hello everyone I'm Jean Faria we are reporting on the ground near Puerto Rico for blockchain unbound exclusive conversations at coinage end of covering all the action restart week of ten of events cryptocurrency blockchain all the people are here with the local ecosystem the cube is here it's great to have you on thanks for joining blockchain innovation is today global this is a revolution way bigger than the Internet itself programmable money programmable contracts that wipes out finance it wipes out legal it wipes out governance in many ways there's no central authority you have access to open source software it's fully connected so now is the time to make it translate we've all heard about the steam digital transformation its businesses that if they don't evolve and adopt blockchain AI all these other things they have a threat of being put out of business it is extremely competitive a new set of stakeholders investors global players governments are it's happening now you have a chance to be a part of an economy without a permission of a centralized organization have to pay 200 people in 40 countries and it's an unholy mess with withholding taxes and concerns around money transfer costs a hassle it's a nightmare like all currency control so you're only allowed to move a certain amount of capital out the country legally so what happens in all your backups our currency and you can effectively invest in assets around the world this is making it much easier to contribute to help people to get healthy and you don't have to go to school there's a very big influx of young and talented minds at that right and this is really changing the revolution landscape you've got the radical Burning Man hippie guy all the way to a three-piece suit yeah and that diversity is very very rich a lot of people are scared I like whoa hold on slow down we're not gonna prove it the other half saying no this is the future so you have two competing forces colliding for some reason crypto really pokes at people's biases you know why does it have any value and I go well why does the United States dollar have any value I mean you've got Full Faith and Credit of the government that's in debt by 20 trillion dollars you know is that a good idea most people that come here sorry with the what the how and people are scared but the young people are like yo this is happening this is not a moment this is a movement is definitely oh say 1996-97 of the internet bubble it's just starting people know there's something really magical they don't quite know what you know America really grew because you're abused to have all the controls and so the capital by sea left Europe and away in America and now it's happening 300 years later as America has all the controls and the capital starting to go away so a new Liberation's happening incredible resources are now being poured in problems that were ignored for many many and what is beautiful is that block Candy's doing it open-source is accelerating the tech these ideas are being freely shared whereas before there's bottlenecks in the collaboration aspect if we're able to write a contract in a thousand people be able to verify that contract and we're able to transfer money from one person to another without the two parties being involved we've got a perfect scenario security and speed and fairness all at the same time you can create these chains of trust and that can happen anywhere in the world you're on a level playing field if you have 4G connectivity now you can compete globally and be a part of the global economy so if you're someone who's in the emerging developing world and you want to begin to build wealth and you'd like to own a piece of first world real estate and today the minimum is about a thousand dollars but by implementing the Plott chain further they won't eventually get down to one dollar you can buy a piece of real estate and enjoy the returns on that I want to solve the wealth gap and I truly believe we can do it when we can allow anyone anywhere to invest in good quality assets a conduit with the current system there's too many friction costs the killer app right is money it's paying people that is the killer app of the block type right now let's say that money is software and it is software so if you buy something with a credit card what do you think's happening it's all software and what has happened is open-source software has always eventually won with respect to close source software so proprietary money is probably back on its heels because open-source money's coming in something like that will give liquidity to a lot of small business owners America is a country of small business owners across the globe it supports small business owners it's an interesting model yeah you don't have to give up any equity you don't have to give up any poor seats yeah right it's much leaner my super if you're an investor you gotta get a pound of flesh somewhere is it's just getting it on the discounted tokens is there a little liquidity going on when you think about you know private sale presale is 99% a token deal right although equities coming in because a lot of more venture capital is coming in and they're demanding a piece of the action from a company and equity perspective its equity might be future revenue sometimes as dividends or the opportunity get dividends so it's a combination of you have a preference you care you know at the other day equity is I was always preferable there is a provision in the 1934 Securities Act called section 12 G it allows us Spacely to go public by telling the SEC we're doing it without having to delay it to wait for their permission after 60 days it's a derivative so we'll continue to clear comments but but the thing is with tokens who knows how long that'll take I mean is the SEC gonna Shepherd something through with crypto 1 or do they gonna make it take 5 years I don't know [Music] all over the island this is the new Oliver field the world is moving too fast today for a big country to keep up it's all gonna happen now in this next century at the city level and so we work a lot with four smaller countries or small countries because I know estonia armenia baja rains got you know dubai envy so i mean every country wants to be the crypto country multiple small countries are going to come into the space which they know now they can get the capital flowing into that company and they're gonna allow their rules to be lacs they're gonna let capital flow through and then us will have to change or maybe UK will have to change orders against us will have to change in the first world a lot of what we're talking about is a nice-to-have it's it's sort of a bit of a game and if i can participate but where I come from an emerging war that's a necessity they are no other solutions so if you live in South Africa or China or India and you want to get your money into a first world country like England Australia America it's very very difficult and virtually no one can do it but it's a major problem because you want wealth preservation you want but Plan B you want your children to be able to go to a first world university etc etc etc Puerto Rico being a free associated States of the United States of America is like the best place to actually test this possibly some push for that for infrastructure for you know internet for all sorts of different things in terms of building the best infrastructure the new newest best-in-class for your business it's four percent corporate taxes and individual it's zero percent now that's what you got to move here you gotta move here okay but you don't have to give you deliver your US citizenship no taxes are great at the same time they fall in love with the islands so it's amazing because to me Puerto Rico is a combination of LA's whether San Francisco's open-mindedness and Barcelona's you know deep European history it's just a really beautiful place and it's US territory so it's a short hop and a jump to the States if you need to most people in America mainland sort of think they're going to a foreign country because it's treated that way by our government how do I come to Puerto Rico do it right not offend the culture in abil them together what's your experience with the play ball stay good friends lost their relocation services for their business and themselves so they write a big check to you guys for the service but it's you guide them through the entire process and there's real energy here because there's a social movement underneath the entire cryptocurrency movement and that's to basically help your fellow man or women all these activity is really going to give a a shot in the arm to the Puerto Rican economy and we're bringing our funds and we're bringing our advisory the radar Thank You exponent there the hurricane was a horrible atrocity that happened and now we have this blank canvas to create a vision for Puerto Rico so what we're doing is we're connecting every single University on the island to work on open source projects to like make solutions for the private sector they know that if they can buy power on a cellphone like they're already doing for other goods and services now we've got a game-changer this is restart week and one of the other things that we've done is help all of the conference's come together collaborate rather than compete so go into the same week and put all of these satellite groups around it and then we blanket it a week around it so that we had one place for people to go and look for all of the events and then also for some for them to understand a movement about the education piece it's very difficult for people that kind of get caught up to speed because there's some technical things that need to understand to really apply this technology into the business world the other day we had an event where we talked 50 people how to create a smart contract from scratch those are 50 people who are not the same anymore ecosystems developing yet entrepreneurs you got projects you got funding coming in but as it's gonna be a fight for the ecosystem because you can't have zillion ecosystems there are definitely some you know the galaxies and you know regulatory aspects that you know put some concerns and a lot of you know people's mind since its inception you've seen people and media and mainstream media in particular target Bitcoin and they're just adopting the government narrative saying oh everyone in this industry is corrupt Oh everyone in this industry is an ICS camera Oh everyone in this industry is a a drug runner and they have all selling drugs on the dark web and and it's like you know what like you can do some research and don't get better than that traditional media they want to take down everybody that they don't consider you know like a birds of the same feather there actually are a lot of scammers and a lot of like dark forces inside of the cryptocurrency movement so that's why I think we welcome kind of more regulatory influence because you know none of us want to see bad actors in the space we've seen folks go out raise you know really big about to capital with no product roadmap no business talking roadmap no real way to get from zero to X what are they trying to shoehorn a regular business onto the blockchain and just assume that by adding crypto at the end of you know toilet paper they're gonna get something I had another founder tell me that you know Mike tokens are worth 100 million humming yep you don't have a user you just have a product you're tokens I've hiked if you ask me it's it's what little I can tell my house is 100 million dollars it's only worth as much as the top buyer how much we really need hardcore reputation systems in our industry and in the for the world I think 2018 is going to be the year of clarity on regulation and I think that's where Puerto Rico comes in and plays a major role just to see the thousands of people who have come here to support these several conferences has been amazing my most surprising thing though is the amount of people that have told me that they bought a one-way ticket and have no intention of going home so to make Puerto Rico your home I think is a really amazing first step when I go to the supermarket and where I go it's full of American and people from outside and when you ask them where you're from and they will tell you from Puerto Rico this is gonna become the epicenter of this multi-billion dollar market we need to have people prepared for this you have to create the transparency the beauty of the transparency is there's actually privacy baked in and that's what I love about blockchain is it has all of the good things all communities need to evolve in my opinion between technology communities open networks of governance where we have peer-to-peer distribution of finance and of resources in a way that allows people to aggregate around the marketplaces that are actually benefitting the way that they believe the world should work we're going to be tools that far surpassed what's currently available in terms of the messages the websites all these things for 20 years the Internet has been free it's a really beautiful thing for consumption and open-source is the absolute right methodology for software when it comes to your own content a reward it makes sense everybody is going to get to play together across every device the developers are going to get rewarded for creating content people are going to be rewarded for creating things inside the games and the players are going to get rewarded for getting to the top levels of all the games and we're going to reward them through our cryptocurrency if we begin to own ourself sovereign identity then when we're owning our data that's the foundation for universal basic income communications completely frictionless payment completely frictionless and governance completely frictionless and we have to put this all together who wins here the average citizen entrepreneur that is leveraged citizen player that wants to start something whether it's a banking a service provider of some sort an entrepreneur or a new financial instrument or firm you all have greenfield opportunity here the first thing I would tell found us is to reach out ok this community is very very supportive like you can reach out to me you can reach out to other guys LinkedIn Facebook or come to these events and say your idea and you need help because you will need help you cannot run this alone ok you are running a company you're running your team have a good team that's the first thing you got to be vigilant and you keeping your money in a hard wallet not keeping your private keys on your computer if you're using a centralized system those centralized systems are really easily exploitable strategic partnerships Advisors founding team and then show the idea to the people explain yourself frankly and honestly and I think the community will reward you to go and find it ring whether you're a fortune 500 company or a startup it's all about building the community and I believe that whether it's utility Target or security or combination of the two it provides an incredible vehicle to ultimately be the catalyst to your community and if you the to community adding value then you're going to build a company event it's always gonna be led by the business model because you need something to act as the power pull to pull the thing along right and you can continuously pump capital into something but if the model is wrong it's just going to drain and it's going to go to inefficient systems and in the end maybe do some help but but a very small percentage of the capacity of what it could do then the advice would be to entrepreneurs don't fret about the infrastructure just nail your business models right and because the switching cost might not be as high as you think that's right we're in the old days when we grew up yeah you made a bad technology decision you're out of business yeah but the first advice that I give my clients is to stomp this is this business that's too much formal in it yeah right if you're missing out so no just because everybody's out there Nico you should be doing an SEO right yeah 46% of I SEOs have already failed already failed start with the business gather this in the counties down right so free cash flow unique value proposition Prada market fit what sits under business think about the token model right the token model has to go in handy now with your business model and revenue model and once you figure out that business and took the models now it's time to think about compliance I'm gonna raise money in the US and abroad I've decided to go to security choking hypothetical instance absolute what do I do is there for you an incentive mechanism or is a fundraising mechanism or both who's gonna be my user who's gonna use this token right there aren't gonna be moms dads hospitals they was my target and then how they're gonna use it and are they gonna hold it I'm gonna sell it are they gonna trade it so all these different things define that oh c'mon once you get your token actually authenticated realized everything's transparent and it gets on that secondary market it's better to use that to invest in anything you need investment get everybody incentivized around your token all your employees all your vendors everybody incentivize around that token it's a thousand percent more powerful than a dollar so the dollar doesn't go up in value in your token your token can go up and down and as soon as you find just one spark it blows up everybody boats rise equal it's pasta Sara Lee the time to crack open the champagne you still have to demonstrate product market fit you have to help build a market in our particular case so there's a lot of hard work launch it's a start line it's just like it's only a step along the whole process you know what made people get it you showed them the money yeah you showed them the money sometimes people don't you can explain these concepts that are world-changing super high level or whatever people were not actually gonna get it until it's useful to them average business people and senior business people who have typically been shut off to the idea of blockchain are now seeing this as very real and here to stay momentum is just beginning it's gonna be amazing what these guys come up with that's one of the things I love about doing this thing right I'm an old guy and I get to hang around these smart young people makes me feel young again yeah but the other thing that we have and I think you should share it as well as we have to offer to these young guys experience thing we just invented a new category in the ico category an advisor token and a you have to have the stomach for it and I think you just have to be as educated and as you can what government entity can resist for the long term something that's actually trying to provide a better and better and better financial infrastructure you should be able to participate in many different nations who have many different economies that are all really cooperating interdependently to create the best possible life for all human good one dollar will not change your life but if you change your habits you'll change your financial destiny and so my philosophy is get it to a dollar so that every single person can participate and once you start to learn good habits around money and wealth the rest it's a formula like it's a flywheel instead the world will become a better place we'll have better companies positive impact is not counter to profit they go hand in hand the Puerto Rico movement it's a movement while Czech entrepreneurs capital investors the pioneers in the blockchain decentralized Internet are all here this is like the Silicon Valley of the crypto right I think they're calling it crypto island yes TV show we should be honest like it's not lost its crypto island exclusive coverage for Puerto Rico's - Cuba I'm John Ferrari getting the signal here out of all the noise in the market this is what we do this is the cube mission great strip we start week Point agenda open content community thanks for watching [Music]

