>>Welcome back to HP discover 2021 My name is Dave Volonte and you're watching the cubes, virtual coverage of H. P. S. Big customer event. Of course, the virtual edition, we're gonna dig into transformations the role of technology in the role of senior technology leadership. Look, let's face it, H P. E. Has gone through a pretty dramatic transformation itself in the past few years. So it makes a great example in case study and with me is rashmi kumari who is the senior vice president and C. I. O. At HP rashmi welcome come on inside the cube. >>Dave Nice to be here. >>Well, it's been almost a year since Covid changed the world as we know it. How would you say the role of the CEO specifically and generally it has changed. I mean you got digital Zero Trust has gone from buzzword to >>mandate >>digital. Everybody was complacent about digital in many ways and now it's really accelerated remote work hybrid. How do you see it? >>Absolutely. As I said in the last discover that Covid has been the biggest reason to accelerate digital transformation in the company's I. C. C. I O. S role has changed tremendously in the last 15 months. It's no more just keep the operations running that's become a table stick. Our roles have become not only to create digital customer experience engaged with our customers in different ways, but also to transform the company operations from inside out to be able to give that digital experience from beginning to end off the customer engagement going forward. We have also become responsible for switching our strategies around the companies as the Covid. Covid hit in different parts of the world at different times and how companies structured their operations to go from one region to another. A global company like H. B had to look into its supply chain differently. Had to look into strategies to mitigate the risk that was created because of the supply chain disruptions as well as you go to taking care of our employees. How do you create this digital collaboration experience where teams can still come together and make the work happen for our end customers? How do we think about future employee engagement when people are not coming into these big buildings and offices and working together, But how to create the same level of collaboration coordination as well as delivery or faster uh goods and services which is enabled by technology going forward. So see I. O. And I. T. S. Role has gone from giving a different level of customer experience to a different level of employee experience as well as enabling day to day operations of the company's. Ceos have realized that digital is the way to go forward. It does not matter what industry you are in and now see a as have their seat at the table to define what the future of every company now, which is a technology company respective you are in oil and gas or mining or a technical product or a card or a mobility company. End of the day you have to act and behave like a technology company. >>So I want to ask you about that because you've you've been a Ceo and uh you know, leading technology provider now for the last three years and you've had previous roles and where you know non technical technology, you know, selling to I. T. Companies and as you point out those worlds are coming together, everybody is a technology company today. How do you think that changes the role of the C. I. O. Because it would always seem to me that there was a difference between A C. I. O. And a tech company. You know what I mean by that? And the C. I. O. It's sort of every other company is those two worlds converging. >>Absolutely. And it's interesting you pointed out that I have worked in many different industries from healthcare and pharma to entertainment to utilities. Um And now at a technology company end of the day um The issues that I. T. Deals with are pretty similar across the organization. What is different here is now my customers are people like me in other industries and I have a little bit of an advantage because just having the experience across various ecosystem. Even at H. B. Look I was fortunate um at H. B. Because of Antonio's leadership, we have topped out mandate to transform how we did business. And I talked about my next gen IT program in last year's cube interview. But at the same time while we were changing our customer partners experience from ordering to order processing to supply chain to finance. Uh We decided this pivot of becoming as a service company. And if you think about that pivot it's pretty common if it was a technology company or non technology company at HP. We were very used to selling a product and coming back three years later at the time of refresh of infrastructure or hardware. That's no more true for us now we are becoming as a service or a subscription company and I. T. Played a major role to enable that quote to cash experience. Which is very different than the traditional experience around how we stay connected with our customer, how we proactively understand their behavior. I always talk about this term. Um Digital exhaust which results into data which can result into better insight and you can not only Upsell cross l because now you have more data about your product usage, but first and the foremost give what your customer wants in a much better way because you can proactively understand their needs and wants because you are providing a digital product versus a physical product. So this is the change that most of the companies are now going through. If you look at Domino's transition, there are pills a sellers but they did better because they had better digital experience. If you look at Chipotle, these are food service companies I. K which is a furniture manufacturer across the board. We have helped our customers and industries to understand how to become a more digital provider. And and remember when uh hp says edge to cloud platform as a service edges the product, the customers who we deal with and how do we get that? Help them get their data to understand how the product is behaving and then get the information to cloud for further analysis. Um and understanding from the data that comes out of the products that gets up, >>I think you've been HP now think around three years and I've been watching of course for decades. Hp. Hp then HP is I feel like it's entering now the sort of third phase of its transformation, your phase one was okay, we gotta figure out how to deal or or operate as a separate companies. Okay. That took some time and then it was okay. Now how do we align our resources and you know, what are the waves that we're gonna ride? And how do we how do we take our human capital, our investments and what bets do we place and and all in on as a service. And now it's like okay how do we deliver on all those promises? So pretty massive transformations. You talked about edge to cloud as a service so you've got this huge pivot in your in your business. What's the technology strategy to support that transformation? >>Yeah that's a that's a great question. So as I mentioned first your second phase which was becoming a stand alone company was the next N. I. T. Program very broad and um S. Four and 60 related ecosystem application. We're even in the traditional business there was a realization that we were 100 20 billion company. We are 30 billion company. We need different types of technologies as well as more integrated across our product line across the globe. And um we I'm very happy to report that we are the last leg of next in I. T. Transformation where we have brought in new customer experience through low touch or not touch order pressing. A very strong as four capabilities. Where we are now able to run all global orders across all our hardware and services business together. And I'm happy to report that we have been able to successfully run through the transformation which a typical company of our size would take five or six years to do in around close to three years. But at the same time while we were building this foundation and the capabilities to be able to do other management, supply chain and data and analytics platforms. We also made the pivot to go to as a service now for as a service and subscription selling. It needs a very different quote to Kazakh cash experience for our customers and that's where we had to bring in um platforms like brim to do um subscription building, convergent charging and a whole different way to address. But we were lucky to have this transformation completed on which we could bolt on this new capability and we had the data and another X platform built which now these as a service products can also use to drive better insight into our customer behavior um as well as how they're using our product a real time for our operations teams. >>Well they say follow the money in the cube. We love to say follow the day to day is obviously a crucial component of competitive advantage business value. So you talk a little bit more about the role of data. I'm interested I'm interested in where I. T. Fits uh you know a lot of companies that have a Chief data officer or Ceo sometimes they're separate. Sometimes they they work you know for each other or Cdo works for C. I. O. How do you guys approach the whole data conversation? >>Yeah that's a that's a great question and has been top of the mind of a lot of C E O C I O S. Chief digital officers in many different companies. The way we have set it up here is do we do have a chief data officer and we do have a head of uh technology and platform and data within I. T. Look. The way I see is that I call the term data torture if we have multiple data lakes, if we have multiple data locations and the data is not coming together at one place at the first time that it comes out of the source system, we end up with data swamps and it's very difficult to drive insights. It's very difficult to have a single version of truth. So HP had two pronged approach. First one was as part of this next gen i. T. Transformation we embarked upon the journey first of all to define our customers and products in a very uniform way across the globe. It's called entity Master Data and Product Master Data Program. These were very very difficult program. We are now happy to report that we can understand the customer from code stage to servicing stage beginning to end across all our system. It's been a tough journey but it was a effort well spent at the same time while we were building this message capability, we also invest the time in our analytics platform because we are generating so much data now globally as one footprint. How do we link our data link to R. S. A. P. And Salesforce and all these systems where our customer data flows through and create analytics and insight from it from our customers or our operations team. At the same time, we also created a chief data officer role where the responsibility is really to drive business from understanding what decision making an analytics they need around product, around customer, around their usage, around their experience to be able to drive better alignment with our customers and products going forward. So this creates efficiencies in the organization. If you have a leader who is taking care of your platforms and data building single source of truth and you have a leader who is propagating this mature notion of handling data as enterprise data and driving that focus on understanding the metrics and the insight that the businesses need to drive better customer alignment. That's when we gain those efficiencies and behind the scenes, the chief data officer and the data leader within my organization worked very, very closely to understand each other needs sometimes out of the possible where do we need the data processing? Is it at the edge? Is it in the cloud? What's the best way to drive the technology and the platform forward? And they kind of rely on each other's knowledge and intelligence to give us give us superior results. And I have done data analytics in many different companies. This model works where you have focused on insight and analytics without because data without insight is of no value, but at the same time you need clean data. You need efficient, fast platforms to process that insight at the functional nonfunctional requirements that are business partners have and that's how we have established in here and we have seen many successes recently. As of now, >>I want to ask you a kind of a harder maybe it's not harder question. It's a weird question around single version of the truth because it's clearly a challenge for organizations and there's many applications workloads that require that single version of the truth. The operational systems, the transaction systems, the HR the salesforce. Clearly you have to have a single