>> from Bahrain. It's the Q recovery AWS Public sector Bahrain brought to you by Amazon Web service is >> welcome to the cues conversation here. You're in Bahrain for Amazon Webster, is this summit our second summit? Um, here. Big news. Amazon Web services announced the availability of the region in the Middle East. I'm here with the chief of Public Sector Theresa Cross and vice President of Worldwide Public Sector. This is a huge milestone. This event one just in terms of the event. The interest across multiple countries in the region. Yes. And you have a new region with multiple availability zones? Yes, up and running. Congratulations. >> Hey, we launched the confetti today and yes, we're open for business and we do. It's a hyper scale region with three available the zones and lots of activity already here in the delays. But it really is a substantial kind of milestone because we started this sometime back in the Middle East, was one of the top regions around the world requested by our partners and customers. And now here we are. >> We've been talking with you for many, many years and I love interviewing you, but this one to me feels like it's not the weight off your shoulders. It's you're at the start line of another marathon. You've achieved so much with this because what's the first thing about Bart Rainey? We've reported on this on Select Angle and our other sites is that you get a lot of work here, is not just turning on a region. There's a lot of government commitment cloud first, full modernization, fintech banking systems, a full re platforming of a government and society and Amazons powering a lot of it and causing a lot of economic growth. So this is a big deal. >> It really is a big deal because, like you said, it really is about digital transformation here. And when I met the crown Prince in 2014 we had this conversation about really creating the economy here in a different way because Bob terrain itself, it's not oil rich country, but a smaller country with lots and lots of tourism. But in this region, while we haven't based here in Bahrain, this is truly a Middle East GCC region and but But part of that, the reason to start it here in my reign was that they really did take a lead in government transformation. As you heard them say, they're going all in shake Some on today talked about government is moving really fast, and they actually did the hard work to think about their telecommunications industry, their government regulations. They started with cloud first, and then they created all the write regulations to make this happen. So it is kind of phenomenal how quickly, in some ways, you know, feel slower than we'd like, But it's really moving quite fast. >> It's pretty fast. You should get a lot of kudos for that. I think you will. But I think to me what's interesting. The news here is that there is a balance between regulation and innovation going on, and regulation can be hampering innovation, some cases and not enough regulation. You have a Facebook situation or >> right so >> it's a balance. These guys have done it right. But to me, the tell sign is the fintech community, >> because that's where >> the money is. The central bank and then the ABC bank are all talking about a pea eye's all in with Amazon that's gonna create an ecosystem for innovation. Startups, et cetera. >> It totally isn't you heard Thean Vivid Jewel from ABC Bank today talk about their platform. What they're doing with clouds and the reason they chose a DBS was because we had this region of Bob Terrain, and they wanted to move quickly in. The regulations now have been updated in a way that actually allows them to do their banking applications in the lab. There's also a startup accelerator here, Fintech May, and they're doing a tenant work with new types of financial applications. So it's so exciting to see this kind of happening than the lace for I think a lot of people thought it would be much slower. We have a ways to go. It's still day one, for sure, but all the building blocks are getting there in the right place to really make this happen. >> You know, 80. Jessie's quoting the announcement you guys had just a couple weeks ago. Laura Angel And in July, the clouds of chance unlocked digital transmission. Middle East, says Andy chassis. Obviously unlocking is a key word because now you have customers from startups to large enterprises and ecosystem of a P M party. So the Ap N Group is here. Yes, So you have global I SUV's here and knew I s V's. You got the government and the education and to me, the news of the show. To me at least maybe it's not the big news, but is that you guys? They're offering a computer like a cloud computing degree. Yeah, for the first time about that news, >> you are right in terms of kind of every sector's picking at, but like in most places around the world, this is not unique. We need skills, and we've got to make sure that we're teaching the skills, working backwards from what the employer needs, like a TVs. So what? We've been here. We announced today we're launching our first cloud computing degree at the university of our terrain, and they're kind of thing. That's really unusual, John. They're going to do a phase one where they offer a cloud certification starting in early 2021 every program at the University of Bahrain, Whether you're in finance or banking, or business or health care or