>> Announcer: From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of AWS Public Sector Partner Awards Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Hi and welcome to a special production of theCUBE. We're talking to the Amazon web services public sector, their partner awards program. I'm your host Stu Miniman, and we're digging in on education. It's one of the sectors, of course, public sector looks at nonprofits, it looks at the government sectors and the education, and of course, when we talk about remote learning is such a huge, important topic, especially right now in 2020 with the global pandemic. So happy to welcome to the program, we have two guests. First of all, representing the award winning-company, Mohammad Haque. He is the co-founder and senior vice president of architecture and engineering with eLumin. And joining is one of his customers, Damian Doyle, who is the associate vice president of enterprise infrastructure solutions at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, or UMBC, as it's known. Gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us. >> Thank you. Thanks for having us here. >> All right, first of all, Mohammad, congratulations. As I said in my intro, such an important topic. I have two children that are dealing with remote learning. I have lots of friends that work in higher education and new in the technology space. So your company is the 2020 AWS public sector award winner for best remote learning. I'm sure there is a space that has a lot of competition. And of course, leveraging public cloud is a great way to be able to ramp this sort of thing up rather fast. Give us a little bit, you know, you are the co=founder, so we'd love to hear a little bit of the origin story, your background, and tell us about what differentiates eLumin. >> Sure. eLumin, we provide managed products and services around end user compute with a focus on education for providing access to applications and other technology resources, course content, course applications in the public cloud, so that users are able to use whatever device they have wherever they are, and have access to those applications that are required for completing that course coursework. They can be in, at home, in their dorms, at a corner coffee shop, on the side of a mountain in the middle East, wherever they may be, but leveling that playing field so that they can access and have access to any of the demanding applications on any device is what we're, what our goal is, is to make sure that we're not having technology be a barrier to their learning. >> Fantastic. Damian, if we could turn to you, then. At UMBC, maybe if you could give our audience a thumbnail of the university, and I have some idea of the challenge that was put in front of you when you talk about e-learning, but maybe you could give us a little bit of the pre-COVID and what you were faced and what you were looking at when it came to dealing with the current situation. >> Sure. Be happy to. So we're, UMBC is a midsize public institution. We're sort of suburban, about 14,000 students, and we have undergrad, graduate, and doctoral programs, and we have a heavy focus on a lot of the STEM disciplines. And so pre-COVID, very based in collaborative environments, active learning, but hands-on, so a lot of our programs really do have a lot of that, and we leverage technology very heavily, even if it's in, whether it's in engineering, biology, any of those kinds of programs. As you said, the challenge became how do you very quickly pivot into an entirely online model when you sort of scattershot all of your students and you don't really have a great sense of what they're going to have access to and the abilities and connectivity they're going to have. So this kind of thing was really critical for us as we made that transition. >> Excellent. Mohammad, were you working with UMBC before the current move to go remote? Give us a little bit about the relationship and how that started. >> I believe actually that the pandemic was the impetus to kind of drive this forward. Damian and his team reached out to eLumin looking for a solution that would allow them to kind of have students access the applications that they normally would have access to in their physical computer labs, but with the change and not having access to those labs anymore, needed a remote learning solution, a remote access solution for being able to access those high compute, high graphics processing, memory-intensive applications through the cloud and taking into account the fact that students won't have the highest end computer laptop. They'll probably be working on a Chromebook or a lower-end machine, but need that compute power. And then we had to kind of provide a solution pretty quickly because it was, schools were shutting down, essentially, physically shutting down and needing to continue on with their coursework. >> Yeah, Damian, I'd like to understand from your side. Can you share with us a little bit the timeframes? How fast did you go from, oh my gosh, we need this, we need proposals, we need to roll this out, and we need to have students and teachers back up and running? >> Well, I think the one thing from our side, we had already known of eLumin and we had been looking at that pre-COVID. We knew we needed product that provided us this kind of agility and really gave the students some better access to the computing tools that they needed. So once we identified that, the thing that was amazing to me is we moved from our existing system over to production eLumin in, I think it was about two and a half weeks sort of start to finish, and to get all the images, to get all the technology running, tested, and everything up and running in two and a half weeks for a full solution for a campus is, was pretty amazing. And that was one of the real benefits we saw as going to the cloud. We also looked at this outside of COVID as something that really provided a major benefit to the students so that they could work from anywhere at any time, rather than be sort of tethered to that physical lab. >> Well, I'm glad you raised that. So if you could, Damian, a little bit help us understand how much were you using a cloud before? And it sounds like you believe that in the, I guess if we say post-COVID world, you will probably have some hybrid model. Would that be fair to say? >> Yeah, I think before we did have a different solution that was still cloud-based. It was part of our business continuity. So we still had some semblance of a virtual computing solution in the cloud, but it wasn't that extensive, and a lot of our individual programs, chemical engineering, geography, and others were using physical labs that the students would sort of schedule times and be able to work in as part of their coursework. Coming out of this, we fully expect if we're going an extended period of time where students are able to access these materials and these demanding software packages at any time from any kind of device coming out of COVID, they're not going to want to go back to that model where they're asking, they have to get permission and go in in limited hours into a physical lab and sit there. This is going to be the expectation going forward is that they have this kind of access and this kind of flexibility from now on. >> Yeah, this is, I mean, they've gotten a taste, essentially, and so they see how easy it is to complete their coursework without actually having to trek across campus into a lab and kind of fight with the population to find a seat. This basically will become an expectation of an offering. >> Yeah, Mohammad, what I'd love if you could drill in a little bit for us there. Architecturally speaking, of course, the cloud is built to be able to scale and move fast. So if you need capacity and need to scale up fast, that's great. If in the future, you still want to leverage this solution, but you can scale down, that should be possible. So maybe give us a little bit of a how AWS architecturally supports what you're doing, and just from a pricing solution standpoint, how you'll be able to support the customer in today's environment and however that path goes down the road, you'll be able to support that too. >> Right, I mean, so with AWS cloud, we're able to, as you said, scale up or down as demand is needed, but we've taken that even a little bit further where we're scaling based off of student scheduling. So if we've got a course that we know that is running from >> 10: 00 AM to 11:00 AM, prior to that course starting, we'll scale the environment up so that it's available for those students if it's more of a in course lab session and then spin things back down after the course is done so that we don't have those many, many machines sitting there running and burning the hours and running up the bill. Physical environment, once you've installed it, it's there. It's always running. You cannot do that. But with the power of the cloud, we're able to go up and down. We're able to take things, scale things down off hours. If we look at the patterns for student usage, off hours, overnight, take things down because you don't need those machines sitting there running all the time. >> And this is one of the biggest differentiators. So many times in higher ed, we struggle to have to explain to companies and vendors and providers what our needs are and how we're very different from corporations and other verticals. With the eLumin solution and the capabilities in AWS, we're really having this tailor to our students' schedules, to the class schedules, and that kind of flexibility makes the product economically viable for us, but it also means that we don't get nearly the kind of pushback from the academic side, because it is really tailored to meet their needs versus just something we're kind of shoehorning in. So that makes a huge difference in terms of adoption and the way it's perceived from a marketing and acceptance standpoint. >> Yeah, Damian, I'm curious, once you did that initial rollout, how much of an on ramp is there for both the education, the educator side, as well as the student side? And you talked about having some flexibility as to how and when students use things. That sounds great, but do you have to change office hours or the hours that the staff are leveraging that? I'm just trying to understand the ripple effect of what you're doing. >> No, it's a fair point. We have done fairly extensive training. The students picked it up very quickly. What we, with students, if there's a tool that they can use to do their work more effectively, they're going to use it, whether it's something we provide or something they find through other means. But what we've done is reached out to all of our faculty that we're training, that we're teaching in our physical labs and tried to work with them to understand what this solution is, how they can sort of rethink some of their classes. And a couple of our departments have actually taken an approach of rather than sit everybody in a virtual lab the same way they would sit people in a physical lab, they're moving some of this to more asynchronous so that the students can sort of work at their own pace and sort of rethink how they structure some of those classes because of the flexibility being provided. But it does take a lot of training from the instructional side and some rethinking of this, but the end solution is something that reaches the students where they are and the way they want to learn, which is a really powerful thing we're always trying to do. >> Excellent. Mohammad, I'm wondering just broadly learnings that you have from what's been happening. Obviously I'm sure you've been quite busy in responding to things. What's been the impact on your business? How has AWS been as a partner to be able to support the needs of what you're doing? >> Well, as you can imagine, things have just really blown up in terms of demand and being able to, again, through the power of the cloud, just being able to scale up and rapid deployment. As we spoke about earlier, this deployment was two and a half weeks from start to finish, being able to do that, being able to do that with AWS tools have been critical in moving things forward. >> Excellent. Damian, back to you on this. Obviously if you had had more time to be able to plan this out, there might be some things that you would do differently. But what have your learnings been with this? And if you've been talking to your peers, any advice that you would give as you've moved through this rapid acceleration of the move to remote? >> Certainly, I think we would've certainly done some things differently, but we had been talking about this move for three or four months ahead of COVID, so for us, it wasn't quite as rushed as the actual deployment wound up being. I think the big thing is having a vendor and having a partner where you can understand all the options. So the good and bad of the cloud is there's 100 different ways to do almost anything you want to accomplish, and taking the time to understand what the different features and the ramifications of how you deploy and how you think through that. For us, we deployed one way because we could do it very quickly, and then we took the rest of the semester and part of this summer to do some more thorough evaluations to really ask our constituents, do you like this method, or do you like some of the other possibilities, and see which user experience they liked more, and then we're able to work with eLumin, and they've been able to be very nimble in adjusting the services to meet what we've gotten our feedback on. So I think if I had to do it again, I would've done that testing ahead of time, but that's a very minor thing. These are really sort of small tweaks to just make life a little easier, not fundamental differences in what we're providing. >> Yeah, Damian, one last question, if I could. Sorry, Mohammad. Just, I'm curious from the financial standpoint how much you felt that you understood what costs would be and some of the levers as to what you were using and the impact there. We've seen great maturation over the last handful of years as to transparency and understanding how cloud actually is built. But just curious if you have any final comments on the financial piece of things, seeing that it probably wasn't something that was in your budget for the last quarter. >> It wasn't, that's very true, but we also knew that it was essential. So what we realized was we didn't know how often a lot of our physical labs and these classes were being used. So we knew there was going to be some unknowns. We'd move to this, we'd have to see what adoption was. But being able to get the reporting