(bright upbeat music) >> Welcome to theCUBE's, continuous coverage of AWS re:Invent 2021. We're here live running one of the most important and largest technology events of the year. It's all about AWS and AWS's ecosystem partners. We are joined by Jay Mozo, Director of Transformation Services, TEKsystems Global Services, alumni of AWS, >> Yep. >> David: I got that, right? >> Yep. >> David: And Ted Swinyar, you're Director of Solutions 1Strategy. Who's going to tell me what the relationship is between 1Strategy and TEKsystems? Like I don't already know what it is since you came and essentially announced the magic, here on our stage in 2019. Ted, you want to start off with a little background since you were acquired. >> Ted: Yeah, I'll jump in. >> How did that go? >> So 1Strategy is a TEKsystems Global Services Company, and we're an AWS premier partner. We've got competencies and DevOps, migration, data and analytics, machine learning. And we're really excited this year to be focusing also on the security competency as well. >> So you've been laser focused on AWS forever? >> Ted: Day one. >> Day one. >> Ted: You know that's been our core focus, and together with TEKsystems Global Services, we're able to bring that dedicated and specialized focus on cloud transformation now at scale. And that's really exciting. >> So TEKsystems, you do it all? >> Yep. >> AWS laser-focused, sounds like a great combination. >> Ted And Jay: Yeah. >> And our focus is you know, how we bring that deep AWS specialized expertise together with proven methodologies, the proprietary deployment strategies to take the customer to the next step on their cloud journey. Whether they're just getting started, whether they're in a migration or whether they're already a veteran at AWS looking to take the next step. >> So Jay talk about the last two years. >> Jay: Yeah. >> You've been in this two years obviously very interesting times we've been living through. How has the combination gone? >> Oh it's been great again that expertise, that deep AWS expertise, that's what our customers (indistinct), they would expect from us, right? And we truly are passionate about accelerating business transformation for our customers, right? And our goal is really simple, we bring in real-world expertise, just like an AWS expertise that 1Strategy brought and we solve complex problems whether they're business, technology, or even just people talent, right? The whole talent around this whole ecosystem, we heard Adam talk about it even earlier today, right? Talent is a challenge. So we're very obsessed with technology, right? But we're even more than that we're obsessed with our customers, right? We're at 80% of the fortune 500, more than 6,000 customers, and that obviously grew with our 1Strategy partners here. And we really consider ourselves with 1Strategy as all in one kind of full stack integration partner, right? Well we meet our customers where they are and we work side by side with them to transform their business, again very passionate about that. >> So what do these engagements look like? Are you approaching the customer from an AWS perspective in partnership with AWS? So AWS services, AWS technology, bridging that divide specifically, or are you coming in from sort of a TEKsystems overall perspective and then identifying the areas where AWS is a fit and bringing in 1Strategy? Or is it a mixture of both? What does that look like? >> It's a mixture of both for sure. We do a lot of partnering with AWS, right? Especially with 1Strategy. And we come to the table a lot with AWS together and we have that kind of joint feeling with AWS. And when AWS isn't at the table in the beginning, if it makes sense to go on the AWS platform, we bring them to the table. But it's really around focusing on what you're bringing up, it's focusing on the customer and what they need. And again, we have our kind of business modernization framework that we lean on, that really drives that conversation, so we can figure out very quickly, you know, how to help them and which platform is going to help them. And obviously, you know, AWS more and more, right? They're coming out with all these services, even a higher level services. And the conversations with our customers are really along those lines, right? How do we kind of help them leverage these services, right? So they can really achieve the agility that they need. >> So in the last two years, aside from the pandemic, global economy, what are some of the things in cloud that maybe you didn't anticipate? Now you're coming in from a specialist perspective, Laser focused on AWS, more the generalist, let's take care of anything the customer might need. Are there areas where you are surprised by the pace or a lack of pace in terms of movement to cloud? What have the last two years looked like from that perspective? >> Well I'll say one of the big things has been the change in data. The data is a lifeblood of every organization and what looks like normal data today, would be alien for some businesses going back two years ago. And as the entire world has gone through a business transformation, there's been just more and more data coming at customers faster and faster, the acceleration there has been