Clint Crosier, AWS | AWS Summit DC 2021
>> Welcome back to theCUBE's covering of AWS Public Sector Summit. In-person here in Washington, DC. I'm John Furrier, your host, great to be back face to face. We've got a great, special guest Clint Crosier, who is the Director of AWS' Aerospace & Satellite. Major General of The Air Force/Space Force. Retired. Great to see you in person again. Thanks for coming on theCUBE. >> Thank you for having me. I appreciate that. >> First of all, props to you for doing a great job at Amazon, bringing all your knowledge from Space Force and Air Force into the cloud. >> Thank you. >> So that's great, historical context. >> It's been valuable and it's provided a whole lot of insight into what we're building with the AWS space team, for sure. >> So number one question I get a lot is: We want more space content. What's the coolest thing going on in space? Is there a really a satellite behind the moon there, hidden there somewhere? What's the coolest thing going on in space? >> Well, the coolest thing that's going on in space, I think is you're seeing the rapid growth of the space industry, I mean, to me. I've been in the space industry for 34 years now, and there have been periods where we projected lots of growth and activity and it just didn't really come about, especially in the 80's and the 90's. But what we're seeing today is that growth is taking place. Whether it's the numbers of satellites that are being launched around the globe every year, there's some 3,000 objects on orbit today. Estimates are that there'll be 30,000 objects at the end of the decade, or the number of new companies, or the number of global spinning. It is just happening right now, and it's really exciting. >> So, when people say or hear space, there's a lot of economic changes in terms of the cost structures of how to get things deployed into space. That brings up the question of: Is space an opportunity? Is it a threat vector? What about congestion and security? >> Yeah, well three great things, absolutely an opportunity. We're seeing the rapid growth of the space industry, and we're seeing more commercialization than ever before. In my whole career, The Air Force or, NASA, or the NRO would sort of, hold things and do them themselves Today, you're seeing commercial contracts going out from the National Reconnaissance Office, NASA, from The Air Force, from the Space Force. So lots of opportunity for commercial companies. Security. Absolutely, priority number one should be security is baked into everything we do at AWS. And our customers, our Government classified customers tell us the reason they came to AWS is our security is top notch and certified for all their workloads. And as you well know, we have from unclassified all the way up to top secret capabilities on the AWS cloud. So just powerful opportunities for our customers. >> Yeah. And a lot of competitors will throw foot on that. I know, I've reported on some of that and not a lot of people have that same credential. >> Sure. >> Compared to the competition. >> Sure. >> Now I have to ask you, now that you have the top secret, all these clouds that are very tailorable, flexible with space: How are you helping customers with this Aerospace Division? Is it is a commercial? In the public sector together? What's the... >> All of the above. >> Take us through the value proposition. >> Yeah, happy to do this. So what we recognized over the last two years or so we, at AWS, recognized all this rapid growth that we're talking about within the space industry. Every sector from launch to on-orbit activities, to space exploration, all of it. And so AWS saw that and we looked at ourselves and said: "Do we have the right organization and expertise in place really to help our customers lean into that?" And the answer was: we decided to build a team that had deep experience in space, and that was the team that we grew because our thesis was: If you have a deep experience in space, a deep experience in cloud, you bring those two together and it's a powerful contribution. And so we've assembled a team with more than 500 years of collective hands-on experience, flying satellites, launching rockets. And when we sit down with our customers to innovate on their behalf, we're able to come up with some incredible solutions and I'm happy to talk about those. >> I'd love to, but tell you what, first of all, there's a lot of space nerds out there. I love space. I love space geeking out on the technology, but take us through the year you had, you've had a pretty incredible year with some results. You have that brain trust there. I know you're hiring. I know that people want to work for you. I'm sure the resumes are flying in, a lot of action. >> There is. >> What are the highlights from this year? >> So the highlights I think