>> Announcer: TheCube presents HPE Discover 2022, brought to you by HPE. >> Welcome back to HPE Discover 2022, theCube's continuous wall to wall coverage, Dave Vellante with John Furrier. Keith Basil is here as the General Manager for the Edge Business Unit at SUSE. Keith, welcome to theCube, man good to see you. >> Great to be here, it's my first time here and I've seen many shows and you guys are the best. >> Thanks you. >> Thank you very much. >> Big fans of SUSE you know, we've had Melissa on several times. >> Yes. >> Let's start with kind of what you guys are doing here at Discover. >> Well, we're here to support our wonderful partner HPE, as you know SUSE's products and services are now being integrated into the GreenLake offering. So that's very exciting for us. >> Yeah. Now tell us about your background. It's quite interesting you've kind of been in the mix in some really cool places. Tell us a little bit about yourself. >> Probably the most relevant was I used to work at Red Hat, I was a Product Manager working in security for OpenStack and OpenShift working with DOD customers in the intelligence community. Left Red Hat to go to Rancher, started out there as VP of Edge Solutions and then transitioned over to VP of Product for all of Rancher. And then obviously we know SUSE acquired Rancher and as of November 1st, of 2020, I think it was. >> Dave: 2020. >> Yeah, yeah time is flying. I came over, I still remained VP of Product for Rancher for Cloud Native Infrastructure. And I was working on the edge strategy for SUSE and about four months ago we internally built three business units, one for the Linux business, one for enterprise container management, basically the Rancher business, and then the newly minted business unit was the Edge business. And I was offered the role to be GM for that business unit and I happily accepted it. >> Very cool. I mean the market dynamics since the 2018 have changed dramatically, IBM bought Red Hat. A lot of customers said, "Hmm let's see what other alternatives are out there." SUSE popped its head up. You know, Melissa's been quite, you know forthcoming about that. And then you acquire Rancher in 2020, IPO in 2021. That kind of gives you another tailwind. So there's a new market when you go from 2018 to 2022, it's a completely changed dynamic. >> Yes and I'm going to answer your question from the Rancher perspective first, because as we were at Rancher, we had experimented with different flavors of the underlying OS underneath Kubernetes or Kubernetes offerings. And we had, as I said, different flavors, we weren't really operating system people for example. And so post-acquisition, you know, one of my internal roles was to bring the two halves of the house together, the philosophies together where you had a cloud native side in the form of Rancher, very progressive leading innovative products with Rancher with K3s for example. And then you had, you know, really strong enterprise roots around compliance and security, secure supply chain with the enterprise grade Linux. And what we found out was SUSE had been building a version of Linux called SLE Micro, and it was perfectly designed for Edge. And so what we've done over that time period since the acquisition is that we've brought those two things together. And now we're using Kubernetes directives and philosophies to manage all the way down to the operating system. And it is a winning strategy for our customers. And we're really excited about that. >> And what does that product look like? Is that a managed service? How are customers consuming that? >> It could be a managed service, it's something that our managed service providers could embrace and offer to their customers. But we have some customers who are very sophisticated who want to do the whole thing themselves. And so they stand up Rancher, you know at a centralized location at cloud GreenLake for example which is why this is very relevant. And then that control plane if you will, manages thousands of downstream clusters that are running K3s at these Edge locations. And so that's what the complete stack looks like. And so when you add the Linux capability to that scenario we can now roll a new operating system, new kernel, CVE updates, build that as an OCI container image registry format, right? Put that into a registry and then have that thing cascade down through all the downstream clusters and up through a rolling window upgrade of the operating system underneath Kubernetes. And it is a tremendous amount of value when you talk to customers that have this massive scale. >> What's the impact of that, just take us through what happens next. Is it faster? Is it more performant? Is it more reliable? Is it processing data at the Edge? What's the impact of the customer? >> Yes, the answer is yes to that. So let's actually talk about one customer that we we highlighted in our keynote, which is Home Depot. So as we know, Kubernetes is on fire, right? It is the technology everybody's after. So by being in demand, the skills needed, the people shortage is real and people are commanding very high, you know, salaries. And so it's hard to attract talent is the bottom line. And so using our software and our solution and our approach it allows people to scale their existing teams to preserve those precious human resources and that human capital. So that now you can take a team of seven people and manage let's say 3000 downstream stores. >> Yeah it's like the old SRE model for DevOps. >> Correct. >> It's not servers they're managing one to many. >> Yes. >> One to many clusters. >> Correct so you've got the cluster, the life cycle of the cluster. You already have the application life cycle with the classic DevOps. And now what we've built and added to the stack is going down one step further, clicking down if you will to managing the life cycle of the operating system. So you have the SUSE enterprise build chain, all the value, the goodness, compliance, security. Again, all of that comes with that build process. And now we're hooking that into a cloud native flow that ends up downstream in our customers. >> So what I'm hearing is your Edge strategy is not some kind of bespoke, "Hey, I'm going after Edge." It connects to the entire value chain. >> Yes, yeah it's a great point. We want to reuse the existing philosophies that are being used today. We don't want to create something net new, cause that's really the point in leverage that we get by having these teams, you know, do these things at scale. Another point I'm going to make here is that we've defined the Edge into three segments. One is the near Edge, which is the realm of the-- >> I was going to ask about this, great. >> The telecommunications companies. So those use cases and profiles look very different. They're almost data center lite, right? So you've had regional locations, central offices where they're standing up gear classic to you machines, right? So things you find from HPE, for example. And then once you get on the other side of the access device right? The cable modem, the router, whatever it is you get into what we call the far Edge. And this is where the majority of the use cases reside. This is where the diversity of use cases presents itself as well. >> Also security challenges. >> Security challenges. Yes and we can talk about that following in a moment. And then finally, if you look at that far Edge as a box, right? Think of it as a layer two domain, a network. Inside that location, on that network you'll have industrial IOT devices. Those devices are too small to run a full blown operating system such as Linux and Kubernetes in the stack but they do have software on them, right? So we need to be able to discover those devices and manage those devices and pull data from those devices and do it in a cloud native way. So that's what we called the tiny Edge. And I stole that name from the folks over at Microsoft. Kate and Edrick are are leading a project upstream called Akri, A-K-R-I, and we are very much heavily involved in Akri because it will discover the industrial IOT devices and plug those into a local Kubernetes cluster running at that location. >> And Home Depot would fit into the near edge is that correct? >> Yes. >> Yeah okay. >> So each Home Depot store, just to bring it home, is a far Edge location and they have over 2,600 of these locations. >> So far Edge? You would put far Edge? >> Keith: Far Edge yes. >> Far edge, okay. >> John: Near edge is like Metro. Think of Metro. >> And Teleco, communication, service providers MSOs, multi-service operators. Those guys are-- >> Near Edge. >> The near edge, yes. >> Don't you think, John's been asking all week about machine learning and AI, in that tiny Edge. We think there's going to be a lot of AI influencing. >> Keith: Oh absolutely. >> Real time. And it actually is going to need some kind of lighter weight you know, platform. How do you fit into that? >> So going on this, like this model I just described if you go back and look at the SUSECON 2022 demo keynote that I did, we actually on stage stood up that exact stack. So we had a single Intel nook running SLE Micro as we mentioned earlier, running K3s and we plugged into that device, a USB camera which was automatically detected and it loaded Akri and gave us a driver to plug it into a container. Now, to answer your question, that is the point in time where we bring in the ML and the AI, the inference and the pattern recognition, because that camera when you showed the SUSE plush doll, it actually recognized it and put a QR code up on the screen. So that's where it all comes together. So we tried to showcase that in a complete demo. >> Last week, I was here in Vegas for an event Amazon and AWS put on called re:Mars, machine learning, automation, robotics, and space. >> Okay. >> Kind of but basically for me was an industrial edge show. Cause The space is the ultimate like glam to edge is like, you're doing stuff in space that's pretty edgy so to speak, pun intended. But the industrial side of the Edge is going to, we think, accelerate with machine learning. >> Keith: Absolutely. >> And with these kinds of new portable I won't say flash compute or just like connected power sources software. The industrial is going to move really fast. We've been kind of in a snails pace at the Edge, in my opinion. What's your reaction to that? Do you think we're going to see a mass acceleration of growth at the Edge industrial, basically physical, the physical world. >> Yes, first I agree with your assessment okay, wholeheartedly, so much so that it's my strategy to go after the tiny Edge space and be a leader in the industrial IOT space from an open source perspective. So yes. So a few things to answer your question we do have K3s in space. We have a customer partner called Hypergiant where they've launched satellites with K3s running in space same model, that's a far Edge location, probably the farthest Edge location we have. >> John: Deep Edge, deep space. >> Here at HPE Discover, we have a business unit called SUSE RGS, Rancher Government Services, which focuses on the US government and DOD and IC, right? So little bit of the world that I used to work in my past career. Brandon Gulla the CTO of of that unit gave a great presentation about what we call the tactical Edge. And so the same technology that we're using on the commercial and the manufacturing side. >> Like the Jedi contract, the tactical military Edge I think. >> Yes so imagine some of these military grade industrial IOT devices in a disconnected environment. The same software stack and technology would apply to that use case as well. >> So basically the tactical Edge is life? We're humans, we're at the Edge? >> Or it's maintenance, right? So maybe it's pulling sensors from aircraft, Humvees, submarines and doing predictive analysis on the maintenance for those items, those assets. >> All these different Edges, they underscore the diversity that you were just talking Keith and we also see a new hardware architecture emerging, a lot of arm based stuff. Just take a look at what Tesla's doing at the tiny Edge. Keith Basil, thanks so much. >> Sure. >> For coming on theCube. >> John: Great to have you. >> Grateful to be here. >> Awesome story. Okay and thank you for watching. This is Dave Vellante for John Furrier. This is day three of HPE Discover 2022. You're watching theCube, the leader in enterprise and emerging tech coverage. We'll be right back. (upbeat music)

>>live from Orlando, Florida It's the cue covering Microsoft Ignite Brought to you by Cohee City. Welcome >>back, everyone to the cubes Live coverage of Microsoft IC night here at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida I'm your host, Rebecca Night, along with my co host Stew Minutemen were joined by Parham Cologne. He is the chief product officer at you. I path. Thank you so much for coming on the Cube. >>Thank you so much for >>coming back on the cute. >>Thank you. >>So I I was just a u IE path with you in Vegas a couple of weeks ago and the U AI Path tagline is a robot for every employee Microsoft tagline is employing empowering every employee to be a technologist, empowering citizen developers. Does it strike you that do the two missions are are similar in their way? >>That's that's absolutely right. I think we have so much in common their companies together on I think we're working very closely together and not just our technology, but also in what we're trying to achieve, which is to make people achieve more in amplifying human achievement is a core mission of our company and very excited that Microsoft so shares the same emission. >>Yeah, it really does connect with Mace onto this morning. Talked about that 61% of job openings for developers air outside the tech sector. And of course, you AI path is really trying to help. But this is productivity overall, with everything you're doing, >>absolutely, and productivity's where we focus our technology primarily on. In fact, a lot of focus is around. How do we actually get people to do more with less time so they can have more time to do the things that they could do with the creative parts of their time, as opposed to doing a Monday in part? So, yeah, productivity's is really important to us. The company. That's what we think about every day. >>Could you bring us inside the relationship with Microsoft and you? I passed? >>Yeah, so we're deeply partner that Microsoft's and today one we've most of our technology is built on Microsoft's stack on dot net miran. Our databases all run on sequel server or cloud service runs on Microsoft Azure. So we are very deeply partner to be health Microsoft Bill. A lot of a I service is around document extraction. The forms recognize her with one of the first customers that we work together with Microsoft and Chevron on so very deep partnership with Microsoft. Okay, >>so let me ask you a question. Actually, as a customer of Microsoft, you know what? Why, why everything built on Microsoft from, you know, the dot net through the infrastructure of the service. What, what? Why did you bypass choose Microsoft? >>I think it made a lot of sense. Microsoft's focus on productivity Microsoft's focus on enabling developers do stuff quickly on it also helped a lot of the founders, myself included, came through with Microsoft to be a lot of experience with Microsoft's. I think part of that helped as well. >>Does it help or hurt when you are then pitching your service? Is that that it is that it is a much more Microsoft focused company, >>So I think we've grown over the years to actually have a much broader ecosystem, so we have more than 500 partners now we work with Google. Google is a customer, it's an investor. It's also very deep partner. A lot of very I service is we're welding on it with Google were be partnered with AWS as well. So I think we're working with all the way our customers are today. But I think we're still have a very close relationship with Microsoft, given our agitated given where we started. >>Yeah, I actually I I went to the passport event last year and had not realized how deep that connection was with Microsoft. I see you. I path across all the clouds. So there's a little mention of our p A. That this morning in the keynote theme, the power automate solution coming out from Microsoft. Of course, everyone seems tohave an R p A. Out there, you know all the big software houses out there. Tell us what this means in the marketplace. >>Yes, Listen, our P a is a very fast growing market. Is the fastest growing enterprise category today, And when you grow so fast, it's good for the business but also attracts attention, I think getting somebody like Microsoft to sort of say that we're in it as well. Only help sort of solidify the foundation, solidify the category and brings a lot more, you know, credibility to this category. So I think we're excited to have Microsoft here as well. >>And in terms of a CZ, you were saying to companies that are very much focused on workplace productivity, employee collaboration, and being able to be more creative with the time that you have. How much is that cultural alignment? How much does that help your partnership? >>I think it helps a partnership a lot. So you know, when we, for example, of when you meet with the office team, they think deeply about helping people do more with last