(upbeat music) >> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of Women in Data Science 2023 live from Stanford University. This is Lisa Martin. My co-host is Tracy Yuan. We're excited to be having great conversations all day but you know, 'cause you've been watching. We've been interviewing some very inspiring women and some men as well, talking about all of the amazing applications of data science. You're not going to want to miss this next conversation. Our guest is Gabriela de Queiroz, Principal Cloud Advocate Manager of Microsoft. Welcome, Gabriela. We're excited to have you. >> Thank you very much. I'm so excited to be talking to you. >> Yeah, you're on theCUBE. >> Yeah, finally. (Lisa laughing) Like a dream come true. (laughs) >> I know and we love that. We're so thrilled to have you. So you have a ton of experience in the data space. I was doing some research on you. You've worked in software, financial advertisement, health. Talk to us a little bit about you. What's your background in? >> So I was trained in statistics. So I'm a statistician and then I worked in epidemiology. I worked with air pollution and public health. So I was a researcher before moving into the industry. So as I was talking today, the weekly paths, it's exactly who I am. I went back and forth and back and forth and stopped and tried something else until I figured out that I want to do data science and that I want to do different things because with data science we can... The beauty of data science is that you can move across domains. So I worked in healthcare, financial, and then different technology companies. >> Well the nice thing, one of the exciting things that data science, that I geek out about and Tracy knows 'cause we've been talking about this all day, it's just all the different, to your point, diverse, pun intended, applications of data science. You know, this morning we were talking about, we had the VP of data science from Meta as a keynote. She came to theCUBE talking and really kind of explaining from a content perspective, from a monetization perspective, and of course so many people in the world are users of Facebook. It makes it tangible. But we also heard today conversations about the applications of data science in police violence, in climate change. We're in California, we're expecting a massive rainstorm and we don't know what to do when it rains or snows. But climate change is real. Everyone's talking about it, and there's data science at its foundation. That's one of the things that I love. But you also have a lot of experience building diverse teams. Talk a little bit about that. You've created some very sophisticated data science solutions. Talk about your recommendation to others to build diverse teams. What's in it for them? And maybe share some data science project or two that you really found inspirational. >> Yeah, absolutely. So I do love building teams. Every time I'm given the task of building teams, I feel the luckiest person in the world because you have the option to pick like different backgrounds and all the diverse set of like people that you can find. I don't think it's easy, like people say, yeah, it's very hard. You have to be intentional. You have to go from the very first part when you are writing the job description through the interview process. So you have to be very intentional in every step. And you have to think through when you are doing that. And I love, like my last team, we had like 10 people and we were so diverse. Like just talking about languages. We had like 15 languages inside a team. So how beautiful it is. Like all different backgrounds, like myself as a statistician, but we had people from engineering background, biology, languages, and so on. So it's, yeah, like every time thinking about building a team, if you wanted your team to be diverse, you need to be intentional. >> I'm so glad you brought up that intention point because that is the fundamental requirement really is to build it with intention. >> Exactly, and I love to hear like how there's different languages. So like I'm assuming, or like different backgrounds, I'm assuming everybody just zig zags their way into the team and now you're all women in data science and I think that's so precious. >> Exactly. And not only woman, right. >> Tracy: Not only woman, you're right. >> The team was diverse not only in terms of like gender, but like background, ethnicity, and spoken languages, and language that they use to program and backgrounds. Like as I mentioned, not everybody did the statistics in school or computer science. And it was like one of my best teams was when we had this combination also like things that I'm good at the other person is not as good and we have this knowledge sharing all the time. Every day I would feel like I'm learning something. In a small talk or if I was reviewing something, there was always something new because of like the richness of the diverse set of people that were in your team. >> Well what you've done is so impressive, because not only have you been intentional with it, but you sound like the hallmark of a great leader of someone who hires and builds teams to fill gaps. They don't have to know less than I do for me to be the leader. They have to have different skills, different areas of expertise. That is really, honestly Gabriela, that's the hallmark of a great leader. And that's not easy to come by. So tell me, who were some of your mentors and sponsors along the way that maybe influenced you in that direction? Or is that just who you are? >> That's a great question. And I joke that I want to be the role model that I never had, right. So growing up, I didn't have anyone that I could see other than my mom probably or my sister. But there was no one that I could see, I want to become that person one day. And once I was tracing my path, I started to see people looking at me and like, you inspire me so much, and I'm like, oh wow, this is amazing and I want to do do this over and over and over again. So I want to be that person to inspire others. And no matter, like I'll be like a VP, CEO, whoever, you know, I want to be, I want to keep inspiring people because that's so valuable. >> Lisa: Oh, that's huge. >> And I feel like when we grow professionally and then go to the next level, we sometimes we lose that, you know, thing that's essential. And I think also like, it's part of who I am as I was building and all my experiences as I was going through, I became what I mentioned is unique person that I think we all are unique somehow. >> You're a rockstar. Isn't she a rockstar? >> You dropping quotes out. >> I'm loving this. I'm like, I've inspired Gabriela. (Gabriela laughing) >> Oh my God. But yeah, 'cause we were asking our other guests about the same question, like, who are your role models? And then we're talking about how like it's very important for women to see that there is a representation, that there is someone they look up to and they want to be. And so that like, it motivates them to stay in this field and to start in this field to begin with. So yeah, I think like you are definitely filling a void and for all these women who dream to be in data science. And I think that's just amazing. >> And you're a founder too. In 2012, you founded R Ladies. Talk a little bit about that. This is present in more than 200 cities in 55 plus countries. Talk about R Ladies and maybe the catalyst to launch it. >> Yes, so you always start, so I'm from Brazil, I always talk about this because it's such, again, I grew up over there. So I was there my whole life and then I moved to here, Silicon Valley. And when I moved to San Francisco, like the doors opened. So many things happening in the city. That was back in 2012. Data science was exploding. And I found out something about Meetup.com, it's a website that you can join and go in all these events. And I was going to this event and I joke that it was kind of like going to the Disneyland, where you don't know if I should go that direction or the other direction. >> Yeah, yeah. >> And I was like, should I go and learn about data visualization? Should I go and learn about SQL or should I go and learn about Hadoop, right? So I would go every day to those meetups. And I was a student back then, so you know, the budget was very restricted as a student. So we don't have much to spend. And then they would serve dinner and you would learn for free. And then I got to a point where I was like, hey, they are doing all of this as a volunteer. Like they are running this meetup and events for free. And I felt like it's a cycle. I need to do something, right. I'm taking all this in. I'm having this huge opportunity to be here. I want to give back. So that's what how everything started. I was like, no, I have to think about something. I need to think about something that I can give back. And I was using R back then and I'm like how about I do something with R. I love R, I'm so passionate about R, what about if I create a community around R but not a regular community, because by going to this events, I felt that as a Latina and as a woman, I was always in the corner and I was not being able to participate and to, you know, be myself and to network and ask questions. I would be in the corner. So I said to myself, what about if I do something where everybody feel included, where everybody can participate, can share, can ask questions without judgment? So that's how R ladies all came together. >> That's awesome. >> Talk about intentions, like you have to, you had that go in mind, but yeah, I wanted to dive a little bit into R. So could you please talk more about where did the passion for R come from, and like how did the special connection between you and R the language, like born, how did that come from? >> It was not a love at first sight. >> No. >> Not at all. Not at all. Because that was back in Brazil. So all the documentation were in English, all the tutorials, only two. We had like very few tutorials. It was not like nowadays that we have so many tutorials and courses. There were like two tutorials, other documentation in English. So it's was hard for me like as someone that didn't know much English to go through the language and then to learn to program was not easy task. But then as I was going through the language and learning and reading books and finding the people behind the language, I don't know how I felt in love. And then when I came to to San Francisco, I saw some of like the main contributors who are speaking in person and I'm like, wow, they are like humans. I don't know, it was like, I have no idea why I had this love. But I think the the people and then the community was the thing that kept me with the R language. >> Yeah, the community factors is so important. And it's so, at WIDS it's so palpable. I mean I literally walk in the door, every WIDS I've done, I think I've been doing them for theCUBE since 2017. theCUBE has been here since the beginning in 2015 with our co-founders. But you walk in, you get this sense of belonging. And this sense of I can do anything, why not? Why not me? Look at her up there, and now look at you speaking in the technical talk today on theCUBE. So inspiring. One of the things that I always think is you can't be what you can't see. We need to be able to see more people that look like you and sound like you and like me and like you as well. And WIDS gives us that opportunity, which is fantastic, but it's also helping to move the needle, really. And I was looking at some of the Anitab.org stats just yesterday about 2022. And they're showing, you know, the percentage of females in technical roles has been hovering around 25% for a while. It's a little higher now. I think it's 27.6 according to any to Anitab. We're seeing more women hired in roles. But what are the challenges, and I would love to get your advice on this, for those that might be in this situation is attrition, women who are leaving roles. What would your advice be to a woman who might be trying to navigate family and work and career ladder to stay in that role and keep pushing forward? >> I'll go back to the community. If you don't have a community around you, it's so hard to navigate. >> That's a great point. >> You are lonely. There is no one that you can bounce ideas off, that you can share what you are feeling or like that you can learn as well. So sometimes you feel like you are the only person that is going through that problem or like, you maybe have a family or you are planning to have a family and you have to make a decision. But you've never seen anyone going through this. So when you have a community, you see people like you, right. So that's where we were saying about having different people and people like you so they can share as well. And you feel like, oh yeah, so they went through this, they succeed. I can also go through this and succeed. So I think the attrition problem is still big problem. And I'm sure will be worse now with everything that is happening in Tech with layoffs. >> Yes and the great resignation. >> Yeah. >> We are going back, you know, a few steps, like a lot of like advancements that we did. I feel like we are going back unfortunately, but I always tell this, make sure that you have a community. Make sure that you have a mentor. Make sure that you have someone or some people, not only one mentor, different mentors, that can support you through this trajectory. Because it's not easy. But there are a lot of us out there. >> There really are. And that's a great point. I love everything about the community. It's all about that network effect and feeling like you belong- >> That's all WIDS is about. >> Yeah. >> Yes. Absolutely. >> Like coming over here, it's like seeing the old friends again. It's like I'm so glad that I'm coming because I'm all my old friends that I only see like maybe once a year. >> Tracy: Reunion. >> Yeah, exactly. And I feel like that our tank get, you know- >> Lisa: Replenished. >> Exactly. For the rest of the year. >> Yes. >> Oh, that's precious. >> I love that. >> I agree with that. I think one of the things that when I say, you know, you can't see, I think, well, how many females in technology would I be able to recognize? And of course you can be female technology working in the healthcare sector or working in finance or manufacturing, but, you know, we need to be able to have more that we can see and identify. And one of the things that I recently found out, I was telling Tracy this earlier that I geeked out about was finding out that the CTO of Open AI, ChatGPT, is a female. I'm like, (gasps) why aren't we talking about this more? She was profiled on Fast Company. I've seen a few pieces on her, Mira Murati. But we're hearing so much about ChatJTP being... ChatGPT, I always get that wrong, about being like, likening it to the launch of the iPhone, which revolutionized mobile and connectivity. And here we have a female in the technical role. Let's put her on a pedestal because that is hugely inspiring. >> Exactly, like let's bring everybody to the front. >> Yes. >> Right. >> And let's have them talk to us because like, you didn't know. I didn't know probably about this, right. You didn't know. Like, we don't know about this. It's kind of like we are hidden. We need to give them the spotlight. Every woman to give the spotlight, so they can keep aspiring the new generation. >> Or Susan Wojcicki who ran, how long does she run YouTube? All the YouTube influencers that probably have no idea who are influential for whatever they're doing on YouTube in different social platforms that don't realize, do you realize there was a female behind the helm that for a long time that turned it into what it is today? That's outstanding. Why aren't we talking about this more? >> How about Megan Smith, was the first CTO on the Obama administration. >> That's right. I knew it had to do with Obama. Couldn't remember. Yes. Let's let's find more pedestals. But organizations like WIDS, your involvement as a speaker, showing more people you can be this because you can see it, >> Yeah, exactly. is the right direction that will help hopefully bring us back to some of the pre-pandemic levels, and keep moving forward because there's so much potential with data science that can impact everyone's lives. I always think, you know, we have this expectation that we have our mobile phone and we can get whatever we want wherever we are in the world and whatever time of day it is. And that's all data driven. The regular average person that's not in tech thinks about data as a, well I'm paying for it. What's all these data charges? But it's powering the world. It's powering those experiences that we all want as consumers or in our business lives or we expect to be able to do a transaction, whether it's something in a CRM system or an Uber transaction like that, and have the app respond, maybe even know me a little bit better than I know myself. And that's all data. So I think we're just at the precipice of the massive impact that data science will make in our lives. And luckily we have leaders like you who can help navigate us along this path. >> Thank you. >> What advice for, last question for you is advice for those in the audience who might be nervous or maybe lack a little bit of confidence to go I really like data science, or I really like engineering, but I don't see a lot of me out there. What would you say to them? >> Especially for people who are from like a non-linear track where like going onto that track. >> Yeah, I would say keep going. Keep going. I don't think it's easy. It's not easy. But keep going because the more you go the more, again, you advance and there are opportunities out there. Sometimes it takes a little bit, but just keep going. Keep going and following your dreams, that you get there, right. So again, data science, such a broad field that doesn't require you to come from a specific background. And I think the beauty of data science exactly is this is like the combination, the most successful data science teams are the teams that have all these different backgrounds. So if you think that we as data scientists, we started programming when we were nine, that's not true, right. You can be 30, 40, shifting careers, starting to program right now. It doesn't matter. Like you get there no matter how old you are. And no matter what's your background. >> There's no limit. >> There was no limits. >> I love that, Gabriela, >> Thank so much. for inspiring. I know you inspired me. I'm pretty sure you probably inspired Tracy with your story. And sometimes like what you just said, you have to be your own mentor and that's okay. Because eventually you're going to turn into a mentor for many, many others and sounds like you're already paving that path and we so appreciate it. You are now officially a CUBE alumni. >> Yes. Thank you. >> Yay. We've loved having you. Thank you so much for your time. >> Thank you. Thank you. >> For our guest and for Tracy's Yuan, this is Lisa Martin. We are live at WIDS 23, the eighth annual Women in Data Science Conference at Stanford. Stick around. Our next guest joins us in just a few minutes. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: The cube's live coverage is made possible by funding from Dell Technologies, creating technologies that drive human progress. (upbeat music) (background indistinct chatter) >> Good morning from Barcelona, everyone. It's theCUBE live at MWC23, day three of our four days of coverage. Lisa Martin here with Dave Nicholson. Dave, we have had some great conversations. Can't believe it's day three already. Anything sticking out at you from a thematic perspective that really caught your eye the last couple days? >> I guess I go back to kind of our experience with sort of the generalized world of information technology and a lot of the parallels between what's been happening in other parts of the economy and what's happening in the telecom space now. So it helps me understand some of the complexity when I tie it back to things that I'm aware of >> A lot of complexity, but a big ecosystem that's growing. We're going to be talking more about the ecosystem next and what they're doing to really enable customers CSPs to deliver services. We've got two guests here, Tammy Wyman joins us the Global head of Partners Telco at AWS. And Kurt Schaubach, CTO of Federated Wireless. Welcome to theCUBE Guys. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Great to have you here, day three. Lots of announcements, lots of news at MWC. But Tammy, there's been a lot of announcements from partners with AWS this week. Talk to us a little bit more about first of all, the partner program and then let's unpack some of those announcements. One of them is with Federated Wireless. >> Sure. Yeah. So AWS created the partner program 10 years ago when they really started to understand the value of bringing together the ecosystem. So, I think we're starting to see how this is becoming a reality. So now we 100,000 partners later, 150 countries, 70% of those partners are outside of the US. So truly the global nature and partners being ISVs, GSIs. And then in the telco space, we're actually looking at how we help CSBs become partners of AWS and bring new revenue streams. So that's how we start having the discussions around Federated Wireless. >> Talk a little bit about Federated Wireless, Kurt, give the audience an overview of what you guys are doing and then maybe give us some commentary on the partnership. >> Sure. So we're a shared spectrum and private wireless company, and we actually started working with AWS about five years ago to take this model that we developed to perfect the use of shared spectrum to enable enterprise communications and bring the power of 5G to the enterprise to bring it to all of the AWS customers and partners. So through that now through we're one of the partner network participants. We're working very closely with the AWS team on bringing this, really unique form of connectivity to all sorts of different enterprise use cases from solving manufacturing and warehouse logistics issues to providing connectivity to mines, enhancing the experience for students on a university campus. So it's a really exciting partnership. Everything that we deliver on an end-to-end basis from design deployment to bringing the infrastructure on-prem, all runs on AWS. (background indistinct chatter) >> So a lot of the conversations that we've had sort of start with this concept of the radio access network and frankly in at least the public domain cellular sites. And so all of a sudden it's sort of grounded in this physical reality of these towers with these boxes of equipment on the tower, at the base of the tower, connected to other things. How does AWS and Federated Wireless, where do you fit in that model in terms of equipment at the base of a tower versus what having that be off-premises in some way or another. Kind of give us more of a flavor for the kind of physical reality of what you guys are doing? >> Yeah, I'll start. >> Yeah, Tammy. >> I'll hand it over to the real expert but from an AWS perspective, what we're finding is really I don't know if it's even a convergence or kind of a delaying of the network. So customers are, they don't care if they're on Wi-Fi if they're on public spectrum, if they're on private spectrum, what they want are networks that are able to talk to each other and to provide the right connectivity at the right time and with the right pricing model. So by moving to the cloud that allows us that flexibility to be able to offer the quality of service and to be able to bring in a larger ecosystem of partners as with the networks are almost disaggregated. >> So does the AWS strategy focus solely on things that are happening in, say, AWS locations or AWS data centers? Or is AWS also getting into the arena of what I would refer to as an Outpost in an AWS parlance where physical equipment that's running a stack might actually also be located physically where the communications towers are? What does that mix look like in terms of your strategy? >> Yeah, certainly as customers are looking at hybrid cloud environments, we started looking at how we can use Outpost as part of the network. So, we've got some great use cases where we're taking Outpost into the edge of operators networks, and really starting to have radio in the cloud. We've launched with Dish earlier, and now we're starting to see some other announcements that we've made with Nokia about having ran in the cloud as well. So using Outpost, that's one of our key strategies. It creates, again, a lot of flexibility for the hybrid cloud environment and brings a lot of that compute power to the edge of the network. >> Let's talk about some of the announcements. Tammy was reading that AWS is expanding, its telecom and 5g, private 5G network support. You've also unveiled the AWS Telco Network Builder service. Talk about that, who that's targeted for. What does an operator do with AWS on this? Or maybe you guys can talk about that together. >> Sure. Would you like to start? I can talk. All right. So from the network builder, it's aimed at the, I would say the persona that it's aimed at would be the network engineer within the CSPs. And there was a bit of a difficulty when you want to design a telco network on AWS versus the way that the network engineers would traditionally design. So I'm going to call them protocols, but you know I can imagine saying, "I really want to build this on the cloud, but they're making me move away from my typical way that I design a network and move it into a cloud world." So what we did was really kind of create this template saying, "You can build the network as you always do and we are going to put the magic behind it to translate it into a cloud world." So just really facilitating and taking some of the friction out of the building of the network. >> What was the catalyst for that? I think Dish and Swisscom you've been working with but talk about the catalyst for doing that and how it's facilitating change because part of that's change management with how network engineers actually function and how they work. >> Absolutely, yeah. And we're looking, we listen to customers and we're trying to understand what are those friction points? What would make it easier? And that was one that we heard consistently. So we wanted to apply a bit of our experience and the way that we're able to use data translate that using code so that you're building a network in your traditional way, and then it kind of spits out what's the formula to build the network in the cloud. >> Got it. Kurt, talk about, yeah, I saw that there was just an announcement that Federated Wireless made JBG Smith. Talk to us more about that. What will federated help them to create and how are you all working together? >> Sure. So JBG Smith is the exclusive redeveloper of an area just on the other side of the Potomac from Washington DC called National Landing. And it's about half the size of Manhattan. So it's an enormous area that's getting redeveloped. It's the home of Amazon's new HQ two location. And JBG Smith is investing in addition to the commercial real estate, digital place making a place where people live, work, play, and connect. And part of that is bringing an enhanced level of connectivity to people's homes, their residents, the enterprise, and private wireless is a key component of that. So when we talk about private wireless, what we're doing with AWS is giving an enterprise the freedom to operate a network independent of a mobile network operator. So that means everything from the ran to the core to the applications that run on this network are sort of within the domain of the enterprise merging 5G and edge compute and driving new business outcomes. That's really the most important thing. We can talk a lot about 5G here at MWC about what the enterprise really cares about are new business outcomes how do they become more efficient? And that's really what private wireless helps enable. >> So help us connect the dots. When we talk about private wireless we've definitely been in learning mode here. Well, I'll speak for myself going around and looking at some of the exhibits and seeing how things work. And I know that I wasn't necessarily a 100% clear on this connection between a 5G private wireless network today and where Wi-Fi still comes into play. So if I am a new resident in this area, happily living near the amazing new presence of AWS on the East coast, and I want to use my mobile device how am I connected into that private wireless network? What does that look like as a practical matter? >> So that example that you've just referred to is really something that we enable through neutral host. So in fact, what we're able to do through this private network is also create carrier connectivity. Basically create a pipe almost for the carriers to be able to reach a consumer device like that. A lot of private wireless is also driving business outcomes with enterprises. So work that we're doing, like for example, with the Cal Poly out in California, for example is to enable a new 5G innovation platform. So this is driving all sorts of new 5G research and innovation with the university, new applications around IoT. And they need the ability to do that indoors, outdoors in a way that's sort of free from the domain of connectivity to a a mobile network operator and having the freedom and flexibility to do that, merging that with edge compute. Those are some really important components. We're also doing a lot of work in things like warehouses. Think of a warehouse as being this very complex RF environment. You want to bring robotics you want to bring better inventory management and Wi-Fi just isn't an effective means of providing really reliable indoor coverage. You need more secure networks you need lower latency and the ability to move more data around again, merging new applications with edge compute and that's where private wireless really shines. >> So this is where we do the shout out to my daughter Rachel Nicholson, who is currently a junior at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Rachel, get plenty of sleep and get your homework done. >> Lisa: She better be studying. >> I held up my mobile device and I should have said full disclosure, we have spotty cellular service where I live. So I think of this as a Wi-Fi connected device, in fact. So maybe I confuse the issue at least. >> Tammy, talk to us a little bit about the architecture from an AWS perspective that is enabling JBG Smith, Cal Poly is this, we're talking an edge architecture, but give us a little bit more of an understanding of what that actually technically looks like. >> Alright, I would love to pass this one over to Kurt. >> Okay. >> So I'm sorry, just in terms of? >> Wanting to understand the AWS architecture this is an edge based architecture hosted on what? On AWS snow, application storage. Give us a picture of what that looks like. >> Right. So I mean, the beauty of this is the simplicity in it. So we're able to bring an AWS snowball, snow cone, edge appliance that runs a pack of core. We're able to run workloads on that locally so some applications, but we also obviously have the ability to bring that out to the public cloud. So depending on what the user application is, we look at anything from the AWS snow family to Outpost and sort of develop templates or solutions depending on what the customer workloads demand. But the innovation that's happened, especially around the pack core and how we can make that so compact and able to run on such a capable appliance is really powerful. >> Yeah, and I will add that I think the diversification of the different connectivity modules that we have a lot of them have been developed because of the needs from the telco industry. So the adaptation of Outpost to run into the edge, the snow family. So the telco industry is really leading a lot of the developments that AWS takes to market in the end because of the nature of having to have networks that are able to disconnect, ruggedize environments, the latency, the numerous use cases that our telco customers are facing to take to their end customers. So like it really allows us to adapt and bring the right network to the right place and the right environment. And even for the same customer they may have different satellite offices or remote sites that need different connectivity needs. >> Right. So it sounds like that collaboration between AWS and telco is quite strong and symbiotic, it sounds like. >> Tammy: Absolutely. >> So we talked about a number of the announcements in our final minutes. I want to talk about integrated private wireless that was just announced last week. What is that? Who are the users going to be? And I understand T-Mobile is involved there. >> Yes. Yeah. So this is a program that we launched based on what we're seeing is kind of a convergence of the ecosystem of private wireless. So we wanted to be able to create a program which is offering spectrum that is regulated as well. And we wanted to offer that on in a more of a multi country environment. So we launched with T-Mobile, Telephonica, KDDI and a number of other succeed, as a start to start being able to bring the regulated spectrum into the picture and as well other ISVs who are going to be bringing unique use cases so that when you look at, well we've got the connectivity into this environment, the mine or the port, what are those use cases? You know, so ISVs who are providing maybe asset tracking or some of the health and safety and we bring them in as part of the program. And I think an important piece is the actual discoverability of this, because when you think about that if you're a buyer on the other side, like where do I start? So we created a portal with this group of ISVs and partners so that one could come together and kind of build what are my needs? And then they start picking through and then the ecosystem would be recommended to them. So it's a really a way to discover and to also procure a private wireless network much more easily than could be done in the past. >> That's a great service >> And we're learning a lot from the market. And what we're doing together in our partnership is through a lot of these sort of ruggedized remote location deployments that we're doing, mines, clearing underbrush and forest forest areas to prevent forest fires. There's a tremendous number of applications for private wireless where sort of the conventional carrier networks just aren't prioritized to serve. And you need a different level of connectivity. Privacy is big concern as well. Data security. Keeping data on premise, which is a another big application that we were able to drive through these edge compute platforms. >> Awesome. Guys, thank you so much for joining us on the program talking about what AWS Federated are doing together and how you're really helping to evolve the telco landscape and make life ultimately easier for all the Nicholsons to connect over Wi-Fi, our private 5g. >> Keep us in touch. And from two Californians you had us when you said clear the brush, prevent fires. >> You did. Thanks guys, it was a pleasure having you on the program. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Our pleasure. For our guest and for Dave Nicholson, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE Live from our third day of coverage of MWC23. Stick around Dave and I will be right back with our next guest. (upbeat music)

(calming music) >> Hello and welcome back to fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada. We're here at AWS re:Invent day three of our scintillating coverage here on theCUBE. I'm Savannah Peterson, joined by John Furrier. John Day three energy's high. How you feeling? >> I dunno, it's day two, day three, day four. It feels like day four, but again, we're back. >> Who's counting? >> Three pandemic levels in terms of 50,000 plus people? Hallways are packed. I got pictures. People don't believe it. It's actually happening. Then people are back. So, you know, and then the economy is a big question too and it's still, people are here, they're still building on the cloud and cost is a big thing. This next segment's going to be really important. I'm looking forward to this next segment. >> Yeah, me too. Without further ado let's welcome our guests for this segment. We have Brad from AMD and we have Rahul from you are, well you do a variety of different things. We'll start with CloudFix for this segment, but we could we could talk about your multiple hats all day long. Welcome to the show, gentlemen. How you doing? Brad how does it feel? We love seeing your logo above our stage here. >> Oh look, we love this. And talking about re:Invent last year, the energy this year compared to last year is so much bigger. We love it. We're excited to be here. >> Yeah, that's awesome. Rahul, how are you feeling? >> Excellent, I mean, I think this is my eighth or ninth re:Invent at this point and it's been fabulous. I think the, the crowd, the engagement, it's awesome. >> You wouldn't know there's a looming recession if you look at the activity but yet still the reality is here we had an analyst on yesterday, we were talking about spend more in the cloud, save more. So that you can still use the cloud and there's a lot of right sizing, I call you got to turn the lights off before you go to bed. Kind of be more efficient with your infrastructure as a theme. This re:Invent is a lot more about that now. Before it's about the glory days. Oh yeah, keep building, now with a little bit of pressure. This is the conversation. >> Exactly and I think most companies are looking to figure out how to innovate their way out of this uncertainty that's kind of on everyone's head. And the only way to do it is to be able to be more efficient with whatever your existing spend is, take those savings and then apply them to innovating on new stuff. And that's the way to go about it at this point. >> I think it's such a hot topic, for everyone that we're talking about. I mean, total cost optimization figuring out ways to be more efficient. I know that that's a big part of your mission at CloudFix. So just in case the audience isn't versed, give us the pitch. >> Okay, so a little bit of background on this. So the other hat I wear is CTO of ESW Capital. We have over 150 enterprise software companies within the portfolio. And one of my jobs is also to manage and run about 40 to 45,000 AWS accounts of our own. >> Casual number, just a few, just a couple pocket change, no big deal. >> And like everyone else here in the audience, yeah we had a problem with our costs, just going out of control and as we were looking at a lot of the tools to help us kind of get more efficient one of the biggest issues was that while people give you a lot of recommendations recommendations are way too far from realized savings. And we were running through the challenge of how do you take recommendation and turn them into real savings and multiple different hurdles. The short story being, we had to create CloudFix to actually realize those savings. So we took AWS recommendations around cost, filtered them down to the ones that are completely non-disruptive in nature, implemented those as simple automations that everyone could just run and realize those savings right away. We then took those savings and then started applying them to innovating and doing new interesting things with that money. >> Is there a best practice in your mind that you see merging in this time? People start more focused on it. Is there a method or a purpose kind of best practice of how to approach cost optimization? >> I think one of the things that most people don't realize is that cost optimization is not a one and done thing. It is literally nonstop. Which means that, on one hand AWS is constantly creating new services. There are over a hundred thousand API at this point of time How to use them right, how to use them efficiently You also have a problem of choice. Developers are constantly discovering new services discovering new ways to utilize them. And they are behaving in ways that you had not anticipated before. So you have to stay on top of things all the time. And really the only way to kind of stay on top is to have automation that helps you stay on top of all of these things. So yeah, finding efficiencies, standardizing your practices about how you leverage these AWS services and then automating the governance and hygiene around how you utilize them is really the key >> Brad tell me what this means for AMD and what working with CloudFix and Rahul does for your customers. >> Well, the idea of efficiency and cost optimization is near and dear to our heart. We have the leading. >> It's near and dear to everyone's heart, right now. (group laughs) >> But we are the leaders in x86 price performance and density and power efficiency. So this is something that's actually part of our core culture. We've been doing this a long time and what's interesting is most companies don't understand how much more efficiency they can get out of their applications aside from just the choices they make in cloud. but that's the one thing, the message we're giving to everybody is choice matters very much when it comes to your cloud solutions and just deciding what type of instance types you choose can have a massive impact on your bottom line. And so we are excited to partner with CloudFix, they've got a great model for this and they make it very easier for our customers to help identify those areas. And then AMD can come in as well and then help provide additional insight into those applications what else they can squeeze out of it. So it's a great relationship. >> If I hear you correctly, then there's more choice for the customers, faster selection, so no bad choices means bad performance if they have a workload or an app that needs to run, is that where you you kind of get into the, is that where it is or more? >> Well, I mean from the AMD side right now, one of the things they do very quickly is they identify where the low hanging fruit is. So it's the thing about x86 compatibility, you can shift instance types instantly in most cases without any change to your environment at all. And CloudFix has an automated tool to do that. And that's one thing you can immediately have an impact on your cost without having to do any work at all. And customers love that. >> What's the alternative if this doesn't exist they have to go manually figure it out or it gets them in the face or they see the numbers don't work or what's the, if you don't have the tool to automate what's the customer's experience >> The alternative is that you actually have people look at every single instance of usage of resources and try and figure out how to do this. At cloud scale, that just doesn't make sense. You just can't. >> It's too many different options. >> Correct The reality is that your resources your human resources are literally your most expensive part of your budget. You want to leverage all the amazing people you have to do the amazing work. This is not amazing work. This is mundane. >> So you free up all the people time. >> Correct, you free up wasting their time and resources on doing something that's mundane, simple and should be automated, because that's the only way you scale. >> I think of you is like a little helper in the background helping me save money while I'm not thinking about it. It's like a good financial planner making you money since we're talking about the economy >> Pretty much, the other analogy that I give to all the technologists is this is like garbage collection. Like for most languages when you are coding, you have these new languages that do garbage collection for you. You don't do memory management and stuff where developers back in the day used to do that. Why do that when you can have technology do that in an automated manner for you in an optimal way. So just kind of freeing up your developer's time from doing this stuff that's mundane and it's a standard best practice. One of the things that we leverage AMD for, is they've helped us define the process of seamlessly migrating folks over to AMD based instances without any major disruptions or trying to minimize every aspect of disruption. So all the best practices are kind of borrowed from them, borrowed from AWS in most other cases. And we basically put them in the automation so that you don't ever have to worry about that stuff. >> Well you're getting so much data you have the opportunity to really streamline, I mean I love this, because you can look across industry, across verticals and behavior of what other folks are doing. Learn from that and apply that in the background to all your different customers. >> So how big is the company? How big is the team? >> So we have people in about 130 different countries. So we've completely been remote and global and actually the cloud has been one of the big enablers of that. >> That's awesome, 130 countries. >> And that's the best part of it. I was just telling Brad a short while ago that's allowed us to hire the best talent from across the world and they spend their time building new amazing products and new solutions instead of doing all this other mundane stuff. So we are big believers in automation not only for our world. And once our customers started asking us about or telling us about the same problem that they were having that's when we actually took what we had internally for our own purpose. We packaged it up as CloudFix and launched it last year at re:Invent. >> If the customers aren't thinking about automation then they're going to probably have struggle. They're going to probably struggle. I mean with more data coming in you see the data story here more data's coming in, more automation. And this year Brad price performance, I've heard the word price performance more this year at re:Invent than any other year I've heard it before, but this year, price performance not performance, price performance. So you're starting to hear that dialogue of squeeze, understand the use cases use the right specialized processor instance starting to see that evolve. >> Yeah and and there's so much to it. I mean, AMD right out of the box is any instance is 10% less expensive than the equivalent in the market right now on AWS. They do a great job of maximizing those products. We've got our Zen four core general processor family just released in November and it's going to be a beast. Yeah, we're very excited about it and AWS announced support for it so we're excited to see what they deliver there too. But price performance is so critical and again it's going back to the complexity of these environments. Giving some of these enterprises some help, to help them understand where they can get additional value. It goes well beyond the retail price. There's a lot more money to be shaved off the top just by spending time thinking about those applications. >> Yeah, absolutely. I love that you talked about collaboration we've been talking about community. I want to acknowledge the AWS super fans here, standing behind the stage. Rahul, I know that you are an AWS super fan. Can you tell us about that community and the program? >> Yeah, so I have been involved with AWS and building products with AWS since 2007. So it's kind of 15 years back when literally there were just a handful of API for launching EC2 instances and S3. >> Not the a hundred thousand that you mentioned earlier, my goodness, the scale. >> So I think I feel very privileged and honored that I have been part of that journey and have had to learn or have had the opportunity to learn both from successes and failures. And it's just my way of contributing back to that community. So we are part of the FinOps foundation as well, contributing through that. I run a podcast called AWS Insiders and a livestream called AWS Made Easy. So we are trying to make sure that people out there are able to understand how to leverage AWS in the best possible way. And yeah, we are there to help and hold their hand through it. >> Talk about the community, take a minute to explain to the audience watching the community around this cost optimization area. It's evolving, you mentioned FinOps. There's a whole large community developing, of practitioners and technologists coming together to look at this. What does this all mean? Talk about this community. >> So cost management within organizations is has evolved so drastically that organizations haven't really coped with it. Historically, you've had finance teams basically buy a lot of infrastructure, which is CapEx and the engineering teams had kind of an upper bound on what they would spend and where they would spend. Suddenly with cloud, that's kind of enabled so much innovation all of a sudden, everyone's realized it, five years was spent figuring out whether people should be on the cloud or not. That's no longer a question, right. Everyone needs to be in the cloud and I think that's a no-brainer. The problem there is that suddenly your operating model has moved from CapEx to OpEx. And organizations haven't really figured out how to deal with it. Finance now no longer has the controls to control and manage and forecast costs. Engineering has never had to deal with it in the past and suddenly now they have to figure out how to do all this finance stuff. And procurement finds itself in a very awkward way position because they are no longer doing these negotiations like they were doing in the past where it was okay right up front before you engage, you do these negotiations. Now it's kind of an ongoing thing and it's constantly changing. Like every day is different. >> And you got marketplace >> And you got marketplace. So it's a very complex situation and I think what we are trying to do with the FinOps foundation is try and take a lot of the best practices across organizations that have been doing this at least for the last 10, 15 years. Take all the learnings and failures and turn them into hopefully opinionated approaches that people can take organizations can take to navigate through this faster rather than kind of falter and then decide that oh, this is not for us. >> Yeah. It's a great model, it's a great model. >> I know it's time John, go ahead. >> All right so, we got a little bumper sticker exercise we used to say what's the bumper sticker for the show? We used to say that, now we're modernizing, we're saying if you had to do an Instagram reel right now, short hot take of what's going on at re:Invent this year with AMD or CloudFix or just in general what would be the sizzle reel, that would be on Instagram or TikTok, go. >> Look, I think when you're at re:Invent right now and number one the energy is fantastic. 23 is going to be a building year. We've got a lot of difficult times ahead financially but it's the time, the ones that come out of 23 stronger and more efficient, and cost optimize are going to survive the long run. So now's the time to build. >> Well done, Rahul let's go for it. >> Yeah, so like Brad said, cost and efficiencies at the top of everyone's mind. Stuff that's the low hanging fruit, easy, use automation. Apply your sources to do most of the innovation. Take the easiest part to realizing savings and operate as efficiently as you possibly can. I think that's got to be key. >> I think they nailed it. They both nailed it. Wow, well it was really good. >> I put you on our talent list of >> And alright, so we repeat them. Are you part of our host team? I love this, I absolutely love this Rahul we wish you the best at CloudFix and your 17 other jobs. And I am genuinely impressed. Do you sleep actually? Last question. >> I do, I do. I have an amazing team that really helps me with all of this. So yeah, thanks to them and thank you for having us here. >> It's been fantastic. >> It's our pleasure. And Brad, I'm delighted we get you both now and again on our next segment. Thank you for being here with us. >> Thank you very much. >> And thank you all for tuning in to our live coverage here at AWS re:Invent, in fabulous Sin City with John Furrier, my name's Savannah Peterson. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in high tech coverage. (calm music)

