(upbeat music) (logo shimmers) >> Good afternoon everyone, and welcome back to AWS re Invent 2022. We are live here from the show floor in Las Vegas, Nevada, we're theCUBE, my name is Savannah Peterson, joined by John Furrier, John, are you excited for the next segment? >> I love the innovation story, this next segment's going to be really interesting, an example of ecosystem innovation in action, it'll be great. >> Yeah, our next guests are actually award-winning, I am very excited about that, please welcome Alan and Becky from IBM. Thank you both so much for being here, how's the show going for ya? Becky you got a, just a platinum smile, I'm going to go to you first, how's the show so far? >> No, it's going great. There's lots of buzz, lots of excitement this year, of course, three times the number of people, but it's fantastic. >> Three times the number of people- >> (indistinct) for last year. >> That is so exciting, so what is that... Do you know what the total is then? >> I think it's over 55,000. >> Ooh, loving that. >> John: A lot. >> It's a lot, you can tell by the hallways- >> Becky: It's a lot. >> John: It's crowded, right. >> Yeah, you can tell by just the energy and the, honestly the heat in here right now is pretty good. Alan, how are you feeling on the show floor this year? >> Awesome, awesome, we're meeting a lot of partners, talking to a lot of clients. We're really kind of showing them what the new IBM, AWS relationship is all about, so, beautiful time to be here. >> Well Alan, why don't you tell us what that partnership is about, to start us off? >> Sure, sure. So the partnership started with the relationship in our consulting services, and Becky's going to talk more about that, right? And it grew, this year it grew into the IBM software realm where we signed an agreement with AWS around May timeframe this year. >> I love it, so, like you said, you're just getting started- >> Just getting started. >> This is the beginning of something magic. >> We're just scratching the surface with this right? >> Savannah: Yeah. >> But it represents a huge move for IBM to meet our clients where they are, right? Meet 'em where they are with IBM technology, enterprise technology they're used to, but with the look and feel and usage model that they're used to with AWS. >> Absolutely and so to build on that, you know, we're really excited to be an AWS Premier Consulting Partner. We've had this relationship for a little over five years with AWS, I'd say it's really gone up a notch over the last year or two as we've been working more and more closely, doubling down on our investments, doubling down on our certifications, we've got over 15,000 people certified now, almost 16,000 actually- >> Savannah: Wow. >> 14 competencies, 16 service deliveries and counting. We cover a mass of information and services from Data Analytics, IoT, AI, all the way to Modernization, SAP, Security Services, right. So it's pretty comprehensive relationship, but in addition to the fantastic clients that we both share, we're doing some really great things around joint industry solutions, which I'll talk about in a few minutes and some of those are being launched at the conference this year, so that's even better. But the most exciting thing to me right now is that we just found out that we won the Global Innovator Partner of the Year award, and a LATAM Partner of the Year award. >> Savannah: Wow. >> John: That's (indistinct) >> So, super excited for IBM Consulting to win this, we're honored and it's just a great, exciting part to the conference. >> The news coming out of this event, we know tomorrow's going to be the big keynote for the new Head of the ecosystem, Ruba. We're hearing that it's going to be all about the ecosystem, enabling value creation, enabling new kinds of solutions. We heard from the CEO of AWS, this nextGen environment's upon us, it's very solution-oriented- >> Becky: Absolutely. >> A lot of technology, it's not an either or, it's an and equation, this is a huge new shift, I won't say shift, a continuation for AWS, and you guys, we've been covering, so you got the and situation going on... Innovation solutions and innovation technology and customers can choose, build a foundation or have it out of the box. What's your reaction to that? Do you think it's going to go well for AWS and IBM? >> I think it fits well into our partnership, right? The the thing you mentioned that I gravitate to the most is the customer gets to choose and the thing that's been most amazing about the partnership, both of these companies are maniacally focused on the customer, right? And so we've seen that come about as we work on ways the customer to access our technology, consume the technology, right? We've sold software on-prem to customers before, right, now we're going to be selling SaaS on AWS because we had customers that were on AWS, we're making it so that they can more easily purchase it by being in the marketplace, making it so they can draw down their committed spin with AWS, their customers like that a lot- [John] Yeah. >> Right. We've even gone further to enable our distributor network and our resellers, 'cause a lot of our customers have those relationships, so they can buy through them. And recently we've enabled the customer to leverage their EDP, their committed spend with AWS against IBM's ELA and structure, right, so you kind of get a double commit value from a customer point of view, so the amazing part is just been all about the customers. >> Well, that's interesting, you got the technology relationship with AWS, you mentioned how they're engaging with the software consumption in marketplace, licensed deals, there's all kinds of new business model innovations on top of the consumption and building. Then you got the consulting piece, which is again, a big part of, Adam calls it "Business transformation," which is the result of digital transformation. So digital transformation is the process, the outcome is the business transformation, that's kind of where it all kind of connects. Becky, what's your thoughts on the Amazon consulting relationships? Obviously the awards are great but- >> They are, no- >> What's the next step? Where does it go from here? >> I think the best way for me to describe it is to give you some rapid flyer client examples, you know, real customer stories and I think that's where it really, rubber meets the road, right? So one of the most recent examples are IBM CEO Arvind Krishna, in his three key results actually mentioned one of our big clients with AWS which is the Department of Veterans Affairs in the US and is an AI solution that's helped automate claims processing. So the veterans are trying to get their benefits, they submit the claims, snail mail, phone calls, you know, some in person, some over email- >> Savannah: Oh, it gives me all the feels hearing you talk about this- >> It's a process that used to take 25 to 30 days depending on the complexity of the claims, we've gotten it down with AWS down to within 24 hours we can get the veterans what they need really quickly so, I mean, that's just huge. And it's an exciting story that includes data analytics, AI and automation, so that's just one example. You know, we've got examples around SAP where we've developed a next generation SAP for HANA Platform for Phillips Carbon Black hosted on AWS, right? For them, it created an integrated, scalable, digital business, that cut out a hundred percent the capital cost from on-prem solutions. We've got security solutions around architectures for telecommunications advisors and of course we have lots of examples of migration and modernization and moving workloads using Red Hat to do that. So there's a lot of great client examples, so to me, this is the heart of what we do, like you said, both companies are really focused on clients, Amazon's customer-obsessed, and doing what we can for our clients together is where we get the impact. >> Yeah, that's one of the things that, it sounds kind of cliche, "Oh we're going to work backwards from the customer," I know Amazon says that, they do, you guys are also very customer-focused but the customers are changing. So I'd love to get your reaction because we're now in that cloud 2.0, I call that 2.0 or you got the Amazon Classic, my word, and then Next Gen Cloud coming, the customers are different, they're transforming because IT's not a department anymore, it's in the DevOps pipeline. The developers are driving a lot of IT but security and on DataOps, it's the structural change happening at the customer, how do you guys see that at IBM? I know we cover a lot of Red Hat and Arvind talks to us all the time, meeting the customer where they are, where are they? Where are the customers? Can you share your perspective on where they are? >> It's an astute observation, right, the customer is changing. We have both of those sets of customers, right, we still have the traditional customer, our relationship with Central IT, right, and driving governance and all of those things. But the folks that are innovating many times they're in the line of business, they're discovering solutions, they're building new things. And so we need our offerings to be available to them. We need them to understand how to use them and be convenient for these guys and take them through that process. So that change in the customer is one that we are embracing by making our offerings easy to consume, easy to use, and easy to build into solutions and then easy to parlay into what central IT needs to do for governance, compliance, and these types of things, it's becoming our new bread and butter. >> And what's really cool is- >> Is that easy button- >> We've been talking about- >> It's the easy button. >> The easy button a lot on the show this week and if you just, you just described it it's exactly what people want, go on Becky. >> Sorry about that, I was going to say, the cool part is that we're co-creating these things with our clients. So we're using things like the Amazon Working Backward that you just mentioned.` We're using the IBM garage methodology to get innovative to do design working, design thinking workshops, and think about where is that end user?, Where is that stakeholder? Where are they, they thinking, feeling, doing, saying how do we make the easier? How do we get the easy button for them so that they can have the right solutions for their businesses. We work mostly with lines of business in my part of the organization, and they're hungry for that. >> You know, we had a quote on theCUBE yesterday, Savannah remember one of our guests said, you know, back in the, you know, 1990s or two 2000s, if you had four production apps, it was considered complex >> Savannah: Yeah. >> You know, now you got hundreds of workloads, thousands of workloads, so, you know, this end-to-end vision that we heard that's playing out is getting more complex, but the easy button is where these abstraction layers and technology could come in. So it's getting more complex because there's more stuff but it's getting easier because- >> Savannah: What is the magnitude? >> You can make it easier. This is a dynamic, share your thoughts on that. >> It's getting more complex because our clients need to move faster, right, they need to be more agile, right, so not only are there thousands of applications there are hundreds of thousands microservices that are composing those applications. So they need capabilities that help them not just build but govern that structure and put the right compliance over that structure. So this relationship- >> Savannah: Lines of governance, yeah- >> This relationship we built with AWS is in our key areas, it's a strategic move, not a small thing for us, it covers things like automation and integration where you need to build that way. It covers things like data and AI where you need to do the analytics, even things like sustainability where we're totally aligned with what AWS is talking about and trying to do, right, so it's really a good match made there. >> John: It really sounds awesome. >> Yeah, it's clear. I want to dig in a little bit, I love the term, and I saw it in my, it stuck out to me in the notes right away, getting ready for you all, "maniacal", maniacal about the customer, maniacal about the community, I think that's really clear when we're talking about 24 days to 24 hours, like the veteran example that you gave right there, which I genuinely felt in my heart. These are the types of collaborations that really impact people's lives, tell me about some of the other trends or maybe a couple other examples you might have because I think sometimes when our head's in the clouds, we talk a lot about the tech and the functionality, we forget it's touching every single person walking around us, probably in a different way right now than we may even be aware- >> I think one of the things that's been, and our clients have been asking us for, is to help coming into this new era, right, so we've come out of a pandemic where a lot of them had to do some really, really basic quick decisions. Okay, "Contact Center, everyone work from home now." Okay, how do we do that? Okay, so we cobbled something together, now we're back, so what do we do? How do we create digital transformation around that so that we are going forward in a really positive way that works for our clients or for our contact center reps who are maybe used to working from home now versus what our clients need, the response times they need, and AWS has all the technology that we're working with like Amazon Connect to be able to pull those things together with some of our software like Watson Assistant. So those types of solutions are coming together out of that need and now we're moving into the trend where economy's getting tougher, right? More cost cutting potentially is coming, right, better efficiencies, how do we leverage our solutions and help our clients and customers do that? So I think that's what the customer obsession's about, is making sure we really understand where their pain points are, and not just solve them but maybe get rid of 'em. >> John: Yeah, great one. >> Yeah. And not developing in a silo, I mean, it's a classic subway problem, you got to be communicating with your community if you want to continue to serve them. And IBM's been serving their community for a very long time, which is super impressive, do you think they're ready for the challenge? >> Let's do it. >> So we have a new thing on theCUBE. >> Becky: Oh boy. >> We didn't warn you about this, but here we go. Although you told, Alan, you've mentioned you're feeling very cool with the microphone on, so I feel like, I'm going to put you in the hot seat first on this one. Not that I don't think Becky's going to smash it, but I feel like you're channeling the power of the microphone. New challenges, treat it like a 32nd Instagram reel-style story, a hot take, your thought leadership, money clip, you know, this is your moment. What is the biggest takeaway, most important thing happening at the show this year? >> Most important thing happening at the show? Well, I'm glad you mentioned it that way, because earlier you said we may have to sing (presenters and guests all laughing) >> So this is much better than- >> That's actually part of the close. >> John: Hey, hey. >> Don't worry, don't worry, I haven't forgotten that, it's your Instagram reel, go. (Savannah laughs) >> Original audio happening here on theCUBE, courtesy of Alan and IBM, I am so here for it. >> So what my takeaway and what I would like for the audience to take away, out of this conversation especially, but even broadly, the IBM AWS relationship is really like a landmark type of relationship, right? It's one of the biggest that we've established on both sides, right- >> Savannah: It seems huge, okay you are too monolith in the world of companies, like, yeah- >> Becky: Totally. >> It's huge. And it represents a strategic change on both sides, right? With that customer- >> Savannah: Fundamentally- >> In the middle right? >> Savannah: Yeah. >> So we're seeing things like, you know, AWS is working with us to make sure we're building products the way that a AWS client likes to consume them, right, so that we have the right integration, so they get that right look and feel, but they still get the enterprise level capabilities they're used to from IBM, right? So the big takeaway I like for people to take, is this is a new IBM, it's a new AWS and IBM relationship, and so expect more of that goodness, more of those new things coming out of it. [John] Excellent, wow. >> That was great, well done, you nailed it. and you're going to finish with some acapella, right? (Alan laughs) >> You got a pitch pipe ready? (everyone laughs) >> All right Becky, what about you? Give us your hot take. >> Well, so for me, the biggest takeaway is just the way this relationship has grown so much, so, like you said, it's the new IBM it's the new AWS, we were here last year, we had some good things, this year we're back at the show with joint solutions, have been jointly funded and co-created by AWS and IBM. This is huge, this is a really big opportunity and a really big deal