>> Announcer: Live from Atlanta, Georgia, it's theCUBE, covering IFS World Conference 2018 brought to you by IFS. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage of IFS World Conference 2018, here in Atlanta, Georgia. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. We have a three panel guest with us today. We have Eric Schaeffer, the Senior Managing Director of Accenture, Paul Maher, GM Industry Experiences at Microsoft, and Yasushi Yagyu, Assistant Manager at NEC Corporation. Thank you so much for joining me. >> Guests: Thank you. >> So you're on this panel because you are all platinum sponsors and close partners of IFS. We've heard a lot today about IFS's passion for customers. It's a customer-centric, customer-focused company. I'd love to hear from you, your experiences as being partners with IFS. If you could describe a little bit about what you've experienced. I'm going to start with you. >> Thanks, Rebecca. I think, we've been, Accenture and IFS have been partners for many many years, and what I've appreciated in the relationship is the customer focus, but really the focus on delivering value to both IFS and Accenture customers. It's a value-driven approach, very industry specific. So understanding the industry issues, leveraging IFS products and solution to best meet these, having Accenture come in and help tailor the solution to the industry imperatives, and also leveraging digital technologies and combining these with the IFS foundation, which I think was a key term used this morning. >> Yeah, I mean so... Microsoft and IFS have had a very long and prosperous partnership over the last 20 years or so. What's great here, from the keynote this morning is obviously the announcement of IFS Applications 10. And so Microsoft obviously, being a Cloud provider, we've most recently been working very closely with IFS on their move to the Cloud and moving their solutions to the Cloud. So you know, this thing called digital transformation is really, sort of the boss and it's great to see, you know, as you had probably this morning in the keynote, you know, really disruption is really driving new innovation and so we're really glad to partner with IFS in response to that disruption, thinking about Cloud and bringing the IFS Solutions to the Cloud, and really delivering innovation to really address the digital transformation needs of industry. >> And I'd love to talk about you, Yasushi, about innovation. I mean, I ask all of you, but this is a company that really is known for having a history of innovation. How do you come together and collaborate and come up with new creative solutions? >> Uh huh. For example, we have independently, we have AI engine. Namely HML is our engine. And our customer has already implemented that kind of AI solution to predict the demand forecast. And then... Our solution is connect to the IFS Production Control Module, or master schedule module. And then, now our AI can generate forecast data and send it to the master schedule module. >> I know that Accenture has innovation centers around the world. Can you talk a little bit about how you innovate with IFS? >> Well, so we have four innovation centers across the world. We have one in Detroit, one in Munich, Shanghai, and Tokyo. And what we do with IFS is look at industry use cases. And then by combining IFS solutions, plus some of the digital assets, which are proprietary to Accenture, combining the two to deliver new levels of efficiency. And so helping out clients, walking through these innovation centers, they get the "Wow" moment where they see how IFS plus Accenture combined can deliver more value and unlock the value which is trapped in their enterprise. >> Can you talk a little bit about that "Wow" factor? I mean, what are sort of... What are a lot of the challenges that your clients are facing, that you're partnership with IFS has helped them solve? >> Well, many of our clients and I think the term digital transformation of industry was mentioned, it is how is digital transforming the industry. I think the question is not the why. Everybody's convinced and has understood that it is happening. The question is more of the how to. And this is where the combination of IFS plus Accenture really focusing on the how to, how to leverage these technologies on very pragmatic use cases, demand forecasting we heard. It's all about artificial intelligence and visual and computer vision for visual quality inspections, analytics on the shop floor. So it's working with IFS and our clients, the team of three, to identify these use cases and see how to leverage digital to respond and provide a solution. >> At Microsoft, what kind of benefits have you seen with some of the IFS products? >> Yeah, I mean so, from a Microsoft perspective, of course, you know, we are the vendor, the technology vendor. Most recently we've been working very closely with IFS around the move to the Cloud. So I mean, certainly as I think about the partnership that we've had, it really is multi-faceted in terms of, of course we work very closely around how do we think about driving new opportunities and sales motions. And IFS is one of our highest ranked managed partners so we partner very closely there. But suddenly if I was to focus on the technology innovation perspective, what we're really excited about is really