version of the truth. I feel like however we're on the cusp of a new era where business lines see an opportunity for whatever their own truth to work with a partner to create some kind of new data product. And it's early days in that. But I want to and maybe not the right question for HP. But I wonder if you see it with in your ecosystems where where it's it's yes, single version of truth is sort of one class of data and analytics gotta have that nail down data quality, everything else. But then there's this sort of artistic version of the data where business people need more freedom. They need more latitude to create. Are you seeing that? And maybe you can help me put that into context. >>Uh, that's a great question. David. I'm glad you asked it. So I think tom Davenport who is known in the data space talks about the offensive and the defensive use cases of leveraging data. I think the piece that you talked about where it's clean, it's pristine, it's quality. It's all that most of those offer the offensive use cases where you are improving company's operations incrementally because you have very clean that I have very good understanding of how my territories are doing, how my customers are doing how my products are doing. How am I meeting my sls or how my financials are looking? There's no room for failure in that area. The other area is though, which works on the same set of data. It's not a different set of data, but the need is more around finding needles in the haystack to come up with new needs, new ones and customers or new business models that we go with. The way we have done it is we do take this data take out what's not allowed for everybody to be seen and then what we call is a private space. But that's this entire data available to our business leader, not real time because the need is not as real time because they're doing more what we call this predictive analytics to be able to leverage the same data set and run their analytics. And we work very closely with business in its we educate them. We tell them how to leverage this data set and use it and gather their feedback to understand what they need in that space to continue to run with their with their analytics. I think as we talk about hindsight insight and foresight hindsight and insight happens more from this clean data lakes where you have authenticity, you have quality and then most of the foresight happens in a different space where the users have more leverage to use data in many different ways to drive analytics and insights which is not readily available. >>Thank you for that. That's interesting discussion. You know digital transformation. It's a journey and it's going to take many years. A lot of ways, not a lot of ways 2020 was a forced March to digital. If you weren't a digital business, you were out of business and you really didn't have much time to plan. So now organizations are stepping back saying, okay let's really lean into our strategy the journey and along the way there's gonna be blind spots, there's bumps in the road when you look out what are the potential disruptions that you see maybe in terms of how companies are currently approaching their digital transformations? That's a great question. >>Dave and I'm going to take a little bit more longer term view on this topic. Right in what's top of my mind um recently is the whole topic of E. S. G. Environmental, social and governance. Most of the companies have governance in place, right? Because they are either public companies or they're under some kind of uh scrutiny from different regulatory bodies or what not. Even if you're a startup, you need to do things with our customers and what not. It has been there for companies. It continues to be there. We the public companies are very good at making sure that we have the right compliance, right privacy, right governance in in in place. Now we'll talk about cyber security. I think that creates a whole new challenge in that governance space. However, we have the set up within our companies to be able to handle that challenge. Now, when we go to social, what happened last year was really important. And now as each and every company, we need to think about what are we doing from our perspective to play our part in that. And not only the bigger companies leaders at our level, I would say that Between last March and this year, I have hired more than 400 people during pandemic, which was all virtual, but me and my team have made sure that we are doing the right thing to drive inclusion and diversity, which is also very big objective for h P E. And Antonio himself has been very active in various round tables in us at the world Economic forum level and I think it's really important for companies to create that opportunity, remove that disparity that's there for the underserved communities. If we want to continue to be successful in this world too, create innovative products and services, we need to sell it to the broader cross section of populations and to be able to do that, we need to bring them in our fold and enable them to create that um, equal consumption capabilities across different sets of people. Hp has taken many initiatives and so are many companies. I feel like uh, The momentum that companies have now created around the topic of equality is very important. I'm also very excited to see that a lot of startups are now coming up to serve that 99% versus just the shiny ones, as you know, in the bay area to create better delivery methods of food or products. Right. The third piece, which is environmental, is extremely important as well as we have seen recently in many companies and where even the dollar or the economic value is flowing are around the companies which are serious about environmental HP recently published its living Progress report. We have been in the forefront of innovation to reduce carbon emissions, we help our customers, um, through those processes. Again, if we do, if our planet is on fire, none of us will exist, right. So we all have to do that every little part to be able to do better. And I'm happy to report, I myself as a person, solar panels, battery electric cars, whatever I can do, but I think something more needs to happen right where as an individual I need to pitch in, but maybe utilities will be so green in the future that I don't need to put panels on my roof, which again creates a different kind of uh waste going forward. So when you ask me about disruptions, I personally feel that successful company like ours have to have E. S. G. Top of their mind and think of products and services from that perspective, which creates equal opportunity for people, which creates better environment sustainability going forward. And, you know, our customers are investors are very interested in seeing what we are doing to be able to serve that cause uh for for bigger cross section of companies, and I'm most of the time very happy to share with my C I. O cohort around how are H. P E F s capabilities creates or feeds into the circular economy, how much e waste we have recycled or kept it off of landfills are green capabilities, How it reduces the evils going forward as well as our sustainability initiatives, which can help other, see IOS to be more um carbon neutral going forward as well. >>You know, that's a great answer, rashmi, thank you for that because I gotta tell you hear a lot of mumbo jumbo about E S G. But that was a very substantive, thoughtful response that I think, I think tech companies in particular are have to lead in our leading in this area. So I really appreciate that sentiment. I want to end with a very important topic which is cyber. It's obviously, you know, escalated in, in the news the last several months. It's always in the news, but You know, 10 or 15 years ago there was this mentality of failure equals fire. Now we realize, hey, they're gonna get in, it's how you handle it. Cyber has become a board level topic, you know? Years ago there was a lot of discussion, oh, you can't have the sec ops team working for the C. I. O. Because that's like the Fox watching the Henhouse, that's changed. Uh it's been a real awakening, a kind of a rude awakening. So the world is now more virtual, you've gotta secure physical uh assets. I mean, any knucklehead can now become a ransomware attack, er they can, they can, they can buy ransomware as a services in the dark, dark web. So that's something we've never seen before. You're seeing supply chains get hacked and self forming malware. I mean, it's a really scary time. So you've got these intellectual assets, it's a top priority for organizations. Are you seeing a convergence of the sea? So roll the C. I. O. Roll the line of business roles relative to sort of prior years in terms of driving security throughout organizations. >>This is a great question. And this was a big discussion at my public board meeting a couple of days ago. It's as as I talk about many topics, if you think digital, if you think data, if you think is you, it's no more one organizations, business, it's now everybody's responsibility. I saw a Wall Street Journal article a couple of days ago where Somebody has compared cyber to 9-11-type scenario that if it happens for a company, that's the level of impact you feel on your on your operations. So, you know, all models are going to change where C so reports to see IO at H P E. We are also into products or security and that's why I see. So is a peer of mine who I worked with very closely who also worked with product teams where we are saving our customers from a lot of pain in this space going forward. And H. B. E. Itself is investing enormous amount of efforts in time in coming out of products which are which are secured and are not vulnerable to these types of attacks. The way I see it is see So role has become extremely critical in every company and the big part of that role is to make people understand that cybersecurity is also everybody's responsibility. That's why in I. T. V. Propagate def sec ups. Um As we talk about it, we are very very careful about picking the right products and services. This is one area where companies cannot shy away from investing. You have to continuously looking at cyber security architecture, you have to continuously look at and understand where the gaps are and how do we switch our product or service that we use from the providers to make sure our companies stay secure The training, not only for individual employees around anti phishing or what does cybersecurity mean, but also to the executive committee and to the board around what cybersecurity means, what zero trust means, but at the same time doing drive ins, we did it for business continuity and disaster recovery. Before now at this time we do it for a ransomware attack and stay prepared as you mentioned. And we all say in tech community, it's always if not when no company can them their chest and say, oh, we are fully secured because something can happen going forward. But what is the readiness for something that can happen? It has to be handled at the same risk level as a pandemic or earthquake or a natural disaster. And assume that it's going to happen and how as a company we will behave when when something like this happen. So I'm here's believer in the framework of uh protect, detect, govern and respond um as these things happen. So we need to have exercises within the company to ensure that everybody is aware of the part that they play day today but at the same time when some event happen and making sure we do very periodic reviews of I. T. And cyber practices across the company. There is no more differentiation between I. T. And O. T. That was 10 years ago. I remember working with different industries where OT was totally out of reach of I. T. And guess what happened? Wanna cry and Petra and XP machines were still running your supply chains and they were not protected. So if it's a technology it needs to be protected. That's the mindset. People need to go with invest in education, training, um awareness of your employees, your management committee, your board and do frequent exercises to understand how to respond when something like this happen. See it's a big responsibility to protect our customer data, our customers operations and we all need to be responsible and accountable to be able to provide all our products and services to our customers when something unforeseen like this happens, >>Russian, very generous with your time. Thank you so much for coming back in the CUBA is great to have you again. >>Thank you. Dave was really nice chatting with you. Thanks >>for being with us for our ongoing coverage of HP discover 21 This is Dave Volonte, you're watching the virtual cube, the leader in digital tech coverage. Be right back. >>Mm hmm, mm.