>> Narrator: Live from San Juan, Puerto Rico, it's theCube. Covering Blockchain Unbound, brought you to by Blockchain Industries. (upbeat Latin Music) >> Hello everyone welcome back to our our exclusive coverage, theCube in Puerto Rico for the big story about Blockchain UnBound. That's the event it's a global conference from investors, bitcoin billionaires and millionaires, as well as entrepreneurs coming to Puerto Rico to discuss the future of Blockchain, the future cryptocurrency, the future of decentral application. Partnering with the island of Puerto Rico, our next guest is Damarius Riviera with Puerto Rico Advantage. And the big story is a lot of people are moving here for either tax advantages or entrepreneurial reasons and Damarius and her team at the Puerto Rico Advantage help set that up. Damarius, welcome to theCube. >> Hola, how are you? >> Thanks for coming on. >> Thanks. >> One of the big rush here is like a gold rush for folks coming in, moving to Puerto Rico but it's hard. You guys provide a service to do that for folks. How fast is it, how does it work? How does the service work? Okay, we're Puerto Rico Advantage came together as me, I'm a local from Puerto Rico and my partners are American from Wisconsin. They're both Act 20 and Act 22 themselves. So when they got here to the island, they took like seven months to find out the opportunity analysis and if the tax incentives work for them. So when they met me, I worked previously in the government before so I know how all of this works and I said let's come with one business that will be a one stop for each client. So when they come to us they get their grants, plus the relocation services for their business and themselves. >> Certainly the incentives right now are really wonderful for business and folks who are building companies and creating wealth. The tax advantages are here. There's been a surge of people coming here. What's it like? What's, how many people are coming through? Was it a lot of volume? You guys busy? Give us some insight into how it's working. >> Yes, a lot of people are coming. They're moving real estate pretty much in San Juan area. It's gone, so the other places like Dorado and Rincon are packed. When I go to the supermarket, everywhere I go it's full of American and people from upstate. And when you ask them where you're from and they will tell you from Puerto Rico. They're already calling themselves Puerto Rican. So it's very exciting and a great opportunity for us. >> One of the things I've been impressed with is the acceptance and the blending of the island folks and people coming in. Take me through an example. Let's just say hypothetically, hypothetically, I wanted to move to Puerto Rico, what do I do? I call you guys up and say hey get me a flat, get me a house. I need security I need a car. Do I need a driver's license? Do I need insurance, I mean what has to happen? Take me through and how do I, and what happens for me? Is it turn key, is it easy? What do you guys do? What do I have to do? Take me through a use case. >> Okay, first when the client calls, if it's interested in Act 20 business, they will tell a little bit about their business and then we can say if their business qualified. Then, we will take them to the CBA and work everything about the grant. It usually takes two week depending on all the info the client gives us and the quickly and I will manage everything in the government agencies. For the residential part, we schedule their meetings when they have kids to the great private schools here. We help them with the real estate, driver's license. They do need driver's licenses. I take them to get their voters ID, everything. We have like a draft, a checklist, with everything they need to qualify for residence, a Puerto Rico resident. And we take them, we make the process very easy for them. >> So they write a big check to you guys, for the service, but you guide them through the entire process? >> Yes, we do. >> So, for individuals, you can do it for individuals and businesses and individuals right? >> Yes. >> Take me through the scenarios. >> For individuals it will be the basic Act 22. So, that one is very simple and we just tell them what they need to do to comply with the 183 days they need to reside here in Puerto Rico to get the benefits for the grants tax incentives. >> So, take me through the business aspect. >> Oh, the business aspect is also very easy. As long as your company gives an export service, it qualifies. So, we even do the, if they need to hire staff, manage their business, everything. We help them with everything. >> And you guys see a lot of business coming from, people that were going to go to the Cayman Islands, or somewhere else, are they coming here? >> Yes, everybody likes because they feel Puerto Rico is part of the United States, but then we don't pay federal taxes so they have that great benefit, so they're moving a lot of the companies here. >> So since the Hurricane obviously there's been a lot of effort in the U.S. and focusing attention on helping Puerto Rico, and there's been stories good and bad, but as the new Blockchain and the Bitcoin cryptocurrency newly minted millionaires and billionaires come in, how has the culture reacted to that? They seem to be open arms. Has it been well received? What's some of the feedback that's been happening here in Puero Rico with the new in migration of folks? >> Yes, it's very well received and it's amazing because this group of the Blockchain just came after Hurricane Maria. So people were amazed like, wow, they're still considering moving here and help the island, even after this big natural disaster. So, it gives hope to a lot of people here and it's helping the island to do a lot of more progress. >> And what's great is the island is first of all beautiful but, with the infrastructure, opportunity to reboot it and reset new infrastructure, all the tech geeks, this is Blockchain, they're like tech nerds. They love the high-speed internet, they want to have the good infrastructure and the schools have now connected Blockchain. I talked to an entrepreneur here two days ago where he's linking all the schools, educational institutions and colleges with Blockchain to create a community. So there's kind of a nerd nation emerging here in Puerto Rico, isn't there? >> Yes, yes, it's amazing that we've been considered for all of that. >> Well thank you for coming on and explaining The Puerto Rican Advantage. Also, her partners are Jennifer Brockman and Angela Brookman. You guys are doing a great service. Thank you for what you do. I think a lot of people that I've talked to really appreciated it. For folks who want to come to Puerto Rico and help out and contribute but also get some real advantages for the business and as an individual. The tax breaks and the benefits are significant here and it's part of the U.S. So, great stuff. Thank you so much. >> Yes, thank you a lot. >> More live coverage here in Puerto Rico. I'm John Furrier, host of theCube. We're back after this short break. (electronic music)

(lively music) >> Narrator: Live from San Juan, Puerto Rico. It's The Cube! Covering Blockchain Unbound. Brought to you by Blockchain Industries. (lively island music) >> Hey, hello everyone. I'm John Furrier. We are reporting on the ground here in Puerto Rico for Blockchain Unbound, a global conference of leaders from around the world who are coming into Puerto Rico with the local entrepreneurs, with the local ecosystem, to talk about the future of the digital nations in the world, digital transformation, also cryptocurrency, Blockchain...all the people are here, The Cube is here, as part of our 2018 kickoff of all the crypto Blockchain shows. My next guest here on The Cube is Gustavo Diaz Skoff, who is the founder and president of the Young Entrepreneurs in Puerto Rico's society, also heavily involved in the ecosystem. Thanks for speaking with me. >> Thank you. >> John: So, what's going on here in Puerto Rico? Also, we just talked with Michael Angelo, who is the co-founder of Edublock, but we're talking about a whole transformation going on in Puerto Rico. What's the young culture like? What's the old guard say? I mean, are people... What's going on? What's the mindset? What's going on in Puerto Rico? We know the hurricane that hit, but, again, looking past that, what's the cultural vibe right now in Puerto Rico? I think the cultural vibe right now is that there's a little bit of a hesitation, but, at the same time, there's a lot of excitement. Events that, like, for example, the one that were hosted yesterday, Law 23, that brought the local and the vicinity communities together to actually clear up and like lowered those stations and actually bonded and brought more energy into the whole push. I think that is the overarching vibe here in the island, it's just like awesome. There's...something's happening. We don't know quite yet what it is, but there is a historical narrative of the island, and there is definitely a very bullish view of the island. So what's really going on here is that the people are excited, but you got the whole world descending upon Puerto Rico. We grabbed a lot last night with the party. >> Yeah. >> We put out a nice sizzle reel this morning, but the vibe was awesome. People were dancing, a lot of people smiling. >> You were there? >> We were there! We just put some up on our telegram channel. >> I was the organizer of it. >> Congratulations, really awesome. >> Thank you. >> John: Outside, nice weather, things were great, but it really is about the cross-pollination. It's about the culture of Puerto Rico, maintaining the culture in Puerto Rico, seems to be the top story that we hear from folks here. Yes, we like to bring in the industry, but don't tell us what to do. We're Puerto Rico (laughing) you know, don't stomp on our land! I'm not being...but I mean there's kind of a vibe like 'look it, Puerto Rico's proud.' But that's got to translate into execution... what's the young guns doing? >> So, this is the reality in terms of what the young guns are doing, and, sadly, sometimes they're a very sad story, and the reality is like when you look at the world economic forums competitive reports, we have the sixth-largest conglomeration of trained scientists and engineers in the world. Holy shit! That's insane. But, at the same time, we have 90 percent of them being unemployed or underemployed, because we don't have like technology companies that are actually requesting and demanding that type of knowledge. And so, that's where we're actually failing in terms of execution, because we're going to end up working for a bank or for a government agency, and so there's not that many opportunities to actually go and build that. And now, just looking at the whole shift and how the world has basically come into our shores, it's like, wow. There is an opportunity to actually use this human capital and work together and just start developing and challenging ourselves locally to keep building, either as an entrepreneur or as an intrapreneur. >> John: You know, Brock Pierce, I thought, said it great today on the keynote he gave here at the Blockchain Unbound Conference, "It's a global 'we' going on; it's a 'we,' not a 'me.'" >> And I think, you know, someone who's seen many waves in my life, this is the biggest wave ever, because it's creating essentially a flat world, it's global, so it's not like the old guard, gatekeeper, migration paths up, so the migration for up the ladder, if you will, in society for a young individual was kind of structured in the past. >> Now the ladder has fallen. It's flat. (chuckling) >> Peter Thiel, who at one point was looking at paying people not to go to school, literally the world is your oyster with this new technology, because now it's a global fabric. There's no central authority. You have access to open source software. It's fully connected. So now's the time to make it translate. What do you hope for for the community in Puerto Rico to make that connection in the actual property flow, the relationships. What are you guys looking for to have happen? >> Yeah. So the answer is going to be a little bit historical, and that goes back to the question I asked off of the camera, was like, "Do you know where the first special economic zone was built, the first SEZ was built?" It was here in Puerto Rico. And for those that don't know, that was the economic model that we used as a human race in 130 nations in 4300 zones around the world to transition our economy from agriculture to manufacturing. And I believe that, right now, we're building that fabric. We're starting to reconstruct the second generation of an SEZ, and, whatever is happening here, to either build better cities, where people are able to access their food, are able to access capital, are able to access opportunities in a way that it's de-risked. I believe it's being built right now. And I think that is where we're heading. Because we already did it 71 years ago, and this is just the perfect concoction to re-do it. >> John: You know, I talk with a lot of leaders. One of them, in particular, Teresa Carlson, runs Amazon Web Services' global public sector, which is government, schools, and whatever. We're seeing for the first time, and this is what, I think, Amazon sees, and they're the leader in cloud computing, which is phenomenal, which, again, levels a lot of gatekeepers, if you think about it that way. She talks about digital nations, that we are now at the front end of the beginning of a wave where sovereignty, at a national level, with this no-border, kind of digital culture, is a huge opportunity. >> Yeah. >> How are you guys recruiting? How are you spreading the love? How are you spreading the word? Because it's not just developers, it's about the communities. >> Well, first of all, I think it's important to actually say that it's better, I think, Puerto Rico being a free associated states of the United States of America, it's like the best place to actually test this philosophy and push for that. I think that the way that we're actually starting to recruit that is by spreading out into the world and saying, "Hey, this is happening, come back." As I was mentioning, in May, we're going to Washington DC to present over 23 organizations that are working on basically all that's happening, and be able to bring more consciousness, bring more tools into the island and be able to build, essentially, the future of it. >> Tell me about the things that you're working on right now. You mentioned before we came on camera some of the things you were doing in Washington DC. What are some of the things you're hoping to accomplish over the next year in your role, inside the community here in Puerto Rico? >> I hope to, with Edublock, be able to help more students get into this space, be able to leverage better connections and relationships with these corporations that are in need now of Blockchain developers, and be able to have that circle of flow of the people here in the island and the people internationally that are looking for talent. That's my main goal. And if I could put a number of it, it would be amazing to have 500 students recruited, or with an internship, within corporations by the next 365 days. >> As you guys at Edublock are creating a separate event forum for what's happening at Blockchain Unbound to the education community, because it's pretty pricey to come to this conference, it's an investor's conference, it's an industry conference. You're seeing a world coming together, a lot of people coming in from the crypto blockchain community. What are people talking about in Puerto Rico about this migration and this intersection of the two worlds? Is it good, bad, confusing? Are people trying to figure it out? What's the vibe? >> They need more information. They need more data. (laughing) We only have a few articles, and that's it. >> John: Yeah. >> My father, for example... >> John: Articles from centralized news organizations, not trusted news organizations. >> Yes, yes. >> What does the decentralized data say? >> The decentralized data say is that this is a good technology, and we need to be careful, like we need to understand it correctly. And we need to raise awareness around the community, because it can either go really, really, really, really, really well, or we can repeat the past couple of years in the island. >> It could fail miserably or be a home run. >> Great stuff. We certainly want to expose the information and share what the stories of the key things that we're...you're doing a great job. You guys are doing great work. We support you from Silicon Valley with The Cube. >> Our job is open, free content, which we're doing here in Puerto Rico. We're with Gustavo Diaz Skoff, who is the founder and president of the Young Entrepreneur's Club here, Entrepreneurial Society, in Puerto Rico. We're on the ground, getting all the top stories and sharing the data with you. I'm John Furrier. Thanks for watching. (digital music)

>>Welcome to the cubes coverage of HP discover 2021. I'm your host lisa martin. I've got a couple of guests with me here from emphasis. Alumni Yuma lacks empathy. Is back. Senior vice president and regional head of EMEA emphasis Yuma. It's great to see you welcome back to the program. >>Yeah. Hi Liza. It's great to be back for discover 2021. It's been a great opportunity to meet with a lot of our stakeholders and hp. >>Excellent. We're gonna dig into that. And so do Cutie is here as well. The CTO Cloud Advisory, VP hybrid cloud engineering platforms and automation at emphasis Sergey Welcome to the program. >>Thank you lisa. It's a pleasure to be in the program is my first time but I really enjoy it. Well >>Welcome. Welcome. So the next 15 minutes or so we're gonna unpack a survey that was just done as we know cloud has catalyzed a lot in the last year. One of those being cloud adoption. Talk to us about some of the things that you've seen as more and more enterprises are moving workloads to cloud. How is a hybrid cloud enabling businesses to grow, enabling them to actually have a competitive edge? >>Uh lisa if you uh if you look at the pre covid scenario and what there are many, many clients which actually made a significant move into cloud, but there were many few, a few of the companies who didn't really take a mature uh cloud adoption. But those companies which actually did the adoption, we see that have taken a big step with the help of the when the covid hit them because they were able to be very resilient, but at the same time they were able to the cloud adoption really help them to improve their business profits. Uh When we did this cloud reader survey across all the geography is we didn't get across the U. S. The latin, the issue pacific the email markets. And when we looked at uh what our clients and enterprises were able to recover and get all of this whole cloud adoption. We've got a number of 414 billions of profits that the enterprises can make by using this cloud adoption. And that's what we saw in this survey that we did with our clients. >>Yeah, that's huge. Enterprises the survey found can add up to you said 414 billion and that new profits annually through effective cloud adoption and sticking with you for a second. What does emphasis described as effective cloud adoption? >>When we look at cloud adoption, we have enterprises who started shifting workloads which are very comfortable for them. And then uh then they started to take the more mature understanding of moving workloads which were very critical to the business. So when we look at effective, it is a combination of both the ones that were very easy to go to the cloud, the ones that made business is able to bring in new applications and new, go to markets uh, to their segments to their clients. But then it is also about taking some of those legacy world clothes and making a choice the right choice to take it by transforming those applications and environments uh, into the cloud direction. And that's what we call as effective. It's just not the easy ones, but also those complex and legacy rebuild ones that that effectively goes on to transform itself into a new way for the for their clients and for the experience of the users. >>It's a big changes coming, big opportunities. We see, we've talked about this for many times more and more companies moving to multi cloud arrangements for a variety of reasons. What have been some of the things that emphasis has experienced and what are some of your viewpoints on a multi cloud? >>Thank you, lisa. So, um, if you look around right, you know, hybrid cloud has been the new normal. Right? And um and if you look at it, private cloud is becoming an essential