>>Hello and welcome back to the cubes live coverage of A W. S. Public sector summit. I'm john Kerry hosting CUBA. We're live in Washington D. C. For two days, an actual event with an expo floor with real people face to face and of course we're streaming it digitally on the cube and cube channels. And so our next guest, Mark Francis chief digital health integration officer Electronic caregiver, Mark great to see you tech veteran and former intel back in the day. You've seen your ways of innovation. Welcome to the cube. >>Thanks so much. It's a pleasure to be here. >>So we were talking before we came on camera about all the innovation going back in the computer industry but now with health care and delivery of care telemedicine and how the structural systems are changing and how cloud is impacting that. You guys have an interesting solution on AWS that kind of, to me connect the dots for many tell us what you guys do and take us through the product. >>Sure. Happy to do so uh our company is electronic caregiver were actually founded back in 2009. We're based in Los cruces new Mexico so off the grid. Um but since that time we have been spending a lot of time and money doing foundational R and D pilots and product development work. Really say how do you bridge that chasm between the doctor's office and the patient home in a way that you can put a patient facing device and equipment in a patient's home that's going to drive high level of engagement, obtain actionable curated data that's presented out to caregivers and the caregivers can then act upon that to help direct and deliver high quality care. >>So basically is the future of medicine, >>the future of medicine. Right. Right. We look at medicine, we look at the future of medicine as being a hybrid model of in person care plus remote care. And we really see ourselves at the epicenter of providing a platform to help enable that. >>You know the big story here at the public sector. Some and we've been reporting on a digitally for the previous year is the impact the pandemic has had on the industry and and not just normal disruption, you know technology and start ups, disruption happens, structural changes being forced upon industries by the force majeure. That is the pandemic education, health care and so video and data and connected oriented systems are now the thing structurally that's changing it. That's causing all kinds of business model, innovations and challenges. Yeah. What's your take on that? Because this is real. >>Yeah. It is real. It it's funny that this is actually my third digital health company. Um First one was in in uh Silicon Valley early remote patient monitoring company. We end up selling it to bosh uh when I joined intel to be part of our digital health group, we did that for five years and ended a joint venture with G. E. So people have been playing around in remote patient monitoring telehealth for some time until the pandemic though there wasn't really a strong business model to justify scaling of these businesses. Um uh the pandemic change that it forced adoption and force the government to allow reimbursement coach as well. And as a result of that we've seen this pure if aeration of different product offering service offerings and then payment models around telehealth broadly speaking >>well since you started talking the music started cranking because this is the new music of the industry, we're here on the expo floor, we have face to face conversations going on and uh turn the music down. Hey thanks guys, this is a huge thing and I want to uh highlight even further what is the driver for this? Because is it, I mean actually clouds got some benefits but as you guys do the R. And D. What's going on with what's the key drivers for medicine? >>Yeah, I would take two things from a from a technology perspective, the infrastructure is finally in place to enable this type of charity distance before that it really wasn't there now that's there and the products that folks are used are much more affordable about the provider's side and the patient side. The main driver is um uh there's a lot of underlying trends that were happening that we're just being ignored Whether it was 50% non adherence to treatment plans, massive medication mismanagement um lack of professional and informal caregivers, all those things were kind of happening underneath the surface and then with Kobe, it all hit everybody in the phase. People started using telehealth and then realize, hey, we can deliver high quality care, we can deliver value based care mixed with a hybrid model of tele care plus patient care. And it turned out that, that, that works out well. So I think it's now a realization that tell care not only connects patients but solve some of these other issues around adherents, compliance, staffing and a number of other >>things and that this is a structural change we were talking about. Exactly. All right, So talk about amazon, what do you guys are doing on AWS? How's that all work? >>That's working out great. So as we, as we launch at a 2.0, we built it on 24 foundational aws and Amazon services. It's a serverless architecture, um, uh, which is delivered. What enables us to do is we have a whole bunch of different patients facing devices which we now integrate all into one back end through which we can run our data analytics are machine learning and then present curated actual data to the providers on top of that. We've also been developing a virtual caregiver that's really, really innovative. So we're using the unity engine to develop a very, very realistic virtual caregiver that is with the patient 24 hours a day in their home, they develop a relationship with that individual and then through that they can really drive greater you know more intimate care plan and a more intimate relationship with their human caregivers that's built using basic technology behind Alexa pauline lacks as well as IOT core and a lot of other ai ml services from from amazon as well. >>Not to get all nerdy and kind of seeking out here because under the hood it's all the goodness of amazon. We've got a server list, you got tennis is probably in there doing something who knows what's going on there, You've got polly let's do this and that but it also highlights the edge the ultimate network edges the human and if you've got to care for the patient at home or wherever on the run whatever. Yeah you got to get the access to the data so yeah I can imagine a lot of monitoring involved too. Yeah can you take us through how that works? >>Yeah and for us we like to talk about intelligence as opposed to data because data for data sakes isn't actionable. So really what can we do through machine learning and artificial intelligence to be able to make that data more actionable before the human caregiver because you're never going to take a human out of the equation. Uh But uh we had a lot of data inputs, they're both direct data inputs such as vital signs, we also get subtle data input. So with our with our uh with Addison or virtual caregiver uh the product actually come to the camera away from intel called the real sense cameras. And with that we get to see several signs of changes in terms of gate which might be in the indicative of falls risk of falls. We can see body temperature, pulse, heart rate, signs of stress, lack of sleep. Maybe that's a sign of uh adverse reaction to a new medication. There's a bunch of different direct and indirect inputs. We can take run some analysis against and then say hey there's something here you might want to look at because it might be indicating a change in health. >>So this is where the innovation around these bots and ai come in because you're essentially getting pattern matching on other signals you already know. So using the cameras and or sensors in to understand and get the patients some signaling where they can maybe take action call >>fun or Yeah, that's exactly. And the other thing we get, we get to integrate information related to what are called social determinants of health. So there's a whole body of research now showing that 65% of someone's health is actually driven by non clinical issues. So again issues of food security, transportation, access to care, mental health type issues in terms of stress and stuff like we can start gathering some of that information to based upon people's behaviors or for you to assessments which can also provide insights to help direct care. >>So maybe when I'm doing the Cuban reviews, you guys can go to work and look at me. I'm stressed out right now, having a great time here public sector, this is really cool. So take a minute to explain the vision. What does this go from here? I'll see low hanging fruit, telemedicine, check data, observe ability for patient for optimizing care, check what happens next industry disruption, what how these dominoes have been kind of fall? >>Yeah, for us uh we really are seeing more providers and more payers system. Integrators looking now to say how do I put together a comprehensive solution from the doctor's office to inpatient hospital to home that can remove it. A lot of barriers to care addi which is our platform is designed to be interoperable to plug into electronic health care systems, whether it's Cerner, Epic or Athenahealth, whatever it might be to be able to create that you pick us seamless platform for provider to use. We can push all of the data to their platform if they want to use that or they could use our platform and dashboard as well. We make it available to healthcare providers but also a lot of people are trying to age in place and they're getting treated by private duty providers, senior housing providers and other maybe less clinical caregivers. But if you're there every day with somebody you can pick up signs which might prevent a major health episode down the road. So we want to close that circle our our vision is how do we close the circle of care so that people get the right information at the right time to deliver the right >>care. So it's kind of a health care stack of a new kind of stack. So I have to ask you if there was an eye as pass and sass category um infrastructure as a service platform as a service. And then says it sounds like you guys are kind of combine the lower parts of the stack and enable your partners to develop on top of. Is that how it >>works? Yes it does. Yeah. Yeah. So with addie, the interesting thing that we've done it's designed to have open a P. I. For a lot of modules as well. So if we're working with the american Heart Association and we want to do a uh cardiac care module from using their I. P. We could do that if we want to integrate with Uber health or lift we could do that as well if we want to do something in the amazon and pill pack, it's a plug in that we could do that. So if I'm a patient or or a loved one at home instead of going to 10 different places or use our platform and then pull up four different apps. Everything can be right there at their fingertips. You can either do it by touch or you can use this voice because it's all a voice or a touch of interaction. >>So just because I'm curious and and and for clarification, the idea of going past versus SAS platform versus software as a service is why flexibility or customization? Why not go SAS and be a SAS application? >>Uh we've talked mostly about, we've we've gone back and forth platform as a service or infrastructure as a service. So that's more the debate that we've had. It's more about the scalability that we can offer. Um uh not just in the United States, but globally as well. Um and really that's really the thing that we've been looking at, especially because there's so many different sources of data, if you want to provide high quality care that needs to be integrated. We want to make sure that we created a platform, not just for what we provide but for what others in the environment can provide. >>So you really want to enable other people to create that very much layer on top of you guys, do you have out of the box SAS to get people going or is that just >>With the release of adding 2.0, now we do. So now folks go to our website and they contact our development those tools and and those libraries are available. >>Now, this is an awesome opportunity. So for people out there who are wanting to innovate on you, they can just say, okay, I'll leverage your the amazon web services of healthcare essentially. >>That's a nice bold ambitious statement. Yeah, but I mean kind of but if we if we can achieve that, then we'd be quite happy and we think the industry, you're gonna partner >>benefit of that. It's an ecosystem play. Exactly, yeah. It's kind of like. >>Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And for us, what we do covert is a perfect example going back to that. So when Covid hit um were based in las cruces, new Mexico last winter lost crew system to el paso and overwhelmed. They're at capacity. Different health care systems came to us, they asked if we partner with them to deliver a basically a triage program for folks that were coming into the er with Covid. So we designed a Kobe at home programs. So you get diagnosed, get a kit, go home and using telehealth virtual visits, remote monitoring. Be able to stay healthy at home without doing community spread. And by making sure that you were being watched over by a care professionals 24 hours a day. We did that um worked with 300 people Malcolm would all of them said healthy. We were able to expand uh inpatient capacity by 77%. We saved the system over $6 million in in three months. We've now been asked and we're actually replicating that in Memphis now and then also we've been asked to do so down in Mississippi >>mark, great conversation. Uh real quick. I only I don't have much time left but I want to ask you, does this mean that we're gonna see a clip of proliferation of in home kind of devices to assist? >>Yeah, we will. Uh, what we've seen is a big pivot now towards hospital at home model of care. So you have providers saying, you know, I'll see you in my facility but also extend capabilities so I can see you and treat you at home as well. We've also seen a realization that telehealth is more than a than an occasional video visit because if all you're doing is replacing an occasional in person visit with an occasional video visit. You're not really changing things now. There's a whole different sensors ai other integrations that come together to be able to enable these different models >>for all the business school folks out there and people who understand what's going on with structural change. That's when innovation really changes. Yeah, this is structural change. >>Absolutely. >>Mark, thanks for coming on. Mark Francis chief Digital Health Integration Officer Electronic Caregiver here on the Q. Thanks. Coming >>on. Thank you. My pleasure. >>Okay, more coverage after this short break. I'm john Kerry, your host Aws public Sector summit, We'll be right back mm mm mm

from around the globe it's thecube covering space and cyber security symposium 2020 hosted by cal poly hello everyone welcome to the space and cyber security symposium 2020 hosted by cal poly where the intersection of space and security are coming together i'm john furrier your host with thecube here in california i want to welcome our featured guest lieutenant general john f thompson with the united states space force approach to cyber security that's the topic of this session and of course he's the commander of the space and missile system center in los angeles air force base also heading up space force general thank you for coming on really appreciate you kicking this off welcome to the symposium hey so uh thank you very much john for that very kind introduction also uh very much thank you to cal poly uh for this opportunity to speak to this audience today also a special shout out to one of the organizers uh dustin brun for all of his work uh helping uh get us uh to this point uh ladies and gentlemen as uh as uh john mentioned uh i'm jt thompson uh i lead the 6 000 men and women of the united states space forces space and missile system center which is headquartered here at los angeles air force base in el segundo if you're not quite sure where that's at it's about a mile and a half from lax this is our main operating location but we do have a number of other operating locations around the country with about 500 people at kirtland air force base in albuquerque new mexico uh and about another 500 people on the front range of the rockies uh between colorado springs and uh and denver plus a smattering of other much smaller operating locations nationwide uh we're responsible for uh acquiring developing and sustaining the united states space force's critical space assets that includes the satellites in the space layer and also on the ground layer our ground segments to operate those satellites and we also are in charge of procuring launch services for the u.s space force and a number of our critical mission partners across the uh department of defense and the intelligence community um just as a couple of examples of some of the things we do if you're unfamiliar with our work we developed and currently sustained the 31 satellite gps constellation that satellite constellation while originally intended to help with global navigation those gps signals have provided trillions of dollars in unanticipated value to the global economy uh over the past three decades i mean gps is everywhere i think everybody realizes that agriculture banking the stock market the airline industry uh separate and distinct navigation systems it's really pervasive across both the capabilities for our department of defense and capabilities for our economy and and individuals billions of individuals across our country and the planet some of the other work we do for instance in the communications sector uh secure communications satellites that we design and build that link america's sons and daughters serving in the military around the world and really enable real-time support and comms for our deployed forces and those of our allies we also acquire uh infrared missile warning satellites uh that monitor the planet for missile launches and provide advanced warning uh to the u.s homeland and to our allies uh in case some of those missile launches are uh nefarious um on a note that's probably a lot closer to home maybe a lot closer to home than many of us want to think about here in the state of california in 2018 smc jumped through a bunch of red tape and bureaucracy uh to partner with the u.s forest service during the two of the largest wildfires in the state's history the camp and woolsey fires in northern california as those fires spread out of control we created processes on the fly to share data from our missile warning satellites those are satellites that are systems that are purpose built to see heat sources from thousands of miles above the planet and we collaborated with the us forest service so that firefighters on the ground uh could track those fires more in real time and better forecast fires and where they were spreading thereby saving lives and and property by identifying hot spots and flare-ups for firefighters that data that we were able to working with our contractors pass to the u.s forest service and authorities here in california was passed in less than an hour as it was collected to get it into the hands of the emergency responders the first responders as quickly as possible and doing that in an hour greatly surpassed what was available from some of the other assets in the airborne and ground-based fire spotters it was really instrumental in fighting those fires and stopping their spread we've continued uh that involvement in recent years using multiple systems to support firefighters across the western u.s this fall as they battled numerous wildfires that unfortunately continue working together with the u.s forest service and with other partners uh we like to make uh we like to think that we made a difference here but there's still a lot more work to go and i think that we should always be asking ourselves uh what else can space data be used for and how can we more rapidly get that space data to uh stakeholders so that they can use it for for purposes of good if you will how else can we protect our nation how else can we protect our friends and allies um i think a major component of the of the discussion that we will have throughout this conference is that the space landscape has changed rapidly and continues to change rapidly um just over the past few years uh john and i were talking before we went live here and 80 nations now have uh space programs 80 nearly 80 space faring nations on the planet um if you just look at one mission area that uh the department of defense is interested in and that's small launch there are currently over a hundred different small launch companies uh within the u.s industrial base vying for commercial dod and civil uh payload capabilities uh mostly to low earth orbit it's it's just truly a remarkable time if you factor in those things like artificial intelligence and machine learning um where we're revolutionary revolutionizing really uh the ways that we generate process and use data i mean it's really remarkable in 2016 so if you think about this four years ago uh nasa estimated that there were 28 terabytes of information transiting their space network each day and that was four years ago um uh obviously we've got a lot of desire to work with a lot of the people in the audience of this congress or in this conference uh we need to work with big thinkers like many of you to answer questions on how best we apply data analytics to extract value and meaning from that data we need new generations of thinkers to help apply cutting edge edge theories of data mining cyber behaviorism and internet of things 2.0 it's just truly a remarkable time uh to be in the space business and the cyber aspects of the states of the space business are truly truly daunting and important to uh to all of us um integrating cyber security into our space systems both commercial and government is a mandate um it's no longer just a nice to have as the us space force and department of the air force leadership has said many times over the past couple of years space is becoming congested and contested and that contested aspect means that we've got to focus on cyber security uh in the same way that the banking industry and cyber commerce focus on uh cyber security day in and day out the value of the data and services provided is really directly tied to the integrity and availability of that data and services from the space layer from the ground control segments associated with it and this value is not just military it's also economic and it's not just american it's also a value for the entire world particularly particularly our allies as we all depend upon space and space systems your neighbors and friends here in california that are employed at the space and missile system center uh work with network defenders we work with our commercial contractors and our systems developers um our international allies and partners to try and build as secure and resilient systems as we can from the ground up that keep the global commons of space free and open for exploration and for commerce um as john and i were talking earlier before we came online there's an aspect of cyber security for space systems especially for some of our legacy systems that's more how do we bolt this on because we fielded those space systems a number of years ago and the the challenges of cyber security in the space domain have grown so we have a part that we have to worry about bolting it on but then we have to worry about building it in as we as we field new systems and build in a flexibility that that realizes that the cyber threat or the cyber security landscape will evolve over time it's not just going to be stagnant there will always be new vulnerabilities and new threat vectors that we always have to look at look uh as secretary barrett who is our secretary of the air force likes to say most americans use space before they have their first cup of coffee in the morning the american way of life really depends on space and as part of the united states space force we work with defense leaders our congress joint and international military teammates and industry to ensure american leadership in space i really thank you for this opportunity to address the audience today john and thanks so much to cal poly for letting me be one of the speakers at this event i really look forward to this for uh several months and so with that i look forward to your questions as we kind of move along here general thank you very much for the awesome uh introductory statement uh for the folks watching on the stream brigadier general carthan is going to be in the chat answering any questions feel free to chat away he's the vice commander of space and missile systems center he'll be available um a couple comments from your keynote before i get to my questions because it just jumped in my head you mentioned the benefits of say space but the fires in california we're living that here that's really real time that's a benefit you also mentioned the ability for more people launching payloads into space and i only imagine moore's law smaller faster cheaper applies to rockets too so i'm imagining you have the benefits of space and you have now more potential objects flying out sanctioned and maybe unsanctioned so you know is it going to be more rules around that i mean this is an interesting question because it's exciting space force but for all the good there is potentially bad out there yeah so i i john i think the uh i think the basics of your question is as space becomes more congested and contested is there a need for more international norms of how satellites fly in space what kind of basic features satellites have to perhaps deorbit themselves what kind of basic protections does do all satellites should all satellites be afforded as part of a peaceful global commons of space i think those are all fantastic questions and i know that u.s and many uh allied policy makers are looking very very hard at those kinds of questions in terms of what are the norms of behavior and how we uh you know how how we field and field is the military term but you know how we uh populate uh using civil or uh commercial terms uh that space layer at different altitudes uh low earth orbit mid mid-earth orbit geosynchronous earth orbit different kinds of orbits uh what the kind of mission areas we accomplish from space that's all things that need to be definitely taken into account as uh as the place gets a little bit not a little bit as the place gets increasingly more popular day in and day out well i'm super excited for space force i know that a new generation of young folks are really interested in it's an emerging changing great space the focus here at this conference is space and cyber security intersection i'd like to get your thoughts on the approach that space force is taking to cyber security and how it impacts our national goals here in the united states yeah yeah so that's a that's a great question john let me let me talk about in two uh two basic ways but number one is and and i know um some people in the audience this might make them a little bit uncomfortable but i have to talk about the threat right um and then relative to that threat i really have to talk about the importance of uh of cyber and specifically cyber security as it relates to that threat um the threats that we face um really represent a new era of warfare and that new era of warfare involves both space and cyber uh we've seen a lot of action in recent months uh from certain countries notably china and russia uh that have threatened what i referred to earlier as the peaceful global commons of space for example uh it through many unclassified sources and media sources everybody should understand that um uh the russians have been testing on orbit uh anti-satellite capabilities it's been very clear if you were following just the week before last the department of defense released its uh 2020 military and security developments involving the people's republic of china um uh and uh it was very clear that china is developing asats electronic jammers directed energy weapons and most relevant to today's discussion offensive cyber uh capabilities there are kinetic threats uh that are very very easy to see but a cyber attack against a critical uh command and control site or against a particular spacecraft could be just as devastating to the system and our war fighters in the case of gps and important to note that that gps system also impacts many civilians who are dependent upon those systems from a first response perspective and emergency services a cyber attack against a ground control site could cause operators to lose control of a spacecraft or an attacker could feed spoofed data to a system to mislead operators so that they send emergency services personnel to the to the wrong address right attacks on spacecraft on orbit whether directly via a network of intrusion or enabled through malware introduced during the systems production uh while we're building the satellite can [ __ ] or corrupt the data denial of service type attacks on our global networks obviously would disrupt our data flow and interfere with ongoing operations and satellite control i mean if gps went down i you know i hesitate to say it this way because we might elicit some screams from the audience but if gps went down a starbucks wouldn't be able to handle your mobile order uber drivers wouldn't be able to find you and domino's certainly certainly wouldn't be able to get there in 30 minutes or less right so with a little bit of tongue-in-cheek there from a military operations perspective it's dead serious um uh we have become accustomed in the commercial world to threats like lance ransomware and malware and those things have unfortunately become commonplace in commercial terrestrial networks and computer systems however what we're seeing is that our adversaries with the increased competition in space these same techniques are being retooled if you will to use against our national security space systems uh day in and day out um as i said during my opening remarks on the importance of cyber the value of these systems is directly tied to their integrity if commanders in the field uh firefighters in california or baristas in in starbucks can't trust the data they see they're receiving then that really harms their decision-making capabilities one of the big trends we've recently seen is the mood move towards proliferated leo uh uh constellations obviously uh spacex's uh starlink uh on the commercial side and on the military side the work that darpa and my organization smc are doing on blackjack and casino as well as some space transport layer constellation work that the space development agency is designing are all really really important types of mesh network systems that will revolutionize how we plan and field warfighting systems and commercial communications and internet providing systems but they're also heavily reliant on cyber security uh we've got to make sure that they are secured to avoid an accident or international damage uh loss of control of these constellations really could be catastrophic from both a mission perspective or from uh you know satellites tumbling out of low earth orbit perspective another trend is introductions in artificial intelligence and machine learning on board spacecraft or at the edge our satellites are really not so much hardware systems with a little software anymore in the commercial sector and in the defense sector they're basically flying boxes full of software right and we need to ensure the data that we're getting out of those flying boxes full of software are helping us base our decisions on accurate data and algorithms govern governing the right actions and that those uh that those systems are impervious to the extent possible uh to nefarious uh modifications so in summation a cyber security is vital element of everything in our national security space goals and i would argue for our national uh goals uh writ large including uh economic and information uh uh dimensions uh the space force leadership at all levels uh from uh some of the brand new second lieutenants that general raymond uh swore into the space force this morning uh ceremonially from the uh air force association's air space and cyberspace conference uh to the various highest levels general raymond uh general d t thompson myself and a number of other senior leaders in this enterprise we've got to make sure that we're all working together to keep cyber security at the forefront of our space systems because it they absolutely depend on it you know you mentioned uh hardware software threats opportunities challenges i want to ask you because you you got me thinking of the minute there around infrastructure i mean we've heard critical infrastructure you know grids here on on earth you're talking about critical infrastructure a redefinition of what critical infrastructure is an extension of what we have so i'd love to get your thoughts about space force's view of that critical infrastructure vis-a-vis the threat vectors because you know the term threat vectors has been kicked around in the cyber space oh yeah threat vectors they're always increasing the surface area well if the surface area is from space it's an unlimited surface area so you got different vectors so you got new critical infrastructure developing real time really fast and you got an expanded threat vector landscape putting that in perspective for the folks that aren't really inside the ropes on these critical issues how would you explain this and how would you talk about those two things well so i tell you um i just like um uh just like uh i'm sure people in the security side or the cyber security side of the business in the banking industry feel they feel like it's uh all possible threat vectors represent a dramatic and protect potentially existential threat to all of the dollars that they have in the banking system to the financial sector on the department of defense side we've got to have sort of the same mindset um that threat vector from to and through space against critical space systems ground segments the launch enterprise or transportation uh to orbit and the various different uh domains within uh within space itself like i mentioned before uh leo mio and geo-based satellites with different orbits all of the different mission areas that are accomplished from space that i mentioned earlier some that i didn't mention like weather tactical or wide band communications uh various new features of space control all of those are things that we have to worry about from a cyber security uh threat perspective and it's a it's a daunting challenge right now right yeah it's awesome and one of the things we've been following on the hardware side here in the on the ground is the supply chain we've seen you know malware being you know really put into really obscure hardware who manufactures it as being outsourced obviously government has restrictions but with the private sector uh you mentioned china and and the us kind of working together across these these peaceful areas but you got to look at the supply chain how does the supply chain the security aspect impact the mission of the u.s space force yeah yeah so so um how about another um just in terms of an example another kind of california-based historical example right um the very first u.s satellite uh explorer one was built by uh the jet