out and working with Mohammad and others to really start customizing in the cloud. That's the beauty of it is we recognize, we saw some really fascinating patterns where during the week people would use this sort of as you'd expect, but on the weekends, it was in the evenings. Nobody's logging on Saturday or Sunday morning, but boy, at eight p.m., there's a good bit of usage. So we could tailor and do some of that off-hours work and really slows things down. Having that visibility has made the economic piece much more viable, and really being able to tweak the computing power with two different needs of the different classes. So it's actually been fairly easy to understand, but it was a ramp up where we had to sort of guess at first and then understand our own processes. But that's more sort of the, if you don't have good data coming in, it's hard to get it out. >> Excellent. And Mohammad, I want to let you kind of give your lessons learned. Obviously it's a technology space you've been in and it's just been an acceleration of some of the things you're working on. So lessons learned, advice you would give to other companies, other universities and educational facilities out there. >> Right, and this is, again, speaking to the power of the cloud, right? Some of the, one of the biggest lessons learned here is you don't necessarily need to get it right the first time. As Damian was saying, we went back, kind of analyzed what we were seeing, and after the initial deployment, took a look at the actual usage and kind of adjusted based off of that, according to that, taking in feedback from faculty members on how they were using the system and tweaking the presentation or tweaking applications on the back end for accommodating those needs. That's the power of the cloud, being able to adjust on the fly. You're not, you don't have to be committed to every single bit there, and being able to change it on the fly is just something that is kind of natural in the cloud these days. >> Excellent. Well, thank you both so much for joining us, Damian, thank you for joining and moving forward, sharing your story, wish you the best of luck going forward. And Mohammad, big congratulations on winning. Super important category, especially here in 2020. Congratulations to you and the team. >> Thank you. >> Yeah, thank you. >> All right, stay tuned for more coverage here from the AWS public sector. It's their partner awards program. I'm Stu Miniman, and thank you for watching theCUBE. (bright music)

>> Live from Bahrain, it's theCUBE. Covering AWS Summit Bahrain. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Hello everyone, welcome back to live coverage here for theCUBE in Bahrain. We're in the Middle East first time ever. Making the trip out here as part of our exclusive coverage of Amazon Web Services. Public Sector Summit, for the first time we are seeing a region being deployed here in the Middle East in Bahrain and surrounding friendly countries. This is a watershed moment for AWS as they put a region, they announced it, it'll be operational in early 2019, in record time, a lot of build-up going on. It's going to have a major impact for entrepreneurship, society, and overall data. Data is the new oil, this is what's happening. This is theCUBE coverage, I'm John Furrier, your host. Our next guest is Mohammad Altura, who is the chief information technology sector in communications realtor authority at Kuwait. He's the CTO. Welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you. >> Thank you for coming on, I really appreciate it. So, tell us about the vision, because you guys have a 20/35 vision around digital transformation. In the United States, we always talk about data is the new oil. This is an oil-driven country that has created a lot of value and also enabled people through that resource. Now digital is the new resource, with connected society. This is the digital transformation. What's your vision? >> Well, thank you very much for hosting me. And thank you for AWS for making this great summit. Really helping people to accomplish their vision and develop economies as well. Well for Kuwait, we are very much excited about putting the technology in the center of our economy. As you know, now technology is being efficient everywhere. As individuals, we cannot live without smartphones. As corporations, we cannot live without a proper IT. And the same thing with economy. You have to deploy IT in your economy. And healthcare and education, ecommerce, public safety, government, so you make it dynamic and efficient. And it's less cost to sustain and open a huge potential of growth using that. And of course in Kuwait, we are thinking of, seriously everyday, to put the technology in the center of economy. And also create entrepreneur segment to sustain this type of economy as well. And that growth will definitely help us, not only in developing those sectors, but also the man power of those sectors that's going to manage this growth. >> So you're the chief in Kuwait for the CITRA, which stands for the Communications and Information Technology Regulatory Authority. So essentially, that's all the action. That's all the infrastructure, that's all the communications. This is the foundation for what the future society is going to be built on. >> Basically, for CITRA, they are a regulator for telecom and IT, and our main bottom line is to deploy those two technologies by regulations in our country, to get down to three things basically. To make people life easier, to develop and protect our economy, and to support innovation. And to do that, there are so many diversified initiatives that we have to take place. Such as entrepreneur programs, such as healthcare everywhere. Making healthcare goes to people as well. Such as education, generation change, and also the entrepreneur segment growth policies. They all come together, and they create the three bottom lines that we're talking about, which is make people life easy, develop and protect economy and support innovation. >> This is the reality now. It's not aspirational, it's actually reality. Also being from, first time in the area for us and theCUBE, we observe on the ground here, the ground troop. Which is a vibrant, robust culture. And some people might not have that. So, take a minute to explain the culture. Because with digital, it's not a radical transformation. It's an extension of the culture. How would you describe what's going on in Kuwait culturally, and what are you enabling and what's the early signals of what is a thing to come? >> There is a very much focus on ICT in terms of culture, because in our culture, worldwide, we have the highest number of smartphone subscribers, and LTE network subscribers. So we do have a digital society, you know, by DNA right now. In the old days, we use to train people and make awareness. Now, we don't have to do that. It's part of our DNA. You see small kids playing around smartphones and doing so many technological things that we never expected. And that actually is extending also to the mid-age, and the senior people. We see that they want to make sure they bridge the gap between the young generation and the old generation. So definitely the culture is there. The infrastructure is there. Our LTE networks today cover the entire geography of Kuwait, including the offshore islands. So, no matter where you go to Kuwait, you'll find the high speed access of the internet. Now we started to do trails on 5G as well. We love trendy technologies. Our entrepreneur program's going to focus on trendy things. Cloud computing, blockchain, artificial intelligence, an internet of things. These are the main drivers for our economy, versus traditional IT. Of course, we still have legacy in country. And we are looking at how we're going to transport that to the trendy technology, that's definitely going to be more efficient, more scalable, and much less cost, and opening a trend of economic development in the country as well. >> This is a reality. And I think you made a point about the LG and 5G. Perfectly preparation. You also made a comment about, you know, training people. I remember the days, like here's the terminal, here's the manual, read the manual, learn some IT server. Mobile has changed all that. So that's the reality changing. The question is, what's next? As entrepreneurs start to have access, and citizens have mobile, you have to really start thinking strategically and tactically around how to provide value to citizens. People in your country. Whether it's, you know, just getting services and communicating to other citizens or with a government. And then entrepreneurs who are creating and building things. >> You touched a very important point. Technology is supposed to make life people easier, because we have some government services that people have to go physically, or have to go online, where they always have to follow up themselves. Now we want to make technology to push things to people. To make it easier for them to interact with government, with healthcare, with commerce. That's very important. To make an easy environment for people, to implement their vision. And also, make it easier for the foreign investments, to come and work in Kuwait market as well. So, definitely technology will play a huge role of making people include and engage with the government. >> What exciting things from our world and the United States, that live in California, Silicon Valley, is you look at the globalization of entrepreneurship, check. The mobile penetration, check. And the innovation is not so much the technology anymore, it's business models. It's how money's being deployed and used. Cost to capital. So I got to ask you, because now software is eating the world, okay? And you have software money, and data is the new oil, data is money. This is a very interesting time. So if software is money, how do you view that? Because now that you have the infrastructure, cryptocurrency, blockchain, these are new opportunities to digitize your supply chain, create a new fintech environment. What's you vision on this? Because this is happening really fast. >> This actually is very important, to make your market efficient. And what I mean by that is you can get things going much easier than the old ways. And definitely we wanted to make sure that everybody is included. I mean, there is no one left behind. Awareness definitely can be done much easier than before. In order for you to innovate, before you had to have a set up of labs, investment. Now, you just go into the cloud, and find your innovative environment, whether you are healthcare, education, biomed, you know, all types of fields. Oil and gas is very important in Kuwait, as it is number one industry still. And it's all going to depend on definitely technology. >> Every sector is being disrupted. >> Yes. >> (laughs) Okay, so talk about your relationship with AWS. Also, you have I think some news. You guys have had release with Amazon. A memorandum of understanding, or MOU, as they call it. Describe the relationship with Amazon that you guys have. I know it's a very productive one. What is it all about? How do you see it unfolding? >> MOU was signed on last September 4th, in Washington, D.C., between CITRA CEO and Teresa, the VP worldwide for public sector in AWS. And it's focusing on mainly three parts. Economic development, entrepreneur development in Kuwait, so that we can develop the ICT economy, and of course, the protection of all this, which is the cyber security. Now, with these three main areas that we're working on, definitely healthcare education are priority, and creating the right policies, as the regulators, to make sure that we all going to match the vision of 2035. As well as the... (coughs) Sorry. The new trends of technology, which is IoT, which is, you know, the robotics, the artificial intelligence. All of these going to really contribute great for the economy and the relationship between us and AWS, and we're very excited, actually, to kick off this. We are now, since we just did it three weeks ago, we are developing an execution plan, Between us and AWS, so that we can progress this MOU as quickly as possible. And we have many stakeholders as well. So we already brought some stakeholders here as a kick off with healthcare education. And definitely on the coming days, we will engage more people from Kuwait. >> Education, certainly great. healthcare, you need that. Citizen interfacing with the government, all good. Obviously Kuwait, oil and gas you mentioned, big, important. IoT and cyber security are now go hand in hand. Super important, this is very important. This is something that you guys see very big part of, instrumenting a lot of the pre-existing operations of the government, and also the facilities. This is a part of your plan? IoT? >> Yup. >> And security. Talk about the role of cyber security in IoT, because IoT is a surface area. You have to protect it. It's hard. >> As we already started the trial of 5G, of course 5G definitely gives you advantage on speed, but 5G without IoT, I don't think it makes a huge difference. So, you know, imagine if you have your healthcare system built on IoT. So you can track the patients, track everybody, real time. Anything goes wrong, you'll see all the components come together, to make the fix for the patients, as much quicker than before. For example, if we talk about some processes in the government that takes some time. With blockchain technology and IoT, it's definitely, you're going to solidify the relationship between all parties. And it becomes real type relationship. And we're very excited because that would actually make, the economy becomes more vibrant. And when it becomes like this, then more money's going to be generated in the GDP. >> Wireless is critical for IoT, you're saying. Especially 5G. 'Cause now you've got a blanket of RF, radio frequency, powering the devices. Great, love it. Question for you, role of data. Data is now the new way to interact, because cloud makes data. You got analytics, you got people who are immobile and moving around, healthcare's tapping in. Real time information is super important. You got the 5G high speed wireless overlay. How do you view the role of data? >> We're working with AWS on a policy called data classification policy and GDPR, which is Data General Regulatory Policy regulation. And that will help us, actually, to make sure the data, whatever class it is, it's in the right place. So, because you know, some people think that if you put your data in public cloud, then you have some issue with privacy. Which is not actually, because now you can classify. If you have a public data, then you have a classification, it's everybody's, can access it. If you have a private data, the cloud can give you a secure place to store it, and make sure no body gets into anybody's privacy. >> Making it addressable is really important. >> Yes. >> And making it real time, low latency. Okay final question for you. I really appreciate your time. I know you got a hard stop. We're here with the chief of the CITRA in Kuwait. A super big time opportunity for you guys with digital and AWS. But I want you to share to the folks watching, that are watching live and on demand. What should they know about what's going on in Kuwait? The culture, the technology, the digital transformation, that they might not know about. Share your perspective of what's happening in Kuwait. >> I would say, I mean, now the clouds awareness is being very much obvious among Kuwait people. And you see a lot of cloud adaption is happening as we speak. I mean, our organization started about four years ago, and we adopted the cloud from day one. Also, you think about the things that we need to do more awareness in Kuwait, I think, is the IoT and AI, artificial intelligence, and blockchain. Because these are new trends and people still not fully aware of what good things they can do to our economy. >> Mohammad Altura, thank you for spending the time on your very busy schedule here at this amazing event. Oversold, really crowded. We're looking forward to being in the region with theCUBE. We're looking forward to following up with you on the cool AI, blockchain, and IoT. We love that here, we love talking about it. Thanks for sharing you insights here. >> Thank you very much, thank you. >> I'm John Furrier here at theCUBE. You can reach me on Twitter, @Furrier. Also, online I'm everywhere. Just search my name and if you want to reach out, send me some messages, happy to talk about it. CUBE coverage here, in Bahrain, for theCUBE's new ground we're covering in the Middle East. All the innovations happening here, right around AWS's new regions, here in the Middle East. Stay with us, after this short break. (upbeat music)