(bright upbeat music) >> Hello everyone and welcome back to Las Vegas, Nevada. We're live from the show floor here at AWS re:Invent on theCUBE. My name is Savannah Peterson joined by my VIP co-host John Furrier. John, what's your hot take? >> We get wall-to-wall coverage day three of theCUBE (laughing loudly) shows popping, another day tomorrow. >> How many interviews have we done so far? >> I think we're over a hundred I think, (laughing loudly) we might be pushing a hundred. >> We've had a really fantastic line up of guests on theCUBE so far. We are in the meat of the sandwich right now. We've got a full line up of programming all day long and tomorrow. We are lucky to be joined by two fantastic gentlemen on our next segment. Brad, who's a familiar face. We just got to see you in that last one. Thank you for being here, you still doing good? >> Still good. >> Okay, great, glad nothing's changed in the last 14 minutes. >> 'no, we're good. >> Would've been tragic. And welcome, Mark, the CEO of Cloud Saver. Mark, how you doing this morning? >> I'm doing great, thanks so much. >> Savannah: How's the show going for ya'? >> It's going amazing. The turnout's just fantastic. It's record turnouts here. It's been lots of activity, it's great to be part of. >> So I suspect most people know about AMD, but Mark, I'm going to let you give us just a little intro to Cloud Saver so the audience is prepped... >> 'yeah, absolutely. So at Cloud Saver we help companies manage their Cloud spin. And the way that we do it is a little bit unique. Most people try and solve Cloud cost management just through a software only solution but we have a different perspective. There's so many complexities and nuances to managing your Cloud spin, that we don't think that software's enough. So our solution is a full managed service so we can plan our own proprietary technology with a full service delivery team, so that we come in and provide project management, Cloud engineering, FinOps analysts, and we come in and basically do all the cost authorization for the company. And so it's been a fantastic solution for us and something that's really resonated well within our customer base. >> I love your slogan. "Clean up the Cloud with the Cloud Saver Tag Manager'. >> Mark: That's right. >> So yesterday in the Keynote, Adams Lesky said, "Hey if you want to tighten your belt, come to the Cloud." So, big focus right now on right sizing. >> That's right. >> I won't say repatriation 'cause that's not kind of of happening, but like people are looking at it like they're not going to, it's not the glory days where you leave all your lights on in your house and you go to bed, you don't worry about the electricity bill. Now people are like, "Okay, what am I doing? Why am I doing it?" A lot more policy, a lot more focus. What are you guys seeing as the low hanging fruit, best practices, the use cases that people are implementing right now? >> Yeah, if you think about where things are at now from a Cloud cost management perspective, there's a lot of frustration in the marketplace because everybody sees their cost continually going up. And what typically happens is they'll say, okay we need to figure out what's going on with this cost and figure out where we can make some changes. And so they go out and get a cost visibility tool and then they're a little bit disappointed because all that visibility tool is completely dependent upon properly tagging your resources. So what a lot of people don't understand is that a lot of their pain that they're experiencing, the root cause is actually they've got a data problem which is why we built a entire solution to help companies clean up their Cloud, clean up their tags. It really is a foundational piece to help them understand how to manage their costs. >> I just.. >> Data is back in the data problem again >> Shocking, right? Not a theme we've heard on the show. Not a theme we've heard on the show at all. I mean, I think with tags it matters more than people realize and it can get very messy very quick. I know that this partnership is relatively new, six months, you told us before this show. Brad what does this partnership mean for AMD customers? >> Yeah, it's critical, they have a fantastic approach to this kind of a full service approach to cost optimization, compete optimization. AMD we're very, extremely focused on providing most cost efficient, most performance, and most energy efficient products on the market. And as Adam talked about, come to the Cloud to tighten your belt. I'll follow up. When you come to the Cloud, your choice matters, right? Your choice matters on what you use and what the downstream impact and cost is. And it also matters in sustainability and other other factors with our products. >> You know, yesterday Zeyess Karvellos one of our analysts on theCUBE, he used his own independent shop. We were talking about this focus and he actually made a comment I want to get your both reaction to, he said "Spend more in the Cloud, save more." Meaning there are ways to spend more on the Cloud and save more at the same time. >> Right. >> It's not just cut and eliminate, it's right side. I don't know what the right word is. Can you guys.. >> No, I think what you're saying is, is that there are areas where you need to spend more so you can be more efficient and get value that way, but there's also plenty of areas where you're spending money unnecessarily. Either you have resources that nobody's using. Let's find those and pull them to the front and center and turn them off, right? Or if you've over provisioned certain areas let's pull those back. So I think having the right balance of where you spend your money to get the value makes total sense. >> John: Yeah >> I like that holistic approach too. I like that you're not just looking at one thing. I mean, people, you're kind of, I'm thinking of you as like the McKinsey or like the dream team that just comes in tidies everything up. Makes sure that people are being, getting that total cost optimization. It's exciting. So who, I imagine, I mean obviously the entire organization benefits, but who benefits most? What types of roles? Who's using you? >> Right, so, Cloud cost management really benefits the entire organization, especially when times get tougher and everybody's looking to tighten their belt with cost. You know.. >> Wait every time when you say that, I'm like conscious, (laughing loudly) of my abdomen. we're in Vegas, there's great food, (laughing loudly) and we got, (laughing loudly) thanks a lot Adam, thanks a lot. (all laughing loudly). >> No, but it really does benefit everybody across the organization and it also helps people to keep cost management kind of front and center, right? No company allows people to have a complete blank check to go out there for infrastructure and as a way to make sure you've got proper checks and balances in place so that you're responsibly managing your IT organization. >> Yeah, and going back to the spend comment, spend more, you know, to save money. You know, look, we're going to be facing a very difficult situation in 23. I think there's going to be a lot of headwinds for a lot of companies. And the way to look at this is it's if you can provide yourself additional operating capital to work, there's other aspects to working with the business. Time to market, right? You're talking about addressing your top line. There's other ways to use applications and the services from AWS to help enable your business to grow even faster in '23 right? So '23 is a time to build, not necessarily a time to hang back and hope everything turns out okay. >> Yeah we can't go over it, (chuckles) We can't go under it, we got to go through it... >> Got to make it work >> Got to make our way through it. I think it's, yeah, it's so important. So as the partnership grows, what's next for you two companies? Brad will go to you first. >> Yeah sure you know, we're very excited to partner with Cloud Saver. It's fantastic company, have great team. And for us it's AMB is entering into the partnership space of this now. So now we've got a great position with AWS. We love their products, and now we're going to try to enable as many partners as we can in some specific areas. And for us cost optimization is priority number one. So you'll see a lot of programs that come out in '23 around this area. We're going to dedicate a lot of sales resources to help as many enterprise customers as we can, working with our close partners like Cloud Saver. >> Next ecosystem developing for you guys. >> Absolutely, absolutely, and you know AMD's they're still fairly new in the Cloud space, right? And this is a journey that takes a long time, and this is the next leg in our growth in the environment. >> Well, certainly the trend is more horsepower, more under the hood, more capabilities, customized >> Oh that's coming. >> Workloads. You're starting to see the specialized instances, you can see what's happening and soon it's going to be like a, it's own like computer in the Cloud >> Right. >> More horsepower. >> You think about this, I mean more than 400 instance types, more than 400 types of services out there in that range. And you think about all the potential interactions and applications. It's incredibly complex, right? >> Yeah that decision matrix just went like this in my brain when you said that. That is wild. And everyone wants to do more, faster, easier but also with the comfort of that cost savings, in terms of your customers priorities, I mean, you're talking to a lot of different people across a lot of different industries both of you are, I'm sure is cost optimization the number one priority as we're going into 2023? >> Yeah. Matter of fact, I have a chance to obviously speak with AWS leadership on a regular basis. Every single, they keep telling me for the past two months, every single CEO they're speaking to right now, it's the very first things out of the mouth. It's top of mind for every major corporation right now. And I think the message is also the same. It's like, great, let's help you do that but at the same time, is it not a bad time to re:Invest with some of those additional savings, right? And I think that's where the value of else comes into play. >> Yeah, and I think what you guys are demonstrating to also is another tell sign of this what I call NextGen Cloud evolution, which is as the end-to-end messaging and positioning expands and as you see more solutions. You know, let's face it, it's going to be more complex. So the complexity will be abstracted away by new opportunities like what you guys are doing, what you're enabling. So you're starting to see kind of platforms emerging across the board as well as more ISVs. So ISVs, people building software, starting to see now more symbiotic relationship, for developers and entrepreneurship. >> Yeah, so the complexity of the Cloud is certainly something that's not going to get any less as time goes on, right? And I think as companies realize that, they see it, they acknowledge it and I think they're going to lean on partners to help them navigate those waters. So that's where I think the combination of AMD and Cloud Saver, we can really partner very well because I think we're both very passionate about creating customer value, and I think there's a tremendous number of ways that we can collaborate together to bring that to the customers. >> And you know what's interesting too you guys are both hitting on this is that this next partner channel whatever you want to call it is very joint engineering and development. It's not just relationships and selling, there's integration and the new products that can come out is a phenomenal, we're going to watch. I think I predict that the ecosystem's going to explode big time in terms of value, just new things, joint engineering, API... >> 'it's so collaborative too. >> Yeah, it's going to be... >> 'well, the innovation in the marketplace right now is absolutely on fire. I mean, it's so exciting to see all the new technologies have on board. And to be able to see that kind of permeate throughout the marketplace is something that's just really fun and excited to be part of. >> Oh, when you think about the doom and gloom that we hear every day and you look around right now, everybody's building, right? And... >> this and smiling. >> And smiling, right? >> Paul: Today, (laughing loudly) >> Until Thursday when the legs start to get out. >> Yeah. >> Yeah, what recession? I mean, it's so crowded here. And again, this is the point that the Amazon is now a big player in this economy in 2008 that last recession, they weren't a factor. Now you got be tightening new solutions. I think you're going to see, I think more agility. I think Amazon and the ecosystem might propel us out the recession faster if you get the tailwind that might be a big thing we're watching. >> I agree. Cloud computing is inevitable. >> Yeah. >> It's inevitable. >> Yeah, it's no longer a conversation, it's a commitment. And I think we all certainly agree with that. So, Brad is versed in this challenge because we did it in our last segment. But Mark, we have a new tradition I should say, at re:Invent here, where we're looking for your 32nd Instagram reel, your sizzle your thought leadership hot take on the most important story or theme of the show this year. >> For the show as a whole. Wow, well, I think innovation is absolutely front and center today. I think, of the new technologies that we're seeing out there are absolutely phenomenal. I think they're taking the whole Cloud computing to the next level, and I think it's going to have a dramatic impact on how people develop applications and run workloads in the Cloud. >> Well done. What do you think John? I think you nailed it. >> Nailed it. Yeah, want to go for round two? >> Sure. >> Sure, I'll give a shot, (laughing loudly) So... >> 'get it, Brad. >> So, when in public Cloud choice matters? >> It matters. Think about the instance types you use think about the configurations you use and think about the applications you're layering in there and why they're there, right? Optimize those environments. Take advantage of all the tools you have. >> Yeah, you're going to start tuning your Cloud now. I mean, as it gets bigger and better, stronger you're going to start to see just fine tuning more craft, I guess. >> Mark: Yeah. >> In there, great stuff. >> Paul, and in these interesting times, I'm not committed to calling it a recession yet. I still have a chart of hope. I think that the services and the value that you provide to your customers are going to be one of those painkillers that will survive through this. I mean we're seeing a little bit of the trimming of the fat, of extraneous spending in the tech sector as a whole. But I can't imagine folks not wanting to leverage AMD and Cloud Saver, it's exciting, yeah. >> Saving money never goes out of style right? (laughing loudly) >> Saving money is always sexy. I love that, yeah, (laughing loudly) It's actually really... That's a great line goes on. Mark, thank you so much for being here and sharing your story with us. We really appreciate it, Brad. It's been a fabulous thing. You're just going to stay here all day, right? >> I'll just hang out, yeah. >> All right. >> I'm yours. >> I love that. And thank you all for tuning to us live here from the show floor at AWS re:Invent in fabulous sunny Las Vegas Nevada with John Furrier, I'm Savannah Peterson you're watching theCUBE, the leader in high tech coverage. (bright upbeat music)

well you're watching the cube and I knew that you knew that I'm John Walls we're here in Las Vegas it's re invent 22. Big Show AWS putting it on the Big Show here late in 2022 that's going really well we're at the executive Summit right now sponsored by Accenture and we're going to talk about that relationship between Accenture and AWS um kind of where it is now and where it's going you know even bigger things down the road to help us do that two guests Andy Tay who's a senior managing director and the Accenture AWS business group lead at Accenture Andy thanks for being with us thanks for having me and Sarah whose last name was one of my all-time favorites all good because it is it's all good right okay it's all good Sarah all good worldwide leader of accenture's AWS business group for AWS and thank you both again for being here so let's talk about the relationship just in general high level here 30 000 feet a lot of great things have been happening we know a lot of great things are happening but how's this all you think evolved how did how has this come about that you two are just inextricably linked almost here in the cloud space Sarah why don't you jump on that yeah I'd love to um I think one of the the strongest factors that causes that Synergy for us is we both work backwards from our customer outcomes and so just by consistently doing that taking those customer signals um really obsessing over our customers success we know what we're marching towards and so then we kind of extract those themes and really work together to think about okay when we look at this holistically how do we go bigger better faster together and accomplish and solve those customer problems yeah Andy yeah John let me just maybe add and you know to amplify you know what Sarah just touched on um we both have common to our culture this notion of working from the client's perspective first so really delivering to the clients values or um you know in aws's parlance it's you know customer and so that's at the core and when we keep that at the core everything else becomes really easy where we invest what we build key clients we focus on what our team structure is et cetera Etc that's really easy so that sort of core core pillar number one in terms of our sort of you know success factors the second thing that I think really helps us is our sort of scale geographically you know certainly from an Accenture standpoint as you know John we're north of 800 000 people globally um couple that with aws's strength we really do have you know a field depth and breadth across the board that allows us to sort of see and feel what's happening in the market and allows us really to see around the corners as we like to think and say um and and that helps us be intentional on what we do um and then the third thing is really us we might know what we do but we sort of need to then play to our strengths and as you know we're two very different companies one focus on the technology side the other you know focus on the technology Services although we'll touch on you know some of the changes we're looking at as we go forward but that sort of playing to strength is key as well for us as a third pillar of success and so keeping those three things at the core really helps us move you know day to day and year by year and that's what you see in this continued partnership so what are you hearing from your customers these days we've talked a lot already today and it's kind of the buzzword you know modernization right everybody's talking about this transformation I don't care if you're in Mainframe or where you are everybody wants a modernized right now um you know what are you hearing from customers in that regard and I'm sure everybody's in a different state different yeah frame of mind you know some are embracing some are dragging uh what what's your take on the state of play right now well and I think it's like especially in these macroeconomic moments that we're in um time to value is critical for our customers um and then we have the talent shortage but even with those our customers still need us to solve for sustainability and still focus on inclusion diversity and equity and so we can't lower the bar in anything that we've already been doing we need to just keep doing more and building with them and so I think um for us really getting to the to the meat of what our customers need modernization is a big one but we're still seeing just so many of our customers look at basic transformation right how how do I dip in how do I start to move my environment move my people and get ready for what I need to do next for my business and so that that is a challenge and like we said with with the markets as volatile as they are right now I think a lot of customers are just trying to work with us to figure out how to do that in the most optimized and efficient way I just want to kind of rub people on the head and say it's going to be all right I mean it's so volatile as you pointed out Sarah right yeah I mean the market up and down and we're worried about a recession and companies and their plans they want to be Forward Thinking yeah but they've got to you know keep their powder dry too in some respects and get ready for that rainy day you know John it's funny um because you would think you know you've got the one hand you know rub that you know it's gonna be all right and and then on the other end you'll you know maybe clients should sort of hold temper and you know sort of just pause but I think clients get it they see it they feel it they understand the need to invest and I think you know there's a recent study back in 2008 those clients you know Sarah and I were reading the other day those clients who didn't invest ahead of those you know major if you remember those macroeconomic downturn times they came out really on the bad side um and so clients now are realizing that in these times these are the moments to invest and so they get it but they're faced with a couple of challenges one is time Sarah touched on you just don't have time and the second is Talent so we're working in a very intentional way on what we can do to help them there and and as you'll hear later on from Chris Wegman and Eric Farr um we're launching our velocity platform which really helps to compress that type and and get them faster you know time to Value we're also being very intentional on talent and how we help their talent so you know rotate so that we're not just taking the technology Journey but we're also having the people journey and then the third thing Sarah and I really focus on with our teams is figuring out new ways new sources of value for our clients and that's not just cost that's value the broader set and so we find that in moments like this it's actually an opportunity for us to really bring the best of AWS and Accenture to our clients well you hit value and I always find this one kind of tough because there is a big difference between cost and value my cost is X right whatever I write on my chat that's my cost so but but how do you help clients identify that value so that because it's you know it can be a little nebulous right can it not I mean it's uh but you have to validate you got to quantify at the end of the day because that's what the CEO wants to see it's what the CIO wants to see yeah you've got to identify values so how many how do you do that yeah yeah I mean we we have many different ways right velocity which Andy kind of touched on I think is is really um it's our foundational approach to help customers really kind of enter into their Cloud journey and focus on those key factors for Success right so we've got ISB Solutions built in there We've Got Talent and change built in we've got kind of what we're calling the fabric right that foundational technology layer and giving our customers all of that in a way that they can consume in a way that they can control and you know different modules essentially that they can leverage to move it's going to be tangible right they're going to be able to see I've now got access to all these things that I need I can move as I need to move and I'm not constantly you know looking around figuring out how to lock it all together we've given them that picture and that road map on how to really leverage this because we we need to be able to point to tangible outcomes and so that's critical yeah proof's got to be in the pudding and and you know to Sarah's point I think sort of we're entering into this sort of new dare I say new chapter of cloud and then you know sort of the first chapter was sort of those outcomes were around cost you know I've moved you into the cloud you can shut down your data center but now we've sort of got other sources of value now Beyond costs there's news new sources of revenue how do I become a platform company on top of the AWS cloud and then you know eke out new Revenue sources for myself how do I drive new experiences for my customers yeah um how do I maybe tap into the sustainability angle of things and how do I get greater Innovation from my talent how do I operate better in a Sarah said how do I become more Nimble more agile and more responsive to Market demands and so all those areas all those Dynamics all those outcomes are sources of value that were sort of really laser focused on and just ensuring that as a partnership we we help our clients on that Journey so what do you do about talent I mean you brought it up a couple of times UTP has um in terms of of training retaining recruiting all those key elements right now it's an ultra competitive environment right now yeah and there might be a little bit of a talent Gap in terms of what we're producing right so um you know how do you I guess make the most out of that and and make sure you keep the good people around yeah Talent is an interesting one John um and we were just touching on this uh before we got here um you know sort of from an Accenture standpoint um we're obviously focused on growing our AWS Talent um we've now got I think it's north of 27 000 people in Accenture with AWS certifications north of 34 000 certificates you know which is absolutely fantastic a small City it's just I mean it is very intentional in building that um as AWS rolls out new Services Adam touched on a whole bunch of them today we're at the core of that and ramping and building our talent so that we can drive and get our clients quicker to their value and then the second area of focus is what do we do to help our clients Talent how do we train them how do we enable them how do we you know get them to be more agile and you know being able to sort of operate in what we call that digital core operate in the cloud how do we do that and so we're focused um in in capabilities in fact our Accenture head of talent and people and change Christie Smith John is is here this week just for that and we're exploring ways in which we can get tighter and even more Innovative Around Talent and so I ultimately that that bleeds over to where the partnership goes right because if you can enhance that side of it then then everybody wins on that in terms of what you think you know where this is going yeah yeah it's already you know pretty good setup uh things are working pretty well but as the industry changes so rapidly and and you have to meet those needs how do you see the partnership evolving as well to meet those needs down the road we we have a very fortunate position in that our CEOs are both very engaged in this partnership and they push us think bigger go faster figure it out let's ride and there are definite pros and cons and some days I'm flying this close to the Sun but um it isn't a it's an absolute privilege to work with them the way that we get to and so we're always looking I mean Auntie said it earlier this is the relationship that helps us look around corners we've raised the bar and so we're constantly pushing each other pushing our teams just innovating together thinking it all through on where are we going and like I said reading those tea leaves reading those themes from our customers like hey we've just had five customers with the same similar feeling problem that we're trying to solve or we ran into the same issue in the field and how do we put that together and solve for it because we know it's not just five right we know they're more out there and so um I think you know it's it's leadership principles for us right at Amazon that guiding think big um you know insist on high standards that that'll always be core and Central to who we are and then you know fortunately Accenture has a really similar ethos yeah quick take on that Andy yeah I think as we look out you know I think um we're going to we've already seen but we're going to see this continued blurring of Industries um of um you know sort of clients moving into other Industries and yeah sort of this sort of agitation Market agitation um and so I think disruption you know disruption and and we're being you know focused on what do we need to be to do in order to help our clients on those Journeys and and to continue to you know get them you know faster Solutions is an area that we you know we are um really looking at and these are solutions that are either industry Solutions you'll hear a couple of them this week um you know we've got our insurance solution that we're we've developed as an intelligent underwriting capability leveraging AWS AIML to sort of be intelligent and cognitive um you know we've got other Solutions around the around Industries energy and Life Sciences but then also intelligent applications that might be touching you know areas I think earlier today Adam talked about AWS supply chain and that's an area that we are focused on and and proud to be a part of that and we're working very very closely with with Amazon on that uh to help you know our clients move ahead so I think we're going to see this continued blurring and we're going to obviously you know keep addressing that and just keep iterating well it looks like a relationship of trust and expertise right and it's worked out extremely well and uh if this is any indication where the interview went uh even better things are ahead for the partnership so thank you thank you for chiming in I appreciate your perspectives yeah thank you it's been great we continue our coverage here on thecube we're at re invent 22 we're in Las Vegas and you're watching thecube the leader in technical coverage foreign

foreign continued coverage of AWS re invent my name is Savannah Peterson and I am very excited to be joined by two brilliant blokes in the space of efficiency and performance whether you're on Prem or in the cloud today's discussion is going to be fascinating please welcome Brad and Simon to the show how are you Simon coming in from the UK how you feeling well thank you excellent and Brad we have you coming in from Seattle how are you this morning doing fine thank you excellent and feeling bookish given your background love that I know that you both really care about efficiency and performance it's a very hot topic both of the show and in the industry right now I'm curious I'm going to open it up with you Simon what challenges and I think you've actually continued to tackle these throughout the course of your career what challenges were you facing and wanting to solve when you started yellow dog um really we're just looking at cloud and coming from an on-premise environment really wanted to be able to make accessing Cloud particularly a volume to be simple and straightforward um if you look at today at the number of instance types available from the major Cloud providers there's more than seven thousand different instance types whereas on-prem you go along you select your processes you select your systems it's already be really easy when you hit the cloud you've just got this amazing amount of choice so really it was all about how can you make Intelligent Decisions for you know are you going to run your workload how to match it with what you've got on premise and that was really the inspiration for Rafael so staying there for just a second what does yellow dog provide customers is a SAS system so um you get to it by accessing through the yellow platform and what it allows people to do is to be able to make Intelligent Decisions about where to run their workload would that be on premise or in the cloud it has a wealth of information it understands the costs the performance the latency and the availability of every different instance type in all different clouds it really allows people to uh to be able to make use of that information provision exactly what they need and to be able to run their workloads yeah it also includes a provisioner and it also includes a scheduler as well which is a cloud native scheduler so it's designed to be able to cope with um with cloud in terms of things like spots and interruptions and be able to uh to reschedule and fail over between clouds if there's ever need to do so yeah that sounds incredible and I know this means a lot for partners like AMD Brad talk to me about the partnership and what this means for AMD for your customers yeah absolutely it you know we're excited to be aligned with the uh with a company like yellow dog it's it's um you know the the importance of compute is becoming more and more prevalent every day and it's it's always been top of mind but especially now when you think about what the uh what the economy and the rest of the world is kind of facing over the next you know probably a year or longer it's so important that um that you're able to maximize your dollars and your spend and doing away with uh with uh with absolute certainty that you've got the right type of people behind you uh ensuring that you're your dollars are being spent very wisely and the great thing about yell dogs that they have tremendous insight into uh into cost optimization computer optimization across the entire Globe their their indexes is quite remarkable and what it does is it allows uh customers to actually see just how performant and cost efficient AMD is so it allows us to really put our best foot forward and and gives customers a chance to understand something that they probably weren't uh more familiar with the fact that uh that AMD uh is a tremendous a tremendous value in the marketplace yeah and and uh Simon can you tell us a little bit more about the yellow dog index I'm glad you brought that up Brad yes the yellow index is uh is essentially it's live it's available for anyone to access you can just go to index.yam.tech and you'll be able to see pretty much every single instance type that's available from all the major Cloud providers and be able to make your selection are you looking for GPU type nodes are you looking for AMD processors are you looking just for performance essentially what you're able to do is create a live view of effectively what's available in different data centers around the world and the price at this moment in time also just uh as Brad mentioned in terms of you know cost efficiency and uh and being taking green values seriously as we should we should do the yellow index also has the ability to be able to see at that point in time where the best place to be at a runner job is based upon the lowest carbon impact of running at this moment in time and that for many organizations gives an amazing Insight in not just about being able to find the the understand fishing processes but being able to ensure the greenest energy possible is powering that process when you want to be able to run your workload it's so powerful what you just said and I think when we exactly it's not just about it's not just about power but it's about place when we are are looking at Global Computing at scale what I know that there's ESG advantages in and ESG being a very hot topic when we're talking about AMW on AWS and and and leveraging tools like yellow dog what other sorts of advantages Beyond being least carbon impactful can your Mutual customers benefit from so it's not like I say there's many other features you know a very important thing when you're running a high performance Computing workload is being able to match the instruction set that you're running on premise and then being able to use that in the cloud as well and also to be able to make Intelligent Decisions of where should something run should would something be more efficient um to build on premise should we always try and maximize our on-premise resources before going into the cloud there's a lot about being able to just be able to make decisions and yellow itself it makes thousands of decisions per second to be in a workout where the the best and most optimized places to to run your workload yeah so Brad you work with a lot of companies at scale what type of scale is possible when leveraging Technologies like AMD and yellow dog combined well you know I love the fact that you mentioned uh you know HPC and it's one of the areas that actually is most exciting for for me personally and for and for AMD with the combination of yellow dog and AWS and AWS launched the very first HPC uh instance type last year and you know we're we're we haven't even begun to answer a question we haven't gotten to see um the full-scale capability in the cloud when it comes to these uh these very coordinated and very refined workloads that are running at massive scale and and uh you know we've got some some products we'll be launched in the near future as well that are incredibly performant and you know to be honest I don't think I don't think we have even come close to seeing the scale relative to somebody's very optimized workloads in HPC uh that that we're capable of so um we're excited we're excited for the next few years to see how how we can wrap in um some of the tremendous success that AMD has had on-prem in these these these massive compute centers and replicating that same success inside AWS with companies like yellow dog it's uh it we're excited to see what uh what's what's going to come forward can you give us a preview of anything on the record that gets you really excited about the future I was going to ask you what what had you looking forward to 2023 and Beyond but nothing well not nothing official of course uh but um I will say this you know AMD has recently successful had the launch for Genoa uh it's our next next-gen release and it is um it is proving to be it absolutely is the dominant compute engine it at this point that exists and you know when you start to couple that with the the prowess of AWS you know you could see that over time becoming something potentially that um you know um can really start to change the compute landscape quite a bit so we're hopeful that you know in the future we'll have something along those lines uh with AWS and others and um we're very uh we're very bullish in that area love it uh Simon what about you you've been passionate about low carbon I.T for a long time is carbon neutral Tech in our future what I realize is a bold and lofty claim for you but feel free to give us any of your future predictions um yeah so well I started here trying to build solutions for you know many years ago so 2006 um I was part of a team that launched the the world's lowest powered Windows PC that was actually based on the AMD technology back then so uh you can tell that AMD have been working on a low power for us for a long time in terms of carbon neutral yes I think um certainly there's a there's a few data centers around the world now that are getting very close to uh to carbon neutral some of which may have already achieved it so that's really interesting but so you know the the second part of that is really the the manufacturer of everything that goes into those Services systems and being able to to get to uh you know a net zero on those over a period of time and when we do that which is yeah not without challenges but but certainly possible then we really will have carbon neutral I.T which will be uh a benefit to everyone you know mankind itself yeah casual statement and I have to say that I wholeheartedly agree I think that it's one of the greater challenges of Our Generation especially as what we're able to do in HPC in particular since we're talking about it is only going to grow and scale and magnitude and the amount of data that we have to organize certain process is is wild even today so I love that I'm curious is there anything that you can share with us that's in the pipeline for Yellow Dog anything coming up in the future that's very exciting um so we're coming up very soon um we're going to release something called um version 4 again log which contains um what we call a resource framework which is all about making sure you've got everything you need before you run a job either on-prem or in the cloud so that might be anything from making sure you've got the right licenses making sure that your data is all in the right location making sure you've got all aspects of your workflow ready before you start launching compute and start really but you know burning through dollars with computer could potentially sat there uh not not doing anything until other tasks keep catch up so we're really excited about this new V4 release which will uh which will come out very soon awesome we can't wait to learn more about that hopefully here again on the cube Brad what do Partnerships with companies like yellowdog meme for you and for the customers that you're able to serve yeah it's it's incredibly important I it's you know there's one of the difficulties in in compute that we have today especially in Cloud compute there's there's so much available at this point I mean there was a point in time it was very simple and straightforward it's not even close to being that anymore green so you know one of the things I love about yellow dog itself is actually it does a great they do a great job of making very complex situations and environments fairly simple to understand especially from a business perspective and so one of the things that we love about it is it actually helps our customers you know the AMD direct customers better understand how to properly use our technology and to get the most out of it and so it's difficult for us to articulate that message because you know we are a Semiconductor Company so sometimes it's a little tough to be able to articulate workloads and applications in the way that our customer base will be able to understand but you know it's it's so critical to have companies like yellow dog in the middle that can actually you know make that translation for us directly to the customer um you know and and especially too when you start thinking about ESG and environmental relationships and I'd like to make a comment and one of the things that is fantastic about AMD AWS and yellow we all share the same Mission and we're very public about those missions about just being better to the to the planet and um you know AMD has taken some very aggressive uh targets through 2025 much beyond anything that the industry has expected and you know because of that we are you know we are the most um we are the most power efficient xa6 product on the marketplace and it's not even close and you know I look forward to the day when uh you know you start looking at instance types inside these public Cloud providers in conjunction with the old dog and you can actually even start to see maybe potentially what that carbon footprint is based on those decisions you make on compute and um you know considering that more than half to spend for everybody is generally compute in these environments it's critical to really know what your true impact in the world is and um it's just one of the best parts about a partnership like this oh what a wonderful note to close on and I love both the Synergy between all the partners on a technology level but most importantly on a mission level because none of it matters if we don't have a planet that we can continue to innovate on so I'm I'm really grateful that you're both here fighting a good fight working together and also making a lot of information available for companies of all different sizes as they're navigating very complex decision trees in and operating their stack so thank you both Simon and Brad I really appreciate your time it's been incredibly insightful and thank you to our audience for tuning in to our continuing coverage of AWS re invent here on thecube my name is Savannah Peterson and I look forward to learning more with you soon foreign [Music]