propulsion uh laboratory folks uh not far from here in el segundo up in uh up in pasadena um that satellite when it was first built in the late 50s uh weighed a little bit over 30 pounds and i'm sure that each and every part was custom made and definitely made by u.s companies fast forward to today the global supply chain is so tightly coupled and frankly many industries are so specialized almost specialized regionally around the planet we focus every day to guarantee the integrity of every component that we put in our space systems is absolutely critical to the operations of those satellites and we're dependent upon them but it becomes more difficult and more difficult to understand the the heritage if you will of some of the parts that are used the thousands of parts that are used in some of our satellites that are literally school bus sized right the space industry especially uh national security space sector um uh is relatively small compared to other commercial industries and we're moving to towards using more and more parts uh from non-us companies uh cyber security and cyber awareness have to be baked in from the beginning if we're going to be using parts that maybe we don't necessarily um understand 100 percent like an explorer one uh the the lineage of that particular part the environmental difficulties in space are well known the radiation environment the temperature extremes the vacuum those require specialized component and the us military is not the only uh customer in that space in fact we're definitely not the dominant customer uh in space anymore all those factors require us along with our other government partners and many different commercial space organizations to keep a very close eye on our supply chains from a quality perspective a security perspective and availability um there's open source reporting on supply training intrusions from um many different breaches of commercial retailers to the infectious spread of uh you know compromised patches if you will and our adversaries are aware of these techniques as i mentioned earlier with other forms of attack considering our supply chains and development networks really becomes fair game for our adversaries so we have to uh take that threat seriously um between the government and industry sectors here in the u.s we're also working with our industry partners to enact stronger defenses and assess our own vulnerabilities last fall we completed an extensive review of all of our major contracts here at space and missile system center to determine the levels of cyber security requirements we've implemented across our portfolio and it sounds really kind of you know businessy geeky if you will you know hey we looked at our contracts to make sure that we had the right clauses in our contracts to address cyber security as dynamically as we possibly could and so we found ourselves having to add new language to our contracts to require system developers to implement some more advanced uh protective measures in this evolving cyber security environment so that data handling and supply chain perspective uh protections um from contract inception to launch and operations were taken into account uh cyber security really is a key performance parameter for us now it's as important as the the mission performance of the system it's as important as cost it's as important as schedule because if we deliver the perfect system on time and on cost uh it can perform that missile warning or that communications mis mission perfectly but it's not cyber secure if it doesn't have cyber protections built into it or the ability to implement mitigations against cyber uh threats then we've essentially fielded a shoe box in space that doesn't do the k the the war fighter or the nation uh any good um supply chain risk management is a is a major challenge for us uh we're doing a lot to coordinate with our industry partners uh we're all facing it head on uh to try and build secure and trusted components uh that keep our confidence as leaders firefighters and baristas uh as the case may be uh but it is a challenge and we're trying to rise to that challenge you know this so exciting this new area because it really touches everything you know talk about geeking out on on the tech the hardware the systems but also you put your kind of mba hat on you go what's the roi of the extra development and how you how things get built because the always the exciting thing for space geeks is like you're building cool stuff people love it's it's exciting but you still have to build and cyber security has proven that security has to be baked in from the beginning and be thought as a system architecture so you're still building things which means you've got to acquire things you got to acquire parts you got to acquire build software and and sustain it how is security impacting the acquisition and the sustainment of these systems for space yeah from initial development uh through planning for the acquisition design development fielding or production fielding and sustainment it impacts all aspects of of the life cycle john uh we simply especially from the concept of baking in cyber security uh we can't wait until something is built and then try and figure out how to make it cyber secure so we've moved way further uh towards working side by side with our system developers to strengthen cyber security from the very beginning of a system's development cyber security and the resilience associated with it really have to be treated as a key system attribute as i mentioned earlier equivalent with data rates or other metrics of performance we like to talk in uh in the space world about uh mission assurance and mission assurance has always you know sort of taken us as we as we technically geek out right mission assurance has always taken us to the will this system work in space right can it work in a vacuum can it work in you know as it as it uh you know transfers through uh the van allen radiation belt or through the the um the southern hemisphere's electromagnetic anomaly right will it work out in space and now from a resiliency perspective yeah it has to work in space it's got to be functional in space but it's also got to be resistant to these cyber security threats it's it's not just i think uh general dt thompson quoted this term it's not just widget assurance anymore it's mission assurance um uh how does that satellite uh operator that ground control segment operate while under attack so let me break your question a little bit uh just for purposes of discussion into into really two parts uh cyber uh for cyber security for systems that are new and cyber security uh for systems that are in sustainment or kind of old and legacy um obviously there's cyber vulnerabilities that threaten both and we really have to employ different strategies for for defense of of each one for new systems uh we're desperately trying to implement across the department of defense in particular in the space world a kind of a devsecops methodology and practice to delivering software faster and with greater security for our space systems here at smc we have a program called enterprise ground services which is a tool kit basically a collection of tools for common command and control of different satellite systems egs as we call it has an integrated suite for defensive cyber capabilities network operators can use these tools to gain unprecedented insight to data flows and to monitor space network traffic for anomalies or other potential indicators of of bad behavior malicious behavior if you will um uh it's rudimentary at this point but because we're using devsecops and that incremental development approach as we scale it it just becomes more and more capable you know every every product increment that we field here at uh at uh la air force base uh uh we have the united space space forces west coast software factory which we've dubbed kobayashi maru they're using those agile devops uh software development practices uh to deliver uh space awareness software uh to the combined space operations center uh affectionately called the csp that c-spock is just down the road uh from cal poly uh there in san luis obispo at vandenberg air force base they've securely linked the c-spock with other space operation centers around the planet our allies australia canada and the uk uh we're partnering with all of them to enable secure and enhanced combined space operations so lots of new stuff going on as we bake in new development uh capabilities for our our space systems but as i mentioned earlier we've got large constellations on satellite of satellites on orbit right now some of them are well in excess of a decade or more old on orbit and so the design aspects of those satellites are several decades old and so but we still have to worry about them because they're critical to our space capabilities um we've been working with an air force materiel command organization uh called crows which stands for the cyber resiliency office for uh weapon systems to assess all of those legacy platforms from a cyber security perspective and develop defensive strategies and potential hardware and software upgrades to those systems to better enable them to to live through this increasingly cyber security uh concerned era that we currently live in our industry partners have been critical to to both of those different avenues both new systems and legacy systems we're working closely with them to defend and upgrade uh national assets and develop the capabilities to do similar with uh with new national assets coming online the vulnerabilities of our space systems really kind of threaten the way we've done business in the past both militarily and in the case of gps economically the impacts of that cyber security risk are clear in our acquisition and sustainment processes but i've got to tell you it that as the threat vectors change as the vulnerabilities change we've got to be nimble enough agile enough to be able to bounce back and forth we can't just say uh many people in the audience are probably familiar with the rmf or the risk management framework approach to um to reviewing uh the cyber security of a system we can't have program managers and engineers just accomplish an rmf on a system and then hey high five we're all good uh it's a journey not a destination that's cyber security and it's a constant battle rhythm throughout a weapon systems life cycle not just a single event i want to get to this commercial business needs and your needs on the next question but before i go there you mentioned the agile and i see that clearly because when you have accelerated innovation cycles you've got to be faster and we saw this in the computer industry mainframes mini computers and then when you started getting beyond me when the internet hit and pcs came out you saw the big enterprises the banks and and government start to work with startups it used to be a joke in the entrepreneurial circles is that you know there's no way if you're a startup you're ever going to get a contract with a big business enterprise now that used to be for public sector and certainly uh for you guys so as you see startups out there and there's acquisition involved i'm sure would love to love to have a contract with space force there's an roi calculation where if it's in space and you have a sustainment view edit software you might have a new kind of business model that could be attractive to startups could you share your thoughts on the folks who want to be a supplier to you uh whether they're a startup or an existing business that wants to be agile but they might not be that big company we are john that's a fantastic question we are desperately trying to reach out to to those new space advocates to those startups to those um what we sometimes refer to within the department of defense those non-traditional uh defense contractors a couple of things just for uh thinking purposes on some of the things that we're trying to highlight um uh three years ago we created here at uh space and missile system center uh the space enterprise consortium uh to provide a platform uh a contractual vehicle really to enable us to rapidly prototype uh development of space systems and to collaborate uh between the u.s space force uh traditional defense contractors non-traditional vendors like startups and even some academic institutions uh spec as we call it space enterprise consortium uses a specialized contracting tool to get contracts uh awarded quickly many in the audience may be familiar with other transaction agreements and that's what spec is based on and so far in just three years spec has awarded 75 different uh prototyping contracts worth over 800 million dollars with a 36 reduction in time to award and because it's a consortium based competition for um for these kinds of prototyping efforts the barrier to entry for small and non-traditional for startups even for academic institutions to be able to compete for these kinds of prototypings is really lowered right um uh these types of partnerships uh that we've been working through on spec uh have really helped us work with smaller companies who might not have the background or expertise in dealing with the government or in working with cyber security uh for their systems both their developmental systems and the systems that they're designing and trying to build we want to provide ways for companies large and small to partner together and support um uh kind of mutually beneficial uh relationships between all um recently uh at the annual air force association uh conference that i mentioned earlier i moderated a panel with several space industry leaders uh all from big traditional defense contractors by the way and they all stressed the importance of building bridges and partnerships uh between major contractors in the defense industry and new entrants uh and that helps us capture the benefits of speed and agility that come with small companies and startups as well as the expertise and specialized skill sets of some of those uh larger contractors uh that we rely on day in and day out advanced cyber security protections and utilization of secure facilities are just a couple of things that i think we could be prioritizing more so in those collaborations as i mentioned earlier the spec has been very successful in awarding a number of different prototyping contracts and large dollar values and it's just going to get better right there's over 400 members of the space enterprise consortium 80 of them are non-traditional kinds of vendors and we just love working with them another thing that many people in the audience may be familiar with in terms of our outreach to innovators uh if you will and innovators that include uh cyber security experts is our space pitch day events right so we held our first event last november in san francisco uh where we awarded over a two-day period about 46 million dollars to 30 different companies um that had potentially game-changing ideas these were phase two small business innovative research efforts uh that we awarded with cash on the spot uh we're planning on holding our second space pitch day in the spring of 2021. uh we're planning on doing it right here in los angeles uh covent 19 environment permitting um and we think that these are you know fantastic uh uh venues for identifying and working with high-speed startups startups and small businesses who are interested in uh really truly partnering with the us air force it's a as i said before it's a really exciting time to be a part of this business uh and working with the innovation economy uh is something that the department of defense uh really needs to do in that um the innovation that we used to think was ours you know that 80 percent of the industrial-based innovation that came from the department of defense uh the the script has been flipped there and so now more than 70 percent uh particularly in space innovation uh comes from the commercial sector not from uh not from the defense business itself and so um that's a tsunami of uh investment and a tsunami of uh capability and i need to figure out how to get my surfboard out and ride it you know what i mean yeah i mean it's one of those things where the flip the script has been flipped but it's exciting because it's impacting everything are you talking about systems architecture you're talking about software you're talking about a business model you talk about devsecops from a technical perspective but now you have a business model innovation all the theaters of uh are exploding in innovation technical business personnel this brings up the workforce challenge you've got the cyber needs for the u.s space force there's probably a great roi model for new kinds of software development that could be priced into contracts that's a entrepreneurial innovation you got the the business model theater you've got the personnel how does the industry adopt and change you guys are clearly driving this how does the industry adjust to you yeah so um i think a great way to answer that question is to just talk about the kind of people that we're trying to prioritize in the u.s space force from a from an acquisition perspective and in this particular case from a from a cyber security perspective as i mentioned earlier it's the most exciting time to be in space programs uh really since the days of apollo um uh you know just to put it in terms that you know maybe have an impact with the audience uh from 1957 until today approximately 9 000 satellites uh have been launched from the various space faring countries around the planet uh less than two thousand of those nine thousand are still up on orbit and operational and yet in the new space regime um players like spacex have plans to launch you know 12 000 satellites for some of their constellations alone it really is a remarkable time in terms of innovation and fielding of space capabilities and all of those space capabilities whether they're commercial civil or defense are going to require appropriate cyber security uh protections it's just a really exciting time uh to be working in stuff like this and so uh folks like the folks in this audience who have a passion about space and a passion about cyber security are just the kind of people that we want to work with because we need to make sure our systems are are secure and resilient we need folks that have technical and computing expertise engineering skills to be able to design cybersecure systems that can detect and mitigate attacks uh but we also as you alluded to we need people that have that business and um you know business acumen human networking background so that we can launch the startups and work with the non-traditional businesses uh help to bring them on board help to secure both their data and our data and uh and and make sure our processes and systems are are free as much as possible from uh uh from attack um for preparation for for audience members who are young and maybe thinking about getting into this uh trade space um you gotta be smart on digital networking uh you gotta understand basic internet protocols concepts uh programming languages uh database design uh learn what you can from penetration or vulnerability testing and and uh risk assessment i will tell you this and i don't think he will i know he will not mind me telling you this but you've got to be a lifelong learner and so two years ago i'm at home one evening and i get a phone call on my cell phone and it's my boss the commander of air force space command uh general j raymond who is now currently the chief of space operations and he is on temporary duty flying overseas he lands where he's going and he first thing he does when he lands is he calls me and he goes jt um while i was traveling um i noticed that there were e-books available on the commercial airliner i was traveling on and there was an e-book on something called scrumming and agile devsecops and i read it have you read it um and i said no sir but if you tell me what the title of the book is i will read it and so i got to go to my staff meeting um you know the very next week the next time we had a staff meeting and tell everybody in the stab meeting hey if the four star and the three star can read the book about scrumming then i'm pretty sure all of you around this table and all our lieutenants and our captains our gs13s all of our government employees can get smart on uh the scrumming development process and interestingly as another side i had a telephone call with him last year during the holidays where he was trying to take some leave and i said sir what are you up to today are you are you you know making eggnog for the event tonight or whatever and the chief of space operations told me no i'm trying to teach myself python i'm at lesson two and it's not going so well but i'm i'm gonna figure this out and so that kind of thing if the chief of staff or the you know the the the chief of space operations can prioritize scrumming and python language and innovation in his daily schedule then we're definitely looking for other people who can do that and we'll just say lower levels of rank uh throughout our entire space force enterprise um look i i we don't need to need people that can code a satellite from scratch but we need to know we need to have people that have a basic grasp of the programming basics and cyber security requirements and that can turn those things into into meaningful actions obviously in the space domain things like basic physics and orbital mechanics are also important uh space is not an intuitive uh domain so under understanding how things survive uh on orbit is really critical to making the right design and operational decisions and you know i know there's probably a lot because of this conference i know there's a probably a whole lot of high-speed cyber security experts out in the audience and i need those people in the u.s space force the the country is counting on it but i wouldn't discount having people that are just cyber aware or cyber savvy right i have contracting officers and logisticians and program managers and they don't have to be high-end cyber security experts but they have to be aware enough about it to be able to implement cyber security protections um into our space system so the skill set is is really really broad um our adversaries are pouring billions of dollars into uh define designing uh and fielding offensive and destructive space cyber security weapons right they've repeatedly shown really a blatant disregard of safety and international norms for good behavior on orbit and the cyber security aspects of our space systems is really a key battleground going forward so that we can maintain that as i mentioned before peaceful uh global commons of space we really need all hands on deck if you're interested in helping in uniform if you're interested in helping uh not in uniform uh but as a government employee a commercial or civil employee to help us make cyber security more important uh or more cape more able to be developed for our space systems then we'd really love to uh to work with you or have you on the team to build that safe and secure future for our space systems lieutenant general john thompson great insight thank you for sharing all that awesome stories too and motivation for the young next generation the united states space force approach of cyber security really amazing talk thank you for your time final parting question is as you look out and you had your magic wand what's your view for the next few years in terms of things that we could accomplish it's a super exciting time what do you hope for so um um first of all john thanks to you and and thanks to cal poly uh for the invitation and and thanks to everybody for uh for their interest in cyber security especially as it relates to space systems that's here at the conference um uh there's a quote and i'll read it here uh from uh bernard schriever who was the uh the founder if you will uh a legend in uh dod space the founder of the western development division which was a predecessor organization to space and missile systems center general shrever i think captures the essence of what how we see the next couple of years the world has an ample supply of people who can always come up with a dozen good reasons why new ideas will not work and should not be tried but the people who produce progress are breed apart they have the imagination the courage and the persistence to find solutions and so i think if you're hoping that the next few years of space innovation and cyber security innovation are going to be a pony ride at the county fair then perhaps you should look for another line of work because i think the next few years in space and cyber security innovation are going to be more like a rodeo um and a very dynamic rodeo as it goes it is a an awesome privilege to be part of this ecosystem it's really an honor for me to um to be able to play some small role uh in the space ecosystem and trying to improve it uh while i'm trying to improve the chances of uh of the united states of america in a uh in a space war fighting uh uh environment um and so i thank all of you for uh participating today and for this little bit of time that you've allowed me to share with you thank you sir thank you for your leadership and thank you for the for the time for this awesome event space and cyber security symposium 2020 i'm john furrier on behalf of cal poly thanks for watching [Music]

>> Narrator: From around the globe. It's theCUBE covering space in cybersecurity symposium 2020 hosted by Cal Poly. >> Hello, everyone. Welcome to the space and cybersecurity symposium, 2020 hosted by Cal Poly where the intersection of space and security are coming together. I'm John Furrier, your host with theCUBE here in California. I want to welcome our featured guest, Lieutenant General, John F. Thompson with the United States Space Force approach to cybersecurity. That's the topic of this session. And of course he's the commander of the space and missile system center in Los Angeles Air Force Base. Also heading up Space Force. General, thank you for coming on. I really appreciate to you kicking this off. Welcome to the symposium. >> Hey, so thank you very much, John, for that very kind introduction. Also very much thank you to Cal Poly for this opportunity to speak to this audience today. Also a special shout out to one of the organizers, Dustin Debrun, for all of his work, helping get us to this point. Ladies and gentlemen as a John mentioned, I'm JT Thompson. I lead the 6,000 men and women of the United States Space Force's Space and Missile System Center, which is headquartered here at Los Angeles Air Force Base and El Segundo. If you're not quite sure where that's at, it's about a mile and a half from LAX. This is our main operating location, but we do have a number of other operating locations around the country. We're about 500 people at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and an about another 500 people on the front range of the Rockies between Colorado Springs and Denver plus a smattering of other much smaller operating locations nationwide. We're responsible for acquiring, developing and sustaining the United States Space Force's, critical space assets. That includes the satellites in the space layer and also on the ground layer our ground segments to operate those satellites. And we also are in charge of procuring launch services for the US Space Force and a number of our critical mission partners across the Department of Defense and the intelligence community. Just as a couple of examples of some of the things we do, if you're unfamiliar with our work we developed and currently sustain the 31 satellite GPS constellation that satellite constellation, while originally intended to help with global navigation, those GPS signals have provided trillions of dollars in unanticipated value to the global economy over the past three decades. GPS is everywhere. I think everybody realizes that. Agriculture, banking, the stock market, the airline industry, separate and distinct navigation systems. It's really pervasive across both capabilities for our Department of Defense and capabilities for our economy and individuals, billions of individuals across our country and the planet. Some of the other work we do for instance, in the communications sector, secure communications satellites that we designed and build that link America's sons and daughters serving in the military around the world and really enable real time support and comms for our deployed forces. And those of our allies. We also acquire infrared missile warning satellites that monitor the planet for missile launches that provide advanced warning to the US Homeland and to our allies in case some of those missile launches are nefarious. On a note, that's probably a lot closer to home, maybe a lot closer to home than many of us want to think about here in the state of California. In 2018, SMC jumped through a bunch of red tape and bureaucracy to partner with the US Forest Service during two of the largest wildfires in the state's history, the Camp and Woolsey fires in Northern California. As those fires spread out of control, we created processes on the fly to share data from our missile warning satellites. Those are satellites that are systems that are purpose built to see heat sources from thousands of miles above the planet. And we collaborated with the US Forest Service so that firefighters on the ground could track those fires more in real time and better forecast fires and where they were spreading, thereby saving lives and property by identifying hotspots and flareups for firefighters. That data that we were able to working with our contractors pass to the US Forest Service and authorities here in California, was passed in less than an hour as it was collected to get it into the hands of the emergency responders, the first responders as quickly as possible and doing that in an hour greatly surpassed what was available from some of the other assets in the airborne and ground-based fire spotters. It was really instrumental in fighting those fires and stopping their spread. We've continued that involvement in recent years, using multiple systems to support firefighters across the Western US this fall, as they battled numerous wildfires that unfortunately continue. Working together with the US Forest Service and with other partners we'd like to think that we've made a difference here, but there's still a lot more work to go. And I think that we should always be asking ourselves what else can space data be used for and how can we more rapidly get that space data to stakeholders so that they can use it for purposes of good, if you will. How else can we protect our nation? How else can we protect our friends and allies? I think a major component of the discussion that we will have throughout this conference is that the space landscape has changed rapidly and continues to change rapidly. Just over the past few years, John and I were talking before we went live here and 80 nations now have space programs. Nearly 80 space faring nations on the planet. If you just look at one mission area that the Department of Defense is interested in, and that's small launch, there are currently over 100 different small launch companies within the US industrial base vying for commercial DoD and civil payload capabilities, mostly to lower earth orbit. It's truly a remarkable time. If you factor in those things like artificial intelligence and machine learning, where we're revolutionizing really, the ways that we generate process and use data. It's really remarkable. In 2016, so if you think about this four years ago, NASA estimated that there were 28 terabytes of information transiting their space network each day. And that was four years ago. Obviously we've got a lot of desire to work with a lot of the people in the audience in this conference, we need to work with big thinkers, like many of you to answer questions on how best we apply data analytics to extract value and meaning from that data. We need new generations of thinkers to help apply cutting edge theories of data mining, cyber behaviorism, and Internet of Things 2.0, it's just truly a remarkable time to be in the space business and the cyber aspects of the space business are truly, truly daunting and important to all of us. Integrating cyber security into our space systems, both commercial and government is a mandate. it's no longer just a nice to have as the US Space Force and Department of the Air Force leadership has said many times over the past couple of years, space is becoming congested and contested. And that contested aspect means that we've got to focus on cyber security in the same way that the banking industry and cyber commerce focus on cybersecurity day in and day out. The value of the data and services provided is really directly tied to the integrity and availability of that data and services from the space layer, from the ground control segments associated with it. And this value is not just military, it's also economic and it's not just American, it's also a value for the entire world, particularly our allies, as we all depend upon space and space systems. Your neighbors and friends here in California that are employed at the space and missile system center work with network defenders. We work with our commercial contractors and our systems developers, our international allies and partners to try and build as secure and resilient systems as we can from the ground up that keep the global comments of space free and open for exploration and for commerce as John and I were talking earlier, before we came online, there's an aspect of cybersecurity for space systems, especially for some of our legacy systems, that's more, how do we bolt this on? Cause we fielded those space systems a number of years ago, and the challenges of cybersecurity in the space domain have grown. So we have a part that we have to worry about, bolting it on, but then we have to worry about building it in as we field new systems and build in a flexibility that realizes that the cyber threat or the cybersecurity landscape will evolve over time. It's not just going to be stagnant. There will always be new vulnerabilities and new threat vectors that we all have to look at. Look, as Secretary Barrett, who is our secretary of the air force likes to say most Americans use space before they have their first cup of coffee in the morning. The American way of life really depends on space. And as part of the United States Space Force, we work with defense leaders, our Congress joint, and international military teammates and industry to ensure American leadership in space. I really thank you for this opportunity to address the audience today, John, and thanks so much to Cal Poly for letting me be one of the speakers at this event. I've really looked forward to this for several months. And so with that, I look forward to your questions as we kind of move along here. >> General, thank you very much for those awesome introductory statement. For the folks watching on the stream, Brigadier General Carthan's going to be in the chat, answering any questions, feel free to chat away. He's the vice commander of Space and Missile System Center, he'll be available. A couple of comments from your keynote before I get to my questions. Cause it just jumped into my head. You mentioned the benefits of say space with the fires in California. We're living that here. That's really realtime. That's a benefit. You also mentioned the ability for more people launching payloads into space. I'm only imagined Moore's law smaller, faster, cheaper applies