>> From around the globe, it's the Cube! With digital coverage of IBM Think 2021, brought to you by IBM. >> Well, welcome back to the Cube and our IBM Think initiative and today a fascinating subject with a dramatic shift that's going on in the Middle East and specifically in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. There is a significant partnership that has just recently been launched called SARIE, which is the Saudi Arabian real interbank express. And it basically is a, a dramatic move to make the kingdom cashless - and IBM is very much at the center of that. With me to talk about that role is Elhadji Cisse who at IBM is the MEA head of payments which of course is middle East and Africa. Elhadji, good to have you with us all the way from Dubai. Good to see you today. >> The pleasure's all mine. >> Good. Well, thank you for joining us. And let's, let's talk about this initiative. First off, the problem or at least the challenge that IBM and its partners are trying to solve and now how you're going about it. So let's just paint that 30,000 foot level, if you will, then we'll dive in a little deeper. >> All right. So if you look at the countries, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and in much of the region, Middle East and Africa, we have very cash driven society. And this provides lots of challenges in terms of government point of view, businesses' point of view. And even the consumer point of view. The cash transaction is becoming less and less traceable. You are less likely to see where the cash is going, where the cash is coming from. Maintaining the cash also is becoming more and more expensive in terms of security, in terms of recycling the cash, holding the cash, transacting the cash, all of that has to be taken into consideration. And the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, with the help of the crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, has a visionary vision 2030 to be put in place that will enable them to revolutionize the entire financial sector. There's a segment within that called the FSDB, the financial sector development program. And that program, within that program, they have a goal to develop a digital platform that will enhance and enable the society to go to a more cashless society and also help define a full end to end digital environment for the, for the kingdom. >> So when you think about the scale of this, I mean it's almost mindblowing in a way, because in many cases we've been talking about with various of your colleagues at IBM, different initiatives that involve an organization or involve maybe a more regional partnership or something like that. This is national, right? This is every banking institution in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Businesses, government entities. I mean, if you would, share with me some of the complexity of this in terms of a project of that scale and, and trying to bring together these disparate systems that all have a different kind of legacy overhang, if you will, right. And now you're trying to modernize everybody moving towards the same goal in 2030, I think it's mind blowing. >> Yeah, it is. It is, John. And if you look at the complexity, if I may speak a little bit about how complex it is, let's start with the team. The team has been a full diverse team. We have 10 different nationalities. We have team from America, Canada, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE, China, UK, Pakistan, India. I mean, you name it. We have the whole globe pretty much. Every single region, Australia also was there. We had the team of that magnitude. In addition to that, as you rightfully stated, we're not building a system for a particular company or particular industry. It is for the entire country, all the banks of Saudi Arabia: the 11 national banks and the 12 additional international banks that are there. The global corporates, such as the Telco corporation, the oil corporation that are there. All of them needs to be onboarded into this including the 17 million or 20 some million population that are there. Now, the keys to this that we have is that our partners, MasterCard and Saudi payments, we have mandated ourself not to divide ourselves into three teams. We have to go with this as one single team. This was the motto of the project. This is what made us successful. We didn't differentiate between IBM, MasterCard, or Saudi payment. We all went together and addressed every single challenge as a team with the three different layers. And that's what helped us become successful with this engagement. >> So let's look at the initiatives specifically then in terms of the technology that's driving this. We talk a lot about the digital transformation that's occurring in the world. And again, it's kind of a catch all phrase, but this truly is a almost a magical transformation that you're going through. So how did you address the various workloads, what's going to be done where and how, and by whom. And then this integration that has to go on with that, not only are you centralizing a lot of these functions but you also have to distribute them to institutions across the kingdom. So if you would share a little bit of insight on that. >> Yeah. So if you look, if you look at the architecture that we have put in place, it's really a very agile and flexible architecture in a way that we have put in a central entity, which is the payment hub that is, that will handle all the payments solution that is there. And we put the flexibility for all the consumers because we have different banks. If you look at the banks industry, we have banks that are very mature, banks that have a medium level of maturity, and some that are absolutely not mature at all. And with this solution that we have to get involved, we have to be Azure 222 enabled, which is the new language that we will be using. Now, the infrastructure that we put in place have enabled that flexibility, otherwise we will never going to be successful. You cannot come to a country and say everybody needs to be onboarded into this language. Everybody needs to be operating this way. No, that will never going to work. We have taken that into consideration from the beginning. We knew this would be a challenge and we put different tools within IBM that we have put in place in order to go to mitigate those, such as the WTX, which is the Webster transformation exchanger that enables us to transform messages from and to Azure 222 or to Azure 222 or to any type of format that the customer have, any of the customer would be the banks. So we encapsulate that. Another challenge that we have is on the on boarding aspect. A lot of banks, again depending on their maturity level, we have to be ready with different environment for them to be, to catch up with us. Not everybody will be able to onboard on the same time. So by leveraging our RTVS solution, the rational testable service virtualization, it enables us to mitigate, to virtualize an entire ecosystem, make it look like it is a physical environment for the banks to use as a test as opposed to in the normal circumstances, purchasing additional hardware additional software, additional components and doing that, we're just virtualizing it for those who are ready for a system testing, those who are ready for a performance test, those who're ready for any type of non-functional requirements testing aspect. So these tools and this mechanism have helped us with our complex system integration methodology to mitigate this complexity and make it easy for the ecosystem to be onboarded and make us successful in this deal. >> And you raised a really interesting point in terms of the maturity of different levels of technology within the banking institutions there. You've got, you know, I'm sure, as you pointed out, some very small enterprises, right? Very small towns, very small institutions whose systems might not be as sophisticated or as mature, basically. So ultimately, how do you tie all that in together so that there might be a very large institution that has a very robust set of infrastructure and processes in place. And then you've got it communicating with a very small institution. You've got to be a great translator, right? I mean, IBM does here. Because you don't have them sometimes basically talking the same language, literally in this case. >> Yes, absolutely. And this is really our forte. We are the system integrators of choice in this region. And this goes without saying, because of our platform and our processes and our people that we put together. If you look at this, this example again, on the integration layer, we've enabled two lines of communication, two channels for the community. They could either go for API if they are very mature or they could go to MQ which is a low level of, I won't say a low level, but a very old fashioned way of communicating. On that aspect, they not only they have two protocols to get to us, they can use any message format that they want as long as we agree and we have an end check on the language that they're going to be using. And this integration layer or the system of integration that we have built that enables us to add that flexibility on both entities. >> So this was just launched. I mean literally just launched. What's your timeline in order to have full or I guess, reasonable implementation. >> That's a great question. Actually, the average is 24 to 30 months. We have broken the world record. We have implemented this magnificent solution within 18 months. It's actually a 17 month and a half of implementation. With the scope that we have, that is onboarding all the banks, having deferred net settlement, having the Azure 222, billing solution on it. We had the, we had the billing we had the dispute management, we had the single proxies. We have the debit cap and limit management and the portal solution. So we have all of these component within 17 and a half month. This breaks the world record of implementing an instant payment solution globally. >> We'll call Guinness and get you in the book then. It is a remarkable achievement. It really is. And you know, and you've talked about some of the the values here in terms of reduced transaction costs. Greater stability, greater security, greater transactional relationships, I imagine market liquidity, right? In your thought, I mean, tie all that together for our viewers in terms of impact and what you think this kind of partnership is going to create in terms of changing the way basically financial services are delivered in the kingdom. >> So it will change a lot. And the impact in the economy, like I said this is going to be on a three-fold. One, from a consumer point of view, you'll be able to save time in making your transactions. You will be able to trace your transactions and be able to have enough data to understand how you're managing your budget in your annual transaction. From a business point of view, you will be able to save yourself from theft. I mean, again, having cash in your business, it will tend to having more people coming in and stealing them from you either your employees or your customers or anybody else. But having a cashless business nobody can literally steal your money. They can only steal your phone or steal your gadget that you have for that aspect. Managing and maintaining cash also is a big problem. Now from a government point of view, this is where it gets very interesting, especially for Saudi Arabia, the taxation of the employees or the payment of it, the trustability of all of that and being able to trace it and being able to say, okay how much tax you will need to pay by end of the year without you doing the calculation. That information was already provided to the government. And as a central bank, the printing of cash, maintaining cash, storing cash, securing cash all of those costs will be going away. This is why the country wanted to go into a cashless society. >> Well, it's a fascinating endeavor. And certainly congratulations on that front. We're talking about real time payments and really making a significant difference in in how services are delivered in the kingdom and Elhadji, I certainly have appreciated your time here today and talking about it and and wish you all the best down the road. Thank you very much. >> Thank you very much, John. I appreciate it. >> All right. So we're talking about the journey to a cashless society in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and what Elhadji is doing and what IBM is doing to make that happen. I'm John Wallace and thanks for joining us here on the Cube!

