know, look, uh, will love, what do you guys do? But we have the specialist is specific set of requirements and uh, keep it general enough, incorporated into the product. But there was also a lot of things which would have been specific to a vertical or even to a specific company. We just want to enable them to do this stuff. >>Of course the platforms are there, enabling enables some capabilities that provides value to that right use case. And that could be custom designed domain specific, but I'm sorry, letting that, that could be domain specific. So the platform is enabled capabilities for someone to do something. >>Yes. But again, the key point to the platform is he, it has to kind of solve a real problem, not be there for the sake of elegance or solution or API and things of that nature. >>Final question for you, Alex. So I'm, I'm a CIO or CSO or I'm out there with decision making. I'm like, man, you know what I gotta get up. I gotta rethink my enterprise architecture. I've got to think about, I got IOT coming, I've got industrial IOT and just an regular IOT. I want to have a comprehensive platform. Um, why Chronis what's the pitch and how do you, and what's different than the traditional Sans and storage and other solutions out there? What's the, what's the, what's that pitch to that enterprise decision maker? >>he kinda like to say as you say, I mean you have a tremendous growth in your, in your, in your data flows, the number of data sources, uh, exploding. It's actually going back to a previous question. I think that's what one of the differences that it's not just a volume of data, it's the like the breadth of the data sources are getting better. So you've got to, to manage that gets a little somehow or it's not an Academy. I don't know. I don't know what they're writing and all. I was like, who all the analogy for that so you can like how do you guys get into manage that? Do you have to protect it please? You have to know what your exposure is of what the things there and just throwing out a bunch of, you know, like standard nuts, technologists when product is not going to solve it. >>I mean, yes, you can hire lots of people. You can build your own thing. You would be effectively reinventing the wheel. Lots of wheels in the process of why have we already have that solution for you? I like the platform idea because it makes data more addressable, horizontally scalable. It's not just a siloed right slot product out there. You can actually work and enabled with data. Data is moving around. You've gotta be acted on yes. And software to do that. Yes, exactly. Exactly. So that's, that's another thing cause it's not, uh, it keeps like in a structured day tourism's unstructured data. There's dispatch discussion's been going on for many years. Uh, you know, they've, the reality is you will always have both types into Google. All of us have, they need to process them in both ways. Um, and let's have one more final question that just popped in my head so I can, final final question. >>What's in the infrastructure platform that you're involved in that people should know about that they might not know about that is important to, to investigate? What, is there a killer feature? Is there a killer thing in there that that is like notable that they should know about? What's the, what's under the hood on the infrastructure side for Kronos? Well, lots of things they don't understand. What's your favorite feature about that? What's your favorite feature? What's the one thing? Gosh, you knows like I have lots of babies. I love them all. I mean hard counting sides. A lot of size. I mean like let's say like, okay, I've been writing storage all my most of my career. I like storage, but that does mean it's more important or less important than other things. You know, unless you have a comprehensive compute layer on top of that, this storage is just then become a storage vendor, a niche for the them. >>So that's not who we are. I'm really fascinated by actually the integration was the like cyber feature in the security because that's on one hand it's not something that I've been doing in my previous carrier for most of the time, but I do have a lot of Ghana understanding how they work flow way. She has an integration points and that's excites me. Something I, that's one of the reasons I integrated platforms is I think the key thing. Thanks for coming on, Alex. Thanks for sharing your insight. Appreciate it. First first thing in the morning here in afternoon. Now you never know them and it's like everybody's so busy. It's the Chronis inaugural global cyber summit 2019 about cyber protection, not data protection, cyber protection. They both work hand in hand. This is the cube coverage here in Miami beach. I'm John furrier. We'll be back with more after the short break.