(upbeat music) >> Good Friday morning everyone from Motor City, Lisa Martin here with John Furrier. This is our third day, theCUBE's third day of coverage of KubeCon + CloudNativeCon 22' North America. John, we've had some amazing conversations the last three days. We've had some good conversations about observability. We're going to take that one step further and look beyond its three pillars. >> Yeah, this is going to be a great segment. Looking forward to this. This is about in depth conversation on observability. The guest is technical and it's on the front lines with customers. Looking forward to this segment. Should be great. >> Yeah. Ian Smith is here, the field CTO at Chronosphere. Ian, welcome to theCUBE. Great to have you. >> Thank you so much. It's great to be here. >> All right. Talk about the traditional three pillars, approach, and observability. What are some of the challenges with that, and how does Chronosphere solve those? >> Sure. So hopefully everyone knows people think of the three pillars as logs, metrics and traces. What do you do with that? There's no action there. It's just data, right? You collect this data, you go put it somewhere, but it's not actually talking about any sort of outcomes. And I think that's really the heart of the issue, is you're not achieving anything. You're just collecting a whole bunch of data. Where do you put it? What are you... What can you do with it? Those are the fundamental questions. And so one of the things that we're focused on at Chronosphere is, well, what are those outcomes? What is the real value of that? And for example, thinking about phases of observability. When you have an incident or you're trying to investigate something through observability, you probably want to know what's going on. You want to triage any problems you detect. And then finally, you want to understand the cause of those and be able to take longer term steps to address them. >> What do customers do when they start thinking about it? Because observability has that promise. Hey, you know, get the data, we'll throw AI at it. >> Ian: Yeah. >> And that'll solve the problem. When they get over their skis, when do they realize that they're really not tackling it properly, or the ones that are taking the right approach? What's the revelation? What's your take on that? You're in the front lines. What's going on with the customer? The good and the bad. What's the scene look like? >> Yeah, so I think the bad is, you know, you end up buying a lot of things or implementing even in open source or self building, and it's very disconnected. You're not... You don't have a workflow, you don't have a path to success. If you ask different teams, like how do you address these particular problems? They're going to give you a bunch of different answers. And then if you ask about what their success rate is, it's probably very uneven. Another key indicator of problems is that, well, do you always need particular senior engineers in your instance or to help answer particular performance problems? And it's a massive anti pattern, right? You have your senior engineers who are probably need to be focused on innovation and competitive differentiation, but then they become the bottleneck. And you have this massive sort of wedge of maybe less experienced engineers, but no less valuable in the overall company perspective, who aren't effective at being able to address these problems because the tooling isn't right, the workflows are incorrect. >> So the senior engineers are getting pulled in to kind of fix and troubleshoot or observe what the observability data did or didn't deliver. >> Correct. Yeah. And you know, the promise of observability, a lot of people talk about unknown unknowns and there's a lot of, you know, crafting complex queries and all this other things. It's a very romantic sort of deep dive approach. But realistically, you need to make it very accessible. If you're relying on complex query languages and the required knowledge about the architecture and everything every other team is doing, that knowledge is going to be super concentrated in just a couple of heads. And those heads shouldn't be woken up every time at 3:00 AM. They shouldn't be on every instant call. But oftentimes they are the sort of linchpin to addressing, oh, as a business we need to be up 99.99% of the time. So how do we accomplish that? Well, we're going to end up burning those people. >> Lisa: Yeah. >> But also it leads to a great dissatisfaction in the bulk of the engineers who are, you know, just trying to build and operate the services. >> So talk... You mentioned that some of the problems with the traditional three pillars are, it's not outcome based, it leads to silo approaches. What is Chronosphere's definition and can you walk us through those three phases and how that really gives you that competitive edge in the market? >> Yeah, so the three phases being know, triage and understand. So just knowing about a problem, and you can relate this very specifically to capabilities, but it's not capabilities first, not feature function first. So know, I need to be able to alert on things. So I do need to collect data that gives me those signals. But particularly as you know, the industry starts moving towards as slows. You start getting more business relevant data. Everyone knows about alert storms. And as you mentioned, you know, there's this great white hope of AI and machine learning, but AI machine learning is putting a trust in sort of a black box, or the more likely reality is that really statistical model. And you have to go and spend a very significant amount time programming it for sort of not great outcomes. So know, okay, I want to know that I have a problem, I want to maybe understand the symptoms of that particular problem. And then triage, okay, maybe I have a lot of things going wrong at the same time, but I need to be very precise about my resources. I need to be able to understand the scope and importance. Maybe I have five major SLOs being violated right now. Which one is the greatest business impact? Which symptoms are impacting my most valuable customers? And then from there, not getting into the situation, which is very common where, okay, well we have every... Your customer facing engineering team, they have to be on the call. So we have 15 customer facing web services. They all have to be on that call. Triage is that really important aspect of really mitigating the cost to the organization because everyone goes, oh, well I achieved my MTTR and my experience from a variety of vendors is that most organizations, unless you're essentially failing as a business, you achieve your SLA, you know, three nines, four nines, whatever it is. But the cost of doing that becomes incredibly extreme. >> This is huge point. I want to dig into that if you don't mind, 'cause you know, we've been all seeing the cost of ownership miles in it all, the cost of doing business, cost of the shark fan, the iceberg, what's under the water, all those metaphors. >> Ian: Yeah. >> When you look at what you're talking about here, there are actually, actually real hardcore costs that might be under the water, so to speak, like labor, senior engineering time, 'cause Cloud Native engineers are coding in the pipelines. A lot of impact. Can you quantify and just share an example or illustrate where the costs are? 'Cause this is something that's kind of not obvious. >> Ian: Yeah. >> On the hard costs. It's not like a dollar amount, but time resource breach, wrong triage, gap in the data. What are some of the costs? >> Yeah, and I think they're actually far more important than the hard costs of infrastructure and licensing. And of course there are many organizations out there using open source observability components together. And they go, Oh it's free. No licensing costs. But you think again about those outcomes. Okay, I have these 15 teams and okay, I have X number of incidents a month, if I pull a representative from every single one of those teams on. And it turns out that, you know, as we get down in further phases, we need to be able to understand and remediate the issue. But actually only two teams required of that. There's 13 individuals who do not need to be on the call. Okay, yes, I met my SLA and MTTR, but if I am from a competitive standpoint, I'm comparing myself to a very similar organization that only need to impact those two engineers versus the 15 that I had over here. Who is going to be the most competitive? Who's going to be most differentiated? And it's not just in terms of number of lines of code, but leading to burnout of your engineers and the churn of that VPs of engineering, particularly in today's economy, the hardest thing to do is acquire engineers and retain them. So why do you want to burn them unnecessarily on when you can say, okay, well I can achieve the same or better result if I think more clearly about my observability, but reduce the number of people involved, reduce the number of, you know, senior engineers involved, and ultimately have those resources more focused on innovation. >> You know, one thing I want, at least want get in there, but one thing that's come up a lot this year, more than I've ever seen before, we've heard about the skill gaps, obviously, but burnout is huge. >> Ian: Yes. >> That's coming up more and more. This is a real... This actually doesn't help the skills gap either. >> Ian: Correct. >> Because you got skills gap, that's a cost potentially. >> Ian: Yeah. >> And then you got burnout. >> Ian: Yeah. >> People just kind of sitting on their hands or just walking away. >> Yeah. So one of the things that we're doing with Chronosphere is, you know, while we do deal with the, you know, the pillar data, but we're thinking about it more, what can you achieve with that? Right? So, and aligning with the know, triage and understand. And so you think about things like alerts, you know, dashboards, you be able to start triaging your symptoms. But really importantly, how do we bring the capabilities of things like distributed tracing where they can actually impact this? And it's not just in the context of, well, what can we do in this one incident? So there may be scenarios where you, absolutely do need those power users or those really sophisticated engineers. But from a product challenge perspective, what I'm personally really excited about is how do you capture that insight and those capabilities and then feed that back in from a product perspective so it's accessible. So you know, everyone talks about unknown unknowns in observability and then everyone sort of is a little dismissive of monitoring, but monitoring that thing, that democratizes access and the decision making capacity. So if you say I once worked at an organization and there were three engineers in the whole company who could generate the list of customers who were impacted by a particular incident. And I was in post sales at the time. So anytime there was a major incident, need to go generate that list. Those three engineers were on every single incident until one of them got frustrated and built a tool. But he built it entirely on his own. But can you think from an observability perspective, can you build a thing that it makes all those kinds of capabilities accessible to the first point where you take that alert, you know, which customers are affected or whatever other context was useful last time, but took an hour, two hours to achieve. And so that's what really makes a dramatic difference over time, is it's not about the day one experience, but how does the product evolve with the requirements and the workflow- >> And Cloud Native engineers, they're coding so they can actually be reactive. That's interesting, a platform and a tool. >> Ian: Yes. >> And platform engineering is the hottest topic at this event. And this year, I would say with Cloud Native hearing a lot more. I mean, I think that comes from the fact that SREs not really SRE, I think it's more a platform engineer. >> Ian: Yes. >> Not everyone's an... Not company has an SRE or SRE environment. But platform engineering is becoming that new layer that enables the developers. >> Ian: Correct. >> This is what you're talking about. >> Yeah. And there's lots of different labels for it, but I think organizations that really think about it well they're thinking about things like those teams, that developer efficiency, developer productivity. Because again, it's about the outcomes. It's not, oh, we just need to keep the site reliable. Yes, you can do that, but as we talked about, there are many different ways that you can burn unnecessary resources. But if you focus on developer efficiency and productivity, there's retainment, there's that competitive differentiation. >> Let's uplevel those business outcomes. Obviously you talked about in three phases, know, triage and understand. You've got great alignment with the Cloud Native engineers, the end users. Imagine that you're facilitating company's ability to reduce churn, attract more talent, retain talent. But what are some of the business outcomes? Like to the customer experience to the brand? >> Ian: Sure. >> Talk about it in some of those contexts. >> Yeah. One of the things that not a lot of organizations think about is, what is the reliability of my observability solution? It's like, well, that's not what I'm focused on. I'm focused on the reliability of my own website. Okay, let's take the, common open source pattern. I'm going to deploy my observability solution next to my core site infrastructure. Okay, I now have a platform problem because DNS stopped working in cloud provider of my choice. It's also affecting my observability solution. So at the moment that I need- >> And the tool chain and everything else. >> Yeah. At the moment that I need it the most to understand what's going on and to be able to know triage and understand that fails me at the same time. It's like, so reliability has this very big impact. So being able to make sure that my solution's reliable so that when I need it the most, and I can affect reliability of my own solution, my own SLA. That's a really key aspect of it. One of the things though that we, look at is it's not just about the outcomes and the value, it's ROI, right? It's what are you investing to put into that? So we've talked a little bit about the engineering cost, there's the infrastructure cost, but there's also a massive data explosion, particularly with Cloud Native. >> Yes. Give us... Alright, put that into real world examples. A customer that you think really articulates the value of what Chronosphere is delivering and why you're different in the market. >> Yeah, so DoorDash is a great customer example. They're here at KubeCon talking about their experience with Chronosphere and you know, the Cloud Native technologies, Prometheus and those other components align with Chronosphere. But being able to undergo, you know, a transformation, they're a Cloud Native organization, but going a transformation from StatsD to very heavy microservices, very heavy Kubernetes and orchestration. And doing that with your massive explosion, particularly during the last couple of years, obviously that's had a very positive impact on their business. But being able to do that in a cost effective way, right? One of the dirty little secrets about observability in particular is your business growth might be, let's say 50%, 60%, your infrastructure spend in the cloud providers is maybe going to be another 10, 15% on top of that. But then you have the intersection of, well my engineers need more data to diagnose things. The business needs more data to understand what's going on. Plus we've had this massive explosion of containers and everything like that. So oftentimes your business growth is going to be more than doubled with your observability data growth and SaaS solutions and even your on-premises solutions. What's the main cost driver? It's the volume of data that you're processing and storing. And so Chronosphere one of the key things that we do, because we're focused on organizational pain for larger scale organizations, is well, how do we extract the maximum volume of the data you're generating without having to store all of that data and then present it not just from a cost perspective, but also from a performance perspective. >> Yes. >> John: Yeah. >> And so feeding all into developer productivity and also lowering that investment so that your return can stand out more clearly and more valuably when you are assessing that TCO. >> Better insights and outcomes drives developer productivity for sure. That also has top theme here at KubeCon this year. It always is, but this is more than ever 'cause of the velocity. My question for you, given that you're the field chief technology officer for Chronosphere and you have a unique position, you've got a great experience in the industry, been involved in some really big companies and cutting edge. What's the competitive landscape? 'Cause the customers sometimes are confused by all the pitches they're getting from other vendors. Some are bolting on observability. Some have created like I would say, a shim layer or horizontally scalable platform or platform engineering approach. It's a data problem. Okay. This is a data architecture challenge. You mentioned that many times. What's the difference between a pretender and a player in this space? What's the winning architecture look like? What's a, I won't say phony or fake solution, but ones that customers should be aware of? Because my opinion, if you have a gap in the data or you configure it wrong, like a bolt on and say DNS crashes you're dead in the water. >> Ian: Yeah. >> What's the right approach from a customer standpoint? How do they squint through all the noise to figure out what's the right approach? >> Yeah, so I mean, I think one of the ways, and I've worked with customers in a pre-sales capacity for a very long time I know all the tricks of guiding you through. I think it needs to be very clear that customers should not be guided by the vendor. You don't talk to one vendor and they decide, Oh, I'm going to evaluate based off this. We need to particularly get away from feature based evaluations. Features are very important, but they're all have to be aligned around outcomes. And then you have to clearly understand, where am I today? What do I do today? And what is going to be the transformation that I have to go through to take advantage of these features? They can get very entrancing to say, Oh, there's a list of 25 features that this solution has that no one else has, but how am I going to get value out of that? >> I mean, distributed tracing is a distributed word. Distributed is the key word. This is a system architecture. The holistic big picture comes in. How do they figure that out? Knowing what they're transforming into? How does it fit in? >> Ian: Yeah. >> What's the right approach? >> Too often I say distributed tracing, particularly, you know, bought, because again, look at the shiny features look at the the premise and the MTTR expectations, all these other things. And then it's off to the side. We go through the traditional usage of metrics very often, very log heavy approaches, maybe even some legacy APM. And then it's sort of at last resort. And out of all the tools, I think distributed tracing is the worst in the problem we talked about earlier where the most sophisticated engineers, the ones who are being longest tenured, are the only ones who end up using it. So adoption is really, really poor. So again, what do we do today? Well, we alert, we probably want to understand our symptoms, but then what is the key problem? Oh, we spend a lot of time digging into the where the problem exists in my architecture, we talked about, you know, getting every engineer in at the same time, but how do we reduce the number of engineers involved? How do we make it so that, well, this looks like a great day one experience, but what is my day 30 experience like? Day 90. How is the product get more valuable? How do I get my most senior engineers out of this, not just on day one, but as we progress through it? >> You got to operationalize it. That's the key. >> Yeah, Correct. >> Summarize this as we wrap here. When you're in customer conversations, what is the key factor behind Chronosphere's success? If you can boil it down to that key nugget, what is it? >> I think the key nugget is that we're not just fixated on sort of like technical features and functions and frankly gimmicks of like, Oh, what could you possibly do with these three pillars of data? It's more about what can we do to solve organizational pain at the high level? You know, things like what is the cost of these solutions? But then also on the individual level, it's like, what exactly is an engineer trying to do? And how is their quality of life affected by this kind of tooling? And it's something I'm very passionate about. >> Sounds like it. Well, the quality of life's important, right? For everybody, for the business, and ultimately ends up affecting the overall customer experience. So great job, Ian, thank you so much for joining John and me talking about what you guys are doing beyond the three pillars of observability at Chronosphere. We appreciate your insights. >> Thank you so much. >> John: All right. >> All right. For John Furrier and our guest, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE live Friday morning from KubeCon + CloudNativeCon 22' from Detroit. Our next guest joins theCUBE momentarily, so stick around. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Hey everyone. Welcome to theCUBE's coverage of VMware Explore 2022. We are at Moscone West. Lisa Martin and Dave Nicholson here. Excited, really excited, whereas they were saying in the VMware keynote, pumped and jacked and jazzed to be back in-person with a lot of folks here. Keynote with standing room only. We've just come from that. We've got a couple of guests here from Expedient, going to unpack their relationship with VMware. Please welcome Brian Smith, the Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer at Expedient. And Brent Meadows, the Vice President of Advanced Solution Architecture at Expedient. Guys it's great to have you on the program. >> Appreciate it bringing us on. >> Yep, welcome. >> Isn't it great to be back in person? >> It is phenomenal to be back. >> So let's talk about obviously three years since the last, what was called VMworld, so many dynamics in the market. Talk to us about what's going on at Expedient, we want to dig into Cloud Different, but kind of give us a lay of the land of what's going on and then we're going to uncrack the VMware partnership as well. >> Sure, so Expedient we're a full stack cloud service provider. So we have physical data centers that we run and then have VMware-based cloud and we've seen a huge shift from the client perspective during the pandemic in how they've really responded from everything pre-pandemic was very focused with Cloud First and trying to go that route only with hyper scaler. And there's been a big evolution with how people have to change how they think about their transformation to get the end result they're looking for. >> Talk about Cloud Different and what it's helping customers to achieve as everyone's in this accelerated transformation. >> Yeah. So, Cloud Different is something that Expedient branded. It's really about how the transformation works. And traditionally, companies thought about doing their transformation, at first they kept everything in house that they were doing and they started building their new applications out into a hyper scale cloud. And what that really is like is, a good analogy would be, it's like living in a house while you're renovating it. And I know what that's like from my relationship versus if you build a new house, or move to a new property that's completed already. And that's really the difference in that experience from a Cloud Different approach from transformation is you think of all the things that you have internally, and there's a lot of technical debt there, and that's a lot of weight that you're carrying when you're trying to do that transformation. So if you kind of flip that around and instead look to make that transformation and move all that technical debt into a cloud that's already built to run those same types of applications, a VMware-based cloud, now you can remove all of that noise, move into a curated stack of technology and everything just works. It has the security in place, your teams know how to run it, and then you can take that time you really reclaim and apply that towards new applications and new things that are strategic to the business. >> That's really critical, Brent, to get folks in the IT organization across the business, really focused on strategic initiatives rather than a lot of the mundane tasks that they just don't have time for. Brent, what are you hearing in the last couple of years with the dynamics we talked about, what are you hearing from the customer? >> Right. So, one of the big things and the challenges in the current dynamic is kind of that staffing part. So as people have built their infrastructure over the years, there's a lot of tribal knowledge that's been created during that process and every day more and more of that knowledge is walking out the door. So taking some of that technical debt that Brian mentioned and kind of removing that so you don't have to have all that tribal knowledge, really standardizing on the foundational infrastructure pieces, allows them to make that transition and not have to carry that technical debt along with them as they make their digital transformations. >> We heard a lot this morning in the keynote guys about customers going, most of them still being in cloud chaos, but VMware wanting them to get to cloud smart. What does that mean, Brian, from Expedient's perspective? What does cloud smart look like to Expedient and its customers? >> Yeah, we completely agree with that message. And it's something we've been preaching for a couple years in part of that Cloud Different story. And it's really about having a consistent wrapper across all of your environments. It doesn't matter if it's things that you're running on-premises that's legacy to things that are in a VMware-based cloud, like an Expedient cloud or things that are in a hyper scale, but having one consistent security, one consistent automation, one consistent cost management, really gives you the governance so that you can get the value out of cloud that you are hoping for and remove a lot of the noise and think less about the technology and more about what the business is getting out of the technology. >> So what does that look like as a practical matter? I imagine you have customers whose on-premises VMware environments look different than what you've created within Expedient data centers. I'm thinking of things like the level of adoption of NSX, how well a customer may embrace VSAN on-prem as an example. Is part of this transmogrification into your data center, kind of nudging people to adopt frameworks that are really necessary for success in the future? >> It's less of a nudge because a lot of times as a service provider, we don't talk about the technology, we talk more about the outcome. So the nice thing with VMware is we can move that same virtual machine or that container into the platform and the client doesn't always know exactly what's underneath because we have that standardized VMware stack and it just works. And that's part of the beauty of the process. I dunno if you want to talk about a specific client or... >> Yeah, so one of the ones we worked with is Bob Evans Foods. So they were in that transformation stage of refreshing, not only their office space and their data center, but also their VMware environment. So we helped them go through and first thing is looking at their existing environment, figuring out what they currently have, because you can't really make a good decision of what you need to change until you know where you're starting from. So we worked with them through that process, completely evacuated their data center. And from a business perspective, what that allowed them to do as well is have more flexibility in the choice of their next corporate office, because they didn't have to have a data center attached to it. So just from that data center perspective, we gave them some flexibility there. But then from an operations perspective, really standardize that process, offloaded some of those menial tasks that you mentioned earlier, and allow them to really look more towards business-driving projects, instead of just trying to keep those lights on, keeping the backups running, et cetera. >> Brian, question for you, here we are, the theme of the event is "The Center of the Multi-cloud Universe" which seems like a Marvel movie, I haven't seen any new superheroes yet, but I suspect there might be some here. But as customers end up and land in multi-cloud by default not by strategy, how does Expedient and VMware help them actually take the environment that they have and make it strategic so that the business can achieve the outcomes, improving revenue, finding new revenue streams, new products, new routes to market to delight those customers. How do you turn that kind of cloud chaos into a strategy? >> Yeah. I'd say there's a couple different components. One is really time. How can you give them time back for things that are creating noise and aren't really strategic to the business? And so if you can give that time back, that's the first way that you can really impact the business. And the second is through that standardization, but also a lot of times when people think of that new standard, they're only thinking if you're building from scratch. And what VMware has really helped is by taking those existing workloads and giving a standard that works for those applications and what you're building new and brings those together under a common platform and so had a really significant impact to the speed that somebody can get to that cloud operating model, that used to be a multi-year process and most of our clients can go from really everything or almost everything on-prem and a little bit in a cloud to a complete cloud operating model, on average, in four to six months. >> Wow! >> So if I have an on-premises environment and some of my workloads are running in a VMware context, VMware would make the pitch in an agnostic way that, "Well, you can go and deploy that "on top of a stack of infrastructure "and anybody and anywhere now." Why do customers come to you instead of saying, "Oh, we'll go to "pick your flavor of hyper scale cloud provider." What's kind of your superpower? You've mentioned a couple of things, but really hone it in on, why would someone want to go to Expedient? >> Yeah. In a single word, service. I mean, we have a 99% client retention rate and have for well over a decade. So it's really that expertise that wraps around all the different technology so that you're not worried about what's happening and you're not worried about trying to keep the lights on and doing the firefighting. You're really focused on the business. And the other way to, I guess another analogy is, if you think about a lot of the technology and the way people go to cloud, it's like if you got a set of Legos without the box or the instructions. So you can build stuff, it could be cool, but you're not going to get to that end state-- >> Hold on. That's how Legos used to work. Just maybe you're too young to remember a time-- >> You see their sales go up because now you buy a different set for this-- >> I build those sets with my son, but I do it grudgingly. >> Do you ever step on one? >> Of course I do. >> Yeah, there's some pain involved. Same thing happens in the transformation. So when they're buying services from an Expedient, you're buying that box set where you have a picture of what your outcome's going to be, the instructions are there. So you also have confidence that you're going to get to the end outcome much faster than you would if you're trying to assemble everything yourself. (David laughing) >> In my mind, I'm imagining the things that I built with Lego, before there were instructions. >> No death star? >> No. Nothing close with the death star. Definitely something that you would not want your information technology to depend upon. >> Got it. >> Brent, we've seen obviously, it seems like every customer these days, regardless of industry has a cloud first initiative. They have competitors in the rear view mirror who are, if they're able to be more agile and faster to market, are potential huge competitive threat. As we see the rise of multi-cloud in the last 12 months, there's also been a lot of increased analyst coverage for alternate specialty hybrid cloud. Talk to us about, Expedient was in the recent Gartner market guide for specialty cloud. How are these related? What's driving this constant change out in the customer marketplace? >> Sure. So a lot of that agility that clients are getting and trying to do that digital transformation or refactor their applications requires a lot of effort from the developers and the internal IT practitioners. So by moving to a model with an enterprise kind of like Expedient, that allows them to get a consistent foundational level for those technical debt, the 'traditional workloads' where they can start focusing their efforts more on that refactoring of their applications, to get that agility, to get the flexibility, to get the market advantage of time to market with their new refactored applications. That takes them much faster to market, allows them to get ahead of those competitors, if they're not already ahead of them, get further ahead of them or catch up the ones that may have already made that transition. >> And I would add that the analyst coverage you've seen in the last 9 to 12 months, really accelerate for our type of cloud because before everything was hyper scale, everything's going to be hyper scale and they realized that companies have been trying to go to the cloud really for over a decade, really 15 years, that digital transformation, but most companies, when you look at the analysts say they're about 30% there, they've hit a plateau. So they need to look at a different way to approach that. And they're realizing that a VMware-based cloud or the specialty cloud providers give a different mode of cloud. Because you had of a pendulum that everything was on-premises, everything swung to cloud first and then it swung to multi-cloud, which meant multiple hyper scale providers and now it's really landing at that equilibrium where you have different modes of cloud. So it's similar like if you want to travel the world, you don't use one mode of transportation to get from one continent to the other. You have to use different modes. Same thing to get all the way to that cloud transformation, you need to use different modes of cloud, an enterprise cloud, a hyper scale cloud, working them together with that common management plan. >> And with that said Brian, where have customer conversations gone in the last couple of years? Obviously this has got to be an executive level, maybe even a board level conversation. Talk to us about how your customer conversations have changed. Have the stakeholders changed? Has things gone up to stack? >> Yeah. The business is much more involved than what it's been in the past and some of the drivers, even through the pandemic, as people reevaluate office space, a lot of times data centers were part of the same building. Or they were added into a review that nobody ever asked, "Well, why are you only using 20% of your data center?" So now that conversation is very active and they're reevaluating that and then the conversation shifts to "Where's the best place?" And that's a lot of, the conference also talks about the best place for your application for the workload in the right location. >> My role here is to dive down into the weeds constantly to stay away from business outcomes and things like that. But somewhere in the middle there's this question of how what you provide is consumed. So fair to assume that often people are moving from CapEx model to an OPEX model where they're consuming by the glass, by the drink. What does that mean organizationally for your customers? And do you help them work through that journey, reorganizing their internal organization to take advantage of cloud? Is that something that Expedient is a part of, or do you have partners that help them through that? How does that work? >> Yeah. There's some unique things that an enterprise doesn't understand when they think about what they've done on-prem versus a service provider is. There's whole models that they can purchase with us in consumption, not just the physical hardware, but licensing as well. Do you want to talk about how clients actually step in and start to do that evaluation? >> Sure. So it really kind of starts on the front end of evaluating what they have. So going through an assessment process, because traditionally, if you have a big data center full of hardware, you've already paid for it. So as you're deploying new workloads, it's "free to deploy." But when you go to that cloud operating model, you're paying for each drink that you're taking. So we want to make sure that as they're going into that cloud operating model, that they are right sized on the front end. They're not over-provisioned on anything that they're going to just waste money and resources on after they make that transition. So it's really about giving them great data on the front end, doing all that collection from a foundational level, from a infrastructure level, but also from a business and IT operations perspective and figuring out where they're spending, not just their money, but also their time and effort and helping them streamline and simplify those IT operations. >> Let's talk about one of the other elephants in the room and that is the remote hybrid workforce. Obviously it's been two and a half years, which is hard to believe. I think I'm one of the only people that hates working from home. Most people, do you too? Okay, good. Thank you, we're normal. >> Absolutely. (Lisa laughing) But VMware was talking about desktop as a service, there was so much change and quick temporary platform set up to accommodate offsite workers during the pandemic. What are some of the experiences that your clients are having and how is Expedient plus VMware helping businesses adapt and really create them the right hybrid model for them going forward? >> Sure. So as part of being that full sack cloud service provider, desktop in that remote user has to be part of that consideration. And one of the biggest things we saw with the pandemic was people stood up what we call pandemic VDI, very temporary solutions. And you saw the news articles that they said, "We did it in 10 days." And how many big transformational events do people plan and execute in 10 days that transform their workforce? So now they're having to come back and say, "Okay, what's the right way to deploy it?" And do you want to talk about some of the specifics of what we're seeing in the adjustments that they're doing? >> Sure. So it is, when you look at it from the end user perspective, it's how they're operating, how they're getting their tools through their day to day job, but it's also the IT administrators that are having to provide that service to the end users. So it's really kind of across the board, it's affecting everyone. So it's really kind of going through and helping them figure out how they're going to support their users going forward. So we've spun up things like VMware desktop as a service providing that multi-tenant ability to consume on a per desktop basis, but then we've also wrapped around with a lot of security features. So one of the big things is as people are going and distributing where they're working from, that data and access to data is also opened up to those locations. So putting those protections in place to be able to protect the environment and then be able, if something does get in, to be able to detect what's going on. And then of course, with a lot of the other components, being able to recover those environments. So building the desktops, the end user access into the disaster recovery plans. >> And talk more, a little bit Brent, about the security aspect. We've seen the threat landscape change dramatically in the last couple of years, ransomware is a household word. I'm pretty sure even my mom knows what that means, to some degree. Where is that in customer conversations? I can imagine in certain industries like financial services and healthcare with PII, it's absolutely critical to ensure that that data is, they know where it is. It's protected and it's recoverable, 'cause everyone's talking about cyber resilience these days. >> Right. And if it's not conversation 1, it's conversation 1A. So it's really kind of core to everything that we do when we're talking to clients. It's whether it's production DR or the desktops, is building that security in place to help them build their security practice up. So when you think about it, it's doing it at layers. So starting with things like more advanced antivirus to see what's actually going on the desktop and then kind of layering above there. So even up to micro-segmentation, where you can envelop each individual desktop in their own quasi network, so that they're only allowed kind of that zero trust model where, Hey, if you can get to a file share, that's the only place you should be going or do I need web apps to get my day to day job done, but really restricting that access and making sure that everything is more good traffic versus unknown traffic. >> Yeah. >> And also on the, you asked about the clouds smarter earlier. And you can really weave the desktop into that because when you're thinking of your production compute environment and your remote desktop environment, and now you can actually share storage together, you can share security together and you start to get economies of scale across those different environments as well. >> So as we are in August, I think still yeah, 2022, barely for a couple more days, lot of change going on at VMware. Expedient has been VMware America's partner of the year before. Talk to us about some of the things that you think from a strategic perspective are next for the partnership. >> That it's definitely the multi-cloud world is here. And it's how we can go deeper, how we're going to see that really mature. You know, one of the things that we've actually done together this year was we worked on a project and evaluated over 30 different companies of what they spend on IT. Everything from the physical data center to the entire stack, to people and actually build a cloud transformation calculator that allows you to compare strategies, so that if you look at Strategy A over a five year period, doing your current transformation, versus that Cloud Different approach, it can actually help quantify the number of hours difference that you can get, the total cost of ownership and the speed that you can get there. So it's things like that that help people make easier decisions and simplify information are going to be part of it. But without a doubt, it's going to be how you can have that wrapper across all of your different environments that really delivers that cloud-like environment that panacea people have been looking for. >> Yeah. That panacea, that seems like it's critical for every organization to achieve. Last question for you. When customers come to you, when they've hit that plateau. They come to Expedient saying, "Guys, with VMware, help us accelerate past this. "We don't have the time, we need to get this done quickly." How do you advise them to move forward? >> Sure. So it goes back to that, what's causing them to hit that plateau? Is it more on the development side of things? Is it the infrastructure teams, not being able to respond fast enough to the developers? And really putting a plan in place to really get rid of those plateaus. It could be getting rid of the technical debt. It could be changing the IT operations and kind of that, the way that they're looking at a cloud transformation model, to help them kind of get accelerated and get them back on the right path. >> Back on the right path. I think we all want to get back on the right path. Guys, thank you so much for joining David and me on theCUBE today, talking about Expedient Cloud Different, what you're seeing in the marketplace, and how Expedient and VMware are helping customers to succeed. We appreciate your time. >> Yep. >> Thanks for having us. >> For our guests and Dave Nicholson, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE live from VMware Explorer '22, stick around, Dave and I will be back shortly with our next guest. (gentle upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Hi, everybody. We're wrapping up day two of AWS Re:Inforce 2022. This is theCUBE, my name is Dave Vellante. And one of the folks that we featured, one of the companies that we featured in the AWS startup showcase season two, episode four, was Illumio. And of course their here at the security theme event. PJ Kerner is CTO and Co-Founder of Illumio. Great to see you, welcome back to theCUBE. >> Thanks for having me. >> I always like to ask co-founders, people with co-founder in their titles, like go back to why you started the company. Let's go back to 2013. Why'd you start the company? >> Absolutely. Because back in 2013, one of the things that we sort of saw as technology trends, and it was mostly AWS was, there were really three things. One was dynamic workloads. People were putting workloads into production faster and faster. You talk about auto scale groups and now you talk about containers. Like things were getting faster and faster in terms of compute. Second thing was applications were getting more connected, right? The Netflix architecture is one define that kind of extreme example of hyper connectivity, but applications were, we'd call it the API economy or whatever, they were getting more connected. And the third problem back in 2013 was the problems around lateral movement. And at that point it was more around nation state actors and APTs that were in those environments for a lot of those customers. So those three trends were kind of, what do we need to do in security differently? And that's how Illumio started. >> So, okay, you say nation state that's obviously changed in the ROI of for hackers has become pretty good. And I guess your job is to reduce the ROI, but so what's the relationship PJ between the API economy, you talked about in that lateral movement? Are they kind of go hand in hand? >> They do. I think one thing that we have as a mission is, and I think it's really important to understand is to prevent breaches from becoming cyber disasters, right? And I use this metaphor around kind the submarine. And if you think about how submarines are built, submarines are built with water tight compartments inside the submarine. So when there is a physical breach, right, what happens? Like you get a torpedo or whatever, and it comes through the hall, you close off that compartment, there are redundant systems in place, but you close off that compartment, that one small thing you've lost, but the whole ship hasn't gone down and you sort of have survived. That's physical kind of resiliency and those same kind of techniques in terms of segmentation, compartmentalization inside your environments, is what makes good cyber resiliency. So prevent it from becoming a disaster. >> So you bring that micro segmentation analogy, the submarine analogy with micro segmentation to logical security, correct? >> Absolutely, yes. >> So that was your idea in 2013. Now we fast forward to 2022. It's no longer just nation states, things like ransomware are top of mind. I mean, everybody's like worried about what happened with solar winds and Log4j and on and on and on. So what's the mindset of the CISO today? >> I think you said it right. So ransomware, because if you think about the CIA triangle, confidentiality, integrity, availability, what does ransomware really does? It really attacks the availability problem, right? If you lock up all your laptops and can't actually do business anymore, you have an availability problem, right. They might not have stole your data, but they locked it up, but you can't do business, maybe you restore from backups. So that availability problem has made it more visible to CEOs and board level, like people. And so they've been talking about ransomware as a problem. And so that has given the CISO either more dollars, more authority to sort of attack that problem. And lateral movement is the primary way that ransomware gets around and becomes a disaster, as opposed to just locking up one machine when you lock up your entire environment, and thus some of the fear around colonial pipeline came in, that's when the disaster comes into play and you want to be avoiding that. >> Describe in more detail what you mean by lateral movement. I think it's implied, but you enter into a point and then instead of going, you're saying necessarily directly for the asset that you're going after, you're traversing the network, you're traversing other assets. Maybe you could describe that. >> Yeah, I mean, so often what happens is there's an initial point of breach. Like someone has a password or somebody clicked on a phishing link or something, and you have compromise into that environment, right? And then you might be compromised into a low level place that doesn't have a lot of data or is not worthwhile. Then you have to get from that place to data that is actually valuable, and that's where lateral movement comes into place. But also, I mean, you bring up a good point is like lateral movement prevention tools. Like, one way we've done some research around if you like, segmentation is, imagine putting up a maze inside your data center or cloud, right. So that, like how the attacker has to get from that initial breach to the crown