law, you can do this cloud computing certification, which gets you going and helps you understand how you last cloud in your business and then in the fall will be announcing the four year starting, the four year cloud computing degree, and that is in conjunction with our A DBS Educate program. And it will be all the right cloud skills that are needed to be successful. >> Talk about the demographics in this country because one of the things that's coming up is when I talk people in the doorways and it's a chance to talk to some local folks last night that that all in an Amazon, the theme is this. This younger generation yes, is here, and they have different expectations. They all want to work hard. They don't want to just sit back on their laurels and rest on their on their location. Here. They want to build companies they want to change. This is a key factor in the bottle rain modernization. Is that >> Yeah, generation well, all across the Middle East. The thing that's unique about the mill aces, the very young population you had millions of gamers across the Middle East as an example that comic con and Saudi like two years ago on that was one of the most popular things was fortnight. As soon as the region got at all the different gaming started taking place. But we want to create a culture of builders here, and the way you do that is what you said, John putting it into their hands, allowing these young people have the tools create a startup became entrepreneur, but they need to have access to these tools. And sometimes capital is often not that easy to get. So they want to make sure that the capital that they're given or that they have, whether it's bootstrap capital or venture capital, fending or whatever friends and family, they want to make sure that they can use that capital to the greatest advantage to build that company out. And I truly believe that this is gonna help them having an eight of us cloud region. I mean, you saw. Today we have 36 companies that launched their offering in the region on the day we actually announced so that they had specific offerings for the Middle East, which pretty exciting. I mean, that's a lot on day one. >> I mean, it's still day. One of you guys always say, but literally day one they were launching Yeah, I wanted to comment if you could just share some insights. I know, Um, your passion for, you know, entrepreneurship. You guys are also some skill development investing a lot of women in tech power panel this morning, there's major change going on. You guys were providing a lot of incentives, a lot of mentoring, this internships in conjunction with by rain. There's a lot of good things. Share some of the new things that you're working on, maybe deals you're talking about doing or >> way announced Thio kind of new things today. One is we have our we partake program, which I'm, of course, super passionate about. And that is about preventing tech learning and skills to women and underserved in representative communities. So we announced three other training programs here across the Middle East time. So those were put up today and you'll continue to see its role more and more of those out. And the other thing we did yesterday we announced a internship program with the minister of Youth here in Bahrain. That was shaped Nassir, who's a very famous He's that King san, and he's a very famous sportsmen. He does. He just won the Ironman Ironman and 2016. It was the world champion. He does endurance horse racing, so he's a He's a someone that the youth look at to here, and so he's doing all these programs. So we announced a partnership that were the first group doing the internship with this youth program, and so we're very excited. We're going to start that small and scale it, but we want to get these young people quickly and kind of get them excited. But here, what they focus on it is underrepresented communities. So it fits so nicely in with what we're doing with our attack. So you have both Oliver training our over 400 online courses that we offer with a dubious education academy. Now degree now our internship program and we protect. So, John, we're just getting going. I'm not saying that this is all will offer, but these are the things that were getting going with, and we need to make sure we also Taylor things like this Ministry of Youth program and sports at to the region in terms of water, their local needs, and we'll make sure that we're always looking >> at the entrance. Just just get him some great experience. Yes, so they can earn and feel good about themselves. This is kind of a key, exactly thing not just getting an internship, >> and it's, I think, locally it will be about teaching them to do that, disagree and commit really have that backbone to build that company and ask all those hard questions. So we're really going to try to indoctrinate them into the Amazon a TVs culture so we can help them be entrepreneurs like we are every day. >> And you got the data center, you got the city, the centers, you get the regions up and running, and architect, it perfectly suits up with people in it. Are you going to staff that with local talent, or is it gonna be Amazonian is coming in? What's the makeup of staff gonna be? What's the >> story? I mean, our goal is to hire as many local talent. We everywhere we go around the world. We want to get local talent because you can't yet if we