>> From the Amazon meeting Center in downtown Seattle, it's theCUBE, covering IMAGINE: A Better World, a global education conference sponsored by Amazon Web Services. >> Hey, welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in Seattle, Washington at the first ever AWS IMAGINE education conference. I think they said there was 900 registrants. Teresa Carlson did the key note, just finished, really fantastic. 900 people, it's funny, she equated it to AWS Public Sector which, seven years ago, had 50 people. And this year it had, I think, 15,000 people. So I think we'll see a similar growth here. Really, application of all the things that AWS does for education specifically, and there's all the cost saving and shutting down data centers and all that kind of stuff. But much more importantly is educating the workforce and getting a new class of kids and educators involved in cloud computing 'cause, let's face it, it's the dominant paradigm going forward. I don't think there's much question about that. So we're excited to be here, talk to some of the great people, all educators. And our first guest is Dr. David Dimmett. He's the SVP and Chief Engagement Officer at Project Lead the Way. David, great to see you. >> Yeah, great, thanks for having us here. So we're excited to be here as part of this first ever education conference that AWS is hosting. So great event, lots of fantastic energy, excited to present later today on diversity inclusion and computer science education, a space where we're doing a lot of really great work. And want to share, and also here to learn. >> Great, so give us the overview on Project Lead the Way. >> Sure, so Project Lead the Way, we are a 20-year-old national nonprofit. We were started in upstate New York, and we're working today with over three million students in pre-K all the way through 12th grade in high school. And we work with them in computer science education, biomedical science engineering; our job is to inspire kids. We want them to have access to a lifetime of opportunity. We know these skills are essential. Students who have these skills have opportunities, have doors open to them. Students without these skills really, today, face a lifetime of consequences. >> Right, so how do you get the skills into the education? It's such a frustration, and typical K through 12 education, computer science has not been part of the standard curriculum. There's the math track, which you take trig and calc, and there's the science track with bio and physics and chem, but computer science really hasn't done a great job of weaseling its way into the standard curriculum that everybody takes. So how do you get this curriculum in? How do you get the education to the kids? >> Sure, and we're seeing some movement in this area, which is really exciting. AWS has been a big part of that. But what we look at, we for the last 20 years have really put an emphasis on testing students primarily in those subjects that are easy to test, so core academic content; we definitely need students to have knowledge in those areas. What's been missing for a long time is the connection to that core academic knowledge to real-world problem solving. And that's where kids come in to a Project Lead the Way classroom and get excited. So we're starting with them early as pre-K, working all the way through, and it's, like I said, all those career pathways. But they're applying what they're learning in their algebra class, they're applying what they're learning in their physics class. And we know the research indicates that students decide really early if they like or are good at math or science. And gone are the days where it's okay to just brush off those content areas. We need to rethink the way kids get excited and inspired at an early age. >> So do you pull them, then, into a separate classroom experience outside of their everyday at school? How does the mechanics actually work? >> Right, so we're working with about 14,000 programs all across the country this year, all 50 states. And there are a variety of implementation models. In the early grades, in pre-K through five, a lot of times that's integrating into the homeroom or into the primary classroom. So we're training teachers all across buildings in a lot of elementary schools all across the country. When you work your way into middle school and high school, students rotate through, sometimes as an elective. But increasingly we're seeing schools require those courses because it exposes students to some of the careers that they may not understand and opportunities that they don't know exist. >> Right, it's so funny, right? 'Cause technology, over and over and over again, back to the Luddites, right, destroys certain industries, creates new industries, right? You don't want to be the guy making buggy whips anymore; it's probably not a great industry. But there didn't use to be web developers. There didn't use to be integration specialists. There didn't use to be SEO people. So there's a whole new class of applications that continue to be created with each of these huge information technology transformations. >> Yeah, it really is, and we have an increasing gap, really, unfortunately, in equality of opportunity. Increasingly today, we see students who have access to these opportunities in their pre-K, 12 experiences. Those students have a chance to go on to all kinds of careers, whether it's AWS, Verizon, Toyota, Lockheed Martin, you can go down the list. Companies are recruiting students that have these skills. Students who happen to not get exposed to these opportunities early really struggle to catch up later in life or later in their education system. So we really look at a variety of on-ramps for students. We work in the school day primarily. We also support a lot of work outside the school day. One of the key things that we do is we help teachers gain confidence in these areas. We were talking earlier about the skills gap that exists for adults in getting into some of these careers; same thing exists for teachers. We have teacher shortages all across the country. And what we're really looking to do is inspire not just students but the teachers who teach them. We'll train over 10,000 teachers this summer and get them ready to go in and inspire and prepare their students. >> It's really interesting, especially you get smarter kids once they're in high school and college. And they're looking for that connection. "Come on, Dad, what am I taking in chemistry? "I'm not going to be a doctor, "I'm not going to be a chemical scientist. "How does it relate to what I'm going to do "or philosophy or whatever." But these types of skills are really, really cogent. And not to mention that, but the kids are interacting with these types of applications all the day. So the connection between what I'm doing at school versus what I might be doing when I get out of school has got to be so much tighter than when you take a philosophy class or an American lit class. >> Yeah, we're rolling out, and with AWS's support. AWS has provided us with subject matter experts with a lot of the technological tools to help us deliver a brand new cybersecurity course this year all across the country. We're really excited about that. And you look at what's happening in terms of the cybersecurity threats that our country faces, that other countries face. It's both an economic issue but also a national security issue. And we just don't have the skilled workforce to be effective in those areas. We're inspiring kids, through AWS's help, to get excited and not just get excited but to have the skills to go out and be successful. So what I love, too, is a lot of the advances that we anticipate in healthcare are not going to be necessarily biomedical advancements. They will be, but they'll also be technological advances. We've worked with Cerner to train teachers in our computer science courses; they're one of the world's largest medical records companies. How do we provide data and information, big data, to medical providers, so that they can provide the best targeted treatment to their students? And so one of the things that we thrive on in our work is the connection to business and industry. And we want to provide that talent, that workforce, of the future. >> Right, so let me just drill in on that a little bit in terms of the role. You said you've been around for 20 years, your foundation. The role of private companies in general, and AWS specifically in helping on some of these really big problems, these really big efforts. 'Cause we know the public school systems never have enough money, getting pulled in a ton of different directions. So what kind of impact does somebody like AWS coming in help you complete your mission? >> Right, so AWS, AWS Educate have provided us with a variety of supports, and they're really helping us do a lot of really great work for students all across the country. A couple of specific examples. I mentioned subject matter experts. Having AWS come in and help us not just with this cybersecurity course but also how do we infuse into our other computer science coursework cloud career skilled development? And so we're doing that now with AWS's support. And Ken Eisner and his team have really helped us for the last couple of years; it's a great partnership. Additionally, providing us with the infrastructure, the applications, the AWS ecosystem of supports are helping us do a variety of things to secure student data, to also drive down cost to schools. All of those things together provide a great opportunity to the students that we're serving, three million plus, all across the country. >> Three million plus, that's great. So there's a real specific program that I want to give you a chance to talk about, the Kentucky Cloud Careers Pathways. That's kind of an example; give us a little bit more color. And we talked before, I got a lot of family in Kentucky, so it touched me a little bit. And, of course, Teresa's from there as well. >> So Kentucky is one of our strongest states for Project Lead the Way and has been for a lot of years. The governor and his cabinet have really done a lot of work to advance career opportunities, workforce development, economic development. And what we have and what we announced last year in Kentucky is the Cloud Career Pathway program. And that is a partnership between AWS; Project Lead the Way; the community college system in Kentucky; the governor's economic, labor, development, education departments; all of us working together to get kids exposed to cloud careers early in their education experience. And we've started training teachers to that end this year. We think it's going to be a real model for the country. >> David, I think you said it in every one of your answers, adding the "and the teachers, too." Such an important part, right? Such a key enabler to make this thing actually go. It can't just be about the kids. >> Absolutely, teachers are the bedrock of what we do in education. I say that as a lifelong educator. We've got a lot of work to do, and teachers are under attack in some places. And you've seen this last year, the work that's happened to put teachers in a position to be successful. And we've got a lot of work to do there. But our job, we want to go out and inspire the country's best teachers to go in and work in some of the most difficult work situations that exist in our country and inspire kids and with limited resources. And teachers are pouring their hearts out to do that. We think we've got a great opportunity, but we trained 10,000 plus teachers this year alone. And we see those teachers gain confidence. They go back to their classrooms, they're excited, and they know more about the opportunities that exist for their students. And I say that as a lifelong educator. In fact, my wife and I met 20 years ago as first-year teachers, so that, to me, is really core to what we do. >> Well, I see the passion in your eyes. So thank you for following up on this mission and doing good work and spending a few minutes with us on theCUBE. >> Yeah, that's great, thanks Jeff. >> All right, he's David, I'm Jeff. You're watching theCUBE from AWS IMAGINE Educate. Thanks for watching. (electronic music)

>> From the Amazon Meeting Center in downtown Seattle, it's theCUBE covering IMAGINE: A Better World, a Global Education Conference, sponsored by Amazon Web Services. >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in downtown Seattle at AWS IMAGINE Education. First year of the show, 900 registrants, 20 countries represented, really all the public sectors show, but this one's just focused on education as its own track. A lot of really interesting innovation going on, and as part of the keynote, we saw a really cool concept video about bringing Alexa into the class. The Echo Dot talking, and so, we're excited to have kind of the guy driving this whole project. He's David Hakanson, the CIO of Saint Louis University. First off, what a great keynote you had this morning. >> Thank you, thank you, and we're really excited to announce this today. So, today we announced that we are putting an Amazon Echo Dot in every single residence hall room. So, over 2,300 devices that will be in every room awaiting students for this fall. The device will be essentially their virtual assistant. They can ask questions specific to the university, through our custom skill, or any other question that's normally through the Alexa platform. >> So, the voice of God is talking above us, but that's okay. So, it was interesting when you were starting your presentation earlier today, I'm like, what are the applications going to be? I mean, what are these kids going to do with this? Like, we've got a Dot at home. We ask it to play music all the time, but you really did your homework on trying to think through what are the different use cases, what types of information are going to help the kids get their information a little bit faster, a little easier? >> That's right. We want this to be valuable for our students, and our students are active inside and outside of the classroom. Our university does over a million hours of community service a year, so we attract a very active student. We don't want them to be spending time searching for information. We want them to get that information immediately. Whether it's something simple, such as when is the library closed? Or, what channel is their favorite show going to be on? We want them to be able to get very fast access to information because right now, they have to search through web pages or calendars to find out what's going on on campus or other key information, and that takes time. >> Right. Well, it's funny because there's a lot of conversation about the educational experience, and really trying to develop an engaging experience for the kids in school, for the students, but the question is always, you know, how do you define engagement, what is engagement, and what are the actual things, the physical activities, that are going to drive this? And you guys, amazing stat. You said you went from concept to delivery in three months, and in that process, really explored a lot of interesting concepts. I wonder if you can add a little bit more color to that development process. >> Absolutely. It started with a six week pilot program, where we tested different virtual assistant technology to see what did the students really like, and they chose the Amazon Echo system. And once we made that decision, we were able to go from that concept to completion in three months, which was fantastic for us because we wanted to make sure we were ready for the fall semester. To do that, we worked very closely with AWS and the Alexa for Business team, as well as the partner, the skill development partner, called Empowered. We were able to use the partner ecosystem to allow us to move very quickly, and through that process engaging our students, engaging our stakeholders to make sure that the device was going to meet their needs, not just be something that looked good on their desk. >> Right. So was voice part of the initial design criteria, or did that come when you were looking at different type of interactive devices? Because clearly, the kids today are super adept on their phone, and they can text with their eyes closed with one finger tied behind their back. Voice is still relatively new. At least, maybe it's not as new as I think, so how did you get to the voice as the main UI for kind of this new, cutting edge information system? >> So, we started with voice saying we want a virtual assistant that's voice based because we see that as the future. So, if you're on your smart phone looking for information, you're still having to go to a website or to different data sources to get that, whereas asking a question is much faster, and getting that answer, it's a much faster transaction. So, we started with that saying how can we use voice technology to help our students be more productive, and then, engaged our students in that conversation, and they were very excited about that. >> Right. So, one of the really cool things about Alexa and the Dot is the programmability, which, obviously, you guys took advantage of. So, a little color on kind of how you chose what to program, but I think even more exciting is what kind of opportunities that opens up as an individual student, as a CS project in the class, and as you said, your university has a lot more going on than just incoming students. You've got graduate degrees, medical things going on, so I wonder if you can shed a little light on kind of how you developed what you have for the launch date, but you know, some of the future things that you see down the road. >> That really goes to the Alexa for Business foundation that we chose, and Alexa for Business was the differentiator for us. It was a key area because through that tool and ecosystem, we could manage the devices, and we could group the devices. So, we could group a learning community of engineers, of students studying engineering, and give them specialized skills or allow them to develop a skill and have that only on their devices, not on everyone else's devices. So, the ability to manage these allowed us to really focus on that educational experience, allow students to start creating skills, and then be able to manage and deploy them at scale. >> That's great. I can't wait to come back a year from now and hear kind of what happened. I'm sure there's going to be all kinds of cool surprises, tough surprises, you