is, we've built a team that the industry is telling us was needed. Again, there was no organization that really served the space cloud industry. And so we're kind of building this industry within the industry, the space cloud industry. And so number one, just establishing that team and leaning into that industry has been valuable. The other thing that we're real proud of is we built a global team, because space is a global enterprise. We have teams in Europe and in Asia and South America here in the U.S., so we built a global team. One of the things that we did right up front, we weren't even six months old, when we envisioned the idea of doing the AWS Space Accelerator. And some of the folks told me: "Clint, six months under your belt, maybe you ought to get your feet under you." And I said: "No, no. We move fast to support our customers." And so we made a call for any space startup that wanted to come on board with AWS and go through our four week Space Accelerator. We partnered with Sarah from Capital. And the idea was: if you're a small company that wants to grow and build and learn how you can use the cloud to gain competitive advantage, come with us. And so John, I would have been happy if we had 50 companies applied, we had 194 companies across 44 countries that applied to our accelerator. We had to down select a 10, but that was a tremendous accomplishment, two of those are speaking this afternoon, where they met each other at our accelerator and now have formed a partnership: Ursa Space and HawkEye 360 on how they build on the cloud together. Fascinating. >> Well, I love that story. First of all, I love the military mindset. No, we're not going to wait. >> Move it out. >> It's not take that hill, it's take that planet. >> Our customers won't wait, innovation, doesn't wait, the future doesn't wait. We have to move out. >> So, this brings up the entrepreneurship angle. We got there a little early, but I want to talk about it because it's super important. There's an entrepreneurial culture happening right now in the space community >> There is. At large, and it's getting bigger and wider. >> Bigger every day. >> What is that? What if someone says: "Hey, what's going on with entrepreneurship in this space? What are the key dynamics? What's the power dynamics?" It's not money, there's money out there, but like what's the structural thing happening? >> The key dynamic, I think, is we're seeing that we can unlock things that we could never do before. And one of our goals is: the more space data we can make more accessible to more people around the world. It unlocks things we couldn't do. We're working with space companies who are using space data to track endangered whales off the coast of California. We're working with companies that are using space data to measure thermal and greenhouse emissions for climate change and climate management. We're working with one company, Edgybees, who has a small satellite constellation, and they're using it to build satellite based, augmented reality, to provide it to first responders as they go into a disaster response area. And they get a 3D-view of what they're going into. None of those workloads were possible five years ago. And the cloud and cloud-based technologies are really what opens those kinds of workloads up. >> What kind of higher level services do you see emerging from space cloud? Because you know, obviously you have to have some infrastructure. >> Absolutely. Got to put some stuff into space. That's a supply chain, reliability, also threat. I mean, I can have a satellite attack, another satellite, or I'm just making that up, but I'm sure there's other scenarios that the generals are thinking about. >> So space security and cyberspace security is critical. And as I said, it's built into everything we do in all of our platforms, so you're absolutely right about that, but when we think about the entrepreneurship, you know, what we're seeing is, and I'll give you a good example of why the industry is growing so fast and why cloud. So one company we work with, LeoLabs. So Leo identified the growth in the LEO: Low Earth Orbit segment. 