(upbeat music) >> Hello and welcome to this Cube conversation. I'm John Furrier, your host of theCube here in Palo Alto, California. We're here in 2021 as we get through the pandemic and vaccine on the horizon all around the world. It's great to welcome Sandy Carter, Vice President of Partners and Programs with Amazon Web Services. Sandy, great to see you. I wanted to check in with you for a couple of reasons. One is just get a take on the landscape of the marketplace as well as you've got some always good programs going on. You're in the middle of all the action. Great to see you. >> Nice to see you too, John. Thanks for having me. >> So one of the things that's come out of this COVID and as we get ready to come out of the pandemic you starting to see some patterns emerging, and that is cloud and cloud-native technologies and SAS and the new platforming and refactoring using cloud has created an opportunity for companies. Your partner group within public sector and beyond is just completely exploding and value creation. Changing the world's society is now accelerated. We've covered that in the past, certainly in detail last year at re:Invent. Now more than ever it's more important. You're doing some pretty cutting things. What's your update here for us? >> Well, John, we're really excited because you know the heartbeat of countries of the United States globally are small and medium businesses. So today we're really excited to launch Think Big for Small Business. It's a program that helps accelerate public sector serving small and diverse partners. So you know that these small and medium businesses are just the engine for inclusive growth and strategy. We talked about some stats today, but according to the World Bank, smaller medium business accounts for 98% of all companies, they contribute a 50% of the GDP, two-thirds of the employment opportunities, and the fastest growing areas are in minority owned businesses, women, black owned, brown owned, veteran owned, aborigine, ethnic minorities who are just vital to the economic role. And so today this program enables us as AWS to support this partner group to overcome the challenges that they're seeing today in their business with some benefits specifically targeted for them from AWS. >> Can I ask you what was the driver behind this? Obviously, we're seeing the pandemic and you can't look at on the TV or in the news without seeing the impact that small businesses had. So I can almost imagine that might be some motivation, but what is some of the conversations that you're having? Why this program? Why think Big for Small Business pilot experience that you're launch? >> Well, it's really interesting. The COVID obviously plays a role here because COVID hit small and medium businesses harder, but we also, you know, part of Amazon is working backwards from the customers. So we collected feedback from small businesses on their experience in working with us. They all want to work with us. And essentially they told us that they need a little bit more help, a little bit more push around programmatic benefits. So we listened to them to see what was happening. In addition, AWS grew up with a startup community. That's how we grew up. And so we wanted to also reflect our heritage and our commitment to these partners who represent such a heartbeat of many different economies. That was really the main driver. And today we had, John, one of our follow the sun. So we're doing sessions in Latin America, Canada, the US, APJ, Europe. And if you had heard these partners today it was just such a great story of how we were able to help them and help them grow. >> One of the cultural changes that we've been reporting on SiliconANGLE, you're seeing it all over the world is the shift in who's adopting, who's starting businesses. And you're seeing, you mentioned minority owned businesses but it goes beyond that. Now you have complete diverse set entrepreneurial activity. And cloud has generated this democratization wave. You starting to see businesses highly accelerated. I mean, more than ever, I've never seen in the entrepreneurial equation the ability to start, get started and get to success, get to some measurable MVP, minimal viable product, and then ultimately to success faster than ever before. This has opened up the doors to anyone to be an entrepreneur. And so this brings up the conversation of equality in entrepreneurship. I know this is close to your heart. Share your thoughts on this big trend. >> Yeah, and that's why this program it's not just a great I think achievement for AWS, but it's very personal to the entire public sector team. If you look at entrepreneurs like, Lisa Burnett, she's the President and Managing Director of DLZP. They are a female owned minority owned business from Texas. And as you listen to her story about equity, she has this amazing business, migrating Oracle workloads over to AWS, but as she started growing she needed help understanding a little bit more about what AWS could bring to the table, how we could help her, what go to market strategies we could bring, and so that equalizer was this program. She was part of our pilot. We also had John Wieler on. He is the Vice President of Biz Dev from IMT out of Canada. And he is focused on government for Canada. And as a small business, he said today something that was so impactful, he goes, "Amazon never asked me if I'm a small business. They now treat me like I'm big. I feel like I'm one of the big guys and that enables me grow even bigger." And we also talked today to Juan Pablo De Rosa. He's the CEO of Technogi. And it's a small business in Mexico. And what do they do? They do migrations. They just migrate legacy workloads over. And again, back to that equality point you made, how cool was it that here's this company in Mexico, and they're doing all these migrations and we can help them even be more successful and to drive more jobs in the region. It's a very equalizing program and something that we're very proud of. >> You know what I love about your job and I love talking to you about this (Sandy laughs) because it's so much fun. You have a global perspective. It's not just United States. There's a global perspective. This event you're having this morning that you kicked off with is not just in the US, it's a follow the sun kind of a community. You got quite the global community developing there, Sandy. Can you share some insight behind the curtain, behind AWS, how this is developing? How you're handling it? What you're doing to nurture and grow that community that really wants to engage with you because you are making them feel big because (laughs) that's what cloud does. It makes them punch above their weight class and innovate. >> Yeah, that's very correct. >> This is the core thesis of Amazon. So you've got a community developing, how are you handling it? How are you building it? How are you nurturing it? What are your thoughts? >> You know what, John? You're so insightful because that's actually the goal of this program. We want to help these partners. We want to help them grow. But our ultimate goal is to build that small and medium business community that is based on AWS. In fact, at re:Invent this year, we were able to talk about MST which is based out of Malaysia, as well as cloud prime based out of Korea. And just by talking about it, those two CEOs reached out to each other from Korea and Malaysia and started