time. You know, we think about the same things as well. So if you notice some of the newer products that we've launched our very deeply integrated into office, in fact to do a lot of inspiration from products like Excel to be able to say business people that are able to, you know, do some very sophisticated, complex business models and excel should be able to do similar stuff with their products as well. So we continue to work with Microsoft and across collaboration across the steams, anything in general, our message. We have a close relationship with Microsoft, So when Microsoft bring this into opportunities and it closes, it actually retired Dakota for Microsoft Sellers as well. So I think all of that alignment really helps. >>I would love to hear you know what? What? Joint customers. You know what brings customers to you? I path at a show here. What? What are some of the key drivers for their discussions that you're having this week? >>Yeah. I mean, we've got you know, through through the years, we've got over 5000 customers that work with us large enterprises in a very large banks to companies like Chevron. Chevron in particular, is one of those customers. You know, that's a very, very deep customer of Microsoft, but also a very strong customer of ours and a specific use case at my at Chevron. Chevron wanted to extract data from their oil field service reports. They were getting more than 1000 oil. Regular reports coming in every day with about 300 pages for average. For report on. Somebody had to manly go in and physically read those reports. Put him into that s a P system so that you could predict if there was a pretty prevent amendments appear that was acquired, you know, working together with Microsoft, we were able to take service that Microsoft was building an A. I called forums recognize ER and take it to pre bid on Alfa with customers so that Chevron is now able to have all of those reports read by you. I path robots and automatically punch it into, you know, the SNP preventive maintenance applications so that you can actually ship the engineer on side before you know that something happened to the old Greg. So I think that's a pretty cool a scenario. >>Another's another similarity between AI Path and you, AI Path and Microsoft is this customer obsession. And this is something that you talked a lot about at your path forward. This spending time with customers, learning how they would use our p A and then also thinking, thinking ahead of them and in terms of how they could use our p A. How do you work with customers and Microsoft together in partnership in terms of how do you find out exactly what their needs are and the joint solutions you could provide? >>Yeah, and then that's a really good question. Microsoft has been very obsessed with, you know, driving customer obsession and all parts of the organization we culturally have a really deep obsession about working closely with customers. And I think so that Microsoft has empty sea, meet the customer sessions around around the world on We were close living Microsoft to make sure that our technology can be showcased by Microsoft people in those empty see sessions so that when customers come in, they able to not only see Microsoft technology, but also our technology. And if they're interested, then our sales teams work elaborately together to make sure we can, you know, have a joint session than planning and working with customers. >>So I had a chat earlier this year with your CMO Bobbi Patrick talking about how a I and r p a go together. You on the product? So will I. I be able to allow our p A to get into more complex configuration, give us where we are and you know what? What's what's new in that space? >>Yeah, No, absolutely. So like the first wave of our p A was all about taking sort of structured processes, you know, deluding data from excel sheets, reading data for maybe eyes and be able to process it in different systems now in the humans don't always work with that. 10% of what >>we do >>on a daily basis, a structure, data right, spreadsheets and stuff, 90% of what we d'oh reading spread shades, extracting information from papers responding Thio. You know Chad conversations. All of that unstructured information can now be processed by AI algorithms to be able to extract the intent off the chat conversation to be to extract the data. That's in that unstructured document that we just received to be able to use computer vision to detect what is on the computer screen so that you're able to detect that control, whether rendered the browser or renders in a window start to application of that. So I brings the possibility to automate a lot more complex processes within the organization, you know, mimicking sort of MME. Or human like behavior. So the robots are not just doing the numbers and structured data but be able to process unstructured information. It's >>well, well, the way I help it all, trying to understand, what can I automate? >>Absolutely. And that's the other piece off being able to use process, understanding capability. So what we've done is we've built capability that's able to follow human activity logs and how people are using systems, but also how the databases air getting updated by different applications and be able to mind that information to understand how work is getting done and the enterprise and be able to understand what are the scenarios and possibilities for automating mawr business processes that's hold onto the key benefits of how a I and process mining can be can be applied to the context of the R P. A. >>There's so many product announcements today. On the main stage is an 87 page book that we that we were sent from the Microsoft calms team. What is it? What's the most exciting things you've seen here today? >>I think I'm really excited about some of the innovation that Microsoft is doing in the analytic stock to be able to report on the, you know, the data warehouse, but also big data together and one stack. I think that's really powerful. That is something that our customers have have be very interested in, because robots process structure log, but also in structure logs. I'm also excited about some of the eye investments that Microsoft is making, I think some of the eye capabilities and are really coming to practical use. A lot of companies tuck Brody I For a long time. We've applied a I practically in our technology, but I think a lot more technology is now available for us to be used in our products. >>Okay, parm. There's a recent acquisition process. Gold was. The company could tell us a little bit about that. What what? What are the plans for that >>absolutely process Goal is a company that's basically all in Germany and nine home and in bed. Ireland. On this is the company that was focused on process, understanding of process. Mining's essentially, what they had was that connectors a different line of business applications and be able to sit and study logs of how work was getting done over long periods of time. So what happened is if you went to a line of business owner and he asked them, What is your process for procure to pay look like, in order to cash look like chances out, they'll draw you a straight line. That's a haze with the processes, However, when you look at how work is getting done, it's typically not a straight line. And depending on how many variations you're looking at, you can get up to, like, you know, 15 or 20 different variations, the same process being done. So what process gold does is identifies. What are the different ways in which processes air getting done? Identify where the bottlenecks exist in the process, right? How long is the step one? How long is the time? But we step two and step three, right? Is that taking 25% of what the total time is? And is there a way to optimize that process by eliminating that bottleneck? And once you've optimized the process, it also gives you the ability to go automate that optimized process right? You don't want to automate a process that is sub optimal. You want to go understand the process, see how work is getting done, optimized the bottlenecks and eliminate the bottlenecks, optimize the process and then go out of made that and process go. It really helps us sort of cater to that need, which is go automate. You know, the best possible way to optimize the process >>in terms of Microsoft's use of things like a I and ML And now we have not really talked a lot about ML here. I mean, it was mentioned on the main stage, but not a lot. How? What? What do you think the future holds in terms of Microsoft in the next 5 to 10 years? >>Yeah. I mean, I think I see Microsoft investing a lot in data and really being able Thio get all kinds of data because ML is useful only after it's able to reason over tons of data. And Microsoft is in a rightfully investing and the data repositories in stores so that it has the ability to store that data to process that data. And once that's got the data on the data assets over it, then it's able to go Korea the algorithms that can reason over data on and create that stuff. And I think that's really exciting because Microsoft has a lot of the horsepower to be able to not only store that data process that data efficiently said can be used in machine learning. And I >>hope our um thank you so much for coming on the Cube. It was a pleasure talking to you. >>Thank you. Pleasure to have you here. Thank you very much. >>I'm Rebecca Knight. First to minimum. Stay tuned for more of the cubes. Live coverage of Microsoft ignite.

>>live from Orlando, Florida It's the cue covering Microsoft Ignite Brought to you by Cho He City Welcome >>back, everyone to the Cubes Live coverage of Microsoft IC Night. 26,000 people were here. The cube, the middle of the show floor. It's an exciting time. I'm your host. Rebecca Night, along with my co host, Stew Minutemen. We're joined by Barbara Homans. She is the director. Global ecosystem strategy and micro ecosystem lead at HP Thank you so much for coming on the Cube direct from Munich. Yes, Rebecca. Glad to be here. So you have You have two Rolls Global Ecosystem Strategy and Michael Microsoft's ecosystem lead. Explain how those work and how they there is synergy between those two roles. Yeah, I mean, I started >>off with the Microsoft role, but what we figured out is that actually, the world is much bigger than just one alliance, and that's why we call ourselves the Ecosystem. So it's all about driving alliances from different partner speed as I speed Eyes V's or also smaller partners in different segments and build a whole ecosystem play. That's what I'm attempting to do. >>So how do HB and Microsoft worked together. So we've >>seen partnering for 30 years strong, strong relationship with Microsoft and really nice to see. Also today, you know some of the H p e solutions on stage and even deepening our partnership. We have several areas. Probably 34 I can talk about in the next few minutes on how we work together with Microsoft specifically. >>Yeah. So? So Barbara, You know, I think most of us remember back, you know, early if you're talking about windows and office and you know HP here what's now part of HP Inc? Not sure. As many people know about all of the places that H p e Partners, obviously on the server side, it makes sense. But Azure is something. And the Azure arc announcement Help us understand, you know, Azure stack and beyond. Where? HP. Ethan with Microsoft on the Enterprise side. >>Perfect. Absolutely. We have still in Microsoft. Oh, am business where we have actually service attached with licenses. That's not going away rights. We absolutely. It's a strong business class. We work very closely around sequel with Microsoft, and that's also worried this whole azure arc announcement fits in. But it's more than just a sequel right with this as your arc. For me, it's a announcement around deepening relationships. Both. We're interested in a hybrid strategy. I really like Thio here from Satya today. How important hybrid is for Microsoft and this announcement as your ark. That's in public preview now, right? Well, give somewhat details on that. So we'd love to work with customers on that we actually our part of the public review and if anyone is interested, love to hear from customers. Please come to me, Barbara Holman's and we'll hook you up and get into the program. It's really about the hybrid piece, right that we both worked >>in Barbara H. P. E. If my understanding plays on both sides of it, it's not just in the data center with some gear there, but as you said, there's a sequel. The application side, you know, hybrid HP, you know, plays across the board, >>Indeed, So I don't know if you know about HB is actually a expert MSP partner for Azure. We got that last year. We're very proud of what I think we're one of 50 world by its partners. That also means we can actually offer Manage Service's Migration Service is helping people to move to an azure based clout. And that actually came partially because off our position off CTP Cloud Technology Partners, but also read pixie in the UK, and there are no old part off our point. Next service is group, and so as such, we have numerous customers were actually helped into the public cloud. Help them to find the right place. Because if you don't know if you've seen the video from Eric Poodle, that was part of the announcement today as well around as your ark, this is all about finding the right mix off your applications, and this is where we work together and a perfect fit. >>What are some of the biggest challenges you're seeing from your cut from your customers in terms of how you might, how Azure Arc might be the solution for them >>so as your ark? It's hard to say at this >>stage, because I just really don't work for Michael >>Self. So, yeah, we have to ask these people. But again, what I understand division is really that way will be able to manage hybrid environments in a in a better way, and again, this is what HP You know, we have a lot off our tour, of course, but we also announce that our hardware, all of that, will be available as a service within the next two for years. So we're moving in that direction in addition to Azure. And I think this will help customers to take adventures in the end. But it's hard to say Right, So you on this. This is very new. At this stage, the odds are right >>and this is a Microsoft show, not on HP show, but I I read somewhere that you had done a talk. Fear no cloud with H. P m. Our company's afraid. I mean, how would you describe the atmosphere with the companies that you work with? I worked >>in the cloud space, but for the last 10 years or longer, you know, it was on different parts off the industry there and from the early adoption. Really. People looking into you know, should I trust my data in this specific with this cloud provider or which applications am I gonna move? And I think today people have lost the fear a little bit, but they still don't know what to put where and there's applications, you do not want to move in a cloud. There's others that you for your specific company, you don't want to move, and another company may do that. And that's what we're trying to help them, right? So don't you don't have to fear the cloud you can. Actually, we can help you to adopt it at your pace in your way and so that you take most of the advantage out of it. >>But Barbara would love to hear any color you could give from the joint HP, EA and Microsoft customers very much. The announcement today feels like it completely. It's an update on the hybrid message, but A B and Microsoft have been working together on solutions like Azure Stack for a number of years. So what? What's working well today? What do you think you know? This will mean down the road a CZ. Some of these solutions start start to mature even further. >>Maybe moving to another area that HB and Microsoft worked very well together is around the modern workplace practice, and in there we just had a really nice win with Portia thing, actually in Austria, but planning to roll this out no further than that, and h b E's team has helped them to move from the current applicator from the current environment. Thio up two dates. Microsoft 3 65 Environment There's em OD in the UK and it's fast twice if I can talk about M. O D on stage here and they said yes, another customer that we should help to move to a Microsoft 3 65 environment. So there's numerous customers that trust HP with Microsoft in moving their their information to the to the clouds. Yeah, that's one example Asha Stack we have. You know, there's several customers that hard won about ashes. Takis. Difficult to talk about the customers because a lot of them are in the government sector on. So you know, there's a few that we can talk about, but they're mostly service providers, but the really big names, unfortunately, we can talk about because of the conference shit Confidentiality. Yeah, >>trust is one of the things that we keep hearing so much of it about at this conference. Satya Nadella talked about it on the main stage this morning in terms of the relationship that you have and HP standing in the technology world. How do you feel trust with customers? And how do you make sure you are maintaining that? That bond of trust and also the reputation of being a trustworthy partner? >>Yeah, I think I love you know, I love