jewels takes a lot longer when you have, a segmented environment, as opposed to, if you have a very flat network, it is just go from there to go find that asset. >> Hence, you just increase the denominator in the ROI equation and that just lowers the value for the hacker. They go elsewhere. >> It is an economic, you're right, it's all about economics. It's a time to target is what some our research like. So if you're a quick time to target, you're much easier to sort of get that value for the hacker. If it's a long time, they're going to get frustrated, they're going to stop and might not be economically viable. It's like the, you only have to run faster than the-- >> The two people with the bear chasing you, right. (laughs) Let's talk about zero trust. So it's a topic that prior to the pandemic, I think a lot of people thought it was a buzzword. I have said actually, it's become a mandate. Having said that others, I mean, AWS in particular kind of rolled their eyes and said, ah, we've always been zero trust. They were sort of forced into the discussion. What's your point of view on zero trust? Is it a buzzword? Does it have meaning, what is that meaning to Illumio? >> Well, for me there's actually two, there's two really important concepts. I mean, zero trust is a security philosophy. And so one is the idea of least privilege. And that's not a new idea. So when AWS says they've done it, they have embraced these privileges, a lot of good systems that have been built from scratch do, but not everybody has least privilege kind of controls everywhere. Secondly, least privilege is not about a one time thing. It is about a continuously monitoring. If you sort of take, people leave the company, applications get shut down. Like you need to shut down that access to actually continuously achieve that kind of least privilege stance. The other part that I think is really important that has come more recently is the assume breach mentality, right? And assume breach is something where you assume the attacker is, they've already clicked on, like stop trying to prevent. Well, I mean, you always still should probably prevent the people from clicking on the bad links, but from a security practitioner point of view, assume this has already happened, right. They're already inside. And then what do you have to do? Like back to what I was saying about setting up that maze ahead of time, right. To increase that time to target, that's something you have to do if you kind of assume breach and don't think, oh, a harder shell on my submarine is going to be the way I'm going to survive, right. So that mentality is, I will say is new and really important part of a zero trust philosophy. >> Yeah, so this is interesting because I mean, you kind of the old days, I don't know, decade plus ago, failure meant you get fired, breach meant you get fired. So we want to talk about it. And then of course that mentality had to change 'cause everybody's getting breached and this idea of least privilege. So in other words, if someone's not explicitly or a machine is not explicitly authorized to access an asset, they are not allowed, it's denied. So it's like Frank Slootman would say, if there's doubt, there's no doubt. And so is that right? >> It is. I mean, and if you think about it back to the disaster versus the breach, imagine they did get into an application. I mean, lamps stacks will have vulnerabilities from now to the end of time and people will get in. But what if you got in through a low value asset, 'cause these are some of the stories, you got in through a low value asset and you were sort of contained and you had access to that low value data. Let's say you even locked it up or you stole it all. Like it's not that important to the customer. That's different than when you pivot from that low value asset now into high value assets where it becomes much more catastrophic for those customers. So that kind of prevention, it is important. >> What do you make of this... Couple things, we've heard a lot about encrypt everything. It seems like these days again, in the old days, you'd love to encrypt everything, but there was always a performance hit, but we're hearing encrypt everything, John asked me the day John Furrier is like, okay, we're hearing about encrypting data at rest. What about data in motion? Now you hear about confidential computing and nitro and they're actually encrypting data in the flow. What do you make of that whole confidential computing down at the semiconductor level that they're actually doing things like enclaves and the arm architecture, how much of the problem does that address? How much does it still leave open? >> That's a hard question to answer-- >> But you're a CTO. So that's why I can ask you these questions. >> But I think it's the age old adage of defense in depth. I mean, I do think equivalent to what we're kind of doing from the networking point of view to do network segmentation. This is another layer of that compartmentalization and we'll sort of provide similar containment of breach. And that's really what we're looking for now, rather than prevention of the breach and rather than just detection of the breach, containment of that breach. >> Well, so it's actually similar philosophy brought to the wider network. >> Absolutely. And it needs to be brought at all levels. I think that's the, no one level is going to solve the problem. It's across all those levels is where you have to. >> What are the organizational implications of, it feels like the cloud is now becoming... I don't want to say the first layer of defense because it is if you're all in the cloud, but it's not, if you're a hybrid, but it's still, it's becoming increasingly a more important layer of defense. And then I feel like the CISO and the development team is like the next layer maybe audit is the third layer of defense. How are you seeing organizations sort of respond to that? The organizational roles changing, the CISO role changing. >> Well there's two good questions in there. So one is, there's one interesting thing that we are seeing about people. Like a lot of our customers are hybrid in their environment. They have a cloud, they have an on-prem environment and these two things need to work together. And in that case, I mean, the massive compute that you can be doing in the AWS actually increases the attack surface on that hybrid environment. So there's some challenges there and yes, you're absolutely right. The cloud brings some new tools to play, to sort of decrease that. But it's an interesting place we see where there's a attack surface that occurs between different infrastructure types, between AWS and on-prem of our environment. Now, the second part of your question was really around how the developers play into this. And I'm a big proponent of, I mean, security is kind of a team sport. And one of the things that we've done in some of our products is help people... So we all know the developers, like they know they're part of the security story, right? But they're not security professionals. They don't have all of the tools and all of the experience. And all of the red teaming time to sort of know where some of their mistakes might be made. So I am optimistic. They do their best, right. But what the security team needs is a way to not just tell them, like slap on the knuckles, like developer you're doing the wrong thing, but they really need a way to sort of say, okay, yes, you could do better. And here's some concrete ways that you can do better. So a lot of our systems kind of look at data, understand the data, analyze the data, and provide concrete recommendations. And there's a virtual cycle there. As long as you play the team sport, right. It's not a us versus them. It's like, how can we both win there? >> So this is a really interesting conversation because the developer all of a sudden is increasingly responsible for security. They got to worry about they're using containers. Now they got to worry about containers security. They got to worry about the run time. They got to worry about the platform. And to your point, it's like, okay, this burden is now on them. Not only do they have to be productive and produce awesome code, they got to make sure it's secure. So that role is changing. So are they up for the task? I mean, I got to believe that a lot of developers are like, oh, something else I have to worry about. So how are your customers resolving that? >> So I think they're up for the task. I think what is needed though, is a CISO and a security team again, who knows it's a team sport. Like some technologies adopted from the top down, like the CIO can say, here's what we're doing and then everybody has to do it. Some technologies adopted from the bottom up, right. It's where this individual team says, oh, we're using this thing and we're using these tools. Oh yeah, we're using containers and we're using this flavor of containers. And this other group uses Lambda services and so on. And the security team has to react because they can't mandate. They have to sort of work with those teams. So I see the best groups of people is where you have security teams who know they have to enable the developers and the developers who actually want to work with the security team. So it's the right kind of person, the right kind of CISO, right kind of security teams. It doesn't treat it as adversarial. And it works when they both work together. And that's where, your question is, how ingrained is that in the industry, that I can't say, but I know that does work. And I know that's the direction people are going. >> And I understand it's a spectrum, but I hear what you're saying. That is the best practice, the right organizational model, I guess it's cultural. I mean, it's not like there's some magic tool to make it all, the security team and the dev team collaboration tool, maybe there is, I don't know, but I think the mindset and the culture has to really be the starting point. >> Well, there is. I just talk about this idea. So however you sort of feel about DevOps and DevSecOps and so on, one core principle I see is really kind of empathy between like the developers and the operations folks, so the developers and the security team. And one way I actually, and we act like this at Illumio but one thing we do is like, you have to truly have empathy. You kind have to do somebody else's job, right. Not just like, think about it or talk about it, like do it. So there are places where the security team gets embedded deep in the organization where some of the developers get embedded in the operations work and that empathy. I know whether they go back to do what they were doing, what they learned about how the other side has to work. Some of the challenges, what they see is really valuable in sort of building that collaboration. >> So it's not job swapping, but it's embedding, is maybe how they gain that empathy. >> Exactly. And they're not experts in all those things, but do them take on those summer responsibilities, be accountable for some of those things. Now, not just do it on the side and go over somebody's shoulder, but like be accountable for something. >> That's interesting, not just observational, but actually say, okay, this is on you for some period of time. >> That is where you actually feel the pain of the other person, which is what is valuable. And so that's how you can build one of those cultures. I mean, you do need support all the way from the top, right. To be able to do that. >> For sure. And of course there are lightweight versions of that. Maybe if you don't have the stomach for... Lena Smart was on this morning, CISO of Mongo. And she was saying, she pairs like the security pros that can walk on water with the regular employees and they get to ask all these Colombo questions of the experts and the experts get to hear it and say, oh, I have to now explain this like I'm explaining it to a 10 year old, or maybe not a 10 year old, but a teenager, actually teenager's probably well ahead of us, but you know what I'm saying? And so that kind of cross correlation, and then essentially the folks that aren't security experts, they absorb enough and they can pass it on throughout the organization. And that's how she was saying she emphasizes culture building. >> And I will say, I think, Steve Smith, the CISO of AWS, like I've heard him talk a number of times and like, they do that here at like, they have some of the spirit and they've built it in and it's all the way from the top, right. And that's where if you have security over and a little silo off to the side, you're never going to do that. When the CEO supports the security professionals as a part of the business, that's when you can do the right thing. >> So you remember around the time that you and you guys started Illumio, the conversation was, security must be a board level topic. Yes, it should be, is it really, it was becoming that way. It wasn't there yet. It clearly is now, there's no question about it. >> No, ransomware. >> Right, of course. >> Let's thank ransomware. >> Right. Thank you. Maybe that's a silver lining. Now, the conversation is around, is it a organizational wide issue? And it needs to be, it needs to be, but it really isn't fully. I mean, how many organizations actually do that type of training, certainly large organizations do. It's part of the onboarding process, but even small companies are starting to do that now saying, okay, as part of the onboarding process, you got to watch this training video and sure that you've done it. And maybe that's not enough, but it's a start. >> Well, and I do think that's where, if we get back to zero trust, I mean, zero trust being a philosophy that you can adopt. I mean, we apply that kind of least privilege model to everything. And when people know that people know that this is something we do, right. That you only get access to things 'cause least privileges, you get access to absolutely to the things you need to do your job, but nothing more. And that applies to everybody in the organization. And when people sort of know this is the culture and they sort of work by that, like zero trust being that philosophy sort of helps infuse it into the organization. >> I agree with that, but I think the hard part of that in terms of implementing it for organizations is, companies like AWS, they have the tools, the people, the practitioners that can bring that to bear, many organizations don't. So it becomes an important prioritization exercise. So they have to say, okay, where do we want to apply that least privilege and apply that technology? 'Cause we don't have the resources to do it across the entire portfolio. >> And I'll give you a simple example of where it'll fail. So let's say, oh, we're least privilege, right. And so you asked for something to do your job and it takes four weeks for you to get that access. Guess what? Zero trust out the door at that organization. If you don't have again, the tools, right. To be able to walk that walk. And so it is something where you can't just say it, right. You do have to do it. >> So I feel like it's pyramid. It's got to start. I think it's got to be top down. Maybe not, I mean certainly bottom up from the developer mindset. No question about that. But in terms of where you start. Whether it's financial data or other confidential data, great. We're going to apply that here and we're not going to necessarily, it's a balance, where's the risk? Go hard on those places where there's the biggest risk. Maybe not create organizational friction where there's less risk and then over time, bring that in. >> And I think, I'll say one of the failure modes that we sort of seen around zero trust, if you go too big, too early, right. You actually have to find small wins in your organization and you pointed out some good ones. So focus on like, if you know where critical assets are, that's a good place to sort of start. Building it into the business as usual. So for example, one thing we recommend is people start in the developing zero trust segmentation policy during the development, or at least the test phase of rolling out a new application as you sort of work your way into production, as opposed to having to retro segment everything. So get it into the culture, either high value assets or work like that, or just pick something small. We've actually seen customers use our software to sort of like lock down RDP like back to ransomware, loves RDP lateral movement. So why can we go everywhere to everywhere with RDP? Well, you need it to sort of solve some problems, but just focus on that one little slice of your environment, one application and lock that down. That's a way to get started and that sort of attacks the ransomware problem. So there's lots of ways, but you got to make some demonstrable first steps and build that momentum over time to sort of get to that ultimate end goal. >> PJ Illumio has always been a thought leader in security generally in this topic specifically. So thanks for coming back on theCUBE. It's always great to have you guys. >> All right. Thanks, been great. >> All right. And thank you for watching. Keep it right there. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE's coverage of AWS re:Inforce 2022 from Boston. We'll be right back. (upbeat music)

>>Welcome back to Boston. Everybody watching the cubes coverage, OFS reinforce 22 from Boston, Atlanta chow lobster, the SOS a ruin in my summer, Andy and Smith is here is the CMO of laminar. Andy. Good to see you. Good >>To see you. Great to be >>Here. So laminar came outta stealth last year, 2021, sort of, as we were exiting the isolation economy. Yeah. Why was laminar started >>Really about there's there's two mega trends in the industry that, that created a problem that wasn't being addressed. Right? So the two mega trends was cloud transformation. Obviously that's been going on for a while, but what most people doesn't don't realize is it really accelerated with COVID right? Being all, everybody having to be remote, et cetera, various stats I've read like increased five times, right? So cloud transformation are now you are now problem, right? That's going on? And then the other next big mega trend is data democratization. So more data in the cloud than ever before. And this is, this is just going and going and going. And the result of those two things, more data in the cloud, how am I securing that data? You know, the, the, the breach culture we're in like every day, a new, a new data breach coming up, et cetera, just one Twitter, one yesterday, et cetera. The, those two things have caused a gap with data security teams and, and that's what he >>Heard at attract. Yeah. So, you know, to your point and we track this stuff pretty carefully quarterly, and you saw, it was really interesting trend. You actually saw AWS's growth rate accelerate during the pandemic. Absolutely. You know? Absolutely. So you're talking about, you know, a couple of hundred billion dollars for the big four clouds. If you, if you include Alibaba and it's still growing at 35, you know, 40% a year, which is astounding, so, okay. So more cloud, more data. Explain why that's a, a problem for practitioners. >>Yeah, exactly. The reality is in, in the security, what, what are we doing? What all the security it's about protecting your data in the end, right? Like, like we're here at this at, at reinforce all these security vendors here really it's about protecting your data, your sensitive data. And, but what, what had been happening is all the focus was on the infrastructure, the network, et cetera, et cetera, and not as much focus, particularly on the data and, and the move to the cloud gave the developers and the data scientists, way more power. They don't longer have to ask for permission. And so they can just do what they want. And it's actually wonderful for the business. The business is moving faster, you spin up applications sooner, you get new, new insights. So all those things are really great, but because the developer has so much power, they can just copy data over here, make a backup over here, new et cetera. And, and security has no idea about all these copies of the, of the data that are out there. And they're typically not as well protected as that main production source. And that's the gap that >>Exists. Okay. So there was this shift from sort of perimeter hardening the perimeter, hardening the infrastructure and, and now your premises, it's moving to the data we saw when, when there was during the pandemic, there was definitely a shift to end point security. There was a shift to cloud security rethinking the network, but it was still a lot of, you know, kind of cha chasing the whackamole and people have talked about this is a data problem for years. Yeah. But it was, it's taken a while for, for companies, for the technology industry to, to come at it. You guys are one of the first, if not the first. Yeah. Why do you think it took so long? Is this cuz it's really hard. >>Yeah. I mean, it, it's hard. You need to focus on it. The, the traditional security has been around the network and the box, right. And those are still necessary. It's important to, you know, your use identity to cover the edge, to, to make sure people can't get into the box, but you also have to have data. So what, what happens is there's really good solutions for enterprise data security, looking at database, you know, technology, et cetera. There are good solutions for cloud infrastructure security. So the CSP of the world and the CWPP are protecting containers, you know, protecting the infrastructure. But there really wasn't much for cloud everything you build and run in the cloud. So basically your custom application, your custom applications in the IAS and PAs environments, there really wasn't anything solving that. And that's really where laminar is focused. >>Okay. So you guys use this term shadow data. We talk about shadow. It what's shadow data. >>Yeah. So what we're finding at a hundred percent of our customer environments and our POVs and talking to CISOs out there is that they have these shadow data assets and shadow data elements that they have no clue that existed. So here's the example. Everybody knows the main RDS database that is in production. And this is where, you know, our, our data is taken from. But what people don't realize is there's a copy of that. You know, in a dev environment, somebody went to run a test and they was supposed to be there for two weeks. But then that developer left forgot, left it there. They left the company, oh, now it's been there for two years that there was an original SQL database left over from a lift and shift project. They got moved to RDS, but nobody deleted that thing there, you know, it's a database connected to an application, the application left, but that database, that abandoned database is still sitting. These are all real life customer examples of shadow data that we run into. And there's, and what the problem is that main production data store is secured pretty well. It's following all your policies, et cetera. But all these shadow data resources are typically less well protected unmonitored. And that is what the attackers are after. >>So you're, you know, the old, the, the Watergate follow the money, you're following the data, >>Following the data. >>How do you follow that data if there's so much of it, it, and it's, you know, sometimes, you know, not really well understood where it is. How do you know where >>It is? Yeah. It's the beauty of partnering with somebody like AWS, right? So with each of the cloud providers, we actually take a role in your cloud account and use the APIs from the cloud provider to see all the changes in all the instances are going on. Like it is, the problem is way more complicated in the cloud because I mean, AWS has over 200 services, dozens of ways to store data, right. It's wonderful for the developer, but it's very hard for the security practitioner. And so, because we have that visibility through the cloud provider's APIs, we can see all those changes that are happening. We can then say, ah, that's a data store. Let me go analyze, make a copy, have a snapshot of that and do the analyzing of that data right inside our customer's account without pulling the data out. And we have complete visibility to everything. And then we can give that data catalog over to the customer. >>All right. I gotta ask you a couple Colombo questions. So if you know, we talk about encryption, everything's encrypted everything. If, if the data is encrypted, why then would I need laminar? >>Because I mean, we'll make sure that the data's encrypted okay. Right. Often. So it's not supposed to be and not right. Two is, we're gonna tell you what type of data is inside there. Oh, is this, is this health information? Is it personal identify information? Is it credit cards? You know, et cetera, C so we'll classify the data for you. We will also, then there's things like retention, period. How long should we, I hold onto that data, all the things about what are, who has access, what's the exposure level for that data. And so when you, when you think about data security posture, what's the posture of that data you're looking at at those data policies. It's something that has been very well defined and written down. But in the past, there was just no way to go verify that those, that, that, that policy is actually being followed. And so we're doing that verification automatically. >>So without the context, you can't answer those other questions. So you make sure it's encrypted. If it's not, or you can at least notify me that it's not, you don't do the encryption. Right. Or do you, >>We don't do it ourselves, but we can give you here. Here's the command in and the Amazon to go encrypt it >>Right. Then I can automate that. And then the classification is key because now you're telling me the context. So I can say, okay, apply this policy to that data, retain it for this long, get rid of it after X number of years, or if it's work, process, get rid of it now. Yeah. And then who should have access to that data. And so you can help at least inform how to enforce those policies. >>Exactly. And so we, we, we call it guided remediation because what we're, you know, talking to a CISO, they're like, I need 400 more alerts, like a hole in the head like that. Doesn't do me any good. If you can't tell me how to resolve the, the, the, this security gap that I have or this, then it doesn't do any good. And, and the first, first it starts with who do I need to go talk to? Right. So they have hundreds, if not thousands of developers. Oh, great. You found this issue. I, I, I don't know who to go. Like, I can't just delete it myself, but I need to go talk to somebody really, should this be deleted? We need, do we really, really need to hold onto this? So we, we help guide who the data owner is. So we give you who to talk to. You, give you all the context. Here's the data, here's the data asset that it's in. Here's our suggestion. Here's the problem. Here's our suggestion for >>Solution. And you started the company on AWS >>Started on AWS. Absolutely. >>So what's of course it's best cloud and why not start there? So what's the relationship like, I mean, how'd you get started? You said, okay, Hey, we're we got an idea for a company. We're gonna build it on AWS. We're gonna become a customer. We're gonna, you know, >>We actually, so insight partners is our main investor. Yeah. And they were very helpful in giving us access to literally hundreds of CSOs, who we had conversations with before we actually launched the company. And so we did some shifting and to, to figure out our exact use case. But by the time we came to market, it was in February this year, we actually GAed the product that, where like product market fit nailed because we'd had so many conversations that we knew the problem in the market that we needed to solve. And we knew where we needed to solve it first. And, and the, the, the relationship we AWS is great. We just got on the marketplace, just became a, a partner. So really good. Good >>Start. So I gotta ask you, so I always ask this question. So how do you actually know when you have product market fit? >>You it's about those conversations. Right. You know, so like, I I've been to lots of startups and sometimes you're you're, you, you each have a conversation and then they, they saying, oh, well kind of want this. And we kind of like that. And so it, the more conversations you have, the more, you know, you're solving a real problem. Right. And, and, and, and, and you re react to what that, what that prospect is telling you back and, or that advisor or that whoever we're talking to. And, and every single one of the CISO conversations we had was I don't have a good inventory of my data in the cloud. >>The reason I asked that, cause I always ask the startups, like, when do you scale? Cause I think startups sometimes scale too fast. They try to scale too fast, they'll hire 50 sales people. And then they, you know, churn, you know, they, they got a 50% churn, but they're trying to optimize their go to market when they got 50% of their customers are gonna leave. So it's, it's gotta be the sequential thing. So, so you got product market fit. So are, are you in the scaling phase >>Now? We are. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So now it's about how quickly can we deliver? We, we we're ramping customer base significantly. And, and you know, we've got a whole go to market team in, you know, sales and marketing in the us and, and often off to the races >>And you just run on AWS or you run another clouds. >>It's multi-cloud so AWS, Azure, GCP, et cetera. >>Okay. So then my least my next question is it sort of, you can do this within each of the individual clouds today. Do you see a day and maybe it's here today is where you can create a single experience across those clouds >>Today. It's a single experience across cloud. So our SaaS, we have our SaaS portion runs in AWS, but the actual data analysis runs in each cloud provider. So AWS, Azure, GCP and snowflake too, actually. >>Ah, okay. So I come through your whatever portal, like if I can use that term. Yep. And that's running on AWS. Yes. You're SAS, as you say, and then you go out to these other environments, GCP, Azure, AWS itself, and snowflake. Yep. And I see laminar, is that right? Or >>There's a piece running inside our customer's environment. Okay. So, so we have a customer, they, the, we have, we get a role inside of their cloud account or read only role inside of their cloud account. And we spin up serverless functions in that cloud account. That's where all the analysis happens. And that's why we don't take any data out of the environment. So it all stays there. And, and therefore we don't, we don't actually see the data outside of the environment. Like, I, I can tell you there's a metadata comes out. I can tell you, there are credit cards inside that data store, but I can't tell you exactly which credit card it is cuz I don't know. So all the important actions happens are there and just the metadata metadata comes out. So we can give you a cross cloud dashboard of all your sensitive data. >>And of course, so take the example of snowflake. They're going across clouds, they're building what we call super cloud sort of, of a layer that floats on top. You're just sort of going wherever that data goes. >>Yeah, exactly. So, so each of there's a component that lives in the customer's environment in the, in those multi-cloud environments and then a single view of the world dashboard that is our SaaS component that runs an AWS. So >>You guys are, is, am I correct? You're series a funded >>Series, a funded yeah, exactly. >>And, and already scaling to go to market. Yeah. Which is, which is early to scale. Right. I mean you've got startup experience. Right? >>Absolutely. >>How does it compare? >>Well, what was amazing here was access. I mean, really it was through the relationship with insight. It was access to the CISOs that I had never had at any of the other startups I was with. You're trying to get meetings, you're meeting with a lot of practitioners, you know, et cetera. But getting all those conversations with buyers was, was super valuable for us to say, ah, I know I'm solving a real problem that has value that they will pay for. Right. And, and, and so that, that was a year and a half probably still of all that work going on. We just, just waited to GA until we understood the market >>Better. Yeah. Insight. They're amazing. The way to talk about scaling. I mean, they've just the last 10 years that comp that, that PE firm has just gone wild in terms of just their, their philosophy, their approach, their cadence, their consistency. And now of course their portfolio. >>Yeah. And, and they started doing a little bit earlier and earlier stage. I mean, I, I always think of them as PE too, but you know, they, they did our seed round. Right. They did our a round and, and they're doing earlier stages, but particularly what they saw in Laar was exactly what we started this conversation with. They saw cloud transformation speeding up, they saw data democratization happening. They're like, we need to invest in this now because this is a now a problem to solve. >>Yeah. It's interesting. Cuz when you go back even pre 2010, you talk to, you know, look at insight, they would wait. They would invest in companies unless there was, you know, on the way to five plus million dollar ARR, they weren't doing seed deals. Totally. Like they saw, wow, these actually can be pretty lucrative and we can play and we have a point of view and yeah. So cool. Well, congratulations. I'll give you the final word. What, what should we be watching for from, from Laar as sort of, you know, milestones that you guys want to hit and, and indicators of success. >>Yeah. Now it's all about growth partnerships, you know, integrations with, with other of the players out here. Right. And so, you know, like scaling our AWS partnership is one of the key aspects for us. And so, you know, just look for, look for the name out there and, and you'll start, you'll start to see it a lot more. And, and if, if you have the need, you know, come look us up. Laar security.com. >>Awesome. Well thanks very much for coming to Cuban. Good luck. Appreciate it. All right. >>Wonderful. Thanks. You're >>Welcome. All right. Keep it right there, everybody. This is Dave ante. We'll be back right after this short break from AWS reinvent 2022 in Boston. You're watching the cue.

>>The cube presents HPE discover 2022 brought to you by HPE. >>Welcome back to HPE. Discover 2022. My name is Dave Lanta. I'm here with my co-host John fur. John we've been watching the evolution of H HP to HPE. We've seen GreenLake when Antonio Neri, I called it. I called it burn the boats. He goes, no, no, no, it wasn't burn the boats. I said, well, okay, burn the bridges. But it was all in on as a service on, on GreenLake. And we're gonna talk about that. Brad Shapiro is here. He's the vice president and managing director of the enterprise business at HPE financial services. Brad. Good to see him. Good to see >>You as well. >>Yeah, you guys got it all started. When, when Antonio kinda laid down, the gauntlet said, this is where we're going. Let's make it happen now. Cause the first place he turned I would imagine is the financial services said, okay, how do we start this today? Can you help us? And they take us back to that >>And yeah, sure. So, you know, uh, yeah, HP financial services, um, it's kind of a foundational element cuz when you think about it, asset management is really what we're doing here. And I know asset management's a, a big word, right? And it can mean lots of things to, to different people. Um, in this context, uh, we started looking at how do customers manage assets over the life cycle and a lot of customers while they were interested in a consumption model and looking at GreenLake for their private cloud, they were certainly looking at public cloud for certain workloads and then maybe even traditional data center for other activities that, that they're running. So it's really that hybrid environment. Uh, but they were stuck going well, Hey, I'm in a CapEx model today. How do I get out of CapEx and really get into this hybrid model? >>And that's where asset management comes in. So one of the, the biggest initial focus is, and we continue to have that focus. We call it our accelerated migration offer and it's really us going in and acquiring the customer assets, moving it on the HPE balance sheet and then figuring out what are we gonna do with those assets, which are gonna stay in use under a consumption model, which are excess. And we can put through our, uh, asset up cycling process, we monetize the majority of that, put that back into reuse and then maybe a small amount gets recycled. So, so really focused on the assets and accelerating customers transition to GreenLake. Did you >>See, or are you seeing a difference between like Le traditional leasing customers who already have kind of on that model versus like what you just described as sort of the, the CapEx was more complicated, you gotta get, I presume procurement involved the legal issues and was there a lot less, was it less friction with the, the leasing customers? Well, >>You know, I, I look at leasing and financing, very similar to CapEx. It's, it's a much more traditional model versus this new as a service experience. Um, so if, if they were in a leasing model, we could convert those leases into GreenLake. I wouldn't say one was any more difficult than the other. Yeah. Um, they were both really traditional mindset, um, and not really looking at a consumption model. So I think we had our fair share of both. And I think we, we have and are able to address both customers moving in into a consumption >>Mode. Right. How does this tie into sustainability? Because you know, we have on one end of the spectrum, the, the high end sustainability, you know, the, the science and sure. And the behind it, tactically speaking companies still now want to operate in this kind of, there's a sustainable angle here. Yeah. Talk about that piece of it. How does that tie in obviously consumption versus CapEx you're building, you're not building, what, what does that thread through the sustainability angle? >>Yeah. So, so first let me just say sustainability is really important to our customers. Um, and, and we're seeing it all over and it is real. Um, the good thing is that you can get business value out of the solutions and have a more sustainable model. So when I think about, and I talk to customers about sustainability, uh, there's a number of fronts they're focused on one, their customers believe it's important, right? So, so they're focused on making sure they're driving sustainable models. Uh, I've seen an increasing number of customers, both commercial and public sector have sustainability requirements in their tenders, in their RFPs. And you have to be able to, to comply with those. Um, second, uh, they, they look at it and go, how do I attract talent? It's increasingly important for them to attract talent. And then really if you, because >>They wanna work for a mission driven company that's >>Sustainable. Absolutely. Absolutely. And, and the third area is investors. You know, the investment community is now looking at ESG and whole and you know, certainly environmental impacts, um, in where they're making an investment. So quick personal story, I was talking, uh, to a friend of mine who works for a hedge fund and he was telling me over the last year, they've hired a whole team. That's focused on just doing analysis of companies, ESG initiatives, determining where they're gonna invest their money. So it's, it's a wall street thing now. So this is real from a number of angles where, where sustainability has an impact. Now, how we play in that. Um, clearly when you go to a GreenLake consumption model, the idea is improving utilization of the asset. So driving higher utilization means you need less assets. You know, over time, the, the secret is we're gonna sell you less, right? >>You're gonna have less assets, but you're gonna have higher utilization. That's good for the environment where HPE Fs comes in is when those assets are done. We put those assets back into reuse. So we have a remark, we have remarketing facilities, one in, in Andover, mass, one in kin Scotland. And then we have 80 different facilities. We have partnerships around the world and our focus is how do we drive more reuse, 85% of the assets we get back, go into reuse. And when you look at servers and PCs and things like that, it's over 95% go into reuse. So a real focus on reuse is good for the environment as well. And then needless to say, the new technology that goes into a GreenLake deal, we're seeing like 30% energy savings coming, coming out of those environments. So all really good stuff related to it's >>Interesting. I mean, a couple points there is one is, you know, Benoff kind of got it all started pre pandemic. He was out talking about, you know, sustainability and ESG. And a lot of people were like, no way. It's all about bottom line profits. And so he was ahead of that. And I guess, you know, back to at least you were, oh, you were always in the residual value game, but now it's a little different, isn't it? Absolutely. It's, it's it's yes. You gotta figure out what the value of that asset's gonna be, but also there's a sustainability aspect of it as >>Well. Yeah, absolutely. And the, the pretty cool thing here is while you drive sustainability, we're also seeing customers that, that go into GreenLake. Um, we had a good example with Kern county, a 42% savings over their CapEx environment when they moved to GreenLake. So it was better for the environment and significant savings. So you can have kind of like have your cake and eat it too. You, you get better environmental, uh, impacts and you're getting better bottom line, uh, performance. >>It's a business case there too do. Now we kind of, I was talking upfront about the, the early days of GreenLake where, you know, they were, it was a financial model. Yeah. And now it's evolving to actually a technology model. We heard Alma with the platform. How has that, or has that changed the way that financial services your >>Group >>Yeah. Approaches the, the, the market. >>Yeah. So, um, yeah, that's a great point. You know, when people talk about GreenLake, they think about the old days. And, and look, I've been around a while. I remember the flex capacity, right? Yeah, of course this isn't flex capacity. I mean, the platform's amazing and it really starts to bring to life the whole thought, when we talk about hybrid, right, there are workloads sure. They might belong best in the public cloud. Right. There, there are workloads that belong best in the private cloud, under the HPE GreenLake model. And there are still workloads that customers may say, Hey, look, I've got legacy applications. I'm gonna continue to run them in a traditional data center. And so from an H P E Fs perspective, you know, we look at this, not as a leasing and financing company, we're looking at this on how do we leverage the customer's existing assets? >>How do we create incremental budget using those existing assets? And then what kind of model best serves that workload? And then how do you optimize the capacity and the spend on that? So, you know, an interesting note in the past year, we put 500 million back into customer budgets by just leveraging their existing it estate. And, and it does, it's not all HPE product, you know, we're, we're, we're monetizing third party products in the data center, in the network, in the workplace. So we can really look at, we call it any tech any time, anywhere we look at all the technology and really assess what's the best way to leverage that investment. Yeah. And, and get the most out of >>It. Yeah. I mean, it's really evolved from just recycling assets for profit, but integrating the business model into the value proposition, the core value proposition in GreenLake. That's great innovation. Um, and, and congratulations on that. Sure. My, my question for you is more kind of zooming out at the market. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, from your perspective in financial services at HPE, what has the pandemic proven to you guys? How has it changed? How you guys work and how has it changed the customer environment? Cuz you mentioned assets. I think real estate. Oh no. One's going back to work. Yeah, no one's been in the office. How has the market changed with hybrids as a steady state now coming outta the pandemic? What are customers doing with the assets? What are some of the trends that you're seeing in the customer base? >>Yeah. So, so look, I'll give you my personal perspective of what I think about as a business leader. And when I talk to customers, I think we're all thinking about the same thing. So I start with experience, what experience do I wanna create for my customers and very closely linked to that, my colleagues, right? So it, the, the people working in our organization, what experience am I creating for them? So they can in turn, create that experience for partners and customers externally. So experience is one thing. The second is innovation, right? We spend a lot of time thinking about what's next? Where do we want to go? What's the innovation and more and more that innovation is all digital, right? So digital transformation is huge within my organization. And it's huge within all of our customers. Dave, I think the last time we talked, I was in my living room on a little laptop screen and zoom and, and I think I use the analogy E every business is now a digital business, even my pizza shop in jerseys. >>Yeah. Right. I mean, everything was online curbside pickup. So what I'm finding is the, the trends in terms of how to leverage technology is how do you create that customer experience? And then how does digital now blend as we're coming out of the pandemic? And, and you're, you know, now able to go into restaurants and stores, how do you blend digital with that in person experience and maybe leverage the best of both. Right. And, and how do you do that in a seamless way to really give customers choice and give them that smooth, seamless experience. So that, that's what I see happening. And you know, what we are trying to do with our asset management plays with the financial modeling we do is how do we get more of that spend going to innovation versus maintenance. And, and that's a big key because, you know, you have to be fast. So I talk about innovation. I talk about customer experience, speed to market. I mean, you know, and the bar keeps getting higher, right? It's like, as soon as you think you're fast, you're slow. We, because you have to keep, it all keeps rolling. >>We heard yesterday on the cube from, uh, one of the HP point, next executives said, you gotta perform and transform >>At the >>Same time at the same time. And you gotta know where the people are gonna land. Absolutely. And how the assets are gonna be distributed. >>And to your point, Brad, you know, from our virtual interview, you're so right. I mean, every business has to be a digital business. And you know, my, my personal story, John, you know, my brother Richie was the executive chef at legal seafood. Right. Pandemic. So then that was a, a place you wanted to go to that restaurant, famous restaurant in Boston when they reopened, they weren't ready. Right. They didn't have the digital story together. They ended up having to, we were just at Smith and Linsky, they ended up selling to Smith and Wilensky's oh, and you, you drive around, you see a lot of these retail businesses is shut down. Yeah. Right. And so, okay. So we're, they weren't able to get through that, you know, cross that chasm in digital transformation. Yeah. A lot of businesses were able to and make it a tailwind. >>Yeah. And, and look, the other thing I think all businesses are focused on right now, uh, with the labor market is talent. And, and so when you think about all of these things tying together, you want to drive, uh, you know, innovation. You want to drive your digital transformation. You wanna make that environmentally sustainable. And, and I think all of that, if you start putting all that together, those are the companies that are gonna attract the talent in the marketplace. And, and really there there's a battle for talent and >>You wanna make it profitable. Uh, Brad bureau. Thanks so much for you. Great to see you face to face. >>Yeah. Likewise. Thanks. Thanks. >>All right. Keep it right there, John. And I will be back. We're wrapping up day three of HPE, discover 2022. You're watching the cube.