component for hosting applications. You know, uh you know, when you look at it, it's more about applications which have low latency requirements, you know, it has regulatory requirements or it has a static demand of infrastructure. Now, what emphasis has done in this space is is that, you know, we have um we have developed a framework which we call it as a right loud solution framework and this is focused on implementing a hybrid multi cloud leveraging an in house developed tools and frameworks as well as platforms along with our strategic Puerto rico system, that is our biggest contribution onto the hybrid multi cloud world. Now, the foundation of our framework is emphasis Polly cloud platform. It's a unified multi cloud management platform. It can provision, it can orchestrate, it can also manage the cloud deployment across multiple of the environment. It can be a private, it can be public or it can be on the edge. Now, apart from all of these things, it also offers features and functionality is very similar to the hyper scholars and either it can be in terms of the user experience or it can be in a commercial model or a technology stack or it can be reports or it can be persona based user experience and integration with multiple systems. It brings all of these functionalities seamlessly across the multiple hybrid ecosystem. That's the biggest contribution from emphasis in this space. >>Got it. Okay. As we see the just clear growth of multi cloud in every industry. Talk to us about what the cloud radar survey uncovered with respective you mentioned that big number, the correlation between cloud transformation and profitable growth for enterprises across any industry. >>So I did mention about it uh lisa in in the previous question as well. When we looked at when we look at enterprises trying to take the cloud adoption, the big benefits for the enterprises do happen when they crossed that uh layer of moving a significant part of their existing legacy in a very transformed new world. And that brings in the new way of working for their customers for their end users and internally as well for their various stakeholders. And that I think is creating a cost structure for them, which is very, very optimal from where they were. But at the same time, it is enabling their ecosystem of of users and customers to come and operate in a very seamless fashion. And that is the biggest advantage of uh boosting profits for them at the same time, cutting costs within the, within the internal stakeholders. So at one stage you're optimizing your cost at another stage, you're bringing in the easiness for your clients to operate on, which is actually creating that enlarged profit boost. >>I'm sticking with you for a second. If we unpack that growth, that business profit growth opportunity that you the survey uncovered, Are we talking about things like faster time to market, increasing scale? What are some of the things underneath that hood? >>So, if you if you look at uh traditionally cloud was considered uh the enabler for quick, faster time to market. But now cloud has become the central theme for resilience. If you look at the covid pandemic, uh, those, those enterprises which were already cloud enabled, we're able to resiliently and sustain their business and grow their businesses. So as economy started opening up, if I can talk about an automotive client who is today enriching businesses out of china because they have the first economy that has opened up after the pandemic. So you see a lot of enablement for those enterprises which have already taken the cloud journey. And if you look at Today, enterprises are in somewhere around 17-18% of of cloud adopt mint and if they can take that to the 40%, that's when they will see that kind of boosted profits. And we can clearly see about $400 plus billion dollars of profits that enterprises can make. >>All right, so let's talk to you for a second. If we look at some of the survey results, the acceleration that is expected to be seen by in the next year of enterprises moving so many more workloads to cloud. You talked about hybrid cloud. Talk to me about how the experience of working with HP in creating joint solution suites is going to help the customers facilitate and drive that transformation. >>Thank you lisa. So if you look at H P E, H P E comes with a fine set of technology and commercial constructs, you know, that complements our right cloud framework and they offer the solutions. The whole sort of a lot of solutions offer private cloud as a service which is a major component of our right club framework. Either it is a continuous service with HP is is immoral data platform on HP hardware or video as a service based on a compose Herbal and Converse infrastructure or H. P. S cloud built on HPC cloud, build on Cray systems and all of them commercially supported with an H. P. S. Green leg offering makes it very attractive for our customers. Now, these integrations have helped us in providing a very similar metering and billing along with the chargeback solutions, very much in line with what is being provided by Hyper scholars. Apart from this, we also work very closely with H. P. E to create a very compelling sourcing strategy for driving hybrid cloud driven digital transformation while taking cost out and protecting the existing investments through various financial models for our customers, helping them in terms of transforming their digital estate in the, in the new cloud world. >>And um, I want to get your perspective as well. The HP emphasis partnership talk to me about that being a win win for your clients in every industry. >>So actually uh Visa is a great question and this probably is my third uh cube interview and I've told this previously as well in my previous interviews as well, the relationship between emphasis and hedge P is very very strategy and it's it's very very top down driven. And today we've seen very high transformative opportunities that two organizations have come together and we won't call it win win, but we call it a win win win, which is essentially win for HPV win for emphasis, but even for the clients as well. So if you look at some of the engagements that we have jointly done, everything has been transformative. I can talk about uh energy client where we've done a huge which will be D I uh engagement with them, where we have been able to take them very uh seamlessly when the covid pandemic hit them so that there are significant part of their right to users but be able to operate from their residences. I can talk about a great story about how we had enabled Green Lake for a wind energy company. Uh and how that Green Lake capability help the customer to migrate the application seamlessly uh to a hybrid cloud. And there are so many examples of similar scale and size when we look at clients in the manufacturing space and the automobile sector, where we've really done work very closely with HP across all regions and all geography is uh to make this what I would call a win win win partnership. >>I like that when when when who wouldn't want that. One more question for you talk to me about the next, as we talked about some of those survey results and I think folks can find that survey the cloud radar survey on the emphasis dot com website. I found it on the homepage there. But looking at how much Transformation is expected in the next 12 months or so, what are some of the things that we can expect from emphasis on H. P. E. to help drive and catalyze that growth that you expect to see in the next 12 months? >>Yeah. And I was talking to you before this interview and you said that yes, we gotta look at this. And I was feeling very happy that you have the opportunity to look at the side. And you said that look there's an opportunity to also make to continuously provide feedback. And we're very happy for clients to come in and look at it and do provide us the feedback. This is a constant learning for us. We have a big learning company Uh and when it comes to uh the next 12 months of agenda, I think the pipeline is very robust for both us and the hp. In terms of the way we want to take proactive transformational opportunities to the to our clients create a value differentiation on the hybrid cloud for them. And uh clearly uh this this survey clearly came back to reflect back to us that our strategy that we've done together as partners is the right strategy because there is a significant headroom for growth uh in the cloud space uh for both emphasis and H. B. >>Excellent. Well gentlemen, thank you for joining me today, talking to me about what emphasis and HP are doing together, unpacking some of the significant insights that the cloud radar survey has uncovered. We appreciate your time. >>Thank you lisa. Thank you. Thank you for giving us this opportunity. >>Absolutely. For election Soju. I'm lisa martin. You're watching the cubes coverage of HP discover 2021. Yeah, yeah.

>> From around the globe, It's theCUBE. With digital coverage of IBM Think 2021, brought to you by IBM. >> Hi, welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of IBM Think 2021 virtual. I'm John Furrier host of the CUBE. We got a great guest here. Brian Bouchard is the co-founder president and CEO of Alacrinet. Brian great to see you remoting in all the way from Puerto Rico to Palo Alto. >> That's right. >> Great to see you. >> Thanks for First of all, thanks John, for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity. >> Yeah, great to see you. Thanks for coming on. First of all, before we get into what you guys do and and how this all ties in to Think. What do you guys do at Alacrinet? Why the name? A it's good you're at the top of the list and alphabetically, but tell us the, the, the the secret behind the name and what you guys do. >> So, first of all Alacrinet is based on the root word alacrity which means a prompt and willing, a prompt a joyous prompt to, excuse me, to achieve a common goal. So we ultimately are a network of individuals with the traits of alacrity. So Alacrinet. So that's our name. >> Great. So what's your relationship with IBM and how you guys have been able to leverage the partnership program in the marketplace? Take us through the relationship. >> So, well, first of all Alacrinet is a platinum IBM business partner and it was awarded recently the 2020 IBM North American partner of the year award. And we were selected amongst 1600 other business partners across North America. We've been actually a consulting, an IT consulting company for almost 20 years now. And we were founded in 2002 in Palo Alto and we have focused specifically on cyber security since 2013. And then as part, go ahead. >> What are some of the things that you guys are working on? Because obviously, you know, the business is hot right now. Everyone's kind of looking at COVID saying we're going to double down on the most critical projects and no time for leisurely activities when it comes to IT. And cloud scale projects, you know mission critical stuff's happening what are you guys working on? >> So we're, we're focused on cybersecurity, our security services really compliment IBM's suite of security solutions and cover the full spectrum from our research and penetration testing, which helps identify vulnerabilities before a breach occurs. And we also have managed security services which helps prevent, detect and remediate attacks in real time. And then finally, we also have a security staffing division and a software resell division, which kind of rounds out the full amount of offerings that we have to provide protection for our clients. >> What are some of the biggest challenges you guys have as a business, and how's IBM helping you address those? >> Well, as you know, John, we all know the importance of cybersecurity in today's world, right? So it's increasing in both demand and importance and it's not expected to wane anytime soon. Cyber attacks are on the rise and there's no there's no expected end in sight to this. And in fact, just this week on 60 minutes, Jay Powell, the chairman of the federal reserve board he noted that cyber attacks were the number one threat to the stability of the US economy. Also this week, a public school in Buffalo New York was hacked with ransomware and the school you know, this, the school district is just contemplating you know, paying the ransom to the hackers. So there's literally thousands of these attacks happening every day, whether it's in local school district or a state government, or an enterprise even if you don't hear about them, they're happening In adding to the complexity that the cyber attackers pose is the complexity of the actual cybersecurity tools themselves. There isn't a single solution provider or a single technology, that can ensure a company's security. Our customers need to work with many different companies and disconnected tools and processes to build an individual strategy that can adequately protect their organizations. >> You know, I love this conversation whenever I talk to practitioners on cybersecurity, you know that first of all, they're super smart, usually cyber punks and they also have some kinds of eclectic backgrounds, but more importantly is that there's different approaches in terms of what you hear. Do you, do you put more if you add more firefighters, so to speak to put out the fires and solve the problems? Or do you spend your time preventing the fires from happening in the first place? You know, and you know, the buildings are burning down don't make fire fire, don't make wood make fire resistance, you know, more of a priority. So there's less fires needing firefighters So it's that balance. You throw more firefighters at the problem or do you make the supply or the material the business fireproof, what's your take on that? >> Yeah, well, it kind of works both ways. I mean, we've seen customers want it. They really want choice. They want to, in some cases they want to be the firefighter. And in some cases they want the firefighter to come in and solve their problems. So, the common problem set that we're seeing with our that our customers encounter is that they struggle one, with too many disparate tools. And then they also have too much data being collected by all these disparate tools. And then they have a lack of talent in their environment to manage their environments. So what we've done at Alacrinet is we've taken our cybersecurity practice and we've really specifically tailored our offerings to address these core challenges. So first, to address the too many disparate tools problem, we've been recommending that our clients look at security platforms like the IBM Cloud Pak for security the IBM Cloud Pak for security is built on a security platform that allows interoperability across various security tools using open standards. So our customers have been responding extremely positively to this approach and look at it as a way to future-proof their investments and begin taking advantage of interoperability with, and, tools integration. >> How about where you see your business going with this because, you know, there's not a shortage of need or demand How are you guys flexing with the market? What's the strategy? Are you going to use technology enablement? You're going to more human driven. Brian, how do you see your business unfolding? >> Well, actually really good. We're doing very well. I mean, obviously we made the, the top the business partner for IBM in 2020. They have some significant growth and a lot of interest. I think we really attack the market in a, in a with a good strategy which was to help defragment the market if you will. There's a lot of point solutions and a lot of point vendors that various, you know, they they spent specialized in one piece of the whole problem. And what we've decided to do is find them the highest priority list, every CSO and CIO has a tick list. So that how that, you know, first thing we need we need a SIM, we need an EDR, we need a managed service. We need, what's the third solution that we're doing? So we, we need some new talent in-house. So we actually have added that as well. So we added a security staffing division to help that piece of it as well. So to give you an idea of the cybersecurity market size it was valued at 150 billion in 2019 and that is expected to grow to 300 billion by 2027. And Alacrinet is well-positioned to consolidate the many fragmented aspects of the security marketplace and offer our customers more integrated and easier to manage solutions. And we will continue to help our customers select the best suite of solutions to address all types of cybersecurity, cybersecurity threats. >> You know, it's it's such a really important point you're making because you know, the tools just have piled up in the tool shed. I call it like that. It's like, it's like you don't even know what's in there anymore. And then you've got to support them. Then the world's changed. You get cloud native, the service areas increasing and then the CSOs are also challenged. Do I, how many CLAWs do I build on? Do I optimize my development teams for AWS or Azure? I mean, now that's kind of a factor. So, you have all this tooling going on they're building their own stuff they're building their own core competency. And yet the CSO still needs to be like maintaining kind of like a relevance list. That's almost like a a stock market for the for the products. You're providing that it sounds like you're providing that kind of service as well, right? >> Yeah, well, we, we distill all of the products that are out there. There's thousands of cybersecurity products out there in the marketplace and we kind of do all that distillation for the customer. We find using, you know, using a combination of things. We use Forrester and Gartner and all the market analysts to shortlist our proposed solutions that we offer customers. But then we also use our experience. And so since 2013, we've been deploying these solutions across organizations and corporations across America and we've, we've gained a large body of experience and we can take that experience and knowledge to our customers and help them, you know, make make some good decisions. So they don't have to, you know, make them go through the pitfalls that many companies do when selecting these types of solutions. >> Well congratulations, you've got a great business and you know, that's just a basic search making things easier for the CSO, more so they can be safe and secure in their environment. It's funny, you know, cyber warfare, you know the private companies have to fight their own battles got to build their own armies. Certainly the government's not helping them. And then they're confused even with how to handle all this stuff. So they need, they need your service. I'm just curious as this continues to unfold and you start to see much more of a holistic view, what's the IBM angle in here? How, why are you such a big partner of theirs? Is it because their customers are working with you they're bringing you into business? Is it because you have an affinity towards some of their products? What's the connection with IBM? >> All of the above. (chuckles) So I think it probably started with our affinity to IBM QRadar product. And we have, we have a lot of expertise in that and that solution. So that's, that's where it started. And then I think IBM's leadership in this space has been remarkable, really. So like what's happening now with the IBM Cloud Pak for security you know, building up a security platform to allow all these point solutions to work together. That's the roadmap we want to put our customers on because we believe that's the that's the future for this, this, this marketplace. >> Yeah. And the vision of hybrid cloud having that underpinning be with Red Hat it's a Linux kernel, model of all things >> Yeah. Super NetEase. >> Locked in >> It's portable, multiple, you can run it on Azure. IBM Cloud, AWS. It's portable. I mean, yeah, all this openness, as you probably know cyber security is really a laggard in the security in the information technology space as far as adopting open standards. And IBM is I think leading that charge and you'll be able to have a force multiplier with the open standards in this space. >> Open innovation with open source is incredible. I mean, if you, if, if if open source can embrace a common platform and build that kind of control plane and openness to allow thriving companies to just build out then you have an entire hybrid distributed architecture. >> Yeah. Well, I think companies want to use the best in breed. So when we, when we show these solutions to customers they want the best in breed. They always say, I don't, when it comes to security they don't want second best. They want the best it's out there because they're securing their crown jewels. So that makes sense. So the problem with, you know having all these different disparate solutions that are all top in their category none of them talk to each other. So we need to address that problem because without that being solved, this is just going to be more it's going to compound the complexity of the problems we solve day to day. >> Awesome. Congratulations, Brian, great story. You know entrepreneur built a great business over the years. I think the product's amazing. I think that's exactly what the market needs and just shows you what the ecosystem is all about. This is the power of the ecosystem. You know, a thousand flowers are blooming. You got a great product. IBM is helping as well. Good partnership, network effects built in and and still a lot more to do. Congratulations. >> Absolutely. >> Okay. >> Thank you very much >> Brian Bouchard >> Made my impression. I appreciate that >> Thanks for coming on theCUBE Appreciate it. I'm John Furrier with IBM thinks 2021 virtual coverage. Thanks for watching. (outro music plays)

