>> Life from Las Vegas, it's theCube, covering the AWS Accenture Executive Summit. Brought to you by Accenture. >> Welcome back everyone to theCube's live coverage of the AWS Executive Summit. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. And I'm joined by Kathleen Natriello. She is the vice president and the head of IT, digital design at Bristol Myers Squibb. And Shalu Chadha, senior technology services lead at Accenture. Thank you so much for coming on theCube. >> Sure. >> Thank you for having us. >> So we're going to talk about Bristol Myers Squibb's journey to the cloud today, but I want. Bristol Myers Squibb is a household name, but I would love you to just start out, Kathleen, by telling our viewers a little bit about Bristol Myers Squibb. Just how big a global pharma company you are. >> Sure. We're a global company, as you said. We have about 23,000 employees all over the world. And we're very focused on our immuno oncology therapies. And the way that they work is that they boost the immune system to fight cancer. So it's a really exciting development that we've had over the years. >> And so what was it, sort of, in the trajectory of Bristol Myers Squibb, that made you realize, as an organization, we need to do things differently? What challenges were you facing? >> So, we're very science focused in terms of developing treatments for our patients. And so our highest priority was our scientists' productivity. And so we started our cloud journey about 10 years ago. And our initial focus was on leveraging burst computing in AWS, which enabled us to spin up enough capacity for our scientists to do research with very large volumes of data. That's one of the things about biopharma. We use very large volumes for genomics research. >> And also, with this partnership, using AWS, you also partner with Accenture. So, can you describe a little bit, Shalu, how the partnership evolved? >> Right. And so that journey that Kathy mentioned, We've been part of that journey for the last two years now. And I think it's this nice partnership between AWS, BMS, and Accenture. And the teams have gone on with a lot of quick successes and early successes. And I think, going forward, the focus is really now businesses is going to look for a lot more demand and agility. Clouded adoption is going to be key in how we actually expand on that. And I know we're talking amongst us to say, how do we get there faster now? >> A little less conversation, a little more action please. >> Yes. (inaudible speech and laughter) >> Exactly. So, let's talk about this journey. So you're not only migrating existing applications, you're also building your own applications. >> Yes. >> What's the, sort of the wisdom behind that strategy? >> A couple of things. So I mentioned earlier that we started our journey with our scientists and we've continued because that's where AWS really delivers significant value for Bristol Myers Squibb. So, what we have done is implemented several AWS cloud services that enable our scientists to use machine learning, artificial intelligence, a lot of computational approaches and simulations that significantly reduce the amount of time it takes them to do an experiment, as well as the cost. Because they no longer have to use actual physical material, or patients, or investigators. They can do it all through simulation and modeling, which is exciting. >> So, I mean, we all know that the drug discovery process takes a long time, and it's tedious, um, cumbersome. So can you actually bring it back down to earth a little bit and say, what have you seen? What are your scientists? In terms of how the drug discovery process is going. >> Yeah. Our scientists are our biggest advocates of the cloud and the capabilities it delivers. And they will report back to us that they are doing things with machine learning and artificial intelligence with these simulations, that they're doing in a few hours, that used to take them weeks and months. And so that's how it's really shortening that cycle. >> And are the patients feeling the benefits yet, too? >> The patients will feel the benefits with our focus on clinical trials. And so, being able to speed up a clinical trial is very helpful. And both from the patient experience, as well as the investigators. >> Shalu, can you talk about some of the other innovation and automation capabilities? >> Yeah. So, BMS is really on this really exciting journey, and now that they've, like Kathy said, extended some of those capabilities and actually building and enabling for the scientists, of the commercial, the brand sites. It's now about, really, what do you do next and how you bring that next wave of innovation. And so, what's been nice at Bristol Myers Squibb and the partnership we have with Accenture here, is really looking at taking some of the learnings we had in the back office, in the finance and the procurement. Where we've actually brought a lot of process efficiency through our bots taking some of that learnings and bringing that across in many other different ways. And now we have bots across legal, compliance, and moving into the clinical area that adverse events. And we're looking at really that part which is how do you actually get quicker with how the patients are going to see