(upbeat music) >> Hi everybody. We're back at VeeamON 2022, we're winding down coverage to The Cube day two. We've done a lot of VeeamON. We're at the Aria hotel, smaller physical audience, huge hybrid audience, little different program. Great keynotes, really loved the keynote yesterday and today kind of product day today. Sean Smith is here with myself and David Nicholson. He's the staff Solution Architect at VMware. Sean, thanks for coming on the Cube, taking some time with us. >> Hey guys. Great to be here and great to be in person again. >> Yeah, it sure is. Hoping to see VMworld is no longer VMworld, right? >> It's VMware Explore now. Yep. >> Okay. Awesome. Looking forward to that. That was one of the first shows we ever did. It's kind of got that same vibe, I hope you don't lose that, the core of VMware. >> What we've been told is it's still going to be, the core of what we do and it's going to be the showcase of VMware. >> Which is the ecosystem, great vibe. You always know a million people there, which is great fun. How's it going at VMware today? I mean, let's start there. It's been a while since we've talked physically with... >> Yeah. VMware is, we've come through the pandemic, fairly well, relative speaking to what others have done. I'm part of the VCPP Program, the VMware Cloud Provider Program, and I look after cloud service providers, cloud builders, people who are actually building out networks for customers and environments that are very specialized and focusing on their needs and VMware is forefront with cloud service providers these days, doing really well. >> The last time we were physically proximate to VMware executives, I think Pat Gelsinger was still the CEO, Dell still owned the majority of VMware. So that spin happened. So that's good. I think the ecosystem in particular is probably really happy about that. Does it have any effect on your world? >> From a day to day business perspective, not really, right. Obviously we still have a very tight relationship with Dell. We still do a lot of innovative solutions and products with the Dell team. We have a tight integration there. It really gives us the opportunity to also work with many other vendors as well. And focus on solutions that our customers are looking for really, is where VMware is tryna focus. >> Yeah. It's funny, we were at Red Hat Summit last week. IBM Think was right across the street there was very little mention, if any, I think they talked about an IBM mainframe at Red Hat Summit. That was it. I mean IBM fully owns Red Hat, but a lot of people said, we hope that it's going to be like VMware and you guys have always had that independent culture. >> Fiercely independent. >> Fiercely independent. Yes. >> Yes. It's like when you coach, I don't know me anyway, when I coach my kids baseball, I'm a tougher on them than am with the other kids. I think you guys were sometimes tougher on your own or... And rightly so, you have a huge ecosystem. >> We do. >> That is epic. And so you have to look out for that. VMware has always done that. VCPP the V is for a VMware what's what's the acronym. >> So the CPP is Cloud Provider Program. It's a program that's specifically aimed at our cloud service providers. There's several solutions within the program, which are really focused on helping them build business, helping them go to market, helping them with being able to, for certain part of it compete with the hyperscalers and our support several cloud providers, mostly out of the Northeast, and they're doing really well. They're doing well against the hyperscalers, they very often provide solutions that are not easy to get on a hyperscaler. When you want to have customer interaction and things like that. So the VCP Program as I said, is really tailored, it has solutions which are very much focused on allowing them to build their businesses as a cloud service provider. >> Just a follow up if I may. >> Yeah. >> So the history of VMware Cloud has been really interesting. At one point vCloud Air, we know what happened there. This is not vCloud Air. >> This is not vCloud Air. It's got nothing to do with vCloud Air. It's really a program where we provide solutions that the cloud builders build with, right? So it's software solutions. There's no hardware involved. There's no VMware having the environment, it's really cloud providers building solutions. >> So it's interesting, Dave, this has come full circle, you used to work at Virtustream. There was point Rodney was like, bring it on AWS, correlation and back said, we can't lose to a book seller and all that was just, fun marketing talk for media people like us. But the interesting thing is, well, so VMware Cloud on AWS. Huge success of VMware Cloud Foundation. Doing really well. And obviously you've got momentum. Everybody thought, not everybody. >> It's in Google's, in Azure, it's in Oracle. >> Yeah, yeah. Sorry. >> It's an IBM. >> IBM a... >> It's an IBM. >> Number one in IBM. Yeah. >> And so a lot of people thought, I shouldn't say everybody, but a lot of people thought, MSPs, the cloud service providers, non-hyperscalers are cooked through 2010, 2011. The exact opposite happened. >> It's 100%. >> It's growing like crazy. We want to understand why, but it's come full circle. >> Yeah, it certainly has. I mean, the industry has changed considerably and especially over the last few years with COVID, I will say that the cloud service providers that are support and by the way, Virtustream was one of them, when I first joined VMware, I supported Virtustream. And they have had to adapt their businesses, the hyperscalers have come at them with everything that they've got and honesty, the cloud service providers that I support are phenomenal growth. They they're growing on a par with what some of the hyperscalers are doing. So there's definitely a place for cloud service providers, they've got great business, they've got great customers, great relationships. And it's as I said, it's growing a huge business. >> So we've talked a lot about theme from the perspective of the idea of a Supercloud. Something that can overlay a variety of on-premises and off-premises providers and provide sort of a unified view, unified management methodology. How much is what at least was formerly known as the SDDC stack, the Software Defined Data Center stack, still a part of VMwares vision that is right in line with that, from what Veeam is doing. How much of your business is deploying SDDC stacks that are then customized in one way or another. >> 100% of it. >> 100% of it. Right, okay. >> Yeah. So, when you're talking about having that single view of everything in the cloud provider program, there's a product called VMware Cloud Director. and it is the multi-tenant view of the infrastructure and the environment that the cloud providers are building. Right. So VMware Cloud Director has gone through many iterations and we've recently launched Cloud Director Service, which is a SaaS offering of the product. But what it actually does is you put it on top of VMC on AWS. you put it on top of GCVE, you put it on top of the cloud service providers, SDDCs, right. All of these are SDDCs underneath. >> AVS and Azure. >> AVS and Azure. >> I was associated with that. So I must have it mentioned. >> Exactly. >> They're all SDDC's. >> SDDC's, yeah, yeah, exactly. And as well as your on premise environment. Right. So all of these federate together through the VMware Cloud Director, and you end up having a single pane of glass across all of those environments. So whether it's running in the hyperscale, or running on your premises, running in a cloud service provider's environment, you have a single view, a single interface that you log into and you can see everything that's going on inside your environment. So it really brings that holistic, single view of everything to reality. >> How about from a licensing perspective? >> So from a licensing perspective... >> I'm a non-premises customer, I'm running VMware on-prem, I have been, I was at world VMworld 2004 and enjoyed BattleBots. So hopefully you'll start bringing BattleBots back. >> We will have to. >> And now I'm dealing with a service provider. That is one of the partners that you're working with. How does that licensing work? >> So the Cloud Provider Program actually has a slightly different licensing model to what you would have on premises, right? They have a rental model with VMware, it's a PAYGo model, right. One of the great things about the program is that it's consumption based. So it makes it easy for cloud service providers to build a consumption based business, which is kind of where everything is moving, right? >> Yeah, for sure. >> So whether you have an on-premise environment that's licensed through what we call perpetual or ELA licensing, from a VMware perspective, you can still layer on top, that cloud service provider solution VCD, right? And you would obviously have a financial relationship with the cloud service provider in terms of the environment that you have with them. And they will be able to hook up that environment to your on-premises environment and get that single view. So the licensing is not a restriction, right, you can still continue to have your traditional licensed environment in your data center, as well as being able to connect into these seamlessly, right. That's the great thing about it. And that's where VMC, AVS, GCVE, the OCVS, the Oracle version, the RBM one, you can bring all of these together and really look at it from a holistic perspective, bring in things like NSX-T and other solutions like that VM as well, it works seamlessly across all these environments. >> I am talking about Supercloud, I asked Raghu last year, who's virtually at VMworld, I kind of explained that concept of hiding the complexity, the abstraction layer, being able to hide the underlying primitives and APIs, seems like it's evolving. One of the things he said was yes, but if developers want to go there, we let them. And that was a key point, because you're getting more into that DevOps. >> Correct 100%. >> And I would imagine the cloud service providers really oftentimes need for their reasons to get to those underlying primitives and APIs. >> And actually VCD is the enabler, right? So VCD allows you to provide a container based service sitting right alongside your IAS in the same SDDC, right? We're not even talking about segregating them out, you can have it inside the exact same SDDC, all linked together, all taking a common security approach to what's going on and providing you with that ease of use. So from an end user perspective, the DevOps type of people, VCD is an awesome solution, because they can go in fire up a new VM, or fire up a new container or whatever, without having to go through the rigmarole of asking IT for a VM, or asking somebody's permission, as a organization, you would give your DevOps teams certain amount of resources, how they use it's up to them, right? Whether they put containers in there or they bring VMs, it's all there. And it's all in one single solution. >> You mentioned that your community is doing very well growing it let's call it 35, 40% a year. And it's a market that's quite large worldwide. Because it's a lot of local, regional CSPs, a lot of big country CSPs and you said... >> It's four and a 1/2 thousand of them. So, it's huge. >> There you >> Versus four hyperscalers. >> Yeah, exactly. >> Include Alibaba. So, they might be individually smaller, but collectively they're larger. But you said that the hyperscalers coming after them with everything they had was a comment that you made, are customers choosing CSPs over hyperscalers? If so, when and why. >> Sometimes they are choosing CSPs over hyperscalers, but not always, very often they're choosing CSPs and hyperscalers, right. And it really depends on what their needs are. So historically speaking, it's been everybody rushing to the hyperscalers because that's the flavor of the day let's move out of our data center. It's much cheaper to run everything in these hyperscalers, and they do it. And then the bill comes in and reality suddenly hits. And it's definitely not as cheap as they thought it was going to be, right. So there's many aspects that cause tenants to not only rethink that, but also repatriate, right. Repatriation is a big thing for our cloud service providers. Things like egress costs, most cloud service providers have no egress costs, right? They encourage movement of things amongst themselves and for their tenants, because that's what they want, right? So egress costs are a huge problem for many tenants who come into these environments and that's sometimes why they would choose a CSP over a hyperscaler. But really, it's more about choosing the right place for your workload. There are workloads that belong in hyperscalers, right? And if you have a solution with a CSP like VCD, that allows you not only to be able to connect your on premises and the CSP, but also the hyperscalers and actually have a much more holistic solution where you can determine where you want to put stuff and put it in the right place. It's more about that, than it is about choosing one over the other really. >> Yeah, and sometimes it's more of a business differentiation than a technical one. Is it a hyperscale or is it a CSP? If you're licensing the SDDC stack and you're running it on IAS in Amazon or in Google or Azure? >> I think the other thing too is the CSPs oftentimes they manage service providers, right? Is that true? >> The relationship, right? And that's one of the things if you talk to a cloud service provider and yesterday I was, I had a session and I was talking to a bunch of people about VMware stuff. And I said to them, how many of you have tried to pick up a phone and talk to somebody at AWS? And there was laughter, because the reality is that what AWS does is a kind of one size fits all approach, right? There isn't somebody on the end of the phone that you can pick up and call, if they have a major outage that outage is affecting 1000s of different customers and you one of those thousands really means nothing to them, right? Whereas a cloud service provider, generally speaking, has a very tight one-on-one relationship with both from an engineering perspective, right. With their tenants, but also at a higher managerial level. So they create those relationships and those relationships often drive these things. It's not always financial, there is a financial component to it, but very often it's the relationship, have they got somebody that they can talk to? If they getting many different solutions, can they get all those solutions from one provider? And if they can, it's much easier for them to manage from a... >> And I think so does that manage service... There's also a lot of things that despite their breadth and portfolio that the cloud service providers don't support, you can't do Oracle rack in the cloud, right? But you can in a service provider. >> Exactly. >> And Oracle, look you can negotiate with Oracle, so you can get similar pricing AWS, but this price is two x. They're either on-prem or in Oracle. So I could take my Oracle instance, stick it into a managed service provider or cloud service provider, do whatever I need to, and there are I'm sure 1000s of configurations like that, that aren't necessarily identically supported, security edicts that aren't necessarily exactly the same, so many specials that managed service say welcome to your point. AWS is as long as it's black, it's good. >> Yeah, exactly. And that's the thing, right? Those cloud service providers are doing exactly that. They have Oracle racks in there, they have all sorts of those solutions that are there in their data centers. And proximity is also an issue, right? Very often the people who are using those systems need their ancillary things to be close by, they can't be 10s or 20s or 30 milliseconds away, they need to be sub millisecond connectivity. And those are the areas where the cloud service providers really shine, they can offer those solutions that really enable their tenants to get what they want at the end of the day. Again to your point, you can negotiate with Oracle, but these cloud service providers do it day in and day out. Who wants their business? >> Who wants to do that with Oracle anyway, their lawyers are smarter than yours. Veeam, what are you doing with Veeam, in resilient architectures and cyber recovery? >> Yeah, we are a sponsor here at the event and Veeam is a great partner with VMware and we're great partner to them. A lot of cloud service providers actually use Veeam as their primary backup solution for their tenants, right. VMware Cloud Director that I was talking about just now, the thing that gives you a view of everything over the top, Veeam was actually one of the very first vendors to integrate with VCD. And you can use your Veeam environment directly from the screen, you right click, and you say do a backup and that's as easy as that from a Veeam perspective. So we have a lot of integrations with Veeam. We help the cloud service providers, ransomware is a big talking thing around this event, but all over the place, right? So a lot of the solutions that Veeam brings to the party, these cloud service providers are also deploying into their environments to help with ransomware. They have so many solutions that help those cloud service providers provide a holistic solution. >> Well, Veeam was basically founded saying, Hey, we're going to better our business on VMware. I first saw Veeam at a V mug, I think in Boston, and I was like, who is Veeam? VMware is that their product? It was just so you guys have had a long relationship, even though initially VMware was probably saying the same thing, who the heck are these guys? Well, how do you like them now? Sean, thanks so much for... >> Thank you. It's been great to be here. Appreciate it. Thank you for watching. Keep it right there. We'll be back shortly. We'll get a couple more segments left. Dave and I are going to wrap up later in the day, you watching The Cube at VeeamON 2022, be right back. (upbeat music)

>>The cube presents, Dell technologies world brought to you by Dell. >>No, that, that you guys. >>Hey, welcome back. Everyone. Live here on the floor in Las Vegas with Dell tech world 2022 cube coverage. I'm John for, with Dave Volante, Allison Ducey, chief marketing officer executive vice president of Dell technologies. Welcome back to the queue. Thanks for coming back on. Hey Allison. >>Hey. Hi guys. It's so good to see you. I am just so delighted to be on the cube and so delighted to see you both live and in person. >>So three years ago was the last physical event. A lot of virtual, a lot of, probably some scar tissue to share there, but give us the quick highlights here. The, the show format what's new, what's different. >>So I think one of the things I talked to my team about a lot is we've learned so much over the past couple of years. It's really important as we go forward to carry the best of what we've learned over the last two years, combined with the best of in person experiences that I know we all missed. So things that really people wanna do in person training, connection, the birds of the feather sessions and taking the technology and communications skills that we've developed over the last two years and making the event better as well. So, you know, Dave and I were talking about how do you extend the reach of the event beyond just three days? How do you engage with the global audience? Not all of whom are back to traveling all of the time. And so we think the impact of this event is the biggest and best that it's ever been. And it's not about going back to 2019. It's about the best of the last couple of years and the human connection. I think we've all been missing. >>So I remember last time here, here, we, we asked, we're coming up to state with Ashton Kucher and I told you about my man crush. And now you bring a on Matthew, which was an amazing interview. I mean, I don't really, no, I mean, I love his work, but wow. What a thoughtful and intelligent individual, and you obviously did a great job, you know, carrying that interview. So tremendous. I mean, you, you know him, right? He's like in your >>He's, he's an Austin Guy. He's really committed it to Austin. He's really committed to the university of Texas. We've done a number of things with him together. So we do know him and still, that was probably the most in depth conversation that we'd ever had with him. And it was so much >>Fun. Let me wait. So, okay. So I gotta make you laugh. So at the, after you were done, you said, okay, let's open it up for audience questions. Now I was really intimidated even though I to get up in front of the audience and ask questions, but I didn't know what to ask him. And I figured there'd be a long line of people asking the question. >>There was not. >>So I saw that and I'm like, I don't know what to ask 'em. So I texted my wife and my daughter who love 'em. They're like, all right. All right. And so my wife texted me a question, but it was too late. The, the session had ended. So I'm gonna ask you her question and ask you what, how you think he would've responded and we can >>Refine it. Okay. I'll give it a whirl. Your >>Question was, he's a big proponent of showing up. Okay. I didn't know this. You could ask him about if the definition for him of showing up has changed over time and how does he stay motivated to always show up? And I was like, wow, what a great question. >>That is a great question. And I will tell you as the interviewer, I think lots of people were sort of intimidated. One, one woman even said, this is making me nervous, but here's my question. So as the interviewer, I was looking out at the sea of nobody asking questions, doing scrambling in my head, trying to come up with some more questions, cuz I had already asked all my questions. So I wish you'd been able to get to the stage, uh, get to the mic and ask that question. But here's what I think he would've said. Who knows? Maybe he'll send me a note if I get it wrong. I think he would've said something along the lines of, it's always about being intentional about what's happening in your life at that moment. <affirmative> and so, as he thought about some there's an example he uses in his book. >>I don't remember the name of the movie where he kind of very early in his career where he kind of just winged it and he got to the set and he realized because he was, he thought he was getting over rehearsed. And so he thought I need to go back to the natural moment. And he realized the script was in Spanish and he said, I need six minutes. How is he gonna memorize script in six minutes in Spanish? And I think that was just an interesting example of when he realized that there's a synchronicity between being your natural self and being intentional and being really thoughtful about where you are and what you're doing at that moment. So I think that that intentionality spans his career. It's the moment of interest inspection about where you are in your life and doing brave things like leaving behind a safe, but no longer fulfilling romantic comedy career. So that's what I think he would've said. And >>Bringing that to the moment is where he gets his inspiration. >>I think so. Yeah. >>Yeah. So he's very impressive guy. I didn't read the book yet. It's green light is >>Green lights. Green lights >>Is able the book. So >>I recommend it and I didn't listen to it. I read it. I'm a reader, but I've had many, many, many people tell me that they listen to it. He narrates the book himself. So I think there's some benefit there because you get it truly in his voice. >>Yeah. That's always fun. Yeah. >>Speaking of in the moment, this event has got two things going on in the format you mentioned, but also the content. It is right on point. And a lot of the execs came in Michael and the COOs were both on the cube, interesting poll position you guys have for this. Now you got the marketing angle going on here. How do you throttle this next? What's next? How does it evolve? You got the content, you got the new format, Dell tech world plus digital now combined. What's next? >>I think, I mean, so obviously we are clearly in an inflection point in the technology industry and we've talked a lot about separating the hype from the reality of the day to day of what our customers are doing in their businesses and the problems they're trying to solve. But if you look at what makes us really, uh, I think special and unique is if the, the last number of years we've continued to show up and deliver for our customer tumors, we were there with them over the course of the pandemic. We helped them get their remote workforce up and running and now we're helping them lean into their data center challenges. And I think, for example, the snowflake announcement from earlier this week, this ability to have the best of both worlds and to have your data on premises whilst also benefiting from Snowflake's capabilities. I think that's just a good example of the kind of thing you'll see us do more of, and this intentionality that we're trying to bring to an incredibly complex and fragmented world. So that's what we're doing from a business. And then from a marketing perspective, I think it's just about this stretchy steady drumbeat. It's no longer one moment in time. It is all the moments in time while it's also keeping people's attention. Yeah. Not boring them to death with four hour keynotes. It's >>It's interesting. You know, we, we've been watching you guys for a long time, as you know, and it's interesting. You have such a big story. Now you have the story at the industry positioning of where it is for growth. You also got product innovation, right? Balancing the, the product innovation, which is still evolving. You got edges exploding, the snowflake deal with the new product use cases. There's still the need for the, the nerds, right. So to speak. And then you got the industry leadership, which is happening. So you've got balancing that. How do you thread that needle? How do you tie it all together? How what's, how do you think about that? What's your thought >>Of the things I think is at its simplest. It's not just about what we do. It's also about who we are as a company and you have to do both, right. We have to talk about where we're innovating in our products and our solutions. And it's also really important for us to tell the world who we are and how we show up in the world. And if you think about it, another one of the announcements from this week that I'm really proud of are our solar hubs. And that's a build off of the, uh, solar learning labs working with 25 communities around the world, underserved in terms of access to technology. And so it's, you have to do both sometimes I think in the past we've been just talking about our products cuz we're engineers at heart. And we're proud of that and not talking enough about who we are. I think some companies talk too much about who they are and you're like, well, what do you do exactly? So, you know, the question always is how do you do that? And so there's a believability gap. What we're always striving for is that combination of what we do, who we are. >>So you know, that what we do is really important and there's obviously a lot of very difficult and contentious social issues. Yes. And, and kind of a of follow up there is, is, you know, what's your philosophy on how to handle those? It's presumably what you do, not what you, you say. I mean, you gotta say things as well, and they're gonna be more, you know, we're hearing about it, reading about it, others that are gonna be down the road, how what's your philosophy on how to handle those? >>The first thing is we try to be really thoughtful about what conversations or actually relevant to us. One of the things I watch many companies do is comment on anything, anything, and everything. They sort of run into the fray of the moment and they over comment. And frankly, then I think they don't stand for anything because they're constantly chasing a press cycle, which is pretty vicious and pretty short lived. So we don't think that that serves us. What we do is we look at almost every issue you can imagine. And ahead of time, ahead of time, have the conversation about where are we going to engage? What are the issues that we stand for? And we've got much more intentional, even on our ESG and CSR front, around taking our moonshot goals and making them more practical so that we can be really thoughtful and intentional. Because as you know, at the moment of time, when a crisis hits you, haven't done that work ahead of time. You're probably responding. And you can see that sometimes without naming any names, because everybody knows some of these players are without my even having to say it, someone responding or flip flopping it's cuz they haven't thought about it ahead of time. >>Yeah. And a lot of that comes from the top and the CEO won't stop on Twitter. But so that to me ties in. Yeah. So it ties into the concept of trust. Going back to some of the keynote messages that we heard from Michael you've earned trust in a lot of ways you were there during the pandemic, you know, your products work, et cetera, et cetera, but the way in which you act builds trust doesn't it. And that we've in, I think came across in, in the keynotes. Why such a big theme on trust? I mean you see apple with privacy, doing certain things really doubling down on trust. Can you talk about that? >>I mean, I think it's because it is core to who we are and if you look at the hype cycle around technology, the hype cycle, around companies who can have kind of a moment in the sun and then you find out actually that their business practices weren't very good or they weren't really delivering on the innovation that they were claiming. So they were probably overclaiming at times it has always been core to who we are. What I think we're doing now is just being much more intentional about how important it is to show up that way. That's why I come back to, it's not just what we do, it's who we are and that's why customers choose us. And you hear some of the customer case studies like U S a a like CVS that we use a lot at the moment in time where they needed help managing through the pandemic. We delivered with a consistency that not everybody could provide. And I think provides us the room and the space to really lean into this trust conversation. I >>Love, I love the high level flag. You guys are flying at ESG stores. You're getting in immersed in issues that you're solving for yourselves. So you can understand them and have good positions, but also on digital. Now you have other ways to drive the business. We just started a discord server week before for Dell tech world and already got 8,000 members. And the only thing they really care about about Dell tech world here is what's the monitors, where's the speeds and speeds. Right? They want the speeds and these they're gamers, right? So there's omnichannels everywhere. Right? You have, that's hard, right? So is it a top down? Let, let things fly. Is there intentionality around execution to drive business value? >>I think that, I mean, one of the things that I would say for the company and for its leadership for me personally, is we're generally pretty intentional about most things that we do. I always have an expression that I, I, I don't like to reward a Smith fireman. If the building is on fire, I'm gonna ask you, why is the building on fire? Not, you know, I'll say, are you okay? But then I'll say, why is the building on fire? So the reason I use that analogy is we are pretty intentional about most things that we do. And then you also have to re leave room for innovation because it is a completely different product experience to build an alien where than it is to build server. And yet there's certain standards around how we think about our commitment to environmental goals and sustainability that's consistent. Yeah. So that's the balance that we're always looking for, >>You know, in the isolation economy, we, we learned that we didn't know what was coming next. Yeah. And now in the post isolation economy, we, we learned, you referenced this. We're not going back to 29 team, a rinse and repeat of of 2019 is not gonna work. So I know it's early. You haven't really had much time to think about it, but what have you learned from this event? We were surprised by how many people showed up. What else? >>I was a little surprised by how many people showed up in the fi. And we got a lot of people show up in the final register in the final week or so. I mean, one of the things I think we knew this, but I think we had to learn it a little bit. The hard way. Yeah. Was maybe you don't need four days of two hour keynotes, you know, maybe, maybe people can't absorb that much information. And so I think we've gotten a lot tighter on our messaging and delivering of the keynotes and then allowing people, the space to engage in other that are really important to them, like their own training. They, a lot of people come to this, this event for their own professional development. We should be proud of that and celebrate it. And one of the expressions I use a lot is let's get our inner geek back and provide people the opportunity to do that. And even with our own employees, one of the things that we've seen is just how happy they are to see each our, so leave space for that. >>The face to face matters. It's really valuable in some say, it's the scarce resource now. Yeah. And the digitals augmentation, what have you learned as the standards are, ER, there's no standards they're emerging in real time. What what's popping out as go to, that's gonna evolve as de facto standard digital event kind of hybrid. I >>Think I, I think the short and easy answer is that hybrid Brit evolves as the standard. I don't think anybody sort of like the cloud. Um, I don't think anybody is questioning that you can have the best of both. I think, um, you know, if I taking it out of the realm of events, we are very committed to a hybrid work environment. Just as an example. And this conversation about many companies say you can have flexibility as long as you're here on Tuesday. Well, that's not actually flexibility. That's just pretend flexibility. And so being intentional about, you know, you obviously have to have the conversation with your leader, but we, we are saying, figure out what works for you and work that way. And the reason I went, I took it from events to that example is because that's just one of the many examples of how we're all trying to figure it out. And it's intentionality, it's honesty, it's trust, you know, maybe your job is something that needs to be in person. Great. Then go do it in person. Maybe it's not then don't but have the conversation. So that's, that's how the conversation is sort of >>Maybe it event native, which is the old model. Yeah. Yeah. Hybrid events is there multi-event Daves club super event, >>Multi, multi hybrid events. >><laugh> >>And there actually we do take this show on the road with the Dell tech forum. So it is multi hybrid event. >>By the way you mentioned the team, how excited the team was. I thought it was a great touch at the end of the, of day one keynote to bring all the team members out. That was a really powerful moment, >>You know, to be honest, I loved it when I saw it on paper, I thought this could either be great or so cheesy. I'll be like climbing under my tour and I loved it. And, but even that was a risk where I thought that's fine. Try it. And if it, if it doesn't work, like it's fine, >>Go bigger, go home if they >>Exactly. So I think you see us trying to lean into those moments a little bit more and be willing to take that risk and see what happens. >>Allison always great to have you on the cube. I love your insight. Love your perspective. Final question for you. What are you into these days? What are you watching personally in the industry or in, in your life as we evolve into this next chapter of the generational of the cultural shift? >>I mean the biggest thing that I'm really thinking about is this question of hybrid work and what does it mean to build connection with our employees, with our customers, with our partners, with our broader ecosystem, whilst also having the freedom and flexibility that the last two years have brought us. I mean, I think you guys know, I, I have an odd personal life. I kind little bit of a digital Noma myself and you know, I, in a let's >>Extend the segment, let's >>Go down and in years for past I would not, um, have been able to maintain my life and my job. And that's the power of technology. You just have to look for the downside, which is maybe people need more connection too. So that's an unanswered question. >>Yeah. I knew fabrics are more urging my minds. Very clear. Yeah. Allison, great to have you on again. Pleasure having, Thanks for having us here in the queue. We really >>Appreciate it. We always love having you at Dell tech world. And it's great to see you personally. Thanks >>Executive vice president CMO Dell technologies here in the queue. I'm John for Dave LAN. We'll be right back with more after this break.

More bottoms up and have more technical early adopters. And generally speaking, they're free to use. They're free to try. They're very commonly community source or open source companies where you have a large technical community that's supporting them. So there's a, there's kind of a new normal now I think in great enterprise software and it starts with great technical founders with great products and great bottoms of emotions. And I think there's no better place to, uh, service those people than in the cloud and uh, in, in your community. >>Well, first of all, congratulations, and by the way, you got a great pedigree and great background, super smart, but Myer of your work and your, and, and your founding, but let's face it. Enterprise is hot because digital transformation is all companies there's no, I mean, consumer is enterprise now, everything is what was once a niche. No, I won't say niche category, but you know, not for the faint of heart, you know, investors, >>You know, it's so funny that you say that enterprise is hot because you, and I feel that way now. <laugh> but remember, like right now there's also a tech and VC conference in Miami <laugh> and it's covering cryptocurrencies and FCS and web three. So I think beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder <laugh> but no, I, I will tell you, >>Ts is one big enterprise, cuz you gotta have imutability you got performance issues. You have, I IOPS issues. >>Well, and, and I think all of us here that are, uh, may maybe students of history and have been involved in open source in the cloud would say that we're, you know, much of what we're doing is, uh, the predecessors of the web web three movement. And many of us I think are contributors to the web three >>Movement. The hype is definitely one web three. Yeah. >>But, >>But you know, >>For sure. Yeah, no, but now you're taking us further east of Miami. So, uh, you know, look, I think, I, I think, um, what is unquestioned with the case now? And maybe it's, it's more obvious the more time you spend in this world is this is the fastest growing part of enterprise software. And if you include cloud infrastructure and cloud infrastructure spend, you know, it is by many measures over, uh, $500 billion in growing, you know, 20 to 30% a year. So it it's a, it's a just incredibly fast, well, >>Let's get, let's get into some of the cultural and the, the shifts that are happening, cuz again, you, you have the luxury of being in enterprise when it was hard, it's getting easier and more cooler. I get it and more relevant <laugh> but there's also the hype of like the web three, for instance, but you know, for, uh, um, um, the CEO snowflake, okay. Has wrote a book and Dave Valenti and I were talking about it and uh, Frank Luman has says, there's no playbooks. We always ask the CEOs, what's your playbook. And he's like, there's no playbook, situational awareness, always Trump's playbooks. So in the enterprise playbook, oh, higher, a direct sales force and SAS kind of crushed that now SAS is being redefined, right. So what is SAS is snowflake assassin or is that a platform? So again, new unit economics are emerging, whole new situation, you got web three. So to me there's a cultural shift, the young entrepreneurs, the, uh, user experience, they look at Facebook and say, ah, you know, they own all my data and you know, we know that that cliche, um, they, you know, the product. So as this next gen, the gen Z and the millennials come in and our customers and the founders, they're looking at things a little bit differently and the tech better. >>Yeah. I mean, I mean, I think we can, we can see a lot of common across all successful startups and the overall adoption of technology. Um, and, and I would tell you, this is all one big giant revolution. I call it the user driven revolution. Right. It's the rise of the user. Yeah. And you might say product like growth is currently the hottest trend in enterprise software. It's actually like growth, right. They're one and the same. So sometimes people think the product, uh, is what is driving growth. >>You just pull the product >>Through. Exactly, exactly. And so that's that I, that I think is really this revolution that you see, and, and it does extend into things like cryptocurrencies and web three and, you know, sort of like the control that is taken back by the user. Um, but you know, many would say that, that the origins of this, but maybe started with open source where users were contributors, you know, contributors were users and looking back decades and seeing how it, how it fast forward to today. I think that's really the trend that we're all writing. It's enabling these end users. And these end users in our world are developers, data engineers, cybersecurity practitioners, right. They're really the, and they're really the, the beneficiaries and the most, you know, kind of valued people in >>This. I wanna come back to the data engineers in a second, but I wanna make a comment and get your reaction to, I have a, I'm a gen Xer technically. So for not a boomer, but I have some boomer friends who are a little bit older than me who have, you know, experienced the sixties. And I have what been saying on the cube for probably about eight years now that we are gonna hit digital hippie revolution, meaning a rebellion against in the sixties was rebellion against the fifties and the man and, you know, summer of love. That was a cultural differentiation from the other one other group, the predecessors. So we're kind of having that digital moment now where it's like, Hey boomers, Hey people, we're not gonna do that anymore. You, we hate how you organize shit. >>Right. But isn't this just technology. I mean, isn't it, isn't it like there used to be the old adage, like, you know, you would never get fired for buying IBM, but now it's like, you obviously probably would get fired if you bought IBM. And I mean, it's just like the, the, I think, I think >>During the mainframe days, those renegades were breaking into Stanford, starting the home group. So what I'm trying to get at is that, do you see the young cultural revolution also, culturally, just, this is my identity NFTs to me speak volumes about my, I wanna associate with NFTs, not single sign on. Well, >>Absolutely. And, and I think like, I think you're hitting on something, which is like this convergence of, of, you know, societal it'll trends with technology trends and how that manifests in our world is yes. I think like there is unquestionably almost a religion yeah. Around the way in which a product is built. Right. And we can use open source, one example of that religion. Some people will say, look, I'll just never try a product in the cloud if it's not open source. Yeah. I think cloud, native's another example of that, right? It's either it's, you know, it either is cloud native or it's not. And I think a lot of people will look at a product and say, look, you know, you were not designed in the cloud era. Therefore I just won't try you. And sometimes, um, like it or not, it's a religious decision, right? Yeah. It's so it's something that people just believe to be true almost without, uh, necessarily caring >>About data. Data drives all decision making. Let me ask you this next question. As a VC. Now you look at pitch, well, you've been a VC for many years, but you also have the founder entrepreneurial mindset, but you can get empathize with the founders. You know, hustle is a big part of the, that first founder check, right? You gotta convince someone to part with their ch their money and the first money in which you do a lot of it's about believing in the person. So faking it till you make it is hard. Now you, the data's there, you either have it cloud native, you either have the adaption or traction. So honesty is a big part of that pitch. You can't fake it. >>Oh, AB absolutely. You know, there used to be this concept of like the persona of an entrepreneur. Right. And the persona of the entrepreneur would be, you know, so somebody who was a great salesperson or somebody who tell a great story, and I still think that that's important, right. It still is a human need for people to believe in narratives and stories. Yeah. But having said that you're right. The proof is in the pudding, right. At some point you click download and you try the product and it does what it says it gonna it's gonna do, or it doesn't, or it either stands up to the load test or it doesn't. And so I, I feel like in the new economy that we live in, really, it's a shift from maybe the storytellers and the creators to, to the builders, right. The people that know how to build great product. And in some ways the people that can build great product yeah. Stand out from the crowd. And they're the ones that can build communities around their products. And, you know, in some ways can, um, you know, kind of own more of the narrative of because their product begins exactly >>The volume you back to the user led growth. >>Exactly. And it's the religion of, I just love your product. Right. And I, I, I, um, Doug song is the founder of du security used to say, Hey, like, you know, the, the really like in today's world of like consumption based software, like the user is only gonna give you 90 seconds to figure out whether or not you're a company that's easy to do business with. Right. And so you can say, and do all the things that you want about how easy you are to work with. But if the product isn't easy to install, if it's not easy to try, if it's not, if, if the it's gotta speak to the, >>Speak to the user, but let me ask a question now that for the people watching, who are maybe entrepreneurial entre, preneurs, um, masterclass here in session. So I have to ask you, do you prefer, um, an entrepreneur come in and say, look at John. Here's where I'm at. Okay. First of all, storytelling's fine with you an extrovert or introvert, have your style, sell the story in a way that's authentic, but do you, what do you prefer to say? Here's where I'm at? Look, I have an idea. Here's my traction. I think here's my MVP prototype. I need help. Or do, do you wanna just see more stats? What's the, what's the preferred way that you like to see entrepreneurs come in and engage? >>There's tons of different styles, man. I think the single most important thing that every founder should know is that we, we don't invest in what things are today. We invest in what we think something will become. Right. And I think that's why we all get up in the morning and try to build something different, right? It's that we see the world a different way. We want it to be a different way. And we wanna work every single moment of the day to try to make that vision a reality. So I think the more that you can show people where you want to be the, of more likely somebody is gonna align with your vision and, and wanna invest in you and wanna be along for the ride. So I, I wholeheartedly believe in showing off what you got today, because eventually we all get down to like, where are we and what are we gonna do together? But, um, no, I, you gotta >>Show the >>Path. I think the single most important thing for any founder and VC relationship is that they have the same vision. Uh, if you have the same vision, you