that digital disruption and using the new IFS applications, in particular, IFS Applications 10 that's been announced at the conference, working in partnership there to really look to see how do we start to move the needle and move new customers to really achieve to their digital transformation needs and demands, in partnership with the IFS solution running on the Microsoft digital Cloud. >> What are some of the most exciting new features in IFS 10 that you're most excited about? >> Yeah, I mean you mentioned before about the buzz words and the on-trend technologies and I'll kind of quote the keynote this morning, but what really excites me and excites our joint customers, IFS and Microsoft, is things like artificial intelligence, so what that can do around things like machine learning, cognitive services, things like IoT and making that a reality, so thinking about things like predictive maintenance and really being able to integrate the IFS solutions on the Microsoft digital platform, leveraging IoT to really help in those sort of scenarios is great. And then, really super excited about some of the new innovation opportunities. So thinking about things like block chain and what that can do, as you think about the broader opportunity around supply chain and payments and so on. So I think that closer together of the platform but also we've had such a close partnership with IFS, so thinking about really sort of a business problem-led approach, followed by how can the technology and innovation help our joint customers, I think is really helping us as we're looking to innovate in the world of digital transformation. >> And I know that NEC has recently come out with an announcement about AI and heterogeneous, mixed learning technology. Can you tell our viewers a little bit more about that, Yasushi? >> Yes, we have an engine, engine model. And our customer has implemented that kind of AI solution to demand forecast or machine failure prediction operations. And some of our AI solutions do collaborate with IFS predictions. For example, at NEC booth we can demonstrate our demand forecast solution. And information from each product comes from IFS master schedule or inventory transaction as input data into AI engine. And then AI generates forecast data automatically and sends it back to that module, yeah. >> So here, IFS, we've heard a lot today too, about the metrics, how it measures its success, and we've heard that it has very high NPS score, its Gartner Insights score is far above competitors, and yet it is kind of this best kept secret in the industry. What would your advice be to IFS in terms of getting the word out about its products? >> Yeah, I mean I think everyone's looking for opportunities to further their market share and drive that new innovation and sales pipeline. I think the best guidance I would give is that IFS really is a first-class company and has first-class products. I think it's continued to innovate and be true to the core and you know, just work with partners like good friends here to really get the word out. But it's really not about doing unnatural acts. I think it's really about building an empathy and understanding of what's needed in the industry and I think the story telling and brand awareness will grow. And I think, from what I was hearing this morning, I mean the conference even this year has already grown by 20 percent, so I think you'll see those sort of leading integrators of the word getting out and the brand profile out there. So I think it's a cautious approach, a strategic approach by using partners and not doing unnatural things. Let the innovation that's happening at IFS and with those partnerships, almost do the story telling and the brand awareness, and just be true to the competency and listen to the customers. >> Well when you think ahead at what we're going to be thinking about and talking about at WoCo 2019, 2020, what are sort of the big trends that you see? I mean we've hit a lot of the buzz words with AI and machine learning. What else do you see on the horizon? What's keeping you up at night or are you thinking about? >> Well what I do see is that, so we mentioned all these digital technologies, they will force manufacturers, I believe, to completely reinvent their products and services. And so the products of tomorrow will be with a lot of AI, a lot of digital technologies inside of products, also outside of the products. So products will be very different from today. And so you can easily imagine that the way you engineer, the way you manufacture, the way you support these products, will also be completely different. So I think next year, 2019, will be a lot about how digital is reinventing the products and services of the manufacturers. >> Right, we keep thinking about how it's reinventing our workforce and changing the way we're doing things, but it's actually going to be reinventing what's coming out, too, of these processes. >> Yeah I mean, you've touched upon some of the buzz words. I think it's also the maturity of the technologies. So I mean, I think that's certainly what excites me, is that the maturity and the capabilities has grown. So things like machine learning isn't necessarily new but with breakthroughs around the algorithms, that's kind of bringing the pragmatic reality of it being able to drive the