know, upsides and downsides 'cause you said they're getting installed this week and the kids are showing up in a couple weeks. >> That's correct, that's correct. (laughing) We're moving very quickly. >> Alright David. Well again, I'm going to give you the last word as you touched on it a little bit, but you know, how working with Amazon and AWS specifically you know, kind of impacted this project and how does that help you, you know deliver your objectives more efficiently and faster? >> Yeah, the only way we could have gone from concept to completion in three months was by working closely with AWS and the partner ecosystem. We could not have done this at any scale or efficient timeframe without them. They were a fantastic partner, helping us all the way from choosing the right partner to develop the skill to helping us on how do we get all these devices to work on our network, to how do we get all these devices working on our network and installed within a couple days, and so, from beginning to end AWS has been instrumental in our success to bring this new innovative technology to our students. >> Okay, well we might have to have a field trip out to Saint Louis and check it out. >> You're welcome to come. >> Alright, he's David, I'm Jeff. We're at AWS in downtown Seattle at AWS IMAGINE. Thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) >> On the Amazon Meeting Center. In downtown Seattle. It's theCUBE. Covering Imagine a Better World. A global education conference, sponsored by Amazon Web Services. >> Hey welcome back everybody. Jeffrey here with theCUBE. We're in Seattle, Washington at the AWS Imagine education conference. It's the first one. Teresa Carlson just kicked off the keynote. About 900 registrants from over 20 countries worldwide. We saw it happen with the public sector before. They went from 50 people to 15 thousand, I think she said in seven years. I'm imagining that Imagine is going to have the same track. Cause education is so, so important. And we're excited our next guest came all the way from the other side of the pond. The other side of the Atlantic. He's Peter O'Rourke, Director of IT for the University of Suffolk. Peter, great to see ya. >> Thanks Jeff for the welcome. Yes it's been fantastic to be here with this exciting crowd. And as Teresa said it would be great to be here in seven years. At a huge event. >> A huge event, it'll probably be in Vegas. They like to have those big ones down in Vegas. So what brings you here? It's a long way, education is clearly super important. Digital transformation and cloud. We see it all over the place. But what's the application that you're looking at, what are you excited about in bringing kind of cloud economics to the University of Suffolk? >> Well Jeff, the key thing in education has got to be about students' experience. And that's the thing we've got to keep driving at all the time. What's exciting about partners like Amazon is the potential that they talk about. It's not what they're doing today. It's what they're talking about and going to do tomorrow and the day after. And as I've just said, this is day one. >> Right. >> This is an exciting journey to engage with. With these partners. >> So how have the student experience kind of expectations morphed over time? As you get kind of digital-native kids coming up into the school now and kind of, you know we've seen it on the business side. The consumerization of IT cause people expect their interactions with their companies, their banks and their retailers to be like it is with their phone and computer. How are you seeing the expectations change from your students on what they want and how they want to interact with all the services that you guys provide them. >> Good question. And again the mobile phone is the key here. People arrive at your organizations, whether they are universities or retail establishments. And they already know how they're going to work with you. And when you can't do that. That's a huge disappointment. So these people are using things in their daily life. To arrange trips, theater tickets, cinema. And when you can't work like that, there's a huge disconnect. >> Right, right. The other big issue that happens I've seen more and more is mobile. And you know, universities. You guys are always limited on space. >> Yeah. >> There's always lots of construction and new buildings and new labs and new academic offices and classrooms. So space is always an issue. How does you know, mobile specifically as you mentioned, enable you to provide a different experience, a better experience, a more varied experience when you've got all these other kind of constraints you're faced with. >> How mobile can help with that. It's about allowing your users to consume their content where and when they want to. It's exactly how they live their daily lives. So you know maybe you can't a lecture today. But why should that really matter? >> Right. >> You should be able to pick this up later. >> Right. And that last piece is the staff. And you know a lot of the teachers weren't necessarily educated in CS. That wasn't kind of why they got into the business. Especially if they are in say, history or philosophy. Or some of maybe the softer sciences. How are you seeing their adoption of technology to be, you know don't be afraid of it. This actually can be a great enabler to help you do your job better. How are you seeing their adoption of some of this technology in some of the softer academic areas? >> Well, again good question. But it's a huge challenge. I think for too long what we've tried to do from a technology perspective. Is to turn absolutely brilliant academic colleagues into technologists. And that's not why they came into education. >> Right. >> What's exciting about what's happening now is that we're able to enable them to use much, much simpler technology tools or interfaces that are actually doing amazing things in the background. And they don't need to understand how it does it. And that's the way it should be. >> Right. So last question. What are you expecting to get out of this conference for a day and a half here in Seattle? Ton of educators, ton of people from your indsutry. First ever event of this type for AWS. What are you hoping to take away? >> I'm hoping to take away a ton of exciting ideas. That are almost impossible to install. But there's going to be one or two gems in there that we can work with people like Amazon going forward. And we're going to come back in a year's time. And we'll want to talk about what we've done. >> Right. >> That's the exciting thing. >> That is the key right, what have you done? >> Yes. >> And now with cloud you can do, they've talked about a project in the keynote that was three months from ideation to actually starting to ship stuff. So we can do it. >> That's what we've got to do. >> Right alright Peter, well thanks for taking a few minutes of your day. And good luck with the rest of the conference. >> Thanks Jeff, thanks for talking to me. >> Alright, Peter, I'm Jeff. You're watching theCUBE. We're at AWS Imagine Education in Seattle, Washington. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> From the Amazon Meeting Center in Downtown Seattle, it's theCUBE. Covering Imagine: A Better World, A Global Education Conference sponsored by Amazon Web Services. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in Seattle, Washington, at the AWS, I think it's called the Meeting Space. There's a lot of AWS buildings around here. It's AWS Imagine: Education, first year of the conference, about 900 registered folks, 22 countries represented. Really excited, this thing is going to grow. We've seen it before with AWS. We saw it with Summit: Reinvent. AWS Public Sector. We're excited to be here for the very first time and our next guest is Dr. Scott Ralls. He is the President of Northern Virginia Community College. Scott, great to see you. >> Thank you, it's good to be here Jeff, appreciate it. >> A lot of mentions of NOVA, and that's you guys. >> That's us, yeah. >> That's not the PBS programming. You guys are kind of out front on some of these initiatives, with 3sa and AWS Public Sector. I wonder if you can tell us a little bit about the Veterans' Apprenticeship Program, which has been in place for a little while. >> Just a little bit about NOVA, we're a community college just right outside of the Virginia suburbs of D.C. We're the, I'd say, the biggest college that nobody's heard of outside of our region. We have about 100,000 students. >> 100,000? >> 100,000. >> And how many campuses? >> Six campuses. >> For us, our niche is information technology. It's where the internet runs through our region, and so that cloud computing, we have the highest concentration of cloud computing cyber degrees. That's why the AWS partnership is so key for us, because it's about the opportunity for our students. And for AWS, it's about filling those jobs. Also, we have a lot of employers in our region that hire based on AWS credentials. AWS is the backbone for them. That's why for us as a community college, being jobs-focused, filling that gap, that's why it's key for us. >> That's Tyson's corner, right? That's where AOL started-- >> That's right, that's right, that's right. >> and there's a whole history. >> You've got all the cyber right around there. One writer has said that we're the bullseye of the internet. It's a unique place, but it's a unique opportunity for our students. >> Right, and the smart money's on the AWS second headquarter being in that neighborhood, but we don't-- >> Knock on wood. >> Knock on wood. We would love to see that. >> I'm just curious then if you've been educating people to get jobs in this IT sector, how you've seen that evolve over time? Because it used to be there were a lot of sys admin jobs or a lot of jobs that now automation and cloud is taking away. On the other hand, there's a lot of new jobs that the technology's enabling, like happens every time. How are you seeing the landscape change? >> I really think that's the way it has been. 30 years ago, when I was breaking into this workforce and world, that same conversation was going on. Automation was going to take all the jobs. There's been all kinds of new opportunities that emerge and that's the same thing we see, and certainly in Northern Virginia we see that so, for us, as a community college, we're doing it two ways. You asked about the apprenticeship program, that was our first entree with AWS so we are one of their primary training providers, education providers for apprenticeship. Those are the veterans and others that are hired by AWS, they come to our college for the education component, the certifications, the IT skills. The second part for us is the new cloud degree which we introduced in February, which is a two-year, first cloud degree in the country that will help other students who are not those coming through apprenticeship to also break into this important area. >> This is an associate's degree like all the other degrees you guys offer >> That's right. as a two-year program. I'd be just curious, what are some of the curricula? What are some of the core classes that they take that are part of that degree? >> One of the things that we've been doing, we use a lot of data analytics on the workforce side that others do not so part of it's our engagement, talking with the AWS leaders about what's needed. Part of it's also watching what AW, what credentials, what skills AWS is hiring for and then others who use the AWS platform, so you will see certain types of credentials that are built in, security plus, Linux plus, AWS Solutions Architect built in. Also even programming language, it's like Python because of its importance in that regard. We kind of use that as the, using that intelligence, if you will, to be able to build out what the degree should look like. Because we're paying attention to how AWS hires and how the IT users of AWS, how they're hiring and what the skills are that they're looking for. >> How hard is it to get that through at the school, to actually have an associate degree based on cloud? Were they receptive of the idea, did everybody see it coming, was it a hard push? >> We did it within one year, we did it within one year. >> Did it in one year? >> Within one year. >> Everything in the cloud happens fast. >> We moved fast on this. It is built off of our IT degree, so it's a specialization of that degree, so it was really, I think what made it move faster for us was two things. One is AWS has a great program called AWS Educate, which essentially provides a lot of the curriculum content. It's the kind of things if you were starting a degree, you would have to go out and create on your own. Having that rich content. Other partners, like Columbus State, who is also, Santa Monica, others that are working on cloud degrees and we can partner with each other. Then having the apprenticeship as sort of a North Star to tack on with respect to how companies are hiring and what skills are needed. That allowed us to move fast. >> Beyond Educate and the actual materials and curriculum materials, what does partnering with AWS do for you guys? What has that enabled you to do as part of this program that you couldn't do or it'd be a whole lot harder? >> Not everybody looks at community colleges. Being partnered with AWS, who they are, is key for us, it's important for us. I think it's also they recognize how important it is for them. Not everybody recognizes that. One thing that's unique for us as a community college, we have a lot of students who come to us who already have four-year degrees to get that skills part. It's almost like a graduate school. The apprentices are that way. Most of the apprentices already have four-year degrees in computer science, and we're providing that finishing piece. I think AWS sees in us how to broaden the, to scale, to fill that talent gap. I really think the only way you're going to diversify the talent gap and scale the talent gap is through institutions like ours. >> It's really an interesting statement on the role of community colleges in this whole refactoring of education. One, as you said, a lot of people have four-year degrees, so this concept of ongoing education, continue to get new skills as the opportunities dictate. Have that very specific knowledge and these certifications that are not Intro Philosophy or English Lit 205. These are very specific things that people can apply to their job today. >> The curriculum changes so fast, so we have to be willing to change, our instructors have to be willing to get that new thing. The history curriculum doesn't change that quickly, but the IT curriculum and particularly as it relates to cloud and cyber and other areas. If we're not doing that, then we're out of the ballgame, and when we're out of the ballgame that means our students are out of the ballgame, and that's what it's all about. >> When you come to an event like this, what are you hoping to get out of an event like this? Flew across the country, unfortunately through all the terrible smoke and stuff we have on the west coast. What are some of the things you hope to gain here with some of the other educators? >> One thing that always happens at AWS events is the connections that you make. Part of it is you do hear people, like we heard this morning, that you wouldn't have the opportunity to hear before, on machine learning and other areas. A lot of it's about the connections, so actually tomorrow morning a lot of the community colleges and others who are creating cloud programs will be working together tomorrow. AWS does a great job of maximizing our time, so we're part of the program, but we're also breaking off to really partner and that allows us all to move quicker. When we can build off of each other and then have the resources like AWS makes available to us. >> Sounds like you're moving pretty quick-- >> We're trying, we're trying. >> To get all that done and to get it done in a year. >> We have to keep up with where they're going. >> It's not what academic institutions are generally known for, speed and change. >> We're not your average academic institution. >> There ya go, alright. He's Dr. Scott Ralls,-- >> Thank you, 'preciate it. thanks for taking a few minutes with ya. I'm Jeff Frick, you're watching theCUBE, we're at AWS public sector, Imagine, in downtown Seattle. Thanks for watching, catch ya next time. (electronic tones)