>>From around the globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of IBM think 2021 brought to you >>by IBM. Welcome back to the cubes coverage of IBM Think 2021 virtual. I'm john ferrier host of the Q. We've got a great guest here brian Bouchard, co founder president and ceo of Allah credit brian, great to see you um promoting it all the way from Puerto rico to Palo Alto. >>Great to >>see. First of all. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity. >>Yeah great, Great to see you. Thanks for coming on. Um first of all, before we get into what you guys do and how this all ties in to think what do you guys do? It Alex Burnett, Why the name uh is good, you're at the top of the list and alphabetically, but tell us the secret behind the name and what you guys do. >>So first of all, a crochet is based on the root word alacrity, which means a prompt and will prompt a joyous prompt itude excuse me to achieve a common goal. So we ultimately our network of >>individuals with >>the traits of alacrity. So eloquent. So that's our name. >>Great. So what's your relation with IBM and how you guys been able to leverage the partnership program in the marketplace take us through the relationship >>so Well, first of all, L. A. Quartet is a platinum IBM business partner and was awarded recently the 2020 IBM north american Partner of the Year award. And we were selected among 1600 other business partners across North America. We've been actually a consulting an IT. consulting company for almost 20 years now and we were founded in 2002 in Palo Alto. And we have focused specifically on cybersecurity since 2013. What is >>Right, what are some of the things you guys are working on? Because obviously, you know, the business is hot right now, everyone's kind of looking at Covid saying we're gonna double down on the most critical projects and no time for leisurely activities when it comes to I T and cloud scale projects, you know, mission critical stuff is happening. What are you guys working on? >>So we're focused on cybersecurity. Our our security services really complement IBM suite of security solutions and cover the full spectrum from our research and penetration testing, which helps identify vulnerabilities before it reach occurs. And we also have managed security services which helps prevent detect and remediate attacks in real time. >>And then finally, we also have a security staffing division and a software resale division which kind of rounds out the full amount of offerings that we have to provide protection for our clients. >>What are some of the biggest challenges you guys have as a business and house IBM helping you address those? >>Well, as you know, john, we all know that the importance of cyber security in today's world, so it's increasing in both demand and importance and it's not expected to wait any time soon. Cyber attacks are on the rise and there's >>no >>Uh there's no expected end in sight to this and in fact just this week on 60 minutes, uh, the Jay Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, he noted that cyber attacks were the number one threat to the stability of the US. economy. >>Also this week, >>a public school in Buffalo new york was hacked with ransomware >>and the school, this uh, >>the school district is just contemplating you're paying the ransom to the hackers. So there's literally thousands of these attacks happening every day, whether it's in a local school district or state government or an enterprise, even if you don't hear about them, they're happening. And adding to the complexity that the cyber Attackers pose is the complexity of the actual cybersecurity tools themselves. There isn't a single solution provider or single technology that could ensure a company security. Our customers need to work with many different companies and disconnected tools and processes to build an individual strategy that can adequately protect their organizations. >>You know, I love this conversation whenever I talked to practitioners, uh, cybersecurity, you know, first of all, they're super smart, usually cyber punks, and they also have some kind of eclectic background, but more importantly, is that there's different approaches in terms of what you hear. Do you do you put more if you add more firefighters so to speak, to put out the fires and solve the problems? Or do you spend your time preventing the fires from happening in the first place? You know, and you know, the buildings are burning down, Don't make a fire fire uh don't make would make fire resistance, you know, more of a priority. So there's less fires, not firefighters. So it's that balance. You throw more firefighters at the problem or do you make the supply or the material, the business fireproof? What's your take on that? >>Well, it kind of works >>both ways. I mean, we've seen customers want to, they really want choice. They >>wanna, in some >>cases they want to be the firefighter and in some cases they want the firefighter to come in and solve their problems. So >>the common problem set that we're seeing with our our customers encounter is that they struggle one with too many disparate tools and then they also have too much data being collected by all these disparate tools and then they have a lack of talent in their environment to manage their environment. So what we've done at Lacqua net is we've taken our cybersecurity practice and we've really uh specifically tailored our offerings to address these court challenges. So first to address the too many disparate tools problem, uh We've been recommending that our clients look at security platforms like the IBM cloud pack for security. The IBM cloud fax for security is built on a security platform that allows interoperability across various security tools using open standards. So our customers have been responding extremely positively to this approach and look at it as a way to future proof their investments >>and begin taking advantage of >>interoperability with >>hand tools integration. >>Talk about what you see your business going with with this because you know there's not a shortage of of need um demand. Um How are you guys flexing with the market? Uh What's the strategy are you going to use technology enablement? You're gonna more human driven brian how do you see your business of unfolding >>Well? Actually really good. We're doing very well. I mean obviously we've made the top business partner for IBM in 2020. Um we have some significant growth and a lot of interest I think we really attacked the market in a good strategy which was to help defragment the market if you will. There's a lot of point solutions and a lot of point vendors that you know they they spent uh specialize in one piece of the whole problem and what we've decided to do is find them the highest party list. Every see so and see IO has a tick list. So >>they have that >>you know uh first thing we need we need a sim we need a E. D. >>Are we need a >>managed service? We need um what's the third solution that we're doing? So we need some new talent in house. So we actually have the added that as well. So we added a security staffing uh division to help that piece of it as well. So to give you an idea of the cybersecurity market size, It was valued at 150 billion in 2019. And that is expected to grow to 300 billion by 2027. >>And Akron is well positioned to consolidate the many fragmented aspects of the security marketplace and offer our customers more integrated and easier to manage solutions. And we will continue to help our customers select the best suite of solutions to address all types of cyber security, cyber security threats. >>You know, it's such a really important point you're making because, you know, the tools just piled up in the tool shed, I call it like that, It's like, it's like you don't even know what's in there anymore and then you've got to support them, then the world's changed, get cloud native, the service area is increasing and then the CSOs are also challenged. Do I have any clouds? Do I build on? Do I optimize my development teams for AWS or Azure? Now, that's kind of a factor. So you have all this tooling going on? They're building their own stuff, they're building their own core competency. And yet the sea so still needs to be like maintaining kind of like a relevance list. That's almost like a stock market for the, for the products you're providing, that it sounds like you're providing that kind of service. >>Uh, yeah, as well. Right? We distill all of the products that are out there, there's thousands of cybersecurity products out there in the marketplace and we kind of do all that distillation for the customer we find using, you know, using a combination of things we use uh Forrester and Gartner and all the market analysts to shortlist are, are solutions that we offer customers. But then we also use our experience. And so through since 2013, we've been deploying these solutions across organizations and corporations across America and we've gained a large body of experience and we can take that experience and knowledge to our customers and help them make some good decisions. So they don't have to make them go through the pitfalls that many companies do when selecting these types of solutions. >>Well, congratulations, got a great business and uh you know, that's just a basic, starts making things easier for the sea. So more so they can be safe and secure in their environment. It's funny, you know, cyber warfare, you know the private company have to fight their own battles, going to build their own armies. Certainly the government's not helping them and they're confused even know how to handle all this stuff. So they didn't they need your service. I'm just curious as this continues to unfold and you start to see much more of a holistic view. What's the IBM angle in here? Why are you such a big partner of theirs? Is it because their customers are working with you? They're bringing you into business? Is it because you have an affinity towards some of their products? What's the connection with IBM, >>all of the above? So >>I think it probably started with our affinity to IBM P radar products and we have a we have a lot of expertise in that in that solution. Um, so >>that's that's where it >>started. And then I think I B. M. S leadership in this space has been, Yeah, >>remarkable. Really. So like what's happening now with the IBM compaq for security, building a security platform to allow all these points solutions to work together. Uh that's the road map we want to put our customers on because we believe that's the that's the future for this, this uh, this marketplace >>and the vision of hybrid cloud having that underpinning be with red hat, it's a Lennox Colonel model of >>all things you can you can run it on. Sure. I've been plowed uh aws it's portable. Yeah. All this openness, as you probably know, uh, cybersecurity is really a laggard in the security and the information technology space as far as adopting open standards and IBM is I think leading that charge and you'll be able to have a force multiplier >>uh >>with open standards in the space. >>Open innovation with open source is incredible. I mean if you if if open source can embrace a common platform and build that kind of control, playing and openness to allow thriving companies to just build out, then you have an entire hybrid distributed >>architecture. Yeah, well, I think companies want to use the best in breed. So when we, when we show these solutions to customers, they want the best in breed, they always say, I don't, when it comes to security, they don't want second best. They want the best that's out there because they're securing their crown jewels. So that makes sense. Um, so the problem is having all these different disparate solutions that are all top in their category, none of them talk to each other so we need to address that problem because without that being solved this is just going to be a more, it's going to compound the complexity of the problems we solve day to day, >>awesome, congratulations brian, great story. Um you know entrepreneur built a great business over the years um I think the products amazing, I think that's exactly what the market needs and it just shows you what the ecosystems all about. This is the power of the ecosystem. You know 1000 flowers are blooming, you got a great product. IBM is helping as well. Good partnership network effect builds in and and still a lot more to do. Congratulations. >>Absolutely. Okay thank you very much >>brian thanks >>for coming on the q appreciate it. I'm Sean Fourier with IBM thinks 2021 virtual coverage. Thanks for watching. Mhm.

>>Yeah. >>From the Cube Studios in Palo Alto and Boston. It's the Cube covering IBM. Think brought to you by IBM. >>Welcome back to IBM. Think Digital 2020. This is the Cube, and we're really excited to have two great guests on Michael Jordan is the distinguished engineer with IBM Z Security. Michael, good to see you again. Welcome back. >>Thank you. It's good to be back. >>And, Matt, what Born is the program director and offering lead for Z 15. Good to see that. >>Thank you for having me, >>guys. Easy. Easy is a good place to be. Great corner, 61% growth. You got to love it. Regulations. It'll be feeling pretty good. I mean, other than what we're going through. But from a business standpoint, Z powered through, didn't it? >>It did. I mean, we're really pleased with the contribution that Z continues to make for our clients. Especially right now, given everything that's going on, business continuity, scale, resilient security. They're just so important for our clients in the platform. >>Yes. So we're gonna We're gonna talk a lot about this. Maybe Matt could start with you just in terms of, you know, you talk about. Ah, cyber resiliency. Hear that a lot? Um, e I think it may be. Means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. What does it mean? Busy? >>Yeah, for us. I mean, you know, we kind of start in many ways with, like that, this definition on that which talks about the ability to anticipate, withstand, recover, adapt all of these adverse conditions, might face or stresses compromises in attacks in your systems and your just cyber results. It's so it's a really important top of mind talking point from other clients who are thinking about this both from, I guess, the resilience when it comes to the systems and also the data as well. From our standpoint, you know, Z has been at the forefront of resilience for many, many generations. Now, whether that's the scale that systems we're able to provide, the ability to tap into more capacity is needed, whether on a temporary or permanent basis, cause you never know when a when a spike might be occurring on day, especially with clients going through digital transformation as well. The fact that we can talk about solutions being designed for seven nines of availability on. But the reason why clients like Tesco or alliances for their resilient banking platform or Department of Treasury in Puerto Rico depend on us or for a highly available solution. So it's never been more important for by us. >>So, Michael, from a technical standpoint, um, I mean, I go back to the rack f days and and I I used to ask, why is it that, you know, the mainframe had, you know, such good security, and it was explained to me years ago? Well, cause you knew everything that went on who touched what? You know, there was a clear understanding of that clear visibility of that. Um, but maybe you could explain just for laypeople from just from a technical standpoint. Why is it that Z has such strong cyber resiliency? >>Sure. So So some of it, I think, is there's 22 aspects that I want to mention first is, you know, culture, right? You know, the IBM Z, you know, development team and broader, you know, design team. We have in our culture to build systems that are secure and robust, that that's kind of part of our DNA. And so it's that mindset when you look at, you know, technologies like parallel system, flex and geographic geographically dispersed, parallel, parallel suspects, GPS. You know, those are ingrained in those technologies, but the other capability that we have or I should say, um, you know, benefit that we we have is we own the whole stack, right? We own, you know, the hardware we own the firmware, um, and we own the software that sits on top of there in the middle, where and so whether it's resiliency or whether it's security when we want to design and build solutions, you know, to make optimal solutions, you know any of those spaces we can actually design and architect the solutions, you know, both at the right point in the stack and across the stack as needed to really deliver on these capabilities. >>So, Matt, one of our partners, ET are holds these CEO roundtables, and one of the CEO said we really weren't ready from a resiliency standpoint. We're too focused on on er and kind of missed the boat on business continuity to narrow focus. I presume you're hearing a lot of that these days. I wonder if you could just tell us about some of the things that you're seeing with clients, Maybe the conversations you're having and how you're helping Sort of broaden that capability. >>Yeah, sure. I mean, to your point. I mean, nobody really could have quite predicted. You know what we're dealing with right now, but, you know, we have had over many generations of the Z platform, you know, clients deeply partnered with us to try and make sure they have a a highly available environment for business continuity. And, you know, just thinking about things from a Dell perspective. You know what they can do to fortify and make their solution sort of more resilient on the day by day basis. I mean, one of the things you might be talking about, some of the inherent capabilities we have a hassle. The fact that we build, you know, our systems with the additional capacity kind of baked in. Which means that for so many of our clients, you know, in the first in the first quarter, where they were seeing the huge amounts of peak workload kind of coming in, that they needed to be able to deal with the fact that we design our systems to be able to just kind of gobble up that work. With that we call dark capacity to be turned on at the drop of a hat. It's tremendously important because not only need to be offsite, just resilient in terms of the applications, but you need to get a deal with growth. You're going through that. The other aspect, which is a new capability with the 15 that kind of builds on what we could do with that dark past thing is this concept of instant recovery. But what we're actually helping clients do there in terms of fortifying and making their environment more resilient, is letting them attack into that dark capacity when they're going through restart activities of partitions, not just thinking about unplanned scenarios, but actually planned out just as well. So what that really helps with is because you always have to do