to rockets too. So I'm imagining you have the benefits of space and you have now more potential objects flying out sanctioned and maybe unsanctioned. So is it going to be more rules around that? This is an interesting question cause it's exciting Space Force, but for all the good there is potentially bad out there. >> Yeah. So John, I think the basics of your question is as space becomes more congested and contested, is there a need for more international norms of how satellites fly in space? What kind of basic features satellites have to perhaps de orbit themselves? What kind of basic protections should all satellites be afforded as part of a peaceful global commons of space? I think those are all fantastic questions. And I know that US and many allied policy makers are looking very, very hard at those kinds of questions in terms of what are the norms of behavior and how we field, and field as the military term. But how we populate using civil or commercial terms that space layer at different altitudes, lower earth orbit, mid earth orbit, geosynchronous earth orbit, different kinds of orbits, what the kind of mission areas we accomplished from space. That's all things that need to be definitely taken into account as the place gets a little bit, not a little bit as the place gets increasingly more popular day in and day out. >> I'm super excited for Space Force. I know that a new generation of young folks are really interested in it's an emerging, changing great space. The focus here at this conference is space and cybersecurity, the intersection. I'd like to get your thoughts on the approach that a space force is taking to cybersecurity and how it impacts our national goals here in the United States. >> Yeah. So that's a great question John, let me talk about it in two basic ways. At number one is an and I know some people in the audience, this might make them a little bit uncomfortable, but I have to talk about the threat. And then relative to that threat, I really have to talk about the importance of cyber and specifically cyber security, as it relates to that threat. The threats that we face really represented a new era of warfare and that new era of warfare involves both space and cyber. We've seen a lot of action in recent months from certain countries, notably China and Russia that have threatened what I referred to earlier as the peaceful global commons of space. For example, it threw many unclassified sources and media sources. Everybody should understand that the Russians have been testing on orbit anti-satellite capabilities. It's been very clear if you were following just the week before last, the Department of Defense released its 2020 military and security developments involving the People's Republic of China. And it was very clear that China is developing ASATs, electronic jammers, directed energy weapons, and most relevant to today's discussion, offensive cyber capabilities. There are kinetic threats that are very, very easy to see, but a cyber attack against a critical command and control site or against a particular spacecraft could be just as devastating to the system and our war fighters in the case of GPS and important to note that that GPS system also impacts many civilians who are dependent on those systems from a first response perspective and emergency services, a cyber attack against a ground control site could cause operators to lose control of a spacecraft or an attacker could feed spoofed data to assist them to mislead operators so that they sent emergency services personnel to the wrong address. Attacks on spacecraft on orbit, whether directly via a network intrusion or enabled through malware introduced during the system's production while we're building the satellite can cripple or corrupt the data. Denial-of-service type attacks on our global networks obviously would disrupt our data flow and interfere with ongoing operations and satellite control. If GPS went down, I hesitate to say it this way, cause we might elicit some screams from the audience. But if GPS went down a Starbucks, wouldn't be able to handle your mobile order, Uber drivers wouldn't be able to find you. And Domino's certainly wouldn't be able to get there in 30 minutes or less. So with a little bit of tongue in cheek there from a military operations perspective, it's dead serious. We have become accustomed in the commercial world to threats like ransomware and malware. And those things have unfortunately become commonplace in commercial terrestrial networks and computer systems. However, what we're seeing is that our adversaries with the increased competition in space these same techniques are being retooled, if you will, to use against our national security space systems day in and day out. As I said, during my opening remarks on the importance of cyber, the value of these systems is directly tied to their integrity. If commanders in the field, firefighters in California or baristas in Starbucks, can't trust the data they're receiving, then that really harms their decision making capabilities. One of the big trends we've recently seen is the move towards proliferated LEO constellations, obviously Space X's Starlink on the commercial side and on the military side, the work that DARPA and my organization SMC are doing on Blackjack and Casino, as well as some space transport layer constellation work that the space development agency is designing are all really, really important types of mesh network systems that will revolutionaries how we plan and field war fighting systems and commercial communications and internet providing systems. But they're also heavily reliant on cybersecurity. We've got to make sure that they are secured to avoid an accident or international damage. Loss of control of these constellations really could be catastrophic from both a mission perspective or from a satellites tumbling out of low earth orbit perspective. Another trend is introductions in artificial intelligence and machine learning, onboard spacecraft are at the edge. Our satellites are really not so much hardware systems with a little software anymore in the commercial sector and in the defense sector, they're basically flying boxes full of software. And we need to ensure that data that we're getting out of those flying boxes full of software are helping us base our decisions on accurate data and algorithms, governing the right actions and that those systems are impervious to the extent possible to nefarious modifications. So in summation, cybersecurity is a vital element of everything in our national security space goals. And I would argue for our national goals, writ large, including economic and information dimensions, the Space Force leadership at all levels from some of the brand new second lieutenants that general Raymond swore in to the space force this morning, ceremonially from the air force associations, airspace and cyberspace conference to the various highest levels, General Raymond, General DT Thompson, myself, and a number of other senior leaders in this enterprise. We've got to make sure that we're all working together to keep cyber security at the forefront of our space systems cause they absolutely depend on it. >> You mentioned hardware, software threats, opportunities, challenges. I want to ask you because you got me thinking of the minute they're around infrastructure. We've heard critical infrastructure, grids here on earth. You're talking about critical infrastructure, a redefinition of what critical infrastructure is, an extension of what we have. So I'd love to get your thoughts about Space Force's view of that critical infrastructure vis-a-vis the threat vectors, because the term threat vectors has been kicked around in the cyberspace. Oh you have threat vectors. They're always increasing the surface area. If the surface area is from space, it's an unlimited service area. So you got different vectors. So you've got new critical infrastructure developing real time, really fast. And you got an expanded threat vector landscape. Putting that in perspective for the folks that aren't really inside the ropes on these critical issues. How would you explain this and how would you talk about those two things? >> So I tell you, just like, I'm sure people in the security side or the cybersecurity side of the business in the banking industry feel, they feel like it's all possible threat vectors represent a dramatic and protect potentially existential threat to all of the dollars that they have in the banking system, to the financial sector. On the Department of Defense side, we've got to have sort of the same mindset. That threat vector from, to, and through space against critical space systems, ground segments, the launch enterprise, or transportation to orbit and the various different domains within space itself. Like I mentioned before, LEO, MEO and GEO based satellites with different orbits, all of the different mission areas that are accomplished from space that I mentioned earlier, some that I did mention like a weather tactical or wide band communications, various new features of space control. All of those are things that we have to worry about from a cyber security threat perspective. And it's a daunting challenge right now. >> Yeah, that's awesome. And one of the things we've been falling on the hardware side on the ground is the supply chain. We've seen, malware being, really put in a really obscure hardware. Who manufactures it? Is it being outsourced? Obviously government has restrictions, but with the private sector, you mentioned China and the US kind of working together across these peaceful areas. But you got to look at the supply chain. How does the supply chain in the security aspect impact the mission of the US space Force? >> Yeah. Yeah. So how about another, just in terms of an example, another kind of California based historical example. The very first US Satellite, Explorer 1, was built by the jet propulsion laboratory folks, not far from here in El Segundo, up in Pasadena, that satellite, when it was first built in the late 50s weighing a little bit, over 30 pounds. And I'm sure that each and every part was custom made and definitely made by US companies. Fast forward to today. The global supply chain is so tightly coupled, and frankly many industries are so specialized, almost specialized regionally around the planet. We focus every day to guarantee the integrity of every component that we put in our space systems is absolutely critical to the operations of those satellites and we're dependent upon them, but it becomes more difficult and more difficult to understand the heritage, if you will, of some of the parts that are used, the thousands of parts that are used in some of our satellites that are literally school bus sized. The space industry, especially national security space sector is relatively small compared to other commercial industries. And we're moving towards using more and more parts from non US companies. Cybersecurity and cyber awareness have to be baked in from the beginning if we're going to be using parts that maybe we don't necessarily understand 100% like an Explorer one, the lineage of that particular part. The environmental difficulties in space are well known. The radiation environment, the temperature extremes, the vacuum, those require specialized component. And the US military is not the only customer in that space. In fact, we're definitely not the dominant customer in space anymore. All those factors require us along with our other government partners and many different commercial space organizations to keep a very close eye on our supply chains, from a quality perspective, a security perspective and availability. There's open source reporting on supply training intrusions from many different breaches of commercial retailers to the infectious spread of compromised patches, if you will. And our adversaries are aware of these techniques. As I mentioned earlier, with other forms of attack, considering our supply chains and development networks really becomes fair game for our adversaries. So we have to take that threat seriously. Between the government and industry sectors here in the US. We're also working with our industry partners to enact stronger defenses and assess our own vulnerabilities. Last fall, we completed an extensive review of all of our major contracts here at Space and Missile System Center to determine the levels of cyber security requirements we've implemented across our portfolio. And it sounds really kind of businessy geeky, if you will. Hey, we looked at our contracts to make sure that we had the right clauses in our contracts to address cybersecurity as dynamically as we possibly could. And so we found ourselves having to add new language to our contracts, to require system developers, to implement some more advanced protective measures in this evolving cyber security environment. So that data handling and supply chain protections from contract inception to launch and operations were taken into account. Cyber security really is a key performance parameter for us now. Performance of the system, It's as important as cost, it's as important as schedule, because if we deliver the perfect system on time and on cost, it can perform that missile warning or that communications mission perfectly, but it's not cyber secure. If it's doesn't have cyber protections built into it, or the ability to implement mitigations against cyber threats, then we've essentially fielded a shoe box in space that doesn't do the CA the war fighter or the nation any good. Supply chain risk management is a major challenge for us. We're doing a lot to coordinate with our industry partners. We're all facing it head on to try and build secure and trusted components that keep our confidence as leaders, firefighters, and baristas as the case may be. But it is a challenge. And we're trying to rise to that challenge. >> This is so exciting this new area, because it really touches everything. Talk about geeking out on the tech, the hardware, the systems but also you put your kind of MBA hat on you go, what's the ROI of extra development and how things get built. Because the always the exciting thing for space geeks is like, if you're building cool stuff, it's exciting, but you still have to build. And cybersecurity has proven that security has to be baked in from the beginning and be thought as a system architecture. So you're still building things, which means you got to acquire things, you got to acquire parts, you got acquire build software and sustain it. How is security impacting the acquisition and the sustainment of these systems for space? >> Yeah. From initial development, through planning for the acquisition, design, development, our production fielding and sustainment, it impacts all aspects of the life cycle, John. We simply, especially from the concept of baking in cybersecurity, we can't wait until something is built and then try and figure out how to make it cyber secure. So we've moved way further towards working side by side with our system developers to strengthen cybersecurity from the very beginning of a systems development, cyber security, and the resilience associated with it really have to be treated as a key system attribute. As I mentioned earlier, equivalent with data rates or other metrics of performance. We like to talk in the space world about mission assurance and mission assurance has always sort of taken us as we technically geek out. Mission assurance has always taken us to the will this system work in space. Can it work in a vacuum? Can it work in as it transfers through the Van Allen radiation belt or through the Southern hemisphere's electromagnetic anomaly? Will it work out in space? And now from a resiliency perspective, yeah, it has to work in space. It's got to be functional in space, but it's also got to be resistant to these cybersecurity threats. It's not just, I think a General D.T Thompson quoted this term. It's not just widget assurance anymore. It's mission assurance. How does that satellite operator that ground control segment operate while under attack? So let me break your question a little bit, just for purposes of discussion into really two parts, cybersecurity, for systems that are new and cybersecurity for systems that are in sustainment are kind of old and legacy. Obviously there's cyber vulnerabilities that threatened both, and we really have to employ different strategies for defensive of each one. For new systems. We're desperately trying to implement across the Department of Defense and particularly in the space world, a kind of a dev sec ops methodology and practice to delivering software faster and with greater security for our space systems. Here at SMC, we have a program called enterprise ground services, which is a toolkit, basically a collection of tools for common command and control of different satellite systems, EGS as we call it has an integrated suite for defensive cyber capabilities. Network operators can use these tools to gain unprecedented insight to data flows and to monitor space network traffic for anomalies or other potential indicators of a bad behavior, malicious behavior, if you will, it's rudimentary at this point, but because we're using DevSecOps and that incremental development approach, as we scale it, it just becomes more and more capable. Every product increment that we feel. Here at LA Air Force Base, we have the United Space Force's West Coast Software Factory, which we've dubbed the Kobayashi Maru. They're using those agile DevOps software development practices to deliver a space awareness software to the combined space operations center. Affectionately called the CSpock that CSpock is just on the road from Cal Poly there in San Luis Obispo at Vandenberg Air Force Base. They've so securely linked the sea Spock with other space operation centers around the planet, our allies, Australia, Canada, and the UK. We're partnering with all of them to enable secure and enhanced combined space operations. So lots of new stuff going on as we bake in new development capabilities for our space systems. But as I mentioned earlier, we've got large constellations of satellites on orbit right now. Some of them are well in excess of a decade or more or old on orbit. And so the design aspects of those satellites are several decades old. But we still have to worry about them cause they're critical to our space capabilities. We've been working with an air force material command organization called CROWS, which stands for the Cyber Resiliency Office for Weapon Systems to assess all of those legacy platforms from a cyber security perspective and develop defensive strategies and potential hardware and software upgrades to those systems to better enable them to live through this increasingly cybersecurity concerned era that we currently live in. Our industry partners have been critical to both of those different avenues. Both new systems and legacy systems. We're working closely with them to defend and upgrade national assets and develop the capabilities to do similar with new national assets coming online. The vulnerabilities of our space systems really kind of threatened the way we've done business in the past, both militarily and in the case of GPS economically. The impacts of that cybersecurity risk are clear in our acquisition and sustainment processes, but I've got to tell you, as the threat vectors change, as the vulnerabilities change, we've got to be nimble enough, agile enough, to be able to bounce back and forth. We can't just say, many people in the audience are probably familiar with the RMF or the Risk Management Framework approach to reviewing the cyber security of a system. We can't have program managers and engineers just accomplish an RMF on a system. And then, hey, high five, we're all good. It's a journey, not a destination, that's cybersecurity. And it's a constant battle rhythm through our weapon systems lifecycle, not just a single event. >> I want to get to this commercial business needs and your needs on the next question. But before I go there, you mentioned agile. And I see that clearly because when you have accelerated innovation cycles, you've got to be faster. And we saw this in the computer industry, mainframes, mini computers, and then we started getting beyond maybe when the internet hit and PCs came out, you saw the big enterprises, the banks and government start to work with startups. And it used to be a joke in the entrepreneurial circles is that, there's no way if you are a startup you're ever going to get a contract with a big business enterprise. Now that used to be for public sector and certainly for you guys. So as you see startups out there and there's acquisition involved, I'm sure would love to have a contract with Space Force. There's an ROI calculation where if it's in space and you have a sustainment view and it's software, you might have a new kind of business model that could be attractive to startups. Could you share your thoughts on the folks who want to be a supplier to you, whether they're a startup or an existing business that wants to be agile, but they might not be that big company. >> John, that's a fantastic question. We're desperately trying to reach out to those new space advocates, to those startups, to those what we sometimes refer to, within the Department of Defense, those non traditional defense contractors. A couple of things just for thinking purposes on some of the things that we're trying to highlight. Three years ago, we created here at Space and Missile System Center, the Space Enterprise Consortium to provide a platform, a contractual vehicle, really to enable us to rapidly prototype, development of space systems and to collaborate between the US Space Force, traditional defense contractors, non traditional vendors like startups, and even some academic institutions. SPEC, as we call it, Space Enterprise Consortium uses a specialized contracting tool to get contracts awarded quickly. Many in the audience may be familiar with other transaction agreements. And that's what SPEC is based on. And so far in just three years, SPEC has awarded 75 different prototyping contracts worth over $800 million with a 36% reduction in time to award. And because it's a consortium based competition for these kinds of prototyping efforts, the barrier to entry for small and nontraditional, for startups, even for academic institutions to be able to compete for these kinds of prototyping has really lowered. These types of partnerships that we've been working through on spec have really helped us work with smaller companies who might not have the background or expertise in dealing with the government or in working with cyber security for their systems, both our developmental systems and the systems that they're designing and trying to build. We want to provide ways for companies large and small to partner together in support kind of mutually beneficial relationships between all. Recently at the Annual Air Force Association conference that I mentioned earlier, I moderated a panel with several space industry leaders, all from big traditional defense contractors, by the way. And they all stressed the importance of building bridges and partnerships between major contractors in the defense industry and new entrance. And that helps us capture the benefits of speed and agility that come with small companies and startups, as well as the expertise and specialized skill sets of some of those larger contractors that we rely on day in and day out. Advanced cyber security protections and utilization of secure facilities are just a couple of things that I think we could be prioritizing more so in those collaborations. As I mentioned earlier, the SPEC has been very successful in awarding a number of different prototyping contracts and large dollar values. And it's just going to get better. There's over 400 members of the space enterprise consortium, 80% of them are non traditional kinds of vendors. And we just love working with them. Another thing that many people in the audience may be familiar with in terms of our outreach to innovators, if you will, and innovators that include cyber security experts is our space pitch day events. So we held our first event last November in San Francisco, where we awarded over a two day period about $46 million to 30 different companies that had potentially game changing ideas. These were phase two small business innovative research efforts that we awarded with cash on the spot. We're planning on holding our second space pitch day in the spring of 2021. We're planning on doing it right here in Los Angeles, COVID-19 environment permitting. And we think that these are fantastic venues for identifying and working with high-speed startups, and small businesses who are interested in really, truly partnering with the US Air Force. It's, as I said before, it's a really exciting time to be a part of this business. And working with the innovation economy is something that the Department of Defense really needs to do in that the innovation that we used to think was ours. That 80% of the industrial base innovation that came from the Department of Defense, the script has been flipped there. And so now more than 70%, particularly in space innovation comes from the commercial sector, not from the defense business itself. And so that's a tsunami of investment and a tsunami of a capability. And I need to figure out how to get my surfboard out and ride it, you know what I mean? >> Yeah, It's one of those things where the script has been flipped, but it's exciting because it's impacting everything. When you're talking about systems architecture? You're talking about software, you're talking about a business model. You're talking about dev sec opsx from a technical perspective, but now you have a business model innovation. All the theaters are exploding in innovation, technical, business, personnel. This brings up the workforce challenge. You've got the cyber needs for the US Space Force, It's probably great ROI model for new kinds of software development that could be priced into contracts. That's a entrepreneurial innovation, you've got the business model theater, you've got the personnel. How does the industry adopt and change? You guys are clearly driving this. How does the industry adjust to you? >> Yeah. So I think a great way to answer that question is to just talk about the kind of people that we're trying to prioritize in the US Space Force from an acquisition perspective, and in this particular case from a cybersecurity perspective. As I mentioned earlier, it's the most exciting time to be in space programs, really since the days of Apollo. Just to put it in terms that maybe have an impact with the audience. From 1957 until today, approximately 9,000 satellites have been launched from the various space varying countries around the planet. Less than 2000 of those 9,000 are still up on orbit and operational. And yet in the new space regime players like Space X have plans to launch, 12,000 satellites for some of their constellations alone. It really is a remarkable time in terms of innovation and fielding of space capabilities and all of those space capabilities, whether they're commercial, civil, or defense are going to require appropriate cybersecurity protections. It's just a really exciting time to be working in stuff like this. And so folks like the folks in this audience who have a passion about space and a passion about cybersecurity are just the kind of people that we want to work with. Cause we need to make sure our systems are secure and resilient. We need folks that have technical and computing expertise, engineering skills to be able to design cyber secure systems that can detect and mitigate attacks. But we also, as you alluded to, we need people that have that business and business acumen, human networking background, so that we can launch the startups and work with the non traditional businesses. Help to bring them on board help, to secure both their data and our data and make sure our processes and systems are free as much as possible from attack. For preparation, for audience members who are young and maybe thinking about getting into this trade space, you got to be smart on digital networking. You got to understand basic internet protocols, concepts, programming languages, database design. Learn what you can for penetration or vulnerability testing and a risk assessment. I will tell you this, and I don't think he will, I know he will not mind me telling you this, but you got to be a lifelong learner and so two years ago, I'm at home evening and I get a phone call on my cell phone and it's my boss, the commander of Air Force Space command, General, J. Raymond, who is now currently the Chief of Space Operations. And he is on temporary duty, flying overseas. He lands where he's going and first thing he does when he lands is he calls me and he goes JT, while I was traveling, I noticed that there were eBooks available on the commercial airliner I was traveling on and there was an ebook on something called scrumming and agile DevSecOps. And I read it, have you read it? And I said, no, sir. But if you tell me what the title of the book is, I will read it. And so I got to go to my staff meeting, the very next week, the next time we had a staff meeting and tell everybody in the staff meeting, hey, if the four star and the three star can read the book about scrumming, then I'm pretty sure all of you around this table and all our lieutenants and our captains our GS13s, All of our government employees can get smart on the scrumming development process. And interestingly as another side, I had a telephone call with him last year during the holidays, where he was trying to take some leave. And I said, sir, what are you up to today? Are you making eggnog for the event tonight or whatever. And the Chief of Space Operations told me no, I'm trying to teach myself Python. I'm at lesson two, and it's not going so well, but I'm going to figure this out. And so that kind of thing, if the chief of staff or the Chief of Space Operations can prioritize scrumming and Python language and innovation in his daily schedule, then we're definitely looking for other people who can do that. And we'll just say, lower levels of rank throughout our entire space force enterprise. Look, we don't need people that can code a satellite from scratch, but we need to know, we need to have people that have a basic grasp of the programming basics and cybersecurity requirements. And that can turn those things into meaningful actions, obviously in the space domain, things like basic physics and orbital mechanics are also important spaces, not an intuitive domain. So under understanding how things survive on orbit is really critical to making the right design and operational decisions. And I know there's probably a lot, because of this conference. I know there's probably a whole lot of high speed cybersecurity experts out in the audience. And I need those people in the US Space Force. The country is counting on it, but I wouldn't discount having people that are just cyber aware or cyber savvy. I have contracting officers and logisticians and program managers, and they don't have to be high end cybersecurity experts, but they have to be aware enough about it to be able to implement cyber security protections into our space systems. So the skill set is really, really broad. Our adversaries are pouring billions of dollars into designing and fielding offensive and destructive space, cybersecurity weapons. They repeatedly shown really a blatant disregard of safety and international norms for good behavior on orbit. And the cyber security aspects of our space systems is really a key battleground going forward so that we can maintain that. As I mentioned before, peaceful global comments of space, we really need all hands on deck. If you're interested in helping in uniform, if you're interested in helping, not in uniform, but as a government employee, a commercial or civil employee to help us make cyber security more important or more able to be developed for our space systems. And we'd really love to work with you or have you on the team to build that safe and secure future for our space systems. >> Lieutenant General John Thompson, great insight. Thank you for sharing all that awesome stories too, and motivation for the young next generation. The United States Space Force approach to cybersecurity. Really amazing talk, thank you for your time. Final parting question is, as you look out and you have your magic wand, what's your view for the next few years in terms of things that we could accomplish? It's a super exciting time. What do you hope for? >> So first of all, John, thanks to you and thanks to Cal Poly for the invitation and thanks to everybody for their interest in cybersecurity, especially as it relates to space systems, that's here at the conference. There's a quote, and I'll read it here from Bernard Schriever, who was the founder, if you will, a legend in a DoD space, the founder of the Western development division, which was a predecessor organization to Space and Missile System Center, General Schriever, I think captures the essence of how we see the next couple of years. "The world has an ample supply of people "who can always come up with a dozen good reasons "why new ideas will not work and should not be tried, "but the people who produce progress are breed apart. "They have the imagination, "the courage and the persistence to find solutions." And so I think if you're hoping that the next few years of space innovation and cybersecurity innovation are going to be upon a pony ride at the County fair, then perhaps you should look for another line of work, because I think the next few years in space and cybersecurity innovation are going to be more like a rodeo and a very dynamic rodeo as it goes. It is an awesome privilege to be part of this ecosystem. It's really an honor for me to be able to play some small role in the space ecosystem and trying to improve it while I'm trying to improve the chances of the United States of America in a space war fighting environment. And so I thank all of you for participating today and for this little bit of time that you've allowed me to share with you. Thank you. >> Sir, thank you for your leadership and thank you for the time for this awesome event, Space and Cyber Cybersecurity Symposium 2020, I'm John Furrier on behalf of Cal Poly, thanks for watching. (mellow music)