that these two companies have come together, identified joint customer needs and we're going after 'em together and we're putting 'em in the booth. >> Savannah: So cool. And there's things like smart edge for welding solutions that are out there. >> Savannah: Yes. >> You know, I talked about, and it's, you know you wouldn't think, "Okay, well what's that?" There's a lot to that, a lot of saving when you look at how you do welding and if you apply things like visual AI and auditory AI to make sure a weld is good. I mean, I think these are, these things are cool, I geek out on these things- >> John: Every vertical. >> I'm geeking out with you right now, just geeking- >> Yeah, yeah, yeah, so- >> Every vertical is infected. >> They are and it's so impactful to have AWS just in lockstep with us, doing these solutions, it's so different from, you know, you kind of create something that you think your customers like and then you put it out there. >> Yeah, versus this moment. >> Yeah, they're better together. >> It's strategic partnership- >> It's truly a strategic partnership. and we're really bringing that this year to reinvent and so I'm super excited about that. >> Congratulations. >> Wow, well, congratulations again on your awards, on your new partnership, I can't wait to hear, I mean, we're seven months in, eight months in to this this SaaS side of the partnership, can't wait to see what we're going to be talking about next year when we have you back on theCUBE. >> I know. >> and maybe again in between now and then. Alan, Becky, thank you both so much for being here, this was truly a joy and I'm sure you gave folks a taste of the new IBM, practicing what you preach. >> John: Great momentum. >> And I'm just, I'm so impressed with the two companies collaborating, for those of us OGs in tech, the big companies never collaborated before- >> Yeah. >> John: Yeah. Joint, co-created solutions. >> And you have friction between products and everything else. I mean's it's really, co-collaboration is, it's a big theme for us at all the shows we've been doing this year but it's just nice to see it in practice too, it's an entirely different thing, so well done. >> Well it's what gets me out of the bed in the morning. >> All right, congratulations. >> Very clearly, your energy is contagious and I love it and yeah, this has been great. Thank all of you at home or at work or on the International Space Station or wherever you might be tuning in from today for joining us, here in Las Vegas at AWS re Invent where we are live from the show floor, wall-to-wall coverage for three days with John Furrier. My name is Savannah Peterson, we're theCUBE, the source for high tech coverage. (cheerful upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Hello, welcome to theCUBE's presentation of Women in Tech, Global Event, celebrating International Women's Day. I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE here in Palo Alto, California. We got two great guests. Cindy Polin, head of Solution Architects for Public Sector in Mexico for AWS. And Fernanda Spinardi, who's also the head of Solution Architects for Public Sector in Brazil, both with AWS. Thanks for coming, appreciate your time. >> Thanks for the invitation. >> Thank you, John. >> So we're celebrating International Women's Day this week, and this month, and pretty much every day, I think we're going to be doing a lot of good stuff. But today's a special day. And talking about people's careers, their roles, the gender gap, is a big theme this year. These are all the topics that are going on and being discussed. So, it's a been a lot of fun when learning a lot, I have to ask you guys with AWS, Cindy we'll start with you. How is AWS addressing the gender gap in its technical teams? Because solution architects, they're technical. And we need more women in there. How is AWS addressing the gender gap with its technical teams? >> Yes, for sure, thank you very much. Let me start with a quick note about what is the situation in Mexico. Let me go first into a report published by IMCO, and this is talking about this gender gaps in a STEM career. So let me tell you that three out of 10 professionals who choose careers related with the STEM, with the science technology, engineering and mathematics, are women. So, can you imagine this difference, It's really critical because for sure, we have few women. And in the moment that you try to reach people, to be part of the company, it's difficult. So it's important for AWS to be very very supportive in this initiative and also to be supporting diverse teams. So, that's why we are very supportive in bringing diverse talent in the company. >> There's a lot of focus on getting people early into the pipe lining. Is that some another big area? Did the study show anything there? >> Well, basically it's that we are studying to push harder, to bring more information to the ladies, to the women in general. And also to start developing the technical skills. Because it's really difficult and in the moment that you try to do this, it start like seeing these behaviors or stigmas about this is only for men, it's not for women. So we are trying to start breaking this point in general. >> Fernanda, we had a great chat about Latin America reinvent on theCUBE with your leader over there and, we were talking about the broader community and how you guys are partnering with external organizations and customers. How is Amazon Web Services, AWS, aiming to foster better balance and gender balance and technology partnerships in Latin America? >> Sure, so while the situation in Brazil is not different from the situation that Cindy was mentioning in Mexico right? Our research shows that women only represent around 37% of the workforce where in the country we have over 51-52% of women as part of our population. While we can take this from a gap perspective, also, we can take it from an opportunity perspective. There is such a huge unexplored workforce that we can bring to be part of AWS in the technology world, right? So for us on AWS and Amazon, it's part part of our day one culture. So we are still learning, right? And we are still trying, experimenting to see how we can bring more women to the tech world. One of the things that we are investing in Brazil and in Latin America, are the early in career talent programs. This is something that we have the opportunity to work with the students. And in LATAM, it's a little bit different from the US. We have the opportunity to work with them for one year sometimes for two years in a role while they work they are still in the university and we prepare that talent really early in their career and bring them to be part of Amazon. So yeah, I'm super excited with those programs, I can, talk more about it, but this is one of the initiatives that we are betting that will maybe be a game changer for us in the technology. >> Yeah, those are very interesting stats, 37% of the workers in country where women represent over half of the population. So definitely a lot of work to be done. I got to ask both of you. Amazon has a leadership principle that says that they want to strive to be the world's, or earth's best employer earth being, Earth Day and all that sustainability as well. Diversity, inclusion and equity is a big part of that mission more. And also Amazon's also known for high performing work environment. So, so having the best diversity and inclusion you know, is a, is a, as some say and many are saying is a force multiplier in performance. How is that going in your areas? Can you talk about how the culture that you're in, the countries that you're in and the Amazonian leadership principles tie together? Can you share your thoughts and experiences? >> Sure. I can, I can get started maybe with that one. So, although we have a new leadership principle from my perspective, we have we have always had leadership principles that foster diversity and, and inclusion, right. Pick up, earn trust as an example like it says, listen carefully, right. And speak candidly, this is for me it's the baseline for any, any inclusion conversation. Right. And also you have things like have backbone, disagree and commit. Like you are empowering people to actually have an opinion and bring back that opinion and be heard. Right. So it was already there. I think the thing now is that we have a very specific leadership principle so that there is no, no room for interpretation. Right. It's right there saying that there is a mission a mission to, to be the best employer. Right. And, and I'm, I'm very excited about it. >> John: Cindy, share your thoughts too. I like that comment because you know, Amazon culture's known for, you know, debate then align. Okay. And now you got that cultural factor. Now it's in the leadership principle. What's your reaction? >> Yes. And, and let me add a comment on that about Fernanda's point is that this LP is giving us like the empower to give this environment to prepare, to to give this space to the team and also to be more creative. And also to be more diverse is really important for us to have this space with a lot of empathy, with the in the space to have a lot of fun. And it's important to keep all the time in mind that are we doing the right thing for our employees? Are we are empowering them to be the best of, of the world? So, that is something that is critical for us and, and well that is something that we are right now working on it. >> Okay. So first of all I'm very impressed by both of you. You're inspiring. And I can also tell you that being a solution architect is not an easy job. But it's also in high demand. A lot of people want to, they need solution architects. It's one of the most coveted positions in the industry right now. So how do we get more women in that role? What ideas do you guys have besides being great role models, yourselves? How do we get more solution architects? Because it's super valuable and everyone wants to hire them. >> Fernanda, did you want to start? >> It's you guys. >> You touched a very important point, John. It's about having, having good examples. Like, I mean, it's about you seeing yourself in the role right? You, you believing that it's, it's possible. It's for everyone. If you have a spirit where you, you want to build things if you have this spirit of exploring new possibilities if you like to experiment, well, then you have all that we need in a solution architect, right? It's just then a matter of, you know, know learning technical, learning technology, technical stuff. But this is, this is about having fun on your journey as as a solution architect as well. >> And, and let me tell you something that we are also investing in trainings. Training is online for the for the women that they are, that has this interest that they want to learn more about the technology. They want to have a deeper knowledge about the technical stuff. So we are supporting these initiatives and that is something that they can do background and in their own pace. >> And this is an important role because they need the leadership as head of solution architects. It's a good thing. Is, is there any ways that you found that's a best practice for identifying or advice for people to know if they have what it takes or they have an affinity towards technology? Sometimes it's math. Because cloud is great levels it out. I mean, cloud is new, is more jobs open now that didn't exist years ago, couple years ago. So anyone can rise to the top. >> Yeah. I think that's the beauty of the cloud. There is so much space when we say technology I think this is such a, a broad word, right? It means so much, right. It can be someone that likes to develop code. It can be someone that likes to work with infrastructure. It can be someone that likes machine learning or databases or someone that is inspired about applications for the education world or to research genomes or cure cancer. So, yeah, I don't think that there is like any more like a specific profile. I think it's very open for everyone to explore what they love doing. And even from a technology perspective AWS is working to simplify access to the technology. If we take our services on machine learning. For instance, they are for people, for business people like you don't have to know much about algorithms, right. To use some of the AWS services. So I think we're experiencing the democratization of the technology, and with that more opportunity for people to join us. >> A lot of people are changing careers into cloud. So Cindy, I want to ask you guys also if you can share how the mentoring process works there. Is there mentoring? How does that work? Do you match people? Have you found a nice formula for providing some mentoring and some pathways as people come in? >> Yes, we have many ways but one is very important, is that we have user groups. That is a way that we have like a community with internal and external people, and we share advices, guidance, best practices for the people that is interested in this matter. So for one side as I already mentioned, we have training online that you can reach. We have a lot of free courses. Maybe you can start jumping into artificial intelligence. IUT whatever you want to, to, to want that given them. But in the other hand, we have this option to have this kind of support. We have AWS Girl Chile user groups. We have AWS women, Colombian user groups girls in Argentina, we have many of them. We have four hundreds of user communities. So, that is the way that we can keep in touch. >> Any other programs? I mean, Amazon Web Service and Amazon has very strong representation of women. There's a lot of pockets of women groups in all over the world. How does it come together? Because you also have customers in the user groups. You have partners in the partner network. You have technologists learning. So you have this ecosystem of people. It's not just AWS. How are you guys extending that gap into those areas? >> Exactly. And those conversations are getting more and more constant with our customers, right? So we used to talk about technology, we used to talk about business problems, now we talk about diversity. We talk about improving representation and improving the sentiment of inclusion within our customers as well. And one of the things that I can bring, we have been working with a number of our customers in Brazil just to mention New Bank, one of our customers there in building programs. between AWS and the customer, where we train people, and we expose that people to the market, even if it's inside AWS, inside New Bank or any other partner in that ecosystem. So we are building talent not only for us, but for for the entire ecosystem to benefit from. >> Okay, so I have to ask you guys How did you guys get into the tech, Cindy? What was your way? Did it just jump at you? Did it grab you? Did you kind of discover it early? When did you kind of get into the tech? >> That's a good question. I was remembering this moment that when I was seven years old I just started like working with cars and also with that kind of companies, literally companies. And in that moment say, "I want to be part of this technology work." And after that in high school, I have the opportunity to touch a computer. In that moment I said, "This is the thing that I want to do in the rest of my life." >> Yeah. that's it right there. You got the diction, you taste it. Fernanda, what about you? What's your story? How did you get into it? What was the moment? Was there an exact moment or did it just surround you? >> Yeah, I think I was always curious about how things work. I was not thinking about a career in tech honestly. I was thinking about becoming a lawyer, but at some point in time just clicked, right? And I had actually to fight my way into the technical world literally because, I had this very important university close to my house, like maybe 15 minutes from my house. But at that point in time in Brazil, that particular institution was not accepting women. And believe me, it was not like a hundred years ago. Like it was.... (laughing) >> Yeah, you're young, it's just recently. >> Yeah, so I had to move out out of my hometown, back to the city, to Sao Paulo, which is our biggest city in Brazil to find a place for me on an university that would take women. So yeah, I had to fight my way into technology, but I am very proud of that I was able to. >> Yeah, you know what's great now is you have YouTube, you have all these resources, these videos are going to be going everywhere. We're going to put this out there. There's communities where people can learn and see people like themselves out in positions of leadership and technology. So more and more contents being out there. And I think hopefully no one will have to fight to get into tech. If they like it, they're in it. One of the leaders at AWS she said, "We're in a nerd native environment now, the young generation is natively technical." And, I believe that, I see that. I think that's going to be a really exciting trend and seeing leaders like yourselves out there is really wonderful, so thank you for spending the time with us here on theCUBE. Final question I'll ask you, what's next for you Cindy and Fernanda? What's next in your journey? >> Okay, I think the next for me is to keep pushing the women in Mexico to keep installing and also to start thinking into what is the next step in my career? Where should I go? So I think that is the point that I want to do. >> Cindy, what's next for you? >> I feel I'm just starting. (laughing) So much to do, so much to do. I mean, there is a big business for us to make happen in Brazil right now, and we are looking for talent. So, if the video's going to go on YouTube, I would like everybody there to know that yeah, we are looking for talents in Brazil with opportunities all over the world actually. And yeah, that's building, building and building. >> And there's some rig twitch channels by the way too on some developer programmings, tons of programming, it's all out there. Congratulations, and we're looking forward to following up with you both in the future to get an update and thank you for spending the time and sharing your your stories here on theCUBE I really appreciate, thank you. >> Thank you too. >> Thank you so much. >> Okay, theCUBE presentation of Women in Tech, Global Events celebrating International Women's Day. This is the beginning of more programming. We're going to see more episodes from theCUBE, I'm John Furrier, your host. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Welcome to theCUBE coverage of women in tech. International Women's Day 2022. I'm your host, Lisa Martin. Karla Wong joins me next. Country Sales Leader for the Commercial Sector in Peru at AWS. Karla, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you so much Lisa and thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be with you today. >> I'm looking forward to chatting with you. You've been in the tech industry for more than 20 years, you've been a leader in tech and sales and customer service, partners, organizations. Talk to me a little bit about your background. >> I am a system engineer. I have some studies from enterprise direction with a university in Savannah, Columbia and I have a digital transformation certified with MIT in Boston. >> Fantastic, were you always interested in technology or STEM or was it something that you pivoted into somewhere during your career? >> Yes, you know what? Since I was little, I was just fascinated with the technology and all the time I was just trying to figure out how to do things and how to build that things and I remember once I was just, of course many time long ago, I was with this BHS, right? An equipment and I tried to do and tried to understand how this works and just figure out I was with many parts of that equipment and then I didn't realize how to join that parts but it was really funny because all the time I was trying to understand what is behind that kind of equipment, how this works and all the time I was asking and my dad said, I was just feeling so curiosity about that and asking many questions and I have uncles that they are engineers. So I was just all the time asking about that and they said, you know what? You are good in math, maybe you can just decide for an engineering career. They were encouraged me for doing that. So I guess that was my first clue that I'm interested in technology. >> Well, you sounds like you have a natural curiosity that you had great role models in your parents and probably others along your educational route and your career route that kind of encouraged that curiosity and being curious is one of the things that's important to being at AWS. Am I right? >> Yes, it's really important because we promote, you know, our, one of the main leadership principles that you read is learn to be curious and they promote that one, right? They're encouraging you to innovate, to learn more, to try to understand more about our solutions, our customers, how to make the things better and you have the space to propose new things, to do the things better. So they encourage you and they empower you to do that and you feel like your curiosity that you have very natural here's improved and they just promote that you continue to do that. >> That curiosity is so important. I mean, when we think about women in technology and we think about bringing in more thought diversity and DEI, it's important to be curious, to be able to bring different thoughts in so that the organization can be more well rounded, it can learn, you also not only do you lead the sales organization, but you are someone that's very active in volunteering. Tell me a little bit about that and how do you balance leading a sales organization and volunteering at the same time? >> You know, when you talk about this is more like work life balance, right? And when we talk about that you can feel like you need it, right? You need to work on that. It's more like an attitude of it's extremely important to think about mental health for everyone because that of course have impact in your physical health and when you talk about this, it not only matters in terms of attitude, it's action and disciplines as well and you have to keep in mind that. The first thing I believe and all the time I do it give the right value for this balance because it's something that a lot of people want more than anything and I have more than some professional decision thinking about this precisely and I have to thinking of me as a person, my family, how to help the community and you cannot imagine the impact when you decide to go for a volunteering activities how can benefit you and not in only the personal way, in your professional way. Even though you didn't start a volunteering, trying to figure out how this help you in your professional life, you receive a lot of benefits from the volunteering activities and it's amazing how that one's impacting your professional life also. When you are a volunteer, you'll receive new and meaningful experiences. Volunteering can be an excellent getaway to find unique and valuable experiences that you are very difficult to find in a day to day basis, right? And you develop your real life skills, openness to criticism, responsibility, humility, commitment, service, attitude, many things that you can proactively include in your job with your team and you can join with them in teamwork and try to figure out how to engage with them in your activities. This is another way to motivate your team, to build your team, right? Talking with this very valuable experiences and also I find out that that improves your health and mood. >> Sounds very-- >> We talk having-- >> Sorry. >> I'm sorry, no don't worry. >> That's very complimentary, that the volunteer work with leading the sales organization that there's so much value that you're bringing into your sales leadership role from the volunteering that you do. I'm just curious, can you describe some of the volunteer organizations that you work with? I think it's pretty impressive. >> Yes, I started my volunteering 14 years ago I guess but I was in the volunteering activities from the school and my dad was a really strong influence for that because I joined, I remember joining with him and go to do some volunteering activities that he led and I start 14 years I went with Operation and Smile group and then in the last two or three years I start with Project of Love. We are focused on kids with cancer and try to help them to build the last wishes they have because they pass away and at the end of this, this two years ago, I start with local activity that we do for patients with rare diseases and we just try to join two great passion that I have. One is the dance that we have here. The name of our national dance is Marinera Norteña and we are just doing this with a group that they are passion at the same time with this volunteering activities and the dance and we just trying to be the ambassador for and the voice for these patients, try to share with the community, the hard health journey that they have trying to obtain a fair treatment, a fair diagnostic, because they are rare disease and here is very difficult that they investigate about that. So that's why we are just doing this using dance as a way to broadcast our voice and just share happiness and hope and health. >> Happiness and hope. Those are two great things. So as the female leader in the tech industry, what are some of the main challenges that you have found regarding cultural aspects, regarding geographical aspects and LATAM? Talk to me about some of those challenges. >> Let me share with you my personal journey. My challenges started with the moment I decided to start engineering. A career that is traditional considered for men only, although this changes over the time, you will realize that the stereotype remains in many people minds right? It happens not only in Peru I can see it in Latin America. Someone once asked me if I wouldn't like to study something easier for a woman, right? And I just, when I received that question, that helping me to reaffirm that it was taking the right decision and I have the fortune to work with companies that believe in female leadership and the importance of our contribution and empower me to do things differently. Although I must confess that this was not always like this. I experienced the situation when I have to show that I'm so much and more capable and prepared than a man to take a major challenge. So despite the fact in the recent years you have had the great advances in integration of women in the field of science and technology, the gap in equality in equality in this sector still continues and many times the attitude towards women is discriminatory considering that we don't have enough knowledge and we don't have enough strength to overcome challenge without the ability to give the extra mile that is often required, or simply because of a gender issue. And generally speaking, opportunities that they're not equal. Neither in salaries. Several studies have revealed that in the same position since at position level within company, men's salary or benefits are higher than the woman. In addition, sometimes the position for a woman is not necessarily for merit it's just to feel fulfill a gender quota and when it's fulfilled, there's no more opportunities. So it's still a long way to go. We are working in that, we are trying to inspire more women to be part of this world. This is an amazing world and this world needs our leadership, judgment, ambition, as a woman. So that's why we try to inspire and try to be a role model for some young ladies that they are thinking about this career in technology. >> Right, you bring up a great point though about one of the things in terms of hiring for quotas. And as we think about this International Women's Day, this year's theme is Breaking the Bias. Where do you think we are with that? >> I think we have a lot long, long way to go to. Today we don't see that we have more women in some leadership roles in technology. We see more young ladies studying engineering but you know what, when you talk about stereotypes we need to understand, or the bias, the bias is not only what the society it's giving you, it's also your own bias because we need to understand that technology careers is not only for men it's also for a woman. And we need to understand and change the perspective that we see the challenges that we have in our life because sometimes that could be a really stopper in your professional life. And for me, we don't, we really need to understand that it's important. We cannot stop believing in ourself and we can achieve whatever we want. So we never stop pursuing our goals and achieve what you really need to achieve and as I said all the time, get inspired by women with great achievements who have changed this world technology. We have many examples of that for many years. We have Eva Maria Kiesler, the core inventor of Wi-Fi, Radia Joy Perlman, known as the the mother of the internet and Ada Lovelace who became the first female computer programmer. So we have many examples in this story to understand that the limit is on you. So the bias we need to break the first one is the bias that you have of yourself. >> That's a good point. That's a really good point there. I'm curious, what would your recommendation be? You obviously had, you had that natural curiosity that we talked about. You also seems like you had great parents who were very encouraging of all of the different things that you were interested in. What do you recommend for women maybe starting out in the STEM area or in tech in particular? How do they get that courage to just try? >> You know what, the main thing I guess as I mentioned before, is to put aside the stereotypes, right? And get out of your head, the standing out career like science, technology and engineering is only for a man. All the time I have this list for me, that is lesson learned. And my lesson learned is please don't think that you cannot do it. Try it. If you go and the things do not work well, try it again and try it again. So don't feel stopped because you face your first challenge and the challenge it's very difficult, because we have the courage to do that and you know what? It is very and interesting to understand that women has resilience, we have the courage to do anything, we are multi tasking all the time they say women can do many things at the same time and we have this particular way to communicate. We are very inclusive. We make empathy. We're just leading with a cohesion concept of a team. So we need to explore more about our strengths and try to encourage from them. And one of the main things for me is don't feel afraid and transform, you know, when you feel like that, transfer that as your power, you're encouraged to continue. So we need to transform our fears in our, I always said our gasoline to continue and then your motive to be successful. So transform your fears. >> I love that. >> That's my main focus. >> Transform your fear. That's great advice there is. And I will say no, don't be afraid to raise your hand and ask a question 'cause I guarantee you, many people in the room whether it's a physical room these days or it's a virtual video conferencing room, probably have the same question. Be the one to raise your hand and ask. But I love how you're saying transform that fear 'cause it's there. Don't be afraid to fail but also we need to have those female role models, mentors and sponsors that we can see that can have help us kind of in that transformation process, that mentorship is really critical to help guide that along. >> Yes, yes, yes, that's correct and I will, I am, I was really fortunate because I have real role models in my life not only, as I mentioned my dad and also one of the things that I recognize in this company that I work for that empower leadership from women and I identify some role models I want to follow and I ask her in each particular company to be my coach and to be my mentor, because of course you are starting in the technology side and you need more from others that they can share with you her wisdom, right? And try to give you advice, how to work on that. And I always said, and I will always repeat because I sometimes I have the opportunity to mentor young ladies that they are very curious about the technology side and I share with them my experience, my lesson learned so they can build their own story to do this and I share all the time don't compete in a male environment in a gray suit. You have your own personality, you have your own strengths, you're a woman and you have your strength as a woman. Show that, be, you know, the black point in the middle of the white environment because you're different, your leadership is different. You have to understand that, value that and explore more about that so you can inspire others and you can inspire yourself and it's fair to say, please identify your achievements and value them because you deserve that, you fight for them and you have to be celebrate for that. >> Right. >> So that's the main, you know, the main idea when I share with these ladies but it's right, it's fair to be recognized for that. It's your effort, it's your way to do the things differently and it's very appreciated. >> Very appreciated and very inspiring. Thank you so much Karla for sharing your story, how you are balancing work life volunteerism, how it's complimentary. I found this conversation very inspiring so thank you so much for joining me today. >> Thank you. No, thank you so much Lisa. It was really a pleasure for me to be with you today. >> Excellent, likewise. For Karla Wong, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE's coverage of women in tech, International Women's Day 2022. 