Saturdays, Point on trust because that actually makes the difference between you. Just deliver hardware and you walk away. And this is probably coming back to Azure stack Hop, as it's called now, right? You know, we've been told actually by Microsoft that we've accomplished with the customers from a delivery from a You know, we don't just walk away and say Good luck with the equipment you're on your own really helped them thio and make sure it's working for them. So for me, that's the key that you can come back to a customer afterwards and the customer will actually have you in your office again. >>Well, Barbara, I think back for most of my career what one of the hallmarks of an H. P e solution Was that the turnkey offering we know from, you know, ordering through delivery through, you know, up and running. HP has been streamlining that you know, I think back my entire career cloud has been not necessarily the simplest solutions out there. So maybe give us directionally. How does HPD partner with Microsoft on dhe your customers toe make? I would easier as WeII go through this journey >>S O s aside. Whereas your expert MSP partner a such we have done several of course trainings with Microsoft. We make sure that our people are educated on it way have, you know, with red pixy in the UK it's now part of point next, but I love to say the name because people really associate still with this a specific, strong and trustworthy team. You really build up a very good practice with Microsoft. There's, you know, local deal clinics where we really work in the specific deal. Steal by deal on how we can make it better for the customer. So a lot off local engagement. But for me, that all happens in country. Write me at a global level. I can only help them and steered a little bit. But that's also for me trust. It's a person to person relationship that happens in country. >>And would you say there are big differences country to country in terms of how willingly trust you and and and then how long it takes to build that relationship. >>So I'm gonna get in >>trouble now with some of the country. >>No, I you know the >>somewhere, even your CEO. >>You know, it's no, I mean you and I personally lift in Canada for a while, and so for me, it's some people are harder, you know, you need to get to know them. But then trust is even deeper then some of the others. But I have to say, it's all we're I mean, we're, I would say, from all those who look at h p were really a global company, right? And from this goes from Japan, Thio South Pacific too. You know, many countries in Asia will be very successful with ashes, stack specifically and always in Europe, the Middle East, all the way to North America, South America. So, I mean, that's the nice thing about HPD, I would say for the customers as well that they really get a global view on DA, a global company that can trust. >>So you're here, Ed ignite from Germany. What are the kinds of conversations you're having. And what do you think you're gonna take back with you when you go back to the office next week? So the other piece >>and we have ah, quite big. Both hear it at the event, right? We have a very nice edge line 8000 with us, which is kind of a ruggedized us or a smaller version. It's kindof almost my hand back, kind of to carry along, which has caught a lot of interest from the customers. So just standing there, watching the customers, asking, What is it? Can you tell me more about it? Rest is, you know, I love the bus and I love the actually part of the Microsoft Advisory Council for inspired, which is the partner event, right? But I love the bus to see here what's what's going on and always like to see how other people what they do, what they what they do at these events and then just Microsoft. I think it's wonderful, wonderful company. The inspiration. The story today was just into end a great story with great customer stories as well. So she does to the Microsoft team. Well done. >>Congratulations. Your gear was highlighted in the keynote this morning, so I'm sure that's driving a lot of traffic through for people Thio CC the latest. >>I would >>hope Superdome flex was there and then the actual stick. Both of them were there. So we worked hard for that. Thank you, Michael Self, for giving us the opportunity to be present and the keynote today. Well, >>thank you so much for coming on the Cube. It was a pleasure having you on Barbara. >>Thank you, Rebecca. Thank you. Stupid. >>I'm Rebecca Knight. First to minimum. Stay tuned for more of cubes. Live coverage of Microsoft ignite.

>>live from Orlando, Florida It's the cue covering Microsoft Ignite Brought to you by Cohee City. >>Welcome back, everyone to the Cubes Live coverage of Microsoft IC night here at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, coasting along side of stew. Minutemen >>were joined by Patrick Moorehead. He is the founder and principal principal analyst. Atmore Insights and strategy Thank you so much for returning to the Cube. You're a good friend of the queue. >>Thanks for having me on. I mean, it's a great show, and I literally look for the Cube everywhere. >>Very nice. You >>do about 40 events year, and I'm pretty sure you're in >>about exactly, exactly. >>We've got a few more for you to cut. Come Thio. Yeah, in the other place. Year is >>not over. So so many announcements. Today, an 87 page book from From the Microsoft comes team. One of the things that is getting a lot of attention is azure arc. Satya Nadella himself said, I am so excited about this. This marks the beginning of hybrid computing. What are your first impressions of it, and are you able to see the immediate of differences between Stack and an arc >>S o. I think I would say completely expected. Uh, we're out of this drunken sailor mode where everything's going to the public cloud. Oh, my gosh. And everybody is toast. Who's not doing this? Okay, And now we're in this somewhat sober right where 80% of the workloads are still on Prem. And 20 of those have gone on to either SAS or I as or pass, but it's expected now. Microsoft already had a full stack i e azure stack, but this takes it up a notch because you been deployed arc anywhere on anybody's cloud. They even showed a demo of doing backups to eight of us. So whether it's on Prem, and I'm sure they're gonna show it running on GC, Pia's well >>so Patrick, For for a number years we've been saying, When you line up the big hyper scale er's and say who's doing well, a hybrid. Microsoft's been at the top of the list there because they have a strong footprint in my data center. Microsoft gave everyone the green light to go. Do sass is much you can because they're pushing everybody toe. 03 65. And, of course, Azure is growing in, You know, one of the leaders in Public Cloud. The announcements this week were compelling, but it may be kind of rethink is that I think you laid it out well and said, But we've been talking about hybrid cloud your number years, but we're not really there. So you are. It's a first piece. It's only in tech preview. I think you're saying for a singular application, which is databases. That's right. When you look out there and you see you know the VM wear on AWS Azure, Google, Oracle, IBM, you look a AWS with outposts and those things. How is Microsoft doing today at delivering for what customers need, you know today and moving forward on their cloud journey? >>So Microsoft was first out of the gate with azure stack, right? They were doing hybrid before it was cool. It was interesting for about two years when they were rolling in outer building it they weren't talking about it. So I was thinking, Wait a second, is it not catching on, or do they want to put more on the big cloud azure? But in fact they have been diligently working behind the scenes. And while they had to show Wall Street this Hayward, the public cloud, they were actively building out their hybrid opportunities. And I do believe that when it comes to the slice of hybrid they are leading right now. Now it depends on where you start. I guess where I do is their leading if you have a major public cloud. Okay, eight of us, obviously there were the outposts, and everybody in the audience were all in the audience. We gasped when Andy Jassy brought that out. We kind of knew something was being worked on and focus a CZ well. And I think to be a credible player you have tohave both implementations, going one way and going the other, being able to work with other people's clouds but also noticed everybody has their single pane of glass strategy. If you want to go all in on Microsoft, you have arc on dhe. That's really the classic Microsoft embrace and extend. >>Yeah, Patrick, you said, all in on Microsoft. And if I if I look at the enterprise, you've obviously got some Microsoft. There's probably some things you're doing. An azure right, You're you're running. 03 65. You know, there's lots of pieces in the more Microsoft portfolio, but most people aren't all in on anything today. That's right, The same thing. I looked at Antos and said in Google Cloud or in my data center shore. But anthros on AWS And >>no Veum no, no virtualized applications on Antos either. >>So the same question for Microsoft is if I'm in a W s, you know, have a big footprint of AWS. Is this gonna fly or you know what? What? What's your what's your take >>s? So it's funny where I've wound up after 30 years of doing this stuff is there's always gonna be a lock in. You just have to pick the lock and that you want. Some people are comfortable with an A p. I lock in. Some are comfortable with a hardware lock. In some people are comfortable with a development environment, and you're gonna pick one. Just what is it gonna be? The reality is in a Fortune 500. You're gonna have multiple panes of glass using to determine which two or which three are you comfortable with? Maybe all the panic last for deployment. Maybe we'll have a panic glass for ops. The interesting thing that I'm really looking for, though, is where this heads with multi cloud. Because I believe at least to my definition, multi cloud is kind of fiction if you talk about actually managing it because Dev ops are cool. But you know, when you got a multi cloud, you break Dev and you break ups. So this is a way Arc is a way to keep. If you buy into their Dev and the Rapps and their security, you would go all in on our. >>So I'm actually interested in what you were talking about with Microsoft going sort of working behind the scenes to Wall Street, presenting this one thing but really working behind the scenes and then talking about being at the conference in everyone, gasping at Andy Jassy how much our company's really paying attention to every birth of these companies in terms of their competition with each other to to be number one. >>Oh, they'll all say that they don't track the competition, but they all say they all have these massive competitive teams that are operating in a real time and I guarantee you all of Microsoft's competitors Aire watching all these are are here on doing that. Now I think the best companies are looking forward trying to change the game if they have to change the game. Trench vendors are really have been playing catch up mode, right? If you were 100% on Prem and you were talking about the public cloud, you're gonna be in trouble. I think, actually, oracles a great example of they're in trouble, particularly with I s I c databases of service. But it's like too little, too late. And I think they're paying the price right >>now. Patrick A Thanks for teeing up the Oracle piece because one of one of the topics that saga repeatedly talked about in the keynote was trust. It's actually the exponential t to the environment. If you talk about the ecosystem. Microsoft. If you look at the hyper scale, er's is probably more trust in others. We talk about people wanting to break up cos well, you know, we tried to break up Microsoft back years ago way know what happened there, and Oracle was up on stage it Oracle openworld saying you want to run or go on the cloud. Here's Azure. There are partner. We actually think that was a keep east of the jet ideal eyes enabling that environment. So the question I have for you is first, Do you agree that the ecosystem believes that Microsoft is more trusted? But what about customers? I think you actually made a tweet about it, right? Because I wonder, you know, historically speaking, Microsoft was not the most trusted. It was the one that, you know, I was right behind Oracle esta who I spent the most. Licensing money to Microsoft has changed. Are they trusted partner for companies building their strategy? >>I have to say, based on the last, we'll call it five years level of Microsoft Trust has raised. And there are other players who make Microsoft look like the super trust zone. Okay, I mean, in what they're maybe what they're doing in a breaking consumer privacy, Let's say, 95% of your businesses advertising right. >>Let's just say what you imagine this right? >>Having commercial offerings that are SAS offerings out there. I think you do have to ask the question, but But listen, I think, um, nobody's mother Theresa here. Okay, Everybody's trying to get business, but I do believe particularly Cincinnati has been here. Level has trust has has gone up, and I hear it from clients that I that I meet with all the time other people are on the naughty list for sure. Even those 95% advertising companies who haven't, let's say, done something. That's horrible. But it's just the notion that something could go wrong. I mean, enterprises, they're slow to adopt their very conservative and makes great fun. >>Exactly So. Well, one of the other big announcement is power platform, not water. What are you What are your impressions of this? I mean, is it is it just semantics? I mean, is this just really the umbrella of a lot of things we've seen before? Or is it something new and different? >>So we wait, did see some brand changes of name changes, but we did did see Cem Cem riel movement here. I like to put even though they're different. I like to put a B I dynamics 3 65 and power kind of in the same region because it's Hey, I'm teeing up. Um, hr at for you or C R Ram, But then you're gonna build APS on top of that. And that's what where power comes into play, I think the r p a portion was relatively new and what they brought out. But I wouldn't say this was the big news rollout for, uh, for power. I do think, interestingly enough, is it is it is their largest growth area. If you think about what? Let's a sales force tracking up. What s a P is doing out there? Even a work day? That is, if I look at the cubic dollars that are available, that is their first or second business driver. So I was expecting a little bit more news here. How about you? >>Well, I mean, I I'm I'm just the host here. You're the analyst. You know what you're talking about? I think that how I mean, what do you think? Do? >>Yeah. No, Patrick, you know, from people I've been talking to, there's a mixture of some of it was pulling everything together, but there is a rapid movement. You know, when I talked to the r p. A vendor's out there, it's not right. It's not like they're all quaking in their boots. They're still partner with Microsoft shirt. We see IBM in S A p. Everybody's going after that environment. Come on. Our P a is the gateway drug to a I ITT. It's Rebecca was at exactly show recently talking about that so back to that trust. Their Microsoft is not usually making announcements that you walk across the booth and there's a few people you know saying, Can we roll out the beer early? Because we think our business is ruined. That's where some of that trust isn't Microsoft. But that being said, you know, it was curious to me that they didn't have any big partnerships announcement last year. McDermott was up on stage on Dhe. You know he's changed companies since then, but there was a couple of small open source announcements, but not any large partnership announcement. So ecosystem majorly important. Any commentary from you how Microsoft is doing in that grand battle for you? >>So if I look the past couple of years when some of the biggest players CEOs were on stage right, it was about OD I Hey, let's share our data s a P, probably one of the bigger one even though they're doing with Salesforce's. Well, and I think that was a giant giant leap for folks and second of all way, working to see Larry on stage. Because by the way, that I agree with you on Jen. I That was a huge deal to me. Was Oracle outsourcing? I asked Asher, right, That would have been newsworthy. Okay, if I look at what could have been up here, not that there aren't more strategic deals that could be done. I think they're I think people are busy executing at this point. But if you look at who's gonna share the data without the eye that was the biggest. Working with different clouds. Well, we're not gonna get eight of us to get up on stage here, right? We're not gonna get G c. P here on stage, although, although we could have gotten WebEx up stage because apparently WebEx at a Cisco and teams are becoming friends. And maybe we'll see that on a slightly smaller stage >>enterprise connect kind of launch than it is a Microsoft show. >>Exactly. But I was surprised, you know, and I think it's a testament to how powerful teams actually is on. It's funny when, um um teams, which everybody thought was dead after Slack was announced and hang out with Google has actually ended up being the darling off the enterprise. And not just because it comes free with your M one subscription, right? It's really it's a good product. It's a shockingly good product. You don't have to do any of the any security. If you have any security challenges of anything in Microsoft, you'll avenues you here. But that's not the case. It all uses the back and of Microsoft for security and and regulatory. So anyways, I know I'm veering off here. But there was one partner announcement that I saw. It was Cisco WebEx being friends with teams. >>Can't we all just get along? I mean, there we go. When there's money, everybody exactly every continually we can't. It's too >>expensive to go out on your own. >>Patrick always so much fun to have you and I should having you. I'm Rebecca Knight. For Sue Mittleman, >>stay tuned For more of the cubes, live coverage of Microsoft ignite