>>from around the globe. It's the queue with digital coverage of AWS Public sector online brought to you by Amazon Web services. Everyone welcome back to the Cube's virtual coverage of Amazon Web services. Public sector Summit Online Virtual I'm John Furrier, your host of the Cube here in our Palo Alto studios were quarantined with our crew here. We're talking to all the guests, getting all the content I'm excited of. Sandy Carter Cube alumni's also the VP vice president. Worldwide public sector partners and programs. Sandy. Great to see you virtually. You look >>great virtually too. It's great to see everybody virtually. >>I love the sign behind you. Powered by AWS. I'm excited to have you on, but I really wanted to get jump right in because this is really an important conversation. Public sector is seeing a lot of activity around what's going on with covert 19 especially with all the public services that are needed. And people are now remote workers, remote consumers, public service and still needs to be delivered just like business. So it's a really had a big impact of the entire world. We're all seeing it. We're feeling it's not just tech thing. How are you seeing your community respond? Your partners are responding to covert. 19. Can you share what's happening? >>Yes, John, I have to say, I am so incredibly proud of the partners that we support and how they've stepped up in this time. That has no blueprint, right? It's brand new for everybody, whether we're talking about virtual call centers. We had so many states that said they had people waiting for hours waiting for calls to be answered about Covance for Take. For instance, West Virginia, West Virginia had collars waiting for hours 77,000 calls a day. They worked with one of our partners, Smartronix, and they got this new solution a ream or remote virtual call center, up in 72 hours. 72 hours later, Average wait. Time was 60 seconds. Amazing job by Smartronix or one of our other partners, Elektronik Caregiver who's based out of New Mexico, where my husband's from a great partner who's been looking at, um, telemedicine, how they can help those at risk in hospitals and rehabs, even just at their homes. Or another startup that's a partner of ours called Hello, Alice, that integrated with our AI and ML to create a small business platform to help those small businesses get access to funding. Answer questions During this really hard time and the last example, I'll give you his Inter vision, one of our newest premier partners, who had a customer that came to them and said, Look, I need to get a remote work solution up workspaces identity manager help desk And they thought it would take months and Inter Vision was able to do it in week. So I am so proud and so thankful of our partners and what they've done to really impact the world, not just for their own profit, but for purpose helping out states, governments and citizens >>and congratulations. And it's well needed. People are feeling the pain. One area I want to get your thoughts on is the agencies we talked to the Department of Defense general manager earlier today. Um, all of the agencies in in public sector are shifting, and obviously, with the limitations, they got a shift to the remote workforce. They got to be faster. They got to be agile. I know they've been trying to, but they can't just wait any longer. They're forced to. How are your public sector partners helping the agencies? >>Yeah, this is another just terrific story. I cannot brag about our partners enough with our agency work. So if you looked at all of the agencies, kind of had a tight title wave of this digital transformation, things that we're gonna take them years ended up taking them weeks and months. So whether it's Kansas with the Department of Labor, they had 8800 and 77,000 calls a day. 21 staff couldn't do. It worked with our partners to get a call center up and going or in New Mexico again with Accenture, they used Amazon Connect, which is one of my new favorite products from Amazon. It's a call center that leverages machine learning and AI. They were able to work with the New Mexico Human Services and get that up and going in two days, Um, or even in Montana, a great story with Deloitte, where they built a custom chat box in seven days, custom chat box and seven days to answer questions about food and medicine and even how to get cash. If you needed to get cash, our partners really stepped up with the agencies, and they did so much compelling work so quickly. I think speed was such a great component here, John. The speed of deployment, the speed of help. You know, working 24 by seven to deliver these solutions. Our partners really did an amazing job. >>Yeah, and it's really hard with virtual. I got, I got I wish I was in person with everyone because coming to the public sector summits, one of my favorite events reinvent in public sector. Some of the two big shows, I really think encapsulate all the activity because it's virtual. People might miss some news. What else is going on in the world of public sector partners? You? Can you elaborate more on what's going on around the edges? What's on the bleeding? Cutting edge? What's the pioneer and what are some of the blocking and tackling that you're doing? Share some of the news. What else is going on? >>Yeah. Thank you, John. There's so much going on. First of all, we just introduced a new partner solution portal. So all of these code that 19 solutions are featured there. We will provide a URL for any customer looking for a great solution by our partners. We also really honed in and helped our partners during this time around. Said Ramp. And you know that fed ramp is so crucial. Security cybersecurity Incredibly essential. During this time I know you talked to my good friend Casey from Salesforce. They were able to achieve their fed ramp I and we offer a lot of help to our partners to help them to achieve not just fed ramp, but GDP are as well as HIPPA too. Some other news on migrations. We've got a competency around migrations. We've got some new funding for our partners around map and we're seeing our migration's really accelerate, you know, once these agencies, once he states see the power of the cloud, they're like, give me more, I want to put more and so we're seeing migrations accelerate. I know that you saw the Navy speak about what they're doing with s AP and as to another one of my favorite partners 72,000 users now running in his two on AWS. Six different commands pretty powerful. And I would say last but not least, is PTP our program transformation program for our partners, which really is like 100 and 10 day session to help the partners become a cloud business themselves. So they're kind of drinking their own champagne before they go out and help others. They become a cloud business. It's really powerful. This program has helped to generate twice the revenue of a typical a PM program. >>You mentioned the Navy always having interesting chat about that. Migration was less than 10 months. >>Yes, again. Speed, speed, speed, right, John. I mean, it's incredible >>years, two months, and the other thing that you probably find interesting and this is something that's kind of not talked about. But it's felt just the basic stuff, like getting paperwork in some of these processes, like you mentioned Fed Ramp. There's a lot of things that go on around public sector. You just got to get done. You got a slog through it, if you will. You guys have have responded well there, and this is the benefit of the cloud. Having the streamlined processes elaborate more on that, because I think that's important. Benefit not only just started in the critical infrastructure, like call centers and things of that nature, but getting business done. That's a big thing. >>Yeah, And I would say, you know, if you look at it, we helped over 20 states with their insurance processes. I mean, it seems like a minor thing, but a lot of these things were manual before, Um, we've helped many states with unemployment, you know, very critical at this time, taking a manual process and getting it into the cloud. There's so many of these that we can go on and on about How do you get medical supplies? One of our partners cohesive down in Latin America has been helping around some of the supply chain issues that that we deal with there some of the things that we take for granted when you're in person now that your virtual, you really need to think them through in the cloud. So again, you know, our partners responded with speed. They responded with heart to John one of the other things, you know, hashtag tech for good. They responded with heart as well as they were looking at these projects and ensuring that states and agencies and governments around the world could take care of their citizens, which is all of us. >>You know, existing. We've talked in the past. We've talked on camera and off camera around our shared passion around tech for good. I've been a big proponent of as well as us of right of other folks. But with the crisis, the word impact means something. And social impact is actually social impact. Getting your unemployment check or, you know, this this is highlights the critical nature of why these services exist. I think it's a real testament. I think people should step back and saying why we should never go back to the old antiquated ways because this is now the new reality. These services can be agile, they can be faster. It takes a crisis, unfortunately, and I guess that could be the silver lining in all this. So props to you guys on giving the partnership there with the partners >>and to the governments and states, John, who have now, like they moved rapidly, right? All these states, all these agencies, all these governments move quickly to digital transformation. Now they've gotten a taste of it, and they're like, give me more. And so the great thing to me is that this wasn't a one time event or one time crisis driven movement. Now that they see the power of it much like what you're saying with your business, they're doing more and and that's what I really applaud for all of them. And the way that they're transforming the business is now longer term. >>I'm optimistic, and I hope when we come out of this when everyone gets settled and they re imagine and reinvent, there's a growth strategy and expansion could be for positive change. So you've >>got >>stuff. We're all for that, and we'll be watching that reporting on it. I >>want to >>ask you something. I've heard that you guys will be soon expanding your public safety and disaster response partner. Competency. Can you tell me more about that? >>Yeah, So we announced the This is a hard one is disaster response in public safety competency at re invent for our consulting partners? And that went over amazingly well. I mean, take, for instance, Max are who is probably the best at believing delivering data both pre and post data to a disaster. They helped Noah, for instance, where data was taking 100 minutes to get that data down. Not good enough in a disaster. They were able to achieve a 58% faster download of data so you can do something with that Use that data to make good decisions. So these consulting partners have really embraced are our disaster recovery and public safety response competency. And now what we want to do is introduce this for our technology partners. So we're announcing the coming of this program for our technology partners. Now who is a technology partner? Well, think about an AI is the or a SAS provider these type of partners who have great solutions that target this particular area, think about public safety right now and how important that is, or even disaster response. You know, we have cove it, but right after that, we have all these hurricanes and earthquakes and other things that are happening around the world. Killer hornets. Um and so we've got some great technology partners that have solutions here, and we'll be welcoming them into this confidence. He fold as well. >>Well, this brings up something I've been commenting on. I want to get your reaction is because you know, when you have that flywheel pattern, infrastructures of service platforms of service and sass that build cloud when we've seen the benefits over a decade. Plus, when you bring the business model, you start to see the same thing. Some foundational things like infrastructure as service would be like compliance. Instant auditing that the Navy seeing, for instance, I heard earlier and then that platform pieces to allow these new workloads. So these new applications are going to be coming on. Creative surge of application developers, new kinds of workloads, new kinds of workforces and and work work flows. So you're gonna start to see these new APS. That means you guys will probably be inundated with new things. How do people get involved? Do they join a PN? What are some of the benefits? What should someone do? I want to be a partner of AWS because I see a solution. I create something that may be unique and specialize in niche. But it solves a really important problem. I want to bring it to Amazon. How do I do that? >>And we want you as a partner to John. Um, so yes. I mean, if you're a partner, the very first place to start is to join our A p m r Amazon Partner Network. If you're a startup or an I s d a distributor or reseller consulting partner, any of those that would be the first place to start, And then based on what you're interested in, you would then select the types of help that you might get. So, for example, if you're a start up, we helped start ups with credits because a lot of startups need free credits as they're starting their businesses or even technologies. So if you think about Hello, Alice, uh, you know, really using tagging for her small business site during Cove it we were able to provide some technology expertise to get her moving and grooving. Um, other great programs that we have out there are things like 80 0 the authority to operate. And this is really important, John, because a lot of our our customers require fed ramp and fed ramp is very costly and not only costly, but takes a lot of time so we can dramatically reduce your time to market with fed ramp really help you through with all those best practices. In fact, today we have 110 fed ramp solution that have gone through our 80 or authority to hire authority to operate process. And that's four X. Our top two competitors combined four x the number of partners that have gotten through because of the amount of time that is reduced through this process as well as the best practices that we bring. We've done a slim down version, so if you're a start up and you're interested in it like we partner with the Joshua down at Capital Factory and they've got the Army future command, we got a lot of startups. You want it? We've also got a slim down version for for them as well. >>It's been a >>very powerful program, >>and being in the cloud you can fast track and learn from others. This >>is the >>whole point of cloud. >>Absolutely, And learning from others is, you know, one of the great things that we love to do. In fact, until I we're going to do a big partner meeting, you know, here at the summit we'll have partners that participate in the virtual online summit. We're going to do a separate meeting just for our partners in July as well to share with them some of the things that are important to them around programs and some of these AP and benefits and some of the changes that we've made to help support them during the Cove it crisis. >>And I think you know the partners or the channel or how you look at it. They're adding value and a great partner for Amazon. For you guys, It's a great city. >>Yeah, I mean, are we could not. We at Amazon could not do the business We do without our partners. They bring their expertise, their best practices, the skills and the relationships they have, the contracts they bring to the table. So we're so grateful for the partners that we have in our public sector partner program. It's one of the reasons I loved my job. Every day I get to talk to a new partner on a new technology area that they're working on. It could be, you know, spatial computing, or AI, and they're helping not just move for a business, but they're helping on a purposeful mission project usually which are so powerful in today's world, especially with all the different crisis, is that we've seen, >>you know, One thing I want to get just share with you is that I talk to a lot of partners, certainly on the Cube and in person. One of the things that resonates with partners is not only the optimism of Amazon and programs you run, but it's enablement. You guys really enable the partners to be successful on your behalf and you on their behalf. But ultimately the customer and I think, and there's money to be made so lucrative and profitable, and they could impact change. So this enabling capability is really the magic. And so I want to ask you on your final question. Here in the talk is what's the vibe now? Because also, we know it's pretty depressing with Cove it, um and we're gonna get through this, but so there will be a day we get through. This will be growth and strategies around. It will never be the same. Certainly, I believe the hybrid world. What's >>the >>vibe inside the Amazon Web services public sector partner team, the community, the ecosystem? Could you just give some insight into how people are doing? And what's the vibe? >>Yeah, I would say the vibe is hopeful um, we all see the difference and the impact that we're making on a daily basis. And because of that, um, we continue to stretch forward and really move mountains for our customers to help them deliver better services. Um, you know, our partners are jumping in and all kinds of areas. First of all, for example, they are jumping in on doing hackathons to help with covet 19. So, John, you know, girls and tech. We've got our partners and us as AWS jumping into happy on different solutions for some of these challenges that are facing there. That's all about hope. I hope that we can make a difference. We are jumping in and assisting on remote work and unemployment, um, to provide hope to the teams and the community. So I would say, you know, it's tough for all. In fact, one of my friends describes, this is a crisis cake, not one level of a crisis, but multiple levels of the crisis. And I have never been with a with a more optimistic and positive team in my whole life, one who's willing to do what it takes. And when I see team, I mean not just my AWS partner team, which is the best of the world, but our world class partner team as well, who is willing to jump in there and do what it takes to help our customers. Even this weekend, I had a part of my partner team and my partners working to solve a problem for an agency that was, you know, um, critical. And they jumped in on the weekend to make that happen. So I would say, if I could say one word, I would say My partner's are hopeful they are. They're learning. They're curious. They're stepping out into new areas like connect and remote work and remote learning. And they're doing things that they never thought was possible based on what's happening today. >>Critical infrastructure, critical software, services and processes gotta be maintained and this opportunity. So I think it's, you know, heads down with hope and growth, always great to chat with you. And of course, we'll be following and covering your event next month. So looking forward to it, exciting times. Sandy Carter, Thank you for joining me today for coverage. >>Thank you, John. It's always a pleasure to be here on the Cube Thank you guys for watching as well. >>Sandy Carter, vice president, worldwide public sector partners in program. Distinguished Cube Alumni. A tough job, great job at same time. A lot of opportunities and hope. I'm John Furrow, your host of the Cube. You're watching our coverage. Cube Virtual of Amazon public sector Online summit. Thanks for watching. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Narrator: From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto and Boston, it's theCUBE, covering IBM Think, brought to you by IBM. >> We're back. You're watching theCUBE and our coverage of IBM Think 2020, the digital IBM thinking. We're here with Jamie Thomas, who's the general manager of strategy and development for IBM Systems. Jamie, great to see you. >> It's great to see you as always. >> You have been knee deep in qubits, the last couple years. And we're going to talk quantum. We've talked quantum a lot in the past, but it's a really interesting field. We spoke to you last year at IBM Think about this topic. And a year in this industry is a long time, but so give us the update what's new in quantum land? >> Well, Dave first of all, I'd like to say that in this environment we find ourselves in, I think we can all appreciate why innovation of this nature is perhaps more important going forward, right? If we look at some of the opportunities to solve some of the unsolvable problems, or solve problems much more quickly, in the case of pharmaceutical research. But for us in IBM, it's been a really busy year. First of all, we worked to advance the technology, which is first and foremost in terms of this journey to quantum. We just brought online our 53 qubit computer, which also has a quantum volume of 32, which we can talk about. And we've continued to advance the software stack that's attached to the technology because you have to have both the software and the hardware thing, right rate and pace. We've advanced our new network, which you and I have spoken about, which are those individuals across the commercial enterprises, academic and startups, who are working with us to co-create around quantum to help us understand the use cases that really can be solved in the future with quantum. And we've also continued to advance our community, which is serving as well in this new digital world that we're finding ourselves in, in terms of reaching out to developers. Now, we have over 300,000 unique downloads of the programming model that represents the developers that we're touching out there every day with quantum. These developers have, in the last year, have run over 140 billion quantum circuits. So, our machines in the cloud are quite active, and the cloud model, of course, is serving us well. The data's, in addition, to all the other things that I mentioned. >> So Jamie, what metrics are you trying to optimize on? You mentioned 53 qubits I saw that actually came online, I think, last fall. So you're nearly six months in now, which is awesome. But what are you measuring? Are you measuring stability or coherence or error rates? Number of qubits? What are the things that you're trying to optimize on to measure progress? >> Well, that's a good question. So we have this metric that we've defined over the last year or two called quantum volume. And quantum volume 32, which is the capacity of our current machine really is a representation of many of the things that you mentioned. It represents the power of the quantum machine, if you will. It includes a definition of our ability to provide error correction, to maintain states, to really accomplish workloads with the computer. So there's a number of factors that go into quantum volume, which we think are important. Now, qubits and the number of qubits is just one such metric. It really depends on the coherence and the effect of error correction, to really get the value out of the machine, and that's a very important metric. >> Yeah, we love to boil things down to a single metric. It's more complicated than that >> Yeah, yeah. >> specifically with quantum. So, talk a little bit more about what clients are doing and I'm particularly interested in the ecosystem that you're forming around quantum. >> Well, as I said, the ecosystem is both the network, which are those that are really intently working with us to co-create because we found, through our long history in IBM, that co-creation is really important. And also these researchers and developers realize that some of our developers today are really researchers, but as you as you go forward you get many different types of developers that are part of this mix. But in terms of our ecosystem, we're really fundamentally focused on key problems around chemistry, material science, financial services. And over the last year, there's over 200 papers that have been written out there from our network that really embody their work with us on this journey. So we're looking at things like quadratic speed up of things like Monte Carlo simulation, which is used in the financial services arena today to quantify risk. There's papers out there around topics like trade settlements, which in the world today trade settlements is a very complex domain with very interconnected complex rules and trillions of dollars in the purview of trade settlement. So, it's just an example. Options pricing, so you see examples around options pricing from corporations like JPMC in the area of financial services. And likewise in chemistry, there's a lot of research out there focused on batteries. As you can imagine, getting everything to electric powered batteries is an important topic. But today, the way we manufacture batteries can in fact create air pollution, in terms of the process, as well as we want batteries to have more retention in life to be more effective in energy conservation. So, how do we create batteries and still protect our environment, as we all would like to do? And so we've had a lot of research around things like the next generation of electric batteries, which is a key topic. But if you can think, you know Dave, there's so many topics here around chemistry, also pharmaceuticals that could be advanced with a quantum computer. Obviously, if you look at the COVID-19 news, our supercomputer that we installed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory for instance, is being used to analyze 8000 different compounds for specifically around COVID-19 and the possibilities of using those compounds to solve COVID-19, or influence it in a positive manner. You can think of the quantum computer when it comes online as an accelerator to a supercomputer like that, helping speed up this kind of research even faster than what we're able to do with something like the Summit supercomputer. Oak Ridge is one of our prominent clients with the quantum technology, and they certainly see it that way, right, as an accelerator to the capacity they already have. So a great example that I think is very germane in the time that we find ourselves in. >> How 'about startups in this ecosystem? Are you able to-- I mean there must be startups popping up all over the place for this opportunity. Are you working with any startups or incubating any startups? Can you talk about that? >> Oh yep. Absolutely. There's about a third of our network are in VC startups and there's a long list of them out there. They're focused on many different aspects of quantum computing. Many of 'em are focused on what I would call loosely, the programming model, looking at improving algorithms across different industries, making it easier for those that are, perhaps more skilled in domains, whether that is chemistry or financial services or mathematics, to use the power of the quantum computer. Many of those startups are leveraging our Qiskit, our quantum information science open programming model that we put out there so it's open. Many of the startups are using that programming model and then adding their own secret sauce, if you will, to understand how they can help bring on users in different ways. So it depends on their domain. You see some startups that are focused on the hardware as well, of course, looking at different hardware technologies that can be used to solve quantum. I would say I feel like more of them are focused on the software programming model. >> Well Jamie, it was interesting hear you talk about what some of the clients are doing. I mean obviously in pharmaceuticals, and battery manufacturers do a lot of advanced R and D, but you mentioned financial services, you know JPMC. It's almost like they're now doing advanced R and D trying to figure out how they can apply quantum to their business down the road. >> Absolutely, and we have a number of financial institutions that we've announced as part of the network. JPMC is just one of our premiere references who have written papers about it. But I would tell you that in the world of Monte Carlo simulation, options pricing, risk management, a small change can make a big difference in dollars. So we're talking about operations that in many cases they could achieve, but not achieve in the right amount of time. The ability to use quantum as an accelerator for these kind of operations is very important. And I can tell you, even in the last few weeks, we've had a number of briefings with financial companies for five hours on this topic. Looking at what could they do and learning from the work that's already done out there. I think this kind of advanced research is going to be very important. We also had new members that we announced at the beginning of the year at the CES show. Delta Airlines joined. First Transportation Company, Amgen joined, a pharmaceutical, an example of pharmaceuticals, as well as a number of other research organizations. Georgia Tech, University of New Mexico, Anthem Insurance, just an example of the industries that are looking to take advantage of this kind of technology as it matures. >> Well, and it strikes me too, that as you start to bring machine intelligence into the equation, it's a game changer. I mean, I've been saying that it's not Moore's Law driving the industry anymore, it's this combination of data, AI, and cloud for scale, but now-- Of course there are alternative processors going on, we're seeing that, but now as you bring in quantum that actually adds to that innovation cocktail, doesn't it? >> Yes, and as you recall when you and I spoke last year about this, there are certain domains today where you really cannot get as much effective gain out of classical computing. And clearly, chemistry is one of those domains because today, with classical computers, we're really unable to model even something as simple as a caffeine molecule, which we're all so very familiar with. I have my caffeine here with me today. (laughs) But you know, clearly, to the degree we can actually apply molecular modeling and the advantages that quantum brings to those fields, we'll be able to understand so much more about materials that affect all of us around the world, about energy, how to explore energy, and create energy without creating the carbon footprint and the bad outcomes associated with energy creation, and how to obviously deal with pharmaceutical creation much more effectively. There's a real promise in a lot of these different areas. >> I wonder if you could talk a little bit about some of the landscape and I'm really interested in what IBM brings to the table that's sort of different. You're seeing a lot of companies enter this space, some big and many small, what's the unique aspect that IBM brings to the table? You've mentioned co-creating before. Are you co-creating, coopertating with some of the other big guys? Maybe you could address that. >> Well, obviously this is a very hot topic, both within the technology industry and across government entities. I think that some of the key values we bring to the table is we are the only vendor right now that has a fleet of systems available in the cloud, and we've been out there for several years, enabling clients to take advantage of our capacity. We have both free access and premium access, which is what the network is paying for because they get access to the highest fidelity machines. Clearly, we understand intently, classical computing and the ability to leverage classical with quantum for advantage across many of these different industries, which I think is unique. We understand the cloud experience that we're bringing to play here with quantum since day one, and most importantly, I think we have strong relationships. We have, in many cases, we're still running the world. I see it every day coming through my clients' port vantage point. We understand financial services. We understand healthcare. We understand many of these important domains, and we're used to solving tough problems. So, we'll bring that experience with our clients and those industries to the table here and help them on this journey. >> You mentioned your experience in sort of traditional computing, basically if I understand it correctly, you're still using traditional silicon microprocessors to read and write the data that's coming out of quantum. I don't know if they're sitting physically side by side, but you've got this big cryogenic unit, cables coming in. That's the sort of standard for some time. It reminds me, can it go back to ENIAC? And now, which is really excites me because you look at the potential to miniaturize this over the next several decades, but is that right, you're sort of side by side with traditional computing approaches? >> Right, effectively what we do with quantum today does not happen without classical computers. The front end, you're coming in on classical computers. You're storing your data on classical computers, so that is the model that we're in today, and that will continue to happen. In terms of the quantum processor itself, it is a silicon based processor, but it's a superconducting technology, in our case, that runs inside that cryogenics unit at a very cold temperature. It is powered by next-generation electronics that we in IBM have innovated around and created our own electronic stack that actually sends microwave pulses into the processor that resides in the cryogenics unit. So when you think about the components of the system, you have to be innovating around the processor, the cryogenics unit, the custom electronic stack, and the software all at the same time. And yes, we're doing that in terms of being surrounded by this classical backplane that allows our Q network, as well as the developers around the world to actually communicate with these systems. >> The other thing that I really like about this conversation is it's not just R and D for the sake of R and D, you've actually, you're working with partners to, like you said, co-create, customers, financial services, airlines, manufacturing, et cetera. I wonder if you could maybe kind of address some of the things that you see happening in the sort of near to midterm, specifically as it relates to where people start. If I'm interested in this, what do I do? Do I need new skills? Do I need-- It's in the cloud, right? >> Yeah. >> So I can spit it up there, but where do people get started? >> Well they can certainly come to the Quantum Experience, which is our cloud experience and start to try out the system. So, we have both easy ways to get started with visual composition of circuits, as well as using the programming model that I mentioned, the Qiskit programming model. We've provided extensive YouTube videos out there already. So, developers who are interested in starting to learn about quantum can go out there and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We've got over 40 assets already recorded out there, and we continue to do those. We did one last week on quantum circuits for those that are more interested in that particular domain, but I think that's a part of this journey is making sure that we have all the assets out there digitally available for those around the world that want to interact with us. We have tremendous amount of education. We're also providing education to our business partners. One of our key network members, who I'll be speaking with later, I think today, is from Accenture. Accenture's an example of an organization that's helping their clients understand this quantum journey, and of course they're providing their own assets, if you will, but once again, taking advantage of the education that we're providing to them as a business partner. >> People talk about quantum being a decade away, but I think that's the wrong way to think about it, and I'd love your thoughts on this. It feels like, almost like the return coming out of COVID-19, it's going to come in waves, and there's parts that are going to be commercialized thoroughly and it's not binary. It's not like all of a sudden one day we're going to wake, "Hey, quantum is here!" It's really going to come in layers. Your thoughts? >> Yeah, I definitely agree with that. It's very important, that thought process because if you want to be competitive in your industry, you should think about getting started now. And that's why you see so many financial services, industrial firms, and others joining to really start experimentation around some of these domain areas to understand jointly how we evolve these algorithms to solve these problems. I think that the production level characteristics will curate the rate and pace of the industry. The industry, as we know, can drive things together faster. So together, we can make this a reality faster, and certainly none of us want to say it's going to be a decade, right. I mean, we're getting advantage today, in terms of the experimentation and the understanding of these problems, and we have to expedite that, I think, in the next few years. And certainly, with this arms race that we see, that's going to continue. One of the things I didn't mention is that IBM is also working with certain countries and we have significant agreements now with the countries of Germany and Japan to put quantum computers in an IBM facility in those countries. It's in collaboration with Fraunhofer Institute or miR Scientific Organization in Germany and with the University of Tokyo in Japan. So you can see that it's not only being pushed by industry, but it's also being pushed from the vantage of countries and bringing this research and technology to their countries. >> All right, Jamie, we're going to have to leave it there. Thanks so much for coming on theCUBE and give us the update. It's always great to see you. Hopefully, next time I see you, it'll be face to face. >> That's right, I hope so too. It's great to see you guys, thank you. Bye. >> All right, you're welcome. Keep it right there everybody. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE. Be back right after this short break. (gentle music)