>>from >>Around the globe. It's the cube with digital coverage of IBM think 2021 brought to you by IBM. Welcome to the cubes coverage of IBM Think 2021. I'm your host lisa martin today. Have a new guest new to the cube moderate Tabla, the director of strategic partnerships for enterprise application services is joining me moderate. It's nice to have you on the program. >>Thank you lisa. Very excited to be here and hello everyone. >>So different this year. Again Virtual like last year we're going to talk about digital transformation and we saw this huge acceleration in 2020. The massive adoption of SAS applications. We want to talk though about IBM managed services for S AP applications. So before we get into that I'd love for you to be able to describe what your role is to our audience. >>Absolutely lisa. So good day everyone. I've been with IBM for over 23 years and my current role, I run the strategic alliances for IBM basically in the E. R. P. Space S. A. P. Being our primary strategic partner, I have a global team of architects and we basically look at market requirements. Talk to a lot of customers, talk to our business partner S. A. P. Obviously um you know, try to help them would come up with a solution. Well the transformation journey to the cloud and hopefully today, you know, we'll elaborate a little bit more on the exact work that we do in this space. So very happy to be here. Thank you. >>Sure. So we're going to dissect the IBM s. A. P. Relationship. I think you even worked at S. A. P. Before your 23 year tenure at IBM. So we'll get to some of that as well. But help us understand customers have so much choice each day. There is more and more interest why should a customer choose IBM as their strategic partner for this digital transformation journey. >>Well really, IBM has been in this essay p business for many, many decades. As you know Um we have many many certified people in S. A. P. close to 40,000 people actually globally. Um And we can help the clients in various aspects of their journey. So you know the typical cloud journey has four different aspects to it. Um You need the advice so you need basically systems integration services to help customers actually define the scope on, you know what they actually want to either upgrade, bring it to current as well as you know what workloads they want to move to the cloud. We can help customers with our Systems integration services called the Global Business Business Services in IBM we can help them with their entire planning, we can help them with the actual move to the cloud. So IBM offers a whole different variety of services for migration or not only to see ASAP workloads. I mean ASAP typically ends up being the heart of the workloads that any of the major customers run but surrounding SCP, there's a lot of other applications so we can help plan that entire journey for advice and then move it as well as in the interim. You know, there's also another step which can be some customers. They need to build net new and you know upgrade their applications to the latest technologies so we can help them with that. And then once the building move is over, obviously customers need help with the actual steady state run state environment and that's where this key service that we have managed services for SCP applications helps them. So our certifications with S. A. P. And the fact that we have consultants that are certified and all these different aspects of the journey can really help your clients. The other part, I would say that IBM is really a hybrid cloud provider. So obviously we have our cloud service, the IBM cloud, but we can offer this service meeting the customer where they need to be. So we are a client centric service, so if the customer has a choice of AWS or Azure, uh we can meet them left. So this is how, you know, we can really help our customers with our expertise. I know the data point to note that, you know, 70 80 of the enterprise customers still have not moved their workloads to the cloud. So this is a space, especially with Covid, as you've seen what's happened, you know, customers now are really, really looking to accelerate the journey because it's become a necessity, It's no longer something that our Ceo and C I O can push to the right, right, this is something they have to act now. So I began with all these various services, you know, specifically good in the S A. P area. Um, and given that we've been managing these production workloads for a lot of these enterprise customers on our cloud services for many, many years, we have the experience, we can truly help them with their journey >>And as you said, that's so critical of these days. One of the things that I think we learned in 2020 is is there was no time like the present, it really became such a massive shift that for business survival, those that weren't digitized definitely were in some hot water. Talk to me. So you talked about the IBM s, a P relationship being longstanding, Can you talk to me about the different aspects of the alliance and how that helps you guys to meet customers where they are? >>Sure. Um so s. a. p. and idea, we've been strategic partners for over 46 years. That's a long time. The partnership obviously has evolved over the years and I'll talk about you know a few of the different aspects where we've been partners um you know, the alliance initially obviously started, you know, IBM is in multiple businesses as you know, we have our one of the largest systems integrators in the world from a global business services point of view as well as one of the largest application planet services providers. So that's uh you know part of the alliance then we have our server groups, the power systems that IBM has. So that's another dimension of the alliance where um you know 5 6000 plus ASAP clients even today are still running um there? S a the applications on the power systems, whether it's on premise or also in some of the cloud deployment models. Historically we also had obviously the Database DB two alliance, but now with the S. A. P. S moved to Hannah um that's kind of a little bit of a mute point. Obviously it still exists, but most of the clients are now obviously being encouraged really to adopt S. A. P. S latest S four hana from the services standpoint. The other facet, you know, is really around the cloud services. So that's really our topic today right. Um in the cloud services area we have alliances with S. A. P very very strong alliances that have existed for you know, almost a decade now. Um as I said we've been managing the production workloads for very very large customers in many different industries, their entire supply chains. HR financial systems are running on IBM either in the old traditional hosting models um or also in our cloud models for the past 10 plus years. Right as IBM has evolved, so we have made sure that we do a whole different types of certifications with S. A. P. To stay current. Um many of these certifications are done either you know every two years, some are done every year. And if anyone checks, you know, the S. A. P. Service marketplace website which is owned by S. A. P. You can see IBM listed in all these different angles as a certified provider. There isn't another provider that can claim this breath in terms of certifications that IBM has done and that's why customers can benefit either from one or two of these services that IBMS provides or obviously a combination is a single vendor if the customer needs. So, you know, we have the sex, we have the credibility, we have decades of, you know, Delivery excellence in these areas, servicing these clients. Lots of the Fortune, 100 customers actually are running. Um there? S a p workloads on the IBM systems, whether in traditional hosting or in a hybrid cloud deployment. Some cases were actually providing services for customers that run their SCP workloads on premise. So we cater to that, you know, sets of clients as well and then of course others that are purely on our cloud. Um IBM cloud as well as hyper scholars. Yeah, so long >>list of certifications, that seems to be one of the biggest differentiators that you talked about me a little bit about how things have evolved over the last 12 to 18 months. in terms of how is IBMS focus changed for hybrid cloud with S. A. P. >>Yeah, so the focus changed if you know, you know, until last year we will call the cloud and cognitive company. Um This year of course the whole company has changed and we're going through a major transformation at the moment. We are the hybrid cloud company now. And that that name change means a lot. It means a lot in the sense that it gives choices to the customer, that's what the whole mission is all about. We want to make sure that customers are consuming IBM services and the IBM wants to meet them where they want to be. So there's you know, flexibility of choices in terms of hybrid, another cloud deployment model. So most customers in the S. A. P. Area, you know, they're looking for either just a pure private cloud deployment or they're looking for public cloud deployment or a combination and some are because, you know, there? S A. P. S. Footprint sizes are so large. Think about the multinational global companies, you know, and then they operate in so many different regions of the world and their data sizes of their databases are so large. Perhaps, you know, the public cloud really isn't a good fit yet. These customers are looking to move some sort of their workloads to the cloud. So that's where this hybrid cloud helps them. Because customers, you know, 90 plus percent of the clients today are really not choosing one hyper Scaler as their deployment option. They're really looking at multiple. So because they're running their workloads not just ASAP, but everything else, you know, SCP always brings along a whole bunch of other applications like tax applications and other interfaces, homegrown applications analytics that the customers are using. So if you want to take advantage of the true hybrid cloud and the benefits of all the various um, deployments and hyper scale is available in that region. Really, the hybrid cloud strategy from IBM is a perfect fit because we give them choices of deployment. We're not saying that you have to deploy an IBM cloud. Um, we're saying you can deploy either on premise VWs as your idea of cloud. Really what makes sense? You know, best sense for the types of war clothes that the customer is looking at. So that's how the strategy for IBM has completely