(gentle music) >> From around the globe, it's the Cube! With digital coverage of IBM Think 2021, brought to you by IBM. >> Well, welcome back to the Cube and our IBM Think initiative and today a fascinating subject with a dramatic shift that's going on in the Middle East and specifically in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. There is a significant partnership that has just recently been launched called SARIE, which is the Saudi Arabian real interbank express. And it basically is a, a dramatic move to make the kingdom cashless - and IBM is very much at the center of that. With me to talk about that role is Elhadji Cisse who at IBM is the MEA head of payments which of course is middle East and Africa. Elhadji, good to have you with us all the way from Dubai. Good to see you today. >> The pleasure's all mine. >> Good. Well, thank you for joining us. And let's, let's talk about this initiative. First off, the problem or at least the challenge that IBM and its partners are trying to solve and now how you're going about it. So let's just paint that 30,000 foot level, if you will, then we'll dive in a little deeper. >> All right. So if you look at the countries in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and in much of the region, Middle East and Africa, we have very cash driven society. And this provides lots of challenges in terms of government point of view, businesses' point of view. And even the consumer point of view. The cash transaction is becoming less and less traceable. You are less likely to see where the cash is going, where the cash is coming from. Maintaining the cash also is becoming more and more expensive in terms of security, in terms of recycling the cash, holding the cash, transacting the cash, all of that has to be taken into consideration. And the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, with the help of the crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, has a visionary vision 2030 to be put in place that will enable them to revolutionize the entire financial sector. There's a segment within that called the FSDB, the financial sector development program. And that program, within that program, they have a goal to develop a digital platform that will enhance and enable the society to go to a more cashless society and also help define a full end to end digital environment for the, for the kingdom. >> So when you think about the scale of this, I mean it's almost mindblowing in a way, because in many cases we've been talking about with various of your colleagues at IBM, different initiatives that involve an organization or involve maybe a more regional partnership or something like that. This is national, right? This is every banking institution in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Businesses, government entities. I mean, if you would, share with me some of the complexity of this in terms of a project of that scale and, and trying to bring together these disparate systems that all have a different kind of legacy overhang, if you will, right. And now you're trying to modernize everybody moving towards the same goal in 2030, I think it's mind blowing. >> Yeah, it is. It is, John. And if you look at the complexity, if I may speak a little bit about how complex it is, let's start with the team. The team has been a full diverse team. We have 10 different nationalities. We have team from America, Canada, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE, China, UK, Pakistan, India. I mean, you name it. We have the whole globe pretty much. Every single region, Australia also was there. We had the team of that magnitude. In addition to that, as you rightfully stated, we're not building a system for a particular company or particular industry. It is for the entire country, all the banks of Saudi Arabia: the 11 national banks and the 12 additional international banks that are there. The global corporates, such as the Telco corporation, the oil corporation that are there. All of them needs to be onboarded into this including the 17 million or 20 some million population that are there. Now, the keys to this that we have is that our partners, MasterCard and Saudi payments, we have mandated ourself not to divide ourselves into three teams. We have to go with this as one single team. This was the motto of the project. This is what made us successful. We didn't differentiate between IBM, MasterCard, or Saudi payment. We all went together and addressed every single challenge as a team with the three different layers. And that's what helped us become successful with this engagement. >> So let's look at the initiatives specifically then in terms of the technology that's driving this. We talk a lot about the digital transformation that's occurring in the world. And again, it's kind of a catch all phrase, but this truly is a almost a magical transformation that you're going through. So how did you address the various workloads, what's going to be done where and how, and by whom. And then this integration that has to go on with that, not only are you centralizing a lot of these functions but you also have to distribute them to institutions across the kingdom. So if you would share a little bit of insight on that. >> Yeah. So if you look, if you look at the architecture that we have put in place, it's really a very agile and flexible architecture in a way that we have put in a central entity, which is the payment hub that is, that will handle all the payments solution that is there. And we put the flexibility for all the consumers because we have different banks. If you look at the banks industry, we have banks that are very mature, banks that have a medium level of maturity, and some that are absolutely not mature at all. And with this solution that we have to get involved, we have to be Azure 222 enabled, which is the new language that we will be using. Now, the infrastructure that we put in place have enabled that flexibility, otherwise we will never going to be successful. You cannot come to a country and say everybody needs to be onboarded into this language. Everybody needs to be operating this way. No, that will never going to work. We have taken that into consideration from the beginning. We knew this would be a challenge and we put different tools within IBM that we have put in place in order to go to mitigate those, such as the WTX, which is the Webster transformation exchanger that enables us to transform messages from and to Azure 222 or to Azure 222 or to any type of format that the customer have, any of the customer would be the banks. So we encapsulate that. Another challenge that we have is on the on boarding aspect. A lot of banks, again depending on their maturity level, we have to be ready with different environment for them to be, to catch up with us. Not everybody will be able to onboard on the same time. So by leveraging our RTVS solution, the rational testable service virtualization, it enables us to mitigate, to virtualize an entire ecosystem, make it look like it is a physical environment for the banks to use as a test as opposed to in the normal circumstances, purchasing additional hardware additional software, additional components and doing that, we're just virtualizing it for those who are ready for a system testing, those who are ready for a performance test, those who're ready for any type of non-functional requirements testing aspect. So these tools and this mechanism have helped us with our complex system integration methodology to mitigate this complexity and make it easy for the ecosystem to be onboarded and make us successful in this deal. >> And you raised a really interesting point in terms of the maturity of different levels of technology within the banking institutions there. You've got, you know, I'm sure, as you pointed out, some very small enterprises, right? Very small towns, very small institutions whose systems might not be as sophisticated or as mature, basically. So ultimately, how do you tie all that in together so that there might be a very large institution that has a very robust set of infrastructure and processes in place. And then you've got it communicating with a very small institution. You've got to be a great translator, right? I mean, IBM does here. Because you don't have them sometimes basically talking the same language, literally in this case. >> Yes, absolutely. And this is really our forte. We are the system integrators of choice in this region. And this goes without saying, because of our platform and our processes and our people that we put together. If you look at this, this example again, on the integration layer, we've enabled two lines of communication, two channels for the community. They could either go for API if they are very mature or they could go to MQ which is a low level of, I won't say a low level, but a very old fashioned way of communicating. On that aspect, they not only they have two protocols to get to us, they can use any message format that they want as long as we agree and we have an end check on the language that they're going to be using. And this integration layer or the system of integration that we have built that enables us to add that flexibility on both entities. >> So this was just launched. I mean literally just launched. What's your timeline in order to have full or I guess, reasonable implementation. >> That's a great question. Actually, the average is 24 to 30 months. We have broken the world record. We have implemented this magnificent solution within 18 months. It's actually a 17 month and a half of implementation. With the scope that we have, that is onboarding all the banks, having deferred net settlement, having the Azure 222, billing solution on it. We had the, we had the billing we had the dispute management, we had the single proxies. We have the debit cap and limit management and the portal solution. So we have all of these component within 17 and a half month. This breaks the world record of implementing an instant payment solution globally. >> We'll call Guinness and get you in the book then. It is a remarkable achievement. It really is. And you know, and you've talked about some of the the values here in terms of reduced transaction costs. Greater stability, greater security, greater transactional relationships, I imagine market liquidity, right? In your thought, I mean, tie all that together for our viewers in terms of impact and what you think this kind of partnership is going to create in terms of changing the way basically financial services are delivered in the kingdom. >> So it will change a lot. And the impact in the economy, like I said this is going to be on a three-fold. One, from a consumer point of view, you'll be able to save time in making your transactions. You will be able to trace your transactions and be able to have enough data to understand how you're managing your budget in your annual transaction. From a business point of view, you will be able to save yourself from theft. I mean, again, having cash in your business, it will tend to having more people coming in and stealing them from you either your employees or your customers or anybody else. But having a cashless business nobody can literally steal your money. They can only steal your phone or steal your gadget that you have for that aspect. Managing and maintaining cash also is a big problem. Now from a government point of view, this is where it gets very interesting, especially for Saudi Arabia, the taxation of the employees or the payment of it, the trustability of all of that and being able to trace it and being able to say, okay how much tax you will need to pay by end of the year without you doing the calculation. That information was already provided to the government. And as a central bank, the printing of cash, maintaining cash, storing cash, securing cash all of those costs will be going away. This is why the country wanted to go into a cashless society. >> Well, it's a fascinating endeavor. And certainly congratulations on that front. We're talking about real time payments and really making a significant difference in in how services are delivered in the kingdom and Elhadji, I certainly have appreciated your time here today and talking about it and and wish you all the best down the road. Thank you very much. >> Thank you very much, John. I appreciate it. >> All right. So we're talking about the journey to a cashless society in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and what Elhadji is doing and what IBM is doing to make that happen. I'm John Wallace and thanks for joining us here on the Cube!

>>from the Cube Studios in Palo Alto and Boston, connecting with thought leaders >>all around the world. >>This is a cube conversation. Hi, and welcome to a special production of the Cube. We're talking to the Amazon Web services, public sector, their partner awards program. I'm your host stew minimum, and we're digging in on education is one of the sectors. Of course, public sector looks at non profits. It looks at the government sectors. Education, Of course, when we talk about remote learning is such a huge, important topic, especially right now in 2020 with a global pandemic so happy to welcome to the program. We have two guests. First of all, we're representing the award winning company Mohammad. He is the co founder and senior vice president of architecture and engineering with Lumen and joining his one of his customers, Damien Doyle, who is the associate vice president of Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, or UMBC. As it's known, gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us. >>Thank you. Thanks for having us. >>Alright. First of all, Mohammed, congratulations. As I said in my intro, you know, such an important topic and I have two Children that are, you know, dealing with remote learning have lots of friends that were in higher education and, you know, in the technology space. So your company is the 2020 AWS Public Sector Award winner for best remote learning. I'm sure there is a space that has a lot of competition on. Of course, leveraging public cloud is a great way to be able to ramp this sort of thing up rather fast. Give us a little bit. You know, you are the co founder. So would love to hear a little bit of the origin story, your background and Ellis about what differentiates the looming >>sure loom in we provide ah manage products and services around end user compute with a focus on education for providing access to applications and other technology. Resource is, of course, content course applications in the public cloud, so that users are able to use, you know, whatever device they have wherever they are, um so and have access to those applications that are required for completing that force work they could be in, you know, in at home, in their dorms, at a corner coffee shop on the side of a mountain in the Middle East wherever they may be. But leveling that playing fears playing field so that they could access, um, have access to any of the demanding applications on any device is what we're You know, What our goal is is to make sure that we're not having technology be a barrier to their learning. >>Fantastic. Damien, If if we could turn to you, then atyou NBC, maybe if you could give our audience Ah, thumbnail of you know, the university and I have some idea of the challenge that was put in front of you when you talk about the learning. But maybe you could give us a little bit of the pre cove it and, uh, you know what? What you were faced in and what you were looking at when it came to dealing with the current situation. >>Sure be happy to So where you? NBC is a mid sized public institution. We're sort of suburban, about 14,000 students, and we have undergrad, graduate and doctoral programs, and we have a heavy focus on a lot of the stem disciplines. And so pre cove, it very based in collaborative environments, active learning but but hands on. So a lot of our programs really do have a lot of that. We leverage technology very heavily, even if it's in whether it's an engineering biology, any of those kinds of programs. Uh huh. As you said that the challenge became how do you very quickly pivot into an entirely online model when you sort of scatter shot all of your students and you don't really have a great sense of what they're gonna have access to and, um, and the abilities and connectivity they're gonna have. So this this kind of thing was really critical for us as we made that transition. >>Excellent. Mohammed, Were you working with you, NBC before the current move toe Go, go remote. Give us a little bit about the relationship and how that started. >>I