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(upbeat music) >> Lisa Martin: Hi, everyone. Welcome to The Cube's coverage of women in tech International Women's Day 2022. I'm your host, Lisa Martin. Nicole Parafita joins me next: head of communications, people and culture at AWS Latin America. Nicole, it's great to have you on the program. >> Nicole: Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure. >> Tell me a little bit about your role as head of communications, people and culture. >> Super. So my role is very, very new. I've started in this role like two months ago, so really, really new. And as you said I lead the communications, people and culture team, which is dedicated to understanding people's needs, fostering leadership development, increasing diversity and inclusion, enabling employee recognition, and of course mitigating burnout, which is something we're seeing all across the world due to working from home and all of that. So it's a huge, huge task. And of course it is aligned to Amazon's 15 leadership principle which is striving to be Earth's best employer. So huge challenge. >> Lisa: So tell me a little- so this is a brand new role as you said, just a couple of months. Was the pandemic a factor? And you mentioned burnout. I mean, that's one of the things that I think we've all been struggling with. Was that an influence in creating the role that you're in? >> So there are many many things that led to creating this organization. I think that the first one is this new leadership principle which is striving to be Earth's best employer. There's - people is our top priority and we want to work with them and for them so that we generate engaging content, training materials and we work on enabling them, right? So the first one is striving to be Earth's best employer and that alignment. The second is the priority that our VP in Latin America gives its people. It's the key differentiator that we have at AWS: our culture and it's people and how our people live the culture. And the third thing would be the fact that we're growing, we're growing so fast. We're hiring so many people in the last year so, and we need to make sure we keep this day one culture alive and strong. So yes, we need to make sure that all these people that were hired since March 2020 and never set foot in a physical office, in an AWS physical office live the leadership principles, understand them deeply and can apply all these mechanisms from our culture in their day to day basis. Those are the key three things that led to the creation of this org. >> So you mentioned the leadership principles striving to be Earth's best employer. How does that, how is that connected to International Women's Day and what you're doing in terms of really bringing diversity and equality and inclusion into AWS LATAM? >> I love this question. I think, as I said before, culture and people is our top priority. We're learning a lot. We, this new leadership principle which is striving to be Earth's best employer acknowledges that we're not the best, but that we're working very hard to become Earth's best employer. And all the efforts that we're doing are related to feedback, right? We're listening a lot to our, what our employees are saying and what the market is saying to build the best employee experience we can for everybody. And first of all, I'd say that our culture and our mission is to become, or to be, the most customer-centric company in the world. And for that, we need to be super diverse and inclusive. We need to get as many backgrounds and life experiences we can so that we can invent in the name of our customers. So building this diverse team really helps our business but also, as Jeff Bezos says, "it's the right thing to do." It's what we need to do. So what do we mean when we talk about inclusion, diversity and equity? I think it's good to define these three things, these key pillars of our culture. The first one is inclusion, which about belonging, right? It's about giving the physical- the psychological, sorry, safety to people so that they feel represented. This is super important for us. How do we make people feel comfortable where they work at? And some examples of this that I wanted to share with you. First of all, there's a mechanism that we use internally at AWS, that it's called Connections. Connections is a daily live feedback tool. So at AWS, we don't believe in having an annual survey for listening to employees, to what employees have to say. We believe in having real time feedback and this tool is that, exactly that. So every day I would turn on my computer and I would see a question from this Connection system. And one of the things that we're tracking is, the team I'm on helps me feel included at work. So we would say yes, no, or different options that we give the employees. And we would track how they feel. And according to that data we would implement different initiatives. So we're working on real time feedback from the team so that we can act fast and help the team feel better, right? The other thing that I would would say about belonging is that in AWS we have 13 affinity groups. We have 90,000 Amazonians across hundreds of chapters around the world who work towards different initiatives. One of them, for example, if it's Women at Amazon, Women at Amazon is a huge organization within Amazon with more than 80 chapters worldwide. And the objective of this affinity group is attracting, developing, and retaining women in both tech and non-tech roles across all Amazon business. As an example of the kind of initiatives that they drive, we can talk about Break the Bias. I'm not sure if you heard about this, but it's a huge initiative. It's a webinar that we will be hosting in Latin America on International Women Day on the 8th of March and we will have women sharing amazing stories. We will have, for example, Marta Ferero. Marta Ferero is the founder of a startup, a Colombian startup, called Ubits, which is like the Netflix of corporate training in her own words, among others. And we will also have recruiting specialists that will give advice on how to give and accept in our careers. So those are the kind of initiatives that we're trying to do to attract and retain and develop talent. This is more like an attracting talent thing because it's an open webinar that we have that. Yeah. >> Go ahead. >> So that's about inclusion, which is belonging and how do we make people belong to certain groups within Amazon? The second thing is about diversity which is feeling, it's about feeling represented, right? And it's not about only gender. It can be about race. It can be about ethnicity, sexual orientation, age. We want everyone to feel represented. But now, if we're talking about International Women's Day let me talk a little bit about female representation. And I am very proud to share that we finished 2021 with 18% of female representation in the leadership team in the LATAM leadership team, which means people reporting to the LATAM VP, the vice president, Jaime. And we started 2022 with 35% female representation which is a huge improvement from one year to the other. So that are the numbers, right? But it's not just about numbers. It's the fact that these women that are now part of the leadership team have been given very important tasks. And as my boss always says, "don't tell me about your strategy. Tell me about where you're putting your resources and I'll tell you what your strategy is." And I love the fact that he picked very amazing women to lead very important missions within LATAM. For example, let me just give you an example, Carolina Pina, who joined us from the public sector team is leading this massive training organization. And like the name implies, this organization focuses on generating talent at a huge scale. And this is, I don't know, one of the most long term oriented tasks that we have, and it has a huge impact on Latin America, not only AWS business, but on Latin America. It's focused on really transforming our region into something different so that people can have a better quality of life. So those are the things that really amaze me. We've been given very important tasks, like this one, to really move forward in terms of cloud transformation and the transformation of the countries we operate in, which is amazing, I think. >> It is amazing. >> The last - >> Go ahead. >> The last topic, I'm sorry, I'm speaking too much, but just to close. The last thing that I want to say is equity, which is one of the key things that we have in our culture and equity is about fairness. It's about generating or giving the same amount of opportunities to everybody. The fact that we're massively training people in Latin America is about fairness about generating the skills. And the other thing that we're doing that is super important is that we're changing our interview process so that we make sure we have diverse, a diverse set of interviewers participating in the processes, right? So that people feel represented from the moment they start their journey with AWS with the first phone screen, right? So those things for me are really transformative and talk about what we're trying to do. And of course it has an impact on gender, but it also has an impact on a broader scale from a diversity, equity and inclusion perspective which I think talks about the humanity of AWS. It's not just about the technology it's about transforming people's lives and helping Latin America, or the countries we operate in, to be better, right? For the good. >> Right. That's a great focus. Is that kind of a shift in AWS' culture in terms of really focusing on diversity? Or is that something that's really kind of been there from the beginning? >> So I think it's been here from the beginning, but now, for example, in Latin America, we're growing a lot. So we have more resources that we can allocate to really focus on this initiative. So aligning to these new leadership principal that was launched in July, or published in July, we always were very committed to diversity, equity and inclusion, but now we have more resources so that we can double down on this huge bet. And I feel very proud about that. >> Lisa: Tell me a little bit about, in the few remaining minutes that we have, I'm curious about your background. Were you always interested in tech or STEM? Was that something that you gravitated towards from when you were young, or was it something that you got into a little bit later? >> So my background is communications. I studied advertising, so no. I'm not a science or engineer-focused person, but from at early age I started working in tech companies, so I learned a lot. I had the chance to live in different countries like Mexico or the UK or the US where I always had the chance to interact with many amazing men and women that were focused on technology. So, no, I'm not a technology expert but I've always been related to people who know a lot about this. And I learned a lot in that process. And, you know, I've always seen like this, I don't how to explain, but this initiative or this will to make everyone feel comfortable where they work. I've seen this at AWS. And as I said before, we started the interview I'm eight months pregnant at this point. I'm about to take a five month leave which is a lot more than what the law gives me in Argentina, for example, where I'm located. So those are the kind of things that really make me feel comfortable where I work with and really proud of where I work with. And I want everybody to have the chance to get this type of job so that they can feel the way I feel, right? And I'm talking about men, women, people with disabilities, and many other type of affinity people, right? >> Right. It's so important to be able to have that comfort because your productivity is better, your performance is better, and ultimately the company benefits as those employees feel comfortable in the environment in which they're working and that they have the freedoms to be curious. Talk to me a little bit about some of the things, you mentioned the stat of 2020 to - 2021, excuse me, to 2022, almost doubling the number of women. >> Yep. >> Talk to me about some of the things that you're looking forward to as 2022 progresses. >> Wow, I'm the, you know, every time we have a performance review at AWS you get asked this question, what are you most excited about? Right. And this year I was excited about so many things that the list, I mean I didn't have enough characters to write about that. I think we are always trying to just confirm our beliefs at AWS. And this is the, what I like the most about working here. AWS or Amazon really values people who are curious, are always learning, and always trying to listen to other opinions. And this is key for our culture. I'm very excited about the fact that we're putting, we're turning on mechanisms to have even more feedback than we used to have, not just from customers and partners, but also from our employees. So the fact that we're having real time feedback will really make us better as an organization and always with this day-one culture in mind, which is very fast, right? We're making decisions very fast. We're very dynamic, we're learning on the go. We fail, sometimes. We fail, but we learn very fast. We fail fast. We used to say that we learn, we fail fast. And failure is part of our culture of innovation. So we're learning, we're failing, at some point we're implementing changes. And it's like a very interesting flywheel, right. Of growth. And it's very fast. So my job is very dynamic and I'm very excited about this. I'm hiring a team. I have a team of four people. I already hired two people and I need one more. So I'm very excited about that. I'm very excited to see what our employees are capable of. I mean, they're always inventing on behalf of our customers and partners. And it's always amazing to see the results from the year end, right. You get to tell stories from customers and partners that you never imagined you were going to tell. So I'm very excited about all those things. >> Lisa: Excellent. Well, good luck with the baby. Thank you so much for sharing. What your role is doing and how it's really helping to drive that diversity and inclusion and equity within Amazon. It's such an important cultural element and it's exciting to hear this strategic focus that AWS has. Nicole, we appreciate your time. >> Thank you very much, Lisa, for having me. >> My pleasure. For Nicole Parafita, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching women in tech International Women's Day, 2022. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Hey everyone. Welcome to theCUBE's coverage of Women In Tech, International Women's Day 2022. I'm your host, Lisa Martin. I have two guests from AWS here with me. Carolina Pina joins us, the head of Enterprise Enablement for LATAM and Laura Alvarez Modernel is here as well, Public Sector Programs Manager at AWS. Ladies, it's great to have you on theCUBE. >> Nice to meet you. >> Thank you for having us. >> Carolina, let's start with you. Talk to me a little bit about your role, what it is that you're doing there. >> So my role in AWS is to actually create mechanisms of massive training to try to close the talent gap that we have in the region. And when I mentioned talent gap, I'm talking about obviously digital and cloud-computing skills. So that's, that's, in a nutshell what my role entails. >> Lisa: Got it. How long have you been in that role? Just curious. >> So I've been at AWS a little bit over, over two years. I was actually in the public sector team when I joined, leading the education vertical for Latin American Canada. And I recently joined the commercial sector now leading these massive training efforts for the region for LATAM. >> And Laura, you're in public sector. Talk to me a little bit about your role. >> Yes, I'm in public sector. I'm also based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. So yeah, I'm from Latin America, and I lead educational and community impact programs in the Southern cone of Latin America. I also lead diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and I'm part of the Women at Amazon global board. That's our affinity group to make sure we make efforts towards building a more equal world. And on a personal note I'm really passionate about the topic of gender equality because I truly think it affects us all as women and as Latins. So that's something that I'm always interested in collaborating with. >> Lisa: Excellent. Carolina back to you. If we think about from an enablement perspective how is AWS partnering with its customers and its partners to train and employ women particularly in technology? >> Oh, sure. Lisa, so it's not a surprise. We, like I mentioned, you know we have a big cloud skills, talent gap in the region. In fact, you know, 69% of companies have reported talent shortages and difficulty hiring. So, and this represents a 15 year high. So, many of these companies are actually, you know, our own commercial customers. So they approach us saying, you know, asking for for support training and developing their talent. So like I mentioned, in my role I create massive training efforts and initiatives. So we always take into consideration women, minorities, underrepresented community, and not just for the current talent, meaning like the people that are currently employed, but also to ensure that we are proactively implementing initiatives to develop a talent of younger you know, a younger generation and a talent. So we can, you know, to inspire them and, and ensure that they, that we're seeing them represented in companies like AWS, you know