3,000 objects on orbit today, 30,000 tomorrow. Who's going to do the space traffic management for 30,000 objects in space that are all in the same orbital regime? And so LeoLabs built a process to do space traffic management, collision avoidance. They were running it on premises. It took them eight hours to do a single run for a single satellite conjunction. We got them to help understand how to use the cloud. They moved all that to AWS. Now that same run they do in 10 seconds. Eight hours to 10 seconds. Those are the kind of workloads as space proliferates in and we grow, that we just can't execute without cloud and cloud-based technologies. >> It's interesting, you know, the cloud has that same kind of line: move your workloads to the cloud and then refactor. >> Yeah. So space workloads are coming to the cloud. >> They are. >> Just changing the culture. So I have to ask you, I know there's a lot of young people out there looking for careers and interests. I mean, Cal poly is going into the high school now offering classes. >> Yeah So high school, there's so much interest in space and technology. What is the cultural mindset to be successful? Andy Jassy last year, reading and talk about the mindset of the builder and the enterprise CXO: "Get off your butt and start building" There's a space ethos going on. What is the mindset? Would you share your view on it? >> The mindset is innovation and moving fast, right? We, we lived, most of my career, in the time where we had an unlimited amount of money and unlimited amount of time. And so we were really slow and deliberate about how we built things. The future won't wait, whether it's commercial application, or military application, we have to move fast. And so the culture is: the faster we can move, The more we'll succeed, and there's no way to move faster than when you're building on the AWS cloud. Ground station is a good example. You know, the proposition of the cloud is: Don't invest your limited resources in your own infrastructure that doesn't differentiate your capability. And so we did that same thing with ground station. And we've said to companies: "Don't spend millions of dollars on developing your own ground station infrastructure, pay by the minute to use AWS's and focus your limited resources back in your product, which differentiate your space mission." and that's just been power. >> How is that going from customer perspective? >> Great. It's going great. We continue to grow. We added another location recently. And just in the last week we announced a licensed accelerator. One of the things our customers told us is it takes too long to work with global governments to get licensed, to operate around the world. And we know that's been the case. So we put together a team that leaned in to solve that problem, and we just announced the licensed accelerator, where we will work with companies to walk them through that process, and we can shave an 18 month process into a three or four month process. And that's been... we've gotten great response on that from our company. >> I've always said: >> I remember when you were hired and the whole space thing was happening. I remember saying to myself: "Man, if democratization can bring, come to space" >> And we're seeing that happening >> You guys started it and you guys, props to your team. >> Making space available to more and more people, and they'll dazzle us with the innovative ways we use space. 10 years ago, we couldn't have envisioned those things I told you about earlier. Now, we're opening up all sorts of workloads and John, real quick, one of the reasons is, in the past, you had to have a specific forte or expertise in working with space data, 'cause it was so unique and formatted and in pipeline systems. We're making that democratized. So it's just like any other data, like apps on your phone. If you can build apps for your phone and manage data, we want to make it that easy to operate with space data, and that's going to change the way the industry operates. >> And that's fundamentally, that's great innovation because you're enabling that. That's why I have to ask you on that note Of the innovation trends that you see or activities: What excites you the most? >> So a lot of things, but I'll give you two examples very quickly: One is high-performance compute. We're seeing more and more companies really lean in to understanding how fast they can go on AWS. I told you about LeoLabs, eight hours to 10 seconds. But that high-performance computes going to be a game changer. The other thing is: oh, and real quick, I want to tell you, Descartes Labs. So Descartes Labs came to us and said: "We want to compete in the Annual Global Top 500 supercomputer challenge" And so we worked with them for a couple of weeks. We built a workload on the AWS standard platform. We came in number 40 in the globe for the Top 500 super computer lists, just by building some workloads on our standard platform. That's powerful, high-performance compute. But the second example I wanted to give you is: digital modeling, digital simulation, digital engineering. Boom Aerospace is a company, Boom, that we work with. Boom decided to build their entire supersonic commercial, supersonic aircraft, digital engineering on the AWS cloud. In the last three years, John, they've executed 6,000 years of high-performance compute in the last three years. How do you do 6,000 years in compute in three years? You spin up thousands of AWS servers simultaneously, let them do your digital