changed to meet the clients, you know, for what they're actually looking for. Talk to me a >>little bit about the go to market so I B M and S A P longstanding decades old relationship, A lot of certifications that you talked about. We're talking about business critical Applications, you mentioned supply chain a minute ago and I can't help but think it how supply chain has been affected in the last year. What is the good market approach with respect to providing consultation services to help customers determine? Should we migrate to what Hyper Scaler and how and when? >>Yeah, so we can help them with that? Um, so hyper hyper scale is obviously, you know, IBM has been listed for example, as the leader in Gartner 2020 and you know, there's lots of other stats that show them that IBM is a leader in application services, in consulting services, application management services as well as managed services. So these are all different, Right? And you can see us being listed as a leader either it's in Gartner or I. D. C. Or Horse or Wave. And for many reasons and you know, IBM actually has one series of pinnacle awards from S. A. P. Over the U. S. How this helps the clients really determined is that, you know, IBM obviously does a lot of studies externally. We have internal as well as external facing views of comparatives of the various hyper scholars, um you know, including Aws, Azure, G. C. P. And so on. So when a customer comes to us for asking for advice, um, and so on, we basically look at our own intellectual properties, all the analysis that has been done. And more importantly, we look at the full scope of services that the customer wants is doing. What sort of a business are there in. We have industry experts, there's E. R. P. Strategy, um, folks within IBM. So, you know, they go after a certain industry and when they, let's say, you know, they've gone after the oil and gas industry, for example, they will look at multiple customers in that particular space. So based on their experiences, we can actually define the right road map for the client to be able to help them to move their work clothes to this hybrid cloud strategy that I just mentioned. Right? So that's how we can help them because we have the expertise in that industry as well. >>And I'm curious moderate in the last year with so much flux and rapidly changing market conditions, Did you >>see any >>one or two industries in particular really leading the charge here and coming to IBM. S. A. P. For help on this transformation journey which has been accelerated by a couple of years. >>Suddenly the retail industry for sure, right. I mean in spite of the crisis, I think the retail industry did pretty well, right? Because people still have to buy stuff. Of course, the whole buying behavior change. No question. Um You and I don't know about two days of, but for me, you know, I was never a major online shopper. Oh yeah. You know, I just about everything. Um previously it used to be select things here and there, but now it's totally changed, right? So that industry certainly has accelerated. No question. We've had a lot of those coming. The other industries that I've seen. The change in the last 12, 18 months is really, for example, you know, the banking industry and so on. Um IBM basically, you know, launched a lot of services in the financial services sector for this reason. Um So those are of course transforming very fast to keep up with the market. Um and I'm sure there's others, right? But these are the two that come to mind. Yeah, >>two that have been most affected and needed to pivot so quickly. In addition to health care. Let me ask you one final question here. Before we wrap. Talk to me about the advantages of using the PMC partner managed cloud s a P license resale model. The advantages of using that and the benefits. >>Sure. Um so we, you know, so far our discussion was really focused around, you know, the various service capabilities that IBM has in terms of our capabilities for helping clients with hyper scholars and hybrid cloud. We also need to spend a little bit of time talking about the operations model. Right? So when they're running their production workloads on IBM PMC is yet another dimension. So what PMC partner managed cloud is really some very limited partnerships that s A P does And the IBM is the lead on that one in this base. What ASAP allows is the partner, which in this case is IBM to resell the ASAP software license to a customer. So IBM has the rights globally to resell the license and why is that beneficial to the client? Because now, um, IBM can actually turn around the S. A. P license and have the customer pay us in a SAS model. So it basically is now an apex model where the customer is basically paying, you know, a monthly fee as an example, so there's no upfront cost to the client and they basically pay IBM and IBM PS ASAP. So IBM is kind of holding the risk if you will on behalf of the customer, it gives customers more choices, more flexibilities, better pricing approach. So if the customer wants as an example to buy everything the full package, including systems implementation services, deployment models with choices on a cloud, whether it's IBM cloud or others as well as the license itself. IBM has this end to end capability today. We've been selling it to several clients for a few years in several geography is right. So that's the advantage behind it. >>Excellent. Thanks for breaking that down moderate and joining me today talking about what's new with I B M and S A P, the opportunities for customers to accelerate their digital transformation. We appreciate you stopping by. >>Thank you very much, lisa truly enjoyed it. Thank you. >>Good. Me too. For moderate Tabla. I'm lisa martin. You're watching the cubes coverage of IBM think 2021. >>Mm.

(upbeat music) >> Narrator: From around the globe. It's theCUBE. With digital coverage of IBM Think 2021, brought to you by IBM. >> Welcome to theCUBE's digital coverage of IBM Think 2021. I'm Lisa Martin. Next joining me is Leo LaBranche, Director of global strategic initiatives at AWS. Leo, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you, happy to be here. >> So talk to me about AWS and IBM what's going on there with their relationship. What are some of the things that are significant for both partners? >> Yeah, absolutely, IBM's relationship really started with us around 2016. I would say it was a little bit more opportunistic at the time. We knew there was an opportunity to go to market together. We knew there were some great things we could do for our customers. But we hadn't quite cracked to crack the code so to speak on when and where and why we were going to partner at that point. You fast forward into this sort of 2017 to 2019 timeframe. And we became, I'd say a lot more intentional about how we were going to go to market, where we were going to invest areas such as SAP, et cetera. Were an early one that we identified and I'd say the ball really started rolling sort of in the 2018 timeframe. A combination of a number of different things occurred, you know, the acquisition of Red Hat, obviously, you know Red Hat is a very significant, was a very significant partner with AWS, prior to the acquisition. And so post acquisition, you combine that with ramping up a workforce, focused on AWS, combined with a number of different competencies that IBM really invested in, around migration as an example, or SAP. And, you know, the, the ball really starting to roll quickly after that, you know, I'd say the last 18 months or so we both invested significantly in the relationship expansion around the world really, and joined resources and capability to make sure that we're going to markets sort of partnered intentional way rather than sort of an opportunistic. >> Oh, go ahead. >> So I'd say so far, that's absolutely been paying off in that we are seeing a number of wins all around the world across a broad set of industries, as well as the broad set of technologies. So, you know, the strength of, of IBM's consulting services in particular, but also their software combined with the strength of our platform has really proven to be successful for our customers. >> So you said started in 2016, really started taking shape in the last couple of years, that Red Hat acquisition. Talk to me about what's in this for customers. I imagine customers that are expanding or needing to move workloads into the cloud, or maybe more of a hybrid cloud approach. What are some of the big benefits that customers are going to gain from this partnership? >> Yeah, absolutely. And the reality is IBM has a long and storied history and relationship with their customers, right? They run and manage many of the workloads. They really know the customer's business incredibly well. They have domain expertise and industry and then the technology expertise from a professional services perspective to really help navigate the waters and determine what the right strategy is around moving to the cloud, right? You combine that with the depth and breadth of the skills and capabilities and services that AWS provides. And the fact that IBM has invested significantly in making sure their professional services are deeply steeped in our technology and capabilities. It's a great combination of really understanding the customer's needs. Plus the art of the possible, honestly, when it comes to technology that we provide, really can accelerate both and mitigate risk when it comes to moving to the cloud. >> That risk mitigation is key. So you guys recently, AWS recently launched if I'm going to get this right. Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS or ROSA. Can you talk to me a little bit about ROSA? >> Yeah so, Red Hat obviously very well known, and ultimately adopted within the enterprise. We have built a fully managed service around Red Hat on AWS. What that means is you'll have access to essentially the capabilities that that Red Hat would normally provide but all containerized within a solution that allows you to get access to AWS services, right. The other benefit here is normally you would get sort of a multi-vendor with invoicing and cost model, right? Where you get billed from Red Hat, get billed from Amazon. You get billed from IBM. In this case, it's essentially a wholistic service in which there's a single sort of invoicing and vendor relationship, right. So it's combination of capabilities that normally would be provided via Red Hat combined with access to cloud and all the interfaces and capabilities around OpenShift, et cetera, that you could do there. Plus a more interesting and beneficial commercial model. >> So streamlined pricing models, streamlined operating model for customers. Talk to me about some of the customers that have adopted it. Give me a look into some of the industries where you've seen good adoption and some of the results that they're gaining so far. (loud engine buzz in background) >> Yeah one second, sorry, it's like insanely loud. >> Man's voice: No worries, let's just take a pause. We can just, so yeah we'll go right as if Lisa just finished the question. So just take a breather as long as it needs. And then whenever you're ready whenever that's died down, just like give it a beat give it like a second and then just right as if she just asked the question. >> Answer the question then. >> Man's voice: Yeah. >> All right. >> Man's voice: I'll cut it out as if nothing happened. >> Give me two minutes. So actually on your question, I know the answer from things that I've done recently, but was there an official answer Theresa I'm supposed to give on this? >> Teresa: No, not really I mean, I think what you're talking about on Red Hat specifically >> Right, ROSA's early adoption. >> Teresa: Yeah, no I mean, there there's a product page and stuff, it's really about just the ability of customers to be able to run those solutions on the AWS console it is really the, the gist of it. And that it's fully integrated. >> I'm not sure some of the examples I know of are publicly refrenceable. >> Lisa: That's okay, you could just say, you know, customer in XYZ industry, that's totally fair. I'm not so worried about that. >> Teresa: Yeah I don't know if so ROSA. Lisa, ROSA was just launched in March and so it's brand new so I don't have the customer stories yet. So that's why I don't have them listed for Leo. >> Lisa: Oh, that's fine, that's totally fine. Maybe we can talk about, you know, since the launch was just around the corner, some of the things that have been going on, the momentum interest from customers, questions conversations can be more like that as you're launching the GTM. >> Yeah, and there's certainly a couple of industries that they have targeted I'm going to go with that as well as a couple of customers, like, >> Teresa: Thank you, Lisa. >> Lisa: Sure, of course. >> I think they went around the corner. (Lisa laughs) >> Lisa: All right, let me know and I'll re-ask the question. I'll tweak it a little bit. >> Yeah, go ahead. >> Lisa: All right, so talk to me about, ROSA just launched very recently. Talk to me about customer interest, adoption. Maybe some of the industries in particular if you're seeing any industry that's kind of really leading edge here and taking advantage of this new managed service. >> Yeah, absolutely, so no big surprise, right? The the existing customer base that currently uses Red Hat Linux, and some of the options in OpenShift, et cetera that are out today are then the right customers to potentially look at this when it comes to moving forward. You know, industry-wise certainly there are areas within financial services, banking, insurance, et cetera. We're also seeing some around manufacturing, a little less so, but some in media and telco as well. So it's, it's a broad swath of any applicability of Red Hat and OpenShift is somewhat universal but the early customer bases has largely been sort of in those three areas. >> What I'm curious what are the key target audiences are these, Red Hat customers are these AWS customers. IBM all three? >> Yeah. I mean, there isn't necessarily the perfect customer that we're necessarily looking for, as much as if there are existing customers that are currently using Linux or using Red Hat. If there are someone who, a customer who currently has a relationship with either AWS or IBM there's an opportunity to essentially look at it from any of the angles. If you're already on cloud or you've already experienced AWS in some shape or form there's an opportunity to potentially to leverage ROSA, to further expand that capability and also have some more flexibility so to speak. If you're already using IBM as a professional services provider and advisory firm then they absolutely have the expertise and understanding of this product set to help you understand how it could be best leveraged, right. So you can kind of look at it from either of the dimensions. If it's a customer that's completely new to all of us then we're happy to talk to you. But it's something that will definitely take a little bit more explanation to understand as to why you should, or shouldn't consider us with this multicloud OpenShift type solution. >> Got it, let's shift gears a bit and talk about SAP. When we think about customers looking to migrate SAP workloads to the cloud, looking at the right cloud providers those are really big, challenging strategic decisions for leadership to make. Talk to me about why when you're in those conversations AWS is the best choice. >> Absolutely, I mean, really AWS, let's say with SAP and with with many of our services is really looking to give all the options that you could conceivably need or want in order to engage in cloud migration and transformation. press AP specifically, right? There are a number of different options, right. You could go for a lift and shift or upgrade from many databases to a suite on SAP HANA could potentially look to modernize and leverage cloud services, post migration as well. And then the sort of final pinnacle of that is a complete transformation to S four or S four HANA as far as why AWS specifically beyond just choice, you know, from a cost perspective, it's pretty compelling. And we have some pretty compelling business and use cases around ultimately the cost savings that come when you move from an on-premise SAP implementation to cloud beyond that, usually the cloud migration itself is an opportunity to condense or reduce the number of instances you're paying for, from an SAP perspective, which then further reduces cost. From a reliability perspective, you know, AWS is the world's most secure, extensive reliable cloud infrastructure, right? Any of the instances that you put on AWS are instantly I'd say fairly instantly provisioned in such a way that they are provided across multiple what we call Availability Zones which is giving you sort of the resiliency and the stability that really no other cloud provider can provide. On the security front, I mean this is really a unique position in that AWS plus IBM and the security, the depth in security services you know, numerous years of professional services work that IBM has done in the security space. You know, they have roughly 8,000 or so cybersecurity experts within IBM. So the combination of their expertise in security plus the security of our platform is a great combination. I'd say the final one is around performance, right? AWS offers many more cloud native options around certified SAP instances, specifically all the way from 256 gigabyte option all the way up to 24 terabytes which is the largest of its kind. And as those who have implemented SAP know it's a very resource intensive. So having the ability to do that from a performance perspective is a key differentiator for sure. >> Talk to me from your opinion about why IBM for SAP on AWS, why should customers go that direction for their projects? >> Yeah, you know, IBM has over 40 years of experience in implementing SAP for their customers right. And they've done, I think it's over 6,000 SAP migrations, 40,000 global SAP consultants around the world. Right, so from a capability and depth of experience, you know, there's a lot of nuance to doing it. SAP implementation, particularly one that's then moving from on-prem to the cloud. You know, they've got the experience right. Beyond that they have industry specific solutions that are pre-configured. So I think that there's 12 industry specific solutions pre-configured for SAP, it allows, you know roughly 20 to 30% acceleration when it comes to implementation of platforms. So combination of just depth of experience, depth of capability combined with these solutions to accelerate are all key reasons for sure. >> The acceleration you bring up, sorry is interesting because we saw in the last year the acceleration of digital transformation projects and businesses needing to pivot again and again, and again to figure out how to survive and be successful in this very dynamic market in which we're still living. Anything industry-wise specific that you saw that was really driving the acceleration and the use cases for ROSA in the last year? >> Yeah so, you know SAP, we saw an interesting trend as a result of what's everyone's been experiencing in the last year with COVID, et cetera. You know, many organizations postponed large ERP implementations and large SAP migrations, because of what you just said, right. They weren't entirely sure what would need to be done in order to survive either a competitive threats or more just the global threats that were occurring. So what we saw was, really none of the transformations went away. They, were put on hold for a period of time let's say six to nine months ago maybe even a year ago almost. In lieu of I would say more top line revenue generating or innovative type solutions that maybe were focused specifically at, you know, the changing dynamic with COVID. Since then we've seen a combination of those new ideas, right? Combination of the new innovation around healthcare of course, but also public sector and, you know a lot around employment and then engagement there. We've seen a combination of those new ideas and new innovations with the original goal of optimizing transforming SAP ERP, et cetera. And then combining the two to allow access to the data, that sits inside the SAP implementation the SAP. Combine the data in SAP with all these new innovations and then ultimately use that to sort of capitalize on what the future businesses are going to be. That's been huge, it's been very interesting to see some organizations completely change their business model over the course of the last 12 months. In ways they probably had never intended to before right? But it's, absolutely become an opportunity in a time of a lot of challenges. >> Agreed there are silver linings and we've seen a lot of those interesting opportunities to your point that businesses probably would never have come up with had there not been a forcing function like we've been living with. Leo thank you for joining me today. Talking to me about what's going on with IBM and AWS. We'll be excited to follow what happens with ROSA as it continues to roll out. And we appreciate you joining us on the program. >> Absolutely thank you for your time. >> For Leo Labrunch I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE's digital coverage of IBM think 2021. (upbeat music)