did, First of all, we don't have enough people in our headquarters to bring folks in here, so we really have to train and educate. But locally, we have an office open here by rain. We haven't Office Open and Dubai and one down Saudi, and that is local talent. I mean, we are trying to use as much local talent and will continue to create that. And that's kind of the point. Jonas talking about the degree working backwards from what the employer needs. We want to give input because we think we also are getting good. Yeah, so we need to get the top. But we need those other individual employers that keep telling us we need more cloud skills to give that input. But, yeah, >> we're going to get a degree, migrate them into the job >> market, right quick like >> and educates. Been doing great. I learned a lot. This is a whole opportunity for people who want to make money, get a job. Amazon Web service is >> It's a place you could either work for us. Work for someone now, like even the government has a >> virus. Make a person tomorrow >> there. Yet >> we had one, >> but the point of being a builder, what we're seeing more and more John are these companies and government entities are building their talent internally. They're not outsourcing everything anymore, and the whole culture at being a builder, not just outsourcing all that. And that's what eight of us really helps all these entities. D'oh is moved quicker by having kind of some in house talent and not outsourcing everything to slow you down. That >> really thank ABC pointed that out beautifully in his point was, Hey, I'm gonna you know, I'm all in on AWS. We have domain expertise, We have data. That's our intellectual property. We're going to use that and be competitive and partner. And >> yes, and the new models it is. And that I p stays in house with that company or entity or government organization. It was so fun for me today to hear Shake some on from Maggie. A talk about the government is moving fast, and I think that's an example of a really are they figured out clown helps him just go a lot faster and save many security. >> I'm glad you brought that up. I know you got a short time here, but I want one last point in. We've been talking a lot about modernization of government, your success with C i a United States jet I contract still under consideration. All this going on you're experiencing by ranges and, um, unbelievable, fast moving government. They kind of get it. United States some places gets it. This is really about focusing in on the workloads. What have you learned? As you've been engaging these modernization efforts with governments summer slow, some of political ramifications behind. No one wants to lose. Old guard will hold onto the rails. We've seen that in the news, but this is coming fast. What are you learning? What do you >> take away its leadership? I mean, at the end of the day, all these things were driven by a very strong leaders. And even you can see everybody today on stage. It is leaders that make a decision that they wanted a faster and they want to modernize but have the capabilities. No matter if you're the U. S. Department of Defense. Ah, yes. Health and human resource is National Health Service in the UK or RG a hearing by rain, the government's or enterprises that we work with around the world. The key is leadership. And if there's that leader that is really strong and says we're moving, did you actually see organizations move a lot faster if you see people kind of waffle anger. I'm not sure, you know, that's when you can see the slowness. Wow, What I will tell you is from the early days of starting this business in 2010 the individuals that always move fastest for the mission owners because the mission owners of whatever the business West at a governmental level or enterprise, they said, we need to keep our mission going. So that's the reason they wanted to walk through this transformation. >> And now, I think, with developers coming in and started to see these employees for these companies saying, No, no, what's the reason why we can't go fast? That's right now a groundswell of pressure you see in both government, public sector and commercial. >> And you saw Mark Allen today on stage talking about security. It iss literally day. Zero thing for us, and the reason a lot of our customers are meeting faster now is because of security. Cloud is more secure in their meeting to the cloud for security because they feel like they could both optimize, move faster for workloads, and now they have security. Better, faster, cheaper security, bad design, >> Theresa always pleasure thinking coming. Spending time. Thank >> you for coming to Barbara Ryan. Thank you. So >> we're going global with you guys is seeing the global expansion 20 to 22nd region. 69 availabilities owns nine more coming. More regions. More easy. You guys doing great. Congratulations. >> Thank you. >> Secure. We are here in Bahrain. Form or coverage. Global coverage of the cube with Reese Carlson, vice president of worldwide public sector. She's running the show doing a great job. We're here more after the stroke break. Stay with us.