believe, actually that the pandemic was the impetus to kind of drive this forward. Damien and his team reached out to loom in looking for a solution that would allow them to kind of have students access the applications that they normally would have access to in their physical computer labs. But with ah the change and not having to access those labs anymore needed a remote learning solution. A remote access solution for being able to access those high compute high graphics processing or memory intensive applications through the cloud. Taking into account the fact that you know, students won't have you know, that the highest end computer laptop, you know, they probably be working on a chromebook or a lower and machine, but need that compute power on. And then we had to kind of provide a solution pretty quickly because it was, you know, schools were shutting down, essentially physically started shutting down and needing to continue on with their coursework. Coursework? >>Yeah, Dave and I like to understand from your side. Can you share with us a little bit that time frames, you know, how fast did you go from? Oh, my gosh, We need this. We need proposals. We need to roll this out, and we need to have students. Ah, in teachers back up and running. >>Well, you know, I think the one thing from our side we had already known of element and we've been looking at that pre cove it. We knew we needed a product that that provided us this kind of agility and really gave the students some better access to the computing tools that they need it. So once we identify that, the thing that was amazing to me is is we moved from our existing system over to production illumination. It was about 2.5 weeks sort of start to finish and, you know, to get all the images to get all the technology running tested and everything up and running in 2.5 weeks for a full solution for a campus is was pretty amazing. And that was one of the real benefits we saw was going to the cloud. We also looked at this outside of code as something that really provided a major benefit to the students so that they could work from anywhere at any time rather than be sort of tethered to that physical lab. >>Well, I'm glad you raised that. So if you could Damien a little bit, you know, help us understand. How much are you using A cloud before? And it sounds like you believe that, you know, in the you know, I guess if we say postcode world, you would probably have some hybrid model. Would that be fair to say, >>Yeah, I think before we did have a different solution that was still cloud based. It was part of our business continuity. So we still had some semblance of virtual computing solution in the cloud. But it wasn't that extensive. And a lot of our individual programs chemical engineering, geography and others were using physical labs that the students would sort of scheduled times and be able to work in as part of their coursework. Uh, coming out of this, we fully expect if, if we're going on extended period of time where students are able to access these materials and these demanding software packages at any time from any kind of device coming out of cove it they're not gonna want to go back to that model where they're asking, you know, they have to get permission and go in and limited hours into a physical lab and sit there. This is going to be the expectation going forward is that they have this kind of access and this kind of flexibility from now. >>Yeah, this is I mean, they've gotten a taste essentially, and so, you know, they they see how easy it is to complete their coursework without actually having to trek across campus into a lab and kind of fight with the population to find a seat. This basically will become an expectation of an offering. >>Mohammed, what I'd love if you could drill in a little bit for us there, Architecturally speaking, of course, the cloud is built to be able to scale and move fast. So if you need capacity and need to scale up fast, that's great if in the future you still want to leverage the solution. But you can scale down, that should be possible. So maybe give us a little bit of you know how aws arc. It actually supports what you're doing and, you know, just from a pricing solution standpoint, how you'll be able to support the customer in today's environment. And however that path goes down the road, you'll be able to support that, >>right? I mean, so, you know, with the AWS cloud, we're able to, as you said, scale up or down as demand is needed. But we we've taken that even a little bit further where we're scaling based off of, um, students scheduling. So if we've got, of course, that we know that is running from 10 AM to 11 AM Your prior to that core starting will scale the environment up so that it's available for those students. If it's not, you know, more of, ah, in course, lab session, um, and then spin things back down after the course is done so that we don't have that those many, many machines sitting there running and burning the hours and running up the bill. You know, physical environment. You know, once you've installed it, it's there. It's always running. You cannot do that. But with the power of the cloud, we're able to go up and down. We're able to take things. Uh, you know, scale things down off hours. If we look at the patterns for a student usage, you know, off hours overnight take things down because you don't need those machines sitting there running, running all the time. >>And this is one of the biggest differentiators so many times in higher ed. We struggle to have to explain to companies and vendors and providers what our needs are and how we're very. We're very different from corporations and other other verticals with the bloomin solution and the capabilities in AWS. But we're really having this Taylor to our students schedules to the class schedules, and that kind of flexibility makes the product economically viable for us. But it also means that we don't get nearly the kind of push back from the academic side because it is really Taylor to meet their needs versus just something we're kind of shoehorning in. So that makes a huge difference in terms of adoption and the way it's perceived from a marketing, marketing and acceptance standpoint. Yeah, >>Dave and I'm curious. Once you did that initial rollout, how much of an on ramp is there for both the education, the educators side as well as student side? And you talked about having some flexibility as to how and when students use thing. That sounds great, but do you have to change, you know, office hours or the hours that the staff are leveraging that I'm just trying to understand the you know, the ripple effect of what you're doing? >>No, it's It's a fair point. We have done fairly extensive training. The students picked it up very quickly. What we with students? If there is a tool that they can use to do their work more effectively. They're going to use it, whether it's something we provide or something they find through other means. But what we've done is is reached out to all of our faculty that were training, that we're teaching in our physical labs and try to work with them to understand what the solution is, how they can sort of rethink some of their classes. And a couple of our departments have actually taking a approach of rather than said everybody in a virtual lab the same way they would sit people in a physical lab. They're moving some of this team or a synchronous so that the students can serve, work at their own pace and rethink how they structure some of those classes because of the flexibility being provided. But it does take a lot of training from the instructional side and some rethinking off this. But it the end solution is something that reaches the students where they are and the way they want to learn, which is a really powerful thing. We're always trying to do >>excellent, Mohammed. I'm wondering just broadly learnings that you have from what what's been happening Obviously, I'm sure you've been quite busy and responding to things. You know, what's been the impact on your business, how as a ws been as a partner to support the needs of what you're doing. >>Well, as you can imagine, the other things that just really blown up, Um, in terms of demand and being able to again through the plant power of the cloud, just being able to scale up and rapid deployment, you know, as we talk about earlier this deployment was, you know, 2 2.5 weeks from start to finish. Being able to do that, being able to do that with AWS tools have been, um, critical and moving things forward. >>Excellent. Uh, Damien, it's a sit back to you on this. You know, obviously, if you had had, you know, more time be able to plan this out if there might be some things that you would do differently. But what have your learnings been with this? And if you've been talking to your peers, any advice that you would give, uh, you know, as you've moved through this this rapid acceleration of the move to remote >>you Certainly. I think we would have certainly done some things differently. But we have been talking about this move for three or four months ahead of Covitz. So for us it wasn't. It wasn't quite as rushed as the actual deployment wound up being. I think the big thing is having having a vendor and having a partner where you can understand all the options. So the good and bad of the cloud is there's 100 different ways to do almost anything you want to accomplish and taking the time to understand what the different features and the ramifications of how you how you deploy and how you think. Think through that for us. We deployed one way because we could do it very quickly. And then we took the rest of the semester and part of this summer to do some more thorough evaluations to really ask our constituents you like this method or do you like some of the other, possibly some of the other possibilities and see which user experience they liked more? And then we're able to work with illumination, and they've been ableto very nimble in adjusting the services to meet what we've gotten our feedback on. So I think if I had to do it again, I would have done that testing ahead of time. But that's a very minor thing. These air really sort of small tweaks to just make life a little easier. Not fundamental differences in the what we're providing. >>Yeah, I'm Damien. What? One last question if I could, um sorry. Sorry, Mohammed. Just I'm curious from the financial standpoint, you know how much you felt that you understood what costs would be in some of the levers as to what are you using in the impact there? We've seen, you know, great maturation over the last handful of years. As toe. Yeah, you know, transparency and understanding how cloud actually is build. But I'm just curious if you have any final comments on the financial piece things, seeing that, it probably wasn't something that was in your budget for the last quarter. Yeah, >>it wasn't. That's very true. But we also knew that it was essential so that what we realized was we didn't know how often a lot of our physical labs and these classes were being used. So we knew there was going to be some unknowns. We've moved to this would have to see what adoption was but be able to get the reporting out and working with Mohammed and others to really start customizing in the cloud. That's the beauty of it is we recognize we saw some really fascinating patterns where during the week people would use this sort of as you'd expect. But on the weekends it was in the evenings. Nobody, nobody is logging on Saturday or Sunday morning. But boy at eight PM there's a good bit of usage so we could tailor and do some of that off hours work and really slows things down. Having that visibility has made the economic piece much more viable and really being able to tweak the computing power with two different needs of the different classes. So it's actually been fairly easy to understand, but it was a ramp up where we have to sort of guess at first and then understand our own processes. But that's more sort of the If you don't have good data coming in, it's hard to get it. Get it out. Excellent. Mohammad, I >>want you to kind of give your lessons learned. Obviously, it's a technology space. You've been in. Ah, and it's just been an acceleration of some of the things you're working on. So lessons learned advice you would give Teoh, you know, other companies of the universities and education No facilities out there, >>Right? And, you know, this is again speaking to the power of the cloud, right? Some of that one of the biggest lessons learned here is you don't necessarily need to get it right the first time. It's name and saying was saying, You know, we went back kind of analyze what we were staying in after the initial deployment, took a look at the actual usage and kind of adjusted, based based off of that. According to that, taking and feedback from faculty members on how they were using a system in tweaking the presentation or tweaking applications on the back end for accommodating those needs. That's the power of the cloud being able to adjust on the fly. You're not. You don't have to be committed to every single bit there. Uh, and being able to change it on the fly is is just something that is kind of natural in the cloud these days. >>Excellent. Well, thank you both. So much for joining us, Damien. Thank you for joining and moving forward. Sharing your story. I wish you the best of luck going forward. And Mohammed Big. Congratulations on winning. You know, super important category. Especially here in 20. Funny congratulations to you and the team. >>Thank you. >>Yeah, Thank you. Alright, stay tuned for more coverage here from the AWS public sector is their partner awards program. I'm Stew men a man And thank you for watching the Cube. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

>> Live from Bahrain, it's the Cube, covering AWS Summit Bahrain. Brought to you by Amazon web services. >> Welcome back everyone, we're here live with the Cube here, at Bahrain for exclusive coverage for AWS Summit and the opening in early 2019 just announced previously a few weeks ago, Amazon is opening a region here in the Middle East. It's going to be super impactful in the sense of entrepreneurship business coming together. I'm John Furrier, your host. We have two guests here, Manoj Kanorth, who is the AVP Head of Cloud Data Science Engineer at Mindtree, global company and Snehal Zaveri, Service Delivery Manager at Computer World here in Bahrain partnering. Guys welcome to the Cube. Thanks for coming. >> [Manoj And Snehal] Thank you, Thank you John. >> Good to be here. >> So talk about Mindtree first, what do guys do? Because you now are doing business here. The Cloud's here, not new to you guys, but this is an interesting time. >> It's extremely interesting time. So, we've been doing Cloud for 10 years. So, we do lot of digital transformation work. And, it's a great time that the government of Bahrain has really decided to go all digital and I think this a great, great time for us to be really engaged and we're very happy to be engaged with the Computer World. >> And what do you guys do? What's your main product? You're doing data science, big data analytics, cloud, devops? >> Yes, that's right. So to give you a sense, if you look at India as a country, so the core citizen identity for India, for all the governance initiatives which you could say either it's a big data, the data science piece, the entire piece is actually done by us. So that, what that really gives is, gives identity to citizens, and this is the base for all governance initiatives going forward. So building systems like that, where truly touching the lives of folks through digital transformation where its fundamentally about cloud, it's a big part of data and really about how to drive insights to make this happen, it's something that we're really working towards. So globally, we work with all the global 2000 companies, doing substantial work. >> So the role of data is a big advantage for Bahrain. They're going to make data come center of advantage, GDPR, it's a nightmare, everyone knows how bad that is, and you're living in Europe, people have stopped investing in some cases because of the requirements. So there's some data problems that are hard to solve, easy to say, hey let's create data sovereignty, let's protect consumers, sounds good but is a hard technical problem. Most people don't even know where their data is, nevermind removing, having all these things happen, but the cloud is an opportunity. So, Bahrain is identified data as a major advantage. Your reaction to that? Viable? Will they do it? How will they do it? Your thoughts? >> So I think having