both responses to the adverse events, as well as how do you actually accelerate the clinical trial process. And all of those innovations are really possible with what Kathy has set up in her organization. And actually having that digital acceleration competency and be able to take this span enterprise. >> One of the things that's so interesting about these partnerships is how you work together. >> (in unison) Yes. >> And is it that you're focusing on the science and Accenture is thinking about the technology? I mean, are you, sort of, two different groups? Or how are you coming together to collaborate and build a relationship? >> I really see it as three groups. So it's Bristol Myers Squibb that's focused on science as well as the technology. And if I take an example of how that partnership works, when we were doing our migration to the cloud, the more aggressive plan that we have in place right now, Amazon partnered with us on a migration readiness program. And that enabled us to move as much as 400 plus workloads into the cloud and to other locations. And then Accenture partnered with us, as well, to actually move the applications and migrate them to the cloud and the two other locations. So, I really see it as a three way partnership. And part of the way, one of the reasons it's so successful is it's not just BMS partnering with Accenture, and BMS partnering with Amazon, But it's Amazon and Accenture partnering together. And they would come up with ideas on here's what we think will make BMS even more successful. >> And how, and how is that? Is it because you were really grasping their business challenges? Or, I mean, how are you able to come up with? You're not a life science person. >> Right. >> It's, how are you doing that? >> It's a good question, and I think when I reflect on what I experience with other clients, I think what's so tremendously making us successful here is everything is about interest based. And it's about how we start the conversation. The patient in the center. And then it's about who's interests are we serving. Let's be clear. And let's try and try trigress into what's the solution that actually needs that. So, I think, whether, Kathy mentioned it in the cloud cumulus work, or even with the SAPS four journey right now. It's the combination of AWS, BMS, and Accenture in that journey of how we going to solve this together. Those critical and complex programs. >> Kathy, you said that scientists were some of your biggest advocates for going cloud native. I'm curious about the rest of the work force. I mean, has it been, sometimes introducing new technologies and new ways of doing things can cause consternation among your employees. >> Yeah., but in my organization, we bring a lot of change to the rest of the company. And your right. Sometimes it's well received. But I think when it is well received, is when across the company they can see the productivity gain with our robotics process automation. At a digital workforce, people are able to have, they are able to get a lot more done. And so there is acceptance of that. And very often, the business functions are the ones that introduce the new technologies because they're really interested in it and curious. So it works out well. >> So they're getting more done so >> Yes >> So then they're more satisfied with their work and life >> Yes >> And, exactly. So tell our viewers a little bit more about what's next for this partnership, for this relationship, in terms of new technologies. In terms of what you hope to be able to accomplish in the years to come. >> So, I can start. I really think that's what is next for us is to move a little faster. So, in our cloud journey, as I mentioned, we started 10 years ago and then, we've build on what we've learned. So, as an example, we put our commercial data warehouse into a Amazon Redshift. And then that laid the foundation for us to do, for example, rapid data labs. We started by building some data lakes in HR and R and D. And then, by the time we got to doing that for manufacturing, we did it serverless. And so we've had a nice progression based on learning and going the next step. But I think, we're to the point where the technology's evolving so quickly we can move a lot faster and get the benefits faster. So for me, that's what I view as what's next. >> Shalu, anything? >> Yeah. I would just add that I think analytics set the core. I think there is such a strong foundation set here that now it's about how are we going to extrapolate from there. And really look at bot machine learning and what that could do for us. And that, and we will take a lot from what we've learned here today about actually evolving that journey. And I think the best part is the foundation is set strong. And now it's about accelerating into those specific business areas as well. So I would say analytics and really extending our machine learning capabilities. >> So move faster, analytics machine learning. Great. So we're going to be talking about it next year's summit. Well, Kathy and Shalu, thank you so much for coming on theCube. This was a lot of fun. >> Yes. It was. >> (in unison) Thank you. >> I'm Rebecca Knight. We will have more of theCube's live coverage of the AWS Executive Summit coming up in just a little bit.