>> Announcer: Live from Madrid, Spain. It's theCube covering HPE Discover Madrid 2017. Brought to you by Hewlett-Packard Enterprise. >> And we're back at HPE Discover Madrid 2018. This is theCube, the leader in live tech coverage. I'm Dave Vellante, with my co-host Peter Burris. This is day two of the event. Johannes Koch is here, he's the Vice President and Managing Director of Central Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa for Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, and he's joined by Ali Saleh, he's the Senior Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer at GE Digital for Middle East and Africa. Gentlemen, thanks so much for coming to theCube. >> Appreciate it. Thank you. >> Thank you for having us. >> Johannes, let's start off with you. GE, HPE, what are you guys all about, what are you doing together? Talk about the partnership and the alliance. >> So, you know, it started actually one month ago, I suppose and it was meetings that we had with General Electric to understand the customer requirements in cybersecurity, and what we figured is in this world of IoT, Internet of Things there is an increased requirement for security. And there was, from our perspective, lots of solutions out there but it's quite difficult for customers to understand the landscape and who to turn to. And we also figured that in this world, nobody can serve every requirement of a customer, so this is how we figured out with GED that we have a joint interest here, to serve in the Central/Eastern European and then mainly in the Middle East and Africa part our customer base. And this is how it started and I think what I can say is it has accelerated incredibly during the last two months since we signed the joint agreement. We've been building a channel, we've been having lots of meetings with customers and built a really nice pipeline in the meantime, also I think here the show reflects an incredible interest by our customers. So I think we are in a very good state at the moment having a lot of interest, probably all the key customers in our region having this on their agenda. >> Ali, maybe you could just describe the situation, the industrial expansion if you will in Middle East and Africa, what you guys are seeing in terms of the big trends, and what the opportunity looks like. >> Well thank you. You know, GE has been in the Middle East, Africa, for over 80 years in some countries, and we have deep relationships on industrial side, whether it's power, oil and gas, aviation, healthcare and others. And our customers are thinking a lot about cost, quality, and access, and productivity is top of mind, and they've discovered that their industrial assets are smart and capable but the data are not being collected. So when we collaborate with ecosystem of partners, and we fetch the data and get connected, and get insights from the machine to make them able to make the right decision at the right time and then it drives optimization. This is top of mind. They want to see how they can do better for less. >> Okay, so the customers at GE Digital, the customers are going digital, they have all these devices, instruments, machines, and they're moving in a new direction you guys are trying to lead in. What are the challenges that they're facing, what are they asking your help on, what are the big problems that they're trying to solve? >> So, everyone wants to talk about productivity and calls out. The challenge is that not everyone is ready for digital transformation. Some do not feel there is a burning platform, and those that are ready when they feel there is a burning platform, they don't have a plan, they don't have a playbook. So it's important that we collaborate and help our partners and customers understand their current state and heat map and desired state and pinpoint to quick wins so that they get it and they see incremental improvement. And asset performance management has been an easy way for us to say, "Your asset is underutilized "compared to your industrial entitlement "you can do 10x better," and this gets their attention, and this is where we see the power of one in the industrial age is relevant, one percent. In our market, in the world free market, when we talk to them about one or two percent productivity they laugh at us. They say, "Talk to us about ten or twenty." Because there has been a lot of gap in productivity and efficiency. >> Are you able to, I mean, it's only been nine months, but are you able to start to see any kind of customer results at this point? Do you have some examples even early wins with customers? >> So to be exact, the start of the relationship in a formal way-- >> Was it, what'd you say? >> --is two months. >> I thought I heard nine months. >> No, no, we started our first conversations and until it was over, it came to the agreement-- >> So it was brand new, in terms of... >> It is really brand new and I think what we can say is, I think we have 180 partners already engaged. We have probably more than 500 customer contacts in the region already so with large accounts. And we have a pipeline that is multi-million dollar in size. So we're expecting the first close within our first quarter, which ends at January 2018. I think there's no question that there is a big market opportunity out there, right? And I think the show here, I think for me, even accelerated things, because I think in the past, digital transformation was sort of limited to a few industries, we always give travel industry, we take banking sometimes but here, I think what became transparent to many of the customers that we had here, that there