>> From the Amazon Meeting Center in downtown Seattle, it's theCUBE! Covering IMAGINE: A Better World, a global education conference sponsored by Amazon Web Services. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in Seattle, Washington at the AWS IMAGINE education event. First time ever as part of the public sector series. Theresa Carlson kicked it off earlier today. 900 registered people watched this thing grow, like every other Amazon event that we've ever covered. And really, this is all about education. We're excited to be here. Our next guest has been working on this for awhile, He's Lou Pugliese, he's the Senior Innovation Fellow and Managing Director of Technology Innovation at Action Lab, Arizona State. Welcome. >> Thanks for letting me interview here. >> Absolutely. So just before we get started, kind of general impressions of this event? >> You know, it's amazing. I was just saying just a few minutes ago that you go to a lot of conferences, and you know, you go to so many conferences that the goal is to sort of try to meet 80% of the time new people. And you don't ever do that. Here you do, you know. And so there's a lot of people here that I've known for years, that I haven't seen. And there are a lot of new faces here too, so it's great. >> Right. It's really interesting, we cover a lot of conferences and kind of the lifecycle as they grow. But when they're small like this and just getting started you know, it's so intimate. There's so much hall conversations going on, there's so much just genuine sharing of best practices 'cause everybody's still trying to figure it out. >> Exactly, exactly. That's what you're doing here now. >> Absolutely. So, one of the things you're involved in, that caught my eye doing the research for this, is working on research based approach to really understand what works for the student learning experience. So there's all kinds of conversations we can have about higher education. Does it work, does it not work, is it broken? There's a lot of interesting things. Here, you know, it's been really interesting to focus on community colleges specifically and this kind of direct path between skills and getting a job. And it almost feels like the old apprenticeship model, kind of back in the day. You're at a big four year institution and really exploring. What is changing in the education interaction between kids and teachers, kids and curriculum, and how that stuff gets communicated and what's effective? 'Cause it's a new world, it's not the old world. >> No, it is. And you know, at ASU, what's interesting is is that there's a significant digital presence. You know, 35 thousand students very historically, back to 2009. So with that comes a significant amount of footsteps, digital footsteps, that students have taken. And so now you have the ability to be able to analyze that at a much higher level. And so now what we can do, and the part of what we're doing at the Action Lab is: looking specifically at the efficacy of these digital programs, finding out what course design elements do work, and what needs to be changed. And that gives us the ability to sort of feed that information back into the instructional design process, and continue to iterate on that improvement. The unique thing about the lab is that, it's a persistent lab. Most universities are sort of stop and start research initiatives, and they learn a lot and they publish a lot of papers. We've been around for three years, and we'll be around for 10 more, and it's a persistent examination of what we're doing at a digital environment, and we're taking it one step further, we're trying to understand how students behave in a digital environment. We know a lot about how students behave in a classroom or traditional learning setting, but we don't know how they how they learn in a digital environment. >> Right. I love, you said digital footprints, not digital exhaust, (both laugh) and it kind of reminds me of kind of these older you know, long term longitudinal studies, because it's still pretty early days in trying to figure out how these educational tools and mobile and stuff are impacting the way these kids learn. But we know they spend so much time on them, that is their interface to the world. It's almost like your remote control to life is actually this little thing that you carry around in your hand. So I'm curious, what are some of the things you've discovered that are working? What are some of the things that maybe that were kind of surprising that didn't work? What's some of the early findings that's coming out of that research? >> Sure, so in the early studies, we looked specifically at how demographic populations succeed or don't succeed in an environment. And what we found out is: there are certain demographics of students that flourish in an online environment, and consistently perform well. There are some that don't. The second thing we learned specifically is: what types of design features within a course, like the interaction within students, or exposing learning objectives, or getting students to really understand what rubrics of measurement, how content is being used and paced throughout our curriculum. A lot of really detailed information that faculty need to reorient and redesign their instruction, and so we can see a direct predictive value of improvement based on those changes. >> Right. So are you getting stuff out now that's impacting curriculum development? Or are you still kind of pulling the data together and there has not been enough time to really implement it? >> We are doing that, absolutely. One of the elements that we're introducing into the research now is: this notion of, it sounds like a fancy term, non cognitive or social and emotional learning; things that are a predispositions of learning about a student in their, you know, sort of soft skills world. Grit, determination, goal orientation, a variety of different soft skills, and their disposition, and how that impacts how they learn, and how they succeed in a classroom. >> And how important is that? I would imagine it's got to be super important. >> It's a field that is just still early in its science, but we're learning a lot. Not necessarily just about how students will succeed in a course environment, but those types of social/emotional learning skills that are required for them to be successful in a workplace environment. >> Right, right. And then the other factors that were discussed earlier in the key note are some of the, you know, what's happening at home? You know, there's all these other factors that are in a student's life that aren't directly tied to their education, but it can have a significant impact on their ability to learn, either temporarily, or-- >> They're all predispositions, yeah absolutely, yeah. >> Yeah, or full time. That's great. So, as you look forward now, and I think it came up too in the keynote, there's no shortage of data (chuckles) in this education environment. It's really been the time to grab it, analyze it, and put it to work. So, how are, you know, your engagement with Amazon kind of helping you to move your objectives forward? >> Well the Amazon engagement allows us to sort of off load all of the technological constraints, and gives us ultimate possibilities of not necessarily focusing on the tough stuff; the hardware, the integration, the specific tool sets that are required to extract data and analyze data, and focusing specifically on the research. So ultimately, it allows us to redirect our focus in what's really important in our world, because it's not necessarily about the technology, it's how the technology can point and draw a direct line between what the data says and how we create an intervention with students. >> Right. So I'm just curious to get your perspective. You said before we turned on the cameras, you've been involved in this field for a long time, trying to figure out how people can learn, how they can learn better, more effectively. Are there some big, kind of macro themes, that maybe people don't think about enough, that you've seen repeated time and time again, that people should be thinking about when they think about effective education and how to get kids to actually learn what we're trying to teach them? >> Sure, so a couple things. I mean, what we're focused on is not necessarily what we call big data, what we typically know big data as, it's really more about small data, which shows us causality. So for instance, one of the things that we are learning is that peer-to-peer engagement is really, really important in many courses in engaging in asynchronous and synchronous organizations within the course to learn from peers. Also avenues specifically to faculty, so faculty can actually look at the map of the entire classroom and understand who's achieving and focus just only on those people. >> Interesting. Well, good stuff, and, I'm sure, as you get more and more of the digital footprints, the insights will only increase by leaps and bounds. >> Absolutely. >> Alright, Lou, well thanks for taking a few minutes of your time >> Thank you. and we'll look forward to catching up next year and getting some new information. >> Thanks. >> He's Lou, I'm Jeff, thanks for watchin', we're in Seattle, signing off from AWS IMAGINE educate, See ya next time. (upbeat techno music)

>> From the Amazon Meeting Center, in downtown Seattle, it's theCUBE. Covering Imagine a Better World, a global education conference, sponsored by Amazon Web Services. >> Hey welcome back, everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in downtown Seattle at AWS Imagine Education. About 900 people from 20 countries really coming together for the first ever AWS summit from public sector group, really focused just on education. We've got a little bit of a twist here, our next guest really coming from more of the artsy side of the house, which is always great to hear from. We've got Linda Drew, she's the Vice Chancellor, and Andy Cook, the Chief Operations Officer, both from Ravensbourne University in London. Welcome. >> We're really pleased >> Thank you. to be here, really excited. >> For the people that aren't familiar with Ravensbourne, give us a little overview of the school. >> We're in the center of London in Greenwich, which is right by the river. We have about two-and-a-half-thousand students and about 250 faculty. We specialize in design, media, and technology, and the interaction, and all that kind of stuff. >> Pretty fun space to be right now. >> Absolutely gorgeous place to be. >> There's so much talk about IT and the tech and IT in operations, but there's so much neat stuff happening really more on the creative side and in the arts. Leveraging technology in all different, new ways. >> Absolutely, it's kind of hand and glove, really. All the innovation that's happening is happening with the way that tech is disrupting what's happening in the creative workspace, and vice versa really. The two things are effecting each other. >> The channels of distribution now, being so open, there's no greater time to be an artist, a creator, because your path to publishing, your path to your audience is really, really short and direct, assuming you can get their attention. >> Absolutely, I think we recognize there's a huge opportunity there for us in terms of developing a competitive advantage in the sector using new, emerging technologies to forge a new path for the institution and help educate and bridge the skills gap for industry. >> What are the things you guys do, one of the classes is broadcast production, and we were talking to all of our guys behind the cameras that nobody can see, and that again is an evolving space and you guys, it's kind of an interesting play, on one hand you're talking about Shakespearian plays, on the other hand you're looking at the newest, latest, greatest way to get that out to consumers, to viewers, to schools, while training the people in the middle with the latest and greatest tools. You guys have started a AWS Elemental Experiment. I wonder if you can give us a little bit of color on that project. >> I can start, and I'll tell you about the impact that it has, and Andy might be able to follow up on some of the technical stuff. We've had a project going with the Royal Shakespeare Company in England, and it's one of their education programs where what we do is a three-way relationship between them, their plays being shot in Stratford-upon-Avon or in London, and one aspect of what happens is that what we do is host the live program that is shot in our TV production studio and jointly the recorded program and the live action is streamed to schools, several hundred schools at a time. Some of our recent shows have been reaching upwards of 85,000 school students at a time. >> 85,000? >> Absolutely. >> That is great reach. We'd been using the more traditional technology before and that was having some issues with school teachers and others that were saying they weren't getting a great service out of the live stream, and our students were a bit frustrated with what they were learning about the streaming technologies. Since having moved to AWS Elemental, that's really increased the satisfaction both of what our students are learning but also in what they're delivering in terms of the live streamed program and because they're streaming more than one thing, because we know that they're also streaming not just the content but also the British sign language. They're also streaming signed content as well. >> Great, great. Andy, you're on the hook for actually getting these systems up and working, right? >> (laughs) Well, I'm not sure about that, but I think Linda said it all, I think the previous stack of technology that we were using in this area were not reliable, we were getting a lot of jump outs with the streams, lots of complaints from our schools. This shift to Elemental has been transformational. Lots of really complimentary feedback from the schools that are taking part in this exercise. It's been really good. >> That's good, the story over and over with cloud basically anything is that the amount of scale and resources and expertise and hardware and software that Amazon can bring to bear on your behalf compared to what you can do on you own, it's just not the same and you're a relatively small school. It's that same scale delta whether it's a medium-size company, a big company, or multi-national. These guys have that massive scale across so many customers, and you get that delivered to your doorstep. >> As you well know, there's a massive shift taking place in the broadcast industry away from the, towards IP-driven technologies, so we see this as a real opportunity to develop our curriculum, add cloud technologies in to our existing courses and go on that journey away from the more traditional technologies to a cloud-based approach. >> I'm just curious if you've adopted cloud stuff in more your standard IT practices, or where are you on that journey? Or was the client satisfaction issue on these broadcasts what accelerated that adoption faster than your normal stuff? >> I think it's been quite closely related, in some ways. It's a bit kind of chicken and egg. We were already looking at ways of enhancing our infrastructure and this kind of stuff came along at the same time, so we just say how quickly can we get to move some of this stuff for our standard operational focus. >> I think most universities are in some sort of hybrid state running on premise services with some, putting their feet gently into the water of cloud technologies, but I think we're looking at really accelerating that journey towards AWS now for our infrastructure. >> I'm curious, were you here for the keynote this morning? >> Yeah, definitely. >> Did you see the Alexa movie with the kids in the dorm room? >> Yeah. >> Really exciting. Very exciting. >> I think one of the slides really sums up our journey and thoughts around working with Amazon. It's the IT transformation piece, then there's a adoption of machine learning in terms of improving the student experience, and then there's adopting cloud courses into our curriculum, so those three areas are really where we're looking to build a relationship with Amazon. >> It's interesting to see what defines this new education experience, because the kids have different expectations, they've all grown up with apps and mobile. To your point on the attention, if something's not working, they're used to flipping to another channel, switching to another input, so if it doesn't work, you only have their attention for a short period of time. I think it is really interesting to rethink what are the actual activities that define this new engagement and this new student experience while they're in your institution, and I thought that was a really pretty slick demo. >> That was a great example, really good demo. Some of the really exciting things that have come out of us adopting this technology thus far includes some students coming to us with ideas of setting up our very own television channel that we can broadcast on campus using this technology and a way of streaming it to students' phones and tablets so that they've got content about the university and it's activities on a regular basis. >> The ROI calculation for you to execute that when it's cloud-based is very, very different, right? >> Absolutely, yes >> It's pretty simple. (all laughing) Just buy a new rack of servers and the whole to-do. I'll give you the last word, what are you hoping to get out of these couple days here, what have you seen so far, any hallway conversations that are really getting your attention? >> Hopefully, not just a deeper relationship with AWS, but the traction to help us work towards innovating on creativity and technology into the future. >> Great. >> Brilliant. >> Andy goes I'm going to go with the Chancellor, smart man. (all laughing) >> Absolutely. >> Linda and Andy, thanks again for taking a few minutes-- >> Thank you very much. >> Absolute pleasure. and hope you enjoy the rest of your time here. >> Thank you. >> (mumbles) thank you. >> She's Linda, he's Andy, I'm Jeff, you're watching theCUBE, we're at AWS Imagine Education in downtown Seattle. Thanks for watching. (electronic tones)