management, digital analysis, digital design, bring back a million different perturbations of a wing structure and then pick the one that's best and then come back tomorrow and run it again. That's powerful. >> And that was not even possible, years ago. >> Not at that speed, no, not at that speed. And that's what it's really opening up in terms of innovation. >> So now you've done it so much in your career, okay? Now you're here with Amazon. Looking back on this past year or so, What's the learnings for you? >> The learning is, truly how valuable cloud can be to the space industry, I'll admit to you most people in the space industry and especially in the government space industry. If you ask us a year ago, two years ago: "Hey, what do you think about cloud?" We would have said: "Well, you know, I hear people talk about the cloud. There's probably some value. We should probably look at that" And I was in the same boat, but now that I've dug deeply into the cloud and understand the value of artificial intelligence, machine learning, advanced data analytics, a ground station infrastructure, all those things, I'm more excited than ever before about what the space industry can benefit from cloud computing, and so bringing that, customer by customer is just a really fulfilling way to continue to be part of the space industry. Even though I retired from government service. >> Is there a... I'm just curious because you brought it up. Is there a lot of people coming in from the old, the space industry from public sector? Are they coming into commercial? >> Absolutely. >> Commercial rising up and there's, I mean, I know there's a lot of public/private partnerships, What's the current situation? >> Yeah, lots of partnerships, but we're seeing an interesting trend. You know, it used to be that NASA led the way in science and technology, or the military led the way in science and technology, and they still do in some areas. And then the commercial industry would follow along. We're seeing that's reversed. There's so much growth in the commercial industry. So much money, venture capital being poured in and so many innovative solutions being built, for instance, on the cloud that now the commercial industry is leading technology and building new technology trends that the military and the DOD and their government are trying to take advantage of. And that's why you're seeing all these commercial contracts being led from Air Force, Space Force, NASA, and NRO. To take advantage of that commercialization. >> You like your job. >> I love my job. (laughing) -I can tell, >> I love my job. >> I mean, it is a cool job. I kind of want to work for you. >> So John, space is cool. That's our tagline: space is cool. >> Space is cool. Space equals ratings in the digital TV realm, it is really, super exciting a lot of young people are interested, I mean, robotics clubs in high schools are now varsity sports, eSports, all blend together. >> Space, robotics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, advanced analytics. It's all becoming a singular sector today and it's open to more people than ever before, for the reasons we talked about. >> Big wave and you guys are building the surf boards, everyone a ride it, congratulations. Great to see you in person. >> Thank you. Again, thanks for coming on theCUBE, appreciate that. >> Thanks for having us. >> Clint Crosier is the Director of AWS Aerospace & Satellite. Legend in the industry. Now at AWS. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE. Thanks for watching.
SUMMARY :
Great to see you in person again. Thank you for having me. First of all, props to you for of insight into what we're building What's the coolest of the space industry, I mean, to me. changes in terms of the cost growth of the space industry, I know, I've reported on some of that the public sector together? And the answer was: we decided I'm sure the resumes are in the U.S., so we built a global team. I love the military mindset. It's not take that hill, the future doesn't wait. in the space community There is. the more space data we can make obviously you have to have other scenarios that the in the same orbital regime? know, the cloud has that coming to the cloud. into the high school now and talk about the mindset of And so the culture is: And just in the last week we and the whole space thing was happening. you guys, props to your team. the way the industry operates. Of the innovation trends We came in number 40 in the And that was not even And that's what it's really opening up What's the learnings for you? especially in the coming in from the old, on the cloud that now the I love my job. kind of want to work for you. So John, space is cool. the digital TV realm, it before, for the reasons building the surf boards, Thank you. Legend in the industry.