and our customers, and in our partners. And obviously we, when we sit down with customers to craft these massive trainings you know, leveraging their ecosystems and communities, we actually try to use all our AWS training and certification portfolio which includes, you know, in live in class with live in structures, in classroom trainings. We also have our AWS Skill Builder platform which is the platform that allows us to, you know to reach a broader audience because it has, you know over 500 free and on-demand classes. And we also have a lot of different other programs that touches in different audiences. You know, we have AWS re/Start for underrepresented, and underemployed minorities. We also have AWS Academy, which is the program that we have for higher education institutions. And we have AWS, you know, Educate which also touches, you know, cloud beginners. So in every single of these programs, we ensure that we are encompassing and really speaking to women and developing training and developing women. >> Lisa: That's a great focus there. Laura, talk to me about upskilling. I know AWS is very much about promoting from within. What are some of the things that it's doing to help women in Latin America develop those tech skills and upskill from where, maybe where they are now? >> Well, Lisa, I think that is super interesting because there's definitely a skills gap problem, right? We have all heard about. And what's funny is also that we have this huge opportunity in Latin America to train people and to help further develop the countries. And we have the companies that need the talent. So why is there still a gap, right? And I think that's because there's no magic solution to solving this problem. No, like epic Hollywood movie scene that it's going to show how we close the gap. And it takes stepping out of our comfort zone. And as Carolina mentioned, collaborating. So, we at AWS have a commitment to help 29 million people globally to grow their technical skills with free cloud-computing skills training by 2025. I know that sounds a lot through educational programs but we do have as Carolina mentioned, a Skill Builder you can go into the website for free, enter, choose your path, get trained. We have Academy that we implement with universities. Re/Start that is a program that's already available in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Costa Rica. So there are a lot of opportunities, but you also mentioned something else that I would like to dive a bit deeper that is Latin American women. And yesterday we had the opportunity to record a panel about intersectionality with three amazing Latin women. And what we have to learn from that is that these are two minorities that intersect, right. We're talking about females that are minority. Latinas are minority. And in tech, that is also something that is even bigger minority. So there are more difficulties there and we need to make sure that we are meeting that talent that is there that is in Latin America, that exists. We know for sure we have unicorns in Latin America that are even AWS customers like Mercado Libre, and we have to meet them with the opportunities. And that's why we created a program that came from identifying how this problem evolves in Latin America, that there is a lack of confidence in women also that they don't feel prepared or equipped. There is a cultural component why we don't choose tech careers. And we partner with universities, more than 12 universities in Latin America with the International American Development Bank as well to create tech skills that's a free five weeks program in order to get students and get female in Latin America, into the tech world. And we also have them with mentorship. So I think that is an opportunity to truly collaborate because we as AWS are not going to solve these by ourselves, right? We need everyone pitching in on that. >> Lisa: Right. It's absolutely a team effort. You mentioned something important in terms of helping women, and especially minorities get out of their comfort zone. Carolina, I'm curious when you're talking with women and getting them into the program and sharing with them all of the enablement programs that you have, how do you help them be confident to get out of that comfort zone? That's a hard thing to do. >> Yeah, no, for sure. For sure, Lisa, well, I, you know, a lot of times actually I use myself as an example because, you know, I studied engineering and industrial systems engineering many years ago. And you know, a lot of my career has been in in higher education and innovation and startups. And as I mentioned in the intro I've been at AWS for a little bit over two years. So I, my career has not been in cloud and I recently joined the cloud. So I actually had to go through our own trainings and get our own certifications. So I, that's, you know a lot of times I actually, I use my own example, so people understand that you don't have to come from tech, you don't have to come, you can actually be a non-tech person and, and also see the the benefits of the cloud. And you don't have to only, you know, learn cloud if you're in the IT department or in an IT team. So sometimes, I also emphasize that the cloud and the future is absolutely the cloud. In fact, the world economic foreign, you know teaches us that cloud-computing is that the technology that's going to be mostly adopted by 2025. So that's why we need to ensure that every single person, women and others are really knowledgeable in the cloud. So that's why, you know, technical and untechnical. But I, you know, I use myself as an example for them to say, you know, you can actually do it. And obviously also I collaborate with Laura and a lot of the women at Amazon Latin America Group to also you know, ensure that we're doing webinars and panels. So we show them ourselves as role model like, Laura is an incredible role model for our community. And so it's also to to show examples of what the possibilities are. And that's what we do. >> Lisa: I love that you're sharing >> And can I make a note there also? >> Please, yes. >> To add to that. I think it also requires the companies and the, and the private sector to get out of their comfort zone, right? Because we are not going to find solutions doing what we are already doing. We truly need to go and get near these persons with a new message. Their interest is there in these programs we have reached more than 3,000 women already in Latin America with tech skills. So it's not that women are not interested. It's like, how do we reach them with a message that resounds with them, right? Like how we can explain the power of technology to transform the world and to actually improve their communities. I think there's something there also that we need to think further of. >> It's so important. You know, we say often when we're talking about women in tech, that she needs to see what she can be or if she can't see it, she can't be it. So having those role models and those mentors and sponsors is absolutely critical for women to get, I call it getting comfortably uncomfortable out of that comfort zone and recognizing there's so many opportunities. Carolina, to your point, you know, these days every company is a tech company, a data company whether you're talking about a car dealer, a grocery market. So your point about, you know, and obviously the future being cloud there's so much opportunity that that opens up, for everybody really, but that's an important thing for people to recognize how they can be a part of that get out of their comfort zone and try something that they maybe hadn't considered before. >> Yes. And, actually, Lisa I would love to share an example. So we have a group, O Boticário, which is one of our customers one of the, the lead retails in Brazil. And they've been a customer of AWS since 2013 when they realized that, you know the urgency and the importance of embracing state of the art technology, to your point, like, you know this is a retail company that understands that needs to be, you know embrace digital transformation, especially because, you know they get very busy during mother's days and other holidays during the year. So they realized that they, instead of outsourcing their IT requirements to technology experts they decided to actually start developing and bringing the talent, you know within itself, within, you know, technology in-house. So they decided to start training within. And that's when we, obviously we partnered with them to also create a very comprehensive training and certification plan that started with, you know a lot of the infrastructure and security teams but then it was actually then implemented in the rest of the company. So going back to the point like everybody really needs to know. And what we also love about O Boticário is they they really care about the diversion and inclusion aspect of this equation. And we actually collaborated with them as well through this program called Desenvolve with the Brazilian government. And Desenvolve means developing Portuguese and they this program really ensures that we are also closing that gender and that race gap and ensuring that they're actually, you know, developing talent in cloud for Brazil. So we, you know, obviously have been very successful with them and we will continue to do even more things with them particular for this topic. >> Lisa: I've always known how customer focused AWS is every time we get to go to re:Invent or some of the events but it's so nice to hear these the educational programs that you're doing with customers to help them improve DEI to help them enable their own women in their organizations to learn skills. I didn't realize that. I think that's fantastic very much a symbiotic part of AWS. If we think about the theme for this year's International Women's Day, Breaking The Bias I want to get both of your opinions and Laura we'll start with you, what that means to you, and where do you think we are in Latin America with breaking the bias? >> Well, I think breaking the bias is the first step to truly being who we are every day and being able to bring that to our work as well. I think we are in a learning curve of that. The companies are changing culturally, as Carolina mentioned we have customers that are aware of the importance of having women. And as we say at AWS not only because there is a good business reason because there is, because there are studies that show that we can increase the country's CPD, but also because it's important and it's the right thing to do. So in terms of breaking the bias I think we are learning and we have a long way to go. I talked a bit earlier about intersectionality and that is something that is also important to highlight, right? Because we are talking about females but we are also talking about another minorities. We're talking about underrepresented communities, Indigenous People, Latins. So when these overlap, we face even bigger challenges to get where we want to get, right? And to get to decision making places because technology is transforming the ways we take decisions, we live, and we need someone like us taking those decisions. So I think it's important at first to be aware and to see that you can get there and eventually to start the conversation going and to build the conversation, not to just leave it but to make sure we hear people and their input and what they're going through. >> Lisa: Yes. We definitely need to hear them. Carolina, what's your take on breaking the bias and where do you from your experience, where do you think we are with it? >> Yeah, no, I'm as passionate as Laura on this topic. And that's why we, you know we're collaborating in the Women at Amazon Latin America Chapter, because we're both very, I think breaking the bias starts with us and ourselves. And we are very proactive within AWS and externally. And I feel it's also, I mean, Lisa, what we've been doing is not only, obviously gathering you know, the troops and really making sure that, that we have very aggressive goals internally, but also bringing you know, bringing our male counterparts, and other, you know, other members of the other communities, because the change, we're not going to make it alone. Like the change where it is not women only talking to women is going to make the change. We actually need to make sure the male and other groups are represented. And the dialogue that they're that we're very conscious about that. And I feel like we're seeing more and more that the topic is becoming more of a priority not only within AWS and Amazon but we also see it because now that I meet with when I meet with customers around the region they really want to see how we can collaborate in these diversion and inclusion initiatives. So I think we are breaking the bias because now this topic is more top of mind. And then we are being more proactively addressing it and and training people and educating people. And I feel we're really in a pivoted point where the change that we've really been wanting to we will see in the next you know, few years which is very exciting. >> Lisa: Excellent, and we'll see that with the help of women like you guys. Thank you so much for joining me today, talking about what you're doing, how you're helping organizations across AWS's ecosystem, customers, partners, and helping, of course, folks from within you, right. It's a holistic effort, but we are on our way to breaking that bias and again, I thank you both for your insights. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, Lisa, for the opportunity. >> My pleasure. For Carolina Pina and Laura Alvarez Modernel, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE's coverage of Women in Tech, International Women's Day 2022. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Back the cube here. I'm John Furrier with the cube. Thanks Adam in the studio. We've got two entrepreneurs here. Co-founders of LastMileXchange, Andrew Hoskin and James Grant. Guys, thanks for coming on the cube, >> John. Good to be here. >> Love to get the entrepreneur, both co-founders making it happen. I mean, the pandemic was either a tailwind or a headwind for companies and certainly the internet didn't break. Everything worked out great. So, let's just jump in, why don't we get into some of the questions. What does LMX do? Who are you guys? Take a quick minute to explain what you guys do. >> Sure. So, we're a software provider. We have a cloud-based SAS platform, which effectively it's a bit like a Skyscanner or an Expedia for networks. Carriers need to buy and sell networks from each other and we help them do that. And we have been in the cloud since day one. And so, that's what we do while we're here and it's a good place for us to tell you about it. >> I got it. I got to ask you, because one of the things being entrepreneur, you've got to read the tea leaves. One of the secrets of being a co-founder and doing anything entrepreneurial these days is you got to see the future, but then you've got to come back to the present and convince everybody, what's going on. >> Entrepreneurs: Yeah. >> What is the core value proposition? What's the day in the life of a conversation? I mean you're talking to Martians now, like, huh? What's the public cloud it's like, is it like, isn't it just the internet? It's changing. What's the value proposition? What's the conversation like? >> So, the value position for us is that we, you know, we work with our customers to accelerate the sales cycle through cloud based services. So, a lot of our customers are global tier one carriers. So, we're looking to automate their connectivity pricing, and we do that via a cloud-based solution. So it is vital to us. And particularly with having customers all across the globe, being able to sort of deploy cloud-based services makes life much easier. >> I got to ask you, one of the things that we love about cloud is the agilities. >> Yeah. >> Can you talk about the impact of what you guys are offering for the agility side. What's the impact of the consumer, the application developer, what's the impact? >> Clouds have a big play for us, big impact for our customers. So we provide our solution effectively, almost a plug and play for them. So, we do quoting really, really well. You want to know where a network is, you want to know the connectivity, we'll sort that out for you, and we can give you a solution that they can plug into their systems really quickly. In terms of, for us, when we first started, we had servers in data centers and managing software on that, but we moved to Amazon pretty early. And what we now have is, we can spin up a new customer environment in a day, which you know, from previously two, three weeks. So, cloud has been transformational for us and hopefully for our customers as well. >> And you guys target mainly carriers? >> Very much so, yeah. We're very much in the big carrier Telco space. The people that provide the fabric upon which all of this sits. >> Yeah. And then by the way, it's magic and this, it's robust. It's what we need, utilities, it's important. Last mile, obviously, as we all, some people look at it and say, go back decades, rug ban, you know, last mile is always that last nut to crack. 