just tremendous. And one of the things we see, customers are just drowning in data, you know how they're able to leverage AWS from a technology standpoint to build a data strategy, has to be married with that data-driven culture. And we're seeing more and more customers really getting that. I thought Adam made an incredible point this morning, he called out 85% of the workers surveyed, in the past couple of years are saying, I need to understand technology more. And that's absolutely something we're seeing in the marketplace. That investment in your team, enablement training as well as having the solid foundation and an ability to move toward an agile approach is becoming more and more critical for our customers. >> So you mentioned Adam's keynote, one of the things that was called out, was the idea that there are 475 different kinds of instances available from AWS. So let's get tactical for a minute, pretend like I'm a CEO at a customer site. I know that I want to be in the cloud, I know I want to leverage what the cloud has to offer. How do you guys figure out which ones of these 475 instances I'm going to be leveraging? Do you have like multisided dungeons and dragons dice that you throw, (murmuring) or is there some science behind it? >> Oh man that and the dart board definitely the way to go. No, the idea for every engagement is always focused on what the outcome for the customer is at the end of the day and work backwards from that. So depending on whether they're focused on an ML workload, or whether they're focused on a more, business line application, working backwards to understand what is the outcome they're trying to drive and then building the right technology stack, working backwards to support that. Whether it's taking advantage of any number of the instance types, taking advantage of serverless or any of the really incredible container options that are available in the marketplace today. >> So we're obviously here at AWS re:Invent, 1Strategy is an AWS specialist, TEKsystems multicloud? >> Jay: Yep. >> Fair to say? >> Jay: Yep. >> The world is a multicloud place, I think it's okay to acknowledge that. So if I'm looking to engage with TEKsystems, I can count on AWS being brought in and AWS expertise being brought in when it's appropriate, because it's not the only thing you do? >> Jay: Right, that's right. >> How do you manage that? Who decides whether a workload is better suited for AWS and the 1Strategy folks versus say GCP or Azure? >> Yeah, definitely again, (indistinct) right on it, right? We start with what the customer needs and their outcomes, right. We take an approach around really helping them understand their value stream, right? So if we get our customers to understand their value stream, that really serves as a context, as I mentioned before for business and delivery agility, right? And when we focus there and work backwards from there, we can really figure out all the different pieces. And like you said, it's a multicloud world now, right? For with many of our customers demand their value streams and some of their value stream components or systems or processes, they might live on different things. But, we don't jump to those right out of the gate, right? We jump to understanding where they are in their journey, where they're at with their value stream. We do a lot of dive deep and aligned to really understand where they're at. And then we craft those things actually in partnership with our customer, right? Because they might have things going on in their organization that might lean towards, GCP for some things and AWS for some other things. So we take all of that in as we start to figure out, which platform really is best for them. But again, like Ted mentioned, we with that working backwards mentality. >> So how do you see the change that's happened over time, in I would call it the AWS posture or attitude towards the concept of hybrid cloud technology? I think there was a time when AWS would have said, you know what everything that matters, everything that's born now will be born in the cloud, all net new things will be in the cloud. All the legacy stuff, we'll just sort of let it wither on the vine. It was mentioned in the keynote today that maybe five to 15% of I.T spend is in the cloud today, that's 85% or so leftover. Do you find yourself working in more of an increasingly hybrid environment these days? What's your perspective on hybridity? I think I may have just made that word up. (chuckles) >> Yeah it's absolutely the reality, and it reflects where every customer is in their cloud journey. You know you've got some customers that are just born in the cloud startups, getting you know everything Greenfield, brand new in the cloud. Whereas you've got others, one of our customers just celebrated recently their hundredth birthday. Obviously they have a significant legacy domain and we always need to focus on meeting a customers where they're at. There's no exact match between customer and customer, it's all about understanding where they are, how we can help them get to the next step, whether that's taking advantage of something like outpost, you know the really cool 5G, the private 5G that was announced this morning. Really