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John Wood, Telos | AWS Public Sector Q1 2018
(dramatic music) >> Narrator: Live from Washington D.C., it's cube conversations with John Furrier. >> Hello everyone, welcome to this special cube conversation, I'm John Furrier, the host of The Cube, co-founder of SiliconANGLE media Inc. We are here in the Washington D.C. Beltway area. We're actually at Amazon web services' public sector headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. My next guest is John Wood, he's the CEO and chairman of the board at Telos, a big provider of some of the big contracts, certainly with Amazon CIA, among others, welcome. >> Thank you very much. >> Thanks for joining me. >> I'm glad to be here. >> So, you guys have been pretty instrumental and we were talking to Teresa Carlson earlier, with an exclusive interview with her, and we talked about the shot heard around the Cloud. That was the CIA, Amazon win, four years ago. >> Yes. >> Kind of infiltrated the government area. It's almost a gestation period and now you got DOD action, a ton of other opportunities, but it really is an architectural mindset changeover from the old way. >> Yes You're involved in this, with Telos. What's your take, how are you guys involved, what's going on? >> Yeah, so it was groundbreaking, when the CIA made the determination that they were going to move to the Cloud, for sure. It kind of made everybody stand up and take notice, if the most security conscience organization in the world was considering it, why aren't I? And here we are, four years later, so where is the CIA now? Well now, the CIA is able to provision a server in a couple minutes, whereas the past, it used to take them almost a year. Now, with the use of automation tools like we have with Telos and the Xacta suite, the CIA is able to get their authority to operate in less than a week, when it used to take 18 months. So, I basically think what's happening is, the Cloud is providing an access point to IT modernization and the agency is showing that there is a blueprint that the rest of the government can also follow if they want to. >> One of the things we're involved in a lot of Blockchain covers, as well as kind of kicking the tires on Blockchain. You're in the middle of a Cloud gain with identity. Identity is the secret to having good scalable systems, because when you have good identity, good things happen. In Blockchain, some people say a theory about those. In IT, it's what identity you're going to use. How does the authority to operate challenge, you mentioned, become so important, because you're talking about massive amounts of time, I mean time savings. >> Wood: Yeah, so-- >> Just tease out the nuances of why it's so important to have that identity solution. >> So, in the past, there was no common language within which our cyber security professionals could engage with each other. Now, with the signing of the President's executive order on cyber security, the White House really is mandating the adoption if the NIST framework. What's relevant there is that on the one hand it provides you with a common language, but on the other hand, it's 11 hundred controls. So, as a result, automation is going to be key, to making sure that people can work with each other and making sure that, actually, the adoption actually takes off. >> They're safe, they know the trusted party. Is trust a big part of this and how does that--? >> I think what's happening, because the intelligence community has been working so closely together, and when I say the intelligence community, it's not just the traditional CIA, NSA, NRO, et cetera, it's also the military component of the intelligence community. So, you've got almost 38 assessors that are assessing C2S and SC2S. You know, the secret, if you will, Cloud, and the top secret Cloud, and those assessors all have been working in the same community under this framework and I think that has given them the confidence that the data is protected and as a result, they're heading much closer to reciprocity than ever before. >> There's been observations certainly on the Cube, we've said this many times with the past few years in tracking IT over the years, IT transformation, digital transformation, whatever you want to call it, buzz word. The reality is you had some progressives that would move faster and kick the tires, certainly financial services, in some areas you see that. Really, no problem. Then you had the folks who have just been consolidated down, didn't have a lot of budget and were lagging, waiting to adopt. Now there's no excuses, with cyber security, top of mind, with hacking, malware, ransomware, cyber warfare from nation states, sponsored states, an open source it's out of control. >> It is. >> So the security equations is forcing IT to move. The action has to be taken. What are you guys seeing in this area, because this is a big story and it's really putting a fire under everyone to move. >> And it's long over due. I co-wrote and article with our chief security officer in 2011, talking about why the Cloud was the way to go for federal, state, local, and education customers and at the end of the day, I think what's happening from a top cover perspective, the legislative community understands that. Obviously the Executive branch understands that, and now with editions like C2S the rest of the environment, the rest of the government can see what's possible. So, I believe the leadership within the government is ready for