>> Announcer: Live, from Washington, D.C. it's CUBEConversations with John Furrier. >> Hello, everyone, and welcome to special on the ground here with theCUBE in Washington, D.C. I'm John Furrier, the co-host of theCUBE, and co-founder of SiliconANGLE, as we explore the disruption in Washington, D.C. with cloud computing and all the hot stories we have Timothy Kotin who is the founder of SuperFluid Labs. Thanks for joining me today. >> Thanks so much, John. >> So you guys are doing some pretty disruptive stuff, obviously, societal change, and ventures for good. Social change is a big part of the stories we're covering. You're in the middle of it here at PeaceTech Accelerator. We're here at the United States Peace Institute. What's your story? >> Thanks for having me. SuperFluid Labs, my organization, is a data analytics firm working in Africa. What we do is we help small businesses to unlock their potential using the power of data. For some organizations, this means being able to deliver essential services to millions more people, so for some organizations, it means increasing revenues, and for some organizations, it means understanding opportunities for greater efficiency and productivity. >> Y'know, PeaceTech Labs and PeaceTech Accelerator as part of this global movement where people want to apply AI for good, data for good, and in some cases good is just business, right? Economists, economies are thriving with big data and cloud. You guys are are using the cloud to bring new business models to Africa, to start. You're going to land and expand and take over the world. What's the key thing for you? >> Great, thanks. So the key thing for us is really that in the last few years, there's been an explosion in data, globally. 90% of the data in the world was created in just the last two years, and this presents a huge opportunity to unlock impact for businesses, and so some of the clients that we work with, for example, one of our clients is providing off-grid solar systems for households in sub-Saharan Africa, and they innovate, the innovation, the key innovation behind this model is the ability to deliver energy access as a service, where individuals pay on a pay-as-you-go basis. >> It's interesting, you know, helping society is not just donating money, but enabling entrepreneurs to be successful. You're an entrepreneur, you're here at the Accelerator. How do you get off the ground? I mean, what's great about the cloud is you don't need to provision all these servers, you're using the cloud. How are you guys going from a zero-stage start to getting into the market? What technology are you using, what strategy are you deplyong? >> Excellent. I think innovations such as the cloud have really been essential to our business model. A decade ago, it would have been impossible to launch a business similar to ours, so we use several cloud providers. Obviously, Amazon Web Services is one of them and many others, and what these services have allowed us to do is they've allowed us to focus on the innovation that we are delivering, the solutions that we are delivering, and less on infrastructure, provisions, and worrying about power outages, networking and all of that. >> In Africa, what's the conditions there? I mean, obviously, mobile is everywhere, but there's no telephone lines, and you've got mobile RF flying all over the world. >> Mobile is huge in Africa. I'm going to tell you an interesting stat. In the next three years, there are going to be an additional three hundred million smartphones in sub-Saharan Africa. That's more than the population of the U.S. and that's just in the next three years. >> Huge growth market. >> Huge growth market. >> How are businesses adapting, 'cause this is there you're taking your angle, right, using data, and how does that connect to the proliferation of phones, and how do business folks use it? Is that where you want to target in terms of your solution. >> Excellent question. So, the most innovational businesses that we have seen have taken advantage of access to mobile phones to develop innovative business models. So we have banks, for example, in Kenya, that have developed mobile-only lending and savings products, and they've expanded from 40,000 customers in 2012, to over twenty million customers at the end of last year. >> What's the ecosystem like in Africa, and what's the entrepreneurial cross-over when you go outside the borders of Africa? Obviously, you know in other continents, other economies. How does it all working together? Is it Bitcoin, is it blockchain, is it just standard cloud, how is the emerging landscape in tech impacting the emerging growth inside Africa. >> It's really phenomenonal, and what is most exciting, especially for me, given my experience in the U.S. and in the West and also in Africa is that a lot of the patented technologies, whether that is AI or cryptocurrency, or blockchain, is actually being used to good effect, it's actually being used to deliver essential services in Africa, and you'd be shocked. I was telling someone the other day that when you talk about payments, money-transfer innovation, Africa is really the hotbed for this. >> So you see crypto and blockchain hot in Africa right now. >> It is, and it's being applied in many other use cases beyond payment. So, you have some companies are innovating in land title administration, using that for growth tech and many other use cases. >> Great for property, great for store of value. Talk about your journey here at the PeaceTech Accelerator. How is that working, obviously they're helping you guys, with they're providing a lot of services. Tell us about what those guys are doing. >> Great, well the time here, this is actually the third week of our time here, it's really been very interesting. We've been exposed to mentors who have generously given their time to come and share their experience as other previous or experienced entrepreneurs, or executives that run large corporations, and there's mentoring sessions, we're exposed to investors, we're exposed to a cohort of other similarly minded entrepreneurs. >> That's great because you've accelerated. I've got to ask you a question, as the entrepreneur, you're always seeking for, most entrepreneurs are always seeking for that data edge, y'know, trying to understand the market force, there's all that good stuff. What have you learned here at the PeaceTech Accelerator? What was the something that you said, "Wow, that's something that I never would have gotten." >> Very interesting. So one of the things that has really stood out during my time here is really the emphasis on the fact that business, that delivering great business, or delivering business for good can cut across multiple sectors, I mean, for profit businesses like mine, and I think that is very reassuring, to know that there's a growing recognition globally around the impact and the social good that businesses can deliver. >> So you're using mobile as your backbone for your connectivity, how is the Internet of Things, or IOT, and AI going to be part of your plan? You see that consuming most of your IP and lots of property? >> Very much so. So given the stats I gave earlier on around the growth and explosive growth of data, and the explosive growth of mobile access, that is going to be essential to our IP and our patents, and we thing that's what will really give us the edge in this market. >> Great, final question for you, does D.C. get this? I mean, D.C. certainly is trying to be more global, you're actually here in D.C. at Accelerator, what's your assessment of the Washington, D.C. culture here? >> I think D.C. really gets it. I mean I think D.C. is really the hub of a lot of international development, international outreach by the U.S. government and many other international organizations. So, my being here is actually of the fact that D.C. gets it, and I'm originally from Ghana and from Africa, and we have other members of our cohorts who are flying in from all over the world, and that's the true evidence. >> How's the cloud impacting you? The U.S. is helping you to bring that innovation, what kind of edge are you bringing with cloud computing? >> It's providing speed, it's providing cost-effectiveness, and it's also providing scalability, rapid scalability. >> All right, I'm John Furrier on the ground in Washington, D.C. where all the innovation's happening here, in the United States Peace Institute, we're here with PeaceTech Accelerator, I see great stuff happening, entrepreneurship in social sectors are really happening, AI is a big part of that, IOT, cloud, all the trends are helping out a new generation of start-ups. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)