planned maintenance. You know, when your systems, you know when you're partitions your your system because the environment. So what we're doing is saying when you're going through that restart sort of process, whether it's the shutdown, whether it's to bring up of the partition or the middleware or even in fact, actually helping you catch up. Kind of for what? You what you lost one weren't sort of processing workflow. We turn on that extra capacity in the system automatically for this boost window that were that we're helping our clients with. Not only we do that. Mike's point about owning a stack means that we can deliver that in a way that there's no increase in IBM software cost a reliever. So we're always kind of looking about what we can do to kind of move the ball forward to make a client's environment even more resilient as well. >>I've always, I learned from my mainframe days many, many years ago. And what when a vendor comes in and shows a new product, they always ask you what happens when something goes wrong? It's all about recovery that's always been one of the main frame strength. Mike, I want to ask you about data protection. I mean, it's a topic that again means a lot of things to a lot of people you know doesn't mean backup. There's data privacy. There's data Providence. There's data sovereignty. We talk about data protection from a Z prism. >>Sure, so So our point of view on data protection is is we view it as a as a multi layered proposition. It's not. It's not just one thing. In effect, we viewed the lens of a broader, you know, layered cybersecurity strategy where you know, data protection. And, you know, in this case, you know, talking about encryption and being another encrypt data on a massive scale is the foundation for, you know, a layered cyber security strategy, um, and providing capabilities for appliance. Do you protect data at the disk level with the 15? We also introduced the ability of actually being able to protect the data as it flows through their storage area network through something we call fibre channel endpoint security and then layering on top of that, you know, host based encryption capabilities, you know, in the operating system, whether it's, you know, buy or or data set level encryption and you know, then on top of that, they can layer additional capabilities for things like multi factor authentication to protect your privileged identities from being compromised or being able to do damage to your system and then, you know, building and layering. On top of that things like security, intelligence and being able to monitor and understand You know what, what's happening across the system. >>So I was talking with Developer the other day in cloud app pretty, you know, non mission critical. But ask them to use encryption and he said, Yeah, we could, but we don't cause it slows us down a little bit. So I'm wondering how you deal with that trade off performance versus Protection Z. How does he deal with that? >>Sure, So that's that. That's a great That's a great question. And that actually goes back to you know what we did with with our Z 14 so that the generation before and I think we've we've improved that with with the 15 and then I'll get to that in a bit. But one of the barriers that we recognized is exactly what you said is the You know, the cost of doing encryption is prohibitive, Um, and what we did is we have, ah, a cryptographic accelerator that's integrated into our micro processor that's capable of encrypting so each or it's capable of encrypting up to 14 gigabytes of data per second. And if you multiply that by the number of cores that you have. You know, a fully configured you nosy 15 met. What does it have any cores? Do we have in that 100 >>90 with >>190 So So do the math right? 190 times, you know, 14 gigabytes per second. It's an encryption powerhouse, and that can all be done synchronously with extremely low latency. So we have the horsepower to do encryption on a very broad scale with very, very low overhead. And that's what our clients are leveraging and taking advantage of. And with the Zy 15. That being we announced it and made available last year. We actually have now compression that's built into the micro processor so you can actually compress the data, Um, first and then encrypted. And there's a twofold benefits that first is now. I have less data to encrypt, so I have lowered my encryption overhead, and at the same time I've managed to preserve my storage efficiency. So it's a It's a twofold benefit there, >>you know. People talk off about Z, they talk about it, it's open. It's kind of all started back when you guys brought in Lennox. And now, of course, it's It's much more than that. Um, but I'm wondering how open plays into this notion of cyber resiliency in some respects there. Counter poised. But But how do you sort of square that circle for me? >>Yeah, I mean, it's kind of look at it is when it comes to openness and digital transformation, it's kind of doing it without compromise on. That's kind of the way I look at the Z platform because you're right. I mean the fact that we have the likes of open shift support on the seat platform or you can use, you know, answerable for for doing automation. I mean, were always looking to try and make sure that we support from A from a management standpoint or development standpoint. We'll use whichever tool frameworks languages are appropriate on the platform and integrated to a hyper cloud wherever you want to go. That's why when we look at it from the perspective of what it really means to have mission critical applications and why, it's why that is the key point about banks. Insurance companies, etcetera continue to trust. Z is there is the home for their system of record because they want to get the benefits. You know, the best of both worlds. So they want to be able to have the security, the resilience and the scale of the platform. But the same time they want to have flexibility to be able to use cloud native technologies to be able to deploy them on our platform. And then this micro sort of talking about the exciting thing for us is even going one step further. That says, if you do want your data to move around your hybrid cloud for very good reasons for certain scenarios, being able to have that capability to protect the data, not just encrypted that manage the privacy over the data as it flows out and see to kind of take those characteristics into the hybrid cloud is something that a lot of that clients been really, really excited to take advantage of it. It's >>about this conference. You might get certain >>charting Matt into a security guide. You see that? >>Yeah, >>I think everybody's got to be a security person these days. I want to ask about zero trust. You know, that term is thrown around a lot of, uh, you know, you can get kind of buzz, wordy. You see, people always have substance. I want to ask you guys what zero trust means the Io. >>So So I think there's, you know, my view of zeros where we're at from an industry from from zero. Trust is is very similar to where we're at with cloud, you know, going back a handful of years where if you ask 10 different people what you know, cloud was you get 10 different answers. Um, and none of them were probably wrong. And so I think, you know, we're very similar state in terms of our understanding and, you know, market maturity around zero trust. But there's, you know, at its for, you know, the the the The idea is, you know, we've been focused on protecting, you know, our environments using a castle and moat of approach. Um, and, you know, you know, protecting the perimeter. Yeah, and then trusting everything inside of inside of that. You know that that mode, if you will, um and what the zero trust is a recognition that that's not sufficient. And, you know, and then if you look at that in the context of our evolving and changing in environment and moving to hybrid multi clouds where, um, the notion of a perimeter is gone. You know that that strategy and approach for protection, it doesn't hold up. And so we need to evolve that, um And we need to have, you know, you know, move from the notion of, um, operational trust to a notion of technical trust and building, you know, building more sophisticated mechanisms for doing authentication, understanding broader what's happening across the environment and feeding that into, you know, decisions that are made in terms of who gets to access. What data. So, >>yeah, good, Matt, bring us home overnight. You know, this pandemic has really heightened our awareness of cyber resiliency. Business continuity have changed our our mindset and definition of those two things. But give us your final thoughts on this top. >>I think it's probably just been into sharp focus, really what? It what it means to have mission critical applications that are right at the heart of your of your business. And, you know, you come to realize very quickly. But if those services are not available to your clients, I mean it can have such a long lasting implications So I think people embittering you know their strategy when it comes to, you know, millions off applications with infrastructure and all of that in the context of business continuity, I think people are gonna gonna have a much sharper focus in the future to really see, you know, what is what does it mean? And it's the lifeblood of their business is not able todo operate and serve their clients. And probably as well, more and more applications that maybe weren't considered mission critical in the past will be considered mission critical now because it's not just the back end services, but it's the way the community a reply. It's so a lot of that, I think, is going to play out the way that people think about their business continuity strategy in the future. >>Yeah, you're right. Video conferencing has become mission critical, isn't it? Guys, thanks so much for coming on the Cube again. You know, keep up the good work. Uh, I really appreciate your time and your insights. Always, always great talking, talking Z. So thanks again. >>Thank you. >>All right. Thank you for watching. Everybody. This is Dave Volante for the Cube. Our wall to wall coverage of the think 2020 digital event experience. Keep right there. Right back after this short break. >>Yeah, yeah, yeah.

>> Announcer: From theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto and Boston, it's theCUBE, covering IBM Think, brought to you by IBM. >> Welcome back, I'm Stu Miniman and this is theCUBE's coverage of IBM Think 2020. It is the digital experience online so rather than all gathering together in San Francisco we're getting to talk to everybody where they are and we're happy to bring back one of our CUBE alums, it's actually been a little while since we've had them on the program. Willie Tejada, who is the general manager and Chief Developer Advocate with IBM. Willie, so great to see you, thanks for joining us. >> Hey Stu, thanks for having me, it's good to be back, it's been too long. >> So, first thing, obviously we're all together while we're apart, because of the global pandemic, developers, I've had so many interviews I've done over the years talking about dispersed development, around the clock development, I had a great interview with a head of remote work in the developer community at the beginning of the year before everything happened, so, how's the community doing overall and how are you seeing them react to what's happening? >> In the developer community, I think one of the interesting parts is one, developers feel oftentimes that they can actually make a difference. Two, their work oftentimes happens remotely. And so, one of the things that we've seen is a lot of the interaction that we have when we're doing our developer advocacy work has just converted to digital. And there's some interesting dynamics that come about, just even in that, where if you were doing something like a meetup in New York that was attracting something like 50 people, to maybe 100, maybe the venue was limiting the number of people that you would actually have there if you had a popular topic or speaker. We've had meetups basically be as large as 500 plus people when we went to digital. So definitely some different dynamics as we actually talk about this new normal that we're in, and everybody utilizing digital vehicles to reach the people that they want to talk to. >> All right. So I know last time we talked with you a big topic we talked about was Call for Code, and something that IBM has done different initiatives there, and you've got a very relevant one so bring our audience up to speed, this year's Call for Code, what that would involve. >> Yeah Stu, thanks very much. The Call for Code initiative inside of IBM is now in its third year. We did it in 2018, the concept was fairly simple, developers always love to solve problems and we said what if we challenge the 24 million developers to come and take a crack at society's most pressing issues? And in the first two years we focused on natural disasters, all you had to do was take a look at the coverage prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and you had wildfires in Australia and in Northern California where my home actually is based, and you had tsunamis and hurricanes and floodings. And so the ability for us to actually bring the developer community to bear on some of society's most pressing issues was really kind of the concept upfront, and IBM would help by bringing subject matter experts together, making available tools, because we're thinking let's solve the problem exactly how we solve it when we apply business. You get an expert on supply chain, you get a user of supply chain, you bring them together, developer builds these things. Well, not all the time can you get an expert in disaster, a first responder, so we actually created a lot of that fusion from there. Then, over the course of the first two years, we've had over 210,000 developers participate over across 168 nations with over 8,000 applications submitted. So, wildly successful. Now this year, Stu to your point, we had something that we could really bear down on very heavily. We announced that we were taking on climate change kind of laddering up natural disasters was let's look at the root, climate change, and then the COVID pandemic came about. We said let's tilt people towards that and it's been a tremendous outcoming for it. We've asked the developers to focus on three areas: crisis communications, you may have been one of those folks that's on a conference call or emails that haven't been responded to, on wait times forever, so those communications systems how do we fortify them get them to scale? The second area is remote learning, really look at where all the students are actually these days and what they're doing there, not just teaching but basically how do you give them entertainment, how do you actually provide them some level of social interaction. And the third area with the COVID focus is community collaboration. We really want to try to make sure people's spirits are up and that really does require everybody leaning in, and again you look at the news and tremendous examples of community collaboration and where technology can help scale or broaden that, that's really where Call for Code actually comes into play. >> Yeah, maybe it would be helpful, tell us a little bit about some of the previous winners, what have been some of the outcomes, more than just rallying the community, what resources is IBM putting into this? >> So one of the things that makes it different is rather than it just being a regular hack, this is really a processing side of IBM that we've developed over the course of this last three years. Where the challenge is one piece, the Call for Code challenge, we also developed and rolled out and committed another 25 million, with Call for Code we committed 30 million over that five years and in the following year we recognized the need to see the solutions actually get deployed. And so we committed another $25 million for the fortification, testing, scaling and deployment. So when you win a Call for Code Global Challenge, you also get IBM's support around deployment, fortification, some counseling and relation basically from development, to architecture, to even the business side of it. In our first year, we had a team called Project Owl actually come out and win, and one of the first things that happens especially in hurricanes or these natural disasters, communication grids go down. So they developed a solution that could quickly establish an ad hoc communication grid, and anybody that had a typical cell phone could connect up to that Wi-Fi grid or that grid very similar to the way they actually connect into a Starbucks Wi-Fi system. And it would allow both the first responders to understand where folks were at, and then establish communications. So that was in the first year. The second year was a team called Prometeo, and in October we selected them as the Global Challenge winner, and they were a solution that was built by a firefighter, a nurse and a developer with this concept roughly of how do they monitor essentially a firefighter's situation when they're actually in the heat of battle to best allocate the resources to the people who need them most. Understanding a little bit about their environment, understanding a little bit about the health that's actually happening with the firefighter, and again it's one of those scenarios where you couldn't just build it from the firefighter's side, you couldn't just build it from the nurse's side, and a developer would have a difficult time building it just by themselves. So bringing those people together, a nurse, a firefighter and a developer, and creating a system like this is really really what we're aspiring to do. Now, they won in October, and in February, they're in a field deployment actually doing real testing in the field in some of the fields at Catalonia, Spain. So, we've seen it first-hand exactly what happens when they win, the Project Owl team actually did some hurricane deployment testing in Puerto Rico, that of course IBM helped fortify and build connections between the Puerto Rico government so that we're really seeing essentially the challenge winner see this type of deployment. >> Willie, I love it, it's even better than a punch line I could do, what do you get when you combine a firefighter, a nurse and a developer? The answer is you can positively impact the world so phenomenal there. >> Absolutely. >> I'm curious, where does open source play into this activity? We were just covering Red Hat Summit last week, of course, lots of open source, lots of community engagement in hearing how they are helping communities engage and of course open source has been a big rallying point, everything from 3D printing to other projects in the community. So where does open source fit into this initiative? >> 100%. The amazing part about activating developers these days is just the broad availability of the technologies. And it's certainly stimulated by the community aspect of open source, this idea that they democratize access to technology, and it's really community-centric, and folks can start building very quickly on open source technologies that are material. So number one, all the things that is part of Call for Code and what we actually deployed are based on open source technologies. Now, again one of the differences is how do we actually make those winners and those technology sets become real? And becoming real requires this idea of how do you actually build durable sustainable solutions. So each five of the winners every year have the opportunity essentially to go through the Linux Foundation and have their solutions established as a project with the idea of roughly that people can download it and fork it, people can actually fortify it, but it's available to the whole globe, everybody in the world, to help build upon and fortify and continue to innovate on. So open source is right at the root of it, not just from the technology side, but from the ecosystem and community side that open source was for. And so we've seen as an example the formal establishment of Project Owl's software being open sourced by the Linux Foundation. And it's been fantastic to see both the participation actually there and see how people are basically deriving it and using it exactly