>> live from Miami Beach, Florida It's the que covering demon 2019. Brought to you, by the way, >> Welcome back to Vima on 2019 in Miami. Everybody, we're here at the Fountain Blue Hotel. This is Day two of our coverage of the Cube, the leader in live Tech. And I'm David Dante with Peter Bors. Pippen. Jay Raj is here. He's the vice president and CEO of Make A Wish America. Just that awesome foundation nonprofit people. Thanks for coming on the Cube. >> Thank you for having me appreciate it. >> So make a wish. Children with wishes and have terminal illnesses. You guys make them come true. It's just a great organizations. Been around for a long time, I think, since the early eighties, right, >> 39 years and going >> years and hundreds of thousands of wishes made. So just how did you get Teo make a wish that all come about >> it? It wasn't interesting journey. I was consulting in I t for multiple big companies. And, you know, two years back, it was through a recruiting channel that I got an opportunity to start some conversations as the CIA and make a wish. Uh, the thing that got me in the opportunity was predominately about enterprises and just to give you a little bit off, make official operations. Make a Wish was Founded and Phoenix, Arizona. And but we also operate a 60 chapters across the United States that it is 60 chapters each of the chapter there 501 C three companies themselves with the CEO and abort. Essentially, it is 60 plus one. The national team kind of managing. All of the chapters are helping the chapters. National does not do any wish. Granting all the wish planning happens to the chapters. But National helps the chapters with the distribution of funding models brand. And thanks for That's a couple of years back in the national board talked about in our dream and mission, which is granting every eligible child the notion ofthe enterprise. You know, working as an enterprise came into four and it being a great piece off providing shared services and thanks for that. So I was brought on board and we took on I would call as the leader today said and dashes dream off. Bringing together all the 60 chapters and the city chapter's essentially are split across 120 locations. So Wade took on a project off. You know, combining our integrating all of their infrastructure needs into one place. And Phoenix without ada, sent a provider. You know, we worked with a partner. Phoenix. Now fantastic partners >> there. We had them on the other day. >> Yep, yep. Yeah, MacLaren. I mean, and the team, they did a great job. And, you know, when we had to move all of the data, everything from the 60 chapters applications everything into a centralized data center, locations that we managed right now from Make a Wish National office and provide a service back to the chapters That gives you a little bit off. You know, from behind the scenes. What happened? >> You provide the technical overview framework for all the 60 chapters. >> It almost sounds like a franchise model. >> It's what we call a Federated model back in the nonprofit. >> But but but but because make a wish is so driven by information. Yep. Both in the application as well as the programs to deliver thie brand promise. And the brand execution has got to be very, very closely tied to the quality of a shared services you provide >> exactly. Exactly. And like I said, the reason I talked about them being a separate companies themselves is you know, as I always say to my 60 CEOs, Ah, I should be able to provide the services because they wanted, because they have a choice to go outside and have their own partner. Another thing for that which they can. But they would want to work with the national team and get my, you know, work through our services rather than having have to because of the very it's A. It's a big difference when it comes to, but I've been lucky on privileged to you have these conversations with the CEO's. When I start talking to them about the need for centralization, the enterprise society assed much, there are questions when he start leading with the mission and the business notion of why we need to do that, it's It's fantastic. Everybody is in line with that. I mean, there's no question, then, as toe Hey, guys, uh, let me do all the Operation Manisha fight and leave it to me and I'll in a handler for you, and I let you guys go to what you do best. which is granting wishes. So then it becomes it doesn't become a question off, you know, should be a shouldn't way. And of course, to back that up. But I was talking to the dean, folks, It just solutions. Like VMware, Veeam. It makes it much simpler even from a cost prospect. You not for me to manage a bigger team s so that I can take those dollars and give it back to the business to grant another wish. So it's it's pretty exciting that >> way. So you set the standards. Okay, here's what you know, we recommend and then you're you're saying that adoption has been quite strong. Yeah, I remember Peter. Don't say easy. I used to run Kitty Sports in my local town in which is small town. And there was, you know, a lot of five or six or seven sports, and I was the sort of central organization I couldn't get six sports to agree that high man is 60 different CEO's. But that's okay. So not easy. But so how were you able to talk leadership or leading as we heard from Gino Speaker today? How were you able to get those guys, you know, aligned with your vision. >> Uh, it's it's been fantastic. I've had a lot ofthe good support from our executive came from a leadership team because leadership is always very important to these big initiatives are National board, which comprises off some of the that stuff best leaders in America and I have the fortune toe be mentored by Randy Sloan, who used to be the CEO of Southwest. And before that, you see a global CEO for, uh, you know, Popsicle. You know, he always told me, but but I mean CIA job. One thing is to no the technology, but completely another thing. Toe building relationships and lead with the business conversation. And so a typical conversation with the CEO about Hey, I need to take the data that you have all the I t things that you have and then me doing it. And then there are questions about what about my staff and the's conversations. Because you know, it's a nonprofit is a very noble, nice feeling, and you wouldn't want the conversations about, you know, being rift and things like that are being reduced producing the staff and thinks of that. But you know as he walked through that and show the benefits of why we doing it. They get it. And they've been able to repurpose many off the I. D functions back in tow, revenue generation model or ofhis granting in our team. And in many cases, I've been ableto absolve some off their folks from different places, which has worked out fine for me, too, because now I have kind of a power user model across the United States through which I can manage all these 120 locations. It's very interesting, >> you know, site Reliable and Engineering Dev Ops talks about thie error budget or which is this notion of doo. You're going tohave errors. You're going to have challenges. Do you want it in the infrastructure you wanted the functions actually generating value for the business? I don't know much about Make a wish. I presume, however, that the mission of helping really sick kids achieve make achieve a wish is both very rewarding, very stressful. He's gotta be in a very emotional undertaking, and I imagine it part of your message them has got to be let's have the stress or that emotional budget be dedicated to the kids and not to the technology >> completely agree. That's that. That's been one of my subjects, as you asked about How is it going about? It's about having the conversation within the context of what we talked about business and true business. Availability of data. You know, before this enterprise project data was probably not secure enough, which is a big undertaking that we're going down the path with cyber security. And you know, that is a big notion, misplaced notion out there that in a non profits are less vulnerable. Nobody. But that's completely untrue, because people have found out that nonprofits do not probably have the securing of walls and were much more weight being targeted nonprofits as a whole, targeted for cyber security crimes and so on and so forth. So some of these that I used to, you know, quote unquote help or help the business leaders understand it, And once they understand they get it, they ableto, you know, appreciate why we doing it and it becomes the conversation gets much more easier. Other What's >> the scope of the size of the chapters is that is a highly variable or there is. >> It is highly variable, and I should probably said, That's Thesixty chapters. We look at it as four categories, so the cat ones are what we call the Big Ice, the Metro New Yorkers and Francisco Bay Area. They're called Category one chapters anywhere between 4 1 60 to 70 staff. Grant's close to around 700 wishes you so as Make a Wish America, we ran close toe 15,600 wishes a year, and cat ones do kind of close to 700 15,600 400 to 700. And then you get into care to scare threes and cat for scat force are anywhere between, you know, given example Puerto Rico or Guam territory there. Cat Force New Mexico is a cat for three staff members Gammas operated by two staff members and 20 volunteers. They grant about 3 2 20 12 to 15 which is a year, so it's kind of highly variable. And then, you know, we talk about Hawaii chapter. It's a great example. They cat once predominate because of the fact that you know, they they do. There's not a lot ofthe wishes getting originated from how I but you know, Florida, California and how your three big chapters with a grand are a vicious ist with a lot of grant, you know, wish granting. So there's a lot off, you know, traffic through those chapters >> so so very distributed on diverse. What's the relationship between data and the granting of wishes? Talk about the role of data. >> Should I? I was say this that in a and I probably race a lot of fibrosis and my first introductory session a couple of years back when I John make a wish with the CEO's uh, when we had the CEO meeting and talk to them about I leaders the days off making decisions based on guts are gone. It has to be a data driven decision because that's where the world is leading to be. Take anything for that matter. So when we talk about that, it was very imperative going back to my project that the hall we had all of the data in one place or a semblance off one single place, as opposed to 60 different places to make decisions based on wish forecast, for example, how many wishes are we going to do? How many wishes are coming in? How's the demand? Was the supply matching up one of the things that we need to do. Budget purposes, going after revenue. And thanks for that. So data becomes very important for us. The other thing, we use data for the wish journeys. Essentially, that's a storytelling. You know, when I you know, it was my first foray into for profit Sorry, nonprofit. And me coming from a full profit is definitely a big culture shock. And one of the things they ask us, what are we selling? Its emotions and story. And that's our data. That is what you know. That's huge for us if we use it for branding and marketing purposes. So having a good semblance off data being ableto access it quickly and being available all the time is huge for us. >> Yeah, and you've got videos on the site, and that's another form of data. Obviously, as we as we know here, okay. And then, from a data protection standpoint, how do you approach that? Presume you're trying to standardize on V maybe is way >> are actually invested in veeam with them for a couple of years right now, as we did the consolidation of infrastructure pieces Veeam supporters with all of the backup and stories replication models. Uh, we're thinking, like Ratmir talked about act one wi be a part of the journey right now, and we're looking at active. What that brings to us. One of the things that you know, dream does for us is we have close to 60 terabytes of data in production and close to another 400 terabytes in the back of things. And, uh, it's interesting when they look about look at me equation, you think about disaster recovery back up. Why do you need it? What? The business use cases case in point. This classic case where we recently celebrated the 10th anniversary ofthe back wish bad kid in San Francisco, we have to go back and get all the archives you know, in a quick fashion, because they're always often requests from the media folks to access some of those. They don't necessarily come in a planned manner. We do a lot of things, a lot of planning around it, but still there are, you know, how How did that come about? What's the story behind? So you know, there are times we have to quickly go back. That's one second thing is having having to replicate our data immediately. Another classic case was in Puerto Rico. There was a natural disaster happened completely. Shut off. All the officers work down. We had to replicate everything what they had into a completely different place so that they could in a vpn, into an access that other chapters and our pulled in to help. They were close to 10 wish families close to 10 which families were stranded because of that. So, you know, gaining that data knowledge of where the family is because the minute of his journey starts. Everything is on us till the witch's journey ends. So we need to make sure everything is proper. Everything goes so data becomes very crucial from those pants >> you're tracking us. I mean, if you haven't been on the make a Wish site is some amazing stories. There I went on the other day. There's a story of ah, of 13 year old girl who's got a heart condition. Who wanted to be a ballerina. A kid with leukemia five years old wants to be a You want to be a chef. My two favorites, I'll share What? It was this kid Brandon a 15 year old with cystic fibrosis. I wanted to be a Navy seal. You guys made that happen. And then there was this child. Colby was 12 years old and a spinal muscular issue. You want to be a secret agent so very creative, you know, wishes that you ran >> way had another wish a couple of years last year in Georgia, where they wish kid wanted to go to Saturn. Yes, yes, it was huge. I mean, and you know the best part about us once we start creating those ideas, it's amazing how much public support we get. The community comes together to make them wish granting process. Great. Now. So I got involved in that. They gave the wish Kato training sessions to make sure that he is equipped when he goes into. And we had a bushel reality company create the entire scene. It was fabulous. So, you know, the way you talk about data and the technology is now some of the things I'm very excited about us usage off thes next Gen technology is like our winter reality to grant a wish. I mean, how cool would that be for granting a wish kid who is not able to get out of the bed. But having able to experience a the Hawaii is swimming. Are being in Disney World enough a couple of days? That's That's another use case that we talked about. That other one is to put the donors who pay the money in that moment off granting, you know, they are big major gift, uh, donors for make a wish. Sometimes we were not able to be part of a fish, but that would be pretty cool if you can bring the technology back to them and you know not going for them. You know pretty much everybody and make the ass through that rather than a PowerPoint or a storytelling, when the storytelling has to evolve to incorporate all of that so pretty excited >> and potentially make a participatory like, say, the virtual reality and then even getting in more into the senses and the that the smells. And I mean this is the world that we're entering the machine intelligence, >> which you still have to have, But you still have to be a functioning, competent, operationally sound organization. There've been a number of charities, make a wish is often at the top of the list of good charities. But there were a number of charities where the amount of money that's dedicated to the mission is a lot less an amount of money, dedicated administration of fundraising, and they always blame it. Systems were not being able to track things. So no, it's become part of the mission to stay on top of how information's flowing because it's not your normal business model. But the services you provide is really useful. Important. >> Sure, let me percent you the business conundrum that I have personally as a 90 leader. It takes close to $10,400 on an average to grant a wish. Uh, and, uh, partly because of me. But being part of the mission, plus me as a 90 leader wanting to understand the business more, I signed up. I'm a volunteer at the local Arizona chapter. I've done couple of expanding myself, and, uh, the condom is, if asked, if you want to go, uh, you know, do the latest and greatest network upgrade for $10,400 are what do you want to, uh, you know and make the network more resilient cyber security and all that stuff. What do you want to go grant? Another wish as a 90 leader probably picked the former. But as a volunteer, I would be like, No, it needs to go to the kid. It's Ah, it's It's an interesting kind of number, you know? You have to find the right balance. I mean, you cannot be left behind in that journey because at many points of time s I talked about it being a cost center. It being a back office. I think those days have clearly gone. I mean, we we evolved to the point where it is making you steps to be a participant b A b a enabler for the top line to bring in more revenues, tow no augment solutions for revenue and things. For that sofa >> rattles the experience or exact role citizens. And in your case, it's the experience is what's being delivered to the degree that you can improve the experience administratively field by making operations cheaper. Great. But as you said, new digital technologies, they're going to make it possible to do things with the experience that we could even conceive of. Five >> wears a classic example. Williams and Beam. I couldn't have taken the data from 60 chapters 120 locations into one single location manageable, and it reduced the cost literally reduce the cost of the 60 instances in one place without technology is like, you know what Sharia virtual machines. And and then to have a backup robust backup solution in a replication off it. It's fantastic. It's amazing >> there. And that's against here. You could give back to the dash chapters and backing, But thanks so much for sharing your story. You Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. Alright, keep it right there. Buddy. Peter and I were back with our next guest. You watching the Cube live from V mon from Miami? 2019. We're right back. Thank you.

>> Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE! Covering AWS re:Invent 2018. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services, Intel, and their ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're at AWS re:Invent 2018 at the Sands Convention Center and all over Vegas. I don't know how many people are here. We haven't gotten the official word. 60,000, 70,000, I don't know. There's a lot of people. We're excited to have our next guest, but before we get in, happy to be joined by Lauren Cooney. Lauren, great to see you, as always. >> Great to see you, as well. >> You know, one of my favorite things about doing Cube interviews is we learn about new industries that we didn't even know about. So, while we're here talking about IT, it's really about the application of IT that I think is really more interesting, more fun, and a great learning experience. So, we're really excited to have our next guest on. He is Kevin Smith, the director of MIS for Transcore. Kevin, great to see you. >> Hello. >> And many time Cube alumni, Sazzala Reddy. He is the CTO and co founder of Datrium. Sazzala, great to see you. >> Happy to be here. >> So, Kevin before we get into it, tells us a little about Transcore. What are you guys all about? >> Basically, we are the leading toll authority for kind of of Continental United States and we are trying to expand that throughout the world. We do the whole engineer all the way through manufacturing of toll systems for vehicles and cars throughout the U.S. So, the little stickers in you car all the way up to the readers that read them. They're coming through my place some how or some other. >> So, everything from the reader in the car-- >> Yup, the little sticker tag that sticks in your window or suction cups in. Wherever you are, yes you may hate us, but I'm not the one collecting the tolls. (laughs) >> I don't like it when you miss the picture. >> Well, let's input some design here. (laughs) >> Trust me, I've tried. (laughs) >> But then the huge back in process to pull that up, get it into the system, billing systems. >> Yeah, all integrated. Yep. >> And how big is the company? How long has it been around? >> We were acquired by Roper. We've been many divisions, but Los Alamos was technically, founding fathers 1954. >> 1954, so you've been around a long time >> Oh yeah, yes. They started with cows. >> RFID's on cows? >> Yes, tracking cows in the pastures of New Mexico. (laughs) >> With the little tags in their ears I imagine. Alright, great. We can talk about traffic probably all day long, but that's not why were here. That's not your day job you're not out there with the little RFID scanner. >> Not anymore, thank God. >> Let's talk about some of the challenges 'cause you know, obviously, the toll business has been around for a long time. But the automation of tolls has really changed a lot over the last five years. You probably know better than me from somebody in the booth taking my money and giving me a receipt to some places it's almost exclusively electronic. So, how's that business grown, and what have been some of the accompanying challenges have you seen that been grown? >> Part of the performance issues we were running into was the quantity. Because the man is gone from the booth, we have to produce more tags that become more readable. So, that creates more back in work, more transactions. And, in the long run, producing more tags. You know, we've gone to millions and millions of tags being produced, in a quarter, to where it was just hundreds of thousands. So, with that requires scalability that we can grow with our systems and our systems we had just wasn't doing it. >> So, you got the manufacturing of the tags as well, I didn't even think of the manufac- you got to make them in the first place, too. >> That is our bread and butter. Manufacturing those tags and the millions of millions of transactions that we test, because we have to test every tag that goes out the door. Every tag gets tested. >> How far away do they work, on those readers? I'm just curious. >> It depends on your speed. We've tested up to 200 miles an hour. And I think it's, like, 40-50 feet? So, as long as you're going under 200 miles an hour, we can get ya. >> Okay, so, how did you meet Sazzala in Datrium? How did that come about? >> We went looking for a product that could give us a one stop solution. We wanted something that was basically, I wanted to get out of the storage business, I wanted to get out of the management business. I didn't want to be having to worry about all these different vendors, all these different solutions. And Datrium was able to provide that. Compared to some of the other products that we were looking at, we did test with other products, and Datrium came out on top. They gave us the total package. >> Sazzala, when you looked at this oppurtunity, what did you see? Anything unique and different? What were some of the challenges that you tried to figure out how to help Kevin? >> So, what we are finding is that more and more companies, every company is a software company, every company is a data company, right? Every body wants to move faster. Everybody wants to things faster. I can't wait for my movie to start in two seconds. I'm like, Why is it taking two seconds? So, everybody wants things faster. We live in this instant economy where everything needs to be either you transform or you die. So, how do we make that transition into the speed? How do you build your data center, whatever your doing, to match that speed of innovation? Any system you're going to deploy in a data center, has to be not in the way. It has to be less management, less overhead. Look at Amazon, very successful because there is less to manage. And, you mostly manage your applications. That's what the business moral is going to be going forward. That's why people like the Cloud. Why does CIO like the Cloud? Not because it's cooler, or whatever, but because it makes things faster. It's expensive, yeah, but it makes things faster in some ways. >> Go ahead. >> I was going to say, on issue we ran into and we came to him with was our CAD designers. 'Cause we designed the product. And, the rendering was just dragging on our old systems. And, we went from two to three minutes rendering to seconds rendering new graphics. And, so, before they were like I'm not going to save it yet, I'm not going to re-render it. Now, they're re-rendering every time they're making a change. It helps in performance, it helps the application, and it helps increase the productivity of my CAD designers. >> Right. I was going to say, it was probably the customer service pretty significant, as well, so they can get the version that they want. >> Definitely, definitely. And, you know, the nice thing is is Datrium allowed us to scale. We couldn't go out and just Okay, revamp everything. You got to do baby steps. And Datrium gave us that scaleabilty, to where I could add anything from 1 to 128 nodes. You know, I was able to increase performance by just adding a server node, or increase the rights by adding a data node. That's the flexibilty that I needed from a vendor. >> So, when you said that Datrium had the whole package, you looked at some other solutions out there. When you were trying to find the whole package at the beginning of the process, what were the key attributes that you said I would love to get all these from one place? >> I was looking for performance and scale. Which I got. I was looking for back-up. God, I wanted to get out of the back-up business. I was tired of tapes, I was tired of third-party solutions. >> Tire of tapes? (laughs) >> Trust me. Shh, don't tell the tape vendors here. >> Tape is good, if you have the right application. >> Security, I stay awake at night. I lead our security teams. I stay awake worrying about Is my data protected? You know, with their encryption, that gave me that whole protection. And the last thing was DR. DR is adorned in every IT manager, every IT director, every, you know, CTO. And, with their whole Cloud shift, that DR? What DR, it's done. It just happens. And those four things is kind of what led us to finding Datrium. 'Cause some of them gave us one or two, but not everyone could give us all four of the options that we were looking for. >> What I love about the story is those are kind of concrete savings and doing your job easier. What your excited about is enabling your CAD designer, your kind of proactive sales process, your proactive design, your proactive innovation to actually move faster. That's not a cost saving mechanism. That's really a transformational, kind of positive revenue, side of the tale that I don't think is told enough. People focus on the cost savings and execution. That's not what it's about. It's really about innovating and growing your business faster. Do you think? >> Oh no, our ROI, that we calculated in, was just on hardware. Just on my cost savings that I could put a penny to. The time, it's so great. I mean, my CAD designers producing product faster, my developers are asking for more VMs. For me to spin up because the speed is so much faster. We're used to being Oh, don't touch it. I got this guy tuned exactly where I want it. We got the memory. But now, they're asking for more and more, and it's my in users, who are really the engineers, my manufacturing people, they're wanting more and more out of the product and Datirum is delivering. I don't go to dashboard and look to try and figure out how to tweak it anymore. I don't have any complaints. And, if I don't have any complaints, were doing something right. >> That's a good thing. >> So, it just works? >> Oh, it was beyond just works. >> Literally. >> Trust me, I was ready when we bought product to bring in a whole team and I was like, Oh, I'm going to have to hire all these people. And the guy came in and he goes, Okay, turn it on. Okay we're done. I was like, Nu-uh. He goes, Oh yeah, you have to plug that cord in back there. I was like, Wow. 'Cause, you know, usually it's-- >> I'm looking at a number right now, and it is 617% three year ROI. >> It's across many customers (mumbles) >> I totally believe you with what-- >> So we are aiming for a U.S. designer came and asked me one day, What should I aim for as a design principle? I said, We should aim for zero UI. That's what we should do. It should be transparent, it should just work. That's what we really aim for. I'm not saying we have zero UI today, but that's our goal. >> It's good to have goals. >> Let's just make it work automatically, right? That's kind of the goal. >> Well, and that was one thing, we wanted something integrated, so we didn't have to go looking. And, that's one thing I tell the engineers all the time. I go into the UI just to kind of see how cool the systems running. You know, because there is no issues. It just works. Everything's integrated, I don't have to go in and click and click and click and click to get through stuff. It just works and integrates well. We're a big Vmware shop, big Dell server shop. All of that, one-stop shop. I was telling Sazzala, you know, it's great when I get the e-mail that there's a problem with my Datrium system before my help desk is getting the notification. I can't buy that service. >> So, Kevin, there's a lot of peers that will be watching this show. Peers of you. Having gone through this process and now you are on the other side and you're on to some new things, in terms of innovation, what would you share with a peer whose trying to sort some of this out? It's a confusing landscape. There's so many options, and you got to do your day job, too. Besides, putting out new technology. What would you share with a peer if you're sitting down over a beverage on a Friday afternoon? >> You know, I would talk to them about having that capability, really a performance scale. Being able to not worry about controllers, not worrying about what SSDs you got to put into something to make it work. Pop 'em in. SSDs are cheap nowadays. Pop 'em in. It increases your reads. Going back to the whole no more third-party solutions for back-ups. Every SIS admin, every manager knows, back-ups are only good for restores. That's the only reason you do a back-up, is 'cause you got to do that restore. And, it becomes invisible. It's all running in the background. I don't even think about it anymore. My old systems, we still think about. That aren't on the Datrium product yet, but all our production (scoffs) When I'm backing up every hour, and my RTO almost becomes zero if something happens, you can't ask for that. That's critical, I think, for every manager, every director, even the SIS admins. No one wants to really think about back-ups. And, when you're comparing your products, take a look at that. How quick can you get something back up when that hard drive went out, you know? That's critical. And, of course, DR is, you know, everyone needs that checkbox checked for recovering. It just comes right away, with that. >> We've run out of time. Going to ask you the big question. Do you sleep better? >> Oh, much better. (laughs) Easily now. Yes. Now I get to worry about other things. Like keeping my CFO happy about something else. >> And, I've got a list of people we need to introduce to you. Definitely. >> Fortunately, you always move through your next point of failure. Once you fix one spot. Watch Lucy check out the chocolate-- >> Hey, but if I can have this one off my plate, that's one better for me. >> Well, Kevin, thanks a lot for telling your story. It's a really impressive story And, I'll think of you as I go across a Dumbarton Bridge some time. >> Think about that, yes! >> Absolutely. >> Thank you for having me. >> Sazzala, great to see you, as always. Lauren, lots of fun. I'm Jeff Frick, you're watching theCube. We're at AWS re:Invent 2018. Thanks for watching. (electronic music)