a region here is the first step, and I think the data protection act that has really been launched, I think used to form legal foundations to do that. Once you get on to that, after that, the technology pieces of how to put together, you're exactly right. Cloud is a great way to start, get the data together, design the right foundations to put that together. So I think it is just the right foundation for anything to start. >> They should give a hall pass for everyone prior to cloud. I know guys like doing storage. They, wait a minute, where's that data? Because storage is hard. If your provisioning storage. >> So incredibly more hard, in GDPR is the right to forget. So once somebody says forget me, then going back to all the storage's and reviewing information, is even more difficult. >> Still, talk about your role with Mindtree in Bahrain, Amazon, how do you feel about this? >> Great, I think I will, I would love to answer this question. So, first of all, we as a Computer World, we are three decade old company, more than three decades and we have legacy. We started with traditional data center, and then moved ourselves to virtualize us and to public cloud, private cloud to public cloud and from there, we have moved ourselves to digital transformation. Although it is a big buzzword today, but then we actually doesn't like disruption. We want people not to be a victim of disruption. So we always do that, that we always innovate ourself and keep a pace with industries, varied industries of course. Now as Bahrain is a company when government of Bahrain has chosen AWS, a very strong platform. Now what is missing is the best innovative solutions you need skills, resources, knowledge, to actually leverage this platform which is chosen by government, government of Bahrain. So I think as a strategy they'll alliance is once and we have chosen Mindtree, looking at their global presence, their IP, and we would like Bahrain customers, especially in the public sector and non public sector. Leverage their expertise as working with computer world. So this is all about we as in computer world. What we do and with respect to this government of varying initiative, I think we as in, we are not citizen, but as in residents of Bahrain, it is really a proud for us, that this is not a data center or region for Bahrain. It is a regional data center, we have to definitely look into that. So that's we're we are. >> It's a great opportunity, and the thing I want to point out is, this big demand from government to move faster because they're slow generally, but in Bahrain, they're fast compared to other governments. But the private sector is where, the action's going to be with entrepreneurship. So I got to ask you guys a question around cloud native. How do you guys see cloud native architectures? Because you got Amazon's cloud native. This hybrid cloud, sure, I get that, but cloud native is what everyone's going to be using. >> Perfect, so before he starts from by my side, would be foundation and then I think, he will take on from there. So very great question. So, we see cloud journey in four different phases. The first is migration, which might be the first step, which might not be, but that migration doesn't solve any purpose. We have to move beyond. So that's where the optimization phase comes. Whatever you how posted on cloud, how you can optimize it. Maybe one of the example, is you can move your database, as an infrastructure to the ideas or any other services and so on. From there is the innovative solutions, what you have to think beyond, whatever you have today do it better, do it fast and help it should extend to the smart city concept or smart governance concept or something which is beyond the normal data center what can deliver. So this is how we visualize and from there is the, is the time where you have to start developing native applications, cloud native, you should not think traditionally by hosting and then migrating. You change your mindset, start thinking cloud and living cloud. That's where we are and that's where I think they're >> Jump in, you don't want to do a little bit of cloud, you got to go all way in, this cloud operations is what everyone will end end up doing. >> [Manoj And Snehal] Exactly. Absolutely. Yeah. >> So globally, any application that we are working today, I think fundamentally we have to think about how it runs from the cloud, so it's inevitable that any new architectures that we do today are fundamentally cloud native. Whether those are containers or serverless applications. >> What's the consequence for people watching, if they don't do cloud native? Because this is super important and smart, smart money, smart entrepreneurs are and smart engineers and smart business people, are doing cloud native because, there are specific things that they benefit from. >> Yes. >> What are the consequences of they don't do cloud native? >> So I think a more than consequences. Bahrain is a great opportunity to leap frog because in many places you have decide somewhere you start with a legacy, then you kind of optimize and today when you speak about and you are starting applications fresh. I think if it's directly starting on cloud native, the overall operational efficiency of how you build your applications to be more self healing. Starting fresh and leap frogging, I think is a great opportunity that a Bahrain really has. >> And certainly one of the consequences might be data impact because if we put everything in the cloud, if you're thinking cloud, you're thinking horizontally scalable and seeking a synchronous, you're thinking parallel >> You are thinking parallel >> You're thinking auto scaling, containers, microservices, service meshes. >> Fundamental service meshes you're thinking about the data discovery because you talked about GDPR and the point of resident data, so how do you apply machine learning to really understand the quality of data? How do you discover the right information and then really expose that to the different places. >> Do you think machine learning is a great weapon against GDPR or helps GDPR? >> It helps identify, classify and identify the information and even when you're sharing that information, it's a great way for you to actually get a sense of what is the classification to do it. Humanly it's not possible. >> Is it a program active, this AI can help you. >> That's where AI comes and the second big piece of how the government of bahrain is really looking at it. When the lab, the Fintech companies and the banks is going to have a lot of API's and I think serverless programming with exposing API's is just the right way for this collaboration >> it's really easy >> Makes it easy make it easy to try new things out and fail very, very quickly. >> If you think in terms of services and there's a collection of services, it's a simply API management and then you've got the future of orchestration with Cooper netties, and this is where you start to get into the state stateless applications. >> Yes >> That's where it gets a little bit difficult and some work to do there, but you can really have some fun with stateless. >> You can really have some fun with states >> and get some stuff up >> to build some stuff up and with ever increasing stability of the database in native place even the stateful applications are much more easier these days. >> This is more work involved on the micro services side. Virtually Cross has got some more to do. All right, final question. What's, what do you think is the impact of Amazon coming to the region? In the short term, medium and long term. What do you think is the impact of Amazon's region? >> Yeah, definitely. So, if you talk about the short term, first of all this is a change of mindset that I say and when government of bahrain and the top, I mean his highness, he's supporting this initiative. So the benefit is the lower costs. Operations cost has to go down. See this is not something that the one ministry or one enterprise level initiative. This is national level initiative. So end of the day when you consolidate 70, 80 ministries and you shut down the data center and host the data into AWS, then you are going to save a huge cost. And that's what AWS is found for. So with that strong commitment from the cost optimization then you get the latest technologies. You don't need to keep spending money behind your upgrades and so on that, that's >> Fine as you go up where as the security by the way people always complained about security. Oh, cloud is never going to make. I heard this right out of the gate. Security is more in the cloud than it is on premise. We hear CSO, Chief Security Officers say my worst day of security in the clouds, better than the best day on premises. >> [Manoj And Snehal] Absolute. >> And I think really in the short term, I think this is a statement of ambition. I think it really changes of the complete mindset of the region itself in terms of wanting to have the cloud here becomes the region for all new businesses to come in. And I think given in the medium term, the number of banks that are actually operate in this region, I think it's going to get great flip. to really make this as the key center of all fintech companies going forward. I think the startup initiative with the presidents of all the banks with a much more open government. I think is the right set of factors for most startups to come in, for more innovation to really drive in this region. And I think from a longterm perspective it really serves the difference in terms of how things actually are going to change and move in this particular place. >> I think you're right I think that there's going to be some poll. In that poll is going to be multidimensional. >> Got It. Got It. >> Economic, Social, Political and there is silence. >> And as Mr. Mohammad Alkiad has mentioned in his keynote during the keynote, the procurement process has reduced by 60%. That's unbelievable. You know, government with their own >> It got a home lived movement from the youth, it's going to be the summer of love. Some are a cloud because when the young people get a hold of the cloud, we're talking about young kids now. They've never provisioned Linux. >> Got It. They'd never had off server under their desk. We're talking about new new developers. >> New developers >> They go, wait a minute, what are you? Old Guys had to do all this stuff >> Exactly >> They go right to machine learning. They go right to AI. They're like, no configuration, no, no rock fetches, no mundane tasks. They want it just to be elastic. Serverless is like the right to serverless. >> and quote 9 is just a right >> creativity will come from that speed of development, creativity. So once that said, the key is setting it up >> Yup, and 2 years down the line. You will see Bahrain might be setting up a very right example for AWS to be to give everywhere. >> but we're going to be doing that. That's going to be the investment. >> We are all aligned . >> That's a good deal. That's a good deal. >> There you are. >> We are not aligned absolutely with the government policies and we will commit and that is the success guaranteed. >> I wish that I was 18 again. What I know now, I'd be killing it in the cloud. [Laughing] We went to the to tough days. Guys, thanks so much for coming on and sharing your insights. Great conversation. Its really about what's happening in innovation. It's about cloud computing, it's about scale, it's about new things. Certainly bring a lot of change and good positive change with challenges as opportunities. CUBE see here for the first time bringing to you. Stay with us for more after this short break.

>> Announcer: Live, from Vancouver, Canada, it's theCUBE, covering OpenStack Summit North America 2018. Brought to you by Red Hat, the OpenStack Foundation, and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome to theCUBE's coverage of OpenStack Summit 2018 here in Vancouver. I'm Stu Miniman with my cohost, John Troyer. And happy to welcome back to the program, fresh off the keynote stage, Mark Collier, who's the chief operating officer of the OpenStack Foundation. >> Thank you. Thanks for having me back. >> Thank you for having us back and thank you again for doing the show in Vancouver, so-- >> Oh man, such an amazing place. Like this convention center, I don't think it's fair to call it a convention center because it's like a work of art, you know? >> And it's my second time here for this show, and I think kudos to your team because you have good enough content that people aren't just wandering around, taking pictures of the mountains. My wife is off seizing the whale watching right now, but everybody else here, they're engaged. And that's what you want in the community. >> Yeah, definitely. I guess you have to make sure you don't lose their attention to the whales and the sea planes, but so far everyone seems to be gettin' down to business. >> You know, I think it would be fair to say that there's some transitions going on in the marketplace in general, and at this show I notice when I got the invitation, it's like the OpenStack slash open infrastructure summit. Got a big track on edge computing, got another one on containers, been talking about containers for a few years at this show, which really interesting to talk about. And I mean, the edge stuff, we were talking about it as NFV and the telcos and all that stuff in the past. What is the OpenStack Summit these days, Mark? >> Yeah, I mean I think that it's evolving to reflect what people are doing with open source when it comes to infrastructure. And so we call it open infrastructure, but basically it's just a world of possibilities have been opened up by, of course, OpenStack, but also many, many other components, some of which came before like Linux and things like that, and some of which started after, like Kubernetes, and there's many other examples, TensorFlow for AI machine learning. So there's kind of this like embarrassment of riches these days if yo want to automate your infrastructure in a cloud-like fashion. You can do so many more things with it, and OpenStack solves a very specific, very important layer which is that kind of traditional infrastructure as a service layer, compute storage and networking. But once you automate that, it's proven, it's reliable, you could run millions of cores with it like some of our users are doing. You want to do more and that means layering other things on top or sort of connecting them in different ways. So just trying to help users get something more out of the technology is really what we're about and OpenStack becomes like an enabler rather than kind of like the whole conversation. Yeah, one of the things I always say in this industry, sometimes we just don't have the right expectations going into these environments. You know, when I think back 15 years ago as to what we thought Linux was going to do. Oh it's going to crush Microsoft. It's like, well, Microsoft is still doing quite well and Linux has done phenomenal. We wouldn't have companies like, Google if it wasn't for the likes of Linux. In an open source you've got a lot of tools out there. So while there are the CERNs and Walmarts of the world that take a full OpenStack distribution and put out tons of cores, I've run into software companies where when I dig into their IP, oh what do ya know, there's a project from OpenStack in there that enables what they're doing. So I've seen at a lot of shows they're like, there's companies that are like, yes, I want it, and then there's like, oh no, there's this piece of it I want, there's that piece what I want. And that's kind of the wonder of OpenStack that I can do all of those things. >> Yeah exactly. I think we've talked before about sort of calling it composable open infrastructure, and making, OpenStack's always been architecturally designed from, in terms of the goals around it, to be pluggable so from the beginning you could plug multiple hypervisors kind of underneath and you could plug different backends for storage and networking, so that sort of concept of being something, integration engine that plugs things in is part of the OpenStack kind of philosophy, but now you see that the OpenStack services themselves are sort of, you can think of them as microservices, and like if you just need block storage you can use sender. And that may make sense for some specific environments, and are you running OpenStack? Well, you are, but it gets a little bit fuzzy in terms of are you running all of it or part of it? And the reality is the things are not as simple as a binary yes or no. It's just that the options are much greater now. >> Well Mark, that