is no industry that is sort of immune against what is happening out there and specifically also that the sensors and the devices out there require special attention. And I think with the, specifically on the OT side, we have a solution now with GED that we can basically roll out across our territory. >> So I wanna talk about three things very quickly, I'm gonna lay this out and ask you if in fact this is going to catalyze that much more attention. Number one is a lot of the industry in the Middle East and Africa are natural resource industries, where the historical ways of doing things have been relatively inefficient. So there's a lot of opportunity to use IoT and related things to bring more efficiency, better practices, overall resource management. Number two is, that the technology's now capable of doing that in places where you don't necessarily have the best infrastructure. Aruba technology, for wireless, some of the other things are now possible, that adds to it. And number three, we've seen some recent steps in liberalizing some of the countries that have the most opportunity to do some things differently. You know, Robert Mugabe, no longer in Zimbabwe, the new prince in Saudi Arabia talking about liberalizing things. Are you seeing these come together in a way that would encourage people to think new ways, do new things, use information perhaps differently than it did before? What do you think, is this a confluence, is this a moment? >> Well I agree with you, and absolutely. Today, our customers and partners in region are more ready than before, and they're pulling hard. And when we put our act together as an ecosystem of partners we make it easier on them to make the right decision. When we talk productivity, productivity comes from people, from process operation, from industrial entitlement. And when we talk about the digital thread that brings it all together whether we look at the culture and vision and mission and people utilization, look at the process defined or not, and how we can optimize it, look at the industrial entitlement, and tell them, "Compared to your peers, "this is where you can be." We have their attention. And with the push from the government for productivity and utilization and do more for less, this is becoming top of mind, everyone is talking about it. So, when we partner together and we say, "This is the playbook, this is how you can start, "and this is the edge to cloud solution in a secure way." And we link it to the industrial entitlement, and let's underline industrial, because when we speak the healthcare language and the power language and the oil and gas language we get their attention. >> Excellent, so there's an increasing interest, and you anticipate that there's going to be new action with their pocketbooks. >> Johannes: Yes. And I would add, I think we, this is not an easy marketplace but you can have some outstanding projects. And we have, in the region, you may have heard about, there was in the private investment fund, when the crown prince did announce the NEOM project. Or, we have in Dubai Smart City as a project, with the city of Dubai which are all projects that probably would not happen in Western Europe. So there is potential, there are bigger things happening, and I think there is also an understanding that this is a way how to leapfrog, to your point, to leapfrog technology. And I think that is what can happen. What we need to be careful of is where to invest, because there are lots of ideas out there, and to understand what are the real things, and what are the things that we need to make happen. This is, I think, the challenge. >> And they wouldn't happen in Western Europe because, what? The maturity of the infrastructure, the space limitations, the appetite? >> Johannes: I think, to give the example of Smart City. >> Dave: Yeah. >> So I think we have a lot of, in my remit we have lots of discussion on Smart City. But it's usually you have to find the city that is willing to pay a POC. >> Pete: 12 layers of bureaucracy. >> And exactly. And you need to talk to each and every city individually, whereas here, if you have a decision maker to say, "Yes, we do this." >> Pete: Yep. >> Dave: Right. >> And then we do it. >> Dave: You cut the line. >> And the answer is about readiness. When you go to a large enterprise that's very successful, you meet the CEO and you quickly conclude whether they're ready for digital transformation or not, are they gonna make this top of mind for them? Are they gonna give you time? Are they gonna talk about productivity? Or is this going to be an IT discussion, and they're gonna treat you as a supplier? Those that are ready, we roll up our sleeves, and we put in our dedicated resources to help them look at the transformation. When the government official is pushing and mandating for calls out, then obviously everyone wants to copy and talk about it. And this makes it easier for us to execute. >> You're talking, again, big numbers. Not one percent, ten percent, so that's the nirvana. How confident are you that you can actually have that type of impact? >> So we've got data points, right? If you look at healthcare in the Saudi Ministry of Health, we've been collaborating on looking at operating room optimization or emergency room optimization, without touching digitization. Looking at the process and utilization of appointments, no-show, and