>> From the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas, it's theCUBE! Covering HoshoCon 2018! Brought to you by Hosho. >> Okay, welcome back everyone, we're here live in Las Vegas for the first security blockchain conference's inaugural event, HoshoCon, and it's all about the top brains in the industry coming together, with experience and tech chops to figure out the future in security. I'm John Furrier, the host of theCUBE. Our next guest, Andre McGregor, who's the partner and head of global security for TLDR. Welcome to theCUBE, thanks for joining me. >> Thank you for having me. >> So you have a background, we were just talking off-camera, FBI, you've been doing the cyber for a long time, cyber-security, mostly enterprise-grade, large-scale. Now we're in crypto, where you have small set of teams, running massive scale, with money involved. >> Correct. So guess what, money attracts. >> Right. People who want it, want that money. Lot of hacks, $400 million in Japan, plus 60 million over here, you add it all up, there's a billion so far this year, who knows what really the number is, it's pretty big. >> It is, and what's concerning and the reason why I came over in this space was the number of hacks that were happening. My company, we get probably a call a week, whether it's high net worth individuals, CEO, exchanges, we've helped a couple, some that you'd know of if I told you who they were, trying to get out of a very bad situation. And interim response has been big, but what we've learned is that it's the same old fraud, the same old security tactics that are being used against some of these crypto-companies. >> And we've seen it all the time, everyone's had fraud alerts on their credit card, this is like classic blocking and tackling, at a whole 'nother level. >> It is, because if you think about it from, like a traditional start-up, you have a company that's small, they have time to develop their MVP, they go out and do maybe a seed round, friends and family, they're sort of ramping up over time, whereas we basically flipped the model upside-down, the same six founders now have $10 million worth of crypto, and they're not protecting it in the ways they think they should, because they're in hyper-growth mode. So the bad guys have determined that as a great place to target, and now as we see in the news, it's actually happening. >> Yeah, and Hartej, the co-founder of Hosho, was just one talking about physical security, in the sense of you got to watch out where you go too now, it's not just online security, it's physical security. So start-ups have that kind of fast and loose kind of culture. >> Well, if you think about it, traditional security in corporations, I can put everyone in a building, I have this similar or same network egress points, I can protect those, I can do the gates, guards, guns, perimeters around, but I got people working from home now in the crypto space, everyone's got their own setup. If someone's in an audience, they say oh, I've been in the blockchain space since 2010 or 11, I can make assumptions about them, about their financial worth, and other people are doing the same, but having nefarious reasons. >> Yeah, you connected the dots okay, it was $0.22 in 2011, so therefore, if they had kept a little bit of Bitcoin-- >> They would be doing very well. >> They're a target. >> Therefore, they're a target now. So when you think about it, you put all those scams together, it becomes sort of a hot topic for-- >> I just got into crypto. (laughs) >> Good answer, good answer. >> Alright, so let's talk about this security hack. Because obviously, in the enterprise tech, we cover a lot of those events across the year. IoT Edge is a huge topic, cloud computing booming, so now you have a lot of compute, which is good, and for bad actors too. So you have now a service area that's now, no perimeter, there's no egress points to manage. Is there a digital way to kind of map this out, and does blockchain give us any advantages or is there anything on the horizon that you see, where we can, in digital form? >> Well, I mean the true reason I came to the blockchain space, having worked hundreds of victim notifications and several dozen actual intrusions, from large intrusions at banks that are top five in the world, all the way down to small core defense contractors, you realize it's always a server you didn't know about, credentials that had more access than they should, obviously gaining access to a centralized server, that then gets exposed and allows that data to be leaked out. So the idea of blockchain and being able to decentralize, distribute that data, own it, and keep it cryptographically pure, and also being able to essentially remove the single source of failure that we saw in a lot of these hacks is exciting. Obviously, blockchain is also not the answer to everything. So in some ways, the spread sheet is still a spread sheet, and the MongoDB will still be the MongoDB, but-- >> The post-it next to your computer, your private key on it. >> But at the same point in time, it all comes down to cyber-hygiene, right? I mean, the stuff that we're looking at, the hacks that we're seeing, the hacks that I'm dealing with and my company dealing with, day in and day out, are not sophisticated. They may be sophisticated actors, but they're using insophisticated means, and of course, I hate to harp on it, but e-mail is still the number one intrusion vector, we all have it, we all use it. You could take stats from the FBI that says 92%, you could take stats from Verizon that says 93%, but that will be the number one way in. >> And phishing is the classic attack point. >> It will always be, because-- >> It's easy. >> I can manipulate people, I find the right opportunity, I always say even I've been phished. It happens, the way your mind is, it's just how you react, is what we need to teach people. >> It's really clicking on that one thing, that just takes one time. >> Yep. >> A PDF that you think is a document from work, or potentially a job opportunity, a new thing, sports scores, your favorite team, girlfriend, boyfriend, whatever, I mean, you don't know! >> But, I'm going to challenge you on this, you get, you click on that bad link, or you feel like your computer has been hacked, who do you call? Do you actually have someone that you can call? There's no cyber 911. Unless you are a high net worth individual, or being targeted by a nation-state, you're not calling the FBI. So who do you call? And that's a problem that we have in our industry right now. I mean, I guess I've been the person that people have been calling, which is fine, I want to help them. 12 years as a firefighter on top of my FBI career, I'm used to helping people in time of need. But really, in the grand scheme of things, there's not enough Mandiants or Verizons are too big. So for these smaller, six-person companies, that don't have $500,000 to spend on instant response, they actually have no one to call when they actually do click something bad. >> And the people they punch in a call, the ones that aren't actually there to help them. Sometimes they get honey-potted into another vector. >> Sure. >> Which is hey, how can I help you? >> Or I even challenge it a bit further. You call any of these companies when your phone has been hacked, you SIM-swap, whatever it is, and you need to sign a master services agreement, you need to go through all the legalese, while you're actively being hacked. Like, it's happening hour after hour, and you're seeing it, your accounts are being compromised and being taken over, and you're trying to find outside counsel to do redline. So in emergency services, we say, don't exchange business cards at the disaster site. It's not the time that you should be saying hi, I'm introducing myself, we should figure out all the retainers, inter-response, legal questions beforehand, so that at 2:00 in the morning, someone calls, and you have someone pick up the phone. >> Yeah, and you know what the costs are going to be, 'cause it's solve the problem at hand, put out that fire, if you will. Okay, so I got to ask you a question on how do people protect themselves? 'Cause we know Michael Terpin's doing a fireside chat, it's well known that he sued AT&T, he had his phone SIM swapped out, this is a known vector in the crypto community. Most people maybe in the mainstream might not know it. But you know, your phone can be hacked. >> Yes. >> Simple two-factor authentication's not enough. >> Correct. >> What is the state-of-the-art solution for people who want to hold crypto, any meaningful amount, could be casual money, to high net worth individual wants to have a lot of crypto. >> I mean, I spent a good amount of my time talking about custody. We've sort of pivoted off to a new part of our business line, that deals specifically around institutional custody solutions, and helping people get through this particular process. But we all know, especially from that particular case, that SMS compromises, after account takeover of a phone, is high. Hardware tokens are always going to be something that I'm going to, Harp or YubiKey, or something like that, where I'm still having the ability to keep a remote adversary away from being able to attack my system that has my private keys, or whatever high-value data I have on it. But if I think about it at the end of the day, I'm going to need to transfer that risk. I would like to say that we can transfer all risk, but instead for the people that have a lot of crypto, you're going to need to look for a good custody solution, you're going to need to look and trust the team, you're going to need to look and trust the technology they have, and you're going to have to get insurance. Because there are so many vectors, in a certain point in time, we can't go back to the wild west, where we're actually >> The insider job is, is really popular now too. >> It is, but there are ways around the collusion, counterparty, third party risk of ensuring that not one person can take the billion dollars worth of crypto and run away off to Venezuela and never appear again. But again, it comes down to basic hygiene. I ask people, I've surveyed hundreds of people in the crypto space, and I ask simple questions like VPNs, and I'm still getting a third to a half of people are using VPNS. Very simple things that people are not doing. When you looks at password for example, if anyone still has a password under 12 characters, then game over. I mean, there are a variety of ways of hacking them. I can use GPU servers to do them very quickly. I won't go into all the different options that are there. People still-- >> So 12 characters, alphanumeric obviously, with-- >> With special characters as well. >> Special characters. >> But the assumption, let's just make the assumption, that either those passwords have been cracked already, because they've already been dumped, people share passwords, they get used again, and then the entropy is exponentially higher with every single character after 12. So my password's 22 characters, sure it's a pain to type it in, but when you think about it, at the end of the day, when I combine that with a password manager that also has a YubiKey that's a hardware token, and I require that access all the time, then I don't run into the problem that someone's going to compromise a single system to get into multiple systems. >> And then also, I know there's a lot of Google people as well, they're looking at security at the hardware level, down to the firmware. >> Sure, sure. >> There's all kinds of-- >> I mean, obviously, you could use the TPM chip as well, and that's something that we should be better at, as a society. >> So while I got you here, I might as well ask you about the China super micro modchip baseboard management controller, BMC, that was reported in Bloomberg, debunked, Apple and Amazon both came out and said no, that's been confirmed. They shift their story a little bit too, the reality probably there is some mods going on, it's manufactured in China. I mean, it's a zero-margin business going to zero, why not just let the Chinese continue to develop, and have a higher-value security solution somewhere else, that's what some people are discussing, like okay, like the DRAM market was. >> Yep. >> Let the Japanese own that, they did, and then Intel makes the Pentium. Wall Street Journal reported that, Andy Kessler. So the shifts in the industry, certainly China's manufacturing the devices. There's no surprise when you go to China, and if you turn on your iPhone, it says Apple would like to push an update, but that's not Apple, it's a forged certificate, pretty much public knowledge. The DNS is controlled by China, and a certificate, these are things that they can control, that's, this is the new normal. >> It, it-- >> If you know the hardware, you can exploit it. >> We've been dealing with supply-chain issues since Maxtor hard drives in Indonesia. So was I shocked when I hear stories about that? No, I'm sort of scared myself into a corner, working in skiffs over the years and reading the various reports that come out about supply chain poisoning. >> Certainly possible. >> It's happening. I mean, it's just to what extent is still something that may or may not be known to its full extent, but it's something that will happen, always happens, and will continue to happen. And so at a certain point in time, capitalism does step in and says alright, well, guess what, China, the way I see it is, China wants to be a super-power. At a certain point, they know that people are looking at them, and saying we can't trust you. So they're going to clean up their house, just like anyone else. >> It's inevitable for them. >> It is inevitable. Because they need to show that they can be a trusting force, in the world economy. And at the same time, we're going to have competition out there that's essentially going to say, alright, we can actually prove to have a much better, stronger, validated supply chain that you'll use. >> I mean, IoT and blockchain, great solutions for supply chain. >> 100%. >> I mean, so this is where-- >> I mean, we're talking, I mean, I was actually on a plane flying from Phoenix, to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and I was sitting next to a guy, who was just like, I just want to use a blockchain to be able to deal with a supply chain around compromised food. So in the sense that if you think about it, fish for example, there's a lot of fake fish, fake type of tuna and other stuff that's out there, that people don't know the difference. But the restaurants are paying double, triple the amount of money for it. You start taking things like elephant tusks, you take things like just being able to track things that no one's really thinking about, and you're just like huh, I never thought of it that way. So at the end of the day, I still get surprised with what people are thinking about, that they can do with the blockchain. >> So Andre, question for you here, this event, what's the impact of this event and for the industry, in your opinion? Obviously, a lot of smart people here talking, candidly, sometimes maybe a little bit contentious about philosophies, regulation, no regulation, self-governance, lot of different things being discussed as exploration, to a new proficiency level that we need to get to. What are some of the hallway conversations you're hearing, and involved in? >> A lot of mine are obviously around custody. That is the topic of the moment. And for me, I'm in learning mode. I recognize that I've spent a lot of time in cyber-security. However, whereas it relates to blockchain and digital asset custody, whether it's utility tokens or security tokens, I'm on the CFTC Technology Advisory Committee, specifically, with cyber-security and custody, and so I want to take in as much information as I can, bring it back to the committee, bring it back to the commissioners, and help them create the proper regulations and standards, whether it's through an SRO, or it's through the government itself. >> For the folks that may watch this video later, that are new to the area, what does custody actually mean? Obviously, holding crypto, but define custody in context of these conversations, what is it, what's the threshold issues that are being discussed? >> Sure. I mean, to break it down, custody is very similar to a bank. So you are, you're saying I have a lot of X. It could be baseball cards, it could be gold bars, it could be fiat cash. And I want to have someone hold it, and I'm going to trust them with that. Of course, I'm transferring that risk, and with that, I have an expectation to have a qualified custodian, that has rules and regulations of how they're going to actually manage it, how they're going to control it, ensure that the risk, that people aren't going to take it. It could be, again, the Monet, it could be the Johnny Bench Ricky card, it could be 100 million blocks of gold. But I also want to have a level of insurance. That insurance could come from the insurance industry themselves, and allowing me to protect it in case something does happen to that, or the government. The FDIC, $250,000 for your bank account is a type of insurance that people are using. By the end of the day, from an institutional perspective, you want a pure custodian that takes all the risk. The government wants to say a certain point, that that custodian can allow for margin call, so that the client can't come in and say, well I'm not going to pay out $100 million worth of crypto, and I'm going to seize, or seizure of funds as well. And that's what's being set up right now. Traditional banks are not ready to handle that. Traditional auditing firms, like PWC or Ernst & Young, are still trying to figure out how they'd even be given a qualified opinion, as it relates to how-- >> So it's not so much that they are not have the appetite to do it, they don't have systems, they don't have expertise, >> They don't have systems, they don't have expertise, >> They don't have workflows. >> And right now, things are so new and so volatile, that they're sort of almost putting their toe in the water, but really not sure what the temperature is yet of the water to hop in. >> If someone wants to go to court, you say hey, prove it. Well, it's encrypted, I don't know who did it. >> Well, and the thing is is that when you have 53 states and territories with different money-transmitting laws, on top of the countless federal agencies and departments that are managing that, it is hard to come to consensus. It is much easier in a place like Bermuda, where the government is small enough where everyone can get together pretty quickly, have consensus on an opinion of how they want to deal with the crypto market, deal with custody, pass a regulation, and what's nice about Bermuda is it has crown ascendancy, so the UK government still approves it. >> And they move fast on the regulation side. They literally just passed-- >> They are the only jurisdiction that has a fully complete law surrounding cryptocurrency. >> You're bullish on Bermuda. >> I am, because I saw the efficiency there. And I expressed my same opinion with the CFTC, when I was doing my hearing last week, that it's nice to see the speed, but it's also a small island that allows for that speed. >> And they have legitimate practices that have been going on for years in other industries. >> Right, so there's no dirty money, there's no anything that people are sort of concerned with, they have the same AML, KYC, anti-money laundering and know your customer regulations that you would expect if you had your money in the United States. >> Yeah, we had a chance to interview the honorable charge there. >> Premier Burt, oh very nice. >> Yeah, he's great, and Toronto, so it's awesome. >> Nice. >> Alright, so final takeaway, for this show here, what's your takeaway about this event, the impact to the industry? >> This is a very important event, because I think people are still trying to get their footing around blockchain, they're still trying to get their footing around digital asset protections. And if we can get the smart people in one room, and they can share knowledge, and then we can come together as a community, and create some standards that make sense, then we're protecting the world. >> Well Andre, I'm glad you're in the industry, 'cause your expertise and background on the commercial side and government side certainly lend well to the needs. (laughs) So to speak. We need you, we need more of you. Thanks for coming on theCUBE, really appreciate your commentary and your insight. It's theCUBE, bringing the insights here, we are live in Las Vegas for HoshoCon, I'm John Furrier with theCUBE, we'll be back with more coverage after this short break. (upbeat music)

>> Live, from Las Vegas, it's "The Cube" covering VMworld 2018, brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back. This is The Cube coverage of VM World 2018. Always love when we get to dig in with the practitioners here. I'm Stu Miniman. My cohost is Justin Warren. Welcome to the program first-time guest Andrew Chavez, who is a network and information technology manager with Indian Pueblo Cultural Center out of Albuquerque, New Mexico. >> Out of Albuquerque, New Mexico, that's correct. >> Excellent. Thanks so much for joining us. >> Well, thank you so much for having me. >> Alright, so first of all, tell us a little bit about your organization and your role. >> Well, the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center is kind of a touch point for all the 19 tribes in the state of New Mexico. It's actually one of the only places in the entire world, where 19 tribes, 19 different cultures, really, of Native American people have gotten together, built a cultural center and kind of have formed a gateway in Albuquerque, the largest city in New Mexico, and the gateways to the Pueblos. So it's kind of a cool place. There's just a mix of a lot of neat people, a lot of the different Pueblo people come in and out. It's culturally just a great place to be, just a wonderful, cool place. And on top of that, they at the Pueblo Cultural Center formed a development corporation. So not only do we have the cultural side, which is really neat, but we have this development side, which is developing the old Indian schools. I don't know if you remember the cultural background of the Indian schools throughout the United States of America. >> Yes. >> They've actually taken some of the land for the Cultural Center and the Indian school and are repurposing it, to really help out the Cultural Center and the 19 tribes as we give back to them. >> So is this nonprofit then? >> We have a nonprofit side and a for-profit side. >> OK, give us a little bit of the scope of the operation. You mentioned the tribes and everything, but is it multiple locations? And your scope of responsibilities. >> It's actually multiple locations, so we are actually housed in the Cultural Center itself, but directly across the street we're building up places like hotels, restaurants, office buildings, things of that nature, to kind of diversify the portfolio of things that we offer to the community at large. That money is given back to the stakeholders, who are are the 19 Pueblos. And I was brought in last year, to kind of take what they were as an IT department, and really improve on what they were doing, what they've already done, and just kind of take what's already been done and make it better, and really be able to not only serve the Pueblo Cultural Center, but I'm working to make a showcase there if we can. >> So, Andrew, maybe you could give us a bit of an idea of how IT supports the mission of the Cultural Center. A lot of people are worried that IT is just a cost center and it sits off on the end there and it's something that you have to pay for. So what are some of the things that IT enables the Cultural Center to do, that they wouldn't be able to do otherwise? >> Well, some of the things that we do is... cultural preservation is really one of the big things that we do. Because we do represent all the 19 tribes of New Mexico, different aspects of each of those tribes, in terms of pottery, paintings, all the very rich nature of the hand-crafted pieces that the Pueblos take care of, are all representative of the Cultural Center. So it's not only putting those, but it's cataloging, archiving them, and help with the preservation and dissemination of that information, right? So, when you walk through our museum, all the things are automated. You can go in and press buttons and hear the different languages, see how the pottery is made, see how a lot of these arts and crafts come together, see the history of the Pueblo people and kind of what happened, and how, really, other cultures have interdispersed themselves and interweaved themselves within the rich history of the Pueblo people of New Mexico. And how this overarching culture has really made a difference in the state. Those preservations and on top of that, it's using technology to be able to, again, disseminate it and show how those things work going forward. >> Great stuff, Andrew. Alright, so all the people that visit probably don't understand all the stuff that's behind the scenes. So, it's like all of us that have worked in IT, people are like "Oh, you do computer stuff, right?" So, take us a little bit behind the curtain and tell us a little bit about what technologies you are using to help enable all of those great things you talked about. >> Well, currently what we're using is, we kind of started really green field. The folks that were there before me had worked in more of a single server, hot closet environment (laughs), some of the ways it used to be. There were a lot of consultants, and the decision was made that, to match a lot of the technology initiatives that are going on with the other Pueblos, the Cultural Center needs to catch up. So that's one of the reasons why I was brought in. So one of the first things we did, is say, what can we start doing? And so, when you pull the curtain back one of the things we really decided on was going to a full virtual environment, and finding the right technology and the right player to help us put together a virtual environment, help us build out a data center, and do some of those things. So that's kind of where we started. We started with a five year plan on that build-out and how to maximize not only the budgets that we have, but push those budgets through proper depreciation. So it was really kind of neat to be able to go to a place that I could kind of just pick and choose the things I needed to move forward, and kind of set the course for us moving forward. >> Alright, so could you tell us about some of the decisions you actually made there? So, what did you choose, and what led you to make that particular choice of technology provider? >> Well, initially I started out, because I had worked in a previous endeavor using a UCS, you know, the three in one solution, you have your OS, you have the host, and then you have the navs that's presented to the host, and that's what originally I was going to do because that's what I knew. But I went out to a conference called TribalNet, and was introduced to Nutanix. And I was aware of Nutanix, but I hadn't delved into it. So I kind of talked to one of the reps out there, Justin, and he kind of talked me through Nutanix. When I got back, I searched out a place in Albuquerque called Ardham Technologies, who sells Nutanix, and sat with them. Now, the old UCS was less expensive, cause it's a little older technology, and we didn't think we could get into a hyperconverged solution, but working with the Nutanix rep and my rep from Ardham, they really found a way to make it affordable for us and get us into the hyperconverged technology, which is where I wanted to go. So it was really, kind of... That was the first big decision I made, and I've been very happy with it. >> Excellent. So, having made that deciison and put it in, what are ome of the things that you've now been able to do, given that this is where you wanted to go, and thought maybe it wasn't going to be possible, but now it is. So what's that enabled you to do, that you were looking forward to being able to do? >> Well, it's been abled for us to consolidate a lot of what we have. We haven't used it to its fullest potential because the implementation's only been in about five months. >> Right. >> But what we've been able to do is take those different single servers and move them into a virtualized environment, and then be able to build out a storage area and place user files, and group files, and all the disparate storage areas that were siloed throughout the environment, put it on one single piece of equipment that we can watch. >> Right. >> It's been able to allow us to move to a backup solution that goes to the cloud and isn't fractured, right? So it puts it all in one single area that we can watch, and gives us a single pane of glass for all our servers, which we didn't have before. It's just made us better at what we do, really, and be able to watch what we're doing a lot better. >> Andrew, it's interesting. We talked for years about hyperconvergence. It's not just about converging into the footprint, but it changes the model, because it's really more of a distributed architecture. I think you've got some geographic locations. Maybe help discuss how that fits together, between multiple locations, multi-cloud. It's not just about taking a couple of servers and putting them down to a smaller footprint, it's giving you more flexibility. >> And you've really hit the nail on the head, for the five year plan, right? So year one, it's like choose the vendor, choose the course, but the five year plan is to be able to geographically disperse what we're doing. Because we're using Nutanix, it allows us to put a three-note cluster over here in a single box, we take another single box and put a two-note cluster over here and geographically disperse it. It also allows us, I talked about depreciation, and this is something that I worked on in other places. What we did, is we bought the Nutanix node that we have now for today, right. We plan on using that and buying a secondary node, and using that for the next three years. As we build up, remember I talked about having the development across the road, as we're building new buildings, we're going to build an alternate data center there, and the third year, we're going to take that piece of equipment and move that to the data center and build out a disaster recovery center. So when we buy the new Nutanix node, those two will now be joined. So, not only are we sharing information between the two locations, and have backups geographically dispersed, but we also have been able to use SRM a lot of different ways, to keep the geographical locations up, keep business continuity, but the other portion that is really interesting to us, is that most technology is about a three year depreciation schedule, right. >> Yeah. >> We've been able to take that three year depreciation schedule, and because we're using the older technology as our backup business continuity center, that takes it out to six year depreciation, which extends the life of what we have and be able, when we buy new equipment, it's the newest, greatest, we have the business continuity equipment. And then of course the nodes talk to each other, so we're doing data duplication across two locations. So really when we're all done, we can have up to four to six sets of backups throughout any portion of the day, so it really protects our data and gives us a continuity that we wouldn't have before. >> As someone who really likes a good financial model and spends a lot of time in spreadsheets, mucking around with that, it's really good to hear someone from an IT arena talking about some of the financial impacts on this, some of the business impacts on this. It shows that what is possible when IT takes an interest in the business issues, and shows, we were talking about this earlier on The Cube, about IT people getting a seat at the table, being able to have that conversation about the five year plan, about what makes IT strategically important to the organization. And it's really great hearing a customer actually talk about IT in that context. >> Well, that's one of the things that I think IT gets lost in and as you know, with CIOs, CFOs, CEOs, IT is always seen as a cost center. And we'd eventually like to not be a cost center. (laughs) We'd like to make money, but we have to be fiscally responsible. We have to be fiscally responsible for a number of reasons where I come from at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, because we do have a responsibility to our shareholders. We have a responsibility to the Native American people that are taking care of us. We need to take care of them. So if we can find the technology that we need, that we can be a showcase, not only in the technological realm, but also how we budget and take care of money, that shows huge commitment to what we're doing. You know, you can't be a showcase unless you're going to be fiscally responsible as well as technologically responsible, so that's what we're trying to do. >> Yeah, and Andrew, the other thing that strikes me from your conversation, you talk about this five year plan. Sometimes we come to the shows and it's like oh wait, I'm worried about lock-in and enterprise license agreement. Talk about what you look for in choosing partners that will be strategic, that will be with you for this kind of engagement. >> Well, I'm looking for, everybody's always looking for cutting edge, right? But you need to have cutting edge with a background, with a roadmap, right? So what I look for in not only a partner that services me locally, but also in the larger vendor partners, for instance Nutanix. I look for somebody who has a roadmap of what they're doing. Here's what we started with. You know, if I have a five year plan, what's your five year plan? What was your five year plan? Where did you come from? Where are you going to? Can you show me what's going to go on over here? And that's one thing that I really liked about Nutanix, is they had here's what got us here, here's how it's changing, here's what we can show you moving forward, and here's how it can help you. And then, you know, my vendor in Albuquerque, I want the same things. Are you growing? Are you stagnant? What's your customer list? And then the last portion of that is really a relationship sell. There are people out there that will go buy from any vendor because that's what the price ensues, but I can't buy on just price because I need pricing and support and be able to, you know, one call (laughs) We used to say one throat to choke, but I don't like using that any more. But you know, somebody you can drive to and have a conversation with. And that's one thing I've really respected about my vendors, and I like from a customer perspective, is people that are real, they come and see you, and then I can reach out to not only my local vendor, but the folks that support them. I do have to say, with Nutanix, I met Justin who is the rep from Nutanix. He got me involved with the sales engineer at that point and they were on site, they worked directly with me and built just a great relationship around this brand new purchase, something I'm not familiar with but it's a foray into a wider world. And it made me really comfortable with my decision. >> Alright. What's the most exciting thing that you're looking forward to? So you've seen the roadmap, you've spoken to the vendors and you have an idea of what your five year plan is. What's the most exciting thing that's going to be coming up in the next few years? >> The biggest thing for me, and it's probably not even a new thing for Nutanix, but it's what Nutanix is built on. It's what you talked about, the geographical separation, the node building and how we can, Okay, you need more compute? We can give you more compute. You need more storage? We can give you more storage. You need to add something over here? We can do that. It's the flexibility it gives me to stick within budget, we don't have to do this huge budget every year, to be able to prop up what we need. We can buy piece by piece and build it out. And again part of that fiscal responsibility is being forward looking and working with a company that's saying hey, we can get you this today. We're going to take care of you, we're going to listen to your needs, we're going to get you what you need, and here's the bolt-on pieces as we move forward. So I think that's the most exciting piece, is being able to grow within that framework. I like to use a word called platforms for what (laughs) we're doing, right? And I think, from an IT perspective, that's what we're doing and from a cultural perspective, the Indian Pueblo cultural perspective, it's having that platform. So if we say from a museum standpoint, we found the latest and greatest software that's going to allow people to do virtual reality, but we need a back end to support it, I can say I got that. (laughs) We've been able to build the platform to put that on. So it's putting that platform in place, building on that platform, us growing into it and then that company growing with us. And that's been something that's been just transformative for us. >> Well, Andrew, you talked about authentic conversations. We really appreciate you sharing your story with us. Be sure to check out IndianPueblo.org for all that they have to offer. I want to check out the museum. You've got a great list of cultural activities there, so thanks so much for joining us. >> Yes, come see us at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center. The best time to come is the first week in October for the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta. We'd love to have you all. >> Alright, for Justin Warren, I'm Stu Miniman. We still have lots more coverage here from Vmworld 2018. Thanks for watching The Cube. (upbeat techno music)