>> From the Amazon Meeting Center in downtown Seattle, it's theCUBE. Covering: Imagine A Better World, A Global Education Conference. Sponsored by Amazon Web Services. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in downtown Seattle at the AWS IMAGINE education event, first time ever, 900 people registered, over 20 countries represented, Teresa gave the keynote, a lot of exciting stuff. And one of the big announcements is some of the work that's happening down in Los Angeles with all the community colleges there. We're excited to have, right off the keynote stage, he's Bill Allen, the CEO of the LA Economic Development Corporation, who's been instrumental in getting this thing off the ground. Bill, good to see you. >> Jeff, it's great to be with you today. This is an exciting moment for us, rolling out this very successful pilot program to all 19 colleges that are part of the LA Regional Consortium. >> So let's jump in, it's called the CA Cloud Workforce Project. >> Yeah, the California Cloud Workforce Project. We have obviously millions of businesses in California, in our own region 250,000 business with employees that are looking to convert to the cloud, take advantage of the exciting tools and resources available to them in the cloud, but they need the skilled workers in these firms to help migrate this transition and that's what our community colleges are stepping up to provide with the help of Amazon Web Services and AWS Educate. >> So it's really interesting cause you know it's a special role that community colleges play within the whole education system, and we could have a whole long debate over adult beverages on a Friday about the state of the education system but specifically here, there is a huge gap and people think technology's taking jobs away. They're taking some jobs away, but they're opening up a ton of new jobs and go no further than looking at the jobs open recs, there's lots and lots and lots of jobs to fill. So how did it come to be to tie that back directly to real skills, that you can actually have real kids take real jobs? >> Well we see these transitions happening all across the industry sectors in Los Angeles and we have a broad array: aerospace, entertainment, digital media, life sciences, transportation logistics. >> It's the little technology, right. >> Advanced transportation. they're all undergoing significant changes and they're all becoming more technology enabled, more technology dependent. And the opportunity exists to train workers for these technology enabled jobs that provide good wages and good benefits, and help our businesses compete globally and take advantage, fully leverage all these advances and innovations. We formed a center for a competitive workforce with all of our 19 colleges, using their labeled market researcher economists and our own economists in the institute for applied economics at the LAEDC, to study the evolving demand for labor and skills in the various occupations in these industry sectors and compare that against the supply side of our labor market. >> Right, right. >> To enhance our talent development pipeline, and its led to new programs such as this. This was one of the clear areas of opportunity was cloud computing skills. The first program we launched at Santa Monica College, had two sections they rapidly sold out, we had to expand it to seven sections. More than 300 students participated in the first year of courses. 230 are signed up for this Fall 2018. And it's an extraordinarily successful program, but now the other 18 community college presidents have all stepped up and said we're going to roll this out on our campuses beginning this August at East Los Angeles college and historic East LA, part of our community which, speaks to the diversity opportunities. >> Right. >> We have a very diverse population in Los Angeles and many of our communities have been underrepresented historically in the technology fields. They are really interested in accessing the skills and opportunities, and they are really taking up these courses with enthusiasm from our local high schools to our community colleges. And I think it's going to help us in Los Angeles really diversity our technology workforce, and that helps our companies expand globally. >> Right, so I'm just curious, what are some of the skills when you did the research that popped up in terms of specific types of jobs? Because we've all see the pictures of data centers, they are usually pretty clean, there's not a lot of people walking around. But there are people that really need to make it go. So what were some of those kind of job titles and job skills that leapt out that have such demand, and field demand. >> There's so much need for data scientist, there's so much need for machine learning capabilities, there's so much need for basic cloud computing, cyber security, really all of these advanced technologies that are data dependent, data analytic, data science, really are emerging as important components of each and every industry sector that I mentioned earlier that exists in our community and throughout the world. And so our job is to try and share that knowledge with our community colleges, our state universities, our four year public and private institutions, and even our k-12 institutions so they can begin to adjust their curriculum to ensure that they're creating pathways of learning at the earliest ages, and then specific coursework in these emerging opportunities throughout the career ladder, throughout the career development pipeline in the LA area. >> So I want to touch base on the k-12 because I think an interesting component of this program is each community college is paired up with at least one, I don't know if there's more than one high school in their area. And it's always been kind of interesting to me that it's been so hard to get kind of CS baked into kind of the standard high school curriculum. You've got kind of the standard math track with trig and Calc, and Algebra I and Algebra II, you've got kind of the standard science track with Physics, and Bio, and Chem. But it's been really hard to wedge CS into that. So are you finding with programs like this, kind of the adoption or the embracing of the CS curriculum at these lower, lower levels is finally getting some steam? >> We are, interestingly our students have often been ahead of our institutions in understanding the demand and the opportunity, and they've been clamoring for these kinds of opportunities. And our industries are becoming more aware of the roll that they can play in helping our schools develop the curriculum, purchase, acquire, maintain the equipment associated with this. Whether it's hardware, or software. And these partnerships that are emerging originally around some theme based academies in our schools, both charter schools and traditional public schools have been helping the broader school districts engage more deeply in the development of curriculum to prepare a more technologically literate workforce for the future. >> Right, now what if you could speak a little to the public private partnership. You're with the economic development corporation, you mentioned LA chamber of commerce's involved and now you've got a big company like AWS, there's a lot of resources to bring to bare and also a lot of open job recs. How does that work, and how have they helped you partner with Amazon AWS kind of move your initiative forward? >> So Amazon and the AWS platform have been terrific partners and specifically the AWS education initiative, have been terrific partners and are really shining the way, lighting the path for other major employers in our region. The students who graduate with this program will not only be valuable to Amazon itself but so many of its customers who are migrating to the cloud platform. But we have companies like Northrop Grumman who are partnering with community colleges to develop talent for their joint strike fighter program in the North end of our county, and hiring people for well paying jobs. Amazon has premier partners in their AWS educate partner program like Anaca who are providing internships for the graduates of this program. So the public and private sector are working closely together, that's why the LAEDC and the LA chamber were asked to get involved in this so we can bring employers to the table, who are really forward looking in their approaches to developing their future talent pipeline. And really desirous of developing the more diverse talent base that is in Los Angeles to fill the needs as so many of the workers in these industries are aging out of the workforce. We need a significant number of newly skilled young people in our communities to take on the future of each of these industries. >> Right, so we're both big fans of Teresa Carlson she kicked things off today. If we come back a year from today, which I assume we will, what are we going to be talking about? How do you see kind of the next year? What are your kind of short term goals and more medium term goals? I won't even ask you about long term goals. >> As I mentioned we had a few hundred students sign up for this so much so that we had to expand the sections from two to seven, I think you're going to see thousands of students taking advantage of this across our region. We have 300,000 students in our community colleges in this LA regional consortium. >> 300 thousand? >> 300 thousand students. >> Make a big impact. >> And I think a significant number of them are going to want to avail themselves of these types of opportunities. We're projecting through our center for competitive workforce, thousands of job openings in this area and so we have a ways to go of scaling this up to the thousands of students who should be taking these courses, and preparing themselves for the well paying jobs in these careers in Los Angeles and the broader Southern California mega region for which our community colleges train such a healthy percentage of our workforce. >> Alright Bill, well sounds like you're off and running, and wish you nothing but the best. >> Jeff, thanks so much, great talking to you. >> Alright, he's Bill, I'm Jeff. You're watching theCUBE! We're at AWS Imagine education in Seattle. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> From the Amazon Meeting Center in Downtown Seattle, it's the theCUBE. Covering, Imagine: A Better World, a global education conference, sponsored by Amazon Web Services. >> Hey welcome back everybody. Jeff Rick here with theCUBE. We're in Downtown Seattle Washington at the AWS Imagine Education Conference. First one they've ever done about 900 registrants. People from over 20 countries are here. Theresa Carlson gave the kickoff and it's a pretty exciting event. We've seen this movie before with Amazon. They get involved in a project, and it grows and grows and grows. So this is all about education. It's about education institutions. It's about students obviously, which are the core of education, and we're really excited to have our next guest. It was a big announcement that happened today. He's Marvin Martinez, the President of East Los Angeles College. Marvin great to see you. >> Thank you, pleasure to be here. >> So you're getting ready to go up on stage. it's a big announcement so tell about what it is. It's called the California Cloud... >> Computing. >> Computing Initiative. >> So this is what we've done. We've been developing for the last year a certificate where students can take a number of classes, which is basically a total of 15 units, and they're able to earn at the end of 15 units, a certificate in cloud computing. And the goal is to get them trained quickly to get them out to work quickly. Eventually we hope that the certificate evolves into a degree program, so then we're hoping that the students come back and they get their associate of our certificate and they're able to get even a better job, which is really the goal of this program is we want to get them started, want to get them excited, get them into an entry-level type of job, then they will know they like it. They're going to come back. They'll get that degree, you know do even better right. >> So let me, I just want to make sure I get this. This is a California Cloud Workforce Project. So it's really about the workforce and giving these kids the skills. So it's funny though Marvin where everybody says technology is taking away jobs. They forget yeah they take away some jobs, but there's new jobs created. >> All the time. >> All the time, there's a ton of openings especially in the engineering field and in the cloud, but so what are some of the cloud skills specifically that that kids are taking to get the certificate? >> Well you know the skills they're taking specifically so they could eventually work with some of the major industries in our area. Obviously from Amazon and other similar industries and similar businesses, and there's many of them. Los Angeles you know quickly is becoming the new Silicon Valley. So a lot of industries are moving. They call us all the time, they call me all the time, and say that you have trained students. We will hire them right now and we'll pay them a good salary. So no doubt it's a motivation for us because that's who we are as community colleges. We are here to serve students. We are here to get them trained, get them up there quickly and respond to the needs of industry, that area. >> So it's a really interesting planning that it's the community colleges that you guys have all come together. I think the number's 19 as part of this. So A, you know that you're doing it as a unified effort. So kids at a broad area can take advantage, and also you're also partnering with individual high schools. Each Community College is partners with an individual high school. So how does that work? How does that kind of come into fruition? >> Well you know, one thing that we want to do is that as we work with high schools, high schools today are also under pressure to ensure that their students are being trained well and that if they just get a high school diploma they can go and work somewhere. But also today high schools are getting smart. They're saying hey how do we work with a local college so that when students graduate, they graduate with a high school diploma and a degree from a college. So and why are they doing that because they know in order to be competitive, a young person needs to have these degrees. Today if you want to be competitive a high school diploma may not be enough. So we notice that motivation there. Secondly we're able to get students on a college campus, get them developed get them, they're mature, get them to take a college-level course and then they're able to go out and obviously and work once they complete this program. So the relationship is a natural one. It's one that high schools are seeking from us, which is great. That has not been the case all the time. Usually we've gone to them, but now they're coming to us and saying we need you help us out. >> The part I like about it too is the kids are smart. And they're like why am I taking philosophy? How am I going to use philosophy in my job, that or why am I taking this or why am I taking that? These are really concrete skills that A, they can go look in the newspaper today or I guess I don't know if they look in newspaper for jobs because couldn't find a newspaper if you threw it at them, but they could go seek the job listings at the Amazon sites and also they are working with this technology, they live in this technology, so it's not something foreign or something new. It's something they experience every day. So it's got to be a pretty easy sell I would imagine. >> It's an easy sell. Young people today are different than the way that we grew up. I grew up at a time where there were no cell phones, there was no bottled water. It was a whole different time. Young people today as you're seeing grow up with these technologies. It's part of the who they are. They more than just embraced it. So they welcome to use it in any way they can. So when we propose programs like these, guess what happens? They enroll en masse and that's because they understand it. They identify with it. Will they be willing to enroll in a Shakespeare class? They might but not as much as a class like this one. So no doubt the population today has changed, so part of my job is to introduce programs on the campus that I know will generate that kind of enrollment and interest. So we know that a program like this will do that and we just need to recognize the fact that the world has changed. Let me just add that we don't do that world's education institutions. As institutions we're some of the most conservative institutions in the history of this country. So for us to change it takes quite a lot. So what's forcing us to change, what was forcing us to change is that enrollment is down and not just in many of our colleges in LA but throughout the country. Enrollment is-- >> In Community colleges generally or colleges in general? Community colleges. >> Community colleges throughout the nation enrollment is down. And enrollment is down for a number of reasons. There's more jobs out there, so students are looking to go out and work, but also enrollment is down because of the curriculum and the courses that we have are just not interesting to them. So I think a program like this will help the campus. A program like this will get more students to come and take advantage of an incredible education that they can get at our campuses. >> I was just curious kind of what were the drivers of enrollment before that have kind of fallen away? Was it a particular type of skill set? Was it just that they don't want it generic anymore? They got to go get a job? I'm just curious if there was something that you had before that was appealing that you have now that's just not appealing anymore? >> Good questions. So the last time our economy was in bad shape when the employment was down. That was back around 2008-2009. Well guess what happened in our campuses? Enrollment was up. So when the economy is in bad shape people come back to school. When the economy is in great shape like it is today where there is a lot of jobs, enrollment is down. So we don't see the economy going down at all in a number of years. >> Anytime soon. >> So we have to develop programs that we think will be of interest to students first. Secondly we have to respond to the needs of the new economy. The new economy is now being dominated by these new technologies. We know about it, young people know about it. So when we develop a program like this and we know that it will generate interest. It will generate enrollment. And in many ways that's what drives the funding for a college. We're funded on the basis of how many people we enroll. So if we don't enroll a lot people, we have less money, so no doubt there's a motivation for us, a motivation for the entire system, to really partner with Amazon. And figure out a way for us to really get students train and to get them, hopefully get them a good job. >> So you segued perfectly. My last question was going to be kind of the role of Amazon in AWS, in terms of being a partner. I mean they obviously you know are thinking about things. Theresa's fantastic. She just talked about being from an education family, but at the same time you know they have their own reasons to do it. They need workers right? They need people to fill these jobs to fulfill Amazon's own growth beyond their ecosystem, their partners and customers etcetera. So what does it mean for you as an educator and part of this consortium of community colleges to have somebody like AWS come in and really help you codevelop and drive these types of new programs? >> Well it means everything. Number one we know that Amazon is a major employer. We know that the jobs that they have available are good-paying jobs. They have a career path and so we know it's a good direction for young people to take. So part of my job as an educator is many ways it's like a parent. You want to take care of your family, you want to take care of the kids and put them in the right path so they have the most success possible. Amazon offers that kind of path. So for us to partner with someone like Amazon is great. Secondly, students know who Amazon is. I don't have to sell them. They know who they are, and they know what Amazon can do and they know that it's a great career path for them. So now that I think it could be a great partnership for us but also it's an opportunity for Amazon to even continue further developing that workforce in Los Angeles in California. >> Alright Marvin, well thank you so much for spending a few minutes and I wish you nothing but the best with this California Cloud Workforce Project. Make sure I get it right? >> It's right. Thank you so much, I appreciate it. >> Thank you, alright he's Marvin, I'm Jeff. You're watching theCUBE. We're in Seattle at the Amazon Imagine Education event. First time ever, keep watching. It's going to grow and grow and grow. Thanks for watching. (electronic music)