can, you can get through bumps in the road, you can get through short term spills. You can all sorts of things in the middle. The journey can happen. Yeah. But it doesn't matter as much if you share the same long term vision, >>Don't flake out and, and be fashionable with the latest trends because it's over before you can get there. >>Exactly. I think many people that, that do what we do for a living, we'll say, you know, ultimately the future is relatively easy to predict, but it's the timing that's impossible to predict. <laugh> so you, you know, you sort of have to balance the, you know, we, we know that the world is going in this way and therefore we're gonna invest a lot of money to try to make this a reality. Uh, but some times it happens in six months. Sometimes it takes six years. Sometimes it takes 16 years. Uh, >>What's the hottest thing in enterprise that you see the biggest wave that people should pay attention to that you're looking at right now with Bel partners, Tebel dot your site. What's the big wave. What's your big >>Wave. There's three big trends that we invest in. And the they're the only things we do day in, day out one is the explosion and open source software. So I think many people think that all software is unquestionably moving to an open source model in some form or another yeah. Tons of reasons to debate whether or not that is gonna happen, an alwa timeline >>Happening forever. >>But, uh, it is, it is accelerating faster than we've ever seen. So I, I think it's, it's one big, massive wave that we continue to ride. Um, second is the rise of data engineering. Uh, I think data engineering is in and of itself now, a category of software. It's not just that we store data. It's now we move data and we develop applications on data. And, uh, I think data is in and of itself as big of a market as any of the other markets that we invest in. Uh, and finally, it's the gift that keeps on giving. I've spent my entire career in it. We still feel that security is a market that is underinvested. It is, it continues to be the place where people need to continue to invest and spend more money. Yeah. Uh, and those are the three major trends that we run >>And security, you think we all need a dessert do over, right? I mean, do we need you do over in security or is what's the core problem? I, >>I, I keep using this word underinvested because I think it's the right way to think about the problem. I think if you, I think people generally speaking, look at cybersecurity as an add-on. Yeah. But if you think about it, the whole economy is moving online. And so in, in some ways like security is core to protecting the digital economy. And so it's, it shouldn't be an afterthought, right? It should be core to what everyone is doing. And that's why I think relative to the trillions of dollars that are at stake, uh, I believe the market size for cybersecurity is run $150 billion. And it still is a fraction of what we're, >>What we're and national security even boom is booming now. So you get the convergence of national security, geopolitics, internet digital that's >>Right. You mean arguably, right? I mean, arguably again, it's the area of the world that people should be spending more time and more money given what to stake. >>I love your thesis. I gotta, I gotta say, you gotta love your firm. Love. You're doing we're big supporters, your mission. Congratulations on your entrepreneurial venture. And, uh, we'll be, we'll be talking and maybe see a Cuban. Uh, absolutely not. Certainly EU maybe even north Americans in Detroit this year. >>Huge fan of what you guys are doing here. Thank you so much for helping me on the show. >>Guess be VC Johnson here on the cube. Check him out. Founder for founders here on the cube, more coverage from San Francisco, California. After this short break, stay with us. Everyone. Welcome to the cue here. Live in San Francisco. K warn you for AWS summit 2022 we're live we're back with events. Also we're virtual. We got hybrid all kinds of events. This year, of course, summit in New York city is happening this summer. We'll be there with the cube as well. I'm John. Again, John host of the cube. Got a great guest here, Justin Kobe owner, and CEO of innovative solutions. Their booth is right behind us. Justin, welcome to the cube. >>Thank you. Thank you for having me. >>So we're just chatting, uh, uh, off camera about some of the work you're doing. You're the owner of and CEO. Yeah. Of innovative. Yeah. So tell us the story. What do you guys do? What's the elevator pitch. >>Yeah. <laugh> so the elevator pitch is we are, uh, a hundred percent focused on small to mid-size businesses that are moving to the cloud, or have already moved to the cloud and really trying to understand how to best control security, compliance, all the good stuff that comes along with it. Um, exclusively focused on AWS and, um, you know, about 110 people, uh, based in Rochester, New York, that's where our headquarters is, but now we have offices down in Austin, Texas, up in Toronto, uh, Canada, as well as Chicago. Um, and obviously in New York, uh, you know, the business was never like this, uh, five years ago, um, founded in 1989, made the decision in 2018 to pivot and go all in on the cloud. And, uh, I've been a part of the company for about 18 years, bought the company about five years ago. And it's been a great ride. >>It's interesting. The manages services are interesting with cloud cause a lot of the heavy liftings done by a of us. So we had Matt on your team on earlier talking about some of the edge stuff. Yeah. But you guys are a managed cloud service. You got cloud advisory, you know, the classic service that's needed, but the demands coming from cloud migrations and application modernization, but obviously data is a huge part of it. Huge. How is this factoring into what you guys do and your growth cuz you guys are the number one partner on the SMB side for edge. Yeah. For AWS, you got results coming in. Where's the, where's the forcing function. What's the pressure point. What's the demand like? >>Yeah. It's a great question. Every CEO I talk to, that's a small mids to size business. They're all trying to understand how to leverage technology better to help either drive a revenue target for their own business, uh, help with customer service as so much has gone remote now. And we're all having problems or troubles or issues trying to hire talent. And um, you know, tech is really at the, at the forefront and the center of that. So most customers are coming to us and they're of like, listen, we gotta move to the cloud or we move some things to the cloud and we want to do that better. And um, there's this big misnomer that when you move to the cloud, you gotta automatically modernize. Yeah. And what we try to help as many customers understand as possible is lifting and shifting, moving the stuff that you maybe currently have OnPrem and a data center to the cloud first is a first step. And then so, uh, progressively working through a modernization strategy is always the better approach. And so we spend a lot of time with small to mid-size businesses who don't have the technology talent on staff to be able to do >>That. Yeah. And they want to get set up. But the, the dynamic of like latency is huge. We're seeing that edge product is a big part of it. This is not a one-off happening around everywhere. It is not it's manufacturing, it's the physical plant or location >>Literally. >>And so, and you're seeing more IOT devices. What's that like right now from a challenge and problem statement standpoint, are the customers, not staff, is the it staff kind of old school? Is it new skills? What's the core problem. And you guys solve >>In the SMB space. The core issue nine outta 10 times is people get enamored with the latest and greatest. And the reality is not everything that's cloud based. Not all cloud services are the latest and greatest. Some things have been around for quite some time and our hardened solutions. And so, um, what we try to do with, to technology staff that has traditional on-prem, uh, let's just say skill sets and they're trying to move to a cloud-based workload is we try to help those customers through education and through some practical, let's just call it use case. Um, whether that's a proof of concept that we're doing or whether that's, we're gonna migrate a small workload over, we try to give them the confidence to be able to not, not necessarily go it alone, but, but to, to, to have the, uh, the Gusto and to really have the, um, the, the opportunity to, to do that in a wise way. Um, and what I find is that most CEOs that I talk to yeah. Feel like, listen, at the end of the day, I'm gonna be spending money in one place or another, whether that's on primer in the cloud, I just want know that I'm doing that way. That helps me grow as quickly as possible status quo. I think every, every business owner knows that COVID taught us anything that status quo is, uh, is, is no. No. Good. >>How about factoring in the, the agility and speed equation? Does that come up a lot? It >>Does. I think, um, I think there's also this idea that if, uh, if we do a deep dive analysis and we really take a surgical approach to things, um, we're gonna be better off. And the reality is the faster you move with anything cloud based, the better you are. And so there's this assumption that we gotta get it right the first time. Yeah. In the cloud, if you start down your journey in one way and you realize midway that it's not the right, let's just say the right place to go. It's not like buying a piece of iron that you put in the closet and now you own it in the cloud. You can turn those services on and off. It's a, gives you a much higher density for making decisions and failing >>Forward. Well actually shutting down the abandoning, the projects that early, not worrying about it, you got it mean most people don't abandon stuff cuz they're like, oh, I own it. >>Exactly. >>And they get, they get used to it. Like, and then they wait too long. >>That's exactly. >>Yeah. Frog and boiling water, as we used to say, oh, it's a great analogy. So I mean, this, this is a dynamic. That's interesting. I wanna get more thoughts on it because like I'm a, if I'm a CEO of a company, like, okay, I gotta make my number. Yeah. I gotta keep my people motivated. Yeah. And I gotta move faster. So this is where you guys come in. I get the whole thing. And by the way, great service, um, professional services in the cloud right now are so hot because so hot, you can build it and then have option optionality. You got path decisions, you got new services to take advantage of. It's almost too much for customers. It is. I mean, everyone I talked to at reinvent, that's a customer. Well, how many announcements did Andy jazzy announcer Adam? You know, the 5,000 announcement or whatever. They did huge amounts. Right. Keeping track of it all. Oh, is huge. So what's the, what's the, um, the mission of, of your company. How does, how do you talk to that alignment? Yeah. Not just processes. I can get that like values as companies, cuz they're betting on you and your people. >>They are, they are >>Values. >>Our mission is, is very simple. We want to help every small to midsize business leverage the power of the cloud. Here's the reality. We believe wholeheartedly. This is our vision that every company is going to become a technology company. So we go to market with this idea that every customer's trying to leverage the power of the cloud in some way, shape or form, whether they know it or don't know it. And number two, they're gonna become a 10 a company in the process of that because everything is so tech-centric. And so when you talk about speed and agility, when you talk about the, the endless options and the endless permutations of solutions that a customer can buy in the cloud, how are you gonna ask a team of one or two people in your it department to make all those decisions going it alone or trying to learn it as you go, it only gets you so far working with a partner. >>I'll just give you some perspective. We work with about a thousand small to midsize business customers. More than 50% of those customers are on our managed services. Meaning they know that we have their back and we're the safety net. So when a customer is saying, right, I'm gonna spend a couple thousand and dollars a month in the cloud. They know that that bill, isn't gonna jump to $10,000 a month going in alone. Who's there to help protect that. Number two, if you have a security posture and let's just say your high profile and you're gonna potentially be more vulnerable to security attacks. If you have a partner that's offering you some managed services. Now you, again, you've got that backstop and you've got those services and tooling. We, we offer, um, seven different products, uh, that are part of our managed services that give the customer the tooling, that for them to go out and buy on their own for a customer to go out today and go buy a new Relic solution on their own. It, it would cost 'em a four, >>The training alone would be insane. A risk factor. I mean the cost. Yes, absolutely opportunity cost is huge, >>Huge, absolutely enormous training and development. Something. I think that is often, you know, it's often overlooked technologists. Typically they want to get their skills up. They, they love to get the, the stickers and the badges and the pins, um, at innovative in 2018. When, uh, when we, he made the decision to go all in on the club, I said to the organization, you know, we have this idea that we're gonna pivot and be aligned with AWS in such a way that it's gonna really require us all to get certified. My executive assistant at the time looks at me. She said, even me, I said, yeah, even you, why can't you get certified? Yeah. And so we made, uh, a conscious, it wasn't requirement. It still isn't today to make sure everybody in the company has the opportunity to become certified. Even the people that are answering the phones at the front >>Desk and she could be running the Kubernetes clusters. I >>Love it. It's >>Amazing. >>But I'll tell you what, when that customer calls and they have a real Kubernetes issue, she'll be able to assist and get >>The right people with. And that's a cultural factor that you guys have. So, so again, this is back to my whole point out SMBs and businesses in general, small and large it staffs are turning over the gen Z and millennials are in the workforce. They were provisioning top of rack switches. Right. First of all. And so if you're a business, there's also the, I call the buildout, um, uh, return factor, ROI piece. At what point in time as an owner, SMB, do I get to ROI? Yeah. I gotta hire a person to manage it. That person's gonna have five zillion job offers. Yep. Uh, maybe who knows? Right. I got cyber security issues. Where am I gonna find a cyber person? Yeah. A data compliance. I need a data scientist and a compliance person. Right. Maybe one in the same. Right. Good luck. Trying to find a data scientist. Who's also a compliance person. Yep. And the list goes on. I can just continue. Absolutely. I need an SRE to manage the, the, uh, the sock report and we can pen test. Right. >>Right. >>These are, these are >>Like critical issues. >>This is just like, these are the table stakes. >>Yeah. And, and every, every business owner's thinking about this, >>That's, that's what, at least a million in loading, if not three or more Just to get that app going. Yeah. Then it's like, where's the app. Yeah. So there's no cloud migration. There's no modernization on the app side. No. And they remind AI and ML. >>That's right. That's right. So to try to go it alone, to me, it's hard. It it's incredibly difficult. And the other thing is, is there's not a lot of partners, so the partner, >>No one's raising their hand boss. I'll do all that exactly. In the it department. >>Exactly. >>So like, can we just call up, uh, you know, our old vendor that's >>Right. <laugh> right. Our old vendor. I like it, >>But that's so true. I mean, when I think about how, if I was a business owner starting a business today and I had to build my team, um, and the amount of investment that it would take to get those people skilled up and then the risk factor of those people now having the skills and being so much more in demand and being recruited away, that's a real, that's a real issue. And so how you build your culture around that is, is very important. It's something that we talk about every, with every one of our small to mid-size >>Businesses. So just, I want get, I want to get your story as CEO. Okay. Take us through your journey. You said you bought the company and your progression to, to being the owner and CEO of innovative yeah. Award winning guys doing great. Uh, great bet on a good call. Yeah. Things are good. Tell your story. What's your journey? >>It's real simple. I was, uh, I was a sophomore at the Rochester Institute of technology in 2003. And, uh, I knew that I, I was going to school for it and I, I knew I wanted to be in tech. I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I knew I didn't wanna code or configure routers and switches. So I had this great opportunity with the local it company that was doing managed services. We didn't call it at that time innovative solutions to come in and, uh, jump on the phone and dial for dollars. I was gonna cold call and introduced other, uh, small to midsize businesses locally in Rochester, New York go to Western New York, um, who innovative was now. We were 19 people at the time. Yeah. I came in, I did an internship for six months and I loved it. I learned more in those six months than I probably did in my first couple of years at, uh, at RT long story short. >>Um, for about seven years, I worked, uh, to really help develop, uh, sales process and methodology for the business so that we could grow and scale. And we grew to about 30 people. And, um, I went to the owners at the time in 2000 and I was like, Hey, I'm growing the value of this business. And who knows where you guys are gonna be another five years? What do you think about making me an owner? And they were like, listen, you got long ways before you're gonna be an owner. But if you stick it out in your patient, we'll, um, we'll work through a succession plan with you. And I said, okay, there were four other individuals at the time that were gonna also buy the business with me. >>And they were the owners, no outside capital, >>None zero, well, 2014 comes around. And, uh, the other folks that were gonna buy into the business with me that were also working at innovative for different reasons. They all decided that it wasn't for them. One started a family. The other didn't wanna put capital in. Didn't wanna write a check. Um, the other had a real big problem with having to write a check. If we couldn't make payroll, I'm like, well, that's kind of like, if we're own, we're gonna have to like cover that stuff. <laugh> so >>It's called the pucker factor. >>Exactly. So, uh, I sat down with the CEO in early 2015 and, uh, we made the decision that I was gonna buy the three partners out, um, go through an earn out process, uh, coupled with, uh, an interesting financial strategy that wouldn't strap the BI cuz they cared very much. The company still had the opportunity to keep going. So in 2016 I bought the business, um, became the sole owner. And, and at that point we, um, we really focused hard on what do we want this company to be? We had built this company to this point. Yeah. And, uh, and by 2018 we knew that pivoting all going all in on the cloud was important for us. And we haven't looked back. >>And at that time, the proof points were coming clearer and clearer 2012 through 15 was the early adopters, the builders, the startups and early enterprises. Yes. The capital ones of the world. Exactly the, uh, and those kinds of big enterprises. The GA I don't wanna say gamblers, but ones that were very savvy. The innovators, the FinTech folks. Yep. The hardcore glass eating enterprises >>Agreed, agreed to find a small to midsize business to migrate completely to the cloud is as infrastructure was considered, that just didn't happen as often. Um, what we were seeing where the, a lot of our small to midsize business customers, they wanted to leverage cloud based backup, or they wanted to leverage a cloud for disaster recovery because it lent itself. Well, early days, our most common cloud customer though, was the customer that wanted to move messaging and collaboration. The, the Microsoft suite to the cloud. And a lot of 'em dipped their toe in the water. But by 2017 we knew infrastructure was around the corner. Yeah. And so, uh, we only had two customers on AWS at the time. Um, and we, uh, we, we made the decision to go all in >>Justin. Great to have you on the cube. Thank you. Let's wrap up. Uh, tell me the hottest product that you have. Is it migrations? Is the app modernization? Is it data? What's the hot product and then put a plugin for the company. Awesome. >>So, uh, there's no question. Every customer is looking migrate workloads and try to figure out how to modernize for the future. We have very interesting, sophisticated yet elegant funding solutions to help customers with the cash flow, uh, constraints that come along with those migrations. So any SMB that's thinking about migrating into the cloud, they should be talking innovative solutions. We know how to do it in a way that allows those customer is not to be cash strapped and gives them an opportunity to move forward in a controlled, contained way so they can modernize. So >>Like insurance, basically for them not insurance class in the classic sense, but you help them out on the, on the cash exposure. >>Absolutely. We are known for that and we're known for being creative with those customers and being empathetic to where they are in their journey. >>And that's the cloud upside is all about doubling down on the variable win that's right. Seeing the value and ING down on it. Absolutely not praying for it. Yeah. <laugh> all right, Justin. Thanks for coming on. You really appreciate >>It. Thank you very much for having me. >>Okay. This is the cube coverage here live in San Francisco, California for AWS summit, 2022. I'm John for your host. Thanks for watching. We're back with more great coverage for two days after this short break >>Live on the floor in San Francisco for Aus summit. I'm John for host of the cube here for the next two days, getting all the actual back in person we're at AWS reinvent a few months ago. Now we're back events are coming back and we're happy to be here with the cube. Bring all the action. Also virtual. We have a hybrid cube, check out the cube.net, Silicon angle.com for all the coverage. After the event. We've got a great guest ticking off here. Matthew Park, director of solutions, architecture with innovation solutions. The booth is right here. Matthew, welcome to the cube. >>Thank you very much. I'm glad to be here. >>So we're back in person. You're from Tennessee. We were chatting before you came on camera. Um, it's great to be back through events. It's >>Amazing. This is the first, uh, summit I've been to, to in what two, three >>Years. That's awesome. We'll be at the, uh, a AWS summit in New York as well. A lot of developers and the big story this year is as developers look at cloud going distributed computing, you got on premises, you got public cloud, you got the edge. Essentially the cloud operations is running everything devs sec ops, everyone kind of sees that you got containers, you got Benet, he's got cloud native. So the, the game is pretty much laid out. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and the edge is with the actions you guys are number one, premier partner at SMB for edge. >>That's >>Right. Tell us about what you guys doing at innovative and, uh, what you do. >>That's right. Uh, so I'm the director of solutions architecture. Uh, me and my team are responsible for building out the solutions. The at our around, especially the edge public cloud for us edge is anything outside of an AWS availability zone. Uh, we are deploying that in countries that don't have AWS infrastructure in region. They don't have it. Uh, give >>An example, >>Uh, example would be Panama. We have a customer there that, uh, needs to deploy some financial tech data and compute is legally required to be in Panama, but they love AWS and they want to deploy AWS services in region. Uh, so they've taken E EKS anywhere. We've put storage gateway and, uh, snowball, uh, in region inside the country and they're running or FinTech on top of AWS services inside Panama. >>You know, what's interesting, Matthew is that we've been covering Aw since 2013 with the cube about their events. And we watched the progression and jazzy was, uh, was in charge and became the CEO. Now Adam slaps in charge, but the edge has always been that thing they've been trying to avoid. I don't wanna say trying to avoid, of course, Amazon would listens to the customer. They work backwards from the customer. We all know that. Uh, but the real issue was they were they're bread and butters EC two and S three. And then now they got tons of services and the cloud is obviously successful and seeing that, but the edge brings up a whole nother level. >>It does >>Computing. >>It >>Does. That's not centralized in the public cloud now they got regions. So what is the issue with the edge what's driving? The behavior. Outpost came out as a reaction to competitive threats and also customer momentum around OT, uh, operational technologies. And it merging. We see with the data at the edge, you got five GM having. So it's pretty obvious, but there was a slow transition. What was the driver for the edge? What's the driver now for edge action for AWS >>Data in is the driver for the edge. Data has gravity, right? And it's pulling compute back to where the customer's generating that data and that's happening over and over again. You said it best outpost was a reaction to a competitive situation. Whereas today we have over 15 AWS edge services and those are all reactions to things that customers need inside their data centers on location or in the field like with media companies. >>Outpost is interesting. We always use the riff on the cube, uh, cause it's basically Amazon in a box, pushed in the data center, running native, all this stuff, but now cloud native operations are kind of becoming standard. You're starting to see some standard. Deepak syncs group is doing some amazing work with opensource Raul's team on the AI side, obviously, uh, you got SW who's giving the keynote tomorrow. You got the big AI machine learning big part of that edge. Now you can say, okay, outpost, is it relevant today? In other words, did outpost do its job? Cause EKS anywhere seems to be getting a lot of momentum. You see local zones, the regions are kicking ass for Amazon. This edge piece is evolving. What's your take on EKS anywhere versus say outpost? >>Yeah, I think outpost did its job. It made customers that were looking at outpost really consider, do I wanna invest in this hardware? Do I, do I wanna have, um, this outpost in my datas center, do I want to manage this over the long term? A lot of those customers just transitioned to the public cloud. They went into AWS proper. Some of those customers stayed on prem because they did have use cases that were, uh, not a good fit for outpost. They weren't a good fit. Uh, in the customer's mind for the public AWS cloud inside an availability zone now happening is as AWS is pushing these services out and saying, we're gonna meet you where you are with 5g. We're gonna meet you where you are with wavelength. We're gonna meet you where you are with EKS anywhere. Uh, I think it has really reduced the amount of times that we have conversations about outposts and it's really increased. We can deploy fast. We don't have to spin up outpost hardware can go deploy EKS anywhere in your VMware environment. And it's increasing the speed of adoption >>For sure. Right? So you guys are making a lot of good business decisions around managed cloud service. That's right. Innovative. Does that get the cloud advisory, the classic professional services for the specific edge piece and, and doing that outside of the availability zones and regions for AWS, um, customers in these new areas that you're helping out are they want cloud, like they want to have modernization a modern applications. Obviously they got data machine learning and AI, all part of that. What's the main product or, or, or gap that you're filling for AWS, uh, outside of their availability zones or their regions that you guys are delivering. What's the key is that they don't have a footprint. Is it that it's not big enough for them? What's the real gap. What's why, why are you so successful? >>So what customers want when they look towards the cloud is they want to focus on what's making them money as a business. They wanna focus on their applications. They wanna focus on their customers. So they look towards AWS cloud and a AWS. You take the infrastructure, you take, uh, some of the higher layers and we'll focus on our revenue generating business, but there's a gap there between infrastructure and revenue generating business that innovative slides into, uh, we help manage the AWS environment. Uh, we help build out these things in local data centers for 32 plus year old company. We have traditional on-premises people that know about deploying hardware that know about deploying VMware to host EKS anywhere. But we also have most of our company totally focused on the AWS cloud. So we're that gap in helping deploy these AWS services, manage them over the long term. So our customers can go to just primarily and totally focusing on their revenue generating business. So >>Basically you guys are basically building AWS edges, >>Correct? >>For correct companies, correct? Mainly because the, the needs are there, you got data, you got certain products, whether it's, you know, low latency type requirements, right. And then they still work with the regions, right. It's all tied together, right. Is that how it >>Works? Right. And, and our customers, even the ones in the edge, they also want us to build out the AWS environment inside the availability zone, because we're always gonna have a failback scenario. If we're gonna deploy fin in the Caribbean, we're gonna talk about hurricanes. And we're gonna talk about failing back into the AWS availability zones. So innovative is filling that gap across the board, whether it be inside the AWS cloud or on the AWS edge. >>All right. So I gotta ask you on the, since you're at the edge in these areas, I won't say underserved, but developing areas where now have data and you have applications that are tapping into that, that requirement. It makes total sense. We're seeing that across the board. So it's not like it's a, it's an outlier it's actually growing. Yeah. There's also the crypto angle. You got the blockchain. Are you seeing any traction at the edge with blockchain? Because a lot of people are looking at the web three in these areas like Panama, you mentioned FinTech. And in, in the islands there a lot of, lot of, lot of web three happening. What's your, what your view on the web three world right now, relative >>To we, we have some customers actually deploying crypto, especially, um, especially in the Caribbean. I keep bringing the Caribbean up, but it's, it's top of my mind right now we have customers that are deploying crypto. A lot of, uh, countries are choosing crypto to underlie parts of their central banks. Yeah. Um, so it's, it's up and coming. Uh, I, I have some, you know, personal views that, that crypto is still searching for a use case. Yeah. And, uh, I think it's searching a lot and, and we're there to help customers search for that use case. Uh, but, but crypto, as a, as a, uh, technology, um, lives really well on the AWS edge. Yeah. Uh, and, and we're having more and more people talk to us about that. Yeah. And ask for assistance in the infrastructure, because they're developing new cryptocurrencies every day. Yeah. It's not like they're deploying Ethereum or anything specific. They're actually developing new currencies and, and putting them out there on >>It's interesting. I mean, first of all, we've been doing crypto for many, many years. We have our own little, um, you know, project going on. But if you look talk to all the crypto people that say, look, we do a smart contract, we use the blockchain. It's kind of over a lot of overhead and it's not really their technical already, but it's a cultural shift, but there's underserved use cases around use of money, but they're all using the blockchain just for like smart contracts, for instance, or certain transactions. And they go to Amazon for the database. Yeah. <laugh> they all don't tell anyone we're using a centralized service. Well, what happened to decentralized? >>Yeah. And that's, and that's the conversation performance issue. Yeah. And, and it's a cost issue. Yeah. And it's a development issue. Um, so I think more and more as, as some of these, uh, currencies maybe come up, some of the smart contracts get into, uh, they find their use cases. I think we'll start talking about how does that really live on, on AWS and, and what does it look like to build decentralized applications, but with AWS hardware and services. >>Right. So take me through, uh, a use case of a customer Matthew around the edge. Okay. So I'm a customer, pretend I'm a customer, Hey, you know, I'm, we're in an underserved area. I want to modernize my business. And I got my developers that are totally peaked up on cloud, but we've identified that it's just a lot of overhead latency issues. I need to have a local edge and serve my a, I also want all the benefit of the cloud. So I want the modern, and I wanna migrate to the cloud for all those cloud benefits and the goodness of the cloud. What's the answer. >>Yeah. Uh, big thing is, uh, industrial manufacturing, right? That's, that's one of the best use cases, uh, inside industrial manufacturing, we can pull in many of the AWS edge services we can bring in, uh, private 5g, uh, so that all the, uh, equipment that, that manufacturing plant can be hooked up, they don't have to pay huge overheads to deploy 5g it's, uh, better than wifi for the industrial space. Um, when we take computing down to that industrial area, uh, because we wanna do pre-procesing on the data. Yeah. We want to gather some analytics. We deploy that with a regular commercially available hardware running VMware, and we deploy EKS anywhere on that. Inside of that manufacturing plant, we can do pre-procesing on things coming out of the robotics, depending on what we're manufacturing. Right. And then we can take those refined analytics and for very low cost with maybe a little bit longer latency transmit those back, um, to the AWS availability zone, the, the standard >>For data, data lake, or whatever, >>To the data lake. Yeah. Data lake house, whatever it might be. Um, and we can do additional data science on that once it gets to the AWS cloud. Uh, but a lot of that, uh, just in time business decisions, just time manufacturing decisions can all take place on an AWS service or services inside that manufacturing plant. And that's, that's one of the best use cases that we're >>Seeing. And I think, I mean, we've been seeing this on the queue for many, many years, moving data around is very expensive. Yeah. But also compute going to the data that saves that cost yeah. On the data transfer also on the benefits of the latency. So I have to ask you, by the way, that's standard best practice now for the folks watching don't move the data unless you have to. Um, but those new things are developing. So I wanna ask you what new patterns are you seeing emerging once this new architecture's in place? Love that idea, localize everything right at the edge, manufacturing, industrial, whatever, the use case, retail, whatever it is. Right. But now what does that change in the, in the core cloud? There's a, there's a system element here. Yeah. What's the new pattern. There's >>Actually an organizational element as well, because once you have to start making the decision, do I put this compute at the point of use or do I put this compute in the cloud? Uh, now you start thinking about where business decisions should be taking place. Uh, so not only are you changing your architecture, you're actually changing your organization because you're thinking, you're thinking about a dichotomy you didn't have before. Uh, so now you say, okay, this can take place here. Uh, and maybe, maybe this decision can wait. Right. And then how do I visualize that? By >>The way, it could be a bot tube doing the work for management. Yeah. <laugh> exactly. You got observability going, right. But you gotta change the database architecture on the back. So there's new things developing. You've got more benefit. There >>Are, there are, and we have more and more people that, that want to talk less about databases and want to talk about data lakes because of this. They want to talk more about customers are starting to talk about throwing away data. Uh, you know, for the past maybe decade. Yeah. It's been store everything. And one day we will have a data science team that we hire in our organization to do analytics on this decade of data. And well, >>I mean, that's, that's a great point. We don't have time to drill into, maybe we do another session this, but the one pattern we're seeing come of the past year is that throwing away data's bad. Even data lakes that so-called turn into data swamps, actually, it's not the case. You look at data, brick, snowflake, and other successes out there. And even time series data, which may seem irrelevant efforts over actually matters when people start retrain their machine learning algorithms. Yep. So as data becomes co as we call it in our last showcase, we did a whole whole an event on this. The data's good in real time and in the lake. Yeah. Because the iteration of the data feeds the machine learning training. Things are getting better with the old data. So it's not throw away. It's not just business benefits. Yeah. There's all kinds of new scale. There >>Are. And, and we have, uh, many customers that are running petabyte level. Um, they're, they're essentially data factories on, on, on premises, right? They're, they're creating so much data and they're starting to say, okay, we could analyze this, uh, in the cloud, we could transition it. We could move petabytes of data to AWS cloud, or we can run, uh, computational workloads on premises. We can really do some analytics on this data transition, uh, those high level and sort of raw analytics back to AWS run 'em through machine learning. Um, and we don't have to transition 10, 12 petabytes of data into AWS. >>So I gotta end the segment on a, on a, kind of a, um, fun, I was told to ask you about your personal background on premise architect, Aus cloud, and skydiving instructor. How does that all work together? What tell, what does this mean? >>Yeah. Uh, I, >>You jumped out a plane and got a job. You got a customer to jump >>Out kind of. So I was, you jumped out. I was teaching Scott eing, uh, before I, before I started in the cloud space, this was 13, 14 years ago. I was a, I still am a Scott I instructor. Uh, I was teaching Scott eing and I heard out of the corner of my ear, uh, a guy that owned an MSP that was lamenting about, um, you know, storing data and how his customers are working. And he can't find enough people to operate all these workloads. So I walked over and said, Hey, this is, this is what I went to school for. Like, I'd love to, you know, I was living in a tent in the woods, teaching skydiving. I was like, I'd love to not live in a tent in the woods. So, uh, I started in the first day there, we had a, and, uh, EC two had just come out <laugh> um, and, uh, like, >>This is amazing. >>Yeah. And so we had this discussion, we should start moving customers here. And, uh, and that totally revolutionized that business, um, that, that led to, uh, that that guy actually still owns a skydiving airport. But, um, but through all of that, and through being in on premises, migrated me and myself, my career into the cloud, and now it feels like, uh, almost, almost looking back and saying, now let's take what we learned in the cloud and, and apply those lessons and those services to premises. >>So it's such a great story. You know, I was gonna, you know, you know, the, the, the, the whole, you know, growth mindset pack your own parachute, you know, uh, exactly. You know, the cloud in the early days was pretty much will the shoot open. Yeah. It was pretty much, you had to roll your own cloud at that time. And so, you know, you, you jump on a plane, you gotta make sure that parachute is gonna open. >>And so was Kubernetes by the way, 2015 or so when, uh, when that was coming out, it was, I mean, it was, it was still, and I, maybe it does still feel like that to some people, right. Yeah. But, uh, it was, it was the same kind of feeling that we had in the early days of AWS, the same feeling we have when we >>It's much now with you guys, it's more like a tandem jump. Yeah. You know, but, but it's a lot of, lot of this cutting stuff like jumping out of an airplane. Yeah. You guys, the right equipment, you gotta do the right things. Exactly. >>Right. >>Matthew, thanks for coming on the cube. Really appreciate it. Absolutely great conversation. Thanks for having me. Okay. The cubes here, lot in San Francisco for AWS summit, I'm John for your host of the cube. Uh, we'll be at a summit in New York coming up in the summer as well. Look up for that. Look at this calendar for all the cube, actually@thecube.net. We'll right back with our next segment after this break. >>Okay. Welcome back everyone to San Francisco live coverage here, we're at the cube, a summit 2022. We're back in person. I'm John furry host of the cube. We'll be at the, a us summit in New York city this summer, check us out then. But right now, two days in San Francisco getting all coverage, what's going on in the cloud, we got a cube alumni and friend of the cube, my dos car CEO, investor, a Sierra, and also an investor and a bunch of startups, angel investor. Gonna do great to see you. Thanks for coming on the cube. Good to see you. Good to see you, Pam. Cool. How are you? Good. >>How are you? >>So congratulations on all your investments. Uh, you've made a lot of great successes, uh, over the past couple years, uh, and your company raising, uh, some good cash as Sarah so give us the update. How much cash have you guys raised? What's the status of the company product what's going on? First >>Of all, thank you for having me. We're back to be business with you never while after. Great to see you. Um, so is a company started around four years back. I invested with a few of the investors and now I'm the CEO there. Um, we have raised close to a hundred million there. Uh, the investors are people like nor west Menlo, true ventures, coast, lo ventures, Ram Shera, and all those people, all known guys that Antibe chime Paul Mayard web. So a whole bunch of operating people and, uh, Silicon valley vs are involved. >>And has it gone? >>It's going well. We are doing really well. We are going almost 300% year over year. Uh, for last three years, the space ISR is going after is what I call the applying AI for customer service. It operations, it help desk the same place I used to work at ServiceNow. We are partners with ServiceNow to take, how can we argument for employees and customers, Salesforce, and ServiceNow to take it to the next stage? Well, >>I love having you on the cube, Dave and I, and Dave Valenti as well loves having you on too, because you not only bring the entrepreneurial CEO experience, you're an investor. You're like a, you're like a guest analyst. <laugh>, >>You know, >>You >>Get, the comment is fun to talk to you though. >>You get the commentary, you, your, your finger on the pulse. Um, so I gotta ask you obviously, AI and machine learning, machine learning AI, or you want to phrase it. Isn't every application. Now, AI first, uh, you're seeing a lot of that going on. You're starting to see companies build the modern applications at the top of the stack. So the cloud scale has hit. We're seeing cloud out scale. You predicted that we talked about in the cube many times. Now you have that past layer with a lot more services and cloud native becoming a standard layer. Containerizations growing Docker just raised a hundred million on our $2 billion valuation back from the dead after they pivoted from an enterprise services. So open source developers are booming. Um, where's the action. I mean, is there data control, plane emerging, AI needs data. There's a lot of challenges around this. There's a lot of discussions and a lot of companies being funded observability there's 10 million observability companies. Data is the key. This is what's your angle on this. What's your take. Yeah, >>No, look, I think I'll give you the view that I see, right? I, from my side, obviously data is very clear. So the things that room system of record that you and me talked about, the next layer is called system of intelligence. That's where the AI will play. Like we talk cloud native, it'll be called AI. NA NA is a new buzzword and using the AI for customer service, it operations. You talk about observability. I call it AI ops, applying AOPs for good old it operation management, cloud management. So you'll see the AOPs applied for whole list of, uh, application from observability doing the CMDB, predicting the events insurance. So I see a lot of work clicking for AIOps and AI service desk. What needs to be helped desk with ServiceNow BMC <inaudible> you see a new ALA emerging as a system of intelligence. Uh, the next would be is applying AI with workflow automation. So that's where you'll see a lot of things called customer workflows, employee workflows. So think of what UI path automation, anywhere ServiceNow are doing, that area will be driven with AI workflows. So you'll see AI going >>Off is RPA a company is AI, is RPA a feature of something bigger? Or can someone have a company on RPA UI S one will be at their event this summer? Um, or is it a product company? I mean, I mean, RPA is almost, should be embedded in everything. >>It's a feature. It is very good point. Very, very good thinking. So one is, it's a category for sure. Like, as we thought, it's a category, it's an area where RPA may change the name. I call it much more about automation, workflow automation, but RPA and automation is a category. Um, it's a company also, but that automation should be a, in every area. Yeah. Like we call cloud NA and AI NATO it'll become automation. NA yeah. And that's your thinking. >>It's almost interesting me. I think about the, what you're talking about what's coming to mind is I'm kind having flashbacks to the old software model of middleware. Remember at middleware, it was very easy to understand it was middleware. It sat between two things and then the middle and it was software was action. Now you have all kinds of workflows abstractions everywhere. Right? So multiple databases, it's not a monolithic thing. Right? Right. So as you break that down, is this the new modern middleware? Because what you're talking about is data workflows, but they might be siloed or they integrated. I mean, these are the challenges. This is crazy. What's the, >>So don't about the databases become all polyglot databases. I call this one polyglot automation. So you need automation as a layer, as a category, but you also need to put automation in every area, like, as you were talking about, it should be part of ServiceNow. It should be part of ISRA, like every company, every Salesforce. So that's why you see MuleSoft and Salesforce buying RPA companies. So you'll see all the SaaS companies could cloud companies having an automation as a core. So it's like how you have a database and compute and sales and networking. You'll also will have an automation as a layer <inaudible> inside every stack. >>All right. So I wanna shift gears a little bit and get your perspective on what's going on behind us. You can see, uh, behind us, you got the expo hall. You got, um, we're back to vents, but you got, you know, am Clume Ove, uh, Dynatrace data dog, innovative all the