innovation needed, you know? Capabilities such as the Cloud is providing that ability to scale up, scale down, the ability to provide processing power that wasn't there, previously possible in their price-performance way. So I think it's great to focus on some of the shiny things that are coming up, but I think it's also important to look at saying the things that are of yesterday isn't that far off, it's the maturity that they're reaching and so it's really making sure that they are taken advantage of and really taking that pragmatic approach of, it's got to be business-led versus technology-led, bringing that innovation into industry. >> Yasushi, do you see any big trends on the horizon that you're thinking about at NEC? >> I'm sorry? >> Big technology trends? Things that you're thinking about, maybe you're worried about, concerned about? >> Ah yes, I think IoT technology is helping reach to early maturity stage already. And at this rate, many users successfully gather, collect biased kind of data and revitalize the data to improve actual business operations. As a next step, I believe AI technologies will be widely applied for demand forecasting or that kind of failure prediction and that case of success in each industry will become solution models or templates, which will accelerate the progress of AI introduction. >> Great, well thank you so much. I really appreciate Yasushi, Eric, Paul, I really appreciate your time. It's been a great conversation. >> Thank you. >> We will have more from IFS WoCo 2018 just after this. (upbeat electronic music)

>> From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of AWS re:Invent 2020. Special coverage sponsored by AWS Worldwide Public Sector. >> Hello, welcome back to theCUBES coverage, of AWS re:Invent 2020 virtual. This is theCUBE virtual, I'm John Furrier, your host. We're not there in person this year because of the pandemic, but we're doing the remote. This is special coverage of the public sector, we got two great guests, Manpreet Mattu, who was the Worldwide Public Sector of Startups and Venture Capital team with AWS, and Michael Jackson who's the leader, general manager of Public Health and Venture Capital and Startups. Gentlemen, thanks for joining me. Thanks for coming up. >> Okay, it's my pleasure, thanks for having. >> I loved love welcome to theCUBE. I just want to say that Amazon never forgets the startups, that's where are they were born and bred it's been a startup. It's always day one as the expression goes, but truly even with the success, not just in the enterprise and starts within public sector, it's still a startup agility mindset, just want to call that out and say congratulations. Okay, let's get into it. Tell us about your roles and your backgrounds and why you're here. >> So, I believe so, I'm the head of AWS Public Sector, VC and Startups team, and our mission really is to help our public sector customers, adopt innovation that is built by the startups. I've been with AWS for about two and a half years. And prior to that, I was in a similar role with Booz Allen, helping our public sector customers, adopt innovation data as well. >> Michael. >> Yeah, so I am the general manager of Public Health, for on the Venture Capital and Startups team. My career here at AWS began just over four years ago. I was brought on to the state and local government team, initially building the public health practice from inception, and I also built and led our U S elections business. And I'm really excited now to transition into this global role, to lead our public health VC and startups practice, and really democratize access to innovation for our startups in the healthcare space. >> Well, great journey. You guys are converging, the VC and startup teams are coming together. A lot of macro trends certainly are tailwinds for you guys. Obviously, the pandemic is forcing, more accelerated modern applications in public sector, and we've been covering more and more success stories, of the change happening quickly. As access to capital continues to be great, and agility with the cloud, how has that impacted your teams and your approach? Can you guys share how that's changed this year? Because there's more pressure now to be digital, there's more opportunities, there's more still capital flowing, how has it impacted your roles? >> Now, so at the very high level, Amazon invests in companies because, we want those companies to be successful. And AWS itself makes a substantial investment, in agility, the startup customers success. We have things like service credits and things like, business nurturing programs that we have built over the course of the last seven, eight years. For example, over the past, you had a loan, Amazon has provided more than a billion dollars in credits, through AWS Activate program, to help startups grow and scale their businesses. And not only that a total of more than three and a half billion dollars in credit to more than 140,000 startups, over the last seven years, all through the course of the Activate program. From more so, on the healthcare side, I would want, certainly MJ to also, speak through or speak to, the challenges that the health system has faced in the COVID times, and how AWS is helping the provider, healthcare providers and the startups, really achieve success, and help the patient