>> Narrator: From around the globe, It's theCUBE. With digital coverage of IBM Think 2021, brought to you by IBM. >> Welcome to theCUBE's digital coverage of IBM Think 2021. I'm Lisa Martin. Next joining me is Leo LaBranche, Director of global strategic initiatives at AWS. Leo, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you, happy to be here. >> So talk to me about AWS and IBM what's going on there with their relationship. What are some of the things that are significant for both partners? >> Yeah, absolutely, IBM's relationship really started with us around 2016. I would say it was a little bit more opportunistic at the time. We knew there was an opportunity to go to market together. We knew there were some great things we could do for our customers. But we hadn't quite cracked to crack the code so to speak on when and where and why we were going to partner at that point. You fast forward into this sort of 2017 to 2019 timeframe. And we became, I'd say a lot more intentional about how we were going to go to market, where we were going to invest areas such as SAP, et cetera. Were an early one that we identified and I'd say the ball really started rolling sort of in the 2018 timeframe. A combination of a number of different things occurred, you know, the acquisition of Red Hat, obviously, you know Red Hat is a very significant, was a very significant partner with AWS, prior to the acquisition. And so post acquisition, you combine that with ramping up a workforce, focused on AWS, combined with a number of different competencies that IBM really invested in, around migration as an example, or SAP. And, you know, the, the ball really starting to roll quickly after that, you know, I'd say the last 18 months or so we both invested significantly in the relationship expansion around the world really, and joined resources and capability to make sure that we're going to markets sort of partnered intentional way rather than sort of an opportunistic. >> Oh, go ahead. >> So I'd say so far, that's absolutely been paying off in that we are seeing a number of wins all around the world across a broad set of industries, as well as the broad set of technologies. So, you know, the strength of, of IBM's consulting services in particular, but also their software combined with the strength of our platform has really proven to be successful for our customers. >> So you said started in 2016, really started taking shape in the last couple of years, that Red Hat acquisition. Talk to me about what's in this for customers. I imagine customers that are expanding or needing to move workloads into the cloud, or maybe more of a hybrid cloud approach. What are some of the big benefits that customers are going to gain from this partnership? >> Yeah, absolutely. And the reality is IBM has a long and storied history and relationship with their customers, right? They run and manage many of the workloads. They really know the customer's business incredibly well. They have domain expertise and industry and then the technology expertise from a professional services perspective to really help navigate the waters and determine what the right strategy is around moving to the cloud, right? You combine that with the depth and breadth of the skills and capabilities and services that AWS provides. And the fact that IBM has invested significantly in making sure their professional services are deeply steeped in our technology and capabilities. It's a great combination of really understanding the customer's needs. Plus the art of the possible, honestly, when it comes to technology that we provide, really can accelerate both and mitigate risk when it comes to moving to the cloud. >> That risk mitigation is key. So you guys recently, AWS recently launched if I'm going to get this right. Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS or ROSA. Can you talk to me a little bit about ROSA? >> Yeah so, Red Hat obviously very well known, and ultimately adopted within the enterprise. We have built a fully managed service around Red Hat on AWS. What that means is you'll have access to essentially the capabilities that that Red Hat would normally provide but all containerized within a solution that allows you to get access to AWS services, right. The other benefit here is normally you would get sort of a multi-vendor with invoicing and cost model, right? Where you get billed from Red Hat, get billed from Amazon. You get billed from IBM. In this case, it's essentially a wholistic service in which there's a single sort of invoicing and vendor relationship, right. So it's combination of capabilities that normally would be provided via Red Hat combined with access to cloud and all the interfaces and capabilities around OpenShift, et cetera, that you could do there. Plus a more interesting and beneficial commercial model. >> So streamlined pricing models, streamlined operating model for customers. Talk to me about some of the customers that have adopted it. Give me a look into some of the industries where you've seen good adoption and some of the results that they're gaining so far. (loud engine buzz in background) >> Yeah one second, sorry, it's like insanely loud. >> Man's voice: No worries, let's just take a pause. We can just, so yeah we'll go right as if Lisa just finished the question. So just take a breather as long as it needs. And then whenever you're ready whenever that's died down, just like give it a beat give it like a second and then just right as if she just asked the question. >> Answer the question then. >> Man's voice: Yeah. >> All right. >> Man's voice: I'll cut it out as if nothing happened. >> Give me two minutes. So actually on your question, I know the answer from things that I've done recently, but was there an official answer Theresa I'm supposed to give on this? >> Teresa: No, not really I mean, I think what you're talking about on Red Hat specifically >> Right, ROSA's early adoption. >> Teresa: Yeah, no I mean, there there's a product page and stuff, it's really about just the ability of customers to be able to run those solutions on the AWS console it is really the, the gist of it. And that it's fully integrated. >> I'm not sure some of the examples I know of are publicly refrenceable. >> Lisa: That's okay, you could just say, you know, customer in XYZ industry, that's totally fair. I'm not so worried about that. >> Teresa: Yeah I don't know if so ROSA. Lisa, ROSA was just launched in March and so it's brand new so I don't have the customer stories yet. So that's why I don't have them listed for Leo. >> Lisa: Oh, that's fine, that's totally fine. Maybe we can talk about, you know, since the launch was just around the corner, some of the things that have been going on, the momentum interest from customers, questions conversations can be more like that as you're launching the GTM. >> Yeah, and there's certainly a couple of industries that they have targeted I'm going to go with that as well as a couple of customers, like, >> Teresa: Thank you, Lisa. >> Lisa: Sure, of course. >> I think they went around the corner. (Lisa laughs) >> Lisa: All right, let me know and I'll re-ask the question. I'll tweak it a little bit. >> Yeah, go ahead. >> Lisa: All right, so talk to me about, ROSA just launched very recently. Talk to me about customer interest, adoption. Maybe some of the industries in particular if you're seeing any industry that's kind of really leading edge here and taking advantage of this new managed service. >> Yeah, absolutely, so no big surprise, right? The the existing customer base that currently uses Red Hat Linux, and some of the options in OpenShift, et cetera that are out today are then the right customers to potentially look at this when it comes to moving forward. You know, industry-wise certainly there are areas within financial services, banking, insurance, et cetera. We're also seeing some around manufacturing, a little less so, but some in media and telco as well. So it's, it's a broad swath of any applicability of Red Hat and OpenShift is somewhat universal but the early customer bases has largely been sort of in those three areas. >> What I'm curious what are the key target audiences are these, Red Hat customers are these AWS customers. IBM all three? >> Yeah. I mean, there isn't necessarily the perfect customer that we're necessarily looking for, as much as if there are existing customers that are currently using Linux or using Red Hat. If there are someone who, a customer who currently has a relationship with either AWS or IBM there's an opportunity to essentially look at it from any of the angles. If you're already on cloud or you've already experienced AWS in some shape or form there's an opportunity to potentially to leverage ROSA, to further expand that capability and also have some more flexibility so to speak. If you're already using IBM as a professional services provider and advisory firm then they absolutely have the expertise and understanding of this product set to help you understand how it could be best leveraged, right. So you can kind of look at it from either of the dimensions. If it's a customer that's completely new to all of us then we're happy to talk to you. But it's something that will definitely take a little bit more explanation to understand as to why you should, or shouldn't consider us with this multicloud OpenShift type solution. >> Got it, let's shift gears a bit and talk about SAP. When we think about customers looking to migrate SAP workloads to the cloud, looking at the right cloud providers those are really big, challenging strategic decisions for leadership to make. Talk to me about why when you're in those conversations AWS is the best choice. >> Absolutely, I mean, really AWS, let's say with SAP and with with many of our services is really looking to give all the options that you could conceivably need or want in order to engage in cloud migration and transformation. press AP specifically, right? There are a number of different options, right. You could go for a lift and shift or upgrade from many databases to a suite on SAP HANA could potentially look to modernize and leverage cloud