>> From the Amazon Meeting Center in downtown Seattle, it's theCUBE. Covering Imagine A Better World. A global education conference sponsored by Amazon Web Services. >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in downtown Seattle at the AWS Imagine Educate Show. It's a public sector show. It's the first time they've ever done it really focusing just on education as opposed to the regular public sector show or the AWS Summits and re:Invent that you're very familiar with. We're excited to be here. One of the big themes here is colleges partnering with high schools. And we're excited to have our next guest really talk about how that's working in this program. We have Howard Stahl. He's a professor at Santa Monica College. Howard, great to see you. >> Thank you. >> And with him is Koda Kol. He's a teacher at Roosevelt High in East L.A. and also an adjunct professor at Santa Monica College. Welcome. >> Thank you. >> So, let's just jump into it. There's a big conversation about training people for the next generation of cloud skills. It's good for the kids, it's also good for the employers, it's good for Amazon, it's good for their customers and their partners. How are the kids feeling about this? How is this program being accepted by kids? Is it cool, is it something they want to do? How hard of a sell is it? >> The students are engaged. They're learning something that is immediately relevant to societal's demand. Our students, they're setting up, spinning up web servers, file servers, even VPN, and the VPN servers is going to disrupt the way schools strategize and implement security, because now when they go back to the high schools they're bypassing all these web securities using VPN. >> Right. >> But they really do love it. The students seem to really drink it up. >> They get it. >> Yeah, they do. >> So is there a particular classification of app or of all the different things that you're teaching 'em, database, security, this or that, that resonates more than others or what is it that connects to what they do every day that makes them think, "Hey, this is cool, I engage "these things every day. "What a great career to get into." >> Yeah, I think, they see Amazon in their daily life every day. Delivering them stuff, making them buy stuff, having them deliver things. And they can see as they peel apart the layers and see behind the scenes how Amazon actually gets that done. >> Right. >> And it seems immediately relevant to them. >> Right. >> And so the student interest has been fantastic. >> Been fantastic. And Koda too, I think it's always the thing too with, especially the kids when they're in high school, 15, 16 right, they're starting to get a little bit of attitude. "Why should I read 400-year English novels Dad, "how's that going to help me in my job?" or "Why am I taking chemistry, I don't want to be a doctor? "I get it I got to take it to get into college "but I don't really want to take Chemistry." This is probably something a little bit different in terms of direct visibility into the application. I mean, those other things have applications too, you just don't see it when you're 15. But this they can see, right? They can see how it's going to directly impact them in a positive way. >> Yes, and it also puts everyone at the same playing field. Students that normally fail their English classes, Math classes, now they're in the same classroom and learning content where everyone is on the same page. So, you got your high performing students also with your students that are failing a class, trying to discover what they want to do in life. >> Right. >> They're together, they're working together. Find a common interest and excelling, engaged and asking for more. "Where can we take more classes? "This is what I want to do, "this is where I want to be." >> That's great. Another thing, we were just at a high school competition called Technovation earlier this week where mainly girl's teams from all over the world building applications. Same kind of a thing. Get 'em involved in an application that they can really see a difference and they get it. And I wonder if some of your kids talk about, everybody wants to be mission driven today, and kids want to do stuff that has a higher impact on society, right? We've got four different garbage cans we have to sort our stuff in 'cause we want to be renewable and take care of the environment. Do they see that software is the easiest way to make a huge impact globally, do they get that? >> They get that, they see it. They're instantly creating servers in 5-10 minutes. Going on their servers, setting up websites. They see the relevance. They're taking advantage of the technology. >> Yeah, that's great. So Howard, I wonder if you could speak a little bit about how a partnership with AWS enables you to do things that you wouldn't be able to do if they weren't helping in this whole process? >> At SMC we've been working with AWS for about four years now to spin up this program. The partnership has been fantastic. AWS has been really giving and helpful. They helped train faculty. So we got professional development from them. Now, as part of this program students get credits on the platforms. Faculty get credits on the platform. They've been helping us with advertising and all kinds of other great things and it's really been a wonderful, wonderful partnership, really fantastic. And that industry connection really makes a big difference in making the program succeed. >> You mentioned something I want to follow up on in terms of the staff. We talk a lot about the kids here and the impact on the kids and their education, but I'm curious to get your take on how this has impacted the staff. This new classification of learning if you will, around cloud computing specifically. This subset of computer science which has had a hard time squeezing in between science and math, especially at the high school level. But how are the staff, the teachers taking to this? Do they see this as a great new opportunity? A bunch of new skills to learn? That's got to be kind of invigorating for them, I imagine as well. >> I think so. I think it's really invigorated people who've been around. It keeps us on our toes, makes us learn new things. It's very exciting for many of us and it has been great. And the wonderful thing about computer science is that it changes a lot. As I often say in math, "They haven't invented any new numbers." But in computer science, what I learned when I was in school. Oh my gosh, things have changed a great deal. And so there's a commitment to keep current. And in the community colleges definitely we try to keep our curriculum current with what industry needs. >> Right, I think it's a really great statement on the role of community colleges, in a very specific role to help match skills with needs in jobs. I mean just really concrete, really straightforward, really kind of a simple mission. >> Yeah, and Amazon actually has connected us with local employers near SMC that have helped us validate our curriculum and actually are very interested in hiring the graduates out of our program right away, 'cause there is such a dearth of industry talent in this particular field. >> Which is great, just to close that loop, right. And if I recall, your certificate program is the model now that's been rolled out to all 19 of the L.A. community colleges. >> Yeah, so this program has really spun up, and become much, much bigger than just one particular college. So we developed a number of classes at SMC and a certificate, and we're using that now as a model throughout L.A. county to bootstrap AWS skills in all the local community colleges. 19 other colleges are working with us. >> Right, right. Agreeing to run the same classes at their institutions. And that's very exciting as well. They've also agreed to find local partner high schools to work with as well. So we're really trying to build a hub of AWS experience down in L.A. in what we call "Silicon Beach". >> Right, right. And then the goal ultimately is to get an associate program, right, over some period of time when you get whatever the certification is, or that process. >> Yeah, so we're working on building an AA Degree in cloud computing as well. >> That's great. Koda, you look like you had something to jump in there. All good? >> All good. >> Okay, good. So I want to give you the last word in terms of what would you say to educators that are not in L.A. about what this type of program has brought to you, and more importantly your students in your everyday life at Roosevelt High? >> It has changed the lives of many students. It's changed my perspective on how I see education because in fact it was a little difficult getting the students to be engaged initially, but ever since we launched this cloud computing every student, we can't get enough classes, sections, open. We open one section up and it gets filled. The students are in class. They want to learn the material. It's a good time to be in education. I love it. >> Well good. Well thanks for sharing the passion, it comes through. >> Well the passion starts with our department chair, Howard Stahl here. He's very passionate and it resonates with all the staff members, which resonates with the students. So now we have the synergy that's happening that we hope to eventually distribute to all the other campuses, and make a model. Use Santa Monica as a model. >> Great. Well Koda, Howard, thanks for taking a few minutes. And, really enjoy this story. I look forward to the follow up next year. >> Thank you. >> Alright he's Koda, he's Howard, I'm Jeff! You're watching theCUBE from downtown Seattle at AWS Imagine Education. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

the problem people are trying to achieve is how to become a digital enterprise not just to automate but how do you create a digital enterprise you cannot become a digital enterprise unless your operations are digital you cannot make your operations digital unless your processes are digital and you cannot do that and let us say workforce is digital process automation helps get rid of the mundane and repetitive tasks but the ultimate goal is so that you can enable the humans to do more to enable a lot more creativity you're outside the box thinking we'll come up with new service models come up with new ways to solve things and this is only possible if you get rid of the repetitive mundane tasks which often block bounce down humans [Music] many more jobs we technically enable then will be eliminated by by technology there's gonna be some that are that are that are impacted more dramatically than others but I would I would actually say for most people the ability to have technology to help them do the day-to-day job is gonna have a much higher technology get adopted when you have to go and invest in it it takes passion you got to get people who believe people are committed people who want to go to do something come around like they have for all other things when computers came people had the same concern and Internet and ever I write I think in many ways this will help us help us improve our standard of living and take us to her [Music]

>> From Times Square, in the heart of New York City, it's theCUBE. Covering Imagine 2018. Brought to you by Automation Anywhere. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in Manhattan at the Automation Anywhere Imagine 2018. 1100 people milling around looking at the ecosystem, looking at all the offers that all the partners have. And we're excited to have one of the strategic advisors from the company, he's Bill Raduchel. Strategic advisor, been in the industry for >> 50 years, 40 years, 50 years, whatever. Forever. >> So Bill, thanks for takin' a few minutes. >> My pleasure. >> So how did you get involved with Automation Anywhere? >> Oh the way most things happen in life, friends, right? You get involved, and got to talking to Mihir, and we got, we see the world much the same way. And see the importance of bots and bringing productivity back to the economy. And no other way to do it. So just ya know, it grew. >> It grew. So it's interesting right? Cause I though ERP was supposed to have rung out all the efficiency that, and waste in the system, but clearly that was not the case. >> I won both CIO of the year and CTO of the year, and I put in an ERP system, and I understand it. It also failed three times going in. It was incredibly painful, but it produced over a billion dollars in cash saving. So it did. The problem is the world changes. And the world changes now at a pace far faster than you can possibly change your ERP system. >> Right. >> I mean ERP systems are built to be changed every I don't know, 15 to 25 years. And the world in 25 years is gonna look very different than the world does today. So we just have a huge disconnect between how fast we can create and deploy software, and how fast the world is changing to which that software has to relay. >> Right. And still so many of the processes that people actually do in their day job, are still spreadsheet based, you know, my goodness. How much of the world's computational horsepower is used on Excel on stand alone little reports and projects? >> Another question to ask is how many errors are in those spreadsheets? >> That's right. Not enough copy paste. >> I mean, I was on a study for the National Academy of Sciences, and we looked at why productivity growth wasn't happening. And one answer, which we just talked about, is Legacy software. I mean, you just couldn't change it, you couldn't, you know when you had to rewrite the software all productivity growth just slowed to a crawl. The other thing is something that economists call lore. And lore is basically oral tradition. But it's the way the company really works. >> Right. >> You have all these processes and all these procedures but when you get down and you start talking and sort of like, what is it the secret boss show? I mean, you learn the little things that the people down at the bottom know. Well, so far, Automation has never really penetrated that. And yet that becomes the barrier to almost all change. So what RPA does, is RPA actually begins to go after lore. RPA allows companies to begin to understand lore, and understand how to optimize it. Understand how to record it. I mean, you know, it's not written down. It's below the level that people bother to document and yet, if you don't change the lore, you're not gonna matter. >> You're not changing anything. >> You're not changing anything. So this is why this is so exciting because for the first time, companies, organizations, people, I mean we see all this stuff coming out just to help us in our everyday lives. You get to go at the lore. I mean, you know that, well you don't put that field in, no you wait 20 seconds after you filled in this field before you go and do that, because it takes that long for that and you get an error over here. That's how things really work. And this is the kind of technology that can actually address that. And so for that point of view it's really revolutionary because we've never been able I mean, oral tradition has never been subject to a whole lot of scientific studies. >> Well the other thing is just so impressive when you've been in the business a long time, you know we're talking about AOL before we turn on the cameras and shipping CDs around. >> Right. >> As we get closer and closer to ya know, infinite compute, infinite storage, infinite networking, 5G just around the corner. At a price point that keeps absutodically getting closer and closer to zero, the opportunity for things like AI, and to really apply a lot more horsepower to these problems, opens up a whole different opportunity. >> Two comments to that. One is, about 15 years ago the National Science Foundation funded Monica Lamb at Stanford to do a project on the open mobile internet, POMI. And one of their conclusions was that at some point in the future, which may be happening now, we would all have a digital butler. And everybody would have, basically a bot. They would be living 24/7 operating on our behalf, doing the things that help make our life better. And that is you know, really what's gonna happen. Now you see AI, and if you saw there was a report that got a lot of news from the speech given at the Federal Reserve Bank at Dallas, I think. Where the guy said well productivity is fine, it's just that the AI technology hasn't been able to find a way to be effective, or made real. Well the way it's gonna be made real is these bots because you still got your ERP system. Now granted I can have AI over here, but if it doesn't talk to the ERP system, how is the order gonna get placed? How is the product gonna get mailed? How is it gonna get shipped? So something has to go bring these together. So again, you're not gonna have impact from AI unless you have an impact from bots. Because they're the interface to the real world. >> Well the other huge thing that happened, right, was this mobile. And the Googles and the Amazons of the world resetting our expectations of the way we should be interacting with our technology. And you know, it's funny but there's little things that are in our day all the time. I mean, Ways is just a phenomenal example, right? And auto fill on an address. You know, this is the address you typed in, this is the one that USPS says is the official address from your home. So it's all these little tiny things that are just happening >> Spell check. >> Without even, spellcheck. >> Spell check, I mean, the inventor of spell check is John Seely Brown. And he was giving a speech at the University of Michigan 15 years ago and the graduates weren't pleased. Here was a computer scientist gonna come talk to them and it's at the Michigan stadium, and they're throwing beach balls and no one's paying any attention. And the person who introduced him said and I wanna introduce John Seely Brown, the man who invented spell check. And he had a standing ovation from 100,000 people because that got their attention. They all knew that that was really important. No you're right. I mean, the iPhone is 10 years old. Well I mean smart phones are 20 years old. The iPhone is 10 years old, 10 and a half now. I mean, it's changed how we live our lives, how