5G's here, the mobile sector is looking at massive growth. You're starting to see the cloud providers recognize that the edge is just another network connection. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> How do you guys see that evolving? What's going on? How do you see that affecting your business, the customers on the market? >> Well, so network, I mean, access is all about getting onto the network, whether you're talking cloud or whatever. So, if you can't get into the network, cloud is nothing. If you can't sort of back haul your 5G, you're stuck. So, what we're seeing is, even with 5G, as it rolls out, as people look to densify their networks, they still need to get all that voice stuff, all that data traffic onto fiber. So, we're seeing a lot of interest there still in knowing where connectivity options are, knowing where the network is. With James also, I mean, that other aspect of access, 10 years ago was all about fiber. But you were just telling me before about how increasingly carriers are using 5G as effectively a router in a box, ship it in by a DPD or FedEx out to a customer. >> Yeah. So typically we'll think about mobile as connecting your mobile phone, but now we're looking at sort of, mobile connecting buildings. And one of the key challenges when you're connecting a building with mobile is what the actual connectivity within the building is. So, often we will see mobile maps that show you that sort of connectivity at sort of, the outside level. But of course, you're actually going to have your infrastructure in the building. So, you need to know what the straight signal strength is there. So, we're actually working with a partner at the moment so that we can identify within a building, what the quality of the signal is. >> I mean, that's class, if you think about like, most people think of, oh, it just drops to the end point and then you've got more network behind it, wireless. You got now to work at home dynamics, IOT devices. So, you guys have the buy-sell side of things going on, you got the carriers buying and selling there. >> Entrepreneurs: Yeah, absolutely. >> And then, SD WAN is a huge market, >> Andrew: Absolutely. >> That's growing and, as well. >> And all of that relies on access. Do you know what I mean? Like, you can talk 5G, you can talk IOT. And of course, those are the exciting, sexy things in the industry. But underpinning all of that is a network. And you mentioned the word before and it's right, utility, you know, maybe it's not the sexy side of things, but you've got to have it, otherwise, nothing else works. >> You know, one of the things we do a lot of cloud cover, we cover all of Amazon shows here coming into Telco, the Telco, digital revolution that's going on here, you can see it. And some people aren't ready for it. Almost like, reminds me of the mainframe days back when I was growing up in college, it's like, oh, I'm not, I don't want to do the mainframe. I'm the new guy, I'm the young kid. I love this, a PC and mini computers. Here, it's the same thing. It's kind of like, okay, I see the cloud, but when you have infrastructure as code, >> Yeah. >> Everything gets fuzzy. >> Yeah. >> I mean, now you're talking about programmability. So, that edge at the application level, some say it's going to be a massive innovation enabler, which is going to change that infrastructure's code, which means that guys like you guys got to be able to provide programmable routes, programmable and, >> Yeah. And APR is our, and the programmability of the network, the whole interplay from whether it's quoting, whether it's ordering, whether it's delivering services, whether it's kind of somebody going into somewhere and saying, "I'd like a, a hundred gig into this building", pressing a button and 15 minutes later, everything rolls together to turn it up, is where the whole industry is going. >> Let's take that for a second. >> Sure. >> Just a mind blowing scenario right there. Sounds simple. >> Yeah. >> Compared to where we were just 15 years ago. >> Yeah. >> That scenario didn't exist. >> No. >> And it's hard. It's not trivial. >> No. >> It's not non-trivial. All right. So what's this mean for customers? Are they like buying this level now, like, are they like, where are they on the spectrum of, you know, buying and the progression of operationalizing their business to be fully robust, network end to end, visibility on workloads to network? >> I would say it often depends where the customer is. So, obviously we deal with global customers and that's one of our big selling points is that, you know, a lot of people are focusing on the US, the Western European market, you know, and the connectivity challenges that they're trying to solve there. Our customers have global customers who are looking for connectivity all throughout world. And often there'll be things like mining companies who don't have fiber going into them. And so, we need to be able to work with our customers and their suppliers to be able to automate everything, because you can only fully quote a network when you've got all the locations back. And if you're waiting for information coming back from Africa or from the former CIS, then you know, you're going to have a problem. And we're working with companies in Africa and Russia, Kazakhstan, at the moment to help them automate everything. >> You know what's interesting, I just, my mind just goes nuts here when thinking about what you guys do, because as people start rolling their own with applications, they're going to need to have this programmability, like almost on demand, they're going to need to have, I want to do a digital TV network, I want to provision something or something's hybrid or at the edge. >> You've got a football game, or you've got something like this where you need capacity, you need it quickly. You need it for an event. >> Yeah, exactly. And 5G's perfect. I mean, how many times we've all been at a soccer game or a football game. It's like, I got bars but I have no back haul. Like we all been there. >> Yeah. >> Why, oh? >> Saturated the network and everyone's doing the same thing. >> The radios working, the back haul's choking. I mean, this is real. >> Absolutely. >> How does, does 5G solve that? I mean, where does that get, how does that get solved? I mean, is it going to be ubiquitous? Truly 5G going to make us all work better? I mean, certainly for the end use of 5G is it provides speed, it provides capacity. And also for the operators it provides being able to get more people onto it. And so, and 5G is not my core strength, but it absolutely will be transformative. What I can comment on is, like you say, for an event like this or the football or anything, the Euros, it ultimately goes into a pipe. So, you've got to make sure that you've got to have the right connectivity there and the right capacity there, from the user's phone, through the towers, all the way into the network, all the way to the data center and back again. So the edge, everything, has to play together to do that, and probably, rolling it out quickly and making sure it's agile and making sure it's fast and making sure it's quick and reliable. That's what needs to all work together. I liked how you said you know, the Expedia of the networks. >> Andrew: Yeah. >> That immediately in my mind says, okay, ease of use. >> Andrew: Yeah. >> From consumption standpoint, what's the next level of growth for you guys? I'm almost imagining is programmability or cloudifying or amplifying it, make it rain. >> Yeah, certainly we are going to continue to push into, yeah, effectively digital transformation in fact, across telecoms is happening. You would think there would be a lot further ahead than it is. It's not. There are a lot of people still quoting, ordering manually. So, we're very much part of that, but certainly the ordering and the provisioning, like we've mentioned, that's a big part, but for the industry, and we're going to hopefully be part of that, or we expect to be part of that. So that's, and making sure that connectivity is there when you need it. You know, I'm here, what's there? A bit like flights, I'd like to fly to New York. Who can do it, how much will it cost? I'll buy that one please. And that's what networks should be as well. >> James, what's your vision on how the customers are progressing in their mindset? Obviously, you've got the blocking and tackling to do, you're in the market. Where are they going with the use case and the application? >> The customers are getting to the stage where they're expecting to be able to go into a portal and turn up services. So, as with many things that we're seeing throughout life today, you can go into an app, you can press a couple of buttons and you can, you can order something. So, that's what they're expecting is to be able to just go and say, I need a hundred mg here, press a few buttons. And in 10 minutes time, the circuit's not only quoted, but it's provisioned. At the moment, there's this sort of a digital divide between those that have the digitization in place and those that don't. And that's the sort of the key that we're trying to sort of help the industry with is the sort of the, the outliers and, and also the main carriers to make sure that it's not a sort of, a digital haves and a digital have-nots. >> I was just going to say that. So, if you have the digital haves and have-nots, is that a function of them just not being operationalized in their digitization? Or is it they're not set up for it or they don't have you guys? What's that have-not side of it? How do they become the haves? >> One of the biggest challenges is actually around the sort of, identifying the connectivity at a particular location. So, in some countries it's very easy to do, like the US, UK, Netherlands. We have nice sort of standard address formatting, and you can identify a building at roof level. And when it comes to turning up connectivity straight away, you want to make sure that you turn up the connectivity to the right building. And that's one of the challenges that we're seeing throughout sort of, some of the Eastern European and the LatAm, the Asian and the African markets. >> I mean, we saw what happened with Amazon instances. You've got spot instances, you get reserved instances, you're starting to see that mindset. That's a SAS mindset. >> Yeah. >> That's kind of where things are going. Is that, you guys see the same thing here or is it different? >> Yeah. Well, certainly at the enterprise space, they tend to make decisions over a longer scale. So there, maybe not so much that you sign contracts in a year's term et cetera, but yeah, certainly as a provider, a SAS provider, using all those things, the ability to to tune your expenses, tune your costs, even your resource, you know, you're turning up servers by the hour, by the minute is a big thing. And it takes a mindset change for us and our customers. >> If you don't mind me asking, how long have you guys been doing business as co-founders, when did it start? What was the guiding principle? How do you guys look back now? >> James and I met working for Verizon many years ago. You might've heard of them. And, we sort of did what we do now, in as much as James ran the commercial side of things, I ran the software side of things and we saw that connectivity was a universal problem. And so we saw our opportunity. We went out, we started LastMileXchange. We pivoted once or twice, still in the same space, but we eventually realized that where we are now was what the industry needed. And that's where we've been pushing now for quite a few years. >> I want to give you guys a lot of credit and a lot of props, congratulations. I think, you know, the digital divide has been a broadband challenge for many, many years and decades. Now, you've got that urban divide where people don't have access. And I heard stories during the pandemic that people had access in the region, but couldn't get it to the home, affordability, access, devices. These are new issues, the digital divide, they have connectivity options. >> Andrew: Yeah. >> But it's not really clear yet. So, you're starting to see a lot more of that going on. Of course, the rural areas. >> Andrew: Yeah. >> I live out in the countryside on a farm. So, I'm quite used to their challenges of connectivity. You know, when I first moved into my house, I ended up having to get to way satellite broadband and things have improved now. But when we're talking about 5G, you have people in London, they have 5G. 5G is something that I'm not going to see for three, four years probably. >> Globally, it'll democratize access because like we were saying, we're sitting in an enterprise. You can send out a rooter or a router with a SIM card in it. I mean, you can give a kid a mobile phone in the middle of, you know, Kenya, and he can have access to the world through the internet. So, you know, that increased capacity, that increased densification of networks. Okay, they're not all going to be on 5G today. James hasn't got 5G and he only lives 30 minutes out of London. But 3G, 4G, I think the gentlemen on one of the keynotes was talking there about 3G Plus. You know, effectively, that's going to roll out. The 5G's are going to be in New Yorks and London, but, >> Like, it's going to be bring your own G to your house soon. And I think this space ops is going to be great. And I think overall, just overall, the challenges and the topologies, you're going to start to see diversity in the network topology, and actually it's going to explode. >> Andrew: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. >> Going to be super exciting. Well, again, I think you guys are under something big. I think this idea of sasifying, making things programmable, infrastructure as code is going to be pretty big. So, thanks for coming on. And what's your take, real quick, of Cloud City. >> It's been great. We've just walked in. We both said, as we came in, we came in yesterday to set up and we were really blown away and the rest of our team arrived today and they were very impressed as well. I was going to say Telco D on the team, have done a really impressive job. >> I think you have to come here and see it to believe it because when we walked in, it was just like, this place is stunning. >> Awesome. Well that's the cube coverage, we're rocking and rolling here. We're going back to the studio to see Adam and the team. Back to you.

(upbeat music) >> And, welcome back to theCube's coverage of Red Hat Summit, 2021. I'm John Furrier, host of theCube. We've got a great segment here on how Red Hat is working with telcos and the disruption in the telco cloud. We've got a great guest Cube alumni, Darrell Jordan Smith, senior vice president of industries and global accounts at Red Hat. Darrell, great to see you. Thanks for coming back on theCube. >> Oh, it's been, it's great to be here and I'm really excited about having the opportunity to talk to you today. >> Yeah, we're not in person, in real life's coming back soon. Although I hear Mobile World Congress, might be in person this year, looking like it's good. A lot of people are going to be virtual and activating I know. A lot to talk about. This is probably one of the most important topics in the industry because when you talk about telco industry, you're really talking about the edge. You're talking about 5G, talking about industrial benefits for business, because it's not just edge for connectivity access. We're talking about innovative things from self-driving cars to business benefits. It's not just consumer, it's really bringing that together. You guys are really leading with the cloud-native platform from REL, OpenShift managed services. Everything about the cloud-native underpinnings, you guys have been successful as a company. But now in your area, telco is being disrupted. You're leading the way >> Absolutely. Give us your take on this, this is super exciting. >> Well, it's actually one of the most exciting times. I've been in the industry for 30 years. I'm probably aging myself now, but in the telecommunications industry, this for me, is the most exciting. It's where, you know, technology is actually going to visibly change, the way, that everyone interacts with the network. And with the applications that are being developed out there on, on our platform. and, you know, as you mentioned, IoT, and a number of the other AI and ML innovations, that are occurring in the marketplace. We're going to see a new wave of applications and innovation. >> What's the key delivery workload you're seeing, with 5G environment. Obviously it's not just, you know 5G in the sense of thinking about mobile phones or mobile computers as they are now. It's not just that consumer, "Hey surf the web and check your email and get an app and download and, and communicate". It's bigger than that now. Can you tell us, where you see the workloads coming in on the 5G environment? >> You, you hit the nail on the head. The, the, the, the killer application, isn't the user or the consumer and the way that we traditionally have known it. Because you might be able to download