>> Live, from Las Vegas, it's "The Cube" covering VMworld 2018, brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back. This is The Cube coverage of VM World 2018. Always love when we get to dig in with the practitioners here. I'm Stu Miniman. My cohost is Justin Warren. Welcome to the program first-time guest Andrew Chavez, who is a network and information technology manager with Indian Pueblo Cultural Center out of Albuquerque, New Mexico. >> Out of Albuquerque, New Mexico, that's correct. >> Excellent. Thanks so much for joining us. >> Well, thank you so much for having me. >> Alright, so first of all, tell us a little bit about your organization and your role. >> Well, the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center is kind of a touch point for all the 19 tribes in the state of New Mexico. It's actually one of the only places in the entire world, where 19 tribes, 19 different cultures, really, of Native American people have gotten together, built a cultural center and kind of have formed a gateway in Albuquerque, the largest city in New Mexico, and the gateways to the Pueblos. So it's kind of a cool place. There's just a mix of a lot of neat people, a lot of the different Pueblo people come in and out. It's culturally just a great place to be, just a wonderful, cool place. And on top of that, they at the Pueblo Cultural Center formed a development corporation. So not only do we have the cultural side, which is really neat, but we have this development side, which is developing the old Indian schools. I don't know if you remember the cultural background of the Indian schools throughout the United States of America. >> Yes. >> They've actually taken some of the land for the Cultural Center and the Indian school and are repurposing it, to really help out the Cultural Center and the 19 tribes as we give back to them. >> So is this nonprofit then? >> We have a nonprofit side and a for-profit side. >> OK, give us a little bit of the scope of the operation. You mentioned the tribes and everything, but is it multiple locations? And your scope of responsibilities. >> It's actually multiple locations, so we are actually housed in the Cultural Center itself, but directly across the street we're building up places like hotels, restaurants, office buildings, things of that nature, to kind of diversify the portfolio of things that we offer to the community at large. That money is given back to the stakeholders, who are are the 19 Pueblos. And I was brought in last year, to kind of take what they were as an IT department, and really improve on what they were doing, what they've already done, and just kind of take what's already been done and make it better, and really be able to not only serve the Pueblo Cultural Center, but I'm working to make a showcase there if we can. >> So, Andrew, maybe you could give us a bit of an idea of how IT supports the mission of the Cultural Center. A lot of people are worried that IT is just a cost center and it sits off on the end there and it's something that you have to pay for. So what are some of the things that IT enables the Cultural Center to do, that they wouldn't be able to do otherwise? >> Well, some of the things that we do is... cultural preservation is really one of the big things that we do. Because we do represent all the 19 tribes of New Mexico, different aspects of each of those tribes, in terms of pottery, paintings, all the very rich nature of the hand-crafted pieces that the Pueblos take care of, are all representative of the Cultural Center. So it's not only putting those, but it's cataloging, archiving them, and help with the preservation and dissemination of that information, right? So, when you walk through our museum, all the things are automated. You can go in and press buttons and hear the different languages, see how the pottery is made, see how a lot of these arts and crafts come together, see the history of the Pueblo people and kind of what happened, and how, really, other cultures have interdispersed themselves and interweaved themselves within the rich history of the Pueblo people of New Mexico. And how this overarching culture has really made a difference in the state. Those preservations and on top of that, it's using technology to be able to, again, disseminate it and show how those things work going forward. >> Great stuff, Andrew. Alright, so all the people that visit probably don't understand all the stuff that's behind the scenes. So, it's like all of us that have worked in IT, people are like "Oh, you do computer stuff, right?" So, take us a little bit behind the curtain and tell us a little bit about what technologies you are using to help enable all of those great things you talked about. >> Well, currently what we're using is, we kind of started really green field. The folks that were there before me had worked in more of a single server, hot closet environment (laughs), some of the ways it used to be. There were a lot of consultants, and the decision was made that, to match a lot of the technology initiatives that are going on with the other Pueblos, the Cultural Center needs to catch up. So that's one of the reasons why I was brought in. So one of the first things we did, is say, what can we start doing? And so, when you pull the curtain back one of the things we really decided on was going to a full virtual environment, and finding the right technology and the right player to help us put together a virtual environment, help us build out a data center, and do some of those things. So that's kind of where we started. We started with a five year plan on that build-out and how to maximize not only the budgets that we have, but push those budgets through proper depreciation. So it was really kind of neat to be able to go to a place that I could kind of just pick and choose the things I needed to move forward, and kind of set the course for us moving forward. >> Alright, so could you tell us about some of the decisions you actually made there? So, what did you choose, and what led you to make that particular choice of technology provider? >> Well, initially I started out, because I had worked in a previous endeavor using a UCS, you know, the three in one solution, you have your OS, you have the host, and then you have the navs that's presented to the host, and that's what originally I was going to do because that's what I knew. But I went out to a conference called TribalNet, and was introduced to Nutanix. And I was aware of Nutanix, but I hadn't delved into it. So I kind of talked to one of the reps out there, Justin, and he kind of talked me through Nutanix. When I got back, I searched out a place in Albuquerque called Ardham Technologies, who sells Nutanix, and sat with them. Now, the old UCS was less expensive, cause it's a little older technology, and we didn't think we could get into a hyperconverged solution, but working with the Nutanix rep and my rep from Ardham, they really found a way to make it affordable for us and get us into the hyperconverged technology, which is where I wanted to go. So it was really, kind of... That was the first big decision I made, and I've been very happy with it. >> Excellent. So, having made that deciison and put it in, what are ome of the things that you've now been able to do, given that this is where you wanted to go, and thought maybe it wasn't going to be possible, but now it is. So what's that enabled you to do, that you were looking forward to being able to do? >> Well, it's been abled for us to consolidate a lot of what we have. We haven't used it to its fullest potential because the implementation's only been in about five months. >> Right. >> But what we've been able to do is take those different single servers and move them into a virtualized environment, and then be able to build out a storage area and place user files, and group files, and all the disparate storage areas that were siloed throughout the environment, put it on one single piece of equipment that we can watch. >> Right. >> It's been able to allow us to move to a backup solution that goes to the cloud and isn't fractured, right? So it puts it all in one single area that we can watch, and gives us a single pane of glass for all our servers, which we didn't have before. It's just made us better at what we do, really, and be able to watch what we're doing a lot better. >> Andrew, it's interesting. We talked for years about hyperconvergence. It's not just about converging into the footprint, but it changes the model, because it's really more of a distributed architecture. I think you've got some geographic locations. Maybe help discuss how that fits together, between multiple locations, multi-cloud. It's not just about taking a couple of servers and putting them down to a smaller footprint, it's giving you more flexibility. >> And you've really hit the nail on the head, for the five year plan, right? So year one, it's like choose the vendor, choose the course, but the five year plan is to be able to geographically disperse what we're doing. Because we're using Nutanix, it allows us to put a three-note cluster over here in a single box, we take another single box and put a two-note cluster over here and geographically disperse it. It also allows us, I talked about depreciation, and this is something that I worked on in other places. What we did, is we bought the Nutanix node that we have now for today, right. We plan on using that and buying a secondary node, and using that for the next three years. As we build up, remember I talked about having the development across the road, as we're building new buildings, we're going to build an alternate data center there, and the third year, we're going to take that piece of equipment and move that to the data center and build out a disaster recovery center. So when we buy the new Nutanix node, those two will now be joined. So, not only are we sharing information between the two locations, and have backups geographically dispersed, but we also have been able to use SRM a lot of different ways, to keep the geographical locations up, keep business continuity, but the other portion that is really interesting to us, is that most technology is about a three year depreciation schedule, right. >> Yeah. >> We've been able to take that three year depreciation schedule, and because we're using the older technology as our backup business continuity center, that takes it out to six year depreciation, which extends the life of what we have and be able, when we buy new equipment, it's the newest, greatest, we have the business continuity equipment. And then of course the nodes talk to each other, so we're doing data duplication across two locations. So really when we're all done, we can have up to four to six sets of backups throughout any portion of the day, so it really protects our data and gives us a continuity that we wouldn't have before. >> As someone who really likes a good financial model and spends a lot of time in spreadsheets, mucking around with that, it's really good to hear someone from an IT arena talking about some of the financial impacts on this, some of the business impacts on this. It shows that what is possible when IT takes an interest in the business issues, and shows, we were talking about this earlier on The Cube, about IT people getting a seat at the table, being able to have that conversation about the five year plan, about what makes IT strategically important to the organization. And it's really great hearing a customer actually talk about IT in that context. >> Well, that's one of the things that I think IT gets lost in and as you know, with CIOs, CFOs, CEOs, IT is always seen as a cost center. And we'd eventually like to not be a cost center. (laughs) We'd like to make money, but we have to be fiscally responsible. We have to be fiscally responsible for a number of reasons where I come from at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, because we do have a responsibility to our shareholders. We have a responsibility to the Native American people that are taking care of us. We need to take care of them. So if we can find the technology that we need, that we can be a showcase, not only in the technological realm, but also how we budget and take care of money, that shows huge commitment to what we're doing. You know, you can't be a showcase unless you're going to be fiscally responsible as well as technologically responsible, so that's what we're trying to do. >> Yeah, and Andrew, the other thing that strikes me from your conversation, you talk about this five year plan. Sometimes we come to the shows and it's like oh wait, I'm worried about lock-in and enterprise license agreement. Talk about what you look for in choosing partners that will be strategic, that will be with you for this kind of engagement. >> Well, I'm looking for, everybody's always looking for cutting edge, right? But you need to have cutting edge with a background, with a roadmap, right? So what I look for in not only a partner that services me locally, but also in the larger vendor partners, for instance Nutanix. I look for somebody who has a roadmap of what they're doing. Here's what we started with. You know, if I have a five year plan, what's your five year plan? What was your five year plan? Where did you come from? Where are you going to? Can you show me what's going to go on over here? And that's one thing that I really liked about Nutanix, is they had here's what got us here, here's how it's changing, here's what we can show you moving forward, and here's how it can help you. And then, you know, my vendor in Albuquerque, I want the same things. Are you growing? Are you stagnant? What's your customer list? And then the last portion of that is really a relationship sell. There are people out there that will go buy from any vendor because that's what the price ensues, but I can't buy on just price because I need pricing and support and be able to, you know, one call (laughs) We used to say one throat to choke, but I don't like using that any more. But you know, somebody you can drive to and have a conversation with. And that's one thing I've really respected about my vendors, and I like from a customer perspective, is people that are real, they come and see you, and then I can reach out to not only my local vendor, but the folks that support them. I do have to say, with Nutanix, I met Justin who is the rep from Nutanix. He got me involved with the sales engineer at that point and they were on site, they worked directly with me and built just a great relationship around this brand new purchase, something I'm not familiar with but it's a foray into a wider world. And it made me really comfortable with my decision. >> Alright. What's the most exciting thing that you're looking forward to? So you've seen the roadmap, you've spoken to the vendors and you have an idea of what your five year plan is. What's the most exciting thing that's going to be coming up in the next few years? >> The biggest thing for me, and it's probably not even a new thing for Nutanix, but it's what Nutanix is built on. It's what you talked about, the geographical separation, the node building and how we can, Okay, you need more compute? We can give you more compute. You need more storage? We can give you more storage. You need to add something over here? We can do that. It's the flexibility it gives me to stick within budget, we don't have to do this huge budget every year, to be able to prop up what we need. We can buy piece by piece and build it out. And again part of that fiscal responsibility is being forward looking and working with a company that's saying hey, we can get you this today. We're going to take care of you, we're going to listen to your needs, we're going to get you what you need, and here's the bolt-on pieces as we move forward. So I think that's the most exciting piece, is being able to grow within that framework. I like to use a word called platforms for what (laughs) we're doing, right? And I think, from an IT perspective, that's what we're doing and from a cultural perspective, the Indian Pueblo cultural perspective, it's having that platform. So if we say from a museum standpoint, we found the latest and greatest software that's going to allow people to do virtual reality, but we need a back end to support it, I can say I got that. (laughs) We've been able to build the platform to put that on. So it's putting that platform in place, building on that platform, us growing into it and then that company growing with us. And that's been something that's been just transformative for us. >> Well, Andrew, you talked about authentic conversations. We really appreciate you sharing your story with us. Be sure to check out IndianPueblo.org for all that they have to offer. I want to check out the museum. You've got a great list of cultural activities there, so thanks so much for joining us. >> Yes, come see us at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center. The best time to come is the first week in October for the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta. We'd love to have you all. >> Alright, for Justin Warren, I'm Stu Miniman. We still have lots more coverage here from Vmworld 2018. Thanks for watching The Cube. (upbeat techno music)

>> Live from San Francisco, it's The Cube, covering Google Cloud Next 2018. Brought to you by, Google Cloud and its ecosystem partners. >> Hello everyone, welcome back this is The Cube, live in San Francisco for Google Cloud's big event. It's called Google Next for 2018, it's their big cloud show. They're showcasing all their hot technology. A lot of breaking news, a lot of new tech, a lot of new announcements, of course we're bringing it here for three days of wall-to-wall coverage live. It's day two, our next guest is Tim Kelton, co-founder of Descartes Labs, doing some amazing work with imagery and data science, AI, TensorFlow, using the Google Cloud platform to analyze nearly 15 petabytes of data. Tim, welcome to The Cube. >> Thanks, great to be here >> Thanks for coming on. So we were just geeking out before we came on camera of the app that you have, really interesting stuff you guys got going on. Again, really cool, before we get into some of the tech, talk to me about Descartes Labs, you're co-founder, where did it come from? How did it start? And what are some of the projects that you guys are working on? >> I think, therefore I am. >> Exactly, exactly. Yeah, so we're a little different story than maybe a normal start-up. I was actually at a national research laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and there was a team of us that were focused on machine learning and using datasets, like remotely sensing the Earth with satellite and aerial imagery. And we were working on that from around 2008 to 2014 and then we saw just this explosion in things like, use cases for machine learning and applying that to real world use cases. But then, at the same time, there was this explosion in cloud computing and how much data you could store and train and things like that. So we started the company in late 2014 and now here we are today, we have around 80 employees. >> And what's the main thing you guys do from a data standpoint, where does the data come from? Take a minute to explain that. >> Yeah, so we focus on kind of a lot of often geospatial-centric data, but a lot of satellite and aerial imagery. A lot of what we call remote sensing, sensors orbiting the Earth or at low aerial over the Earth. All different modalities, such as different bands of light, different radio frequencies, all of those types of things. And then we fuse them together and have them in our models. And what we've seen is there's not just the magic data set that gives you the pure answer, right? It's fusing of a lot of these data sets together to tell you what's happening and then building models to predict how those changes affect our customers, their businesses, their supply chain, all those types of things. >> Let's talk about, I want to riff on something real quick, I know I want to get to some of the tech in a second. But my kids and I talk about this all the time, I got four kids and they're now, two in high school, two in college and they see Uber. And they see Uber remapping New York City every five minutes with the data that they get from the GPS. And we started riffing on drones and self-driving cars or aerial cars, if we want to fly in the air with automated helicopters or devices, you got to have some sort of coordinate system. We need this geospatial, and so, I know it's fantasy now, but what you guys are kind of getting at could be an indicator of the kind of geospatial work that's coming down later. Right now there's some cool things happening but you'd need kind of a name space or coordinates so you don't bump into something or are these automated drones don't fly near airports, or cell towers, or windmills, wind farms. >> Yeah, and those are the types of problems we solve or we look to solve, change is happening over time. Often it's the temporal cadence that's almost the key indicator in seeing how things are actually changing over time. And people are coming to us and saying, "Can you quantify that?" We've done things like agriculture and looking at crops grown, look at every single farm all over the whole U.S. and then build that into our models and say how much corn is grown at this field? And then test it back over the last 15 years and then say, as we get new imagery coming in, just daily flooding in through our Cloud Native platform, then just rerunning those models and saying, are we producing more today or less today? >> And then how is that data used, for example, take the agriculture example and that's used to say, okay, this region is maybe more productive than this region? Is it because of weather? Is it because of other things that they're doing? >> You can go back through all different types of use cases, everything from maybe if you're insuring that crop, you would might want to know if that's flooded more on the left side of the road or the right side of the road, as a predictive indicator. You might say, this is looking like a drought year. How have we done in drought years of 2007 and-- >> You look at irrigation trends. >> And you were talking off-camera about the ground truth, can you use IOT to actually calibrate the ground truth? >> Yeah and that's the sensor infusion we're seeing, everywhere around us we're seeing just floods and floods of sensors, so we have the sensors above the Earth looking down, but then as you have more and more sensors on the ground, that's the set of ground truth that you can train and calibrate. You could go back and train and train over again. It's a lot harder problem than, is this a cat or a dog? >> Yeah that's why I was riffing on the concept of a name space, the developer concept around, this is actually space. If you want to have flying drones deliver packages to transportation, you're going to need to know, some sort of triangulation, know what to do. But I got to ask you a question, so what are some of the problems that you're asked to look at, now that you have, you have the top-down view geospace, you got some ground truth sensor exploding in with more and more devices at the network, as a instrument anywhere it can have the IP or whatnot. What are some of the problems that you guys get asked to look at, you mentioned the agriculture, what else are you guys solving? >> Any sort of land use or land classification, or facilities and facility monitoring. It could be any sort of physical infrastructure that you're wanting to quantify and predict how those changes over time might impact that business vertical. And they're really varied, they're everything from energy and agriculture, and real estate, and things like that. Just last Friday, I was talking with, we have a two parts to our company. We have from the tech side, we have the engineering side which is normal engineering, but then we also have this applied science, where we have a team of scientists that are trying to build models often for our customers. 'Cause they're not, this is geospatial and machine learning, that's a rare breed of person. >> You don't want to cross pollinate. >> Yeah, and that's just not everywhere. Not all of our customers have that type of individual. But they were telling me, they were looking at the hurricane season coming up this Fall, and they had a building detector and they can detect all the buildings. So in just a couple hours, they ran that over all of the state of Florida and identified every building in the whole state of Florida. So now, as the seasons come in, they have a way to track that. >> They can be proactive and notify someone, hey you're building might need some boards on it or some sort of risk. >> Yeah and the last couple years look at all the weather events. In California we've had droughts and fires, but then you have flooding and things like that. And you're even able to start taking new types of sensors that are coming out, like the European Space Agency has a sensor that we ingest and it does synthetic aperture radar, where it's sending a radar signal down to the Earth and capturing it. So you can do things like water levels in reservoirs and things like that. >> And look at irrigation for farming, where is the droughts going to be? Where is the flooding going to be? So, for the folks watching, go to descarteslabs.com/search they got a search engine there, I wish we could show it on screen here but we don't have the terminal for it on this show. But it's a cool demo, you can search and find, you can pick an area, football field, and irrigation ditch, anything, cell tower, wind farm, and find duplicates and it gives you a map around the country. So the question is, is that, what is going on in the tech? 'Cause you got to use Cloud for this, so how do you make it all happen? >> Yeah, so we have two real big components to our tech space the first is, obviously we have lots and lots of satellite and aerial imagery, that's one of the biggest and messiest data sets and there's all types of calibration workloads that we have to do. So we have this ingest pipeline that processes it, cleans it, calibrates it, removes the clouds, not as in cloud computing infrastructure, but as in clouds over the head and then the shadows they emit down on the Earth. And we have this big ingestion process that cleans it all. And then finally compresses it and then we use things like GCS as an infinitely scalable object store. And what we really like on the GCS side is the performance we get 'cause we're reading and pulling in and out that compressed imagery all day long. So every time you zoom in or zoom out, like we're expanding it and removing that, but then our models, sometimes what we've done is, we'll want to maybe we're making a model in vegetation and we just want to look at the infrared bands. So we'll want to fuse together satellites from many different sources, fuse together ground sources, sensor sources, and just maybe pull in just one of those bands of light, not pull the whole files in. So that's what we've been building on our API. >> So how do you find GCP? What do you like? We've been all the users this week, what are the strengths? What are some of the weaknesses? What's on their to-do list? Documentation comes up a lot, we'd like to see better documentation, okay that's normal but what's your perspective? >> If you write code or develop, you always want something, you know it's always out of feature parody and stuff. From our perspective, the biggest strengths of GCP, one of the most core strengths is the network. The performance we've been able to see from the network is basically on par with what used to have, when we were at national laboratories we'd have access to high performance, super computing, some of the biggest clusters in the world. And in the network, in GCS and how we've been able scale linearly, like our ingest pipelines, we processed a petabyte of data on GCP in 16 hours through our processing pipeline on 30,000 cores. And we'll just scale that network bandwidth right up. >> Do you tap the premium network service or is it just the standard network? >> This is just stock. That was actually three years ago that we got to our bandwidth. >> How many cores? >> That was 30,000. >> Cause Google talked this morning about their standard network and the premium network, I don't know if you saw the keynote, with you get the low latency, if you pay a little bit more, proximate to your users, but you're saying on the standard network, you're getting just incredible... >> That was early 2015, it's just a few people in our company scaling up our ingest pipeline. We look at that, from then that was 40 years of imagery from NASA's Landsat program that we pulled in. And not that far off in the future, that petabyte's going to be a daily occurrence. So we wanted our ingest to scale and one of our big questions early on is actually, could the cloud actually even handle that type of scale? So that was one of the earliest workloads on things like-- >> And you feel good now about right? >> Oh yeah, and that was one of the first workloads on preemptible instances as well. >> What's on the to-do list? What would make your life better? >> So we've been working a lot with Istio that was shown here. So we actually gave a demo, we were in a couple talks yesterday on how we leverage and use Istio on our microservices. Our APIs are all built on that and so is our multi tenant SAS platform. So our ML team, when they're building models, they're all building models off different use cases, different bands of light, different geographic regions, different temporal windows. So we do all of that in Kubernetes and so those are all-- >> And what does Istio give you guys? What's the benefit of Istio? >> For us, we're using it on a few of our APIs and it's things like, really being able to see when you've start splitting out these microservices that network and that node-to-node or container-to-container latency and where things break down. Being about to do circuit retries or being able to try a response three different times before I return back a 500 or rate limit some of your APIs so they don't get crushed or you can scale them appropriately. And then actually being able to make custom metrics and to be able to fuse that back into how GKE scales on the node pools and stuff like that. >> So okay, that's how you're using it. So you were talking about Istio before, there's things that you'd like to see that aren't there today? More maturity or? >> Yeah I think Istio's like a very early starting point on all of this types of tools. >> So you want more? >> Oh yeah, definitely, definitely but I love the direction they're going and I love that it's open and if I ever wanted to I could build it on prem. But we were built basically native in the cloud so all of our infrastructure's in the cloud. We don't even have a physical server. >> What does open do for you, for your business? Is it just a good feeling? Do you feel like you're less locked in? Does it feel like you're giving back to the community? >> We read the Kubernetes source code. We've committed changes. Just recently, there's Google's open source, the OpenCensus library for tracing and things like that. We committed PRs back into that last week. We're looking for change. Something that doesn't quite work how we want, we can actually go.. >> Cause you're upstream >> Add value... >> For your business. >> We get in really hard problems, you kind of need to understand that code sometimes at that level. Build Tools, where Google took their internal tool, Blaze and opened source that bezel and so we're been using that. We're using that on our monorepos to do all of our builds. >> So you guys take it downstream, you work on it, and then all upstream contributions, is that how it works? >> Sometimes. >> Whenever you need to. >> Even Kubernetes, we've looked, if nothing else we've looked at the code multiple times and say, "Oh, this is why that autoscaler is behaving this way." Actually now I can understand how to change my workload a little bit and alter that so that the scaler works a little bit more performantly or we extract that last 10% of performance out to try and save that last 10%. >> This is a fascinating, I would love to come visit you guys and check out the facilities. It's the coolest thing ever. I think it's the future, there's so much tech going on. So many problems that are new and cool. You got the compute to boot behind it. Final question for you, how are you using analytics and machine learning? What's the key things you're using from Google? What are you guys building on your own? If anything, can you share a quick note on the ML and the analytics, how you guys are scaling that up? >> We've been using TensorFlow since very early days that geovisual search that you were saying, where we user TensorFlow models in some of those types of products. So we're big fans of that as well. And we'll keep building out models where it's appropriate. Sometimes we use very simple packages. You're just doing linear regression or things like that. >> So you're just applying that in. >> Yeah, it's the right tool for the right problem and always picking that and applying that. >> And just quick are you guys are for-profit, non-profit? What's the commercial? >> Yeah, we're for-profit, we're a Silicon Valley VC-backed company, even though we're in the mountains. >> Who's in the VCs? Which VCs are in? >> CrosslinK Capital is one our leading VCs, Eric Chin and that team down there and they've been great to work with. So they took a chance in a crazy bunch of scientists from up in the mountains of New Mexico. >> That sounds like a good VC back opportunity. >> Yeah and we had a CEO that was kind of from the Bay Area, Mark Johnson, and so we needed kind of both of those to really be successful. >> I mean I'm a big believer you throw money at great smart people and then merging markets like this. And you got a mission that's super cool, it's obvious that it's a lot to do and there's opportunities as well. >> Tremendous opportunities. Congratulations, Tim. Thanks for coming on The Cube. Tim Kelton, he's the co-founder at Descartes Labs. Here in The Cube, breaking down, bringing the technology, they got applied physicists, all these brains working on the geospatial future for The Cube. We are geospatial here in The Cube, in Google Next in San Francisco, I'm John Furrier, Dave Vellante, stay with us, for more coverage after this short break.