we do business, how everything goes. Anybody who thinks that the next 10 years is gonna be less change >> No, it's only accelerating. >> There's so many vectors. I mean a year ago, a friend coined the Cambric Extinction, basically a play on words on the Cambrian Extinction. And it's Cloud, AI, mobile, big data, robotics, Internetive things, and cyber security. And he pointed out that any one of those would be incredibly disruptive, they were all hitting at the same time. The thing that's amazing is that's a two year old comment. Block chain wasn't around. >> Right. >> And today, block chain may be more disruptive than any of those. And yet, how do all of those connect to the Legacy systems for some long period of time? It's what's going on in this room. >> Right. Well cause I was gonna ask you, cause you advise a ton of companies, so you've seen it and you continue to see it across a large spectrum. What's special about this company? what's special about this leadership team that keeps you excited, that keeps you involved? >> It's the people side of this, right. I mean, I have been to more computer related conferences in my life than I can count. I've never seen as much enthusiasm as there is here. Maybe, at a Mac conference. But I mean it's that same level of enthusiasm, it's passion. How does technology get adopted when you have to go invest in it? It takes passion. You gotta get people who believe. People who are committed. People who wanna go and do something with it. And that's what they've been able to do. That's what Mihir has done. And it's been brilliant in bringing that on board. >> Yeah, you can certainly feel it here in the room. Especially when it's still relatively intimate. >> Right. >> You know, people are sharing ideas, you know they're excited. It's really not kind of a competitive vendor fair, it's more of a community that's really trying to help each other out. >> Well that, I mean, they're at that stage. It may get a little bit, you know this, well no I'm not gonna tell you about my bot. It's a great bot and it does great things, but nope, I'm not gonna tell you how it works. >> Right. So just last parting word, you know as you see kind of the bot economy. We've seen they got the bot store, I guess they have a hundred bots, they've only had it open for a very short period of time. You can buy, sell, free. What do you see kind of the next short term evolution of this space? >> I think that bots are probably worth somewhere around a point in productivity growth. Well, a point >> Not a basis point, but a point point. >> A point. That's what Makenzie says, that's what, I mean because this is allowing you to capture benefits that you should of and you haven't. A point in global productivity is about a trillion dollars. So then your question for the bot economy is okay, if the value of the bots is a trillion dollars, what portion of that can the bot economy capture? And that you know, I mean 20 30 percent is certainly a reasonable number to go look at. The real world lives over here, all this technology change lives over here, and bots are gonna be the bridge by which you bring those two things together. So yes, it should be big and growing for a long time. >> Well Bill, thanks for taking a minute. I really appreciate the conversation. >> Great, thank you. >> Alright, he's Bill, I'm Jeff. You're watchin' theCUBE from Automation Anywhere Imagine 2018. Thanks for watching. (electronic music)

>> From Times Square, in the heart of New York City, it's theCUBE. Covering Imagine 2018. Brought to you by Automation Anywhere. >> Welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE, we are at Automation Anywhere in midtown Manhattan, 2018, excited to have our next guest, he's Kevin Kroen, he's partner of financial services, intelligent automation leader at PWC, Kevin, great to see you. >> Thank you. >> So financial services seems to be a theme, we're here in Manhattan, why is financial services an early adopter or maybe a frequent adopter or an advanced adopter of the RPA technology? >> Sure, so I think as we see our financial services clients and their agendas, there's been a huge focus on productivity and simplifying their overall operating model over the past couple of years. Banks in particular have gone through several years of having to focus their spending on non discretionary manners like regulatory compliance and risk management. And what that's generated is a need, as they started looking towards the next generation to really start thinking about what they're gonna look like in a post regulatory environment. And automation has quickly risen to the top of the agenda. >> What they're gonna look like in a post regulatory environment. >> Yes. >> Why a post regulate? >> Well I mean if you look through, you know what banks have had to deal with in term of Dodd-Frank, in terms of CCAR, you know, the regulation from federal reserve, these are things that took a lot of spending both on implementing operational processes and on implementing technology. A lot of that work is starting to you know, the banks are putting that behind themselves and so as they look forward and look at how they're going to gain more profitability in the future, the challenge becomes, there's not necessarily a new set of product innovation coming in, and so you have to really look at the expense line. >> Right. >> And so because of that automation has risen to the top of that agenda and so this continues to be one of the top areas of interest that we're getting from our clients. >> Right, so when you say post regulatory, you mean like a new regulation that they have to respond to, not that they're suddenly not gonna be regulated. >> There's not a lot of new regulations coming in right now, especially- >> That pesky one last week, GDRP. >> Yeah but in the US we're in an environment right now, there was just, you know, the revisions to the Dodd-Frank bill that were passed a lot of regulatory rules were actually being loosened so you don't necessarily have an increase in dollars that are going to be going into that. >> Right right, so it just always fascinates me, right, I thought ERP was supposed to wring out all the efficiency in our systems but that was not the case, not even by a long shot and now we continue to find these new avenues for more efficiency and clearly this is a big one that we've stumbled upon. >> Yeah, you know I think it's interesting, when you look at big technology investment over the last decade or two, you could argue a lot of efforts been focused at what I call the kind of core infrastructure and core plumbing so you know, how do I consolidate data into a single location? How do I make sure that data reconciles into different parts of my organization but that like kind of last mile of what someone does as part of their day to day business process was never really addressed, you know or is only addressed in pieces, and so I think as you start looking at the productivity term and how you actually start getting efficiency, we have very few clients that are saying, I want to take on that next big ERP type of limitation or I'm ready to spend 300 million dollars on a new project, they're looking to try to get the most value out of what they already have and they're actually looking to look at that last mile and how can they actually gain some benefit off it so the RPA technologies I think we're one of the catalysts of just being the perfect technology in the right place at the right time from a current business environment, a current technology spend perspective. >> Yeah it's pretty interesting Mihir was talking about, you know one of the big benefits is that you can take advantage of your existing infrastructure, you know, it's not a big giant rip and replace project but it's, again, it's this marginal incremental automation that you just get little benefit, little benefit, little benefit, end of the day, turns into a big benefit. >> Yeah, and I think that's, you know, it's quick, it's fast, it's, you know it can be implemented in an agile manner and you know, our clients are continuously telling us over and over again, they're willing to invest, but they wanna invest where they're gonna see a tangible payback immediately. >> Right. >> And I think when you start to talk the concept of digital transformation, it can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people but there are big picture changes that could be made, those may be longer term trends but they're more immediate things and more immediate benefits that could be gained and I think that's really the sweet spot of where RPA and Automation Anywhere fall into. >> I was just looking up Jeff Immelt in his key note said this is the easy fountain money of any digital transformation project, I think that was the quote, that you'll ever do. That's a pretty nice endorsement. >> Yeah and it's, as we go out, we talk to CFOs, COOs, CIOs, you know, it's, the value proposition is really attractive because, you know, there have been, there's a track record of failed, technology projects failed big transformation projects and, you know, no one wants to necessarily risk their career on creating the next big failure and so I think using technology like RPA almost as an entry point or kind of like a gateway drug into the digital world, see the benefits, start to understand what are some of the business problems and historical kind of, you know, things you're trying to untangle in your infrastructure, attack that and then, you know, start to layer on additional things on top of that, once you get good with RPA and then you can start figuring out, okay, that's they gateway to artificial intelligence, okay how do I start to apply AI across my organization? As you get beyond AI, okay, how do I get into, more advanced state infrastructure and you can start thinking about this world where you can, you know, rather than do the big, five year project where you're gonna try to solve world hunger, it gives you a chance to kind of incrementally go digital over time and I think that's definitely the direction we see a lot of our clients wanting to go in. >> Right, Kevin I want to get your feedback on another topic that came up again in the keynote, was just security, you know it was like the last thing that was mentioned, you know, like A B C D E F G and security, financial services, obviously security is number one, it's baked into everything that everyone's trying to do now, it's no longer this big moat and wall, but it's got to be everywhere so I'm just curious, from the customer adoption point of view, where does security come up in the conversation, has it been a big deal, is it just assumed, is there a lot of good stuff that you can demonstrate to clients, how does security fit within this whole RPA world? >> You know with security and I would just say the broader kind of risk management pieces to the operator infrastructure are one of the first questions we get asked and a highly regulated environment like financial services, you know, the technology is easy and powerful with RPA but you also have to take a step back and say okay, I can program a bot to go do anything in my infrastructure, and that could mean running a reconciliation or it could mean going to our wire system and trying to send money out the door. And so there's a lot of concern around, not only understanding the technical aspects to you know, how the tools work with different types of security technologies, but more looking at your approach to entitlements and your approach to how you actually manage who has access to code bots, deployed bots in production, the overtime, understand what happens, you know we did a presentation to a board of directors a couple months ago on kind of automation more broadly and you know this is, you know, senior level executives the first question we got was, you know, okay, how do I prevent the 22 year old kid that just came off of campus from building a bot that no one knows about, setting it loose in our infrastructure and it going rogue, right? And so I mean this group was pretty savvy, they caught onto it very quickly and you know, the CIO of this client was sitting next to me and she kind of didn't have an immediate answer to that and I think that was kind of the a-ha moment, this is something we really need to put some thought into around you know, who are we gonna let build bots, what policies are gonna be set around how bots get deployed into our production environment, how are we gonna monitor what happens? You know how are we gonna get our auditors, our operational risk folks, our regulators, how are we gonna get all our different stakeholder groups comfortable that we have a well controlled, well functioning bot infrastructure that exists? >> Right, cause the bots actually act like people, they're entitled as like a role right, within the organization? >> We have clients that have literally had to set bots up as new employees, like they get onboarded, they have a, you go to the corporate directory and you can see a picture of R2D2, right like and it's the way they get around how they get a bot intel to a system but it's still, it's not a human right, so you still have to have a policy for how you actually will get code that uses that bot entitlement to function right and so that has to be done in a well disciplined, well controlled manner. >> Right, because to give them the ability to provide information to help a person make a decision is very different then basically enabling them to make that decision and take proactive action. >> Exactly. >> Yeah, it's funny we talked to Dr. Robert Gates at a show a little while ago and he said the only place in the US military where a machine can actually shoot a gun is on the Korean border, but every place else they can make suggestions but ultimately it's gotta be a person that makes the decision to push the button. >> And we're seeing, you know, trying to equate that to financial services, you see a similar pattern where there are certain areas where people are very comfortable playing this technology, you know you get into accounting and reporting and you know more back office type processes, you got other areas that people are a little less comfortable, you know anything that touches kind of wire systems or touches things that, you know, going out the door, touches kind of core trading processes, things like that there's a different risk profile associated with it. I think the other challenge is too is RPA is getting the gateway drug into this going back to my previous point, as you start to layer additional technologies into this, you might have less transparency over understanding clearly what's happening, especially as artificial intelligence takes a much broader role in this and so there's gonna be a lot of scrutiny I think over the next couple years put into like how do I understand the models that are created by artificial intelligence technologies and those decisions that are being made because you, if your regulator says, okay, why did you make this decision, you have to be able to explain it as the supervisor of that intelligent bot, you can't just say, oh it's cause what the machine told me to do, as so, that'll be one of the interesting challenges that's ahead of us. >> Yeah it's good, I mean it's part of the whole scale of conversation, I had interesting conversation with a guy, talking about really opening up those AI boxes so that you have an auditable process, right, you can actually point to why it made the decision even if you're not the one that made it in real time and it's doing it really really quickly so. >> Exactly. >> Really important piece. >> Yeah and as PWC, it's one of our challenges, as a consultant I'm helping clients implement this, my colleagues in our audit practice are now grappling with that same question because we're increasingly being asked to audit that type of infrastructure and have to prove that something did what it was suppose to have done. >> Right, right, alright Kevin, well nothing but opportunities for you ahead and thanks for taking a few minutes to stop by. >> Okay, thank you for having me. >> Alright, he's Kevin, I'm Jeff, you're watching theCUBE from Automation Anywhere, Imagine 2018 in Manhattan, thanks for watching. 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>> From Times Square, in the heart of New York City, it's theCUBE. Covering, Imagine 2018. Brought to you by, Automation Anywhere. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in downtown Manhattan at Automation Anywhere, Imagine 2018. Eleven hundred people buzzing all around us here. The eco system is hot, everybody's looking at all the various solutions, all the various bots, all the various activities going on. And we're excited to have relatively newcomer to the company. He's Kashif Mahbub, the VP, Product Marketing for Automation Anywhere. Kashif, welcome. >> Thanks for having me. >> So you said you've been here, we've had all the founders on I think, so you've been here about a year. So, first impressions, I imagine this is your first show, what do you think? >> It's actually my third show. >> Oh it is your show. >> Things are moving. >> Oh, were you a customer before? >> Company standard, yeah by company standards I would say I'm a veteran. (Jeff laughing) So we are doing these shows, all of these marketing activities at a very rapid pace. >> Very good, so one of the topics we haven't talked about so much today is this kind of digital workforce concept. And you guys have a really specific idea of what makes, kind of taking these things to actually be considered a digital workforce. So what are those three things that you guys combine, to have something that's unique in the market place? >> So we pioneered the concept of digital workforce. And in our parlance, in our definition, a digital workforce, especially at enterprise scale, comprises of three key components. RPA, which is robotic process automation. Cognitive automation, which is the ability of using AI and machine learning capabilities with the RPA. And last but not least, smart analytics. So, the combination of these three make up what we call a digital workforce. If any of one of these elements is missing, we feel that's not really a true digital workforce. So it is the workforce platform that we call enterprise, combines all of these capabilities together to really deliver a true enterprise class, digital workforce platform. >> Now how long have you guys been baking in the AI component of it, in the cognition piece. 