a video and that might take 20 seconds less, but you're not going to pay an awful lot more money for that. The real opportunity around 5G, is the industrial applications. Things like connected car. You know automotive driving, factory floor automation. How you actually interface digitally with your bank. How we're doing all sorts of things, more intelligently at the edge of the network, using artificial intelligence and machine learning. So all of those things are going to deliver a new experience, for everyone that interacts with the network and the telcos are at the heart of it. >> You know, I want to get into the real kind of underpinnings, of what's going on with the innovations happening. You just kind of laid out kind of the implications of the use cases and the target application workloads, but there's kind of two big things going on with the edge and 5G. One is under the hood networking, you know, what's going on with the moving the packets around the workload, throughput, bandwidth, et cetera, and all that, that goes on under the hood. And then there's the domain expertise in the data, where AI and machine learning have to kind of weave in. So let's take the first part, first. OpenShift is out there. Red Hat's got a lot of products, but you have to nail the networking requirements and cloud native with containerization, because at large scales, not just packets, it's all kinds of things going on, security, managing compute at the edge. There's a lot of things under the hood, if you will, from a networking perspective. >> Could you share what Red Hat's doing in that area? >> Yep, so, so that's a very good question, in that we've been building on our experience with OpenStack and the last time I was on theCube, I talked about, you know, people virtualizing network applications and network services. We're taking a lot of that knowledge, that we've learned from OpenStack and we're bringing that into the container based world. So we're looking at how we accelerate packets. We're looking at how we build cloud-native applications, on bare metal, in order to drive that level of performance. We're looking at actually how we do, the certification around these applications and services, because they may be sitting in different applets across the cloud. And in some instances running on multiple clouds, at the same time. So we're building on our experience from OpenStack. We're bringing all of that into OpenShift, our container based environment. With all of the tooling necessary to make that effective. >> It's interesting with all the automation going on and certainly with the edge developing nicely, the way you're describing it, it's certainly disrupting the telco cloud. You have an operator mindset a cloud-native operator thinking, kind of, I mean it's distributed computing. We know that, but it's hybrid. So it's essentially cloud operations. So there's an operator mindset here, that's just different. Could you just share quickly, before we move on to the next segment, what's different about this operating model, for the, these new kinds of operators. As, as you guys have been saying, the CIO is the new cloud operator. That's the skill set they have to be thinking. And certainly IT, to anyone else provisioning and managing infrastructure has to think like an operator, what's your view? >> Exactly. They certainly do need to think like an operator. They need to look at how they automate a lot of these functions, because they're actually deployed in many different places, all at the same time. They have to live independently of each other, that's what cloud-native actually really is. So the whole, the whole notion of five nines and vertically orientated stacks of five nines availability that's kind of going out the window. We're looking at application availability, across a hybrid cloud environment and making sure the application can live and sustain itself. So operators as part of OpenShift is one element of that, operations in terms of management and orchestration and all the tooling that we actually also provide as Red Hat, but also in conjunction with a big partner ecosystem, such as companies like Netcracker, for example, or IBM as another example. Or Ericsson bringing their automation tool sets and their orchestration tool sets, to that whole equation, to address exactly that problem. >> Yeah. You bring up the ecosystem and this is really an interesting point. I want to, just hit on that real quick, because it reminds me of the days, when we had this massive innovation wave in the nineties. During that era, the client server movement, really was about multi-vendor, right? And that, you start to see that now and where this ties into here I think, is and I want to get your reaction to this is that, you know, moving to the cloud was all about to 2015, moved to the cloud, move to the cloud, cloud-native. Now it's all about not only being agile and better performance, but you're going to have smaller footprints, with more security requirements, more net, enterprise requirements. This is now, it's more complicated. So you have to kind of make the complication go away. And now you have more people in the ecosystem, filling in these white spaces. So, you have to be performance and purpose built, if you will. I hate to use that word, but, or, or at least performing and agile, smaller footprint, greater security, enabling other people to participate. That's a requirement. Can you share your reactions to that? >> Well, that's core of what we do at Red Hat. I mean, we take open source community software, into a hardened distribution, fit for the telecommunications marketplace. So we're very adapt to working with communities and third parties. That ecosystem is really important to us. We're investing hundreds of engineers, literally hundreds of engineers, working with our ecosystem partners, to make sure that their application is services certified running on our platform. But also importantly, is certified to be running in conjunction with other cloud-native applications that sit under the same cloud. So that, that is not trivial to achieve, in any stretch of the imagination. And a lot of IT technology skills come to bear. And as you mentioned earlier a lot of networking skills, things that we've learned, and we build with a lot of these traditional vendors as we bring that to the marketplace. >> You know, I've been saying on theCube, I think five years ago, I started talking about this and it was kind of a loose formulation. I want to get your reaction, because you brought up ecosystem. Now saying, you know, you're going to see the big clouds develop obviously Amazon and Microsoft came in after and now Google and others. And then I said, there's going to be a huge wave of, of what I call secondary clouds. And you see companies, like Snowflake building on top of Amazon. And so you start to see the power law, of new cloud service providers emerging, that can either sit and work with, across multiple clouds, either one cloud or others, that's now multi-cloud and hybrid. But this rise of the new, more CSPs, more cloud service providers. This is a huge part of your area right now because some call that telco, telco cloud, edge hits that. What is Red Hat doing in this cloud service provider market specifically? How do you help them? If I'm a cloud service provider, what do I get in working with Red Hat? How do I be successful? Because it's very easy to be a cloud service provider now more than ever. What do I do? How do you help? How do you help me? >> Well, we, we, we offer a, a platform called OpenShift which is our containerized based platform, but it's not just a container. It involves huge amounts of tooling associated with operating it, developing in and around it. So the, the concept that we have, is that you can bring those applications, develop them once, on one, one single platform, and run it on premise. You can run it natively as a service in Microsoft's environment. You can actually run it natively as a service in Amazon's environment. You can run it natively in IBM's environment. You can build an application once and run it in all of them, depending on what you want to achieve and who actually provides you the best zoning, the best terms and conditions, the best, the best tooling in terms of other services, such as an AI, associated with that. So it's all about developing it once, certifying it once, but deploying it in many, many different locations, leveraging the largest possible developer ecosystem, to drive innovation through applications on that common platform. >> So the assumption there, is that's going to drive down costs. Can you tell me about why the benefits, the economics are there? Talk about the economics. >> Well, Yeah, so, so, A, it does drive down costs and that's an important aspect but more importantly, it drives up agility, so time to market advantage is actually attainable for you. So many of the telcos when they deploy a network service, traditionally it would take them literally, maybe a year to roll it all out. They have to do it in days, they have to do updates in real time, in day two operations, in literally minutes. So we were building the fabric necessary, in order to enable those applications and services to occur. And as you move into the edge of the network and you look at things like private 5G networks, service providers or telcos, in this instance, will be able to deliver services all the way out to the edge, into that private 5G environment and operate that, in conjunction with those enterprise clients. >> So OpenShift allows me if I get this right, from the CSP to run, have a horizontally scalable organization. Okay. And from a unification platform standpoint. Okay. Whether it's 5G and other functions, is that correct? >> Darrell: That's correct. >> Okay. So you've got that. Now I want to come in and bring in the top of the stack with the other element that's been been a big conversation here at Red Hat Summit and in the industry. That is AI and the use of data. One of the things that's emerging is the ability to have both the horizontal scale, as well as the specialism of the data and have that domain expertise. You're in the industries for Red Hat. This is important because you're going to have, one industry is going to have different jargon, different language, different data, different KPIs. So you got to have that domain expertise, to enable the ability, to, to write the apps and also enable AI. Can you comment on how that works and what's Red Hat do in there? >> So, so, so, we, we're developing OpenShift and a number of our, other technologies, to be fit for the edge of the network, where a lot of these AI applications will reside, because you want them at the closest to the client or the, or the application itself, where it needs to reside. We're, we're creating that edge fabric, if you like. The next generation of hybrid cloud is really going to be, in my view at the edge. We're enabling a lot of the service providers to go after that, but we're also igniting by industry. You mentioned different industries. So if I look at, for example, manufacturing with MindSphere, we recently announced with Siemens, how they do at the edge of the network, factory automation, collecting telemetry, doing real-time data and analytics, looking at materials going through the factory floor, in order to get a better quality result, with lower, lower levels of imperfections, as they run through that system. It's just one industry and they have, their own private and favorite AI platforms and data sets they want to work with. With their own data scientists who understand that, that, that ecosystem inherently. You can move that to healthcare. And you can imagine, you know, how you actually interface with your healthcare professionals here in North America, but also around the world. How those applications and services and what the AI needs to do, in terms of understanding x-rays and looking at, you know common errors associated with different x-rays, so, so our practitioner can make a more specific diagnosis, faster, saving money and potentially lives as well. So different, different vertical markets in this space, have different AI and ML requirements and needs, different data sciences and different data models. And what we're seeing is an ecosystem of companies, that are starting up there in that space, you know, we have Watson as part of IBM, but you have Perceptor Labs, you have H2O and a number of other, very very important AI based companies in that ecosystem. >> Yeah. And you've got the horizontal scalability of the control plane then in the platform, if you will, that gives us cross-organizational leverage and enable that, that vertical domain expertise. >> Exactly. And you'd want to build an AI application, that might run on a factory floor for certain reasons, it's location and what they're actually physically building. You might want to run that on premise. You might actually want to put it in the IBM cloud, or in Zuora or into AWS. You develop it once to OpenShift, you can deploy it in all of those as a service, sitting natively in those environments. >> Darrell, great chat. You got a lot going on. telco cloud, there is a lot of cloud-native disruption going on. It's a challenge and an opportunity. And some people have to be on the right side of history, on this one, if they're going to get it right. We'll know, and the scoreboard will be very clear, 'cause this is a shift, it's a shift. So again, you hit all the key points that I wanted to get out, but I want to ask you two more areas that are hot here at Red Hat Summit 21, as well, again as well in the industry. I want to get your reaction and thoughts on. And they are DevSecOps and automation. Okay. Two areas everyone's talking about, DevOps, which we know is infrastructure as code, programmability, under the hood, modern application development, all good. You add the second there, security, DevSecOps, it's critical. Automation is continuing to be the benefits of cloud-native. So DevSecOps and automation, what's your take, and how's that impact the telco world and your world? >> You can't, you can't operate a network without having security in place. You're talking about very sensitive data. You're talking about applications that could be real-time critical And this is actually, even lifesaving or life threatening, if you don't get them right. So the acquisition that Red Hat recently made around StackRox, really helps us, make that next level of transition into that space. And we're looking at about how we go about securing containers, in a cloud-native environment. As you can imagine, there'll be many many thousands, tens of thousands of containers running. If one is actually misbehaving for want of a better term, that creates a security risk and a security loophole. We're shoring that up. That's important for the deployment OpenShift in the telco domain and other domains. In terms of automation, if you can't do it at scale and if you look at 5G and you look at the radios at the edge of the network and how you're going to provision those services. You're talking about hundreds of thousands of nodes, hundreds of thousands. So you have to automate a lot of those processes, otherwise you can't scale to meet the opportunity. You can't physically deploy. >> You know, Darrell this is a great conversation, you know as a student of history and Dave Vellante and I always kind of joke about that. And you've been in and around the industry for a long time. Telcos have been balancing this evolution of digital business for many, many decades. And now with cloud-native, it's finally a time where you're startin' to see, that it's just the same game, now, new infrastructure. You know, video, voice, text, data, all now happening, all transformed and going digital, all the way, all aspects of it. In your opinion, how should telcos be thinking about, as they put their plans in place for next generation? Because you know, the world is, is now cloud-native. There's a huge surface here of opportunities, different ecosystem relationships. The power dynamics are shifting. It's, it's really a time where there will be winners and there will be losers. What's your, what's your view on on how the telco industry needs to Cloudify, and how to be positioned for success? >> So, so one of the things I, I truly believe very deeply, that the telcos need to create a platform, horizontal platform that attracts developer and ecosystems to their platform, because innovation is going to sit elsewhere. Then you know, there might be a killer application that one telco might create, but in reality, most of those innovations, the most of those disruptors are going to occur from outside of that telco company. So you want to create an environment, where you're easy to engage and you've got maximum sets of tools and versatility and agility in order to attract that innovation. If you attract the innovation, you're going to ignite the business opportunity that 5G and 6G and beyond is going to actually provide you, or enable your business to drive. And you've really got to unlock that innovation. And you can only unlock it, in