companies out here that we know, we interview them all. They're trying to be suppliers to this growing enterprise market. Right. Okay. But now you also got the entrepreneurial equation. Okay. We're gonna have John Sado on from Deibel later today. He's a former NEA guy and we always talk to Jerry, Jen, we know all the, the VCs. What does the startups look like? What does the state of the, in your mind, cause you, I know you invest the entrepreneurial founder situation. Cloud's bigger. Mm-hmm <affirmative> global, right? Data's part of it. You mentioned data's. Yes. Basically. Data's everything. What's it like for a first an entrepreneur right now who's starting a company. What's the white space. What's the attack plan. How do they get in the market? How do they engineer everything? >>Very good. So I'll give it to, uh, two things that I'm seeing out there. Remember leaders, how Amazon created the startups 15 years back, everybody built on Amazon now, Azure and GCP. The next layer would be is people don't just build on Amazon. They're gonna build it on top of snowflake. Companies are snowflake becomes a data platform, right? People will build on snowflake. Right? So I see my old boss flagman try to build companies on snowflake. So you don't build it just on Amazon. You build it on Amazon and snowflake. Snowflake will become your data store. Snowflake will become your data layer. Right? So I think that's the next level of <inaudible> trying to do that. So if I'm doing observability AI ops, if I'm doing next level of Splunk SIM, I'm gonna build it on snowflake, on Salesforce, on Amazon, on Azure, et cetera. >>It's interesting. You know, Jerry Chan has it put out a thesis of a couple months ago called castles in the cloud where your Mo is what you do in the cloud. Not necessarily in, in the, in the IP. Um, Dave LAN and I had last reinvent, coined the term super cloud, right? He's got a lot of traction and a lot of people throwing, throwing mud at us, but we were, our thesis was, is that what Snowflake's doing? What Goldman S Sachs is doing. You starting to see these clouds on top of clouds. So Amazon's got this huge CapEx advantage, and guys, Charles Fitzgerald out there who we like was kind of shitting on us saying, Hey, you guys terrible, they didn't get it. Like, yeah, I don't think he gets it, but that's a whole, can't wait to debate him publicly on this. <laugh> cause he's cool. Um, but snowflake is on Amazon. Now. They say they're on Azure now. Cause they've got a bigger market and they're public, but ultimately without a AWS snowflake doesn't exist. And, and they're reimagining the data warehouse with the cloud, right? That's the billion dollar opportunity. It >>Is. It is. They both are very tight. So imagine what Frank has done at snowflake and Amazon. So if I'm a startup today, I want to build everything on Amazon where possible whatever is, I cannot build. I'll make the pass layer. Remember the middle layer pass will be snowflake so I can build it on snowflake. I can use them for data layer if I really need to size build it on force.com Salesforce. Yeah. Right. So I think that's where you'll see. So >>Basically the, if you're an entrepreneur, the, the north star in terms of the, the outcome is be a super cloud. >>It is, >>That's the application on another big CapEx ride, the CapEx of AWS or cloud, >>And that reduce your product development, your go to market and you get use the snowflake marketplace to drive your engagement. Yeah. >>Yeah. How are, how is Amazon and the clouds dealing with these big whales, the snowflakes of the world? I mean, I know they got a great relationship, uh, but snowflake now has to run a company they're public. Yeah. So, I mean, I'll say, I think they had Redshift. Amazon has got Redshift. Um, but Snowflake's a big customer in the, they're probably paying AWS, I think big bills too. So >>Joe on very good. Cause it's like how Netflix is and Amazon prime, right. Netflix runs on Amazon, but Amazon has Amazon prime that co-optation will be there. So Amazon will have Redshift, but Amazon is also partnering with, uh, snowflake to have native snowflake data warehouses or data layer. So I think depending on the application use case, you have to use each of the above. I think snowflake is here for a long term. Yeah. Yeah. So if I'm building an application, I want to use snowflake then writing from stats. >>Well, I think that it comes back down to entrepreneurial hustle. Do you have a better product? Right. Product value will ultimately determine it as long as the cloud doesn't, you know, foreclose, your, you that's right with some sort of internal hack. Uh, but I think, I think the general question that I have is that I, I think it's okay to have a super cloud like that because the rising tide is still happening at some point, when does the rising tide stop and do the people shopping up their knives, it gets more competitive or is it just an infinite growth? So >>I think it's growth. You call it cloud scale, you invented the word cloud scale. So I think look, cloud will continually agree, increase. I think there's as long as there more movement from on, uh, OnPrem to the classical data center, I think there's no reason at this point, the rumor, the old lift and shift that's happening in like my business. I see people lift and shifting from the it operations. It helpless, even the customer service service now and, uh, ticket data from BMCs CAS like Microfocus, all those workloads are shifted to the cloud, right? So cloud ticketing system is happening. Cloud system of record is happening. So I think this train has still a long way to go >>Made. I wanna get your thoughts for the folks watching that are, uh, enterprise buyers are practitioners, not suppliers to the more market, feel free to text me or DMing. The next question's really about the buying side, which is if I'm a customer, what's the current, um, appetite for startup products, cuz you know, the big enterprises now and you know, small, medium, large and large enterprise are all buying new companies cuz a startup can go from zero to relevant very quickly. So that means now enterprises are engaging heavily with startups. What's it like what's is there a change in order of magnitude of the relationship between the startup selling to, or growing startup selling to an enterprise? Um, have you seen changes there? I mean I'm seeing some stuff, but why don't get your thoughts on that? What, >>No, it is. If I growing by or 2007 or eight, when I used to talk to you back then and Amazon started very small, right? We are an Amazon summit here. So I think enterprises on the average used to spend nothing with startups. It's almost like 0% or 1% today. Most companies are already spending 20, 30% with startups. Like if I look at a CIO or line of business, it's gone. Yeah. Can it go more? I think it can in the next four, five years. Yeah. Spending on the startups. >>Yeah. And check out, uh, AWS startups.com. That's a site that we built for the startup community for buyers and startups. And I want to get your reaction because I reference the URL cause it's like, there's like a bunch of companies we've been promoting because the solutions that startups have actually are new stuff. Yes. It's bending, it's shifting for security or using data differently or um, building tools and platforms for data engineering. Right. Which is a new persona that's emerging. So you know, a lot of good resources there. Um, and goes back now to the data question. Now, getting back to your, what you're working on now is what's your thoughts around this new, um, data engineering persona, you mentioned AIOps, we've been seeing AIOps IOPS booming and that's creating a new developer paradigm that's right. Which we call coin data as code data as code is like infrastructure is code, but it's for data, right? It's developing with data, right? Retraining machine learnings, going back to the data lake, getting data to make, to do analysis, to make the machine learning better post event or post action. So this, this data engineers like an SRE for data, it's a new, scalable role we're seeing. Do you see the same thing? Do you agree? Um, do you disagree or can you share >>Yourself a lot of first is I see the AIOP solutions in the future should be not looking back. I need to be like we are in San Francisco bay. That means earthquake prediction. Right? I want AOPs to predict when the outages are gonna happen. When there's a performance issue. I don't think most AOPs vendors have not gone there yet. Like I spend a lot of time with data dog, Cisco app Dyna, right? Dynatrace, all this solution. We will go future towards predict to proactive solution with AOPs. But what you bring up a very good point on the data side. I think like we have a Amazon marketplace and Amazon for startup, there should be data exchange where you want to create for AOPs and AI service desk. Customers are give the data, share the data because we thought the data algorithms are useless. I can them, but I gotta train them, modify them, tweak them, make them >>Better, >>Make them better. Yeah. And I think their whole data exchange is the industry has not thought through something you and me talk many times. Yeah. Yeah. I think the whole, that area is very important. >>You've always been on, um, on the Vanguard of data because, uh, it's been really fun. Yeah. >>Going back to big data days back in 2009, you know, >>Look at, look how much data Rick has grown. >>It is. They doubled the >>Key cloud air kinda went private. So good stuff, man. What are you working on right now? Give a, give a, um, plug for what you're working on. You'll still investing. >>I do still invest, but look, I'm a hundred percent on ISRA right now. I'm the CEO there. Yeah. Okay. So right. ISRA is my number one baby right now. So I'm looking at that growing customers and my customers are some of them, you like it's zoom auto desk McAfee, uh, grand to so all the top customers, um, mainly for it help desk customer service. AIOps those are three product lines and going after enterprise and commercial deals. >>And when should someone buy your product? What's what's their need? What category is it? >>I think they look whenever somebody needs to buy the product is if you need AOP solution to predict, keep your lights on predict is one area. If you want to improve employee experience, you are using a slack teams and you want to automate all your workflows. That's another value problem. Third is customer service. You don't want to hire more people to do it. Some of the areas where you want to scale your company, grow your company, eliminate the cost customer service. >>Great stuff, man. Great to see you. Thanks for coming on. Congratulations on the success of your company and your investments. Thanks for coming on the cube. Okay. I'm John fur here at the cube live in San Francisco for day one of two days of coverage of Aish summit 2022. And we're gonna be at Aus summit in San, uh, in New York in the summer. So look for that on this calendar, of course go to eight of us, startups.com. I mentioned that it's decipher all the hot startups and of course the cube.net and Silicon angle.com. Thanks for watching. We'll be back more coverage after this short break. >>Okay. Welcome back everyone. This the cubes coverage here in San Francisco, California, a Davis summit, 2022, the beginning of the event season, as it comes back, little bit smaller footprint, a lot of hybrid events going on, but this is actually a physical event, a summit in new York's coming in the summer. We'll be there too with the cube on the set. We're getting back in the groove psych to be back. We were at reinvent, uh, as well, and we'll see more and more cube, but you're can see a lot of virtual cube outta hybrid cube. We wanna get all those conversations, try to get more interviews, more flow going. But right now I'm excited to have Corey Quinn here on the back on the cube chief cloud economists with bill group. He's the founder, uh, and chief content person always got great angles, fun comedy, authoritative Corey. Great to see you. Thank >>You. Thanks. Coming on. Sure is a lot of words to describe is shit posting, which is how I describe what I tend to do. Most days, >>Shit posting is an art form now. And if you look at mark, Andrew's been doing a lot of shit posting lately. All a billionaires are shit hosting, but they don't know how to do it. Like they're not >>Doing it right? So there's something opportunity there. It's like here's how to be even more obnoxious and incisive. It's honestly the most terrifying scenario for anyone is if I have that kind of budget to throw at my endeavors, it's like, I get excited with a nonsense I can do with a $20 gift card for an AWS credit compared to, oh well, if I could buy a midsize island, do begin doing this from, oh, then we're having fun. >>This shit posting trend. Interesting. I was watching a thread go on about, saw someone didn't get a job because of their shit posting and the employer didn't get it. And then someone on this side I'll hire the guy cuz I get that's highly intelligent shit posting. So for the audience that doesn't know what shit posting is, what is shit posting? >>It's more or less talking about the world of enter prize technology, which even that sentence is hard to finish without falling asleep and toppling out of my chair in front of everyone on the livestream. But it's doing it in such a way that brings it to life that says the quiet part. A lot of the audience is thinking, but generally doesn't say either because they're polite or not a jackass or more prosaically are worried about getting fired for better or worse. I don't don't have that particular constraint, >>Which is why people love you. So let's talk about what you, what you think is, uh, worthy and not worthy in the industry right now, obviously, uh, coupons coming up in Spain, which they're having a physical event, you see the growth of cloud native Amazon's of all the Adams, especially new CEO. Andy's move on to be the chief of all Amazon. Just so I'm the cover of was it time met magazine? Um, he's under a lot of stress. Amazon's changed. Invoice has changed. What's working. What's not, what's rising, what's falling. What's hot. What's not, >>It's easy to sit here and criticize almost anything. These folks do. They're they're effectively in a fishbowl, but I have trouble imagining the logistics. It takes to wind up handling the catering for a relatively downscale event like this one this year, let alone running a 1.7 million employee company having to balance all the competing challenges and pressures and the rest. I, I just can't fathom what it would be like to look at all of AWS. And it's, it's sprawling immense that dominates our entire industry and say, okay, this is a good start, but I, I wanna focus on something with a broader remit. What is that? How do you even get into that position? And you can't win once you're there. All you can do is hold onto the tiger and hope you don't get mold. >>Well, there's a lot of force for good conversations. Seeing a lot of that going on, Amazon's trying to port eight of us is trying to portray themselves as you know, the Pathfinder, you know, you're the pioneer, um, force for good. And I get that and I think that's a good angle as cloud goes mainstream. There's still the question of, we had a guy on just earlier, who was a skydiving instructor and we were joking about the early days of cloud. Like that was like skydiving, build a parachute open, you know, and now same kind of thing. As you move to edge, things are like reliable in some areas, but still new, new fringe, new areas. That's crazy. Well, >>Since the last time we've spoken, uh, Steve Schmidt is now the CISO for all of Amazon and his backfill replacement. The AWS CISO is CJ. Moses who as a hobby races, a as a semi-pro race car driver to my understanding, which either, I don't know what direction to take that in either. This is what he does to relax or ultimately, or ultimately it's. Huh? That, that certainly says something about risk assessment. I'm not entirely sure what, but okay. <laugh> either way, sounds like more exciting. Like I better >>Have a replacement ready <laugh> I, in case something goes wrong on the track, highly >>Available >>CSOs. I gotta say one of the things I do like in the recent trend is that the tech companies are getting into the formula one, which I was never a fan of until I watched that Netflix series. But when you look at the formula one, it's pretty cool. Cause it's got some tech angles, I get the whole data instrumentation thing, but the most coolest thing about formula one is they have these new rigs out. Yeah. Where you can actually race in east sports with other people in pure simulation of the race car. You gotta get the latest and videographic card, but it's basically a tricked out PC with amazing monitors and you have all the equipment of F1 and you're basically simulating racing. >>Oh, it's great too. And I can see the appeal of these tech companies getting into it because these things are basically rocket shifts. When those cars go, like they're sitting there, we can instrument every last part of what is going on inside that vehicle. And then AWS crops up. And we can bill on every one of those dimensions too. And it's like slow down their hasty pudding one step at a time. But I do see the appeal. >>So I gotta ask you about, uh, what's going on in your world. I know you have a lot of great success. We've been following you in the queue for many, many years. Got a great newsletter, check out Corey Quinn's newsletter, uh, screaming in the cloud program. Uh, you're on the cutting edge and you've got a great balance between really being snarky and, and, and really being delivering content. That's exciting, uh, for people, uh, with a little bit of an edge, um, how's that going? Uh, what's the blowback, any blowback late? Has there been uptick? What was, what are some of the things you're hearing from your audience, more Corey, more Corey. And then of course the, the PR team's calling you >>The weird thing about having an audience beyond a certain size is far and away as a landslide. The most common response I get is silence where it's high. I'm emailing an awful lot of people at last week in AWS every week and okay. They must not have heard me it. That is not actually true. People just generally don't respond to email because who responds to email newsletters. That sounds like something, a lunatic might do same story with response to live streams and podcasts. It's like, I'm gonna call into that am radio show and give them a piece of my mind. People generally don't do >>That. We should do that. Actually. I think you're people would call in, oh, >>I, I think >>I guarantee we had that right now. People would call in and say, Corey, what do you think about X? >>Yeah. It not, everyone understands the full context of what I do. And in fact, increasingly few people do and that's fine. I, I keep forgetting that sometimes people do not see what I'm doing in the same light that I do. And that's fine. Blowback has been largely minimal. Honestly, I am surprised about anything by how little I have gotten over the last five years of doing this, but it would be easier to dismiss me if I weren't generally. Right. When, okay, so you launch this new service and it seems pretty crappy to me cuz when I try and build something, it falls over and begs for help. And people might not like hearing that, but it's what customers are finding too. Yeah. I really am the voice of the >>Customer. You know, I always joke with Dave Alane about how John Fort's always at, uh, um, reinvent getting the interview with jazzy now, Andy we're there, you're there. And so we have these rituals at the events. It's all cool. Um, one of the rituals I like about your, um, your content is you like to get on the naming product names. Um, and, and, and, and, and kind of goof on that. Now why I like is because I used to work at ETT Packard where they used to name things as like engineers, HP 1 0, 0 5, or we can't call, we >>Have a new monitor. How are we gonna name it? Throw the wireless keyboard down the stairs again. And then there you go. Yeah. >>It's and the old joke at HP was if they, if they invented SU sushi, they'd say, yeah, we can't call sushi. It's cold, dead fish. That's what it is. And so the joke was cold. Dead fish is a better name than sushi. So you know is fun. So what's the, what are the, how's the Amazon doing in there? Have they changed their naming, uh, strategy, uh, on some of their, their >>Producting. So they're going in different directions. When they named Amazon Aurora, they decided to explore a new theme of Disney princesses as they go down those paths. And some things are more descriptive. Some people are clearly getting bonused on number of words, they can shove into it. Like the better a service is the longer it's name. Like AWS systems manager, session manager is a great one. I love the service ridiculous name. They have a systems manager, parameter store, which is great. They have secrets manager, which does the same thing. It's two words less, but that one costs money in a way that systems manage your parameter store does not. It's fun. >>What's your, what's your favorite combination of acronyms >>Combination >>Of gots. You got EMR, you got EC two, you got S3 SQS. Well, RedShift's not an acronym you >>Gets is one of my personal favorites because it's either elastic block store or elastic bean stock, depending entirely on the context of the conversation, they >>Shook up bean stock or is that still around? Oh, >>They never turn anything off. They're like the anti Google, Google turns things off while they're still building it. Whereas Amazon is like, well, we built this thing in 2005 and everyone hates it, but while we certainly can't change it, now it has three customers on it. John three <laugh>. Okay. Simple BV still haunts our dreams. >>I, I actually got an email on, I saw one of my, uh, servers, all these C twos were being deprecated and I got an email I'm I couldn't figure out. Why can you just like roll it over? Why, why are you telling me? Just like, give me something else. All right. Okay. So let me talk about, uh, the other things I want to ask you, is that like, okay. So as Amazon better in some areas where do they need more work in your opinion? Because obviously they're all interested in new stuff and they tend to like put it out there for their end to end customers. But then they've got ecosystem partners who actually have the same product. Yes. And, and this has been well documented. So it's, it's not controversial. It's just that Amazon's got a database Snowflake's got out database service. So Redshift, snowflake data breach is out there. So you got this co-op petition. Yes. How's that going? And what do you hearing about the reaction to any of that stuff? >>Depends on who you ask. They love to basically trot out a bunch of their partners who will say nice things about them. And it very much has heirs of, let's be honest, a hostage video, but okay. Cuz these companies do partner with, and they cannot afford to rock the boat too far. I'm not partnered with anyone. I can say what I want. And they're basically restricted to taking away my birthday at worse so I can live with that. >>All right. So I gotta ask about multicloud. Cause obviously the other cloud shows are coming up. Amazon hated that word multicloud. Um, a lot of people though saying, you know, it's not a real good marketing word. Like multicloud sounds like, you know, root canal. Mm-hmm <affirmative> right. So is there a better description for multicloud? >>Multiple single >>Cloudant loves that term. Yeah. >>You know, you're building in multiple single points of failure, do it for the right reasons or don't do it as a default. I believe not doing it is probably the right answer. However, and if I were, if I were Amazon, I wouldn't want to talk about my multi-cloud either as the industry leader, let's talk about other clouds, bad direction to go in from a market cap perspective. It doesn't end well for you, but regardless of what they want to talk about, or don't want to talk about what they say, what they don't say, I tune all of it out. And I look at what customers are doing and multi-cloud exists in a variety of forms. Some brilliant, some brain dead. It depends a lot on, but my general response is when someone gets on stage from a company and tells me to do a thing that directly benefits their company. I am skeptical at best. Yeah. When customers get on stage and say, this is what we're doing because it solves problems. That's when I shut up and listen. >>Yeah, course. Awesome. Corey, I gotta ask you a question cause I know you we've been, you know, fellow journeyman and the, and the cloud journey going to all the events and then the pandemic hit. We now in the third year, who knows what it's gonna gonna end. Certainly events are gonna look different. They're gonna be either changing footprint with the virtual piece, new group formations. Community's gonna emerge. You've got a pretty big community growing and it's growing like crazy. What's the weirdest or coolest thing or just big changes you've seen with the pandemic, uh, from your perspective, cuz you've been in the you're in the middle of the whitewater rafting. You've seen the events you circle offline. You saw the online piece, come in, you're commentating, you're calling balls and strikes in the industry. You got a great team developing over there. Duck build group. What's the big aha moment that you saw with the pandemic. Weird, funny, serious, real in the industry and with customers what's >>Accessibility. Reinvent is a great example. When in the before times it's open to anyone who wants to attend, who can pony up two grand and a week in Las Vegas and get to Las Vegas from wherever they happen to be by moving virtually suddenly it, it embraces the reality that talent is evenly. Distributed. Opportunity is not. And that means that suddenly these things are accessible to a wide swath of audience and potential customer base and the rest that hadn't been invited to the table previously, it's imperative that we not lose that. It's nice to go out and talk to people and have people come up and try and smell my hair from time to time, I smelled delightful. Let me assure you. But it was, but it's also nice to be. >>I have a product for you if you want, you know? Oh, >>Oh excellent. I look forward to it. What is it? Pudding? Why not? <laugh> >>What else have you seen? So when accessibility for talent. Yes. Which by the way is totally home run. What weird things have happened that you've seen? Um, that's >>Uh, it's, it's weird, but it's good that an awful lot of people giving presentation have learned to tighten their message and get to the damn point because most people are not gonna get up from a front row seat in a conference hall, midway through your Aing talk and go somewhere else. But they will change a browser tab and you won't get them back. You've gotta be on point. You've gotta be compelling if it's going to be a virtual discussion. Yeah. >>And you turn off your iMessage too. >>Oh yes. It's always fun in the, in the meetings when you're ho to someone and their colleague is messaging them about, should we tell 'em about this? And I'm sitting there reading it and it's >>This guy is really weird. Like, >>Yes I am and I bring it into the conversation and then everyone's uncomfortable. It goes, wow. Why >>Not? I love when my wife yells at me over I message. When I'm on a business call, like, do you wanna take that about no, I'm good. >>No, no. It's better off. I don't the only entire sure. It's >>Fine. My kids text. Yeah, it's fine. Again, that's another weird thing. And, and then group behavior is weird. Now people are looking at, um, communities differently. Yes. Very much so, because if you're fatigued on content, people are looking for the personal aspect. You're starting to see much more of like yeah. Another virtual event. They gotta get better. One and two who's there. >>Yeah. >>The person >>That's a big part of it too is the human stories are what are being more and more interesting. Don't get up here and tell me about your product and how brilliant you are and how you built it. That's great. If I'm you, or if I wanna work with you or I want to compete with you or I want to put on my engineering hat and build it myself. Cause why would I buy anything? That's more than $8. But instead, tell me about the problem. Tell me about the painful spot that you specialize in. Yeah. Tell me a story there. >>I, I think >>That gets a glimpse in a hook and makes >>More, more, I think you nailed it. Scaling storytelling. Yes. And access to better people because they don't have to be there in person. I just did a thing. I never, we never would've done the queue. We did. Uh, Amazon stepped up in sponsors. Thank you, Amazon for sponsoring international women's day, we did 30 interviews, APAC. We did five regions and I interviewed this, these women in Asia, Pacific eight, PJ, they call for in this world. And they're amazing. I never would've done those interviews cuz I never, would've seen 'em at an event. I never would've been in pan or Singapore, uh, to access them. And now they're in the index, they're in the network. They're collaborating on LinkedIn. So a threads are developing around connections that I've never seen before. Yes. Around the content. >>Absolutely >>Content value plus and >>Effecting. And that is the next big revelation of this industry is going to realize you have different companies. And, and I Amazon's case different service teams all competing with each other, but you have the container group and you have the database group and you have the message cuing group. But customers don't really want to build things from spare parts. They want a solution to a problem. I want to build an app that does Twitter for pets or whatever it is I'm trying to do. I don't wanna basically have to pick and choose and fill my shopping cart with all these different things. I want something that's gonna basically give me what I'm trying to get as close to turnkey as possible. Moving up the stack. That is the future. And just how it gets here is gonna be >>Well we're here at Corey Quinn, the master of the master of content here in the a ecosystem. Of course we we've been following up from the beginning. His great guy, check out his blog, his site, his newsletter screaming podcast. Corey, final question for, uh, what are you here doing? What's on your agenda this week in San Francisco and give a plug for the duck build group. What are you guys doing? I know you're hiring some people what's on the table for the company. What's your focus this week and put a plug in for the group. >>I'm here as a customer and basically getting outta my cage cuz I do live here. It's nice to actually get out and talk to folks who are doing interesting things at the duck bill group. We solved one problem. We fixed the horrifying AWS bill, both from engineering and architecture, advising as well as negotiating AWS contracts because it turns out those things are big and complicated. And of course my side media projects last week in aws.com, we are, it it's more or less a content operation where I in my continual and ongoing love affair with the sound of my own voice. >><laugh> and you're good. It's good content it's on, on point fun, Starky and relevant. So thanks for coming to the cube and sharing with us. Appreciate it. No >>Thank you button. >>You. Okay. This the cube covers here in San Francisco, California, the cube is back going to events. These are the summits, Amazon web services summits. They happen all over the world. We'll be in New York and obviously we're here in San Francisco this week. I'm John fur. Keep, keep it right here. We'll be back with more coverage after this short break. Okay. Welcome back everyone. This's the cubes covers here in San Francisco, California, we're live on the show floor of AWS summit, 2022. I'm John for host of the cube and remember AWS summit in New York city coming up this summer, we'll be there as well. And of course reinvent the end of the year for all the cube coverage on cloud computing and AWS two great guests here from the APN global APN Sege chef Jenko and Jeff Grimes partner lead Jeff and Sege is doing partnerships global APN >>AWS global startup program. Yeah. >>Okay. Say that again. >>AWS. We'll start >>Program. That's the official name. >>I love >>It too long, too long for me. Thanks for coming on. Yeah, >>Of course. >>Appreciate it. Tell us about what's going on with you guys. What's the, how was you guys organized? You guys we're obviously we're in San Francisco bay area, Silicon valley, zillions of startups here, New York. It's got another one we're gonna be at tons of startups. A lot of 'em getting funded, big growth and cloud big growth and data secure hot in all sectors. >>Absolutely. >>So maybe, maybe we could just start with the global startup program. Um, it's essentially a white glove service that we provide to startups that are built on AWS. And the intention there is to help identify use cases that are being built on top of AWS. And for these startups, we want to pro vibe white glove support in co building products together. Right. Um, co-marketing and co-selling essentially, um, you know, the use cases that our customers need solved, um, that either they don't want to build themselves or are perhaps more innovative. Um, so the, a AWS global startup program provides white glove support. Dedicat at headcount for each one of those pillars. Um, and within our program, we've also provided incentives, programs go to market activities like the AWS startup showcase that we've built for these startups. >>Yeah. By the way, AWS startup, AWS startups.com is the URL, check it out. Okay. So partnerships are key. Jeff, what's your role? >>Yeah. So I'm responsible for leading the overall effort for the AWS global startup program. Um, so I've got a team of partner managers that are located throughout the us, uh, managing a few hundred startup ISVs right now. <laugh> >>Yeah, you got a >>Lot. We've got a lot. >>There's a lot. I gotta, I gotta ask a tough question. Okay. I'm I'm a startup founder. I got a team. I just got my series a we're grown. I'm trying to hire people. I'm super busy. What's in it for me. Yeah. What do you guys bring to the table? I love the white glove service, but translate that what's in it for what do I get out of it? What's >>A story. Good question. I focus, I think. Yeah, because we get, we get to see a lot of partners building their businesses on AWS. So, you know, from our perspective, helping these partners focus on what, what do we truly need to build by working backwards from customer feedback, right? How do we effectively go to market? Because we've seen startups do various things, um, through trial and error, um, and also just messaging, right? Because oftentimes partners or rather startups, um, try to boil the ocean with many different use cases. So we really help them, um, sort of laser focus on what are you really good at and how can we bring that to the customer as quickly as possible? >>Yeah. I mean, it's truly about helping that founder accelerate the growth of their company, right. And there's a lot that you can do with AWS, but focus is truly the key word there because they're gonna be able to find their little piece of real estate and absolutely deliver incredible outcomes for our customers. And then they can start their growth curve there. >>What are some of the coolest things you've seen with the APN that you can share publicly? I know you got a lot going on there, a lot of confidentiality. Um, but you know, we're here a lot of great partners on the floor here. I'm glad we're back at events. Uh, a lot of stuff going on digitally with virtual stuff and, and hybrid. What are some of the cool things you guys have seen in the APN that you can point to? >>Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I can point to few, you can take them. So, um, I think what's been fun over the years for me personally, I came from a startup brand sales at an early stage startup and, and I went through the whole thing. So I have a deep appreciation for what these guys are going through. And what's been interesting to see for me is taking some of these early stage guys, watching them progress, go public, get acquired and see that big day mm-hmm <affirmative>, uh, and being able to point to very specific items that we help them to get to that point. Uh, and it's just a really fun journey to watch. >>Yeah. I, and part of the reason why I really, um, love working at the AWS, uh, global startup program is working with passionate founders. Um, I just met with a founder today that it's gonna, he's gonna build a very big business one day, um, and watching them grow through these stages and supporting that growth. Um, I like to think of our program as a catalyst for enterprise is sort of scale. Yeah. Um, and through that we provide visibility, credibility and growth opportunities. >>Yeah. A lot, a lot of partners too. What I found talking to staff founders is when they have that milestone, they work so hard for it. Whether it's a B round C round Republic or get bought. Yeah. Um, then they take a deep breath and they look back at wow, what a journey it's been. So it's kind of emotional for sure. But still it's a grind. Right? You gotta, I mean, when you get funding, it's still day one. You don't stop. It's no celebrate, you got a big round or valuation. You still gotta execute >>And look it's hypercompetitive and it's brutally difficult. And our job is to try to make that a little less difficult and navigate those waters. Right. Where ever everyone's going after similar things. >>Yeah. And I think as a group element too, I observe that startups that I, I meet through the APN has been interesting because they feel part of AWS. Yeah, totally. As a group of community, as a vibe there. Um, I know they're hustling, they're trying to make things happen. But at the same time, Amazon throws a huge halo effect. I mean, that's a huge factor. I mean, you guys are the number one cloud in the business, the growth in every sector is booming. Yeah. And if you're a startup, you don't have that luxury yet. And look at companies like snowflake that built on top of AWS. I mean, people are winning by building on AWS. >>Yeah. And our, our, our program really validates their technology first. So we have, what's all the foundation's technical review that we put all of our startups through before we go to market. So that when enterprise customers are looking at startup technology, they know that it's already been vetted. And, um, to take that a step further and help these partners differentiate, we use programs like the competency programs, the DevOps competencies, the security competency, which continues to help, um, provide sort of a platform for these startups, help them differentiate. And also there's go to market benefits that are associated with that. >>Okay. So let me ask the, the question that's probably on everyone's mind, who's watching, certainly I asked this a lot. There's a lot of companies startups out there who makes the cut, is there a criteria cut? It's not like it's sports team or anything, but like sure. Like there's activate program, which is like, there's hundreds of thousands of startups out there. Not everyone is at the APN. Right? Correct. So ISVs again, that's a whole nother, that's a more mature partner that might have, you know, huge market cap or growth. How, how do you guys focus? How do you guys focus? I mean, you got a good question, you know, thousand flowers blooming all the time. Is there a new way you guys are looking at it? I know there's been some talk about restructure or, or new focus. What's the focus. >>Yeah. It's definitely not an easy task by any means. Um, but you know, I recently took over this role and we're really trying to establish focus areas, right. So obviously a lot of the ISVs that we look after are infrastructure ISVs. That's what we do. Uh, and so we have very specific pods that look after different type of partners. So we've got a security pod, we've got a DevOps pod, we've got core infrastructure, et cetera. And really, we're trying to find these ISVs that can solve, uh, really interesting AWS customer. >>You guys have a deliberate, uh, focus on these pillars. So what infrastructure, >>Security, DevOps, and data and analytics, and then line of business >>Line, business line business, like web >>Marketing, business apps, >>Owner type thing. Exactly. >>Yeah, exactly. >>So solutions there. Yeah. More solutions and the other ones are like hardcore. So infrastructure as well, like storage back up ransomware kind of stuff, or, >>Uh, storage, networking. >>Okay. Yeah. The classic >>Database, et cetera. Right. >>And so there's teams on each pillar. >>Yep. So I think what's, what's fascinating for the startups that we cover is that they've got, they truly have support from a build market sell perspective, right. So you've got someone who's technical to really help them get the technology, figured out someone to help them get the marketing message dialed and spread, and then someone to actually do the co-sell, uh, day to day activities to help them get in front of customers. >>Probably the number one request that we always ask for Amazon is can wish that sock report, oh, download it on the console, which we use all the time. <laugh> exactly. But security's a big deal. I mean, you know, ask the res are evolving, that role of DevOps is taking on dev SecOps. Um, I, I can see a lot of customers having that need for a relationship to move things faster. Do you guys provide like escalation or is that a part of a service or that not part of, uh, uh, >>Yeah, >>So the partner development manager can be an escalation for absolutely. Think of that. 