populations on that note. >> Michael, weighing on this new programs, you guys are launching in the impact healthcare, I see where we're seeing the frontline workers, I mean, it's everyone seeing it on TV and the newspaper, and it's impacting friends and family, give us the update. >> Absolutely, so we're here today to launch a new program. We call it the Healthcare Acceleration program. And basically, there are two halves to the program, with an undercurrent or a recurring undercurrent, I should say. Just really quickly before I touch on that though, I'd be remissed if I didn't make note of the fact that, you're right capital is still flowing, and it's a really big deal particularly, as healthcare and public health becomes such a priority, but one of the strategic imperatives of our team's role, similar to the way we democratize access to innovation for startups, we also find it really important to democratize access, to resources for founders, underrepresented founders, so, that everyone can have a level playing field, and equal access to those resources and funding, and things of that nature. Getting back to some of the healthcare priorities, in particular, I don't have to tell you about, this pandemic where on the third, and possibly the deadliest wave losing over 1000 Americans per day. And so, not only are we interested in helping our customers, our enterprise customers inject innovation from startups so that they can address clinical aspects, of the pandemic and beyond, but there are underlying rippling societal implications as well. Things that have been exacerbated by the pandemic. Things like mental health, behavioral health, including substance use abuse, clinical clinician burnout, things like social determinants of health, which lead to disproportionately impacted demographics. So, there's a whole lot to unpack and I'm sure we will, but at the highest level, that's what we're looking to help, our enterprise customers address, with the help of our innovative high potential startups. >> I mean, strategic focus, just go a little bit further on how important this is, because, programs are needed, there is burnout, okay. >> Yeah. >> You have mental health, physical health, everything in between. What are you guys launching? What's new? What can people take away right now from AWS, and what startups and when, 'cause a lot of people are changing their focus. I was seeing people leave their jobs, to have to get on this new mission. They're seeing the pain, there's a lot of entrepreneurial energy, happening right now here. Go further, please. >> So, you touched right on it. So, there are two sides. I mentioned there are two halves, and an underlying current, right? So, the two halves are the supply and the demand. The supply side is what we refer to as the startups, vetted high potential, high growth startups, in the health tech space, that we can help to accelerate their go to market, right? We can pair them with mentorship, credits, we call it the 4Cs. There's capital, mapping them potentially to investors, who are interested into accelerating their growth. There's code, technical support, whether it's cloud formation templates, or technical expertise, connections such as other startups, incubators, accelerators, etcetera, and finally mapping them to customers. So, that's, what's in it for the startups. And then on the other side, the enterprise side, again, there are so many enterprises from payers to providers and others who are looking to accelerate their efforts, to digitally transform their enterprise. And so, by partnering with AWS, and the Healthcare Acceleration program, they can trust that there are AWS powered startups, that are vetted and prepared, to inject that sense of urgency, that sense of innovation. And the underlying current, the dots that are being connected is, workforce modernization or economic development, because in many cases, you're right, people are losing their jobs, people are looking at ways that they can, modernize the workforce is locally leverage local talent. And so, entrepreneurship is a great way, to stimulate the local economy, and help older workers or workers who are looking to transition into a more relevant occupations, to do just that. So, this is an all encompassing program. >> Let's get into this health accelerator from AWS. This is something that is on the table, AWS Health Accelerator, who are the stakeholders, and what are the benefits of this program? >> Well, I mean, before we actually, go to the accelerator for me, I think there's this focus on the healthcare, as an industry, as a vertical, is very important to talk about. The industry is experiencing transformation. It is experiencing disruption and the COVID-19 pandemic, has only accelerated that. If you made, it has sort of magnified some of the stressors, which were already there in the system. If you combine that with the sort of the undercurrent that MJ mentioned from a technological perspective, the delivery of healthcare globally is going digital. So, you see technology is like artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data, augmented reality, IoT based variables. All of these technologies are coming together, to enable applications, such as remote diagnostics, patient monitoring, predictive prescriptive healthcare. And we truly feel