services, post migration as well. And then the sort of final pinnacle of that is a complete transformation to S four or S four HANA as far as why AWS specifically beyond just choice, you know, from a cost perspective, it's pretty compelling. And we have some pretty compelling business and use cases around ultimately the cost savings that come when you move from an on-premise SAP implementation to cloud beyond that, usually the cloud migration itself is an opportunity to condense or reduce the number of instances you're paying for, from an SAP perspective, which then further reduces cost. From a reliability perspective, you know, AWS is the world's most secure, extensive reliable cloud infrastructure, right? Any of the instances that you put on AWS are instantly I'd say fairly instantly provisioned in such a way that they are provided across multiple what we call Availability Zones which is giving you sort of the resiliency and the stability that really no other cloud provider can provide. On the security front, I mean this is really a unique position in that AWS plus IBM and the security, the depth in security services you know, numerous years of professional services work that IBM has done in the security space. You know, they have roughly 8,000 or so cybersecurity experts within IBM. So the combination of their expertise in security plus the security of our platform is a great combination. I'd say the final one is around performance, right? AWS offers many more cloud native options around certified SAP instances, specifically all the way from 256 gigabyte option all the way up to 24 terabytes which is the largest of its kind. And as those who have implemented SAP know it's a very resource intensive. So having the ability to do that from a performance perspective is a key differentiator for sure. >> Talk to me from your opinion about why IBM for SAP on AWS, why should customers go that direction for their projects? >> Yeah, you know, IBM has over 40 years of experience in implementing SAP for their customers right. And they've done, I think it's over 6,000 SAP migrations, 40,000 global SAP consultants around the world. Right, so from a capability and depth of experience, you know, there's a lot of nuance to doing it. SAP implementation, particularly one that's then moving from on-prem to the cloud. You know, they've got the experience right. Beyond that they have industry specific solutions that are pre-configured. So I think that there's 12 industry specific solutions pre-configured for SAP, it allows, you know roughly 20 to 30% acceleration when it comes to implementation of platforms. So combination of just depth of experience, depth of capability combined with these solutions to accelerate are all key reasons for sure. >> The acceleration you bring up, sorry is interesting because we saw in the last year the acceleration of digital transformation projects and businesses needing to pivot again and again, and again to figure out how to survive and be successful in this very dynamic market in which we're still living. Anything industry-wise specific that you saw that was really driving the acceleration and the use cases for ROSA in the last year? >> Yeah so, you know SAP, we saw an interesting trend as a result of what's everyone's been experiencing in the last year with COVID, et cetera. You know, many organizations postponed large ERP implementations and large SAP migrations, because of what you just said, right. They weren't entirely sure what would need to be done in order to survive either a competitive threats or more just the global threats that were occurring. So what we saw was, really none of the transformations went away. They, were put on hold for a period of time let's say six to nine months ago maybe even a year ago almost. In lieu of I would say more top line revenue generating or innovative type solutions that maybe were focused specifically at, you know, the changing dynamic with COVID. Since then we've seen a combination of those new ideas, right? Combination of the new innovation around healthcare of course, but also public sector and, you know a lot around employment and then engagement there. We've seen a combination of those new ideas and new innovations with the original goal of optimizing transforming SAP ERP, et cetera. And then combining the two to allow access to the data, that sits inside the SAP implementation the SAP. Combine the data in SAP with all these new innovations and then ultimately use that to sort of capitalize on what the future businesses are going to be. That's been huge, it's been very interesting to see some organizations completely change their business model over the course of the last 12 months. In ways they probably had never intended to before right? But it's, absolutely become an opportunity in a time of a lot of challenges. >> Agreed there are silver linings and we've seen a lot of those interesting opportunities to your point that businesses probably would never have come up with had there not been a forcing function like we've been living with. Leo thank you for joining me today. Talking to me about what's going on with IBM and AWS. We'll be excited to follow what happens with ROSA as it continues to roll out. And we appreciate you joining us on the program. >> Absolutely thank you for your time. >> For Leo Labrunch I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE's digital coverage of IBM think 2021. (upbeat music)

>>From around the globe, it's the Cube with digital coverage of IBM, think 2021 brought to you by IBM. >>Welcome to the cubes, digital coverage of IBM Think 2021 fine lisa martin. Next joining me is Leo Lebron's director of global strategic initiatives at Aws. Leo, Welcome to the cube. >>Thank you. >>So, talk to me about AWS and IBM. What's going on there with the relationship? What are some of the things that are significant for both partners? >>Yeah, absolutely. You know, IBM relationship really started with us around 2016, I would say it was a little bit more opportunistic at the time, we knew there was an opportunity to go to market together. We knew there were some great things we could do for our customers, but we haven't quite cracked, cracked the code, so to speak, on, on when and where and why we're going to partner at that point. Um you fast forward into the sort of 2017 to 2019 timeframe, um and we became a lot more intentional about how we're going to go to market where we were going to invest. Areas such as S. A. P, et cetera, were early, want to be identified. Um and I'd say the ball really started rolling sort of in the 2018 time Frank, a combination of a number of different things occurred. Uh You know, the the acquisition of Red Hat obviously, you know, Red Hat is a very significant, was a very significant partner with a W. S prior to the acquisition. Um And so post acquisition, you combine that with ramping up a workforce focused on AWS, combined with a number of different competencies at A W or IBM really invested in around migration as an example or S. A. P. Um and you know, the ball really started to roll quickly. Um after that, you know, I'd say in the last 18 months or so, we've both invested, significant in the relationship expansion around the world really, and in joint resources and capability to make sure that we're going to mark, it's sort of a partnered intentional way rather than sort of opportunistic. Uh >>Oh God, >>yeah, I'd say so far that's that's absolutely been paying off. Um and that we are seeing a number of winds all around the world across a broad set of industries as well as a broad set of technologies. Um so, you know, the strength of IBM consulting services in particular, but also their software, combined with the strength of our platform, is really proven to be successful for our customers. >>So you said started in 2016, really started taking shape in the last couple of years. That redhead acquisition talk to me about what's in this for customers. I imagine customers that are, that are expanding or needing to move workloads into the cloud or maybe more of a hybrid cloud approach. What are some of the big benefits that customers are going to gain from this partnership? >>Yeah, absolutely. Uh, reality is um, IBM has a long and storied history and relationship with their customers, right? Um, They run and manage many of the workloads. Um, they really know the customer's business incredibly well. Um They have domain expertise and industry, um, and then the technology expertise from a professional services perspective to really help navigate the waters and and determine what the right strategy is around moving to the cloud, right? You combine that with the depth and breadth of the skills and capabilities and services the WS provides. Um and the fact that IBM has invested significantly in making sure their professional services are deeply steeped in our technology and capabilities. Um, it's a great combination of really understanding the customer's needs plus the art of the possible honestly, when it comes to technology that we provide, really can accelerate both and mitigate risk when it comes to move into the club, >>that risk mitigation is key. So you guys, recently a W has recently launched, I'm gonna get this right red hat, open shift service on AWS or Rosa. Can you talk to me a little bit about rosa? >>Yeah, so um Red Hat obviously very well known and ultimately adopted within the enterprise. Um, we have built a fully managed service around red hat on AWS. Um, what that means is um, you'll have access to essentially the capabilities that that red hat would normally provide, but all containerized within a solution that allows you to have access to AWS services, right. Um, the other benefit here is normally you would get sort of a multi vendors with invoicing and cost model right? Where you get built from red hat get built from amazon, you get built from IBM um, in this case it's it's essentially a holistic service in which there is a single sort of invoicing and vendor relationship. Right? Um, so it's a combination of capabilities that normally would be provided the red hat combined with access to cloud and all the interfaces and capabilities around um, open shift etcetera that you could do their um, plus a more interesting and beneficial commercial model. >>So streamlined pricing model, streamlined operating model for customers. Talk to me about some of the customers that have adopted it. Give me a look into some of the industry's where you've seen good adoption and some