>>Live from Orlando, Florida It's the cue covering Microsoft Ignite Brought to you by Cohee City. >>Hello, everyone. And welcome to the Cubes live coverage of Microsoft Ignite. We're kicking off three days of live coverage here at the Orange County Civic Center Convention Center. Sorry, I'm your host. Rebecca Knight coasting along side of stew Minutemen. Do we have so much to cover? So many new products? So many new strategies. New Emphasis Head knew new buzzwords, tech intensity and democratization. Uh, you were here. You were in the hub. You heard Satya Nadella live on the main stage. I'd like to just get your initial impressions and initial thoughts of of his keynote, and we're gonna dig into all of >>them. Rebecca, it's great to be here second year doing it with you here. Your background, really on business. Productivity. Really enjoyed doing this one within you. Chew said Walter Wall. Three days of covered The place is just buzzing with activity. 26,000 in attendance for a show that's been called soft night for I think it's been about six years. It was tech head back in the day we talked about last year, you know, this was originally, you know, the windows and office. You know, administrators show and has really matured over time. Trust was a big topic of conversation. And you know what? With my general thing, they rearrange some of the logistics of it. I actually, you know, usually I'm sitting with the press and the analyst upfront. Actually, you know, when in the shoes of the attending here, which meant I stood in our for almost two hours waiting to be one of the 3000 out of 26,000 to go get a seat and communication was a little bit weird and we kind of move in. But I did get a nice seat. Such intel was up on front. I thought they covered a lot of ground and it ran well, logistically. For those of us that were watching from the main stage, I heard remotely, you know, as sometimes happens, you know, Internet or things that there could be some calendars. It is with all of these cloud shows that we go to you just get this barrage of so many different things, everything from you know, really interesting as your arc, which we're gonna spend a bunch of time talking about through all of the latest. Aye. Aye. And the power things that they're going on all the way down through dynamics and teams and devices and EJ and on DDE down to the browser and the search engine. So so many different things. You know, Microsoft, Of course. You know, one of the store words in technology, but clearly laying out Ah, lot of announcements, books worth of you work of all of the announcement that go out there. And you know, general, take that I get for most people is they definitely are impressed so far. And they're gonna spend all week digging in tow, learn more, >>So we're gonna We're gonna dig in right now. But But I also just want to say that setting the scene doll, this is October 25th. Microsoft was given the jet, announced it was announced it was given the jet I contract. This was a big surprise. And this is Microsoft, which is a distant number two to AWS. Did Sathya seem on a high from that still or what is your impression? >>Unless I missed it, I didn't catch anything about it. Absolutely. I've talked to some people around the show, Talk to somebody appears in the media and analyst community. That air talking about it absolutely was a big surprise. Anybody that's interested in this go check out John. For years written down on this, David Lantz has done a lot of analysis. We've been looking at this quite a bit. Amazon really had one this deal, and it went through courts and Oracle, you know, pushed against really hard to try to make for the Amazon, did it. General Mattis writes about it in his book that I think you came out recently, You know, from the president down to make sure that Amazon did not get this politics entry. The high level is it's $10 billion over 10 years, but when you look into it, number one is the minimum purchase. In the first years only like a 1,000,000. It's expected to be more like 202 150 million in the 1st 2 years, but it is a big deal. Microsoft really spent a lot of time the last couple of years going deeper into public sector, making sure they've got the governance and the compliance sergeant is Kino talked about the 54 azure regions and what they're doing. They're still work that Microsoft needs to do. They don't have the Level six security yet which Amazon does that They've been given less than a year to get that, to make sure that they can fulfill this. But a lot of pieces and there will be lots of other government contracts, but lots of intrigue there. I think it goes back to thing we mentioned trust. Can the government trust that Microsoft will allow them to do all they need to do? There's a lot of office 3 65 in the government. And, of course, Microsoft does. This other thing. There's a bunch of in the government is they use Oracle. We know that Oracle and Amazon are still butting heads. You don't expect to see Oracle on Amazon, you know, shaking hands on stage any time soon. At Oracle OpenWorld This year you saw Oracle allowing their solution to run on Azure in friendly licensing terms because you can run Oracle on AWS. But oracles gonna do everything you can to make sure that the licensing terms her onerous in that environment, they want you to do it on their infrastructure or on their environment and really opening up to Azure. Now, the government contrast that they can run it there. And for me, that trust resident. When I talk to the partner ecosystem, there definitely is some concern about Amazon's power in the marketplace and what they will do. Amazon, to their credit, has a big ecosystem there. Marketplace is phenomenal and they are open and give customers choice. But obviously, just like if you serve on amazon dot com, if it's a Amazon Basics or Amazon provider solution, they're probably going toe move that them in that way. Every company does this for, you know, Google makes sure that they optimize for their ads and everything like that. Microsoft in the past was known for optimizing their licensing revenue. Today they're more trusted. They're more open. I think Santa leaves that on the from the top. But you know so many things that they need to dig into. So Jet I not something I'd expect to spend a lot of time on this week, But thank you for bringing it up happily undertone. Because what the moral of the stories today cloud is AWS and Azure are the clear leaders. Yes, AWS still has a sizable lead. A measure is slowly eating into that lead. But as a as a user, as an enterprise, as any company out there, you can't be wrong by choosing either of those solutions. And one of Microsoft's embracing is that multi cloud environment going back to art will talk about how do I live in that multi cloud world? Eight of us still leads with their hybrid solution and use eight of us don't use other clouds. Azure is more embracing of a multi cloud world. >>So so let's talk about that now. But I just in terms of the trust at a time where there is such deep and tremendous skepticism, a big tech in government right now, the trust really is a crucial element. We're gonna We're gonna talk about that today with a lot of our guests two developments that you're most interested in. And I really want to dig into here as your ark. We're gonna start azure Arkin Power platform. But as your brand new today, uh, your thoughts, your impressions? >>Yes. So, as your ark, I can automate update with my policies across any environment, not just azure. So where I look at this and say, OK, do I manage azure with this? Absolutely. It's got kubernetes in it, so I should be able to move things around if need be. My my data center. In what? I'm putting their all of the azure stack and EJ hub all of these azure pieces in my data center. Can I manage that with us? Of course. The question is, what about if I'm using Google? Service is if I'm using A W S service is in the demo that they ran. They showed 80 was and said, Oh, we can manage that I said, That's great that they can. But will customers actually do that? There's a certain skill set. There's no way a program for it. And of course, AWS has its tooling that everybody uses their. So we've been trying to get that single pane of glass of, you know, for more than my entire career. And the techies I talked to is that pane of glass is nothing but P a. I n is the joke we always make. So it is great that they've done this by the way it's on Lee in Tech preview right now, so it's great that they have this. We've been saying for years that Microsoft, if you talk about hybrid, has the lead when you talk about thought, leadership and solutions. But really, that hybrid solution is azure and data center, and I've got my APs that live everywhere. So 03 65 or in my data center in there. What we're really hearing here is a comprehensive reimagining of hybrid, as we've been talking about it more recently is I really blur the lines between my data center, the public cloud and even the edge. So it's great to see Microsoft do this. I got a lot of friends that are at the V M World Europe Show in Barcelona this week. We've been talking about this in the V M where environment for last couple of years of the VM, where on AWS via where on Azure V M wear on Google, Oracle, IBM and more. So it's great that Microsoft has stepped up here. In some ways. It makes me really think how I thought about Microsoft because Microsoft has been, in my mind a leader and hybrid and realizing that they need to really, really make a significant change to the portfolio. To really deliver on the promise of hybrid and multi My definition of when we will have a true multi con solution is when the value that extract from the system is greater than the sum of the parts. And absolutely that's not where we are today. Microsoft has a lot of pieces. Absolutely. They have a right to be one of the leaders pulling those pieces together. And really, it is a place where you see Microsoft and IBM, where partnering, but also all going to be that leader in the management of my cloud native environment. And we're gonna spend a lot of time this week talking to the developers because that's another area that sought to spend a lot of time. Those two point 6,000,000 citizen developers, as he calls them. I'm sure you must have really loved Rebecca. 61% of job openings for developers are outside of the tech sector. >>Well, exactly, and that is that is such a huge point and that's what Sathya said. That's always been our sweet spot wear for the citizen developers and we want to democratize computing. We want to make sure that you can bring your best self to work and be your most productive self to work in. So many of the tools that they have introduced today are all about creativity, collaboration, time management, productivity, individual time productivity as well as team productivity. So there's a lot of exciting developments today. Let's talk about power platform. Speaking of the parts and pieces What what does it do? What most interests you and excites you about power platform >>boy. So you know, first, the last thing. The citizen developers. It's funny when most people do, you know, where do I start? And I started to excel. And of course, Microsoft is probably the company that most people I'm old enough now that I remember, you know, using the spreadsheets before Excel was the leader that it was there. But the power platform, The thing I've been looking at is way were here a year ago. There was no power platform. Did we talk a lot about a I Absolutely. We talk about data warehousing and business intelligence and all of these things. So I'm trying to understand how much of This is just the new umbrella. Platt, the new umbrella messaging around it and how much there's new products. I talked to a couple people that dig in straight here. I talked to a couple of Microsoft Mbps. Which way? There are lots of them here. I haven't mentioned it, Rebecca already. But the community at the show is excellent. It is welcoming. It is engaging. Diversity is front and center at this show and Microsoft Great kudos for that because it ties into that citizen developers. But when you talk about the power platform, it's about enabling the citizen developers. So a few announcements in their power automate is really there are p a solution. We've got power virtual agents, which is understanding natural language and conversations. Such actually did a cute little thing. He went toe like universal and fought the demi Gorgon from stranger things. Stranger things, fan. I thought it was really cute and everything. But, he explained, he's like, Okay, here's you know it's understanding my name and saying, Get back to me. It's understanding the movements that I'm doing and turning that into what what's happening so way. Understand that we're still relatively early into gaining the full benefits out of a I hear. But there's a lot of tooling, and from what the people I've talked to is the power platform absolutely is much more than just a rebranding. There are acquisitions that have come in. There are software launches and you know, Microsoft in the agile, continuously shipping code mode that everybody is in these days, you know, is going through a lot of veneration. So I believe that you know that the platform was announced back in the spring, and something that I've seen with Microsoft and many companies like Cisco, that air going heavily of software, a platform of software, actually could be a unifying factor forcing function between all of these groups. So rather than saying, Oh my gosh, Microsoft, you've got, you know, 1000 different software packages that I would by no, no, that's not the way you think about it. You know, they don't come on a CD or disk anymore. Instead, it's there's something that I plug into on it, cloud enabled. It's able to be, you know, purchase interruptible model. So we've got number of guests that that power platform absolutely is. You know, hearing good things in the ecosystem and absolutely, you know, you know, it is a strength of Microsoft when you talk about the leverage and use of data in a business environment, on is their legacy. >>And this is a company that is going from strength to strength right now, really firing on all four senators cylinders, azure office, 3 65 windows. We haven't talked about fortnight and the other gaming elements here, but in terms of, um, usage issues, I know there were There were a couple of hiccups last week. >>Yeah, so you know, outages or something. People are definitely worried about the cloud. There was reported last week that there was some availability and performance issues. They were throttling things back. They were saying you couldn't scale and we're like, Wait, you know, infinite compute, infinite storage on demand. That's what we need. And from some of the things I heard from the community, the gaming platforms actually were impacting this and actually gaming that run across both AWS and azure. So it definitely is a little bit of a red flag. You know, your azure, your your your microsoft, and you want to talk about that you are a leader in the face. You can trust them. We're gonna keep you going. Well, you know, cos have spent decades making sure that their data centers have the up time and reliability that we need. You know, when I talk to the big cloud providers, they have some of the same conversation we were having back in the infrastructure world, You know, 15 years ago about data availability and data loss, You know? D u D E l date on availability and data loss. It was a four letter word. You can't have it. You would have war rooms and make for the things you know. Don't go down so little bit of a red flag especially, you know, will there be any contesting of the government deal? You don't want something sitting there saying Oh, hey, wait. I have a critical you know d o d operation. That needs to happen. Wait, We can't speak out when we need it. You know that. That's a no No. >>Right. Exactly. Well, this is these air, all the topics we're going to get into and then some over the next three days, it's gonna be an action packed show. I'm looking forward to it. A lot of great guests to thanks >>so much. I can't wait. I >>hope you'll stay tuned for more of the cubes. Live coverage of Microsoft IC night coming up in just a little bit.