what we intended to see in the vision of Call for Code, and Code and Response. >> Well, that's phenomenal. We're huge fans of the community activity, of course open source is a great driver of everything you were talking about. So I'm curious, one of the things we're all looking at is where people are spending their time, how this global pandemic is impacting what people are doing. There's plenty of memes out there on social media, it doesn't mean that you all of a sudden are going to learn a new language, or learn to play an instrument because you have lots of time at home, but I'm curious from what you've seen so far, compared to previous years, how's the engagement? What's the numbers? What can you share? Is there a significant difference or change from previous years? >> Yeah, there's so much good will, I would say, that's been brought about around the world in what we're seeing around the COVID-19 pandemic. That the way I would describe it is the rate of submissions and interest that we've seen is 3x above what we've seen in the prior years. Now keep in mind, we're not even actually at the area where we see the most. So keep in mind, right now we tried to accelerate the time to highlight some of these solutions. So April 27th will be the first deadline for COVID-19 challenge, and we'll highlight some of the solutions on May 5th. Now, when we think about it basically from that standpoint we typically actually see people waiting until that submission timeframe. And so when you think of it from that standpoint you really oftentimes see this acceleration, right? At that submission deadline. But we're already seeing 3x what we've seen in the past in terms of participation just because of the amount of good will that's actually out there, and what people are trying to do in solving these problems. And developers, they're problem solvers overall, and putting out those three areas, community crisis communications, remote learning, and community collaboration, they'll see examples of what they see on the news and think they can actually do something better, and then express that in software. >> That's excellent. So, Willie, one of the things, we've been talking to leaders across the industry and one of things we don't know is how much of what we are going through is temporary, and how much will actually be long term. I'm curious if there's any patterns you're seeing out there, discussions you're having with developers, you talk about remote work, you talk about communication. Are there anything that you've seen so far that you think that this will fundamentally just alter the way things might've been in the past going forward? >> Developers are always actually looking for this idea of how they actually sharpen their skills, their craft, new languages that they actually know, new platforms, whatever it actually might be. And I think in the past there was probably, even from our perspective, this balance of face-to-face versus digital, and a mix of both, but I think what we'll find going forward is a more robust mix of that. Because you can't deny the power of reach that actually happens when you actually move something digital. And then I would say that think about how you at theCUBE have refined your studios in dealing with an interview like mine, it gets better and better, you refine it. How you do an online workshop and how you do a workshop on a steel service mesh, you get better and better about how you engage from real time, hands-on keyboard experience in what information, what chat, what community pieces do you put on the screen to stimulate these pieces, I think in general the industry and our company and our teams have gotten better even in this short amount of time. I think those things will be long-lasting. I think we're all humans, so I think they still want the physical face-to-face and community interaction and camaraderie that comes from being in that physical energy, but I do think it'll be complemented by the things that we refined through the digital delivery that's been refined during this situation. >> All right, so Willie, final thing of course, this week, the winners are all being announced, how about people that are watching this and say this sounds phenomenal, how do I learn more, if I didn't get to participate in some of the initial pieces what should I be looking for? And how can I contribute and participate even after Think? >> Well, number one keep in mind that the challenge for the year will still actually go all the way to October, and submissions for that whole Challenger Watch will go to February first. So that's number one. But number two, going to developer.ibm.com/callforcode you'll find all the resources, we have these things called starter kits that help developers actually get up and going very quickly, finding out more information about both the competition structure, and really how you become part of the movement, go there basically and answer the call. >> Awesome. Love it, Willie, thanks so much, pleasure to catch up with you and definitely looking forward to seeing all the outcome that the community is putting forth to focus on this really important challenge. >> Hey Stu, thanks for having me, I really appreciate it. >> All right, be sure to check out thecube.net for all the coverage from IBM Think, all the backlog we had to see Willie a couple years ago when he was on the program, and check out where we will be later in the year. I'm Stu Miniman, and as always, thanks for watching. (gentle music)

>> from Seattle WASHINGTON. It's the Q covering AWS Imagine brought to you by Amazon Web service is >> Hey, welcome back, You're ready. Geoffrey here with the Cube were in Seattle, >> Washington downtown, right next to the convention center for the AWS. Imagine e d. You show. It's a second year of the show found by Andrew Cohen. His crew, part of Theresa's public sector group, really focused on education. Education means everything from K through 12 higher education and community college education, getting out of the military and retraining education. It's ah, it's a really huge category, and it's everything from, you know, getting the colleges to do a better job by being on cloud infrastructure, innovating and really thinking outside the box are really excited to have the man who's doing a lot of the work on the curriculum development in the education is Ken Eisner is the director of worldwide education programs for AWS. Educate can great to see you. Thank you so much for having absolutely nice shot out this morning by Theresa, she said. She just keeps asking you for more. So >> you want to deliver for Theresa? Carl says she is. She is a dynamo and she drives us >> all she does. So let's dive into it a little bit. So, you know, there was, Ah, great line that they played in the keynote with Andy talking about, You know, we cannot be protecting old institutions. We need to think about the kids is a story I hear all the time where somebody came from a time machine from 17 76 and landed here today. It wouldn't recognize how we talk, how we get around, but they would recognize one thing, and unfortunately, that's the school house down at the end of the block. So you guys are trying to change that. You're really trying to revolutionize what's happening in education, give us a little bit of background on some of the specific things that you're working on today. >> Yeah, I I think Andy, one of the things that he mentioned at that time was that education is really in a crisis on. We need to be inventing at a rapid rate. We need to show that invented simplify inside that occassion. Andi, he's incredibly, he's correct. The students are our customers, and we've got to be changing things for them. What we've been really excited to see is that with this giant growth in cloud computing A W S. It was the fastest I T vendor to ever hit $10,000,000,000 a year. The run rate We're now growing at a 42% or 41% year over year growth Ray and $31,000,000,000 a year Lee company. It's creating this giant cloud computing opportunity cloud computing in the number one Lincoln Skill for the past four years in Rome, when we look at that software development to cloud architecture to the data science and artificial intelligence and data analytics and cyber security rules. But we're not preparing kids for this. Market Gallop ran a study that that showed about 11% of business executives thought that students were prepared for their jobs. It's not working, It's gotta change. And the exciting thing that's happening right now is workforce development. Governments are really pushing for change in education, and it's starting to happen >> right? It's pretty amazing were here last year. The team last year was very much round the community college releases and the certification of the associate programs and trial down in Southern California, and this year. I've been surprised. We've had two guests on where it's the state governor has pushed these initiatives not at the district level, the city level, but from the state winning both Louisiana as well as Virginia. That's pretty amazing support to move in such an aggressive direction and really a new area. >> Yeah, I was actually just moderating a panel where we had Virginia, Louisiana, in California, all sitting down talking about that scaling statewide strategy. We had announcements from the entire CUNY and Sunni or City University of New York and State University of New York system to do both two and four year programs in Cloud Computing. And Louisiana announced it with their K 12 system, their community college system and their four year with Governor John Bel Edwards making the announcement two months ago. So right we are seeing this scaling consortium, a play where institutions are collaborating across themselves. They're collaborating vertically with your higher ed and K 12 and yet direct to the workforce because we need to be hiring people at such a rapid ray that we we need to be also putting a lot of skin in the game and that story that happened so again, I agree with Andy said. Education is at a crisis. But now we're starting to see change makers inside of education, making that move right. It's interesting. I wonder, >> you know, is it? Is it? I don't want to say second tier, that's the wrong word, but kind of what I'm thinking, you know, kind of these other institutions that the schools that don't necessarily have the super top in cachet, you know who are forced to be innovative, right? We're number two. We try harder. As they used to say in the in the Hertz commercial. Um, really a lot of creativity coming out of again the community colleges last year in L. A. Which I was, I was blown away, that kind of understand cause that specifically to skill people up to get a job. But now you're hearing it in much more kind of traditional institutions and doing really innovative things like the thing with the the Marines teaching active duty Marines about data science. >> Yeah, who came up with that idea that phenomenal Well, you know, data permeates every threat. It's not just impure data science, jobs and machine learning jobs. There's air brilliantly important, but it's also in marketing jobs and business jobs. And so on. Dad Analytics, that intelligence, security, cybersecurity so important that you think, God, you Northern Virginia Community College in U. S. Marine Corps are working for to make these programs available to their veterans and active military. The other thing is, they're sharing it with the rest of the student by. So that's I think another thing that's happening is this sharing this ability, all of for this cloud degree program that AWS educate is running. All these institutions are sharing their curricula. So the stuff that was done in Los Angeles is being learned in Virginia is the stuff that the U. S Marine Corps is doing is being available to students. Who are you not in military occupations? I think that collaboration mode is is amazing. The thing they say about community colleges and just this new locus of control for education on dhe. Why it's changing community colleges. You're right there. They're moving fast. These institutions have a bias for action. They know they have to. You change the r A. Y right? It's about preventing students for this work for, but they also serve as a flywheel to those four year institutions back to the 12 into the into the workforce and they hit you underserved audience. Is that the rest? So that you were not all picking from the same crew? You cannot keep going to just your lead institutions and recruit. We have to grow that pipeline. So you thank thank these places for moving quick brand operating for their student, right? >> Right, And and And that's where the innovation happens, right? I mean, that's that's, uh, that that's goodness. And the other thing that that was pretty interesting was, um, you know, obviously Skilling people up to get jobs. You need to hire him. That's pretty. That's pretty obvious and simple, but really bringing kind of big data attitude analytics attitude into the universities across into the research departments and the medical schools. And you think at first well, of course, researchers are data centric, right? They've been doing it that way for a long time, but they haven't been doing it and kind of the modern big, big data, real time analytics, you know, streaming data, not sampling data, all the data. So so even bringing that type of point of view, I don't know mindset to the academic institutions outside of what they're doing for the students. >> Absolutely. The machine learning is really changing the game. This notion of big data, the way that costs have gone down in terms of storing and utilizing data and right, it's streaming data. It's non Columbia or down, as opposed to yeah, the old pure sequel set up right that that is a game changer. No longer can you make just can you make a theory and tested out theories air coming streaming by looking at that data and letting it do some work for you, which is kind of machine learning, artificial intelligence path, and it's all becoming democratized. So, yes, researchers need to need learn these new past two to make sense and tow leverage. This with that big data on the medical center site, there are cures that can be discerned again. Some of our most pressing diseases by leveraging data way gonna change. And we, by the way, we gotta change that mindset, not just yeah, the phD level, but actually at the K 12 levels. Are kids learning the right skills to prepare them for you this new big data world once they get into higher ed, right? And then the last piece, which again we've seen >> on the Enterprise. You've kind of seen the movie on the enterprise side in terms of of cloud adoption. What AWS has done is at first it's a better, more efficient way to run your infrastructure. It's, you know, there's a whole bunch of good things that come from running a cloud infrastructure, but >> that's not. But that's not the end, right? The answer to the question >> is the innovation right? It's It's the speed of change, of speed development and some of the things that we're seeing here around the competitive nature of higher education, trying to appeal to the younger kids because you're competing for their time and attention in there. And they're dollar really interesting stuff with Alexa and some of these other kind of innovation, which is where the goodness really starts to pay off on a cloud investment. >> Yeah, without a doubt, Alexa Week AWS came up with robo maker and Deep Racer on our last reinvent, and there's there's organizations at the K 12 level like First Robotics and Project lead. The way they're doing really cool stuff by making this this relevant it you education becomes more relevant when kids get to do hands on stuff. A W S lowers the price for failure lowers the ability you can just open a browser and do real world hands on bay hands on stuff robotics, a rvr that all of these things again are game changers inside the classroom. But you also have to connect it to jobs at the end, right? And if your educational institutions can become more relevant to their students in terms of preparing them for jobs like they've done in Santa Monica College and like they're doing in Northern Virginia Community College across the state of Louisiana and by May putting the real world stuff in the hands of their kids, they will then start to attract assumes. We saw this happen in Santa Monica. They opened up one class, a classroom of 35 students that sold out in a day. They opened another co ward of 35 sold out in another day or two. The name went from 70 students. Last year, about 325 they opened up this California cloud workforce project where they now have 825 students of five. These Northern Virginia Community College. They're they're cloud associate degree that they ran into tandem with AWS Educate grew from 30 students at the start of the year to well over 100. Now the's programs will drive students to them, right and students will get a job at the end. >> Right? Right, well and can. And can the school support the demand? I mean, that's That's a problem we see with CS, right? Everyone says, Tell your kids to take CS. They want to take CS. Guess what? There's no sections, hope in C. S. So you know, thinking of it in a different way, a little bit more innovative way providing that infrastructure kind of ready to go in a cloud based way. Now we'll hopefully enable them to get more kids and really fulfill the demand. >> Absolutely. There's another thing with professional development. I think you're hitting on, so we definitely have a shortage in terms of teachers who are capable to teach about software development and cloud architecture and data sciences and cybersecurity. So we're putting AWS educators putting a specific focus on professional development. We also want to bring Amazonian, Tze and our customers and partners into the classroom to help with that, because the work based learning and the focus on subject matter expert experts is also important. But we really need to have programs both from industry as well as government out support new teachers coming into this field and in service training for existing teachers to make sure, because yes, we launch those programs and students will come. We have to make sure that were adequately preparing teachers. It's not it's not. It's not easy, but again, we're seeing whether it's Koda Cole out of yeah out of, uh, Roosevelt High School. Are the people that were working with George Mason University and so on were seeing such an appetite for making change for their students? And so they're putting in those extra hours they're getting that AWS certification, and they're getting stronger, prepared to teach inside the clients. >> That's amazing, cause right. Teachers have so many conflict ing draws on their time, many of which have nothing to do with teaching right whether it's regulations. And there's just so many things the teachers have to deal with. So you know the fact that they're encouraged. The fact that they want t to spend and invest in this is really a good sign and really a nice kind of indicator to you and the team that, you know, you guys were hitting something really, really positive. >> Yeah, I think we've had its this foam oh fear of missing out opportunity. There's the excitement of the cloud. There's the excitement of watching your kids. You're really transformed their lives. And it could be Alfredo Cologne who came over from Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. You wiped out his economic potential and started taking AWS educate. And you're learning some of these pathways and then landing a job as the Dev Ops engineered. When you see the transformation in your students, no matter what their background is, it is. It is a game changer. This has got to be you. Listen, I love watching that women's team when I win the World Cup, and that the excitement cloud is like the new sport. Robotics is the new sport for these kids. They'll bring them on >> pathways to career, right. We'll take for taking a few minutes in The passion comes through, Andrew Koza big passion guy. And we know Teresa is a CZ Well, so it shines through and keep doing good work. >> Thank you so much for the time. Alright, he's can on Jeff. You're watching the cube. We're in downtown Seattle. A aws. Imagine e d. Thanks for watching. >> We'll see you next time.