this change. They're seeing the benefit as it relates to C2S and SC2S and ultimately, the key is, the guys who run the contracts themselves, you got to make sure that those guys want that, to embrace that change too. >> Furrier: Yeah, so you have the-- >> And right now, 80, if you look across the government, 80% IT span is going back into maintenance. If you look at all my commercial customers, it's somewhere between 20 and 25%. What does that mean? It basically means that the government has a lot of legacy systems, which means that there's a lot of threats, and, which means there's a real cyber security problem. I believe fundamentally that by moving work loads to the Cloud, you'll be eliminating a lot of those cyber security problems. >> Yeah, it just means security is going to be the driver. The other thing I wanted to bring up, especially here in D.C., in public sector, is transparency. Now everyone can see everything. We're in a data-driven world, you can't hide either. The light is on, it's right there on the table. No more hiding. How has transparency been impacted in the procurement process, in the sales motions, the overall engagements with gov and public sector customers? >> I think, truth be told, there have been a lot of ideas that were sort of short-term and not really thoughtful, but the good news, as I said, is that the policy makers are really thinking and considering, trying to figure out how to make changes. Take for example, LPTA, low price technically acceptable. When I went to the congress and talked to both the House and the Senate side, and talked about how if I have one customer whose gotten hacked and the other customer has the same hack, but one happens to be a government customer and one's a commercial customer, the resources that we have are really trained, highly skilled, highly sought-after resources. Well, my commercial customers are willing to pay three to four hundred percent more than my government customers are. So when you have scarce resources, where are you going to apply them? You're going to apply them where the people are who are going to pay you. So my point to the Congress was simply to say, hey man, you get what you pay for. So ultimately, the good news is that, both on the House and the Senate side, that they elimanted LTPA, as it relates to cyber security, goods and services. So I believe, again, that there's a lot of, not just transparency happening, but there's a lot of people realizing that there are things that we can do. Procurement is kind of the last frontier for me. I have seen recently, I saw one of our government customers, where we were subcontracted, they went with something called an OTA, which stands for an other transaction agreement. Big problem in the government these days is everybody protest everything and there's really no downside to the protesting. With an OTA it's not protest-able. So I am seeing our government customers beginning to think about other means of actually doing things like procurement, and so that you can actually acquire. >> Are they going to have instant replay? (laughter) It sounds like the NFL, that call's not reversible. I mean, this is kind of, we're getting into all these rules and regulations where you've got protest, it seems that policy injection is not healthy at some level, because that point about what cost more on the commercial side, because of demand there, they understand the consequences and resource availability. To the government you just eliminated a policy that wasn't really helping. >> Right. >> So policy is a real consideration in here. >> I think so. Again though, it's a different environment than it was five or six years ago and I do think that there are some real positive things that are happening. I agree with you that there's a ground-swell of support behind the Cloud and certainly, players like us see the benefit associated with that shared security model. >> One of the things we've been observing and tracking on Sillaconangle and the Cube is this notion of public-private collaberation. Sharing data is a huge deal. Certainly, in Cyber people realize that data is valuable. Certainly, at Scale, you see patterns you might not see, customers on workloads, here and there, need to be identified. You're not sharing the data you don't know. So data sharing is a big deal, but also, collaborations between the private and public sector. Can you comment on what's going on there, because we're seeing some movement where, you're seeing some security agencies saying, "We'll share some stuff." >> Yeah. >> Furrier: You share some stuff with me, so you're seeing a little bit of the community developing heavily around data-sharing, what's you're take on that? >> So, I think we have a ways to go to make it work right, because if it was working right, you wouldn't see the very published, publicized hacks that have gone on. One of the things that the Congress can do is to provide incentives for the private sector to share more information, more quickly. When the Yahoo hacks occurred, it wasn't discovered until two or three years later. As a result, like I said, there's really no incentive and there's a perceived amount of liability. One of the things I'm asking some of our Congress people to consider is if you do share information, maybe, there's a limitation on liability and that provides, if you will, a mechanism and that provides an incentive for the private organization to work with the public organizations. >> So not to bury it, like Yahoo tried