[Music] when welcome to the special exclusive cube conversation here in Palo Alto in our studios I'm John for your host of the cube we have a very special guest speaking for the first time around some alleged alleged accusations and also innuendo around the Amazon Web Services Jedi contract and his firm c5 capital our guest as Andre Pienaar who's the founder of c5 capital Andre is here for the first time to talk about some of the hard conversations and questions surrounding his role his firm and the story from the BBC Andre thanks for a rat for meeting with me John great to have me thank you so you're at the center of a controversy and just for the folks who know the cube know we interviewed a lot of people I've interviewed you at Amazon web sources summit Teresa Carl's event and last year I met you and bought a rein the work you're doing there so I've met you a few times so I don't know your background but I want to drill into it because I was surprised to see the BBC story come out last week that was basically accusing you of many things including are you a spy are you infiltrating the US government through the Jedi contract through Amazon and knowing c-5 capital I saw no correlation when reading your article I was kind of disturbed but then I saw I said a follow-on stories it just didn't hang together so I wanted to press you on some questions and thanks for coming in and addressing them appreciate it John thanks for having me so first thing I want to ask you is you know it has you at the center this firm c5 capital that you the founder of at the center of what looks like to be the fight for the big ten billion dollar DoD contract which has been put out to multiple vendors so it's not a single source deal we've covered extensively on silicon angle calm and the cube and the government the government Accounting Office has ruled that there are six main benefits of going with a sole provider cloud this seems to be the war so Oracle IBM and others have been been involved we've been covering that so it kind of smells like something's going along with the story and I just didn't believe some of the things I read and I want to especially about you and see five capitals so I want to dig into what the first thing is it's c5 capital involved in the Jedi contract with AWS Sean not at all we have absolutely no involvement in the Jedi contract in any way we're not a bidder and we haven't done any lobbying as has been alleged by some of the people who've been making this allegation c5 has got no involvement in the general contract we're a venture capital firm with a British venture capital firm we have the privilege of investing here in the US as a foreign investor and our focus really is on the growth and the success of the startups that we are invested in so you have no business interest at all in the deal Department of Defense Jedi contract none whatsoever okay so to take a minute to explain c5 firm I read some of the stories there and some of the things were intricate structures of c5 cap made it sound like there was like a cloak-and-dagger situation I want to ask you some hard questions around that because there's a link to a Russian situation but before we get to there I want to ask you explain what is c5 capital your mission what are the things that you're doing c5 is a is a British venture capital firm and we are focused on investing into fast-growing technology companies in three areas cloud computing cyber security and artificial intelligence we have two parts our business c5 capital which invests into late stage companies so these are companies that typically already have revenue visibility and profitability but still very fast-growing and then we also have a very early stage startup platform that look at seed state investment and this we do through two accelerators to social impact accelerators one in Washington and one in Bahrain and it's just size of money involved just sort of order magnitude how many funds do you have how is it structure again just share some insight on that is it is there one firm is there multiple firms how is it knows it work well today the venture capital business has to be very transparent it's required by compliance we are a regulated regulated firm we are regulated in multiple markets we regulated here in the US the sec as a foreign investor in london by the financial conduct authority and in Luxembourg where Afonso based by the regulatory authorities there so in the venture capital industry today you can't afford to be an opaque business you have to be transparent at all levels and money in the Western world have become almost completely transparent so there's a very comprehensive and thorough due diligence when you onboard capital called know your client and the requirements standard requirement now is that whenever you're onboard capital from investor you're gonna take it right up to the level of the ultimate beneficial ownership so who actually owns this money and then every time you invest and you move your money around it gets diligence together different regulators and in terms of disclosure and the same applies often now with clients when our portfolio companies have important or significant clients they also want to know who's behind the products and the services they receive so often our boards our board directors and a shell team also get diligence by by important clients so explain this piece about the due diligence and the cross country vetting that goes on is I think it's important I want to get it out because how long has been operating how many deals have you done you mentioned foreign investor in the United States you're doing deals in the United States I know I've met one of your portfolio companies at an event iron iron on it iron net general Keith Alexander former head of the NSA you know get to just work with him without being vetted I guess so so how long a c5 capital been in business and where have you made your investments you mentioned cross jurisdiction across countries whatever it's called I don't know that so we've been and we've been in existence for about six years now our main focus is investing in Europe so we help European companies grow globally Europe historically has been underserved by venture capital we on an annual basis we invest about twenty seven billion dollars gets invested in venture capital in Europe as opposed to several multiples of that in the US so we have a very important part to play in Europe to how European enterprise software companies grow globally other important markets for us of course are Israel which is a major center of technology innovation and and the Middle East and then the u.s. the u.s. is still the world leader and venture capital both in terms of size but also in terms of the size of the market and of course the face and the excitement of the innovation here I want to get into me early career because again timing is key we're seeing this with you know whether it's a Supreme Court justice or anyone in their career their past comes back to haunt them it appears that has for you before we get there I want to ask you about you know when you look at the kind of scope of fraud and corruption that I've seen in just on the surface of government thing the government bit Beltway bandits in America is you got a nonprofit that feeds a for-profit and then what you know someone else runs a shell corporation so there's this intricate structures and that word was used which it kind of implies shell corporations a variety of backroom kind of smokey deals going on you mentioned transparency I do you have anything to hide John in in in our business we've got absolutely nothing to hide we have to be transparent we have to be open if you look at our social media profile you'll see we are communicating with the market almost on a daily basis every time we make an investment we press release that our website is very clear about who's involved enough who our partners are and the same applies to my own personal website and so in terms of the money movement around in terms of deploying investments we've seen Silicon Valley VCS move to China get their butts handed to them and then kind of adjust their scenes China money move around when you move money around you mentioned disclosure what do you mean there's filings to explain that piece it's just a little bit so every time we make an investment into a into a new portfolio company and we move the money to that market to make the investment we have to disclose who all the investors are who are involved in that investment so we have to disclose the ultimate beneficial ownership of all our limited partners to the law firms that are involved in the transactions and those law firms in turn have applications in terms of they own anti-money laundering laws in the local markets and this happens every time you move money around so I I think that the level of transparency in venture capital is just continue to rise exponentially and it's virtually impossible to conceal the identity of an investor this interesting this BBC article has a theme of national security risk kind of gloom and doom nuclear codes as mentioned it's like you want to scare someone you throw nuclear codes at it you want to get people's attention you play the Russian card I saw an article on the web that that said you know anything these days the me2 movement for governments just play the Russian card and you know instantly can discredit someone's kind of a desperation act so you got confident of interest in the government national security risk seems to be kind of a theme but before we get into the BBC news I noticed that there was a lot of conflated pieces kind of pulling together you know on one hand you know you're c5 you've done some things with your hat your past and then they just make basically associate that with running amazon's jedi project yes which i know is not to be true and you clarified that joan ends a problem joan so as a venture capital firm focused on investing in the space we have to work with all the Tier one cloud providers we are great believers in commercial cloud public cloud we believe that this is absolutely transformative not only for innovation but also for the way in which we do venture capital investment so we work with Amazon Web Services we work with Microsoft who work with Google and we believe that firstly that cloud has been made in America the first 15 companies in the world are all in cloud companies are all American and we believe that cloud like the internet and GPS are two great boons which the US economy the u.s. innovation economy have provided to the rest of the world cloud computing is reducing the cost of computing power with 50 percent every three years opening up innovation and opportunities for Entrepreneurship for health and well-being for the growth of economies on an unprecedented scale cloud computing is as important to the global economy today as the dollar ease as the world's reserve currency so we are great believers in cloud we great believers in American cloud computing companies as far as Amazon is concerned our relationship with Amazon Amazon is very Amazon Web Services is very clear and it's very defined we participate in a public Marcus program called AWS activate through which AWS supports hundreds of accelerators around the world with know-how with mentoring with teaching and with cloud credits to help entrepreneurs and startups grow their businesses and we have a very exciting focus for our two accelerators which is on in Washington we focus on peace technology we focus on taking entrepreneurs from conflict countries like Sudan Nigeria Pakistan to come to Washington to work on campus in the US government building the u.s. Institute for peace to scale these startups to learn all about cloud computing to learn how they can grow their businesses with cloud computing and to go back to their own countries to build peace and stability and prosperity their heaven so we're very proud of this mission in the Middle East and Bahrain our focus is on on female founders and female entrepreneurs we've got a program called nebula through which we empower female founders and female entrepreneurs interesting in the Middle East the statistics are the reverse from what we have in the West the majority of IT graduates in the Middle East are fimo and so there's a tremendous talent pool of of young dynamic female entrepreneurs coming out of not only the Gulf but the whole of the MENA region how about a relation with Amazon websites outside of their normal incubators they have incubators all over the place in the Amazon put out as Amazon Web Services put out a statement that said hey you know we have a lot of relationships with incubators this is normal course of business I know here in Silicon Valley at the startup loft this is this is their market filled market playbook so you fit into that is that correct as I'm I get that that's that's absolutely correct what we what is unusual about a table insists that this is a huge company that's focused on tiny startups a table started with startups it double uses first clients with startups and so here you have a huge business that has a deep understanding of startups and focus on startups and that's enormous the attractor for us and terrific for our accelerators department with them have you at c5 Capitol or individually have any formal or conversation with Amazon employees where you've had outside of giving feedback on products where you've tried to make change on their technology make change with their product management teams engineering you ever had at c5 capital whore have you personally been involved in influencing Amazon's product roadmap outside they're just giving normal feedback in the course of business that's way above my pay grade John firstly we don't have that kind of technical expertise in C 5 C 5 steam consists of a combination of entrepreneurs like myself people understand money really well and leaders we don't have that level of technical expertise and secondly that's what one our relationship with AWS is all about our relationship is entirely limited to the two startups and making sure that the two accelerators in making sure that the startups who pass through those accelerators succeed and make social impact and as a partner network component Amazon it's all put out there yes so in in a Barren accelerator we've we formed part of the Amazon partner network and the reason why we we did that was because we wanted to give some of the young people who come through the accelerator and know mastering cloud skills an opportunity to work on some real projects and real live projects so some of our young golf entrepreneurs female entrepreneurs have been working on building websites on Amazon Cloud and c5 capital has a relationship with former government officials you funded startups and cybersecurity that's kind of normal can you explain that positioning of it of how former government if it's whether it's US and abroad are involved in entrepreneurial activities and why that is may or may not be a problem certainly is a lot of kind of I would say smoke around this conversation around coffin of interest and you can you explain intelligence what that was it so I think the model for venture capital has been evolving and increasingly you get more and more differentiated models one of the key areas in which the venture capital model is changed is the fact that operating partners have become much more important to the success of venture capital firms so operating partners are people who bring real world experience to the investment experience of the investment team and in c-five we have the privilege of having a terrific group of operating partners people with both government and commercial backgrounds and they work very actively enough firm at all levels from our decision-making to the training and the mentoring of our team to helping us understand the way in which the world is exchanging to risk management to helping uh portfolio companies grow and Silicon Valley true with that to injuries in Horowitz two founders mr. friendly they bring in operating people that have entrepreneurial skills this is the new model understand order which has been a great source of inspiration to us for our model and and we built really believe this is a new model and it's really critical for the success of venture capitals to be going forward and the global impact is pretty significant one of things you mentioned I want to get your take on is as you operate a global transaction a lots happened a lot has to happen I mean we look at the ICO market on the cryptocurrency side its kind of you know plummeting obsoletes it's over now the mood security children's regulatory and transparency becomes critical you feel fully confident that you haven't you know from a regulatory standpoint c5 capital everything's out there absolutely risk management and regulated compliance and legal as the workstream have become absolutely critical for the success of venture capital firms and one of the reasons why this becomes so important John is because the venture capital world over the last few years have changed dramatically historically all the people involved in venture capital had very familiar names and came from very familiar places over the last few years with a diversification of global economic growth we've seen it's very significant amounts of money being invest invested in startups in China some people more money will invest in startups this year in China than in the US and we've seen countries like Saudi Arabia becoming a major source of venture capital funding some people say that as much as 70% of funding rounds this year in some way or another originated from the Gulf and we've seen places like Russia beginning to take an interest in technology innovation so the venture capital world is changing and for that reason compliance and regulation have become much more important but if Russians put 200 million dollars in face book and write out the check companies bright before that when the after 2008 we saw the rise of social networking I think global money certainly has something that I think a lot of people start getting used to and I want on trill down into