>> from Seattle WASHINGTON. It's the Q covering AWS Imagine brought to you by Amazon Web service is >> Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jeffrey here with the Cube were in Seattle, >> Washington downtown, right next to the convention center for the AWS. Imagine e d. You show. It's a second year of the show found by Andrew Cohen. His crew, part of Theresa's public sector group, really focused on education. Education means everything from K through 12 higher education, community college education, getting out of the military and retraining education. It's ah, it's a really huge category, and it's everything from, you know, getting the colleges to do a better job by being on cloud infrastructure, innovating and really thinking outside the box are really excited to have the man who's doing a lot of the work on the curriculum development in the education is Ken Eisner is the director of worldwide education programs for AWS. Educate can Great to see you. Thank you so much for having absolutely nice shot out this morning by Theresa, she said. She just keeps asking you for more. So >> you want to deliver for Theresa. Carl says she is. She is a dynamo, and she drives us >> all she does, so just dive into it a little bit. So, you know, there was, Ah, great line that they played in the keynote with Andy talking about, You know, we cannot be protecting old institutions. We need to think about the kids is a story I hear all the time where somebody came from a time machine from 17 76 and landed here today. It wouldn't recognize how we talk, how we get around, but they would recognize one thing, and unfortunately, that's the school house down at the end of the block. So you guys are trying to change that. You're really trying to revolutionize what's happening in education, give us a little bit of background on some of the specific things that you're working on today. >> Yeah, I think Andy, one of the things that he mentioned at that time was that education is really in a crisis on. We need to be inventing at a rapid rate. We need to show that invented, simple, fine inside education, and he's incredibly, he's correct. The students are our customers and we've got to be changing things for them. What we've been really excited to see is that with this giant growth in cloud computing a W. S. It was the fastest I T vendor to ever a $10,000,000,000 a year. The run rate. We're now growing at a 42% or 41% year over year growth Ray and $31,000,000,000 a year Lee company. It's creating this giant cloud computing opportunity, cloud computing in the number one linked in skill for the past four years in Rome. When we look at that software development to cloud architecture to the data science and artificial intelligence and data analytics and cyber security rules. But we're not preparing kids for this. Market Gallop ran a study that that showed about 11% of business executives thought that students were prepared for their jobs. It's not working, It's gotta change. And the exciting thing that's happening right now is workforce development. Governments are really pushing for change in education, and it's starting to happen right? It's pretty amazing were here last year. >> The team last year was very much round the community college releases and the certification of the associate programs and trial down in Southern California, and this year I've been surprised. We've had two guests on where it's the state governor has pushed these initiatives not at the district level, the city level, but from the state winning both Louisiana as well as Virginia. That's pretty amazing support to move in such an aggressive direction and really a new area. >> Yeah, I was actually just moderating a panel where we had Virginia, Louisiana, in California, all sitting down talking about that scaling statewide strategy. We had announcements from the entire CUNY and Sunni or City University of New York and State University of New York system to do both to end four year programs in Cloud Computing. And Louisiana announced it with their K 12 system, their community college system and their four year with Governor John Bel Edwards making the announcement two months ago. So right, we are seeing this scaling consortium, a play where institutions are collaborating across themselves. They're collaborating vertically with your higher ed and K 12 and yet direct to the workforce because we need to be hiring people at such a rapid ray that we we need to be also putting a lot of skin in the game. And that story that happened So again, I agree with Andy said. Education is at a crisis. But now we're starting to see change makers inside of education, making that move right. It's interesting. I wonder, >> you know, is it is it? I don't want to say second tier, that's the wrong word, but kind of what I'm thinking, you know, kind of these other institutions that the schools that don't necessarily have the super top in cachet, you know who are forced to be innovative, right? We're number two. We try harder. As they used to say in the in the Hertz commercial. Um, really a lot of creativity coming out of again the community colleges last year in L. A. Which I was, I was blown away, that kind of understand cause that specifically to skill people up to get a job. But now you're hearing it in much more kind of traditional institutions and doing really innovative things like the thing with the the Marines teaching active duty Marines about data science. >> Yeah, who came up with that idea that phenomenal Well, you know, data permeates every threat. It's not just impure data science, jobs and machine learning jobs. There's air brilliantly important, but it's also in marketing jobs and business jobs. And so on. Dad Analytics that intelligence, security, cybersecurity so important that you think, God, you Northern Virginia Community College in U. S. Marine Corps are working for to make these programs available to their veterans and active military. The other thing is, they're sharing it with the rest of the student by. So that's I think another thing that's happening is this. Sharing this ability all of for this cloud degree program that AWS educate is running. All these institutions are sharing their curricula. So the stuff that was done in Los Angeles is being learned in Virginia's stuff the U. S. Marine Corps is doing is being available to students. Who are you not in military occupations? I think that collaboration mode is is amazing, the thing they say about community colleges and just this new locus of control for education on dhe. Why it's changing community colleges. You're right there. They're moving fast. These institutions have a bias for action. They know they have to. You change the r A. Y right. It's about preventing students for this work for, but they also serve as a flywheel to those four year institutions back to the 12 into the into the workforce and they hit you underserved audience is that the rest is so that you were not all picking from the same crew. You cannot keep going to just share lead institutions and recruit. We have to grow that pipeline. So you thank thank these places for moving quick and operating for their student, right? >> Right, And and And that's where the innovation happens, right? I mean, that's that's, ah, that that's goodness. And the other thing that that was pretty interesting was obviously Skilling people up to get jobs, you need to hire him. That's pretty. That's pretty obvious and simple, but really bringing kind of big data attitude analytics attitude into the universities across into the research departments and the medical schools. And you think at first, of course, researchers are data centric, right? They've been doing it that way for a long time, but they haven't been doing it in kind of the modern big, big data. Real time analytics, you know, streaming data, not sampling data, all the data. So so even bringing that type of point of view, I don't know, mindset to the academic institutions outside of what they're doing for the students. >> Absolutely. The machine learning is really changing the game. This notion of big data, the way that costs have gone down in terms of storing and utilizing data and right, it's streaming data. It's non Columbia or down, as opposed to yeah, the old pure sequel set up right that that is a game changer. No longer can you make just can you make a theory and tested out theories air coming streaming by looking at that data and letting it do some work for you, which is kind of machine learning, artificial intelligence path, and it's all becoming democratized. So, yes, researchers need to need learn these new past two to make sense and tow leverage. This with that big data on the medical center site, there are cures that could be discerned again some of our most pressing diseases by leveraging data, way gonna change. And we, by the way, we gotta change that mindset, not just yeah, the phD level, but actually at the K 12 levels. Are kids learning the right skills to prepare them for you? This new big data world once they get into higher ed, right? And then the last piece, which again we've seen >> on the Enterprise. You've kind of seen the movie on the enterprise side in terms of of cloud adoption. What AWS has done is at first it's a better, more efficient way to run your infrastructure. It's, you know, there's a whole bunch of good things that come from running a cloud infrastructure, but >> that's not. But that's not the end, right? The answer to the question >> is the innovation right? It's It's the speed of change, of speed, a development and some of the things that we're seeing here around the competitive nature of higher education, trying to appeal to the younger kids because you're competing for their time and attention in there. And they're dollar really interesting stuff with Alexa and some of these other kind of innovation, which is where the goodness really starts to pay off on a cloud investment. >> Yeah, without a doubt, Alexa Week AWS came up with robo maker and Deep Racer on our last reinvent, and there's there's organizations at the K 12 level like First Robotics and project lead the way they're doing really cool stuff by making this this relevant you education becomes more relevant when kids get to do hands on stuff. A W S lowers the price for failure lowers the ability you can just open a browser and do real world hands on bay hands on stuff. Robotics, A R V R. That all of these things again are game changers inside the classroom. But you also have to connect it to jobs at the end, right? And if your educational institutions can become more relevant to their students in terms of preparing them for jobs like they've done in Santa Monica College and like they're doing in Northern Virginia Community College across the state of Louisiana and by May putting the real world stuff in the hands of their kids, they will then start to attract assumes. We saw this happen in Santa Monica. They opened up one class, a classroom of 35 students that sold out in a day. They opened another co ward of 35 sold out in another day or two. The name went from 70 students. Last year, about 325 they opened up this California Cloud Workforce Project, where they now have 825 students of five. These Northern Virginia Community College. They're they're cloud associate degree that they ran in tandem with AWS Educate grew from 30 students at the start of the year to well over 100. Now these programs will drive students to them right and students will get a job at the end. >> Right? Right, well in Ken. And can the schools sports a demand? That's that's a problem we see with CS, right? Everyone says, Tell your kids to take CS. They want to take CS. Guess what? There's no sections, hope in C. S. So you know, thinking of it in a different way, a little bit more innovative way providing that infrastructure kind of ready to go in a cloud based way. Now we'll hopefully enable them to get more kids and really fulfill the demand. >> Absolutely. There's another thing with professional development. I think you're hitting on, so we definitely have a shortage in terms of teachers who are capable to teach about software development and cloud architecture and data sciences and cybersecurity. So we're putting a W. C. Educate is putting a specific focus on professional development. We also want to bring Amazonian, Tze and our customers and partners into the classroom to help with that, because the work based learning and the focus on subject matter expert experts is also important. But we really need to have programs both from industry as well as government out support new teachers coming into this field and in service training for existing teachers to make sure, because yes, we launch those programs and students will come. We have to make sure that were adequately preparing teachers. It's not, it's not. It's not easy, but again, we're seeing whether it's Koda Cole out of out of, uh Roosevelt High School. Are the people that were working with George Mason University and so on were seeing such an appetite >> for >> making change for their students? And so they're putting in those extra hours they're getting that AWS certification, and they're getting stronger, prepared to teach inside the class. That's >> amazing, cause right. Teachers have so many conflict ing draws on their time, many of which have nothing to do with teaching right whether it's regulations and there's just so many things the teachers have to deal with. So you know the fact that they're encouraged the fact that they want t to spend and invest in this is really a good sign and really a nice kind of indicator to you and the team that, you know, you guys were hitting something really, really positive. >> Yeah, I think we've had its this foam oh fear of missing out opportunity. There's the excitement of the cloud. There's the excitement of watching your kids. You're really transformed their lives. And it could be Alfredo Cologne who came over from Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. You wiped out his economic potential and started taking AWS educate and you're learning some of these pathways and then landing a job has the Dev ops engineer to Michael Brown, who went through that Santa Monica problem and >> landed an >> internship with Annika. When you see the transformation in your students, no matter what their background is, it is. It is a game changer. This has got to be you. Listen, I love watching that women's team when I win the World Cup, and that the excitement cloud is like the new sport. Robotics is the new sport for these kids. They'll bring them on >> pathways to career, right, well, take for taking a few minutes in The passion comes through Andrew Koza, Big passion guy. And we know Teresa is as well. So it shines through and keep doing good work. >> Thank you so much for the time. Alright, He's Can I'm Jeff, You're watching the Cube. We're in downtown Seattle. A aws. Imagine E d. Thanks for >> watching. We'll see you next time.

>> live from Washington, D. C. It's the Cube covering a ws public sector summit by Amazon Web services. >> Welcome back, everyone to our nation's capital. We are the Cube. We are live at A W s Public Sector summit. I'm your host Rebecca Night, along with my co host, John Farrier. We're joined by Ken Eisner Director Worldwide Educational programs at a WS Thanks so much for coming on the show >> you for having me. >> So tell our viewers a little bit. About what? What you do as the director of educational programs. Sure, I head >> up a program called a Ws Educate a ws educate is Amazon's global initiative to provide students and teachers around the world with the resource is that they need really to propel students into this awesome field of cloud computing. We launched it back in May of 2,015 and we did it to fill this demand. If we look at it today, what kind of right in the midst of this fourth industrial revolution is changing the means of production obviously in the digital on cloud space, But it's also creating this new worker class all around. Yeah, the cloud Advanced services like machine learning I robotics, I ot and so on. And if you looked at the employer demand, um, Cloud computing has been the number one linked in skill for the past four years in a row. We look at cloud computing. We kind of divide into four families. Software development, cloud architecture, the data world, you know, like machine learning I data science, business intelligence and Alex and then the middle school opportunities like technical customer support, age and cybersecurity, which can range all the way from middle school of Ph. D. But yet the timeto hire these people has grown up dramatically. Glass door as study of companies over there platform between two thousand 92 1,050 18 and show that the timeto higher had increased by 80%. Yet just think about that we talk about I mean, this conference is all about innovation. If you don't have builders, if you don't have innovators, how the heck Kenya Kenya innovate? >> Can I gotta ask you, Andy, just to have known him for over eight years and reporting on him and covering it was on when when everyone didn't understand yet what it was. Now everyone kind of does our congratulations and success. But to see him on stage, talk passionately about education. Yeah, mean and knowing Andy means it's kind of boiled up because he's very reserved, very conservative guy, pragmatic. But for him to be overtly projecting, his opinion around education, which was really yeah, pretty critical means something's going on. This is a huge issue not just in politics, riel, state, local areas where education, where >> the root of income inequality it's it's a lot of. >> There's a lot of challenges. People just aren't ready for these new types of jobs that are coming out that >> pay well, by the way. And this is Elliott >> of him out there that are unfilled for the first time, there are more jobs unfilled than there are candidates for them. You're solving this problem. Tell us what's going on in Amazon. Why the fewer what's going on with all this? Why everyone's so jacked up >> a great point. I, Andy, I think, said that education is at a crisis point today and really talked about that racial inequality piece way. Timeto hire people in the software development space Cloud architecture um technical called cloud Support Age. It's incredibly long so that it's just creating excess costs into the system, but were so passionate, like if you look at going to the cloud, Amazon wants to disrupt areas where we do not see that progress happening. Education is an area that's in vast need for disruption. There are people were doing amazing stuff. We've heard from Cal Poly. We've heard from Yeah, Arizona State. Carnegie Mellon. There's Joseph Alan at North Northeastern. >> People are >> doing great stuff. We're looking at you some places that are doing dual enrollment programs between high school and community in college and higher ed. But we're not moving fast enough, but you guys >> are provided with educate your program. This is people can walk in the front door without any kind of going through gatekeepers or any kind of getting college. This is straight up from the front, or they could be dropouts that could be post college re Skilling. Whatever it is, they could walk in the front door and get skilled up through educators that correct, >> we send people the ws educate dot com. All you need is some element of being in school activity, or you won't be going back from Re Skilling perspective and you came free access into resource is whether your student teacher get free access into content. That's map two jobs, because again, would you people warm from the education way? All want enlightenment contributors to sai all important, But >> really they >> want careers and all the stats gallop ransom good stats about both what, yet students and what industry wants. They want them to be aligned to jobs. And we're seeing that there's a man >> my master was specifically If I'm unemployed and I want to work, what can I do? I walk into you, You can go >> right on and we can you sign up, we'll give you access to these online cloud. Career pathways will give you micro credentials so we can bad you credential you against you We belong something on Samarian Robo maker. So individual services and full pathways. >> So this a >> direct door for someone unemployed We're going to get some work and a high paying job, >> right? Right. Absolutely. >> We and we also >> give you free access into a ws because we know that hands on practice doing real world applications is just vital. So we >> will do that end. By the way, at the end of >> this, we have a job board Amazon customer In part of our job, we're all saying >> these air >> jobs are super high in demand. You can apply to get a job as an intern or as a full time. Are you through our job? >> This is what people don't know about Rebecca. The war is not out there, and this is the people. Some of the problems. This is a solution >> exactly, but I actually want to get drilled down a little bit. This initiative is not just for grown ups. It's it's for Kimmie. This is for you. Kid starts in kindergarten, So I'm really interested to hear what you're doing and how you're thinking about really starting with the little kids and particularly underrepresented minorities and women who are not. There were also under representative in the in the cloud industry how you're