to bury that thing. >> Exactly. There's no sense in burying it. There should be no reason to bury. >> Okay, take a minute to talk about Telos, what you guys are doing, the chief executive. What's going on with the company, talk about the successes, where you guys are winning, your challenges and opportunities. >> Sure, we're in the business of, we do cyber security, we do identity and we do secure mobility. In the area of cyber security, I'm very proud about the fact that we're the database of record for intelligence community, many department of defense agencies use us, homeland security, a whole, department of safe-- There's a whole bunch of organizations that tend to work with us. I think that the issue for me has always been around investing in things that make our customers more efficient. So whether it's cyber security, it's one thing to provide the authority to operate, but I like to provide that authority to operate on a continuous basis. When we talk about identity, it's one thing to say that I am who I say I am, but it's another thing to let you know that I'm actually somebody that's trust worthy. So, we have a special relationship with the FBI that allows us to do real-time data look-ups on their people. We're the integrator of record for the common access card, the military ID card, we have been for a long time. From that, we built a business relationship with the TSA and now we have about 70 airports around America that use our service to do identity as a service for all their employees. >> Can you get me to cut the line at Pre? (laughter) >> You know, if you want to cut the line at TSA pre-- >> Quality of service opportunity and people will pay more for that. >> Absolutely. And plus, I think TSA pre-check wants to have a lot more people in that ecosystem too. No different than when the Easy Pass came into play years and years ago. I remember just zooming through the Easy Pass and wondering why people would want to stand in line, why would you, right? And then if you think about it, we're also involved with secure mobility, so we have a capability called Telos ghost that allows you to basically hide on a network. You're familiar with the notion of signal hopping? In World War two that's how we avoided detection by the enemy, so this is what we invented here with something around IP hopping. So as a result of that, whether you're a server-facing thing or a client-facing thing or a mobile device, you can't be seen on the network and if you can't be seen on the network, you can't be hacked. >> Well, that's awesome stuff. Your relationship with Amazon Web Services, talk about that, some of the things you're involved in. >> Yeah. >> The deals, the momentum. What's the relationship look like between you guys? >> So we have an enormous relationship with Amazon, most important part that we have, it started with the agency and I was in a meeting with Teresa Carlson, one of the senior people in the agency, and we wondered whether or not we could do for, we Telos, can do for the Cloud that which we've been doing for the enterprise for the better part of 15 to 17 years now, which is basically providing that authority to operate in an automated way. So we invested together and we were able to prove that we could absolutely do that. Now, what we're doing is we're basically copying and pasting that model to our customers across the government. >> And you guys put a stake in the ground, 2011. You were early. I mean 2008 was the beginning of the DevOps movement, you were in the heart of it in 2011. >> Wood: Yep. What's the biggest thing you've learned or observed or experienced over those years, since 2011? >> The biggest thing? >> Or just the most important. >> Wood: That is an enormous question. >> It could be the most important, the most relevant, most surprising-- >> Well the most important thing was I got married in 2012. (laughter) I have a four year old and two year old and a 14-year old, those are the most important. >> Was it really you who got married, was it your identity? >> Wood: It was really me and it was my identity. I will say, I think that the government is embracing efficiency. The government is embracing change. I think it started around 2014 or 15, and now it's really moving out. I think there's a lot of top cover, both from a policy side and an executive side and I'm seeing a lot of leadership from within the government itself of people who want to make the change happen. >> And there's also the competitive fairness question we're hearing, just here in town, yesterday, rumblings of one-source Cloud, multi-Cloud. Amazon is technically a one-source Cloud, but they've got an ecosystem. Should they have multi-Cloud in their requirements? All these things almost feel like that protest model is going on, like there's a little fud going everywhere from the other vendors. Do we expect to see more of that in your mind or less of it? (laughter) >> I think at the end of the day-- >> The chips are taken off the table. >> The people who don't want change are the ones, who are, if you will, very invested in the legacy. If those people are paid, time, material or cost blessed, they're not paid to be efficient. So there's going to be push back. On the other hand we've seen by the gigantic growth of the adoption of the Cloud and by the Cloud infrastructure and the Cloud ecosystem itself, there are enomorous opportunities for organizations out there. So I think people should embrace the change, I really do. I think, fundamentally, it's