that a little bit we talked about this BBC story that that hit and the the follow-on stories which actually didn't get picked up was mostly doing more regurgitation of the same story but one of the things that that they focus in on and the story was you and the trend now is your past is your enemy these days you know they try to drum up stuff in the past you've had a long career some of the stuff that they've been bringing in to paint you and the light that they did was from your past so I wanted to explore that with you I know you this is the first time you've talked about this and I appreciate you taking the time talk about your early career your background where you went to school because the way I'm reading this it sounds like you're a shady character I like like I interviewed on the queue but I didn't see that but you know I'm going to pressure here for that if you don't mind I'd like to to dig into that John thank you for that so I've had the I've had the privilege of a really amazingly interesting life and at the heart of at the heart of that great adventures been people and the privilege to work with really great people and good people I was born in South Africa I grew up in Africa went to school there qualified as a lawyer and then came to study in Britain when I studied international politics when I finished my studies international politics I got head hunted by a US consulting firm called crow which was a start of a 20 years career as an investigator first in crawl where I was a managing director in the London and then in building my own consulting firm which was called g3 and all of this led me to cybersecurity because as an investigator looking into organized crime looking into corruption looking into asset racing increasingly as the years went on everything became digital and I became very interested in finding evidence on electronic devices but starting my career and CRO was tremendous because Jules Kroll was a incredible mentor he could walk through an office and call everybody by their first name any Kroll office anywhere in the world and he always took a kindly interest in the people who work for him so it was a great school to go to and and I worked on some terrific cases including some very interesting Russian cases and Russian organized crime cases just this bag of Kroll was I've had a core competency in doing investigative work and also due diligence was that kind of focus yes although Kroll was the first company in the world to really have a strong digital practice led by Alan Brugler of New York Alan established the first computer forensics practice which was all focused about finding evidence on devices and everything I know about cyber security today started with me going to school with Alan Brolin crawl and they also focused on corruption uncovering this is from Wikipedia Kroll clients help Kroll helps clients improve operations by uncovering kickbacks fraud another form of corruptions other specialty areas is forensic accounting background screening drug testing electronic investigation data recovery SATA result Omar's McLennan in 2004 for 1.9 billion mark divested Kroll to another company I'll take credit risk management to diligence investigator in Falls Church Virginia over 150 countries call Kroll was the first CRO was the first household brand name in this field of of investigations and today's still is probably one of the strongest brand names and so it was a great firm to work in and was a great privilege to be part of it yeah high-end high-profile deals were there how many employees were in Kroll cuz I'd imagine that the alumni that that came out of Kroll probably have found places in other jobs similar to yes do an investigative work like you know they out them all over the world many many alumni from Kroll and many of them doing really well and doing great work ok great so now the next question want to ask you is when you in Kroll the South Africa connection came up so I got to ask you it says business side that you're a former South African spy are you a former South African spy no John I've never worked for any government agency and in developing my career my my whole focus has been on investigations out of the Kroll London office I did have the opportunity to work in South Africa out of the Kroll London office and this was really a seminal moment in my career when I went to South Africa on a case for a major international credit-card company immediately after the end of apartheid when democracy started to look into the scale and extent of credit card fraud at the request of this guy what year was there - how old were you this was in 1995 1996 I was 25 26 years old and one of the things which this credit card company asked me to do was to assess what was the capability of the new democratic government in South Africa under Nelson Mandela to deal with crime and so I had the privilege of meeting mr. Mandela as the president to discuss this issue with him and it was an extraordinary man the country's history because there was such an openness and a willingness to to address issues of this nature and to grapple with them so he was released from prison at that time I remember those days and he became president that's why he called you and you met with him face to face of a business conversation around working on what the future democracy is and trying to look at from a corruption standpoint or just kind of in general was that what was that conversation can you share so so that so the meeting involved President Mandela and and the relevant cabinet ministers the relevant secretaries and his cabinet - responsible for for these issues and the focus of our conversation really started with well how do you deal with credit card fraud and how do you deal with large-scale fraud that could be driven by organized crime and at the time this was an issue of great concern to the president because there was bombing in Kate of a Planet Hollywood cafe where a number of people got very severely injured and the president believed that this could have been the result of a protection racket in Cape Town and so he wanted to do something about it he was incredibly proactive and forward-leaning and in an extraordinary way he ended the conversation by by asking where the Kroll can help him and so he commissioned Kroll to build the capacity of all the black officers that came out of the ANC and have gone into key government positions on how to manage organized crime investigations it was the challenge at that time honestly I can imagine apartheid I remember you know I was just at a college that's not properly around the same age as you it was a dynamic time to say the least was his issue around lack of training old school techniques because you know that was right down post-cold-war and then did what were the concerns not enough people was it just out of control was it a corrupt I mean just I mean what was the core issue that Nelson wanted to hire Kroll and you could work his core issue was he wanted to ensure the stability of South Africa's democracy that was his core focus and he wanted to make South Africa an attractive place where international companies felt comfortable and confident in investing and that was his focus and he felt that at that time because so many of the key people in the ANC only had training in a cold war context that there wasn't a Nessy skill set to do complex financial or more modern investigations and it was very much focused he was always the innovator he was very much focused on bringing the best practices and the best investigative techniques to the country he was I felt in such a hurry that he doesn't want to do this by going to other governments and asking for the help he wanted to Commission it himself and so he gave he gave a crawl with me as the project leader a contract to do this and my namesake Francois Pienaar has become very well known because of the film Invictus and he's been he had the benefit of Mandela as a mentor and as a supporter and that changed his career the same thing happened to me so what did he actually asked you to do was it to train build a force because there's this talk that and was a despite corruption specifically it was it more both corruption and or stability because they kind of go hand in hand policy and it's a very close link between corruption and instability and and president Ellis instructions were very clear to Crowley said go out and find me the best people in the world the most experienced people in the world who can come to South Africa and train my people how to fight organized crime so I went out and I found some of the best people from the CIA from mi6 the British intelligence service from the Drug Enforcement Agency here in the US form officers from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's detectives from Scotland Yard prosecutors from the US Justice Department and all of them for a number of years traveled to South Africa to train black officers who were newly appointed in key roles in how to combat organized crime and this was you acting as an employee he had crow there's not some operative this is he this was me very much acting as a as an executive and crow I was the project leader Kroll was very well structured and organized and I reported to the chief executive officer in the London office nor Garret who was the former head of the CIA's Near East Division and Nelson Mandela was intimately involved in this with you at Krall President Mandela was the ultimate support of this project and he then designated several ministers to work on it and also senior officials in the stories that had been put out this past week they talked about this to try to make it sound like you're involved on two sides of the equation they bring up scorpions was this the scorpions project that they referred to so it was the scorpions scorpion sounds so dangerous and a movie well there's a movie a movie does feature this so at the end of the training project President Mandela and deputy president Thabo Mbeki who subsequently succeeded him as president put together a ministerial committee to look at what should they do with the capacity that's been built with this investment that they made because for a period of about three years we had all the leading people the most experienced people that have come out of some of the best law enforcement agencies and some of the best intelligence services come and trained in South Africa and this was quite this was quite something John because many of the senior officers in the ANC came from a background where they were trained by the opponents of the people came to treat trained them so so many of them were trained by the Stasi in East Germany some of them were trained by the Russian KGB some of them were trained by the Cubans so we not only had to train them we also had to win their trust and when we started this that's a diverse set of potential dogma and or just habits a theory modernised if you will right is that what the there was there was a question of of learning new skills and there was a question about also about learning management capabilities there was also question of learning the importance of the media for when you do difficult and complex investigations there was a question about using digital resources but there was also fundamentally a question of just building trust and when we started this program none of the black officers wanted to be photographed with all these foreign trainers who were senior foreign intelligence officers when we finished that everyone wanted to be in the photograph and so this was a great South African success story but the President and the deputy president then reflected on what to do with his capacity and they appointed the ministerial task force to do this and we were asked to make recommendations to this Minister ministerial task force and one of the things which we did was we showed them a movie because you referenced the movie and the movie we showed them was the untouchables with Kevin Costner and Sean Connery which is still one of my favorite and and greatest movies and the story The Untouchables is about police corruption in Chicago and how in the Treasury Department a man called Eliot Ness put together a group of officers from which he selected from different places with clean hands to go after corruption during the Probie and this really captured the president's imagination and so he said that's what he want and Ella yeah okay so he said della one of the untouchables he wanted Eliot Ness exactly Al Capone's out there and and how many people were in that goodness so we asked that we we established the government then established decided to establish and this was passed as a law through Parliament the director of special operations the DSO which colloquy became known as the scorpions and it had a scorpion as a symbol for this unit and this became a standalone anti-corruption unit and the brilliant thing about it John was that the first intake of scorpion officers were all young black graduates many of them law graduates and at the time Janet Reno was the US Attorney General played a very crucial role she allowed half of the first intake of young cratchits to go to Quantico and to do the full FBI course in Quantico and this was the first group of foreign students who've ever been admitted to Quantico to do the full Quantico were you involved at what score's at that time yes sir and so you worked with President Mandela yes the set of the scorpions is untouchable skiing for the first time as a new democracy is emerging the landscape is certainly changing there's a transformation happening we all know the history laugh you don't watch Invictus probably great movie to do that you then worked with the Attorney General United States to cross-pollinate the folks in South Africa black officers law degrees Samar's fresh yes this unit with Quantico yes in the United States I had the privilege of attending the the graduation ceremony of the first of South African officers that completed the Quantico course and representing crow they on the day you had us relationships at that time to crawl across pollen I had the privilege of working with some of the best law enforcement officers and best intelligence officers that has come out of the u.s. services and they've been tremendous mentors in my career they've really shaped my thinking they've shaped my values and they've they've shaved my character so you're still under 30 at this time so give us a is that where this where are we in time now just about a 30 so you know around the nine late nineties still 90s yeah so client-server technologies there okay so also the story references Leonard McCarthy and these spy tapes what is this spy tape saga about it says you had a conversation with McCarthy me I'm thinking that a phone tap explain that spy tape saga what does it mean who's Lennon McCarthy explain yourself so so so Leonard McCarthy it's a US citizen today he served two terms as the vice president for institutional integrity at the World Bank which is the world's most important anti-corruption official he started his career as a prosecutor in South Africa many years ago and then became the head of the economic crimes division in the South African Justice Department and eventually became the head of the scorpions and many years after I've left Kroll and were no longer involved in in the work of the scorpions he texted me one evening expressing a concern and an anxiety that I had about the safety of his family and I replied to him with two text messages one was a Bible verse and the other one was a Latin saying and my advice name was follow the rule of law and put the safety of your family first and that was the advice I gave him so this is how I imagined the year I think of it the internet was just there this was him this was roundabout 2000 December 2007 okay so there was I phone just hit so text messaging Nokia phones all those big yeah probably more text message there so you sitting anywhere in London you get a text message from your friend yep later this past late tonight asking for help and advice and I gave him the best advice I can he unfortunately was being wiretapped and those wiretaps were subsequently published and became the subject of much controversy they've now been scrutinized by South Africa's highest court and the court has decided that those wiretaps are of no impact and of importance in the scheme of judicial decision-making and our unknown provenance and on and on unknown reliability they threw it out basically yeah they're basically that's the president he had some scandals priors and corruption but back to the tapes you the only involvement on the spy tapes was friend sending you a text message that says hey I'm running a corruption you know I'm afraid for my life my family what do I do and you give some advice general advice and that's it as there was there any more interactions with us no that's it that's it okay so you weren't like yeah working with it hey here's what we get strategy there was nothing that going on no other interactions just a friendly advice and that's what they put you I gave him my I gave him my best advice when you when you work in when you work as an investigator very much as and it's very similar in venture capital it's all about relationships and you want to preserve relationships for the long term and you develop deep royalties to its people particularly people with whom you've been through difficult situations as I have been with Leonard much earlier on when I was still involved in Kroll and giving advice to South African government on issues related to the scorpius so that that has a lot of holes and I did think that was kind of weird they actually can produce the actual tax I couldn't find that the spy tapes so there's a spy tape scandal out there your name is on out on one little transaction globbed on to you I mean how do you feel about that I mean you must've been pretty pissed when you saw that when you do it when when you do when you do investigative work you see really see everything and all kinds of things and the bigger the issues that you deal with the more frequently you see things that other people might find unusual I are you