thinking expansively about getting more of those people into these jacks. And actually, it's still >> Day one within all y'all way started with Way started with 18 and older because we saw that as the Keith the key lever into that audience and start with computer science but we've expanded greatly. Our wee last year reinvent, We introduced pathways for students 14 over and cloud literacy materials such as a cloud inventor, Cloud Explorer and Cloud Builder. Back to really get at those young audiences. We've introduced dual enrollment stuff that happens between high school community college or high school in higher ed, and we're working on partnerships with scratch First Robotics Project lead the way that introduced, whether it's blocked based coding, robotics were finding robotics is such a huge door opener again, not just for technically and >> get into it absolutely, because it's hands on >> stuff is relevant. They weren't relevant stuff that they can touch that. They can feel that they can open their browser, make something happen, build a mobile application. But they also want tohave pathways into the future. They want to see something that they can. Eventually you'll wind up in and a ws the cloud just makes it real, because you, Khun do real worlds stuff from a browser by working with the first robot. Biotics are using scratch toe develop Ai ai extensions in recognition and Lex and Polly and so on. So we've entered into partnerships with him right toe. Open up those doors and create that long term engagement and pipe on into the high demand jobs of tomorrow. >> What do you do in terms of the colleges that you mentioned and you mention Northeastern and Cal Poly Arizona State? What? What are you seeing? Is the most exciting innovations there. >> Yes. So, first of all, we happen to be it. We're in over 24 100 institutions around the world. We actually, by the way, began in the U. S. And was 65% us. Now it's actually 35% US 65% outside. We're in 200 countries and territories around the world. But institutions such as the doing amazing stuff Polo chow at a Georgia Tech. Things that he's doing with visual ization on top of a ws is absolutely amazing. We launched a cloud Ambassador program to reward and recognize the top faculty from around the world. They're truly doing amazing stuff, but even more, we're seeing the output from students. There was a student, Alfredo Cologne. He was lived in Puerto Rico, devastated by Hurricane Maria. So lost his, you know, economic mobility came to Florida and started taking classes at local schools. He found a ws educate and just dove headlong into it. Did eight Pathways and then applied for a job in Dev Ops at Universal Studios and received a job. He is one of my favorite evangelists, but and it's not just that higher ed. We found community college students. We launched a duel enrolment with between Santa Monica College and Roosevelt High School in Los Angeles, focusing again a majority minority students, largely Hispanic, in that community. Um, and Michael Brown, you finish the cloud computing certificate, applied for an internship, a mission clouds so again a partner of ours and became a God. Hey, guys, internship And they start a whole program around. So not only were seeing your excitement out of the institutions, which we are, but we're also seeing Simon. Our students and businesses all want to get involved in this hiring brigade. >> Can I gotta ask. We're learning so much about Amazon would cover him for a long time. You know all the key buzzwords. Yeah, raise the bar all these terms working backwards. So >> tell us about what's your >> working backwards plan? Because you have a great mission and we applaud. I think it's a super critical. I think it's so under promoted. I think we'll do our best to kind of promote. It's really valuable to society and getting people their jobs. Yeah, but it's a great opportunity, you know, itself. But what's your goal? What's your What's your objective? How you gonna get there, What your priorities, What do you what do you what do you need >> to wear? A pure educational workforce? And today our job is to work backwards from employers and this cloud opportunity, >> the thing that we >> care about our customers still remains or student on DH. So we want to give excessive mobility to students into these fields in cloud computing, not just today and tomorrow. That requires a lot that requires machine lurking in the algorithm that you that changed the learning objectives you based on career, so content maps to thes careers, and we're gonna be working with educational institutions on that recruited does. Recruiting doesn't do an effective job at matching students into jobs. >> Are we >> looking at all of just the elite institutions as signals for that? That's a big >> students are your customer and customer, but older in support systems that that support you, right? Like Cal Poly and others to me. >> Luli. We've also got governments. So we were down in Louisiana just some last month, and Governor Bel Edwards said, We're going to state why with a WS educates cloud degree program across all of their community college system across the University of Louisiana State system and into K 12 because we believe in those long term pathways. Never before have governors have ministers of country were being with the Ministry of Education for Singapore in Indonesia, and we're working deep into India. Never had they been more aligned toe workforce development. It creates huge unrest. We've seen this in Spain and Greece we see in the U. S. But it's also this economic imperative, and Andy is right. Education is at a crisis. Education is not solving the needs of all their constituents, but also industries to blame. We haven't been deeply partnered with education. That partnership is such a huge part of >> this structural things of involved in the educational system. It's Lanier's Internets nonlinear got progressions air differently. This is an opportunity because I think if the it's just like competition, Hey, if the U. S Department of Education not get their act together. People aren't going to go to school. I mean, Peter Thiel, another political spectrums, was paying people not to go to college when I was a little different radical view Andy over here saying, Look at it. That's why you >> see the >> data points starting to boil up. I see some of my younger son's friends all saying questioning right what they could get on YouTube. What's accessible now, Thinking Lor, You can learn about anything digitally now. This is totally People are starting to realize that I might not need to be in college or I might not need to be learning this. I can go direct >> and we pay lip >> service to lifelong education if you end. If you terminally end education at X year, well, you know what's what's hap happening with the rest of your life? We need to be lifelong learners. And, yes, we need to have off ramps and the on ramps throughout our education. Thie. Other thing is, it's not just skill, it's the skills are important, and we need to have people were certified in various a ws skills and come but we also need to focus on those competencies. Education does a good job around critical decision making skills and stuff like, um, collaboration. But >> do they really >> do a good job at inventing? Simplified? >> Do they teach kids >> to fam? Are we walking kids to >> social emotional, you know? >> Absolutely. Are we teaching? Were kids have tio think big to move >> fast and have that bias for action? >> I think that I want to have fun doing it way. Alright, well, so fun having you on the show. A great conversation. >> Thank you. I appreciate it. >> I'm Rebecca Knight for John. For your you are watching the cube. Stay tuned.

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

(lively pop music) >> Live from Mountain View, California. It's the Cube covering DevNet Create 2019. Brought to you by Cisco. >> Okay welcome back everyone, we're here at day two coverage live of coverage at Mountain View, Cube coverage of Cisco's DevNet Create. I'm John Furrier, your host, where all the action is in the creation side of two communities, DevNet, Cisco developers and then the open cloud native world entrepreneurship coming together to create products. Our next guest is Nik Kalyani, co-founder of WhenHub and TryCrypto. He's a builder, he's a creator, he's an entrepreneur. Welcome to The Cube, thanks for coming on >> John, thanks for having me. >> You just gave a long talk so I'll let you breathe a little bit. You're an entrepreneur, you're an inventor, you see things early. You got a lot of your hands on lots of good stuff here. This is the perfect place for you to be giving talks and hanging out. >> Absolutely I love the fact that people are here to learn. They're here to find out about the new innovative things that they can experience hands-on. I just gave a workshop on smart contracts, on the blockchain and I loved the questions I got and the energy that's there. >> What sort of questions were you getting? What was the interest? Where are people going at it? Because networking's a supply chain problem you can almost imagine applying blockchain to networking constructs. >> Yeah absolutely, you know blockchain is one of those technologies that is misunderstood quite a bit and some of the questions I got really helped me, help reinforce that. Ultimately, what I was trying to do is make sure that people understand that blockchain is not a solution for everything. There are certain things where there are scenarios where there are multiple un-trusted parties where blockchain is great, but otherwise it's just a slow database. So you want to make sure that you use it in the right scenarios and supply chain is a very common example where it's used, especially private blockchains. >> If latency's not a concern blockchain might be a solution if other things line up. Great point, I'm glad you brought that up. I want to just ask you because your profile as a person you're a visionary, you see things early. The part of the show here that's interesting is it's not like there's this research kind of thinking, although researchers tends to think about the waves coming. It's about what's here and now and what's coming but it's also making things real and creating. So a lot of the conversations are fun, exploratory, discovery orientated but also there's a lot of reality kind of grounded in it. You know entrepreneurs make some mistakes if you're too early, you're misunderstood for a long time. It's got to be a little bit early at the right time, timing's everything. Talk about the dynamic of timing and building and creating with big waves that are coming. You got cloud, you got blockchain, you got AI, you got machine learning. Talk about this dynamic. >> Absolutely, yeah so timing is so important, especially when you have start-ups right? You could have the greatest technology and maybe the market's not ready for it and so yeah it fails. My first start up was like that. I created something that the market was not ready for but fortunately the stuff I'm working on the market is ready for. So I think one of the things that developers, engineers can do is really look at how not necessarily how a technology is being marketed but what the adoption rate is. If there are more people jumping on it, and a good way to look at that is to look at GitHub and see how many people are creating samples, boilerplates, how many people are writing blog posts et cetera. That I think is a better indicator of whether a technology is ready for prime time or if it's just all vaporware. >> Tell about what you're working on now you're working on some very interesting projects. Where are they? What's the status, size of the team, collaborative open source. What's going on? >> So I have two start-ups I'm working on. the first one is called WhenHub. So we have a product called Interface that allows anyone to be an expert on any topic, and promote themselves through the platform. And allows anyone who's looking for expertise on any topic to find them and then pay for them and do a video call, get their questions answered and the whole transaction is handled via blockchain with either our cryptocurrency or you can use Apple Pay or Google Pay. So we launched a few months ago, we have about 75,000 users, it's growing very fast. We are just at the point right now where we are trying to scale-up. Our crypto token is called WHEN token. It's listed on five different exchanges. So that's one thing. While building that product one thing became very clear to me. Mainstream users have a very challenging time with using anything blockchain or cryptocurrency related. And it's through no fault of theirs, the ecosystem has been created for developers by developers and the tools lack empathy for the users. And that lead me to create an open source project called TryCrypto. The mission is to create free open source content and tools to make blockchain and cryptocurrency more accessible to users. >> To mainstream not the killer dorks and the guys coding. >> Yeah we want it to be like non-technical folks >> Is it the wallet that's the problem or is it just overall too techy? >> You know what John, the very word wallet is the problem. (John laughs) Because it gives this idea that there's something within it. As we were talking earlier, you know about blockchain, there's nothing in a wallet. It's just a placeholder for all of your addresses, right? So in fact, I'm trying to solve that problem with a new tool I've created called Photoblock, where I use a photo and emoji's to replace that. Yes, wallets are problems. The fact that it requires you to have all these parts in place before you can do anything useful, that's a big problem also. People really need to step back and look at the user experience and say what are the friction points and how can we eliminate them and that needs to happen before blockchain and cryptocurrency can have mass adoption. >> Talk about the choice of smart contract language used. Ethereum which was the hottest development oriented the most traction. A lot of ICOs kind of watered that down, it's still under 300. Other ones are emerging, NEO, EO, a bunch of other ones. It seems to be kind of like a NASCAR race, one's in the lead, someone's coming up. How do you look at that marketplace as other developers start to kick the tires? As people start building these real-world apps is that important to have a selector? Does it matter? What's your thoughts on selection? >> That's a great question. I think going back to what I said about how to evaluate a technology. You can see that Ethereum is still continues to be the leader, by far. So while EO and other blockchains have what appears to be a lot of momentum, if you dig down below the surface you don't find as much. So I continue to remain a big fan of Ethereum. Which doesn't mean I don't care for the other blockchains but I find that right now Serenity and Ethereum are a good way to move forward. I think EO is also a good platform to build on but I think their developing tools need to reach some level of maturity. On Ethereum, the folks that have created the truffle stack, the truffle and ganache package, have done a great service for developers because they make them so simple and easy. Something like that needs to evolve. >> Yeah and your point earlier I think it's important to know for the developers out there don't confuse the protocol and the token selection on smart contracts with blockchain. Again, you don't have to anything on blockchain 'cause it's a slow database. You're doing smart contracts which doesn't really require a lot of overhead. I mean it's a contract, it does. You want to have it reliable, but you're not doing zillions of contracts per second. The IOPs are not that high. >> Yeah, actually smart contracts is also a very misunderstood term. In fact, someone asked me is it legal contracts or medical contracts, what is it? A smart contract is really just an application. A programming code that runs on the virtual machines on blockchain. They call it a contract because once it's out there it's immutable. Which means the rules are defined, known and fixed and can't be changed. So when you create a smart contract, really what you're doing is handling a very small amount of data that you want to persist forever that runs with some rules. >> And in a decentralized world, as we call it in our community, it's a digital handshake. You agreed that we would do this, there it is, it's un-hackable. What are the cool things you're working on? What else you got? Opensource project's awesome. You got a lot going on. Life's good. >> Life is good. As I mentioned, Photoblock is the thing that I'm really excited about. Another app that we are building is called Public Record. The problem we are solving there is that in areas where there is strife, or maybe there's dictators et cetera, sometimes when you have people who have photos of some crime occurring or some event occurring, they are reluctant to share it because it could be traced back and have adverse consequences. With Public Record we are building a smart contract driven blockchain app. Where you can just take a photo and it will push that photo on to IPFS. Which stands for the InterPlanetary File System, which is a decentralized file system. It will anonymize the photo. It will strip all the stuff that your camera puts on there like GPS, the camera model et cetera. It'll manipulate that photo and it will then put a hash of that on the blockchain and make it available by location. So you can go to any location look at all the photos that people have taken there that are completely anonymous and impossible to track back to the >> And what about tampering proof? You have origination data, you strip out the real origination data, that's really important for some of these countries where people get killed for sharing or trying to get the backdoor out of the country for political revolution or just simply I don't want anybody to know. How about tamper proof? >> It is, it's on IPFS, which is immutable file system. What we also do is we manipulate the colors and tones of the photo a little bit so it's impossible to even use AI to go back and reverse engineer and figure out who created the photo. The location, the time and the actual content of the photo is not tampered. So Public Record will do that. >> Just a little quick Q and A on your company. Did you do an ICO, did you finance it yourself? >> With WhenHub we did do an ICO, but it was at a time when the market was at its bare things so our ICO was moderately successful. In addition to the ICO funds, we are primarily funded by one of my co-founders, Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert comic strip. We are doing quite well. >> He's a cool guy to hang out with, huh? >> He is. >> Never a dull moment? >> Never a dull moment, I learn quite a bit. >> Congratulations. How do people find out how to hang out with you? You got some good things going on here. Where do you hang out? What do you do for fun? What events do you go to? What's going on with you? >> I'm on Twitter quite a bit. >> Say your Twitter handle. >> It's @techbubble. I'm there. I like to blog. on TryCrypto and also my own personal blog. I go to meet-up events here in Silicon Valley and I do make an effort to speak at least five to six conferences each year. >> Aim it forward. >> Yep. >> A lot more action going on in crypto and token economics not just from an ICO standpoint always been some negative scams out there and global fraud, but generally, blockchain and token economics is real and getting more traction and soon I think it will be clearer. Your thoughts on that, if you could share your perspective in terms of the opportunities around those two areas. >> Like any other new and exciting technology goes through the hype cycle, they've gone through that now. I think there's really two types of people in this ecosystem. The ones that are focused on the cryptocurrency and the pricing around it et cetera. But I'd really like to separate that from the blockchain aspect of it. Blockchain is a very real technology, it's a really different technology that the world has never seen before. Yes, it's very true that not everything is a good candidate for the blockchain. But there are many, many scenarios where there are multiple un-trusted parties that are excellent for blockchain. I think what needs to happen is persons in leadership position need to really evaluate: what are the scenarios where there are un-trusted entities involved? And limit their blockchain involvement, test pilots, all of that they're more likely to see more success. Versus just throwing blockchain into it, replace the database, 'cause that's guaranteed to be a fail. >> Nik, great to have you on. I totally agree with you. The team here we were in Puerto Rico, we've been in the Bahamas, we've been Toronto we've been to all the blockchain events. Consensus is coming up in New York. We might be there, May 14th. Patrick, getting ready to head down to New York. Maybe go down there. Great to have your perspective. Great to see the blockchain conversation coming in here as the emerging tech and the creation here at DevNet Create continues. Thanks for coming out. >> Thank you so much. I appreciate you having me here. >> More Cube coverage here coming live here at Mountain View after this short break. (pop music plays)