our view at Red Hat innovation, if you're open. You know, you follow open standards, you're using open systems and open source, is a method or a tool, that you guys, if you're a telco I would ask, you guys need to leverage and harness. >> Yeah. And there's a lot. And there's a lot of upside there if you get that right. >> Yes. >> There's plenty of upside. A lot of leverage, a lot of assets, take advantage of the whole offline, online, coming back together. We are living in a hybrid world, certainly with the pandemic. We've seen what that means. It's put a spotlight, on critical infrastructure and the critical shifts. If you had to kind of get pinned down Darrell, how would you describe that learnings from the pandemic. As folks start to come out of the pandemic, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. As we come out of this pandemic, companies want a growth strategy. Want to be positioned for success. What's your learning coming out of the pandemic? >> So from, from my perspective, which really kind of in one respect was, was very admirable, but, in another respect is actually deeply, a lot of gratitude, is the fact that the telecommunications companies, because of their carrier grade capabilities and their operational prowess, were able to keep their networks up and running and they had to move significant capacity from major cities to rural areas, because everyone was working from home. And in many different countries around the world, they did that extremely, extremely well. And their networks held up. I don't know, and maybe someone will correct me and email me, but I don't know one telco had a huge network outage, through this pandemic. And that kept us connected. It kept us working. And it also, what I also learned is, that in certain countries, particularly Latam, where they have a very large prepaid market. They were worried that the prepaid market in the pandemic would go down, because they felt that people would have less money to spend. And therefore they wouldn't top up their phones as much. The opposite effect occurred. They saw prepaid grow. And that really taught me, that, that connectivity is critical, in times of stress, that we are also, where everyone's going through. So, I think there were some key learnings there. >> Yeah, I think you're right on the money there. It's like they pulled the curtain back of all the FUD and said, you know, necessity's the mother of invention. And when you look at what happened and what had to happen, to survive in the pandemic and be functional, you're, you nailed it. The network stability, the resilience, but also the new capabilities that were needed, had to be delivered in an agile way. And I think, you know, it's pretty much a forcing function, for all the projects that are on the table, to know which ones to double down on. So, I think you pretty much nailed it. >> Thank you. Darrell Jordan Smith, senior vice president of industries and global accounts for Red Hat, theCube alumni. Thanks for that insight. Thanks for sharing. Great conversation around telcos and telco clouds and all the edge opportunities. Thanks for coming on. >> Thank you, John. >> Okay. It's theCube's coverage of Red Hat Summit 21. I'm John Furrier, your host. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live from Atlanta, Georgia, it's theCUBE, covering IFS World Conference 2018. Brought to you by IFS. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage of IFS World Conference here in Atalanta, Georgia. I'm Rebecca Knight, your host along with my co-host, Jeff Frick. It is late in the day here, the reception is about to start, the drinks are flowing, but we are still interviewing guests, and we've got a great panel right now. Joining us is Scott Helmer. He is the Senior Vice President at the Aviation and Business Defense Unit at IFS, and Henry Canaday, who is a contributing editor at Aviation Week. Thank you both so much for joining us. >> Thanks for having us. >> I wonder if you could walk our viewers a little bit through the idea, where does aviation and defense sit within the IFS business strategy? >> I'm happy to answer that. I think our new CEO of IFS, Darren Roos, has been very clear that there are three things that IFS will be best at. Number one, we will be best at mid-market ERP in those vertical markets that we care about. We will be number one in field service management. And we will be number one in maintenance management solutions in aviation and defense. So aviation and defense is one of the pillars on which IFS's strategy is currently based, and we have formed a global business unit inside of IFS that is specifically responsible, it's a 300 person strong team that is responsible for distributing a comprehensive portfolio of A and D solutions to the A and D market globally. >> What are the some of the biggest challenges that you're setting out to solve for your customers? >> Also a good question. We address the full range of management solution capability across A and D. So whether you're an operator in commercial or defense sector, or whether you're an inservice support provider, we provide solutions and support, all of your MRO capabilities, some of your performance-based logistics requirements, some of your supply chain requirements. Basically leveraging the core processes that IFS is differentiated around. Those being manufacturing, asset and service management, supply chain and project management. >> What's special about aviation and defense that's not been marketed or service delivery, which captures a lot of industry verticals, but the fact that you guys got carved out as a separate vertical, what are some of those unique challenges? >> What is chiefly unique about aviation and defense is the overall complexity in the marketplace. You're talking about very very complex capital intense of mobile assets, where managing the maintenance obligations in order to maintain the availability of the aircraft is under the scrutiny of compliance and is required to be done efficiently, without compromising safety. >> Not to mention the fact, your assets are flying all over the world, so they might not necessarily be able just to roll into the maintenance yard at the end of a bad day. >> And they're large and expensive, that's for sure. >> (laughs) Large and expensive. >> Henry, you've been covering the aviation industry for more than 20 years now. What do you see as the biggest trends, biggest concerns that a company like IFS is trying to grapple with right now, in terms of servicing its clients? >> Well the interesting thing about the airline industry is that it technically in many areas it's extremely advanced and very fast moving industry. In selling tickets, the industry has been going through a continual IT revolution for the last 20 years. Things like giving you notices about when your planes arrive and stuff like that. Very fast moving, changing all the time. But this is stuff, it's just money. There's no safety involved, so they can take chances, if they get it 99% right, they make enough money, they can solve the one percent errors. The problem with maintenance is it's messy, it's complex as Scott says. It's also safety critical. They can't screw it up one tenth of one percent of the time. They've been very, very cautious and very, very slow, and they look sluggish and stagnant on the maintenance side. But fortunately, now, especially the U.S. airlines are making some good money, so there's actually an opportunity for companies like IFS to come in here and really reform the maintenance program. >> We cover a lot of autonomous vehicle shows. Autonomous vehicles are coming. Obviously, a big element of autonomous vehicles will ultimately be safety. One of the things that comes up over and over again, if you look at the number of accidents, the fatalities that happen on our streets, compared to what happens in aviation, if a week on the streets happened at a week in the aviation industry, the planes would be shut down. >> Scott: There'd be no aviation. >> The threshold that you guys have to achieve in terms of safety is second to none. I don't know if there's anything even close, especially in terms of volume of people, and then, oh by the way, everyone globally is getting richer, so the amount of passenger flow. I don't know if you can speak to that in terms of the growth of passenger miles, I imagine is the metric, continues to explode. >> You've had basically 18 straight years without a fatal crash by a major American airline. That's unheard of, that's unheard of. We used to have one crash a year up till around 2000. Every time somebody annoys me with customer service in an airline, I think of this, they're doing the important stuff right, so I don't care. (laughs) >> Very well. >> Right. >> And, then do you think the efficiency, right? At least here domestically, I always think of Southwest, 'cause they were the first ones that really had fast turns, and they raced to the gate, they raced back out of the gate, in terms of really trying to get the maximum efficiency out of those assets. The pressure there, in translating to the other airlines is pretty significant to make sure you're really getting a high ROI. >> That's absolutely right. Again one of the levels of complexity that we were discussing. Certainly airlines are being forced to finally introduce some change into their maintenance operations, as the increasingly complex assets are part of the re-fleeting, as that faster traffic continues to grow. It's about both achieving greater efficiency in maintenance operations, not only without compromising safety, but ensuring the availability of that asset. Because revenue dollars still matter greatly, and those assets are your revenue producing assets that an airline has. >> Can you describe your approach in terms of of how you work together with your clients, the airlines, in terms of developing new products and new features. >> One of the unique characteristics about aviation and defense is not only the size of the client, but the length and duration of the relationships. So, we have a long and rich history, both at IFS and through the acquired MXI technologies, of working with our partners in their programs over the very long term. As much as we have domain expertise and a sizable team of domain experts inside of our business, we're able to recognize our partners that are visionaries in the industry, and we have established multiple levels of collaboration to involve them in the shaping of solution capability to support their businesses going forward. We are just launching today two new planning applications that were not only being launched with American Airlines and LATAM Airlines respectively, but were co-developed with subject matter experts at each. So they're tremendously valuable inputs into shaping our vision of what solutions are going to best drive business value for our customers over a very long relationship horizon. >> So, what have you unpack at MXI acquisition, what did that give you that you didn't have before and what's the total solution now? >> Certainly, I joined IFS through the MXI acquisition. I was previously it's Chief Operating Officer. MXI was focused on best of breed MRO capability for both defense and service port providers, as well as commercial airlines. In combining with IFS, that had a rich history in A and D, we now have the most comprehensive solution portfolio available on the market today. We are the only vendor that can provide best of breed capability, integrated into an end to end enterprise landscape, and we've got the team of subject matter experts or domain experts that are capable of delivering that value, not just the product, but the solution to the customers across all the segments of A and D. >> Just to be clear, your defense is more than aviation. I saw a military truck over on the expo hall, so it's assets beyond just airplanes when it comes to defense. >> Correct, we support on the defense side of things. We support multiple platforms, whether they're fighter jets, whether they're cargo carriers, whether they tanks, whether they're ships, we support for the operators, the offset optimization, performance based logistics, security, et cetera. For the in-service port providers, we similarly support supply chain requirements, MRO requirements, et cetera. >> Henry, as you look forward, you've been covering this space for a while, what are some big, new things coming down the road in the aviation industry that we should be looking for, 'cause we haven't seen a lot of big things from the outside looking in. I guess we had the next generation fighter planes, and then we had obviously the A380 and the 787 on the commercial side. What's new and coming that you're excited about? >> Well, technology changes slowly in commercial aviation, because of the safety aspect. The big, new things are the new aircraft, the 787 and the A350. They are really new generation aircraft, lot more composites, plastics if you will. They're using that instead of aluminum. The other things that's happening is additive manufacturing, this whole printing parts. That's real big, and I've been telling everybody the new Boeing 787 has two printed parts, one made by GE, $120 billion a year. The other made by a company called Norsk Titanium, with 140 people coming out of Norway, which is not exactly the center of innovation in aerospace programs. >> Jeff: With a printed part, like a 3D printed part? >> Yeah a printed part. Those are the two big changes in the aircraft. I mean, customers aren't going to see it, but these planes are now made largely of plastics and the metal parts are going to be more and more printed. Much more efficient way, lighter aircraft, less fuel use, more efficient, less environmental effects, etc. That's a big deal. More important than a huge airplane. >> Right, well I can imagine, we hear about the impacts of 3D printing. I haven't really seen it yet, but this vision where your ability to print parts on demand will have significant impacts on supply chains and inventory and huge, huge impacts down the road. >> And the airline industry is the most demanding. They've go to go through really massive proofs of concept and proof of materials, and it's starting to happen. >> Henry, what would you say is the most important area that IFS should focus on. If they can solve one problem in the airline industry, what do you think it should be? >> Availability would be one. Just aircraft availability, that's what. The airlines are concerned about two things. Dollar cost per flight hour to maintain and what they call a technical dispatch reliability. They want to get that plane launched 99.99% of the time. Get rid of the unpredictive maintenance problems. Schedule everything, make it quick, I want to get the planes off on time. >> It's amazing that unscheduled maintenance, regardless of industry, still continues to be such a bug-a-boo to productivity and profitability. It's one of these things that just has huge impact. >> I would completely agree with Henry. I think asset availability is the number one focus for commercial operators. Our focus has certainly been around trying to remove the impacts of unscheduled maintenance. One of the applications that we launched today allows you to react very, very quickly to unplanned or unscheduled maintenance events, and to do some what-if modeling, so that you can implement the best plan for your fleet, in order to maximize the availability of that asset. Not just in terms of bolstering or producing a better plan. We're attempting to do that even with line planning, where we're adjusting the traditional planning perimeters away from what must be done to what should be done in order to maximize the availability of that aircraft. Of course, as Henry said, everybody's focused on faster, tighter turnaround times. All of our software is designed to try and drive tighter turnaround times and greater efficiency. >> What percentage is scheduled versus predictive versus prescriptive? Maintenance. >> I think it varies by airline. The great majority of maintenance is scheduled, I mean, there's no doubt about that. They put these aircraft down for a week or a month. It's a massive amount of money. It's not the amount of maintenance, it's when unscheduled maintenance happens, it really throws things off. It may only be one or two percent of the maintenance tasks are unscheduled, but that's what throws the aircraft off the schedule. That's what leaves passengers sitting in the departure lounges, ticked off. Not getting there till the next day or the next week, whenever, so it's a very, very small percentage, these unscheduled maintenance events, but it's crucial to the airlines' economics. >> Exactly. Crucial to our itineraries, as well, as the economics. Exactly. >> Making sure that the airlines continue to do what they do best, which is get us from place A to place B. >> Precisely. Well, Scott Henry, thank you so much, it's been a really fun conversation. >> I enjoyed being here, thank you. >> Jeff: Thank you. >> Thanks, Henry. >> Thanks. >> We will have more from theCUBE's live coverage of IFS World Conference just after this. (digital music)