doing any work right now with c5 at South Africa and none whatsoever so I've I retired from my investigative Korea in 2014 I did terrific 20 years as an investigator during my time as investigator I came to understood the importance of digital and cyber and so at the end of it I saw an opportunity to serve a sector that historically have been underserved with capital which is cyber security and of course there are two areas very closely related to cyber security artificial intelligence and cloud and that's why I created c5 after I sold my investigator firm with five other families who equally believed in the importance of investing private capital to make a difference invest in private capital to help bring about innovation that can bring stability to the digital world and that's the mission of c-5 before I get to the heart news I want to drill in on the BBC stories I think that's really the focal point of you know why we're talking just you know from my standpoint I remember living as a young person in that time breaking into the business you know my 20s and 30s you had Live Aid in 1985 and you had 1995 the internet happened there was so much going on between those that decade 85 to 95 you were there I was an American so I didn't really have a lot exposure I did some work for IBM and Europe in 1980 says it's co-op student but you know I had some peak in the international world it must been pretty dynamic the cross-pollination the melting pot of countries you know the Berlin Wall goes down you had the cold war's ending you had apartheid a lot of things were going on around you yes so in that dynamic because if if the standard is you had links to someone you know talked about why how important it was that this melting pot and how it affected your relationships and how it looks now looking back because now you can almost tie anything to anything yes so I think the 90s was one of the most exciting periods of time because you had the birth of the internet and I started working on Internet related issues yet 20 million users today we have three and a half billion users and ten billion devices unthinkable at the time but in the wake of the internet also came a lot of changes as you say the Berlin Wall came down democracy in South Africa the Oslo peace process in the time that I worked in Kroll some of them made most important and damaging civil wars in Africa came to an end including the great war in the Congo peace came to Sudan and Angola the Ivory Coast so a lot of things happening and if you have a if you had a an international career at that time when globalization was accelerating you got to no a lot of people in different markets and both in crow and in my consulting business a key part of what it but we did was to keep us and Western corporations that were investing in emerging markets safe your credibility has been called in questions with this article and when I get to in a second what I want to ask you straight up is it possible to survive in the international theatre to the level that you're surviving if what they say is true if you if you're out scamming people or you're a bad actor pretty much over the the time as things get more transparent it's hard to survive right I mean talk about that dynamic because I just find it hard to believe that to be successful the way you are it's not a johnny-come-lately firms been multiple years operating vetted by the US government are people getting away in the shadows is it is is it hard because I almost imagine those are a lot of arbitrage I imagine ton of arbitrage that you that are happening there how hard or how easy it is to survive to be that shady and corrupt in this new era because with with with investigated with with intelligence communities with some terrific if you follow the money now Bitcoin that's a whole nother story but that's more today but to survive the eighties and nineties and to be where you are and what they're alleging I just what's your thoughts well to be able to attract capital and investors you have to have very high standards of governance and compliance because ultimately that's what investors are looking for and what investors will diligence when they make an investment with you so to carry the confidence of investors good standards of governance and compliance are of critical importance and raising venture capital and Europe is tough it's not like the US babe there's an abundance of venture capital available it's very hard Europe is under served by capital the venture capital invested in the US market is multiple of what we invest in Europe so you need to be even more focused on governance and compliance in Europe than you would be perhaps on other markets I think the second important point with Gmail John is that technology is brought about a lot of transparency and this is a major area of focus for our piece tech accelerator where we have startups who help to bring transparency to markets which previously did not have transparency for example one of the startups that came through our accelerator has brought complete transparency to the supply chain for subsistence farmers in Africa all the way to to the to the shelf of Walmart or a big grocery retailer in in the US or Europe and so I think technology is bringing a lot more more transparency we also have a global anti-corruption Innovation Challenge called shield in the cloud where we try and find and recognize the most innovative corporations governments and countries in the space so let's talk about the BBC story that hit 12 it says is a US military cloud the DoD Jedi contractor that's coming to award the eleventh hour safe from Russia fears over sensitive data so if this essentially the headline that's bolded says a technology company bidding for a Pentagon contract that's Amazon Web Services to store sensitive data has close partnerships with a firm linked to a sanctioned Russian oligarch the BBC has learned goes on to essentially put fear and tries to hang a story that says the national security of America is at risk because of c5u that's what we're talking about right now so so what's your take on this story I mean did you wake up and get an email said hey check out the BBC you're featured in and they're alleging that you have links to Russia and Amazon what Jon first I have to go I first have to do a disclosure I've worked for the BBC as an investigator when I was in Kroll and in fact I let the litigation support for the BBC in the biggest libel claim in British history which was post 9/11 when the BBC did a broadcast mistakenly accusing a mining company in Africa of laundering money for al-qaeda and so I represented the BBC in this case I was the manager hired you they hired me to delete this case for them and I'm I helped the BBC to reduce a libel claim of 25 million dollars to $750,000 so I'm very familiar with the BBC its integrity its standards and how it does things and I've always held the BBC in the highest regard and believed that the BBC makes a very important contribution to make people better informed about the world so when I heard about the story I was very disappointed because it seemed to me that the BBC have compromised the independence and the independence of the editorial control in broadcasting the story the reason why I say that is because the principal commentator in this story as a gentleman called John Wheeler who's familiar to me as a someone who's been trolling our firm on internet for the last year making all sorts of allegations the BBC did not disclose that mr. Weiler is a former Oracle executive the company that's protesting the Jedi bidding contract and secondly that he runs a lobbying firm with paid clients and that he himself often bid for government contracts in the US government context you're saying that John Wheeler who's sourced in the story has a quote expert and I did check him out I did look at what he was doing I checked out his Twitter he seems to be trying to socialise a story heavily first he needed eyes on LinkedIn he seems to be a consultant firm like a Beltway yes he runs a he runs a phone called in interoperability Clearing House and a related firm called the IT acquisition Advisory Council and these two organizations work very closely together the interoperability Clearing House or IC H is a consulting business where mr. Weiler acts for paying clients including competitors for this bidding contract and none of this was disclosed by the BBC in their program the second part of this program that I found very disappointing was the fact that the BBC in focusing on the Russian technology parks cocuwa did not disclose the list of skok of our partners that are a matter of public record on the Internet if you look at this list very closely you'll see c5 is not on there neither Amazon Web Services but the list of companies that are on there are very familiar names many of them competitors in this bidding process who acted as founding partners of skok about Oracle for example as recently as the 28th of November hosted what was described as the largest cloud computing conference in Russia's history at Skolkovo this is the this is the place which the BBC described as this notorious den of spies and at this event which Oracle hosted they had the Russian presidential administration on a big screen as one of their clients in Russia so some Oracle is doing business in Russia they have like legit real links to Russia well things you're saying if they suddenly have very close links with Skolkovo and so having a great many other Khayyam is there IBM Accenture cisco say Microsoft is saying Oracle is there so Skolkovo has a has a very distinguished roster of partners and if the BBC was fair and even-handed they would have disclosed us and they would have disclosed the fact that neither c5 nor Amazon feature as Corcovado you feel that the BBC has been duped the BBC clearly has been duped the program that they broadcasted is really a parlor game of six degrees of separation which they try to spun into a national security crisis all right so let's tell us John while ago you're saying John Wyler who's quoted in the story as an expert and by the way I read in the story my favorite line that I wanted to ask you on was there seems to be questions being raised but the question is being raised or referring to him so are you saying that he is not an expert but a plant for the story what's what's his role he's saying he works for Oracle or you think do you think he's being paid by Oracle like I can't comment on mr. Wireless motivation what strikes me is the fact that is a former Oracle executive what's striking is that he clearly on his website for the IC H identifies several competitors for the Jedi business clients and that all of this should have been disclosed by the BBC rather than to try and characterize and portray him as an independent expert on this story well AWS put out a press release or a blog post essentially hum this you know you guys had won it we're very clear and this I know it goes to the top because that's how Amazon works nothing goes out until it goes to the top which is Andy chassis and the senior people over there it says here's the relationship with c5 and ATS what school you use are the same page there but also they hinted the old guard manipulation distant I don't think they use the word disinformation campaign they kind of insinuate it and that's what I'm looking into I want to ask you are you part are you a victim of a disinformation campaign do you believe that you're not a victim being targeted with c5 as part of a disinformation campaign put on by a competitor to AWS I think what we've seen over the course of this last here is an enormous amount of disinformation around this contract and around this bidding process and they've a lot of the information that has been disseminated has not only not been factual but in some cases have been patently malicious well I have been covering Amazon for many many years this guy Tom Wyler is in seems to be circulating multiple reports invested in preparing for this interview I checked Vanity Fair he's quoted in Vanity Fair he's quoted in the BBC story and there's no real or original reporting other than those two there's some business side our article which is just regurgitating the Business Insider I mean the BBC story and a few other kind of blog stories but no real original yes no content don't so in every story that that's been written on this subject and as you say most serious publication have thrown this thrown these allegations out but in the in those few instances where they've managed to to publish these allegations and to leverage other people's credibility to their advantage and leverage other people's credibility for their competitive advantage John Wheeler has been the most important and prominent source of the allegations someone who clearly has vested commercial interests someone who clearly works for competitors as disclosed on his own website and none of this has ever been surfaced or addressed I have multiple sources have confirmed to me that there's a dossier that has been created and paid for by a firm or collection of firms to discredit AWS I've seen some of the summary documents of that and that is being peddled around to journalists we have not been approached yet I'm not sure they will because we actually know the cloud what cloud computing is so I'm sure we could debunk it by just looking at it and what they were putting fors was interesting is this an eleventh-hour a desperation attempt because I have the Geo a report here that was issued under Oracle's change it says there are six conditions why we're looking at one sole cloud although it's not a it's a multiple bid it's not an exclusive to amazon but so there's reasons why and they list six service levels highly specialized check more favorable terms and conditions with a single award expected cause of administration of multiple contracts outweighs the benefits of multiple awards the projected orders are so intricately related that only a single contractor can reasonably be perform the work meaning that Amazon has the only cloud that can do that work now I've reported on the cube and it's looking angle that it's true there's things that other clouds just don't have anyone has private they have the secret the secret clouds the total estimated value of the contract is less than the simplified acquisition threshold or multiple awards would not be in the best interest this is from them this is a government report so it seems like there's a conspiracy against Amazon where you are upon and in in this game collect you feel that collateral damage song do you do you believe that to be true collateral damage okay well okay so now the the John Wheeler guys so investigate you've been an investigator so you mean you're not you know you're not a retired into this a retired investigator you're retired investigated worked on things with Nelson Mandela Kroll Janet Reno Attorney General you've vetted by the United States government you have credibility you have relationships with people who have have top-secret clearance all kinds of stuff but I mean do you have where people have top-secret clearance or or former people who had done well we have we have the privilege of of working with a very distinguished group of senior national security leaders as operating partisan c5 and many of them have retained their clearances and have been only been able to do so because c5 had to pass through a very deep vetting process so for you to be smeared like this you've been in an investigative has you work at a lot of people this is pretty obvious to you this is like a oh is it like a deep state conspiracy you feel it's one vendor - what is your take and what does collateral damage mean to you well I recently spoke at the mahkum conference on a session on digital warfare and one of the key points I made there was that there are two things that are absolutely critical for business leaders and technology leaders at this point in time one we have to clearly say that our countries are worth defending we can't walk away from our countries because the innovation that we are able to build and scale we're only able to do because we live in democracies and then free societies that are governed by the rule of law the second thing that I think is absolutely crucial for business leaders in the technology community is to accept that there must be a point where national interest overrides competition it must be a point where we say the benefit and the growth and the success of our country is more important to us than making commercial profits and therefore there's a reason for us either to cooperate or to cease competition or to compete in a different way what might takes a little bit more simple than that's a good explanation is I find these smear campaigns and fake news and I was just talking with Kara Swisher on Twitter just pinging back and forth you know either journalists are chasing Twitter and not really doing the original courting or they're being fed stories if this is truly a smear campaign as being fed by a paid dossier then that hurts people when families and that puts corporate interests over the right thing so I think I a personal issue with that that's fake news that's just disinformation but it's also putting corporate inches over over families and people so I just find that to be kind of really weird when you say collateral damage earlier what did you mean by that just part of the campaign you personally what's what's your view okay I think competition which is not focused on on performance and on innovation and on price points that's competition that's hugely destructive its destructive to the fabric of innovation its destructive of course to the reputation of the people who fall in the line of sight of this kind of competition but it's also hugely destructive to national interest Andrae one of the key stories here with the BBC which has holes in it is that the Amazon link which we just talked about but there's one that they bring up that seems to be core in all this and just the connections to Russia can you talk about your career over the career from whether you when you were younger to now your relationship with Russia why