the way the clinical governance is taking place, we're showing 40 percent improvement. If you look at, the factory of the future with Obeikan in Saudi Arabia, we've got asset performance improvement project, and they already yielded a 12 percent improvement, and the entitlement is up to 20, that we're working on. When you transform something, it's iterative, right? When you transform something that you have not pushed for efficiency before it's easy for the first iteration to show an incremental change. >> Pete: Yup. >> That challenge will be for the change to last. And this is where digitization makes it last and makes it impactful. And when we look at the HPE relationship with the MOH on the electronic medical record, we've got right now two active projects with two hospitals, and it's all powered by Predix, and HP peripherals are being deployed to the site. And if we go to the Saudi Electricity Company, we've got a project now on asset performance management across all their assets and again HPE peripherals are also deployed and it's all about GE ecosystem of Predix-enabled solutions. >> So I've had the pleasure and honor of speaking in front of a relatively large group of CIOs a couple times in Africa in the past few years. And I always was surprised by the degree to which they suggested that the necessity of change in this region, and the fact that a little bit of technology can have an enormous impact, the degree to which we might actually see some leadership technology come out of this region. What do you think, are the types of issues, the types of problems that could be solved with this technology in Africa, the types of problems that solving them there could actually start driving the industry in different directions? Solving new classes, whole new classes of problems. Do you think that this type of technology can have a transformative effect, not only in Africa but more broadly? >> Absolutely, this is a way for systems to leapfrog. If you look at Kenya right now, they've got a transformation project for 98 hospitals. And they've got massive shortage of radiologists. So right now, we're replacing equipment in 98 hospitals but tele-radiology is the answer for the shortage of radiologists. If you look to South African Discovery, what Discovery is doing is best in class, and I haven't seen any other insurance company looking at the ecosystem the way they do it. So, absolutely, we're seeing pockets of excellence in Africa, and this can be a way to leapfrog. >> You said you started the conversations around security. >> Johannes: Cybersecurity. >> What was that conversation like? Why was that the starting point? I mean, obviously it's important, but why? >> To be honest, I would have to leave this to you, but I think it was because mainly there was we saw the customer interest. >> Yeah. >> And I would say, probably a year or two years ago, you would have not seen this as a very typical HPE alliance. We were technology people. We were software or hardware people. What you see in, and I mentioned in the beginning, in the world of IoT, things are blurring a bit. What is happening on the edge is very much in the business of General Electric. So I think this builds automatically the new ecosystem. When you look here at Discovery, the alliance has become more and more industrial companies. It's linked to industrial 4.0, car industries and all that. Everywhere where data is being created, we need to have the partnership because and that is because the data that is being created at the edge also needs to be computed at the edge. If we want to be successful, we gotta say, "We cannot limit ourselves to the "data centers the rest is the others." And this is where I think we find the very good connection point because now we have software that actually can operate at the edge. I think you have good examples on that. >> Yeah absolutely, if you look at the pain point in Middle East, Africa, majority of our partners and customers are government entities and for them top of mind securing their large industrial assets is important. And in the operations space there hasn't been much done on security, where you can go into a hospital and simulate light flickering with a voltmeter. And you can take over the temperature and play with it. Today there's a lot of smart sensors out there, but we're securing the IT firewall, but within the hospital, or within the plant, we can do a lot of crazy stuff. And we owe it to our partners to show our capability. That's what we do within our factories, and our platform is designed around security for operations. So the easier interlock with HPE is our ability to get closer to the edge and peripherals, and ensure the operation is secure and that's the first experiment but then, obviously, we're expanding beyond that to other opportunities. >> Dave: Excellent. Alright, gentlemen, we have to leave it there. Thanks so much for coming to theCube. >> Johannes: Thank you very much. >> Sharing your story, good luck with the partnership. >> Thank you. >> Dave: Hope you can come back, maybe in Las Vegas or maybe next year at this event, give us the update. >> For sure. Thank you very much. >> Thank you. Appreciate it. >> Dave: Okay. Keep it right there, everybody. We'll be back with our next guest. Dave Vellante, Peter Burris, this is theCube live from Madrid HPE Discover 2017. (upbeat music)