talking. And then we today introduced folks from Mexico, and Canada, and the US, and Bulgaria. And so, we really pride ourselves on facilitating that community. Our dream here, our vision here is that we would build that small business community to be much more scalable but starting out by making those connections, having that mentoring that will be built in together, doing community meetings that advisory meetings together. We piloted this program in 2020. We already have 37 partners. And they told me as I met with them, they already feel like this small and medium business community or family. Family was the word they used, I think, moving forward. So you nailed it. That's the goal here is to create that community where people can share their thoughts and mentor each other. >> And it's on the ground floor too. It's just beginning. I think it's going to be so much larger. And to piggyback off that I want to also point out and highlight and get your reaction to is the success that you've been having and Amazon Web Services in general but mainly in the public sector side with the public private partnership. You're seeing this theme emerge really been a big way. I've been enclose to it and hosting and being interviewing a lot of folks at that, your customers whether it's cybersecurity in space, the Mars partnership that you guys just got on Mars with partnerships. So it's a global and interstellar soon to be huge everywhere. But this is a big discussion because as from cybersecurity, geopolitical to space, you have this partnership with public private because you can't do it alone. The public markets, the public sector cannot do it alone. And it pretty much everyone's agreeing to that. So this dynamic of public sector and partnering private public is a pretty big deal. Unpack that for us real quickly. >> Yeah, it really is a big deal. And in fact, we've worked with several companies. I'll just use one sector. Public Safety and Disaster Response. We just announced the competency at re:Invent for our tech partners. And what we found is that when communities are facing a disaster, it really is government or the public sector plus the private sector. We had many solutions where citizens are providing data that helps the government manage a disaster or manage or help in a public safety scenario to things like simple things you would think, but in one country they were looking at bicycle routes and discovered that certain bicycle routes there were more crashes. And so one of our partners decided to have the community provide the data. And so as they were collecting that data, putting in the data lake in AWS, the community or the private sector was providing the data that enabled the application, our Public Sector Partner application to identify places where bicycle accidents happen most often. And I love the story, John, because the CEO of the partner told me that they measured their results in terms of ELO, I'm sorry, ROL, Return on Lives not ROI, because they save so many lives just from that simple application. >> Yeah, and the data's all there. You just saw on the news, Tiger Woods got into a car accident and survived. And as it turns out to your point that's a curve in the road where a lot of accidents happen. And if that data was available that could have been telegraphed right into the car itself and slow down, kind of like almost a prevention. So he just an example of just all the innovation possibilities that are abound out there. >> And that's why we love our small businesses and startups too, John. They are driving that innovation. The startups are driving that innovation and we're able to then open access to that innovation to governments, agencies, healthcare providers, space. You mentioned Mars. One of our partners MAXR helped them with the robotics. So it's just a really cool experience where you can open up that innovation, help create new jobs through these small businesses and help them be successful. There's really nothing, nothing better. >> Can I ask you- >> Small, small is beautiful. >> Can I asked you a personal question on this been Mars thing? >> Yeah. >> What's it like at Amazon Web Services now because that was such a cool mission. I saw Teresa Carlson, had a post on the internet and LinkedIn as well as her blog post. You had posted a picture of me and you had thumbs were taking an old picture from in real life. Space is cool, Mars in particular, everyone's fixated on it. Pretty big accomplishment. What's it like at Amazon? People high five in each other pretty giddy, what's happening? >> Oh yeah. The thing about Amazon is people come here to change the world. That's what we want to do. We want to have an impact on history. We want to help make history. And we do it all on behalf of our customers. We're innovating on behalf of our customers. And so, I think we get excited when our customers are successful, when our partners are successful, which is why I'm so excited right now, John, because we did that session this morning, and as I listened to Juan Pablo Dela Rosa, and just all the partners, Lisa, John, and just to hear them say, "You helped us," that's what makes us giddy. And that's what makes us excited. So it could be something as big as Mars. We went to Mars but it's also doing something for small businesses as well. It runs the spectrum that really drives us and fuels that energy. And of course, we've got great leadership as you know, because you get to talk to Andy. Andy is such a great leader. He motivates and he inspires us as well to do more on behalf of our customer. >> Yeah, you guys are very customer focused and innovative which is really the kind of the secret sauce. I love the fact that small medium sized business can also be part of the solutions. And I truly believe that, and why I wanted us to promote and amplify what you're working on today is because the small medium size enterprise and business is the heart of the recovery on a global scale. So important and having the resources to do that, and doing it easily and consuming the cloud so that they can apply the value. It's going to change lives. I think the thing that people aren't really talking much about right now, is that the small medium size businesses will be the road to recovery. >> I agree with you. And I love this program because it does promote diversity, something that Amazon is very much focused on. It's global, so it has that global reach and it supports small business, and therefore the recovery that you talked about. So it is I think an amazing emphasis on all the things that really matter now. During COVID, John, we learned about what really matters, and this program focuses on those things and helping others. >> Well, great to see you. I know you're super busy. Thanks for coming on and sharing the update, and certainly talking about the small mid size business program. I'm sure you're busy getting ready to give the awards out to the winners this year. Looking forward to seeing that come up soon. >> Great. Thank you, John. And don't forget if you are a small and medium business partner 'cause this program is specifically for partners, check out Think Big for Small Business. >> Think Big for Small Business. Sandy Carter, here on theCube, sharing our insight, of course all the updates from the worldwide public sector partner program, doing great things. I'm John Furrier for theCube. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)