'Cause there's a lot of talk about cognitive computing, and it's a big theme that IBM has had for a long, long time, and we're seeing AI work itself in to all kinds of interesting applications. Now kind of, where was your guys' AI journey, how long have you been at it, and where are you seeing kind of the break through to get to this digital workforce concept? >> So automation anywhere has been around for about 15 years now. So we have a very mature product. I look after the enterprise platform, and we just released version 11. So it makes it the most mature platform in the industry at the moment. Now to answer your question about AI, and bringing AI into it, that's fairly recent. But we are based in the heart of Silicon Valley, Google is one of our customers, so is Tesla, so is LinkedIn. These are three big AI companies, with their own AI Technology, yet they use Automation Anywhere platform as well. So, there is AI, and then there is AI with RPA. So think of it as purpose built AI capabilities that are infused through our digital workforce platform, to enhance our RPA capabilities. And you bring in analytics, then we talk about predictive analytics. So overall again, it's building a digital workforce that is enhanced by AI, that is enhanced by cognitive capabilities, so that RPA is not just RPA. It's RPA to the next level. >> Right, and really RPA that's gonna evolve. RPA that's eventually gonna write itself right, or write new versions of itself based on new things. And process improvement, new discoveries in terms of better ways to get things done. Using those other two legs of the spool. >> Yes, so you will see a lot of publications out there that talk about RPA evolving into AI, or AI taking over RPA. The fact is, there is again AI, and then there is AI combined with RPA. So if you take Google's example. Google uses us in the back end, yet it is one of the largest AI companies in the world. So AI, think of it as a big hammer. It has to be used very carefully, and we have purpose built AI into our product to make sure that we extract all the unstructured data. And then we, as Mihir mentioned, our CEO mentioned earlier in the key note, it is feeding this RPA monster that needs more and more data. And all of that data comes through our AI and cognitive capabilities. >> Right, and we know right, and for the machines to learn, they need more, and more, and more data so they get better and better. It's just the way computers do learn. It's very different from the way humans learn, it's a slightly different model. >> It's about building a digital map. You know, we use Waze and Google Maps and all of these different GPS driven capabilities to find our way around, Manhattan for example. Or Bay area for that matter. (Jeff laughing) Think of our digital workforce platform with AI capabilities and with analytics capabilities, as a digital map of an enterprise. We touch so many different infrastructure components. From CRM systems to ERP systems to HRIS systems, that the amount of data that we capture that passes through our system, gives us perhaps the best look that anyone can have into how data flows through an enterprise. And what's the best way to use it. >> Right, so I'm curious in terms of those vertical applications that you described, where have you seen the biggest impact now that you've started to bring the AI in? Are there certain verticals that are just ripe for significant positive change, and some that are less so? >> Yeah absolutely. So, there is a lot of data locked in documents still. So banking, finance and insurance. Those are the three verticals, three industries where our first step with our IQ Bot, which is our cognitive product. We have seen a lot of traction there. The reason for that is again, when we decipher these documents, when we decipher and capture all the data, we then use it very intelligently in automating the processes. So the first step to answer your question would be, organizations, industries that use unstructured data that is locked into their documents, all this dark data of methodology. We unlock that data, and then we use RPA and we feed this RPA monster to really automate the various processes. >> Every time you guys talk about all the data locked in these documents, I can't help but think of the old OCR days, when I got my first $1000 flatbed scanner to try to read a couple documents. It never worked back then, the era of a different place. >> Funny that you mention that because the OCR technology that got built into a lot of scanners later on, a lot of that technology we use under the covers, but at a much more enhanced level. So we partner with some of the best OCR technologies out there, but then we put AI on top of that to really take it to the next level. So when the data comes out of a simple OCR process, it's no longer just some data that you can, like we used to see. Now it's data that is structured, that can be automated in a few clicks. >> It has context right. And most importantly it has context, which makes all the difference in the world. Okay, so what are some of your priorities for next year, before I let you go. What are some of the things you're working on? If we sit down a year from now, what are we gonna be talking about that's new? Don't tell me any secrets, no NDA's have been signed here. (Jeff laughing) >> At Imagine, we come with an approach of an open book. Open kimono if you will, and we share all that we are working on. And all that we are working today, but also going forward. So AI is a big element of that. Automation, combined with any sort of automation, especially RPA combined with AI and machine learning capabilities, that's already, we have a product, as opposed to just an idea. It's a working product with dozens of organizations using it. But then we are infusing that AI into RPA, and making it intelligent RPA. Making it an intelligent digital workforce platform. That's the ultimate goal, and we are already well on our way. >> Alright well Kashif, thanks for a taking a few minutes of your time and congrats on a great show. >> Thank you, thanks for having me Jeff. >> Alright he's Kashif, I'm Jeff, you're watching theCUBE from Automation Anywhere Imagine 2018 in New York City, thanks for watching. (electronic music)

>> From Times Square in the heart of New York City, it's theCUBE, covering Imagine 2018. Brought to you by Automation Anywhere. >> Hey welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in downtown Manhattan, actually midtown Manhattan, at Automation Anywhere Imagine 2018, 1100 people talkin' about bots, talkin' about Robotics Process Automation, or RPA. And we're excited to have the guy that counts the money at the end of the day; it's important part of any business. He's a co-founder, Ankur Kothari, Chief Revenue Officer and Co-Founder, Automation Anywhere. Ankur, great to see you. >> Great to be here, Jeff, thanks for having me. >> So, first off, as a co-founder, I think you're the third or fourth co-founder we've had on today. A little bit of reflection since you guys started this like 14 years ago. >> Yeah. Here we are, there's 1100 people, the room is packed. They had the overflow, they're actually all over us out here with the overflow for the keynote. Take a minute and kinda tell us how you feel about how this thing has evolved over time. >> It feels like a great party to be part of. Always, you're always happy. >> Right. >> One of the traits that you'll find a lot of co-founders is that they are always happy, never satisfied. They're always looking for the next big one. >> Right. >> But it's amazing to be part of Imagine because we learn so much from our customers and our partner as well. It's not just that we bring them together and we're talking. We're learning every time. It's becoming a big ecosystem. >> Right. >> And, an idea as big as a bot or a future of work is too big an idea for one company to continue. You want as many people to come. >> Right. >> So, our idea of Imagine was a little bit like Field of Dreams, you build and they'll come and they'll collaborate and it'll become bigger and bigger. >> And look all around us. I mean, we're surrounded by people and really, the ecosystem. >> And the bots as well, there are bots on the walls and everything else. >> Bots on the walls, partners everywhere. So let's dive into it a little bit. I mean, one of the ways that you guys participate in the ecosystem, and the ecosystem participates, is the Bot Store. >> Yes. >> So it's just like any other kind of an app store. >> Exactly. >> You've got people contributing. I assume you guys have contributed stuff. But we saw earlier in the keynote by Accenture, and EY, and Deloitte. And all types of companies are contributing bots into this ecosystem for lots of different functions or applications. So really, an interesting thing. How's that workin' out? Where'd you come up with the idea? And why's that so important? >> At Automation Anywhere we like to ask ourselves hard questions, as the leaders in this space. And we asked ourselves this question, "What can we now do to further accelerate our journey of all our customers to become a digital enterprise?" The answer came that we are to share in the new bot economy. Now once that answer was clear, every economy requires a marketplace. >> Right. >> And that's where the Bot Store came. It's a marketplace where producers meet the consumers, and you connect them. All we do is, we curate and make sure that the right things go up. But other than that, it's just like any other marketplace. And we thought that if we'll build the right marketplace where the producers meet consumers, we have thousands of customers and large companies looking at it. It will allow perfect place where all the right ideas get converted into product. >> Right. >> We have tons of partners who have domain expertise, functional expertise, vertical expertise; they can prioritize their expertise, they can convert it into IP. >> Right. >> They can do it for free, they can monetize it. So there's lots to gain for producers of all these bots. And if I am a consumer, now suddenly my time clock to make further shrinks, because instead of creating these bots all from scratch, I can download them from this Bot Store and snap them together like a Lego block. >> Right. >> So that's how the whole idea came. We launched it just two months ago and we have hundreds-- >> You just launched it two months ago? >> Yeah! And we have hundreds of bots in it. More than 80-100 partners have participated. We are getting at least 20-30 more submissions coming every day, and we have few hundred submissions coming every week. So, just like any free marketplace, it has an exponential nature. And that's the thing we are counting on. >> That's amazing, that you've got that much traction in such a short period of time. >> Thousands of downloads on a daily basis. Thousands of users just in two month's time. >> You know, we go to a ton of shows. We do over a hundred shows a year. And once shows get to a certain size, it starts to change a little bit. But when they're small like this, it's a very intimate affair on a couple floors here at the Sheraton, everyone is still really involved. They're really sharing. >> Yes. >> There's so much sharing of information. Not so much, you know ... Because they're not really competitors. Within their own companies, they're all part of this same team that are trying to implement this new thing. >> Exactly. >> And you really feel it. >> Exactly. >> So, the store's cool, but the bot economy. When you talk about the bot economy, we talk about API economy a lot. >> Yes. >> How do you see the bot economy? What are the factors that drive the bot economy, and how's it gonna evolve over time? >> We look at it as a few elements. The current version, we think that bot economy, like any economy, has a marketplace, which is our Bot Store. We have a program which we call Bot Games, because any good economy, any new economy, one of the trait is that the good idea can come from anyone. >> Right. >> It can come from anyplace. Like, any customers, any partner, anyone can bring. A good economy, what it does is it brings that idea from anyone, and it gives these vehicles for good ideas to take flight. If the idea is good, it becomes viral, and it has vehicles where those ideas can go to market. What we did was, we created a program called Bot Games. Yesterday on May 29th, we had the 1st Inaugural Bot Games. We invited developers, people who are part of these programs and their companies. And we gamified and created different games. And we thought that if we bring all these champions and pioneers and like-minded people in the same room, give them certain same problem, and then gamify it, put a clock on it, a lot of great ideas will come out of it. >> Right. >> And that came. And some of those ideas will make it to the marketplace, like a Bot Store, like an Imagine. >> Right. >> So that's where all the ideas connect to the customers. And the people who bring those ideas, they also come up. So that's the other aspect. So the Bot Games is where the ideas, you can crowdsource from places. Bot Store is where they go to the market. In between there is a gap. And we are trying to remove that gap by creating a stimulus package for this new bot economy. Like any economy time and again requires a stimulus pack, and we have created one. What we have done is that if you want to learn Automation Anywhere, right? If you want to understand, because that gap is you're to understand Automation Anywhere. We have created Automation Anywhere University a year ago. And now anyone can take courses for free to learn how to create bots. Whether they are customers or partners. And then, if you purchase these bots through one of our certified partners, the first three bots in year one are free. So we are removing the friction in between. If you have not started on this journey, your learning is free, you get ideas from different places, we can get these prebuilt bots, and the first three bots, if you purchase it through our partners, they are free. So we are removing that friction. And then, we are supporting that whole economy with the industry's largest customer success program. >> Right. So I'm curious if you know, maybe you don't know, of the bots in the bots store, how many are free and how many are paid, as a percentage? >> Interestingly, I don't have that stat because we don't actually worry about that. We let all our partners and people who are contributing to this Bot Store decide that. >> Right. >> Some bots they may decide to monetize, some they may not. It's listed on the Bot Store. Offhand, I would say-- >> Take a guess. Is it 50/50? A third? Two-thirds? >> The nature of it looks like 50/50. >> That's a good guess. Full caveat, it's a guess. We didn't do the analysis. >> Exactly. But here is the unique aspect. Yesterday we had a Bot Game, and the winner had an amazing idea that none of us had ever think of. He created this bot that automates the COE of all these programs. Now, we are talking. He is thinking of putting that on Bot Store. That's the power of bringing multiple people together. >> Right. >> That's the power of free economy, where the exponential nature of it is what we are counting on. And we are getting on a daily basis these new bot ideas, these new bots that are making it to the Bot Store. Just like your App Store. I go to App Store to get ideas what I can do on my phone. >> Right, right. >> Just like that, now we are finding our customers are going to Bot Store to figure out what else can they automate. >> Right, right. >> And that's been another amazing part of it. >> You know, it's so consistent. All these shows we go to, right? How do you unlock innovation? There's some really simple ways. One is, give more people the power, give more people the tools, and give more people the data. >> Exactly. >> And you'll get stuff out of it that the small subset of people that used to have access to those three things, they never found. They just didn't think of it that way, right? >> Exactly. And then we firmly believe that any technology, anything, once you democratize it, you give it in hands of everyone-- >> Right, right. >> You can't have a thriving economy unless everyone forms their own point of view. Unless everyone creates their own perspective. And that's our vision of this bot economy. We are bringing everyone and giving them these vehicles to try it out. Look, the technology has reached a stage where it's cheaper to try it out than talk about it. >> Yes. >> And we are doing that so that everyone forms their own unique point of view, and then they express that point of view and we connect those points of view to these thousands of customers worldwide. >> Right. >> Good ideas take flight, and all we have to do is create vehicles for those good ideas to take flight. >> Alright. So, Ankur, I gave you the last word before we wrap up here. If we come back next year, a year from now, inspired 2019, what are we gonna be talking about? What's on your roadmap? What're some of the priorities that you guys are workin' on over the next 12 months? >> We are talking about ... The next 12 months, we are looking at how to further accelerate this journey. Because what people are in this, the real problem people are trying to achieve is how to become a digital enterprise. Not just to automate, but how do you create a digital enterprise? You cannot become a digital enterprise unless your operations are digital. You cannot make your operations digital unless your processes are digital. And you cannot do that unless your workforce is digital. So we are trying to create technologies, vehicles, platforms, so that everyone can scale their program. Where pretty much everyone should have a digital colleague. Everyone should be able to create a bot. Everyone should be able to work with a bot. Every process, every department, every system should have a digital workforce working in it and that can allow you to create a digital enterprise that can scale up and scale down with the demand and supply. >> Alright-- >> That's what we are trying to start. >> Well, we look forward to gettin' the update next year. >> Exactly. >> Alright, Ankur, thanks for taking a few minutes out of your busy day with us. >> Thanks for having me here, and I appreciate and enjoy the conversation. >> Alright, he's Ankur, I'm Jeff. We're at Automation Anywhere Imagine 2018. Thanks for watching theCUBE. See you next time.