going to be a really big positive to this industry and into this region. >> I always say to Dave Vellante and my co-hosts, it's like no brainer, you look at the main frame, that was the generation when I was growing in the industry. I was the young gun, like main frame co-ball, who the hell wants that? Mini computer, eh, I want the client server. It's pretty obvious when you're in it. So I got to ask you with that in mind, Cloud is pretty obvious. Folks will understand DevOps and automation and those efficiences. You mentioned authority to operate as an example. Some of these numbers are pretty significant. So let's go down the problems that are important, what are the consequences, how do you quantify it, right? So the problem that people are trying to solve is how do I get resources, computing, software, whatever. Pretty important, because now you've got security, you've got all kinds of stuff. What are some of the consequences and you mentioned some benchmarks that you've quantified. You mentioned provisioning a server in a year. Is that really true? >> Wood: That's true! >> So give me some data on some of consequences, kind of the old way and new way. >> Well the old way if you're using the traditional procurement, it's like I said, one of the big issues is whether it was the culture or it's procurement roles or just the process to get an approval, it would take a year to get a server provisioned. Now, it's literally, you push a button and one to two minutes later you have a server, a new server. So you get ultimate scale, you get ultimate throughput, you pay as you go, you pay what you use. What's not to like? So that's all good. From the standpoint of security, because it's the NIST framework we can automate about 90% of that. That's 11 hundred controls, right? So we automate about 90% of those 11 hundred controls. Now, you get a whole bunch of auto inheritance, a whole bunch of things that can be automated are, and as a result, when NIST goes from one version of NIST to another version, all that happens automatically, and more importantly, as a cyber security professional, and I've only been at it since 1994. (laughter) I've been in it for relatively a long time as a CEO. As a cyber security professional, what I see is, as long as I can show a continuous monitoring of your current status, that's very relevant to the operational security professional. That's really good. So for us, we know that our customers are going to be a combination of Cloud, hybrid, and on-prem. These large organizations are going to take years and years and years to move to the Cloud, but they got to start, because now is the time. >> So automation and having that nice stack where it automatically updates and auto-provisioning, auto scaling, but the operational provisioning piece is really where the rubber meets the road, right? Is that what you're getting at? >> Well it's that. It's also you're consolidating your data centers. You don't need lots of them anymore. You can just focus on one, that's another big area. Another big area is, you can lift and shift your legacy IT infrastructure into the Cloud and then put the big investment into the new application as it's siting in there in the Cloud. >> Awesome, John, thanks for joining us here in the cube conversation. Here at Amazon Web Services Headquarters, breaking down the trends in GovCloud public sector as Cloud computing really levels the playing field, opens up new doors, new solutions, faster time to operate, in vi of other things, here in Washington, D.C., in Arlington, Virginia, I'm John Furrier. Thanks for watching. (dramatic music)
SUMMARY :
it's cube conversations with John Furrier. of some of the big contracts, certainly with Amazon CIA, So, you guys have been pretty instrumental Kind of infiltrated the government area. You're involved in this, with Telos. Well now, the CIA is able to provision a server How does the authority to operate challenge, you mentioned, Just tease out the nuances of why it's so important So, in the past, there was no common language within They're safe, they know the trusted party. You know, the secret, if you will, Cloud, There's been observations certainly on the Cube, So the security equations is forcing IT to move. They're seeing the benefit as it relates to C2S and SC2S It basically means that the government in the procurement process, in the sales motions, the same hack, but one happens to be a government customer To the government you just eliminated a policy the benefit associated with that shared security model. You're not sharing the data you don't know. and that provides an incentive for the private organization There should be no reason to bury. what you guys are doing, the chief executive. the authority to operate, but I like to provide Quality of service opportunity and people will pay more seen on the network, you can't be hacked. some of the things you're involved in. What's the relationship look like between you guys? the enterprise for the better part of 15 to 17 years now, And you guys put a stake in the ground, 2011. What's the biggest thing you've learned or observed Well the most important thing was I got married in 2012. to make the change happen. from the other vendors. of the adoption of the Cloud and by the Cloud infrastructure What are some of the consequences and you mentioned kind of the old way and new way. or just the process to get an approval, in the Cloud. in the cube conversation.
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