>> Announcer: Live, from Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, it's theCUBE covering Women in Data Science Conference 2018, brought to you by Stanford. (light techno music) >> Welcome back to theCUBE's continuing coverage of the Women in Data Science event, WiDS 2018. We are live at Stanford University. You can hear some great buzz around us. A lot of these exciting ladies in data science are here around us. I'm pleased to be joined by my next guest, Bhavani Thuraisingham, who is one of the speakers this afternoon, as well as a distinguished professor of computer science and the executive director of Cyber Security Institute at the University of Texas at Dallas. Bhavani, thank you so much for joining us. >> Thank you very much for having me in your program. >> You have an incredible career, but before we get into that I'd love to understand your thoughts on WiDS. In it's third year alone, they're expecting to reach over 100,000 people today, both here at Stanford, as well as more than 150 regional events in over 50 countries. When you were early in your career you didn't have a mentor. What does an event like WiDS mean to you? What are some of the things that excite you about giving your time to this exciting event? >> This is such an amazing event and just in three years it has just grown and I'm just so motivated myself and it's just, words cannot express to see so many women working in data science or wanting to work in data science, and not just in U.S. and in Stanford, it's around the world. I was reading some information about WiDS and I'm finding that there are WiDS ambassadors in Africa, South America, Asia, Australia, Europe, of course U.S., Central America, all over the world. And data science is exploding so rapidly because data is everywhere, right? And so you really need to collect the data, stow the data, analyze the data, disseminate the data, and for that you need data scientists. And what I'm so encouraged is that when I started getting into this field back in 1985, and that was 32 plus years ago in the fall, I worked 50% in cyber security, what used to be called computer security, and 50% in data science, what used to be called data management at the time. And there were so few women and we did not have, as I said, women role models, and so I had to sort of work really hard, the commercial industry and then the MITRE Corporation and the U.S. Government, but slowly I started building a network and my strongest supporters have been women. And so that was sort of in the early 90's when I really got started to build this network and today I have a strong support group of women and we support each other and we also mentor so many of the junior women and so that, you know, they don't go through, have to learn the hard way like I have and so I'm very encouraged to see the enthusiasm, the motivation, both the part of the mentors as well as the mentees, so that's very encouraging but we really have to do so much more. >> We do, you're right. It's really kind of the tip of the iceberg, but I think this scale at which WiDS has grown so quickly shines a massive spotlight on there's clearly such a demand for it. I'd love to get a feel now for the female undergrads in the courses that you teach at UT Dallas. What are some of the things that you are seeing in terms of their beliefs in themselves, their interests in data science, computer science, cyber security. Tell me about that dynamic. >> Right, so I have been teaching for 13 plus years full-time now, after a career in industry and federal research lab and government and I find that we have women, but still not enough. But just over the last 13 years I'm seeing so much more women getting so involved and wanting to further their careers, coming and talking to me. When I first joined in 2004 fall, there weren't many women, but now with programs like WiDS and I also belong to another conference and actually I shared that in 2016, called WiCyS, Women in Cyber Security. So, through these programs, we've been able to recruit more women, but I would still have to say that most of the women, especially in our graduate programs are from South Asia and East Asia. We hardly find women from the U.S., right, U.S. born women pursuing careers in areas like cyber security and to some extent I would also say data science. And so we really need to do a lot more and events like WiDS and WiCys, and we've also started a Grace Lecture Series. >> Grace Hopper. >> We call it Grace Lecture at our university. Of course there's Grace Hopper, we go to Grace Hopper as well. So through these events I think that, you know women are getting more encouraged and taking leadership roles so that's very encouraging. But I still think that we are really behind, right, when you compare men and women. >> Yes and if you look at the statistics. So you have a speaking session this afternoon. Share with our audience some of the things that you're going to be sharing with the audience and some of the things that you think you'll be able to impart, in terms of wisdom, on the women here today. >> Okay, so, what I'm going to do is that, first start off with some general background, how I got here so I've already mentioned some of it to you, because it's not just going to be a U.S. event, you know, it's going to be in Forbes reports that around 100,000 people are going to watch this event from all over the world so I'm going to sort of speak to this global audience as to how I got here, to motivate these women from India, from Nigeria, from New Zealand, right? And then I'm going to talk about the work I've done. So over the last 32 years I've said about 50% of my time has been in cyber security, 50% in data science, roughly. Sometimes it's more in cyber, sometimes more in data. So my work has been integrating the two areas, okay? So my talk, first I'm going to wear my data science hat, and as a data scientist I'm developing data science techniques, which is integration of statistical reasoning, machine learning, and data management. So applying data science techniques for cyber security applications. What are these applications? Intrusion detection, insider threat detection, email spam filtering, website fingerprinting, malware analysis, so that's going to be my first part of the talk, a couple of charts. But then I'm going to wear my cyber security hat. What does that mean? These data science techniques could be hacked. That's happening now, there are some attacks that have been published where the data science, the models are being thwarted by the attackers. So you can do all the wonderful data science in the world but if your models are thwarted and they go and do something completely different, it's going to be of no use. So I'm going to wear my cyber security hat and I'm going to talk about how we are taking the attackers into consideration in designing our data science models. It's not easy, it's extremely challenging. We are getting some encouraging results but it doesn't mean that we have solved the problem. Maybe we will never solve the problem but we want to get close to it. So this area called Adversarial Machine Learning, it started probably around five years ago, in fact our team has been doing some really good work for the Army, Army research office, on Adversarial Machine Learning. And when we started, I believe it was in 2012, almost six years ago, there weren't many people doing this work, but now, there are more and more. So practically every cyber security conference has got tracks in data science machine learning. And so their point of view, I mean, their focus is not, sort of, designing machine learning techniques. That's the area of data scientists. Their focus is going to be coming up with appropriate models that are going to take the attackers into consideration. Because remember, attackers are always trying to thwart your learning process. >> Right, we were just at Fortinet Accelerate last week, theCUBE was, and cyber security and data science are such interesting and pervasive topics, right, cyber security things when Equifax happened, right, it suddenly translates to everyone, male, female, et cetera. And the same thing with data science in terms of the social impact. I'd love your thoughts on how cyber security and data science, how you can educate the next generation and maybe even reinvigorate the women that are currently in STEM fields to go look at how much more open and many more opportunities there are for women to make massive impact socially. >> There are, I would say at this time, unlimited opportunities in both areas. Now, in data science it's really exploding because every company wants to do data science because data gives them the edge. But what's the point in having raw data when you cannot analyze? That's why data science is just exploding. And in fact, most of our graduate students, especially international students, want to focus in data science. So that's one thing. Cyber security is also exploding because every technology that is being developed, anything that has a microprocessor could be hacked. So, we can do all the great data science in the world but an attacker can thwart everything, right? And so cyber security is really crucial because you have to try and stop the attacker, or at least detect what the attacker is doing. So every step that you move forward you're going to be attacked. That doesn't mean you want to give up technology. One could say, okay, let's just forget about Facebook, and Google, and Amazon, and the whole lot and let's just focus on cyber security but we cannot. I mean we have to make progress in technology. Whenever we make for progress in technology, driver-less cars or pacemakers, these technologies could be attacked. And with cyber security there is such a shortage with the U.S. Government. And so we have substantial funding from the National Science Foundation to educate U.S. citizen students in cyber security. And especially recruit more women in cyber security. So that's why we're also focusing, we are a permanent coach here for the women in cyber security event. >> What have some of the things along that front, and I love that, that you think are key to successfully recruiting U.S. females into cyber security? What do you think speaks to them? >> So, I think what speaks to them, and we have been successful in recent years, this program started in 2010 for us, so it's about eight years. The first phase we did not have women, so 2000 to 2014, because we were trying to get this education program going, giving out the scholarships, then we got our second round of funding, but our program director said, look, you guys have done a phenomenal job in having students, educating them, and placing them with U.S. Government, but you have not recruited female students. So what we did then is to get some of our senior lecturers, a superb lady called Dr. Janelle Stratch, she can really speak to these women, so we started the Grace Lecture. And so with those events, and we started the women in cyber security center as part of my cyber security institute. Through these events we were able to recruit more women. We are, women are still under-represented in our cyber security program but still, instead of zero women, I believe now we have about five women, and that's, five, by the time we will have finished a second phase we will have total graduated about 50 plus students, 52 to 55 students, out of which, I would say about eight would be female. So from zero to go to eight is a good thing, but it's not great. >> We want to keep going, keep growing that. >> We want out of 50 we should get at least 25. But at least it's a start for us. But data science we don't have as much of a problem because we have lots of international students, remember you don't need U.S. citizenship to get jobs at Facebook or, but you need U.S. citizenships to get jobs as NSA or CIA. So we get many international students and we have more women and I would say we have, I don't have the exact numbers, but in my classes I would say about 30%, maybe just under 30%, female, which is encouraging but still it's not good. >> 30% now, right, you're right, it's encouraging. What was that 13 years ago when you started? >> When I started, before data science and everything it was more men, very few women. I would say maybe about 10%. >> So even getting to 30% now is a pretty big accomplishment. >> Exactly, in data science, but we need to get our cyber security numbers up. >> So last question for you as we have about a minute left, what are some of the things that excite you about having the opportunity, to not just mentor your students, but to reach such a massive audience as you're going to be able to reach through WiDS? >> I, it's as I said, words cannot express my honor and how pleased and touched, these are the words, touched I am to be able to talk to so many women, and I want to say why, because I'm of, I'm a tamil of Sri Lanka origin and so I had to make a journey, I got married and I'm going to talk about, at 20, in 1975 and my husband was finishing, I was just finishing my undergraduate in mathematics and physics, my husband was finishing his Ph.D. at University of Cambridge, England, and so soon after marriage, at 20 I moved to England, did my master's and Ph.D., so I joined University of Bristol and then we came here in 1980, and my husband got a position at New Mexico Petroleum Recovery Center and so New Mexico Tech offered me a tenure-track position but my son was a baby and so I turned it down. Once you do that, it's sort of hard to, so I took visiting faculty positions for three years in New Mexico then in Minneapolis, then I was a senior software developer at Control Data Corporation it was one of the big companies. Then I had a lucky break in 1985. So I wanted to get back into research because I liked development but I wanted to get back into research. '85 I became, I was becoming in the fall, a U.S. citizen. Honeywell got a contract to design and develop a research contract from United States Air Force, one of the early secure database systems and Honeywell had to interview me and they had to like me, hire me. All three things came together. That was a lucky break and since then my career has been just so thankful, so grateful. >> And you've turned that lucky break by a lot of hard work into what you're doing now. We thank you so much for stopping. >> Thank you so much for having me, yes. >> And sharing your story and we're excited to hear some of the things you're going to speak about later on. So have a wonderful rest of the conference. >> Thank you very much. >> We wanted to thank you for watching theCUBE. Again, we are live at Stanford University at the third annual Women in Data Science Conference, #WiDs2018, I am Lisa Martin. After this short break I'll be back with my next guest. Stick around. (light techno music)

(upbeat music) >> Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Fortinet Accelerate 18. Brought to you by Fortinet. >> Welcome back to theCUBEs continuing coverage of Fortinet Accelerate 2018. I'm Lisa Martin here in Las Vegas with my co-host Peter Burris and we're excited to welcome a Cuba alumni back to theCUBE, please welcome Eric Kohl, the VP of Advanced Solutions from Ingram Micro. Welcome back! >> Thank you, thanks for having me back. Excited to be here. >> Yes, we're very excited. So tell us, what's new? We talked to you last year at this event, what's new and Ingram? Tell us about your role there and the things that are all exciting Ingram Micro. >> Yeah, brand-new for me. I'm in my 20th year at Ingram Micro. I lead our security practice for Ingram Micro U.S. and I have responsibility for sales, vendor management, strategy and execution on behalf of our manufacturer partners. It's a ever evolving space. It's such a great space to be in, I love watching the news every day. You know there's going to be some big logo but just as much fun as I have watching those, that's some of these small breaches that you don't hear about and it's just fascinating. So much more exciting than virtualization. (laughs) >> Some might argue with that. So tell us about the partnership that you guys have with Fortinet. How has that evolved over your time there? >> Yeah so been at Ingram for 10 and I've been working with Fortinet for, I'm sorry I've been at Ingram for 20 and been with Fortinet for over 10, back to when we signed the contract together. Just a very great partnership. They're our security partner of the year, last year. Good friends, excited to see John Bove back leading channels back to Fortinet and you know, we both invest in each other's success and so I think that's pretty unique. Huge investment for them here, having an event like this. Not every company does it but to bring everybody together where you can have security conversations get on the same page, it's extremely valuable, huge investment, and we're proud to be a sponsor. >> I'd love to chat about a little bit of the evolution that you've seen at Fortinet in the last 10 years as we look at, you mentioned breaches. I mean, there were some very notable things that happened in 2017. How have you seen the evolution from them on a security transformation standpoint as it relates to your customers and digital transformation. >> Yeah, so I mean it's something that we see every day from you know, as you know we sell to and through partners but you know, one thing obviously is their breath of solutions has expanded. But you know, also things that partners are asking us today is how is this technology being consumed? And in the face of digital transformation, that's a huge value point because ultimately we want to help our partners to architect, recommend the right technology to solve that business problem and then how do you want to consume it? How does your want to your client want to consume that? So I think that's one of the biggest kind of trends that we're seeing right now. >> So as you think about where you've come from to where you are and we'll talk a little bit about where you think might go, what were the stories you told about security 10 years ago? And how are they different from the stories you're telling about security today? >> I would say it's changed from my perspective because at Ingram, we have never ever been a services company like we are today. And so what I mean by that is, we wrap our services, partner services around the Fortinet solution to make it stronger. 10 years ago I would say we are living more in the traditional distribution role of hey, how do we get a box from here to there? Certainly channel enablement, we've been doing that for a long time but our offering of services to help drive demand is incredibly strong. You know, we work with Fortinet for example, on their threat assessment program and we have an engineer that can go and help. Our partners understand to do that, it's a huge partner ecosystem and so we've got to help them with all those channel enablement efforts. >> What are some of the biggest security challenges that you're hearing, say in the last year or so through the channel, that your partnership with Fortinet can help address? >> You know, it's all around complexity and that as you have likely heard that the shortage of folks that can get out and do some of these services have limitations. There's incredibly high demand for services, you know we're serving a channel ecosystem of roughly 12,000 companies that are buying security technology from us, all with varying degrees of capability and so we've really got to help them understand, hey, how can we help you deploy these services, etc. >> So as you imagine then the steps associated with helping the customer, the roles and relationships between Fortinet, Ingram, and your partners also must be evolving. So how is, as a person responsible for ensuring that that stays bound together in a coherent way for customers, how are you seeing that changing? >> Well you know, look it's a three-legged stool. (laughs) It's us, it's Fortinet and that's our partner community and we're reliant on each other to go and be successful in the market. Look, we couldn't be as great as we are working with our Fortinet channel ecosystem if we didn't have the support of Fortinet, the investments they make, the team that they have wrapped around our business, the team we've put in place wrapped around their business so that's kind of what I'm seeing there. >> They shared a lot of momentum not only in the keynotes this morning but also a number of the guests that we've had on the show today in terms of what Fortinet achieved last year. 1.8 billion in billing, nearly 18 thousand new customers acquired, a lot of momentum, a lot of numbers, I love that theme of the event today. So if we look at some of the things that were shared by Kenzie this morning for example, like I mentioned that the customer numbers and even talking about what they're doing to protect 90% of customers in the global S&P 100 and showed some some big brands there. Tell us a little bit about the partnership and how you're leveraging the momentum of what Fortinet is able to do in terms of capturing customers. How does that momentum translate and really kind of maybe fuel Ingram and what you're able to do? >> Well look, I mean there's incredible demand in security today. There was a slide that they showed this morning and I think it was the perfect storm. I like to call the security space a beautiful disaster. It's a mess, it's complicated, it's scary, the threat attacks are you know new and different and they're never going to stop but it again comes back to hey, how do we work together to kind of harness this? How do we go and there's a great partner community here, lots of our friends are here but they can't all be here. So we want to be able to help take that message out to our channel partners that were not here. Things like that. >> What are some of, oh sorry, go ahead Peter. >> I was going to say so Ingram, Ingram itself has changed. You said you've now, are now introducing security or you're introducing more services. So how is that.. How is security leading that charge to move from a more of a product and a distributor to now services? Is security one of the reasons why Ingram is going in that direction? >> It's one of them. I joked on virtualization but there's a lot of services that we can wrap around and I think, obviously there's a high demand of services and we will lead with Fortinet services and solutions where we can. We want our partners to lead with theirs but really we've hired people to go out do assessments. We have a partner ecosystem where, hey I can't get down to New Mexico to do an install. We have a partner network where they can tap into that and make sure that everything is installed correctly, all the features are turned on. You think about all these breaches that happen in the news, it's not that they didn't have the technology, they missed an alert or they didn't have it all deployed. We want to be able to help our partners solve for that. >> Along the partnership front, what are some of the things that excite you about the Fabric-Ready Partner Program and the announcements they've made today? >> Yeah, love it. Look Fortinet has built comprehensive end-to-end solutions within their Fortinet, I'm sorry, for their Fabric ecosystem but they've also recognized that they can't do it all alone and so they've introduced a lot of partners into that. And so what's exciting for me, leading our security category is, hey how do we bring new partners into our ecosystem too? Because it is a differentiator for Ingram to be able to provide multi-vendor solutions. To have somebody you can go to to say, how does SentinelOne work with for Fortinet Fabric? Those types of things, those conversations are happening all the time. >> Another thing that was announced today was what they're doing with with AI. Tell us a little bit about that and how are you seeing what they're going to be able to do with AI as an advantage for your partners and customers. >> Again the artificial intelligence, machine learning, it all goes back to making the technology easier to use. I still think, you think intelligence and I think back to the human factor. Some of these big breaches, look the threat actors are going to get in but how you recover from a breach, I think if we could inject some artificial intelligence into some of these companies that haven't figured out how to successfully pivot. You know paying your hacker a hundred thousand dollars to keep quiet is not the answer but I think that some of these machine learning things are going to make it easier. It's going to be easier to manage the alerts that are happening every day. So anything that helps eliminate, as they said today, the enemy of security is complexity. Things that help to discover these threats and remediate against them, all good stuff for our partners. >> On the enablement side, when we were talking with the channel chief, John Bove, earlier today and talking about sort of this long history of partner focused culture at Fortinet. Tell us about that in terms of the enablement that you're able to glean from them and then pass on to your channels in terms of selling strategies, marketing to, marketing through. What are some of the things that-- >> Look, we have an amazing team. John Bove, Curt Stratton, the folks that really spent so much time working with Ingram and then we've built an amazing team. I think we have 12 people from our company here at this event to make sure we're making the most out of it but you know. If you heard, we're at The Cosmo. They have Secret Pizza, have you been there? Have you heard about it? >> Lisa: No, Secret Pizza? >> Yeah, it's amazing, it's pretty good, okay. (laughs) >> You didn't bring any, I noticed that but continue. >> I didn't but it's secret not-so-secret pizza but we have some secret not so secret weapons. Jenna Tombolesi an NSE 7. She's one of the highest certified engineers on the planet and she works for Ingram Micro helping to technically enable some of our partners. We've got a guy by the name of Will The Thrill Sharland and The Thrill is out talking to partners every single day, helping them to be more profitable, trusted security advisors helping them through anything you can imagine from a channel enablement perspective. And then just huge teams of people that we go to serve this big market together. >> Are you seeing any vertical specificities? When Ken was sharing some slides this morning, they were talking about, they showed some verticals from a kind of market share perspective but I'm curious some of the verticals that kind of come to mind where security is concerned that maybe are a little bit more elevated than some of the others in terms of risk or health care education and financial services. Maybe Fed, SLED, are you seeing any verticals in particular, maybe those that are really going to be kind of having to be leading-edge, where security transformation is concerned? >> They have to be. Think about health care and when they're big ransomware attack hit last year. There's guys on CNN saying, they had to postpone my surgery because ransomware head. I mean that's life-and-death stuff there but I don't think there's any vertical that's immune to what's going on today. So I think you know regardless of your vertical, you have to be prepared, you have to choose the right technology, and choose the right partner to help you implement it. >> If you imagine where Ingram's going to go with this relationship, what kinds of things are you looking to be able to do as a consequence of great strong partnership with Fortinet. >> Look, the way that companies want to consume technology is changing in the space of digital transformation. Once we work with Fortinet and the partner to recommend the right technology and I mentioned this, like how do you want to consume it? Is it public cloud, is it AWS, or Azure? We have an answer for that today is that hey, it's on premise but I need some creative financing to help close this deal to solve a budget constraint. We have an answer for that. There's several variations of that but however that technology wants to be consumed, we have an answer together. So I think that's a testament to the strength of our relationship. >> And I think one of the words that I saw in, at least one of the press releases, was adaptability. Adaptability of some of the technologies and even John Madison was kind of talking about how customers can go, I've got 20-plus security products, how do I start this Fabric? And that word adaptability kind of jumped out at me as how do you enable adaptability when your customers, through the channel, have so many technologies in place and how does Fortinet help that adaptation? >> I would say they're placing bets like we are on top partners that are going to lead with that technology. They've got to go be the experts in that field and really start driving that. Events like this help get everybody on the same page, understand the new offerings. I mentioned Jenna, she was locked in a room all day yesterday all excited about all these things. She's been running around all day but look we've just got to help the channel understand what the new technologies are, what are the new offerings, and hey, how do we go solve that customer problem together. >> So are there any particular new approaches or tactics or techniques that you're using to get the channels to understand better? >> I don't think that there's anything necessarily new. We're all driving towards the same common goal. Having a security conversation today is easier than ever before so you know, I think we're we're going to continue doing what we've been doing. It's been very successful for us but that's, you know. >> What are some of the things, kind of wrapping up here, that you're looking forward to throughout the rest of 2018? We're kind of still in the first quarter calendar, some big announcements from your partner here today. What are some of the things that excite you at Ingram about the year of 2018? >> Look, it's a market that's that's really ripe right now and I think that when you talk about their new technologies, when you talk about the machine learning, there's a lot of these things happening out there. It's just look, we've got a huge market. The potential is unlimited and I think one area where we're really going to drill down this year is down market, down SMB in mid market because they need enterprise grade technology and Fortinet delivers that and has a history of delivering that. So I think we're going to double click down there together this year and John and his team have been great around putting some programs together for us to go and tackle that together. >> Excellent, well we thank you so much Eric for stopping by theCUBE again. >> Yes and I'll bring pizza next time. >> Please do. >> All right. >> Yes and maybe some beverages so we don't have dry throats. >> Of course, yes. >> So we wish you and Ingram the best of luck in this next year and we look forward to talking to you next year, if not sooner. >> Sounds good. Great, thank you. >> We want to thank you for watching theCUBE's continuing coverage of Fortinet Accelerate 2018. For Peter Burris, I'm Lisa Martin, after the short break we'll be right back. (upbeat music)