exciting. >> David: Very interesting. >> Ted And Jay: Yeah. >> We were talking about that beforehand, how that might support industry 4.0 and some of the really interesting opportunities in that regard. Wavelength, another great example, the reality is AWS has gone into the data center now with things like outposts. It's even gone into space with things like ground station, so it's everywhere that our customers are. >> You mentioned 5G from a TEKsystems perspective, what do you do? Do you spin up a 5G practice? Do you scour universities for 5G graduates? How do you keep up with the pace of developments that are coming from AWS let alone the rest of the tech sector? >> Yeah, and again that 5G is a good example, right? And we're going to kind of follow again where our customer are and where the trends going. But we instantly see with these higher level services, where some of these used cases, some of these solutions are going to go, right? We were even talking again that conversation about, the things we can do from an industry perspective, right? And really align all of these technologies to again be very innovative, right? Adam talked about pathfinders and again, we're going to seek out those pathfinders. And now with all of these services coming out of AWS, we're going to be able to do some incredible things in the future with them. >> Yeah it's amazing to see the things that have been unlocked and unshackled by advances in technology. Were there any things that surprised you Ted, coming out of the keynote today, announcements, some of these things are sort of telegraphed in advance. But hardware advances, we talked about 5G, anything that kind of took you off guard a bit or... >> I was really excited by all the move to serverless analytics, Redshift server lists, EMR with serverless MSK serverless, democratization of data. Again coming back to the pathfinders theme, going all the way back to the very beginning, how we can bring that data forward and lowering those bars. Whether you're focused on ML with the SageMaker announcements, and SageMaker canvas, being able to bring all these people together and empower them with data. I see that as again, a lifeblood of every organization and the more that you can bring that out and make it available, the more powerful and the more flexible every company is going to be. >> When you're an AWS services partner, it's a bit like being at a buffet, an endless buffet where new treats are piled on the table each year. I thought it was amazing that one of the important points had to do with the development of Silicon. There are a lot of folks who would say that the underlying hardware no longer matters, nobody cares. AWS realizes that as a foundation it is really important, it's up to folks like you to translate that technical value into business value obviously. If this whole tech thing doesn't work out for us, what if we opened a nightclub here in Vegas and we called it hybridity? >> (Jay laughing) I like >> Love it. >> I like the sound of it, I'm going to look it up and see if it's actually a word. >> Lets patent it. (murmuring) >> We got it all three of us. So anytime organizations come together, there are cultural issues. So you've got AWS specialist, more of a generalist organization and you're going out and you're engaging customers that are having their own cultural issues. What are some of the bigger obstacles that are in the way of leveraging technology? 'Cause you've mentioned it's all about the customer perspective it's not just the technology. What are the things that are still getting in the way now that might surprise people who think that everyone's already in cloud? >> Yeah, I can go first, Ted you can jump in. Yeah culture is, again, it's a big thing, that's why it's built into our business modernization program, culture, continuous learning and Adam mentioned that too. We see challenges obviously from a learning perspective. We really, really need to key in on, not just the technologies they have to learn, but also modern practices, right? And that's going to be a big part of all these things. And definitely these higher level services are going to abstract a lot of those issues for our customers which is great. But it's still not going to displace just the constant you brought up, the constant change and all these services that come out. So I think we focus on a culture and really understanding how to move an organization to the right mindsets and the right practices, right? And that's really the key in terms of their overall business transformation. >> So I think the headline for this segment is going to be awesome two years for TEKsystems and 1Strategy. Jay and Ted, thank you so much for being here on theCUBE with us. I hope you have a great rest of the week here in Las Vegas, it's amazing to be here in person, fantastic. They've done a really good job of keeping us all safe with the protocols in place. Hope to see you again, I guess we'll be shooting for a 2022 update to see how you guys are doing. With that I'd like to thank all of you for joining us on theCUBE here at AWS re:Invent 2021. I'm Dave Nicholson and again thanks for joining us on theCUBE. We are the leader in hybrid technology event coverage. (bright music)