that this presents a tremendous opportunity to improve the patient experience, and more importantly, the patient outcomes, using these technologies, and these newly enabled applications through those technologies. And as an example, in the U S alone, there are 22 key healthcare AI use cases, that are projected to grow by, or to approximately around $22 billion by 2025. So, in AWS, we are collaborating with the wide spectrum of healthcare providers, with public health organizations, with government agencies, all around the globe to support their effort, to cope with the rippling effects of the COVID-19. And arguably, many of them are visible to us today, but I would argue that many many are not even yet, have been begun to understand by us and by our customers. So, that is the reason why we want to put some emphasis, on healthcare from a public sector standpoint. >> Yeah, that's a great call-out Manpreet, I want to just highlight that, maybe get an additional commentary because, the old days it was just the institution, the hospital and then you're done. And then it was okay, hospital plus the caregiver, the doctors, and the workers, and now the patient. So, holistically, you're calling out the big picture, the patient care, right. Their families, their environment, the caregivers, and the institution, and now the supply chain, all of it integrated together. That's where the action is. And that's where the data comes in, that's where cloud scale can come in. Is that right? Am I getting that right there? >> Yeah, that's absolutely. I'm sorry Manpreet. >> Welcome MJ, go on. >> I was going to say you're absolutely right. In fact, we like to look at it almost like a bullseye, right? So, at the center of the bullseye, like you said, usually, the first stakeholder that comes to mind, is the provider or the coordinator of care. Outside of there, you have the payer, outside of there, you have researchers. And in any even further outside still are your regulators, your healthcare agencies at the local state, and federal levels, including military health. So, it's a rippling effect of customers on that side, as well as you asked about stakeholders on the startup side, there's also a bullseye of influence. Starting with the founder herself, the founder, and her executive team, moving out from there to the startup, as an organization outside from there, we've got incubators and accelerators that are in place, to help accelerate that growth as well. And then farther out you've got investors, VCs, and investors, and so on both sides, supply and demand we're looking to tap into, and accelerate the growth, and make connections between the two. >> Yeah, (indistinct) but when I, in back in real life, when we used to go to games, you walk into the stadium, you buy your ticket with your phone, you go to your seat, concessions guys, deliver things there for you, the fan experience, the players are there. I mean, why can't we have that in healthcare? I was just everything is happening, right. Go for good, yeah. And I think that's the Nirvana, hopefully soon. >> We're working on it. >> Good stuff. I know, I just love the vision, I think is so relevant and super important. Now, let's get into this health accelerator. What's this all about? Let's get into that. >> So, the health accelerator will be, a multi-week on-demand program. Where we're going to map high potential vetted startups, to a number of resources, right. I mentioned before that there will be mentorship, there will be technical experts who will be able to, take these startups who have established some presence, but we want to accelerate their ability to go deeper specifically into public health, throughout that ecosystem that I just described, right? Starting with providers and coordinators, payers, researchers, regulators. We want to give them a way to go deep into this, heavily regulated industry, so that they can not only have access to the innovation that many startups would not otherwise, like Manpreet mentioned machine learning AI, but they also have access to the resources, to ensure their success. >> What kind of problems are you guys trying to solve with this? I mean, is there a specific vetting process, is there a criteria? Is there a bar to all over share some specifics? >> Yeah, absolutely. So, for the past few years, a lot of the major change challenges, for our public health customers have been the same, but they require a new approach. And I like to call our approach the HIGH FIVE. So, some of those challenges that have been traditionally, lingering for the past few years, equal social determinants of health. Social determinants, when we talk about that, we not only refer to the nonclinical contributors to a person's overall wellness. So, you think about issues like food deserts or recidivism homelessness, all of that transportation to access to care, right, all of that contributes. But then there's also disparities and health outcomes. When you think about socioeconomic differences, rural health, ethnic and racial minorities, so, that all factors into social determinants of health. Then there's also aging. Now, these are the strategic pillars that we like to focus on, or that we are focusing on. When I mentioned aging every day in the U S, 10,000 people celebrate their 65th birthday. Many of those individuals