has been some of the discussion in the community over the last few years, the core versus the big tent, and now of course with all this interoperability, conversations with both OpenStack participating in other communities and other communities here today, this week. I mean, what's the current state of that conversation about what is OpenStack and how does it interrelate? I think you kind of touched on it with this composable idea. >> Yeah, I mean I think that basically it's kind of like OpenStack is as OpenStack does, you know? So what are people doing with it and that tells you kind of what it is and what people are doing with it. There are a lot of different patterns. There's no like one specific deployment pattern that everyone uses, but probably by and large, by far the most common pattern is OpenStack plus Kubernetes. And so when you talk about the interop piece, this is a really good example where OpenStack has evolved to become a better, kind of better citizen, I guess, of open infrastructure by having more reliable APIs, kind of being a target that tools that build on top can rely on and not sort of have to worry about the snowflakes of different clouds and there's still more work to be done in that area, but we talked about OpenLab, which is an initiative, this morning, that puts together OpenStack, Kubernetes, and other pieces like Terraform and things like that, and does constant end-to-end testing on it, and that's really how you make sure that you know kind of what combinations work well together, and sometimes you just find bugs, and it turns out a couple of changes need to be made upstream in Kubernetes or in OpenStack or in gophercloud or in Terraform, and just if you don't know, then the user kind of with the some assembly required model, finds out and they're like, I don't know, it doesn't work, it's broken. Well, is it OpenStack's fault or Kubernetes's fault, and they don't, they just want it to work. >> So you're saying >> Identified upstream we can fix it. >> You're saying OpenStack has become more of a stable layer of the (mumbles). >> Yes exactly, yes. It has become a much more stable layer. >> Which means there wasn't a whole lot of flashy storage network and compute up on stage actually. >> A lot of the talk-- >> Yeah, it's a really good point. I think it's just really proven in that way, and you know, one of the things that was highlighted was like the virtual GPUs, right? So, if OpenStack is designed to be pluggable, what do people want to have as an option now in terms of compute storage and networking, on the compute side is they want GPUs, because that gives an AI machine learning much faster, if they're bit coin miners, like I'm sure you all are in your basement, they're going to want GPUs. And what was really interesting is that the PTL, like the technical leader of the Nova Project, got up and talked about virtual GPUs. I was back in the green room and like three of the other keynote speakers were like, oh man, we are so excited about this VGPU support. Like, our customers are asking for it, the guy, Mohammad from Vexos, is the CEO of Vexos, he said, our customers are demanding this queens release, which is the latest OpenStack, and we were kind of surprised, they just really want this queens release. So we asked them why and they're like well they want VGPU. So that's kind of an example of an evolution in OpenStack itself, but it's an extension, enabler for things like GPUs, and that's kind of an exciting area as well. >> You know, it's interesting because in previous years it was the major release was one of the main things we talked about. Queens, as you mentioned, other than the VGPUs and that little discussions, spent a lot more time outside, talked to a lot of the users. You talked about the new tracks that were there. And something I heard a lot this year that I hadn't heard for a few years was, get involved, we're looking to build. And I was trying to think of a sports analogy, and maybe it was like, okay, we're actually building more of a league here and we're looking to recruit as opposed to or is it rebuilding what exactly OpenStack 2.0 is in the future? >> Yeah, that's a really interesting point. You're absolutely right, and I can imagine or can remember sort of talking to some of the speakers as they were working on their content, and I don't think I totally picked up that that was a big trend, but you're absolutely right, that was a major call to action from so many different people. I think it's because when we think about what we are as a community, I talked about how we're a community of people who build and operate open infrastructure, and it's really about solving problems, and if you're as open to community collaboration and you want to solve problems, you can't be afraid to stand up and say we have problems. And sometimes maybe that feels awkward. It's like the tech 101 is get up and say you solved all the problems and you should buy it today. It's online or downloaded or whatever. And I think we just realized that the magic of our community is solving problems. There's always going to be more problems to solve, now you're putting more pieces together, which means the pieces themselves have to evolve and the testing and integration has to evolve. Like it's just a new set of challenges and sort of saying, here's what we're trying to solve, it's not done, help us, actually is more, I think, true to kind of what the community is all about. >> I'm wondering, do we know how many people are at the show this year? >> I don't have the exact count. I think it's around 2600, something like that. >> Yeah, so fair to say it might be a little bit less than last year's North America show? >> Yeah, it is a little bit less. >> And what are you hearing from the user? What are the main things they come for? That you got the new tracks, you've got the open dev conference co-located. What kind of key themes can you get from the users? >> Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that we found is that we have twice as many cloud architects this year than a year ago. So I think there's always this period of time where conference attendance is driven by curiosity. Like, I've heard about this thing, what is it, or it's the cool factor, hype curves and all that stuff, I want to learn about it. At this point people know what OpenStack is. We've got tons of ways you can learn about it. There's local meetups, there's OpenStack Days all over the world, there's content, videos online. It's just not like a mystery anymore. Like the mystery draws in kind of the people that are just poking around to learn. Now we're at that point of, okay I know what it is, I know what it's for, I want to architect a solution around it, so seeing twice as many cloud architects I think is an interesting data point to think about how we're shifting more towards, people are not asking if it's proven, they're like it's been proven for whatever, two, three years, however, the perception is, but the technology is just very, very solid. It's running infrastructure all over the world, the largest banks and so on and so, I think that's kind of how things are shifting to what else can we do and put on top of it, now that it's a solid foundation. >> I wonder, sometimes there's that buzz as to what's going on out there. There was a certain large analyst firm that wrote a report a couple months ago that wasn't all that favorable about OpenStack. There's others that watching on Twitter during the keynote, and they're like, they're spending all their time talking about containers, why isn't this just part of the Cloud Native Con, KubCon show? What's the foundation's feedback on, what are you hearing kind of, what's your core deliverables? And why this show should continue in the future? >> Sure, I mean I think that what we're hearing generally from users and seeing in our data as well as from analysts like 451 and IDC, those are a couple of different reports coming out, like right now or just came out, that Jonathan mentioned this morning, I think is adoption just continues to grow, and so you know, I think people are not looking at just one technology stack. And maybe they never were, but I think there was this kind of temptation to just think of it, is it containers versus VMs or is it Kubernetes versus OpenStack? And it's like, no one who really runs infrastructure thinks like that because they might have thought it until they tried it, they realized these things go together. So I think the future of this conference is just becoming more and more centered around what are the use cases? What are the technical challenges we're trying to solve? And to the extent we're getting patterns and tools that are emerging like the lamp stack of the cloud, so to speak. How can people adopt them? So you think about cloud as taking all kinds of new forms, edge computing, those are the kinds of things that I think will become a bigger part of the conference in the future. I do like the open infrastructure angle on this. I mean, as infrastructure folks, right, you know that that storage compute network doesn't manage itself, doesn't configure itself. >> Mark: Totally. >> Doesn't provision itself. And so a lot of the app layer things should rely on this lower layer. And I thought last year in Boston there was this kind of curious OpenStack or containers conversation, which seemed odd at the time, and that's clarified, I think, at a number of levels from a number of camps and vendors. >> Yeah I agree, I think we have done our best from our point of view, from the foundation, myself, and the others that are involved in our community to try to dispell those myths or tamper down that kind of sense of a rivalry, but it takes time and I do feel like there is kind of a sea change now. There are just so many people running in production with various container tools, predominantly Kubernetes and in OpenStack that I think that that sort of myth that they're, that one's replacing the other, it's hard for that cognitive dissonance to last forever when you're given like the hundredth example of like somebody running in production at scale. Like they must be doing it for a reason, and then people start to go, well why is that? >> And I did like the comment you did make about cloud is not consolidating and simplifying, right? Even at the Dell Technologies World show, Michael Dell got up and talked about the distributed core, which is a little bit of an oxymoron, but the fact is compute and compute is everywhere, right? And it's not only, it's on the edge, it's on telephone poles, it's in little boxes in our, you know, going to be on our walls, in our walls, right? And this open infrastructure idea can play everywhere. It's not just about an on-prem data center anymore. >> Yeah and I think that's a big part of why we started to say open infrastructure instead of cloud, just because, I mean, you know, I guess we spent 10 years arguing over the definition of cloud, now we can argue over open infrastructure. But to me it's a little more descriptive and a little less kind of, I don't know, a little less baggage than the term cloud. >> Yeah, definitely differentiates it as to where you sit in the marketplace. And one thing I definitely want to give the foundation great kudos on, the diversity of this show is excellent. Not just that there was a welcome happy hour and there's a lunch, but look at all the PTLs, the project leads that are there, a lot of diversity, up on stage. It's just evident. >> Mark: Thank you. >> And it's just something kind of built into the community, so great job there. >> Thank you, I'm very proud of the fact that we had just so many excellent keynote speakers this morning, and you know, that's always something that we strive for, but I feel like we got closer to the goal than ever in terms of just getting broad representation up on the stage. And some amazing leaders. >> It's always nice from our standpoint because we always say give us your keynote speakers and give us some of the main people making things happen, and it just naturally flows that we have a nice diversity, from gender, from geography. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> From various backgrounds, so that's good. All right, want to give you the final word. Take aways that you want people after the show or maybe some things that people might not know if they didn't make it here for the show. >> I mean, I think, you know, the number one take away is it's all about the people, and we want to make it about the headlines or the technology, and even the technology is about the people, but certainly the operators are not, like I said, logos don't operate clouds or infrastructure, people do, so getting to meet the people, seeing what they're doing, like the Adobe I mentioned, they're marketing cloud. They have 100,000 cores of compute with four people operating it. So if you've got the right four people and the right playbook, you can do that, too. But you got to meet those people and find out how they're doing it, get their recipe, get their playbook, and they're happy to share it, and then you can run at that kind of scale, too, without a big team and you can change the way you operate. >> Yeah, I know I said in my last question, but the last thing, I know there's been a big emphasis to not just do the two big shows a year, but the OpenStack days and other events globally, give people, how do they get involved and where can they come to find out more? >> Yeah, that's a great question. I'm glad you asked because, there are so many ways to get involved and of course it's online, it's IRC, it's mailing lists 24/7, but there's no substitute when it's about the people for meeting in person. So we have the two summits a year. We're also having an event which is called the PTG, which is really for the developers and some of the operators will be coming this fall as well where we're having it in Denver, but the summits are the big shows twice a year, but the OpenStack days are really important. Those are annual, typically one to two day events, in 15 plus countries around the world. One in particular that is going to be really exciting this year is in Beijing. You know, we've had that for the last couple of years. Huge event, but of course, others throughout Europe and Asia. Tokyo is always an awesome OpenStack day, and then there are quite a few in Europe as well. So that's another way you can get involved. Not necessarily have to fly around the world, but if you do have to fly around the world, being in Vancouver is not a bad spot, so. >> Yeah, absolutely, and boy we know there's a lot of OpenStack happening in China. >> Yes there is. >> So Mark Collier, thanks again to the foundation for allowing theCUBE to cover this. >> Sure. >> And thanks so much for joining us. >> Mark: Thank you. >> For John Troyer, I'm Stu Miniman, back here with lots more of three days wall-to-wall coverage here from OpenStack Summit 2018. Thanks for watching theCUBE. (techno music) (shutter clicks)

>> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas, its theCUBE covering IBM Think 2018. Brought to you by IBM >> Welcome back to IBM Think 2018, you're watching theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. My name is Dave Vellante and I'm here with my co-host Peter Burris, this is day three of our coverage. Mohammad Farooq is here, he's the general manager of Brokerage Services GTS at IBM. Mohammad, great to see you again, thanks for coming back on theCUBE. >> Thank you very much, appreciate for having me here. >> You're very welcome. So, big show. All the clients come together in one big tent. >> Yes. >> What do you think? >> It's very exciting. I think we're doing some interesting things with our technology. We have learned a lot from our clients the last two years. We are working very closely with our partners because we believe not one company can do everything in this massive transformation that's underway. So, working with our partners, with our clients on new technologies to specifically accelerate enterprized option of the cloud model and that's exciting for us. >> Partnering, it seems to have new, energized momentum at IBM. I sense a change, is it palpable? I mean, how can you comment on that? >> I think partnering is critical for everybody's success because the industry itself is transforming, and one company cannot achieve all the requirements that clients are asking for, and we have our core competencies. Service Now, our VMWare, our Amazon, our Azure They have their core competencies. But IBM, as a company, is a company that enterprisers trust to move them to cloud and operate them in the cloud. So what we are doing is, to keep that goal in mind, we are saying okay, we are going to take a client from point A, which is non-cloud, to point B, which is cloud native, and in that journey, we will take everybody our partners helped to get there. So that's why, based on client request, we are leveraging our partners, and it has a special meaning for us because it makes our clients successful. >> OK, so, describe exactly what brokerage services does. Is it your job to get people to the cloud? But talk more about that; add some color please. >> I think the brokerage has evolved since I last talked to you a year ago. At this conference, right? A lot of people think brokerage is arbitrage. >> Peter: Is what? >> Arbitrage of services from one provider to the other, that's the limited definition of brokerage. So what we're really calling it is Hybrid Cloud Management System, not brokerage. Brokerage is one part of it. So the Hybrid Cloud Management System is the go-forward strategy of IBM in 2019, 2018 and beyond. Which includes three, four components. One is: how do you bring the entire cloud ecosystem into a federated management maodel? Which includes: business management of IT and cloud, our hybrid. Consumption: a standard consumption model through one point of access to all clouds, internal or external. Third: delivery, how do we deliver services, either automated or workflow? Bi-model, as Gartner calls it, in one model. And four: operations management across public, private, hybrid, internal or external. >> Let me make sure I got this, so, business services in the sense of running IT more like a business, >> Mohammad: Right! >> A consumption model in terms of presenting this in a way that's simple and easy for a business-person to use, a delivery model, in the sense that it's very simple and straightforward and fast to deliver, and then an operations model which makes sure that everything above it works well. >> Yes, and the consumers, in this case, are developers, IT operations people, and DevApp teams, and from a delivery perspective, it is automated or people-work-flow, so you support both, so bringing this federated model together is a very complex undertaking, and IBM services is the strategic partner clients are asking to take them on this journey. Hey, bring this together for us. It's very complex at all layers. It's not a simple thing, and in that bringing it together, partners have a big role to play. Azure, Amazon, Google, Service Now, VMWare, Cisco, they all have critical pieces of it that make this model work, and clients have made choices. Clients already have VMWare. Clients already have Service Now Clients already have Amazon, Azure. But there is no system that brings it together and manages it on an ongoing basis, and the important thing is, the clouds keep changing very fast, and keeping up with the clouds, leveraging the power of the clouds to the right teams within the enterprise to deliver new digital apps, to delivery revenue, is what IBM is enabling our clients to do. >> So wikibot has actually done a fair amount of research around what we call the cloud operating model, we call the Digital Business Platform. AWS has an example of that, as you mention. They all have their approaches to handle those four things that you mentioned. >> Mohammad: Yes! >> But when you get to a customer, who also has to marry across these clouds, sustain some on-premises assets, perhaps some near-premises assets within the cost-service provider, it's what you're trying to do is ensure that they have their operating model that is the appropriate mix of all these different capabilities for their business, we got that right? >> Exactly, you got it. So what we said was every cloud provider, internal or external, or even hosting cloud providers, IBM is a hosting cloud provider. >> Right! >> With the adjustment of business. They had their own model across those four things: Business, consumption, delivery, operations. Now, we cannot operate four silos. Every enterprise is using Amazon, every enterprise has Google, every enterprise has VMWare, every enterprise has IBM. We cannot have four models. >> Dave: Right! >> So what we have done is we have created one standard consistent target operating model. We have integrated all these offerings within that so clients don't have to do it. We offer services to create extensions to it based on variations clients might have, and then operate it as a service for them, so that their path to cloud gets accelerated, and they start leveraging the power of what's good today inside the data centers, and what's available outside in public clouds, in a very secure way. So that is the business IBM is in moving forward, which we are calling it, we are transforming our offerings portfolio, we are calling it: Hybrid Cloud Services Business >> OK so you've got this hybrid operating model, IT operating model that you're envisioning, you're letting the cloud partners do what they do best, >> Mohammad: Right. >> Including your IBM cloud partners, >> Mohammad: Including our operating partners, >> And then you guys are bringing it all together in a framework, in an operating model, That actually can drive business value. >> Exactly, that's what we're doing. We are giving them ease of access from one place, choice of delivery platform, choice of delivery models from one place. Single visibility into how they're running, performing, help, and diagnostics from one place, and then, one billing and payment model, not four. So when I pay monthly bills, I pay based on usage, qualification of that usage across everybody, and then reconciling with my ERP systems, and making the payments. So the CFO has a standard way to manage payments. So that's what IBM is bringing to the table. >> How far could you take this? Could you take this into my SAS portfolio as well, Or is that sort of next step? >> What right now we are doing InfoSecure as a service and platform as a service. Our goal is in '18 and '19 to move to software as a service, because software as a service is much easier because we don't own the infrastructure or the service, we just consume it as electricity, utility. So that we discover the usage of SAS and meter it for usage against our billing model that we have to as B2B contract between a SAS provider and an enterprise and then make sure we've done the license management right. So there's companies like Flexera and others who do that For SAS management there's companies like Skyhigh Networks that recently got acquired, we're bringing those companies in to give us that component. >> But doing that level of brokering amongst the different services, while very useful, valuable, especially if you can provide greater visibility in the cost, because this becomes an increasing feature of COGs in a digital business, right? You still got to do a lot about the people stuff. A lot of folks are focused on ITIL, ITSM, automation at that level. Describe how you'll work with an IT organization and a business to evolve its underlying principals for how the operating model is going to work. >> I think that's probably a more difficult challenge than the technology itself, and if you look at our business, it was a people, it is a people business with GTS. We're more than 90,000 to 100,000 employees babysitting infrastructure for major fortune 500 corporations, and InfoSecure is more into software-defined, that means that we are moving from configuration skills to programming skills, where your programming API is in Amazon to provision infrastructure and deploy, so the skillsets have to definitely move. They have to move to infrastructure teams now have to become programming teams, which they have not been used to. They used to go to VMWare, vSphere, vCenter and configure VMs and deploy VMs. Now they have the right programs to drive and provision infrastructure, so that's one part of it. Second, the process was you do development and then your throw it over to operations, and they'll go configure and deploy production. Now, when you're programming infrastructure. Second, you're doing it in collaboration with developers, because developers are defining their own infrastructure in the cloud. So the process is different. The skills are different, and the process you are to operate in is not the same, it's different. Third, the technologies are different that you work with. So there is change at all levels and what GTS has done is we have put a massive goal in place to re-scale our workforce to take our people and re-scale them in the new process, the new technology and the new roles and that's a very big challenge I think the industry is facing: we don't have enough people who know this. A lot of these people are in Netflix, Facebook, Google, in Silicon Valley, and now, it takes time, it has happened before. The training and the transfer of knowledge, all of that is going on right now. So right now we have a crunch, And the second thing that is becoming more difficult is there's a lot of data coming out of these systems. The volume of data is unbelievable. Like if you look at Splunk and other tools and platforms, they collect a lot of log data. So all these cloud platforms spit out a lot of machine data. Humans cannot comprehend that. It's incomprehensible. So we need machine learning skills and data science skills to understand how these systems are performing. >> Peter: And tools. >> And tools. So we need the AI skills, the data science skills, in addition to the infrastructure design architecture and programming skills. So we really have a challenge on our hands as an industry to kind of effectively build the next-gen management systems. >> Right and we've got, so we've got all these clouds, the ascendancy of clouds has brought cloud creep, >> Mohammad: Right. >> All these bespoke tools along with them, all these different operating models. You're clearly solving a problem there. What's the go-to-market model with all these partners that you've mentioned? You've got cloud, you got PRAM, eventually SAS, >> Yeah, so our cloud go-to-market is three ways We see clients adopting cloud in three ways. One is digital initiatives: They want to go build new IOD apps or mobile apps and they want to put it in production that drive revenue, okay? So we are creating offerings around the DevApps model. We'll say like look, the biggest challenge that our folks have is how to put a app that you build in production. I built a new feature, how can I get it to my client as soon as possible, in a secure way, that can scale and perform, that is the biggest problem with app developers. I can develop anywhere, it's all open-source. I'm not living in, and I can spin up a VM or a container in Amazon and develop a service in two days. But to put it in production, it takes a long time. How can we make offerings that accelerate that? Through our DevApp CICD automation process I was talking about, that's our revenue play. So our go-to-market is driven by how we can generate revenue for our clients through agile offerings for DevApps, that's one go-to-market. Second go-to-market is CIOs are saying like look, I'm spending a lot of money managing my current infrasatructure and my current app portfolio, and I can take money out of the system through cost reductions, so what is my migration and modernization path for my existing portfolio? >> Well, slightly differently, I used to get I used to get my eight to nine percent that I gave back to the business every year simply by following hardware price performance. >> Mohammad: That's exactly right. >> That's not available in the same way. I have to do it through process and automation. >> All automation right? So then we have to look at everything. What part of the portfolio can move to Amazon or cannot? What other refactoring I have to do to microservices and containers to build portability to move to the cloud? So we have created a migration, a global migration practice at IBM in a factory in India and in the US where we have created offerings to work with the CIO right from planning, cost planning, portfolio planning, application design planning and design review, to lift-and-shift, to deploy in cloud and operate it. So we have a series of offerings that track the life-cycle of migration. So that's our second go-to-market path. Our third go-to-market path is: Hey, my business per units are shadow IT; they're already in the cloud, now my CEO is telling me: Hey mister CIO, you make sure they all work and they're secure, and there's no loss in data. And this infrastructure is now in cloud and on-prem. So how do I provide, manage service, to manage your infrastructure and workloads in the cloud? IBM has offerings that will directly provide you multi-cloud management as managed service. So we are taking three client journeys and we are building go-to-market offerings around those three, and we have built, we have re-designed IBM portfolio to operate on those lines. >> Do the digital initiatives, chief digital officer, obviously, target their CIO for the portfolio rationalization optimization and line of business through the shadow IT? >> Right! >> And you bring those together with a constant consistent operating model? >> Exactly, so all three journeys lead to one operating model. >> Dave: Yeah! >> But going back to what Dave said, and we have time for just a little bit more, is, is, no offense, there's no way you can do it all by yourself. >> Mohammad: You cannot. >> So what are some of the core, what are some of the most important partnerships that users need to be looking to? >> I think we have defined what's goal to us. Not always go back to, if you are clearly going to market, what is the core competency of IBM? Okay, with (mumbles) we're going to service this company for a long time, right? We made sure we are, we bring the complexity and control and we manage the complexity; that's our core business. We had mainframe business, we had software business, and a very profitable software business. So we've done all three, hardware, software, and services. As we go forward, cloud services, cloud managed services, our IBM services, is a core competency for us, which is planning, design, managed services, and services integration, to bring these tool sets together from different partners, and operationalizing it, and babysitting it and offering it as a service. So services business is our core offering. Now in the software space, which is the management software, which is service now, (mumbles) Cisco, there there is many layers to it, as I talked about the four things: consumption, operations management, business management, >> And service delivery >> And service delivery. And in service delivery we have three choices: we have VMWare, we have Microsoft and we have IBM. We have stitched it together in a federated framework. The stitching together is our core competence. Okay, Operations management. We have created a federated data lake because data will drive everything going forward. So we own the data lake as our core competency and Watson driving intelligence. But some of the monitoring tools like AppDynamics, New Relic, Splunk, that collect the data, those are our partners. We're integrating that into our Watson framework. So we're looking at core versus non-core in all four layers, and wherever there's a overlap, we're creating unique vertical go-to-market strategies. Here, for this segment, we overlap with you, we agree to compete, to your clients you can lead with that, for our clients we'll lead with ours, so we agree to disagree, but we are going to stick to the target operating model, so that our clients are successful. So there's no confusion we are creating in their minds. So its a very complex dance at this point. >> But you laid it out and it's coherent. >> Right. >> It's got to start there. >> The most important thing is we need to tell our clients what is our core, and what is the core we're going to stand behind? And that core delivers them bottom-line value to move from point A to point B and be successful in the cloud. >> Well Mohammad, I think you've defined those swim lanes, you obviously trust and you've got the trust of your partners, trust of your customers. Like you say, you agree to compete where it makes sense, and you bring core competency and value to differentiate from your competition, so, >> Right. >> Dave: Congratulations on laying that out. We really appreciate you coming on theCUBE. >> Thank you very much. Appreciate it. >> You're welcome. All right, keep it right there everybody, we'll be back with our next guest. You're watching theCUBE live from Think 2018, we'll be right back. >> Mohammad: Thank you very much. (upbeat music)