>> From Times Square, in the heart of New York City, it's theCUBE. Covering Imagine 2018. Brought to you by Automation Anywhere. >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in Manhattan at the Automation Everywhere Imagine 2018. About 1,100 people talking about RPA, Robotics Process Automation, bots, really bringing automation to the crappy processes that none of us like to do in our day to day job. And, we're excited to have a practitioner. He's out in the field. He's talking to customers all the time. It's Weston Jones, and he's the global intelligent automation leader for EY. Weston, great to see you. >> Yeah, thank you, good to be here. >> Absolutely, so it's funny, you said you've been with these guys for a number of years, so when did you get started, how did you see the vision when nobody else saw it, and here we are five years later, I think, since you first met 'em. >> Oh, I know, it's just funny. I mean, years ago I saw Automation Anywhere at conferences. They were one of the small booths, just like everybody else was, talking about automation. I watched them for several years, and then I decided one year when we were looking at some of our offerings to bring in RPA and talk to our leadership about it, and kinda the light bulbs went off. So, from five, six years ago 'til today we've been working with them, and it's really amazing to see kind of how things have changed, and how the adoption has taken place. >> You know, it's such a big moment in a startup, especially software company, when you get a big global integrator like you guys to jump in, you know, advisory service. It's really hard to do. I've been in that position myself, and you guys don't make the move unless you really see a big opportunity. So, what did you see in terms of the big opportunity that made you, you know, basically bet your career on this vertical? >> Well, so when I went to our leadership, in the meeting I had our global shared services leader. So, we have 7,000 plus people on our shared services, and he was very skeptical. We had to do 20 plus proof of concepts with him, and HR, IT, finance, et cetera, to get him excited about it. Now, he's our biggest fan, and actually we promoted him to run our global internal automation team where now we think we're one of the largest users of automation. We're one of the biggest users within tax. We use Automation Anywhere within tax. We have over 750 bots working, and we have a goal to have 10,000 plus by 2022. So, we're really pushing the bar in scaling. >> From 750 to 10,000, what are we, 2018, in four years. >> In four years. That's our goal. >> So, where did you find the early successes, what kind of bots specifically, what type of processes are kind of right for people that are interested, see the potential, but aren't really sure kinda how to get started, or to get that early success? >> Yeah, I mean, it's just almost like anything else, the quick wins, you know. Start with things that are very rules-based, that have a lot of people, FTs associated with them. You know, our thing wasn't that we were actually eliminating FTs, we were just developing capacity, 'cause we're a company that's growing, so instead of hiring more and more people, we took all that mundane work out of people's jobs and allowed them to focus on things that were more value-added. So, the block and tackle stuff-- >> Like what? Like, give me a couple of, you know, just simple stuff-- >> well, we have like HR onboarding, you know, we onboard 60,000 people a year. HR onboarding is something that's very repetitive activity, logging in and out of multiple systems. And, it was something where we were hiring HR professionals that knew how to do talent management, that knew how to do all these things we really wanted them to do, but we had 'em focused on doing a lot of very transactional type activities. So, we said why don't we use the technology for that. Let's free these people up so they can then focus on developing talent, career ladders, other things that we really wanted them to focus on. Other things like, you know, payments, matching, and payment application, things like that, password resets, you know, a lot of stuff that you, I mean, you can just think of in your head. A lot of stuff in finance, a lot of stuff in HR and IT. Even our supply chain, too. We're doing like T and Es, we're doing a lot of automation in our T and E area. But, that to say, I mean, I've mentioned all back office things. We're also doing a lot of front office. So, for example, in our tax department we use almost exclusively Automation Anywhere to do tax returns for clients. And, we have, I think, over a million plus hours that we've eliminated using Automation Anywhere. >> Now, how do you Automation Anywhere a tax return? >> Well, tax return is a very complex set of rules, and you basically, once you kind of load the rules in for certain activities, it's stuff like pulling data from one system into another, you know, doing multiple taxed jurisdictions. >> Is it just like particular steps within that, you just kinda pick off one little process at a time, one little process at a time? >> True, and then you can also put in, you can do a nice interface in the front, and you can have people giving you the data, and then you let the automation then get the data to the right parts within the tax return. >> So, I'm curious in terms of the people that create the bots. Who are they, kinda what skill sets do they have, and do you see that changing over time as you try to go from 750, whatever it is, a 20x multiple, over four years? Do you see kinda the population of people that are able to create and implement the bots growing? How do you, kinda, managing the supply side on on that? >> We have a philosophy that 70% of it's process, 30% of it's technology. We're fortunate that in our advisory area across all the major functional areas, supply chain, HR, finance, et cetera, we have process experts. So, we use those process experts to get the process down, and then what we do is we have core development teams around the world. We have a big team in India, a big team in Costa Rica. We have a team in China, and elsewhere. And, those are the developers. And, so our process people map out the process and then hand that off to the developer. So, developers, you know, we basically, I mean, with Automation Anywhere's help, we've trained them to do the work and they've made it more and more, as time goes on, they made it easier and easier for them to develop bots. And, so We've been able to take people almost right out of college. We've hired some high school students. We take people that, you know, two thirds of the American population doesn't have a college degree, so we hire non-college degrees and teach them how to do this. Not that it's easy, and to be really good you have to have time and experience, but we can teach them to do these types of activities for us. >> That's amazing. So, I wonder if you can share what are some of the biggest surprises, you know, kind of implementation surprises, or ROI types of surprises that you found in implementing these 750. >> Yeah, so one thing I tell people about is if you talk about the Gartner Hype Curve, you go up and you fall into the valley of disillusionment, and, you know, there's gonna be four or five of those valleys that are gonna happen, and you just need to power through them because the technology is so compelling, and the benefits are so compelling. I mean, there's over a dozen benefits whether it's cost savings, improved security, better accuracy, whatever. So, some of the surprises were scaling. Like, when I talk about the DIPSS, the D-I-P-S-S, DIPPS, the first one is gonna be data. People are gonna realize that their data isn't quite there in order to do the more intelligent activities. The integration, so integrating the RPA with the more intelligent pieces of the IQ bot, and other things, how do you do those integrations, how do you take other tools outside of that and integrate them. The third is penetration. I mean, penetration is very small right now. What happens is people tend to look at a whole process that needs to be automated when what you need to do is you need to think about breaking those processes apart. Like FPNA, for example, may have a couple dozen steps to it, but there are pockets of steps that are very automatable. For example, pulling data, structuring it, normalizing it, getting it into some kind of report, that can all be done by automation, then hand it off to someone to do more cognitive activities. So, the penetration is very small right now, but will continue to grow. The savings, you know, have realistic expectations on savings. When this first came out of the door a lot of people were talking very, very high numbers. I mean, you can get it every once in a while, but, the saving numbers, just be realistic about that. And, the last part is scaling. We found scaling to be something that, you know, at the time when we were doing it, very few people had done it. So, to figure out how do you scale, and how do you develop a bot control room, how do you manage the bots, how do you manage the bots interfacing with people, how do you manage the bots interfacing with other technologies. It's a lot more to it than just putting the bot up and letting it work, because they need care and feeding ongoing, because it's not related to the Automation Anywhere technology, it's more of the other things it touches, like website changes, like upgrades to different systems that the bot has to execute with. Those are gonna constantly change and you just need to make sure you're adjusting the bot to actually work in those environments. So, those are kinda the four or five things that we've seen. And, when we go from 750, to 1,000, to 10,000, I mean, we think we're gonna see much more orchestration type things. You know, how do you orchestrate in a more automated way across the bots, the people, and then the other technology. >> Right, it's funny on the scale issue 'cause they were talking about, you know, how do you go from 10 bots, you got 750 to 10,000, and there's been a concept under it that they are a digital workforce, implying that you have to manage 'em like a workforce. You gotta hire 'em, you gotta train 'em, you gotta put 'em in place, you gotta kinda keep an eye on 'em, you gotta review 'em every now and then, and really it's an active management process, it's not just set and forget. >> Yeah, we're hoping that we'll have, I mean, we have some of this already, but we'll have bots managing bots. Well, bots auditing bots. We'll have bots orchestrating bots. That's all gonna eventually happen. I think we can do some of it today, but it's gonna be more and more common. The orchestration piece is really the thing that is gonna be new, that is gonna drive a lot of people this hard to scale. >> The other two consistent themes that you just touched on that we talked a little bit before we turned the cameras on, is Amara's Law, my favorite. You know, we overestimate the short term, which Gartner might call the Hype cycle, but we underestimate in the long term. Really, the other one is kinda just DevOps, and there's DevOps as a way to write code, but I think, more importantly, is DevOps as a culture, which is just look for little wins, little wins, little wins, little wins, little wins, and, before you know it, you've automated a lot and you're gonna start seeing massive returns on that effort versus the, oh, let's throw it in, we're gonna get this tremendous cost savings on day zero, day one, or day 10, or whatever it is. That's really not the strategy. >> Well, I think a lot of people maybe don't like to hear this, but it's a journey. I mean, you start out using the technology where you can. So, it's not a technology play, it's solving your biggest, most complicated problems, that's the key. And, whatever technology you need to do that, use that. So, you do the RPA, then you get more benefit when you add the IQ bots, and the intelligent stuff, and you get more benefit when you start adding, you know, technologies that are even ancillary, like Blockchain, IoT, and things like that. You'll get more and more kind of benefits from this technology. >> All right, Weston, well, thank you for sharing your stories. It's good to get it from the front lines. And, good luck on making 20,000 bots in four years. >> Thank you, thank you. >> He's Weston, I'm Jeff, you're watching theCUBE from Automation Anywhere Imagine 2018. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)