are suffering from comorbidities, from hypertension, diabetes, cancer, and now the lingering impact of COVID-19. And so, as these aging individuals continue to live longer, the goal is to improve the quality of their life as well. And so, many of them look to technology to age independently at home, etcetera. So, that's our second strategic pillar. The third, is mental and behavioral health. So, when I talk about mental health, I mean, everything from mild depression, all the way through suicide prevention, and especially these days with COVID-19, we see a lot of clinicians suffering from burnout. And so, it's important, that we take care of the frontline workers, those healthcare providers, and even outside of COVID-19, you think about the ways that the patient population, has continued to expand, and the growth within the provider market has not, or the pool of providers has not nearly expanded at the same rate. We've got people living longer, we've got more people than ever insured. And so, we need to leverage technology to help a stagnant, number of providers to treat a growing pool of patients, without sacrificing the quality of care. And then finally, we've got environmental health. From air quality to water purity. It's important to understand the correlation between, the environment and the health care of our population. So, those are the pillars. I know I mentioned the HIGH FIVE, the fifth is not specific to healthcare. I touched on it a little bit earlier, but the fifth is, it is democratizing access to innovation, to resources, specifically for founders from underrepresented communities. >> And that's great insight, Michael great, great Schaeffer pointed that out. Manpreet take us on the final word here. Venture Capital, Startups, AWS, what's the current state share with us, the current worldview from your perspective. >> Oh, so, bringing home this point that MJ mentioned, the strategic plan of focus areas. And if you, look at all those strategic areas there's, you can really sort of put those into two buckets. One is the patient side of the bucket, and then there's the provider side of the bucket, or the caretaker side of the bucket. And if the patient side, what we want to do is work with startups that are, really working across a broad spectrum of use cases, but to solve those two key challenges of the, one on the patient's side and other on the provider side. Then the end goal of providing patient experience, and patient outcomes. For the patient side, it's the patient experience, patient engagement, patient outcomes. So, the startups looking on those sides, on those use cases of criteria. And then we have the provider side where, we want to ensure that the providers have the right set of technologies, the right set of solutions, right set of innovation, to help them where healthcare operations. You have all seen in COVID times, how the provider systems are getting overwhelmed. And that's where the healthcare operations comes into play. Clinical decision support. Now, many patients cannot get to the hospitals. So, how do we provide through our startup partners for startup customers, those solutions where remote diagnostics, remote imaging or remote health delivery could be provided. Things like predictive and prescriptive health solutions. How can we work with our startups to provide, those sort of solutions to the providers, to again, at the end, the better the outcome of the patients, right? So, that's what we were looking at. And that's what this program is all about. Working with public sector provider side of the house and the customers understanding, and helping them understand the need as well, and then bringing the right set of startup solutions, and help solve those challenges that they are facing, and the patients are facing as well. MJ, I'm sure you want to close it out, with some thoughts too. >> Okay. >> Absolutely, I would just close it with this, our goal, like Manpreet said, is to match the high potential startups, with the, the enterprises who are desiring those solutions, and success for us, we'll have three traits. It will be valuable, meaning that there will be a true alignment between what our startups offer and what the market needs. It will be measurable, so that we can quantify the improvement and outcomes. And finally, it will be sustainable. So, beyond COVID-19 beyond the opioid crisis, beyond any situation or condition, we look to bring solutions to market through our startups, that are going to truly sustain a transformative approach to modernizing public health enterprises. >> Great job again, and important work and DevOps, impacting healthcare in all kinds of ways. And it's super important work. I'm glad you guys are doing it, and it's going to develop out beautifully, and if I can give you a high five, Michael, I'll give you a high five off in-person, but remotely, >> Virtual. >> Get virtual high five great program. We're going to spread the word, good work. >> Thank you. >> Thanks for doing it, I appreciate it. >> Thank you very much for your time. >> Okay, it's theCUBE coverage virtual, we are theCUBE virtual bringing all the coverage, super important work being done in public sector, cloud enabling it, great people important, and of course, happening at re:Invent. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)