of the results that they're gaining so far. >>Yeah, one second. Sorry. It's like insanely love uh worries. >>Let's just take it, let's just take a >>pause. Like we can >>just we can just so yeah, we'll go right as if lisa lisa just finish the question. Um so just take a breather. Yeah, as long as it as it needs. Um and then whenever you're ready, whenever that's that's died down, just just give it a beat, give it like a second and then just write as if she >>just yeah. >>Oh cut it out as if nothing happened. >>Give me >>two minutes. Mhm. >>So actually on your question, I know the answer from things that I've done recently, but was there an official answer Teresa, I'm supposed to give them the >>No, not >>really. I mean, I think what you're talking about on Red Hat specifically >>right earlier. >>No, I mean there's a product page and stuff, it's really about just the >>the >>ability of customers to be able to run those solutions on the AWS console is really the gist of it and then it's fully integrated. >>Not sure advantage of the examples I know of are publicly referenced. >>That's okay. You could just say customer in X y z industry. That's totally fair. Not to worry about that. Yeah, >>I don't know if uh, so rosa, lisa rosa was just launched in March and so it's brand new. So I don't know, I'm the customer stories yet, >>so >>that's why I don't have them listed for leo >>that's fine. That's totally fine. Maybe we can talk about, you know, since the launch was just around the corner, some of the things that have been going on the momentum interest from customers questions conversations, you mean more like that as you're launching the GTM >>Yeah, and there's certainly a couple of industries that they have targeted. So as well as a couple of customers. >>Yeah, thank you >>lisa. Of course. I think they went around the corner. >>All right, let me know and I'll re ask the question. I'll tweak it a little >>bit. Alright, >>so talk to me about Rosa just launched very recently. Talked to me about customer interest adoption. Maybe some of the industry's in particular if you're seeing any industry that's kind of really leading edge here and taking advantage of this new manage service. >>Yeah. So no big surprise, right. The existing customer base that currently uses red at Lenox and some of the options and open shift etcetera that are out today are then the right customers to potentially look at this when it comes to moving forward. Um, you know, industry wise, certainly there are areas in financial services, banking, insurance, um, et cetera. We're also seeing some around manufacturing a little a little less so, but some in media and telco as well. Um, So it's, it's a broad swath of the applicability of red hat and open shift is somewhat universal, but the early customer base is larger than sort of in those three areas. >>What I'm curious what the key target audiences are these Red Hat customers are these AWS customers? IBM all three. >>Yeah. I mean there isn't necessarily the perfect customer that we're not necessarily looking for as much as um if there are existing customers that are currently using Lennox for using Red Hat. Um, if there are someone who, a customer who currently has a relationship with either a W. S. Or IBM, um, there's an opportunity to essentially look at it from any of the angles if you're already on cloud or you've already experienced AWS in some shape or form, there's an opportunity to potentially to leverage rosa to further expand that capability and also have some more flexibility, so to speak. Um if you're already using IBM as a professional services provider and advisory firm, then they absolutely have the expertise and understanding of this product set to help you understand how it could be best leverage. Right? So you can kind of look at it from either the dimensions. Um if it's a customer that's completely new to all of us, then we're happy to talk to you. But um, it's uh, it's something that we'll definitely take a little bit more explanation to understand or why why you should or shouldn't consider this multi cloud open shift. Absolution >>got it. Let's shift gears a bit and talk about ASAP when we think about customers looking to migrate ASAP workloads to the cloud, looking at the right cloud provider providers and those are really big challenging strategic decisions for leadership to make. Talk to me about why when you're in those conversations, AWS is the best choice. >>Absolutely. I mean, really AWS and say with S A P N with many of our services is really looking to give all the options that you could conceivably need or want in order to engage in cloud migration and transformation. Um, press safety specifically right, There are a number of different options, right? You could go for a lift and shift or upgrade from many database. Too sweet on safety hana. Um, could potentially look to modernize and leverage cloud services, post post migration as well as the sort of final Pinnacle of that is a complete transformation to S four, S 4 Hana as far as why AWS specifically beyond just choice. Um, You know, from a from a cost perspective, uh it's a pretty, pretty compelling and we have some pretty compelling business and use cases around ultimately the cost savings that come when, when you move from an on premise S A. P implementation to cloud. Beyond that, usually the cloud migration itself as an opportunity to uh condense or reduce the number of instances you're paying for from an S A S a P perspective, which then further reduces cost um from a reliability perspective, you know, AWS is is the world's most secure, extensive, reliable part infrastructure, right? Um, any of the instances that you put on AWS are uh, instantly and say fairly instantly provision in such a way that they're they are provided across multiple what we call availability zones, um, which is giving you for the resiliency and the stability that really no other cloud broke Right. Um On the security front, I mean, this is really a unique position in that AWS plus IBM and the security, the depth and security services, you know, numerous years of professional services work um that IBM has done the security space um you know, they have roughly 8000 or so cybersecurity experts with an IBM so the combination of their expertise and security plus the security of our platform um is a great combination. Um I'd say the final one is around performance. Right. AWS offers many more cloud native options around certified ASAP instances specifically all the way from 256 gigabyte option all the way up to 24 terabytes, which is the largest of its kind. Um and as as those who have implemented ASAP No, it's a very resource intensive so having the ability to do that from a performance perspective is is a key differentiator for sure. >>Talk to me from your opinion about why IBM for S. A. P on AWS, why should customers go that direction for their projects? >>Yeah. You know, ASAP has, sorry, safety, IBM has over 40 years of experience in implementing ASAP for their customers. Right. They've done I think it's over 6000 S. A. P migrations, uh 40,000 global S A. P consultants around the world. Right. So from a capability and depth of experience, uh yeah, there's a lot of nuance to doing a safety implantation, particularly one that's been moving from on prem to the cloud. Um you know, they've got they've got the experience right beyond that, they have industry specific solutions that are pre configured. So I think that is 12 industry specific industry solutions we configured for S. A. P. It allows, you know, roughly 20-30 acceleration when it comes to implementation of platform. So um combination of just depth of experience, death of capability combined with these solutions to accelerate are all key key reasons for sure. >>The acceleration yet you bring up, sorry, is interesting because we saw in the last year the acceleration of digital transformation projects and businesses needing to pivot again and again and again to figure out how to survive and be successful in this very dynamic market in which we're still living anything industry. Why is it specific that you saw that was really driving the acceleration and the use cases for Rosa in the last year? Yeah, >>yeah. So you ASAP we saw an interesting trend as a result of what everyone's been experiencing in the last year with Covid etcetera. Um you know, many organizations postponed large european implementations and large as a few migrations because of what you just said, right, they weren't entirely sure um what would need to be done in order to survive either competitive threats or more? Just the global threats that are occurring. Um so what we saw was really none of, none of the transformations went away. They were put on hold for a period of time, let's say 6-9 months ago, maybe even a year ago almost um in lieu of I would say more um top line revenue generating or innovative type solutions that maybe we're focused specifically at, you know, the changing dynamic with with Covid. Um Since then we've seen a combination of those new ideas, right? Combination of the new innovation around health care of course, but also public sector and um you know, a lower unemployment and you know, the engagement there, we sent a combination of those new ideas and new innovations with the original goal of optimizing transforming ASAP, europe et cetera, And then combining the two to allow access to the data right that sits inside the S. A. P. Implementation ASAP, Combined the data asap with all these new innovations and then ultimately use that to sort of capitalize on what the future business is going to be. Um that's been huge. It's been very interesting to see some organizations completely changed their business model over the course of the last 12 months um in ways they probably had never intended you before. Right? But it's it's absolutely become an opportunity, you know, time with a lot of challenges. >>I agree there are silver linings and we've seen a lot of those interesting opportunities to your point and businesses probably would never have come up with had there not been a forcing function like we've been living with Julio. Thank you for joining me today. Talking to me about what's going on with I. B. M. And A W. S will be excited to follow. What happens with Rosa as a, uh, continues to roll out and we appreciate you joining us on the program. >>Absolutely. Thank you for time. >>Pearly Lebron chime lisa martin. You're watching the cubes digital coverage of IBM think 2021. Mhm.