is this Russian angle seems to be why they bring into the Russia angle into it they seem to say that c-5 Cable has connections they call deep links personal links into Russia so to see what that so c5 is a venture capital firm have no links to Russia c5 has had one individual who is originally of Russian origin but it's been a longtime Swiss resident and you national as a co investor into a enterprise software company we invested in in 2015 in Europe we've since sold that company but this individual Vladimir Kuznetsov who's became the focus of the BBC's story was a co investor with us and the way in which we structure our investment structures is that everything is transparent so the investment vehicle for this investment was a London registered company which was on the records of Companies House not an offshore entity and when Vladimir came into this company as a co investor for compliance and regulatory purposes we asked him to make his investment through this vehicle which we controlled and which was subject to our compliance standards and completely transparent and in this way he made this investment now when we take on both investors and Co investors we do that subject to very extensive due diligence and we have a very robust and rigorous due diligence regime which in which our operating partners who are leaders of great experience play an important role in which we use outside due diligence firms to augment our own judgment and to make sure we have all the facts and finally we also compare notes with other financial institutions and peers and having done that with Vladimir Kuznetsov when he made this one investment with us we reached the conclusion that he was acting in his own right as an independent angel investor that his left renova many years ago as a career executive and that he was completely acceptable as an investor so that you think that the BBC is making an inaccurate Association the way they describe your relationship with Russia absolutely the the whole this whole issue of the provenance of capital has become of growing importance to the venture capital industry as you and I discussed earlier with many more different sources of capital coming out of places like China like Russia Saudi Arabia other parts of the world and therefore going back again to you the earlier point we discussed compliance and due diligence our critical success factors and we have every confidence in due diligence conclusions that we reached about vladimir quits net source co-investment with us in 2015 so I did some digging on c5 razor bidco this was the the portion of the company in reference to the article I need to get your your take on this and they want to get you on the record on this because it's you mentioned I've been a law above board with all the compliance no offshore entities this is a personal investment that he made Co investment into an entity you guys set up for the transparency and compliance is that true that's correct no side didn't see didn't discover this would my my children could have found this this this company was in a transparent way on the records in Companies House and and Vladimir's role and investment in it was completely on the on the public record all of this was subject to financial conduct authority regulation and anti money laundering and no your client standards and compliance so there was no great big discovery this was all transparent all out in the open and we felt very confident in our due diligence findings and so you feel very confident Oh issue there at all special purpose none whatsoever is it this is classic this is international finance yes sir so in the venture capital industry creating a special purpose vehicle for a particular investment is a standard practice in c-five we focus on structuring those special-purpose vehicles in the most transparent way possible and that was his money from probably from Russia and you co invested into this for this purpose of doing these kinds of deals with Russia well we just right this is kind of the purpose of that no no no this so in 2015 we invested into a European enterprise software company that's a strategic partner of Microsoft in Scandinavian country and we invested in amount of 16 million pounds about at the time just more than 20 million dollars and subsequent in August of that year that Amir Kuznetsov having retired for nova and some time ago in his own right as an angel investor came in as a minority invest alongside us into this investment but we wanted to be sure that his investment was on our control and subject to our compliance standards so we requested him to make his investment through our special purpose vehicle c5 raised a bit co this investment has since been realized it's been a great success and this business is going on to do great things and serve great clients it c5 taking russian money no see if I was not taking Russian money since since the onset of sanctions onboarding Russian money is just impossible sanctions have introduced complexity and have introduced regulatory risk related to Russian capital and so we've taken a decision that we will not and we can't onboard Russian capital and sanctions have also impacted my investigative career sanctions have also completely changed because what the US have done very effectively is to make sanctions a truly global regime and in which ever country are based it doesn't really matter you have to comply with US sanctions this is not optional for anybody on any sanctions regime including the most recent sanctions on Iran so if there are sanctions in place you can't touch it have you ever managed Russian oligarchs money or interests at any time I've never managed a Russian oligarchs money at any point in time I served for a period of a year honest on the board of a South African mining company in which Renova is a minority invest alongside an Australian company called South 32 and the reason why I did this was because of my support for African entrepreneurship this was one of the first black owned mining companies in South Africa that was established with a British investment in 2004 this business have just grown to be a tremendous success and so for a period of a year I offered to help them on the board and to support them as they as they looked at how they can grow and scale the business I have a couple more questions Gabe so I don't know if you wanna take a break you want to keep let's take a break okay let's take a quick break do a quick break I think that's great that's the meat of it great job by the way fantastic lady here thanks for answering those questions the next section I want to do is compliment

(theCUBE theme music) >> Narrator: Live from Washington D.C. It's theCUBE, covering AWS Public Sector Summit 2017. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services and its partner ecosystem. >> Welcome back here to the show floor at AWS Public Sector Summit 2017. Along with John Furrier, I'm John Walls. Glad to have you here on theCUBE as we continue our coverage here live from the nation's capital. Joining us now from Enlighten IT Consulting is John Eubank IV, Director of Program Management Office. John, thanks for joining us here on theCUBE, a CUBE rookie, I believe, is that correct? >> Yes, sir, yeah, thanks for the invite. >> Nice to break the maiden, good to have you aboard here. First off, tell us a little bit about your consulting firm for our viewers at home, to give an idea about your frame and why you're here at AWS. >> Absolutely, so we're a big data consulting company focused on cyber security solutions for the DOD IC community. What we jumped into about three years ago was a partnership with AWS. And seeing, just the volume, the velocity of data coming out of the DOD, that those on-premise server farms could not keep up, could not support it with the power, space and cooling needs. So we partnered with AWS and over the last three years we've been migrating our customers up to GovCloud, specifically. >> So what are you doing then for DOD specifically, then? When you said you solve problems, right? They've got reams and reams of data, trying to help them manage that process a little bit better, but, you know, drill down a little bit more specifically what you're doing for DOD. >> Absolutely, so we developed a proprietary technology called the Rapid Analytic Deployment and Management Framework, RADMF, it's available on RADMF.com, R A D M F dot com. >> John Walls: True marketer. >> Yeah, true marketer at heart. So that's our, sort of governance framework for DOD applications that want to move to the cloud. It automates the deployment process to get 'em out of their existing systems up to the cloud. One of the real problems inside the DOD that we've encountered is the disparate data sets to enable effective analytics when it comes to cyber security solutions. So, I like to think back to the day one conversation about, sort of the data swamp, not the data lake. That's exactly what we have inside the DOD. There's so many home-built sensors, paired with COT sensors, that it's created this absolute mess, or nightmare of data. That swamp needs to be drained. It needs to be, sort of refined in a way that we can call it a data lake, something understandable that people can-- >> I hate the term data lake, I, you've been listening, I, John knows I hate the term data lake. Love the term data swamp, because it illustrates exactly that, there is, if you don't watch the data, and don't share it, it's just stagnant, and it turns into a swamp. And I think, this is a huge issue. >> John Eubank IV: Absolutely correct. >> So I want you to just double down on that, just give some color. Is it the volume of the data, is it the lack of sharing, both? (laughs) >> It's really every, it's everything under the sun, there's, you know, sharing issues all across the federal government right now and who can see what data, Navy doesn't want to share with Army, inside the IC-- >> John Furrier: Well that'll never happen. >> Agencies don't want to share with each other. (laughs) I think we're, we're breaking down those walls. We're seeing that, when it comes to cyber security, no one person can defend an entire nation. No one agency can defend an entire nation on their own. It has to be a collaborative solution. It has to be a team effort. Navy, Army, Air Force, IC, etc., have to work together, in tendem, in partnership, if we're ever going to just, defend our nation from cyber hackers. >> I want to ask you a philosophical question, because, you know, as someone who's been online all my life, computer science, you've seen, there's always the notion of trolling, the notion of online message boards, back in the day when I was running, is now main stream now, >> John Eubank IV: Right. >> I mean people trolling each other on Twitter, for crying out loud, main stream. So, the culture of digital has an ethos, and open source is a big driver on that cyber security, there's a huge ethos of sharing, and it's kind of an honor among practitioners. >> John Eubank IV: Mm-hmm. 'cause they know how big the threat is. How is that evolving? Because this seems to highlight, your point about sharing, that it's, the digital world's different than the analog world, and some of the practices that are getting traction can be doubled-down on. So everyone's trying to figure out what's, what should be double-down on, and what are the good practices from the bad? Can you just share some cultural... >> Well, I think you hit the nail on the head with the open source model there. That is the key right here. It's not even within the government we need to share. It's industry and government, in partnership, need to approach these problem sets together and work on 'em as one cohesive body. So, for example, our company, our platform, it's entirely an open source platform. It's government-owned solution. We don't sell, it's the big data platform, it's provided by DISA right now. We don't sell that product. It's available to any government agency that wants it for free. We have 1500 different software developers and engineers from across the government community that collaborate together to evolve that platform. And that's really the only way we're going to make a significan difference right now. >> That creativity that could come out of this new process that you're referring to, I'm just kind of thinking out loud here on theCUBE, is interesting because you think about all those people on Twitch. >> John Eubank IV: Uh-huh. >> 34 million, I think, a day or whatever the big number, it's a huge number. Those idle gamers could be actually collaborating on a core problem that could be fun. So if you look at a crowd sourcing model of attacking data, this is kind of a whole new mindset of culture. To me, this is the kind of doors that open up when you start thinking like this model. Because the bad guys are already ahead of the game. I mean, so, how do you, how do you guys talk about that, 'cause you guys have to kind of keep some data masked, and you have to kind of, maybe not expose everything. How do you balance that secretive nature of it, and yet opening it up? >> That's a question that the DHS is struggling with, sort of day in and day out right now. They're going through a couple different iterations of different efforts. There was the ESSA program, there's the Automated Indicator Sharing program going on right now with DHS and some of the IC partners of what do we share with industry, because we're recognizing as a government we can't defend this nation on our own. We need an industry partnership. How do we open that up to the general public of the United States to do that crowd sourced mentality. Threat hunting is a lot of fun if you know what you're doing, and if somebody will guide you down the path, it's an endless world and a need for threat analysts to study the data sets that are out there. Indicators of compromise point you in a general direction, but they're a wide-open direction, and... >> They're already playing, it's like lagging in a video game, they're, gamers are already ahead of, the hackers are already ahead of you. Interesting point, Berkeley, University of California at Berkeley has a new program, they call it the quote Navy Seals of cyber. It's an integrated computer science and engineering and Haas business school program. And it's a four-year degree specifically for a special forces kind of thinking. Interdisciplinary, highly data driven, computer science, engineering and business so they can understand, again, hackers run a business model. These are organized units. This is kind of what we're up against. >> Absolutely agree. >> John Furrier: What are your thoughts on that? You think that's the, the right direction, we need more of it? >> We need more of it, absolutely. DOD is moving in the same direction with the cyber protection teams or CPTs. They're beginning to do sort of the same formal training models for the soldiers. Unfortunately, right now a lot of the cyber protection teams are just scavenged resources from other branches of the military. So you have guys in EOD that are now transitioning into cyber, and they're going from diffusing bombs to diffusing cyber threats. It's a totally different scenario and use case, and it's a tough struggle to transition into that when your background was diffusing a bomb. >> And you brought up the industry collaboration, talking about private, you know, private sector and public sector. I know, you know, personal experience in the wireless space, there was a lot of desire to share information, but yet there was a congressional reluctance. >> John Eubank IV: Mm-hmm. >> To allow that. For different concerns. Some we thought were very unwarranted at the time. So how do you deal with that, because that's another influence in this, is that you might have willing parties, but you've got another body over here that might not be on board. >> I think we're going to start seeing more of a shift as private industry acknowledges their need for government support and that government collaboration, so data breaches like the Target breach and massive credit card breaches that, you know, these private industries cannot keep up with defending their own network. They need government supoort for defending very large corporations. Walmart, Target, Home Depot, the list goes on of breaches. >> Final question as we wrap up here, but what's the coolest tech that you're seeing that's enabling you to be successful, whether it's cool tech that you're looking at, you're kicking the tires on. From software to Amazon, hardware, what are you seeing that's out there that's really moving the needle and getting people motivated? >> So a surprising thing there, I'm going to say the Snowball Edge. And people go, it's just a data hard drive. Well, not really. It's way more than a data hard drive. So when you come to Amazon you think enterprise solutions, enterprise capabilities. What the Snowball Edge provides is a deployable unit that has processing, compute, storage, etc., onboard that you can take into your local networks. They're putting it so you can run any VM you want on the Snowball Edge. What we're doing is we're taking that inside DOD tactical spaces that don't have connections to the internet. We're able to do computation analytics on threats facing that local regional onclave using a hard drive. It's really cool technology that hasn't been fully explored, but that's uh, that's where we're-- >> You can tell you're excited about it. Your eyes light up, you got a big smile on your face. >> Drove the new Ferrari that came out. >> Yeah, right. >> When I saw it, I just jumped all in. >> John Walls: You loved it, right. >> So, three months ago... >> You knew right away, too. >> Right. >> John Furrier: The big wheel. >> John, thank you for being with us. I think they're going to kick us out of the place, John. >> Hey, they got to unplug us. We're going to go until they unplug us. >> Alright, John, again thanks for being with us. >> Well, thank you guys for your time, much appreciated. >> Thank you for joining us here from Washington, for all of us here at theCUBE, we appreciate you being along for the ride at AWS Public Sector Summit 2017. (theCUBE theme music)