'em as an extension of your business inside of AWS. >>Great. And you guys, how is that partner managers, uh, measure >>On those three pillars? Right. Got it. Are we billing, building valuable use cases? So product development go to market, so go to market activities, think blog, posts, webinars, case studies, so on and so forth. And then co-sell not only are we helping these partners win their current opportunities that they are sourcing, but can we also help them source net new deals? Yeah. Right. That's very, >>I mean, top asked from the partners is get me in front of customers. Right. Um, not an easy task, but that's a huge goal of ours to help them grow their top line. >>Right. Yeah. In fact, we had some interviews here on the cube earlier talking about that dynamic of how enterprise customers are buying. And it's interesting, a lot more POCs. I have one partner here that you guys work with, um, on observability, they got a huge POC with capital one mm-hmm <affirmative> and the enterprises are engaging the star ups and bringing them in. So the combination of open source software enterprises are leaning into that hard and bringing young growing startups in mm-hmm <affirmative>. Yep. So I could see that as a huge service that you guys can bring people in. >>Right. And they're bringing massively differentiated technology to the table. The challenge is they just might not have the brand recognition. The, at the big guys have mm-hmm <affirmative>. And so that's, our job is how do you get that great tech in front of the right situations? >>Okay. So my next question is about the show here, and then we'll talk globally. So here in San Francisco sure. You know, Silicon valley bay area, San Francisco bay area, a lot of startups, a lot of VCs, a lot of action. Mm-hmm <affirmative> so probably a big market for you guys. Yeah. So what's exciting here in SF. And then outside of SF, you guys have a global pro, have you see any trends that are geography based or is it sure areas more mature? There's certain regions that are better. I mean, I just interviewed a company here. That's doing, uh, a AWS edge really well in these cases. It's interesting that these, the partners are filling a lot of holes and gaps in the opportunities with a AWS. So what's exciting here. And then what's the global perspective. >>Yeah, totally. So obviously see a ton of partners from the bay area that we support. Um, but we're seeing a lot of really interesting technology come out of AMEA specifically. Yeah. Uh, and making a lot of noise here in the United States, which is great. Um, and so, you know, we definitely have that global presence and, and starting to see super differentiated technology come out of those regions. >>Yeah. Especially Tel Aviv. Yeah. >>Amy and real quick before you get into surge. It's interesting. The VC market in, in Europe is hot. They've got a lot of unicorns coming in. We've seen a lot of companies coming in. They're kind of rattling their own, you know, cage right now. Hey, look at us. Let's see if they crash, you know, but we don't see that happening. I mean, people have been predicting a crash now in, in the startup ecosystem for least a year. It's not crashing. In fact, funding's up. >>Yeah. The pandemic was hard on a lot of startups for sure. Yeah. Um, but what we've seen is many of these startups, they, as quickly as they can grow, they can also pivot as, as, as well. Um, and so I've actually seen many of our startups grow through the demo because their use cases are helping customers either save money, become more operationally efficient and provide value to leadership teams that need more visibility into their infrastructure during a pandemic. >>It's an interesting point. I talked to Andy jazzy and Adam Celski both say the same thing during the pandemic. Necessity's the mother of all invention. Yep. And startups can move fast. So with that, you guys are there to assist if I'm a startup and I gotta pivot cuz remember iterate and pivot, iterate and pivot. So you get your economics, that's the playbook of the ventures and the models. >>Exactly. How >>Do you guys help me do that? Give me an example of what me through. Pretend me, I'm a start up. Hey, I'm on the cloud. Oh my God. Pandemic. They need video conferencing. Hey cube. Yeah. What do I need? Search? What, what do >>I do? That's a good question. First thing is just listen. Yeah. I think what we have to do is a really good job of listening to the partner. Um, what are their needs? What is their problem statement? Where do they want to go at the end of the day? Um, and oftentimes because we've worked with, so how many successful startups that have come out of our program, we have, um, either through intuition or a playbook determined what is gonna be the best path forward and how do we get these partners to stop focusing on things that will eventually, um, just be a waste of time. Yeah. And, or not provide, or, you know, bring any fruit to the table, which, you know, essentially revenue. >>Well, we love startups here in the cube because one, um, they have good stories, they're oil and cutting edge, always pushing the envelope and they're kind of disrupting someone else. Yeah. And so they, they have an opinion. They don't mind sharing on camera. So love talking to startups. We love working with you guys on our startups. Showcases startups.com. Check out AWS startups.com and she got the showcase. So is, uh, final word. I'll give you guys the last word. What's the bottom line bumper sticker for AP globe. The global APN program summarize the opportunity for startups, what you guys bring to the table and we'll close it out. Totally. We'll start >>With you. Yeah. I think the AWS global startup programs here to help companies truly accelerate their business full stop. Right. And that's what we're here for. Love it. >>It's a good way to, it's a good way to put it. Dato yeah. >>All right. Thanks for coming out. Thanks John. Great to see you love working with you guys. Hey, startups need help. And the growing and huge market opportunities, the shift cloud scale data engineering, security infrastructure, all the markets are exploding in growth because of the digital transformation of realities here, open source and cloud. I'll making it happen here in the cube in San Francisco, California. I'm John furrier, your host. Thanks for >>Watching Cisco, John. >>Hello and welcome back to the Cube's live coverage here in San Francisco, California for AWS summit, 2022. I'm John for host of the cube. Uh, two days of coverage, AWS summit, 2022 in New York city coming up this summer will be there as well. Events are back. The cube is back of course, with the cube virtual cube hybrid, the cube.net. Check it out a lot of content this year more than ever a lot more cloud data cloud native, modern applic is all happening. Got a great guest here. Jeremy Burton, Cub alumni, uh, CEO of observe Inc in the middle of all the cloud scale, big data observability, Jeremy. Great to see you. Thanks. >>Coming on. Always great to come and talk to you on the queue, man. It's been been a few years, so, >>Um, well you, you got your hands. You're in the trenches with great startup, uh, good funding, great board, great people involved in the observability Smith hot area, but also you've been a senior executive president of Dell EMC. Um, 11 years ago you had a vision and you actually had an event called cloud meets big data. Um, yeah. And it's here, you predicted it 11 years ago. Um, look around it's cloud meets big data. >>Yeah. I mean the, the cloud thing I think, you know, was, was probably already a thing, but the big data thing I do claim credit for, for sort of catching that bus early, um, you know, we, we were on the, the, the bus early and, and I think it was only inevitable. Like, you know, if you could bring the economics and the compute of cloud to big data, you, you could find out things you could never possibly imagine. >>So you're close to a lot of companies that we've been covering deeply snowflake, obviously you involved, uh, at the board level, the other found, you know, the people there, uh, cloud, you know, Amazon, you know, what's going on here? Yeah. You're doing a startup as the CEO at the helm, uh, chief of observ, Inc, which is an observability, which is to me in the center of this confluence of data engineering, large scale integrations, um, data as code integrating into applications. I mean, it's a whole nother world developing, like you see with snowflake, it means snowflakes is super cloud as we call it. So a whole nother wave is here. What's your, what's this wave we're on what's how would you describe the wave? >>Well, a couple of things, I mean, people are, I think right in more software than, than ever before are why? Because they've realized that if, if you don't take your business online and offer a service, then you become largely irrelevant. And so you you've got a whole set of new applications. I think, I think more applications now than any point. Um, not, not just ever, but the mid nineties, I always looked at as the golden age of application development. Now, back then people were building for windows. Well, well now they're building for things like AWS is now the platform. Um, so you've got all of that going on. And then at the same time, the, the side effect of these applications is they generate data and lots of data. And the, you know, there's sort of the transactions, you know, what you bought today are something like that. But then there's what we do, which is all the telemetry, all the exhaust fumes. And I think people really are realizing that their differentiation is not so much their application. It's their understanding of the data. Can, can I understand who my best customers are, what I sell today. If people came to my website and didn't buy, then why not? Where did they drop off all of that? They wanna analyze. And, and the answers are all in the data. The question is, can you understand it >>In our last startup showcase, we featured data as code one of the insights that we got out of that, and I wanna get your opinion on our reaction to is, is that data used to be put into a data lake and turns into a data swamp or throw into the data warehouse. And then we'll do some queries, maybe a report once in a while. And so data, once it was done, unless it was real time, even real time was not good anymore after real time. That was the old way. Now you're seeing more and more, uh, effort to say, let's go look at the data, cuz now machine learning is getting better. Not just train once mm-hmm <affirmative> they're iterating. Yeah. This notion of iterating and then pivoting, iterating and pivoting. Yeah, that's a Silicon valley story. That's like how startups work, but now you're seeing data being treated the same way. So now you have another, this data concept that's now yeah. Part of a new way to create more value for the apps. So this whole, this whole new cycle of >>Yeah. >>Data being reused and repurposed and figured out and yeah, >>Yeah. I'm a big fan of, um, years ago. Uh, uh, just an amazing guy, Andy McAfee at the MIT C cell labs I spent time with and he, he had this line, which still sticks to me this day, which is look I'm I'm. He said I'm part of a body, which believes that everything is a matter of data. Like if you have enough data, you can answer any question. And, and this is going back 10 years when he was saying these kind of things and, and certainly, you know, research is on the forefront. But I think, you know, starting to see that mindset of the, the sort of MIT research be mainstream, you know, in enterprises, they they're realizing that. Yeah, it is about the data. You know, if I can better understand my data better than my competitor, then I've got an advantage. And so the question is is, is how, what, what technologies and what skills do I need in my organization to, to allow me to do that. >>So let's talk about observing you the CEO of, okay. Given you've seen the ways before you're in the front lines of observability, which again is in the center of all this action what's going on with the company. Give a quick minute to explain, observe for the folks who don't know what you guys do. What's the company doing? What's the funding status, what's the product status and what's the customer status. Yeah. >>So, um, we realized, you know, a handful of years ago, let's say five years ago that, um, look, the way people are building applications is different. They they're way more functional. They change every day. Uh, but in some respects they're a lot more complicated. They're distributed. They, you know, microservices architectures and when something goes wrong, um, the old way of troubleshooting and solving problems was not gonna fly because you had SA so much change going into production on a daily basis. It was hard to tell like where the problem was. And so we thought, okay, it's about time. Somebody looks at the exhaust fumes from this application and all the telemetry data and helps people troubleshoot and make sense of the problems that they're seeing. So, I mean, that's observability, it's actually a term that goes back to the 1960s. It was a guy called, uh, Rudolph like, like everything in tech, you know, it's, it's a reinvention of something from years gone by. >>Um, there's a guy called, um, Rudy Coleman in 1960s coiner term and, and, and the term was being able to determine the state of a system by looking at its external outputs. And so we've been going on this for, uh, the best part of four years now. Um, it took us three years just to build the product. I think, I think what people don't appreciate these days often is the barrier to entry in a lot of these markets is quite high. You, you need a lot of functionality to have something that's credible with a customer. Um, so yeah, this last year we, we, we did our first year selling, uh, we've got about 40 customers now. Um, we just we've got great investors for the hill ventures. Uh, I mean, Mike SP who was, you know, the, the guy who was the, really, the first guy in it snowflake and the, the initial investor were fortunate enough to, to have Mike and our board. And, um, you know, part of the observed story is closely knit with snowflake all of that time with your data, you know, we, we store in there. >>So I want to get, uh, yeah. Pivot to that. Mike SP snowflake, Jeremy Burton, the cube kind of, kind of same thinking this idea of a super cloud or what snowflake became. Yeah. Snowflake is massively successful on top of AWS. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and now you're seeing startups and companies build on top of snowflake. Yeah. So that's become an entrepreneurial story that we think that to go big in the cloud, you can have a cloud on a cloud, uh, like as Jerry, Jerry Chan and Greylock calls it, castles in the cloud where there are moats in the cloud. So you're close to it. I know you, you're doing some stuff with snowflake. So as a startup, what's your view on building on top of say a snowflake or an AWS, because again, you gotta go where the data is. You need all the data. >>Yeah. So >>What's your take on that? I mean, >>Having enough gray hair now, um, you know, again, in tech, I think if you wanna predict the future, look at the past. And, uh, you know, 20 years ago, 25 years ago, I was at a, a smaller company called Oracle and an Oracle was the database company. And, uh, their, their ambition was to manage all of the world's transactional data. And they built on a platform or a couple of platforms, one, one windows, and the other main one was Solaris. And so at that time, the operating system was the platform. And, and then that was the, you know, ecosystem that you would compete on top of. And then there were companies like SAP that built applications on top of Oracle. So then wind the clock forward 25 years gray hairs. <laugh> the platform, isn't the operating system anymore. The platform is AWS, you know, Google cloud. I gotta probably look around if I say that in. Yeah, >>It's okay. Columbia, but hyperscale. Yeah. CapX built out >>That is the new platform. And then snowflake comes along. Well, their aspiration is to manage all of the, not just human generated data, but machine generated data in the world of cloud. And I think they they've done an amazing job are doing for the, I'd say, say the, the big data world, what Oracle did for the relational data world, you know, way back 25 years ago. And then there are folks like us come along and, and of course my ambition would be, look, if, if we can be as successful as an SAP building on top of snowflake, uh, as, as they were on top of Oracle, then, then we'd probably be quite happy, >>Happy. So you're building on top of snowflake, >>We're building on top of snowflake a hundred percent. And, um, you know, I've had folks say to me, well, aren't you worried about that? Isn't that a risk? It's like, well, that that's a risk. You're >>Still on the board. >>Yeah. I'm still on the board. Yeah. That's a risk I'm prepared to take. I am more on snowing. >>It sounds well, you're in a good spot. Stay on the board, then you'll know what's going on. Okay. No, yeah. Serious one. But the, this is a real dynamic. It is. It's not a one off its >>Well, and I do believe as well that the platform that you see now with AWS, if you look at the revenues of AWS is in order of magnitude, more than Microsoft was 25 years ago with windows mm-hmm <affirmative>. And so I've believe the opportunity for folks like snowflake and, and folks like observe it. It's an order of magnitude more than it was for the Oracle and the SAPs of the old world. >>Yeah. And I think this is really, I think this is something that this next generation of entrepreneurship is the go big scenario is you gotta be on a platform. Yeah. >>It's quite easy >>Or be the platform, but it's hard. There's only like how seats were at that table left >>Well value migrates up over time. So, you know, when the cloud thing got going, there were probably 10, 20, 30, you know, rack space and there's 1,000,001 infrastructure, a service platform as a service. My, my old, uh, um, employee EMC, we had pivotal, you know, pivotal was a platform as a service. Don't hear so much about it these days, but initially there's a lot of players and then it consolidates. And then to, to like extract, uh, a real business, you gotta move up, you gotta add value, you gotta build databases, then you gotta build applications. So >>It's interesting. Moving from the data center of the cloud was a dream for starters within if the provision, the CapEx. Yeah. Now the CapEx is in the cloud. Then you build on, on top of that, you got snowflake. Now you got on top of that. >>The assumption is almost that compute and storage is free. I know it's not quite free. Yeah. It's almost free, but you can, you know, as an application vendor, you think, well, what can I do if I assume compute and storage is free, that's the mindset you've gotta get >>Into. And I think the platform enablement to value. So if I'm an entrepreneur, I'm gonna get a series us multiple of value in what I'm paying. Yeah. Most people don't even blanket their Avis pills unless they're like massively huge. Yeah. Then it's a repatriation question or whatever discount question, but for most startups or any growing company, the Amazon bill should be a small factor. >>Yeah. I mean, a lot of people, um, ask me, uh, like, look you build in on snowflake. Um, you, you know, you, you, you're gonna be, you're gonna be paying their money. How, how, how, how does that work with your business model? If you're paying their money, you know, do, do you have a viable business? And it's like, well, okay. I, we could build a database as well and observe, but then I've got half the development team working on something that will never be as good as snowflake. And so we made the call early on that. No, no, we, we want a eight above the database. Yeah. Right. Snowflake are doing a great job of innovating on the database and, and the same is true of something like Amazon, like, like snowflake could have built their own cloud and their own platform, but they didn't. >>Yeah. And what's interesting is that Dave <inaudible> and I have been pointing this out and he's obviously a more on snowflake. I've been looking at data bricks, um, and the same dynamics happening, the proof is the ecosystem. Yeah. I mean, if you look at Snowflake's ecosystem right now and data bricks it's exploding. Right. I mean, the shows are selling out the floor. Space's book. That's the old days at VMware. Yeah. The old days at AWS. >>Well, and for snowflake and, and any platform from VI, it's a beautiful thing because, you know, we build on snowflake and we pay them money. They don't have to sell to us. Right. And we do a lot of the support. And so the, the economics work out really, really well. If you're a platform provider and you've got a lot of >>Ecosystems. Yeah. And then also you get, you get a, um, a trajectory of, uh, economies of scale with the institutional knowledge of snowflake integrations, right. New product, you're scaling a step function with them. >>Yeah. I mean, we manage 10 petabytes of data right now. Right. When I, when I, when I arrived at EMC in 2010, we had, we had one petabyte customer. And, and so at observe, we've been only selling the product for a year. We have 10 petabytes of data under management. And so been able to rely on a platform that can manage that is inve >>You know, well, Jeremy great conversation. Thanks for sharing your insights on the industry. Uh, we got a couple minutes left, um, put a plug in for observe. What do you guys know? You got some good funding, great partners. I don't know if you can talk about your, your, your POC customers, but you got a lot of high ends folks that are working with you. You getting in traction. >>Yeah. Yeah. Scales >>Around the corner. Sounds like, are you, is that where you are scale? >>We've got a big that that's when coming up in two or three weeks, we've got, we've got new funding, um, which is always great. Um, the product is, uh, really, really close. I think, as a startup, you always strive for market fit, you know, which is at which point can you just start hiring salespeople? And the revenue keeps going. We're getting pretty close to that right now. Um, we've got about 40 SaaS companies that run on the platform. They're almost all AWS Kubernetes, uh, which is our sweet spot to begin with, but we're starting to get some really interesting, um, enterprise type customers. We're, we're, you know, F five networks we're POC in right now with capital one, we got some interest in news around capital one coming up. I, I can't share too much, but it's gonna be exciting. And, and like I said, so hill continue to, to, >>I think capital one's a big snowflake customer as well. Right. >>They were early in one of the things that attracted me to capital one was they were very, very good with snowflake early on. And, and they put snowflake in a position in the bank where they thought that snowflake could be successful. And, and today that, that is one of Snowflake's biggest accounts, >>Capital, one, very innovative cloud, obviously Atos customer, and very innovative, certainly in the CISO and CIO, um, on another point on where you're at. So you're, Prescale meaning you're about to scale, >>Right? >>So you got POCs, what's that trajectory look like? Can you see around the corner? What's, what's going on? What's on, around the corner. That you're, that you're gonna hit this straight and narrow and, and gas it fast. >>Yeah. I mean, the, the, the, the key thing for us is we gotta get the product. Right. Um, the nice thing about having a guy like Mike Pfizer on the board is he doesn't obsess about revenue at this stage. His questions that the board are always about, like is the product, right? Is the product right? Is the product right? Have you got the product right? And cuz we know when the product's right, we can then scale the sales team and, and the revenue will take care of itself. Yeah. So right now all the attention is on the product. Um, the, this year, the exciting thing is we we're, we're adding all the tracing visualizations. So people will be able to the kind of things that by in the day you could do with the new relics and AppDynamics, the last generation of, of APM tools, you're gonna be able to do that within observe. And we've already got the logs and the metrics capability in there. So for us this year is a big one, cuz we sort of complete the trifecta, you know, the, the >>Logs, what's the secret sauce observe. What if you had the, put it into a, a, a sentence what's the secret sauce? >>I, I, I think, you know, an amazing founding engineering team, uh, number one, I mean, at the end of the day, you have to build an amazing product and you have to solve a problem in a different way. And we've got great long term investors and, and the biggest thing our investors give is it actually, it's not just money. It gives us time to get the product, right. Because if we get the product right, then we can get the growth. >>Got it. Final question. While I got you here, you've been on the enterprise business for a long time. What's the buyer landscape out there. You got people doing POCs on capital one scale. So we know that goes on. What's the appetite at the buyer side for startups and what are their requirements that you're seeing? Uh, obviously we're seeing people go in and dip into the startup pool because new ways to refactor their, this restructure. So, so a lot of happening in cloud, what's the criteria. How are enterprises engaging in with startups? >>Yeah. I mean, enterprises, they know they've gotta spend money transforming the business. I mean, this was, I almost feel like my old Dell or EMC self there, but, um, what, what we were saying five years ago is happening. Um, everybody needs to figure out a way to take their business to this digital world. Everybody has to do it. So the nice thing from a startup standpoint is they know at times they need to risk or, or take a bet on new technology in order to, to help them do that. So I think you've got buyers that a have money, uh, B it prepared to take risks and it's, it's a race against time to you'll get their, their offerings in this, a new digital footprint. >>Final, final question. What's the state of AWS. Where do you see them going next? Obviously they're continuing to be successful. How does cloud 3.0, or they always say it's day one, but it's more like day 10, but what's next for Aw. Where do they go from here? Obviously they're doing well. They're getting bigger and bigger. Yeah, >>Better. It's an amazing story. I mean, you know, we're, we're on AWS as well. And so I, I think if they keep nurturing the builders and the ecosystem, then that is their superpower. They, they have an early leads. And if you look at where, you know, maybe the likes of Microsoft lost the plot in the, in the late nineties, it was, they stopped, uh, really caring about developers in the folks who were building on top of their ecosystem. In fact, they started buying up their ecosystem and competing with people in their ecosystem. And I see with AWS, they, they have an amazing headstart and if they did more, you know, if they do more than that, that's, what's gonna keep this juggernaut rolling for many years to come. >>Yeah. They got the Silicon and got the stack. They're developing Jeremy Burton inside the cube, great resource for commentary, but also founding with the CEO of a company called observing in the middle of all the action on the board of snowflake as well. Um, great startup. Thanks for coming on the cube. Always a pleasure. Okay. Live from San Francisco. It's to cube. I'm John for your host. Stay with us more coverage from San Francisco, California after the short break. >>Hello. Welcome back to the cubes coverage here live in San Francisco, California. I'm John furrier, host of the cubes cube coverage of AWS summit 2022 here in San Francisco. We're all the developers are the bay air at Silicon valley. And of course, AWS summit in New York city is coming up in the summer. We'll be there as well. SF and NYC cube coverage. Look for us. Of course, reinforcing Boston and re Mars with the whole robotics, AI. They all coming together. Lots of coverage stay with us today. We've got a great guest from Bel VC. John founding partner, entrepreneurial venture is a venture firm. Your next act, welcome to the cube. Good to see you. >>Good to see you, man. I feel like it's been forever since we've been able to do something in person. Well, >>I'm glad you're here because we run into each other all the time. We've known each other for over decade. Um, >>It's been at least 10 years, >>At least 10 years more. And we don't wanna actually go back as bring back the old school web 1.0 days. But anyway, we're in web three now. So we'll get to that in a second. We, >>We are, it's a little bit of a throwback to the path though, in my opinion, >>It's all the same. It's all distributed computing and software. We ran each other in cube con. You're investing in a lot of tech startup founders. Okay. This next level, next gen entrepreneurs have a new makeup and it's software. It's hardcore tech in some cases, not hardcore tech, but using software to take an old something old and make it better new, faster. So tell us about Bel what's the firm. I know you're the founder, uh, which is cool. What's going on. Explain >>What you, I mean, you remember I'm a recovering entrepreneur, right? So of course I, I, >>No, you're never recovering. You're always entrepreneur >>Always, but we are also always recovering. So I, um, started my first company when I was 24. If you remember, before there was Facebook and friends, there was instant messaging. People were using that product at work every day, they were creating a security vulnerability between their network and the outside world. So I plugged that hole and built an instant messaging firewall. It was my first company. The company was called IM logic and we were required by Symantec. Uh, then spent 12 years investing in the next generation of software companies, uh, early investor in open source companies and cloud companies and spent a really wonderful years, uh, at a firm called NEA. So I, I feel like my whole life I've been either starting enterprise software companies or helping founders start enterprise software companies. And I'll tell you, there's never been a better time than right now to start an enterprise software company. >>So, uh, the passion for starting a new firm was really a recognition that founders today that are starting an enterprise software company, they, they tend to be, as you said, a more technical founder, right? Usually it's a software engineer or a builder mm-hmm <affirmative>, uh, they are building that are serving a slightly different market than what we've traditionally seen in enterprise software. Right? I think traditionally we've seen it buyers or CIOs that have agendas and strategies, which, you know, purchase software that is traditionally bought and sold tops down. But you know, today I think the most successful enterprise software companies are the ones that are built more bottoms up and have more technical early adopters. And generally speaking, they're free to use. They're free to try. They're very commonly community source or open source companies where you have a large technical community that's supporting them. So there's a, there's kind of a new normal now I think in great enterprise software. And it starts with great technical founders with great products and great bottoms of motions. And I think there's no better place to, uh, service those people than in the cloud and uh, in, in your community. >>Well, first of all, congratulations, and by the way, you got a great pedigree and great background. You're super smart admire of your work and your, and, and your founding, but let's face it. Enterprise is hot because digital transformation is, is all companies there's no, I mean, consumer is enterprise now. Everything is what was once a niche, not, I won't say niche category, but you know, not for the faint of heart, you know, investors, >>You know, it's so funny that you say that enterprise is hot because you, and I feel that way now. But remember, like right now, there's also a giant tech in VC conference in Miami <laugh> and it's covering cryptocurrencies and FCS and web three. So I think beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder <laugh> but no, I, I will tell you, well, >>MFTs is one big enterprise, cuz you gotta have imutability you got performance issues. You have, I IOPS issues. >>Well, and, and I think all of us here that are of may, maybe students of his stream have been involved in open source in the cloud would say that we're, you know, much of what we're doing is, uh, the predecessors of the web web three movement. And many of us I think are contributors to the web three >>Movement. The hype is definitely web >>Three. Yeah. But, >>But you know, >>For sure. Yeah, no, but now you're taking us further east to Miami. So, uh, you know, look, I think, I, I think, um, what is unquestioned with the case and maybe it's, it's more obvious the more time you spend in this world is this is the fastest growing part of enterprise software. And if you include cloud infrastructure and cloud infrastructure spend, you know, it is by many measures over, uh, $500 billion in growing, you know, 20 to 30 a year. So it it's a, it's a just incredibly fast >>Let's getting, let's get into some of the cultural and the, the shifts that are happening, cuz again, you, you have the luxury of being in enterprise when it was hard, it's getting easier and more cooler. I get it and more relevant <laugh> but there's also the hype of like the web three, for instance, but you know, for, uh, um, um, the CEO snowflake, okay. Has wrote a book and Dave Valenti and I were talking about it and uh, Frank Lutman has says, there's no playbooks. We always ask the CEOs, what's your playbook. And he's like, there's no playbook, situational awareness, always Trump's playbooks. So in the enterprise playbook, oh, hire a direct sales force and sass kind of crushed that now SAS is being redefined, right. So what is SAS? Is snowflake a SAS or is that a platform? So again, new unit economics are emerging, whole new situation, you got web three. So to me there's a cultural shift, the young entrepreneurs, the, uh, user experience, they look at Facebook and say, ah, you know, and they own all my data. And you know, we know that that cliche, um, they, you know, the product. So as this next gen, the gen Z and the millennials come in and our customers and the founders, they're looking at things a little bit differently and the tech better. >>Yeah. I mean, I mean, I think we can, we can see a lot of commonalities across all six of startups and the overall adoption of technology. Uh, and, and I would tell you, this is all one big giant revolution. I call it the user driven revolution. Right. It's the rise of the user. Yeah. And you might say product like growth is currently the hottest trend in enterprise software. It's actually user like growth, right. They're one in the same. So sometimes people think the product, uh, is what is driving. >>You just pull the product >>Through. Exactly, exactly. And so that's that I, that I think is really this revolution that you see, and, and it does extend into things like cryptocurrencies and web three and, you know, sort of like the control that is taken back by the user. Um, but you know, many would say that, that the origins of this movement may be started with open source where users were contributors, you know, contributors were users and looking back decades and seeing how it, how it fast forward to today. I think that's really the trend that we're all writing and it's enabling these end users. And these end users in our world are developers, data engineers, cybersecurity practitioners, right. They're really the users. And they're really the, the offic and the most, you know, kind of valued people in >>This. I wanna come back to the data engineers in a second, but I wanna make a comment and get your reaction to, I have a, I'm a gen Xer technically. So for not a boomer, but I have some boomer friends who are a little bit older than me who have, you know, experienced the sixties. And I've, I've been saying on the cube for probably about eight years now that we are gonna hit a digital hippie Revolut, meaning a rebellion against in the sixties was rebellion against the fifties and the man and, you know, summer of love. That was a cultural differentiation from the other one of group, the predecessors. So we're kind of having that digital moment now where it's like, Hey boomers, Hey people, we're not gonna do that anymore. We hate how you organize shit. >>Right. But isn't this just technology. I mean, isn't it, isn't it like there used to be the old adage, like, you know, you would never get fired for buying IBM, but now it's like, you obviously probably would get fired if you bought IBM. And I mean, it's just like the, the, I think, I think >>During the mainframe days, those renegades were breaking into Stanford, starting the home brew club. So what I'm trying to get at is that, do you see the young cultural revolution also, culturally, just, this is my identity NFTs to me speak volumes about my, I wanna associate with NFTs, not single sign on like, well, >>Absolutely. And, and I think like, I think you're hitting on something, which is like this convergence of, of, you know, societal trends with technology trends and how that manifests in our world is yes. I think like there is unquestionably almost a religion around the way in which a product is built. Right. And we can use open source. One example of that religion. Some people say, look, I'll just never try a product in the cloud if it's not open source. Yeah. I think cloud, native's another example of that, right? It's either it's, you know, it either is cloud native or it's not. And I think a lot of people will look at a product and say, look, you know, you were not designed in the cloud era. Therefore I just won't try you. And sometimes, um, like it or not, it's a religious decision, right? It's, it's something that people just believe to be true almost without, uh, necessarily. I mean, >>The data drives all decision making. Let me ask you this next question. As a VC. Now you look at pitch, well, you've been a VC for many years, but you also have the founder entrepreneurial mindset, but you can empathize with the founders. You know, hustle is a big part of the, that first founder check, right? You gotta convince someone to part with their ch their money and the first money in which you do a lot of is about believing in the first. So faking it till you make it is hard. Now you, the data's there, you either have it cloud native, you either have the adaption or traction. So honesty is a big part of that pitch. You can't fake it. Oh, >>AB absolutely. You know, there used to be this concept of like the persona of an entrepreneur, right. And the persona of the entrepreneur would be, you know, somebody who was a great salesperson or somebody who tell a great story. And I still think that that's important, right. It still is a human need for people to believe in narratives and stories. Yeah. But having said that you're right. The proof is in the pudding, right. At some point you click download and you try the product and it does what it says it's gonna, it's gonna do, or it doesn't, or it either stands up to the load test or it doesn't. And so I, I feel like in this new economy, that're, we live in really, it's a shift from maybe the storytellers and the creators to, to the builders, right. The people that know how to build great product. And in some ways the people that can build great product yeah. Stand out from the crowd. And they're the ones that can build communities around their products. And, you know, in some ways can, um, you know, kind of own more of the narrative because their product begin for exactly >>The volume you back to the user led growth. >>Exactly. And it's the religion of, I just love your product. Right. And I, I, I, um, Doug song is the founder of du security used to say, Hey, like, you know, the, the really like in today's world of like consumption based software, like the user is only gonna give you 90 seconds to figure out whether or not you're a company that's easy to do business with for right. And so you can say, and do all the things that you want about how easy you are to work with. But if the product isn't easy to install, if it's not easy to try, if it's not, if, if the it's gotta speak to the, >>Exactly. Speak to the user. But let me ask a question now that for the people watching, who are maybe entrepreneurial entre entrepreneurs, um, masterclass here is in session. So I have to ask you, do you prefer, um, an entrepreneur to come in and say, look at John. Here's where I'm at. Okay. First of all, storytelling's fine. Whether you're an extrovert or introvert, have your style, sell the story in a way that's authentic, but do you, what do you prefer to say? Here's where I'm at? Look, I have an idea. Here's my traction. I think here's my MVP prototype. I need help. Or do you wanna just see more stats? What's the, what's the preferred way that you like to see entrepreneurs come in and engage? >>There's tons of different styles, man. I think the single most important thing that every founder should know is that we, we don't invest in what things are today. We invest in what we think will become, right. And I think that's why we all get up in the morning and try to build something different, right? It's that we see the world a different way. We want it to be a different way, and we wanna work every single moment of the day to try to make that vision a reality. So I think the more that you can show people where you want to be, the more likely somebody is gonna to align with your vision and, and want to invest in you and wanna be along for the ride. So I, I wholeheartedly believe in showing off what you got today, because eventually we all get down to like, where are we and what are we gonna do together? But, um, no, I, you gotta show the path. I think the single most important thing for any founder and VC relationship is that they have the same vision. Uh, if you have the same vision, you can, you can get through bumps in the road, you can get through short term spills. You can all sorts of things in the middle of the journey can happen. Yeah. But it doesn't matter as much if you share the same long term vision, >>Don't flake out and, and be fashionable with the, the latest trends because it's over before you even get there. >>Exactly. I think many people that, that do what we do for a living will say, you know, ultimately the future is relatively easy to predict, but it's the timing that's impossible to predict. So you, you know, you sort of have to balance the, you know, we, we know that the world is going this way and therefore we're gonna invest a lot of money to try to make this a reality. Uh, but sometimes it happens ins six months. Sometimes it takes six years. Sometimes it takes 16 years. Uh, >>What's the hottest thing in enterprise that you see the biggest wave that people should pay attention to that you're looking at right now with Tebel partners, Tebel dot your site. What's the big wave. What's your big >>Wave. There there's three big trends that we invest in. And then the, the only things we do day in day out one is the explosion at open source software. So I think many people think that all software is unquestionably moving to an open source model in some form or another yeah. Tons of reasons to debate whether or not that is gonna happen an alwa timeline happening forever, but it is, it is accelerating faster than we've ever seen. So I, I think it's its one big mass of wave that we continue to ride. Um, second is the rise of data engineering. Uh, I think data engineering is in and of itself now a category of software. It's not just that we store data. It's now we move data and we develop applications on data. And, uh, I think data is in and of itself as big of a market as any of the other markets that we invest in. Uh, and finally it's the gift that keeps on giving. I've spent my entire career in it. We still feel that security is a market that is underinvested. It is, it continues to be the place where people need to continue to invest and spend more money. Yeah. Uh, and those are the three major trends that we run >>And security, you think we all need a do over, right? I mean, do we need a do over in security or is what's the core problem? I, >>I, I keep using this word underinvested because I think it's the right way to think about the problem. I think if you, I think people generally speaking, look at cyber security as an add-on. Yeah. But if you think about it, the whole like economy is moving online. And so in, in some ways like security is core to protecting the digital economy. And so it's, it shouldn't be an afterthought, right? It should be core to what everyone is doing. And that's why I think relative to the trillions of dollars that are at stake, uh, I believe the market size for cybersecurity is around 150 billion and it still is a fraction of what >>We're, what we're and even boom is booming now. So you get the convergence of national security, geopolitics, internet digital >>That's right. You mean arguably, right. Arguably again, it's the area of the world that people should be spending more time and more money given what to stake. >>I love your thesis. I gotta, I gotta say you gotta love your firm. Love who you're doing. We're big supporters of your mission. Congrat is on your entrepreneurial venture. And uh, we'll be, we'll be talking and maybe see a Cuban. Uh, >>Absolutely >>Not. Certainly EU maybe even north America's in Detroit this year. >>Huge fan of what you guys are doing here. Thank you so much for helping me on the show. >>Des bell VC Johnson here on the cube. Check him out. Founder for founders here on the cube, more coverage from San Francisco, California, after the short break, stay with us. Hey everyone. Welcome to the cue here. Live in San Francisco, California for AWS summit, 2022 we're live we're back with events. Also we're virtual. We got hybrid all kinds of events. This year, of course, 80% summit in New York city is happening this summer. We'll be there with the cube as well. I'm John. Again, John host of the cube. Got a great guest here. Justin Colby, owner and CEO of innovative solutions they booth is right behind us. Justin, welcome to the cube. >>Thank you. Thank you for having me. >>So we're just chatting, uh, off camera about some of the work you're doing. You're the owner of and CEO. Yeah. Of innovative. Yeah. So tell us the story. What do you guys do? What's the elevator pitch. Yeah. >><laugh> so the elevator pitch is we are, uh, a hundred percent focused on small to midsize businesses that are moving to the cloud or have already moved to the cloud and really trying to understand how to best control, cost, security, compliance, all the good stuff, uh, that comes along with it. Um, exclusively focused on AWS and, um, you know, about 110 people, uh, based in Rochester, New York, that's where our headquarters is. But now we have offices down in Austin, Texas up in Toronto, uh, Canada, as well as Chicago. Um, and obviously in New York, uh, you know, the, the business was never like this, uh, five years ago, um, founded in 1989, made the decision in 2018 to pivot and go all in on the cloud. And, uh, I've been a part of the company for about 18 years, bought the company about five years ago. And it's been a great ride. >>It's interesting. The manages services are interesting with cloud cause a lot of the heavy liftings done by AWS. So we had Matt on your team on earlier talking about some of the edge stuff. Yeah. But you guys are a managed cloud service. You got cloud advisory, you know, the classic service that's needed, but the demands coming from cloud migrations and application modernization and obviously data is a huge part of it. Huge. How is this factoring into what you guys do and your growth cuz you guys are the number one partner on the SMB side for edge. Yeah. For AWS, you got results coming in. Where's the, where's the forcing function. What's the pressure point. What's the demand like? Yeah. >>It's a great question. Every CEO I talk to, that's a small to mid-size business. I'll try and understand how to leverage technology better to help either drive a revenue target for their own business, uh, help with customer service as so much has gone remote now. And we're all having problems or troubles or issues trying to hire talent. And um, you know, tech is really at the, at the forefront and the center of that. So most customers are coming to us and they're like, listen, we gotta move to the out or we move some things to the cloud and we want to do that better. And um, there's this big misnomer that when you move to the cloud, you gotta automatically modernize. Yeah. And what we try to help as many customers understand as possible is lifting and shifting, moving the stuff that you maybe currently have OnPrem and a data center to the cloud first is a first step. And then, uh, progressively working through a modernization strategy is always the better approach. And so we spend a lot of time with small to midsize businesses who don't have the technology talent on staff to be able to do >>That. Yeah. They want to get set up. But the, the dynamic of like latency is huge. We're seeing that edge product is a big part of it. This is not a one-off happening around everywhere. It is. And it's not, it's manufacturing, it's the physical plant or location >>Literally. >>And so, and you're seeing more IOT devices. What's that like right now from a challenge and problem statement standpoint, are the customers, not staff, is the it staff kind of old school? Is it new skills? What's the core problem you guys solve >>The SMB space. The core issue nine outta 10 times is people get enamored with the latest and greatest. And the reality is not everything that's cloud based. Not all cloud services are the latest and greatest. Some things have been around for quite some time and are hardened solutions. And so, um, what we try to do with technology staff that has additional on-prem, uh, let's just say skill sets and they're trying to move to a cloud-based workload is we try to help those customers through education and through some practical, let's just call it use case. Um, whether that's a proof of concept that we're doing or whether that's, we're gonna migrate a small workload over, we try to give them the confidence to be able to not, not necessarily go it alone, but to, to, to have the, uh, the Gusto and to really have the, um, the, the opportunity to, to do that in a wise way. Um, and what I find is that most CEOs that I talk to, yeah, they're like, listen, the end of the day, I'm gonna be spending money in one place or another, whether that's OnPrem or in the cloud. I just want to know that I'm doing that in a way that helps me grow as quickly as possible status quo. I think every, every business owner knows that COVID taught us anything that status quo is, uh, is, is no. No. Good. >>How about factoring in the, the agility and speed equation? Does that come up a lot? It >>Does. I think, um, I think there's also this idea that if, uh, if we do a deep dive analysis and we really take a surgical approach to things, um, we're gonna be better off. And the reality is the faster you move with anything cloud based, the better you are. And so there's this assumption that we gotta get it right the first time. Yeah. In the cloud, if you start the, on your journey in one way, and you realize midway that it's not the right, let's just say the right place to go. It's not like buying a piece of iron that you put in the closet and now you own it in the cloud. You can turn those services on and off. It's a, gives you a much higher density for making decisions and failing >>Forward. Well actually shutting down the abandoning, the projects that early and not worrying about it, you got it. I mean, most people don't abandon stuff cuz they're like, oh, I own it. >>Exactly. >>And they get, they get used to it. Like, and then they wait too long. >>That's exactly. Yeah. >>Frog and boiling water as we used to say so, oh, it's a great analogy. So I mean this, this is a dynamic that's interesting. I wanna get more thoughts on it because like I'm a, if I'm a CEO of a company, like, okay, I gotta make my number. Yeah. I gotta keep my people motivated. Yeah. And I gotta move faster. So this is where you guys come in. I get the whole thing. And by the way, great service, um, professional services in the cloud right now are so hot because so hot, you can build it and then have option optionality. You got path decisions, you got new services to take advantage of. It's almost too much for customers. It is. I mean, everyone I talk to at reinvent, that's a customer. Well, how many announcements did Andy jazzy announcer Adam, you know, five, a thousand announcement or whatever they did with huge amounts. Right. Keeping track of it all. Oh, is huge. So what's the, what's the, um, the mission of, of your company. How does, how do you talk to that alignment? Yeah. Not just product. I can get that like values as companies, cuz they're betting on you and your people. >>They are, they are >>The values. >>Our mission is, is very simple. We want to help every small to mid-size business, leverage the power of the cloud. Here's the reality. We believe wholeheartedly. This is our vision that every company is going to become a technology company. So we go to market with this idea that every customer's trying to leverage the power of the cloud in some way, shape or form, whether they know it or don't know it. And number two, they're gonna become a tech company in the pro of that because everything is so tech-centric. And so when you talk about speed and agility, when you talk about the, the endless options and the endless permutations of solutions that a customer can buy in the cloud, how are you gonna ask a team of one or two people in your it department to make all those decisions going it alone or trying to learn it as you go, it only gets you so far working with a partner. >>I'll just give you some perspective. We work with about a thousand small to midsize business customers. More than 50% of those customers are on our managed services. Meaning know that we have their back and we're the safety net. So when a customer is saying, all right, I'm gonna spend a couple thousand dollars a month in the cloud. They know that that bill, isn't gonna jump to $10,000 a month going on loan. Who's there to help protect that. Number two, if you have a security posture and let's just say you're high profile and you're gonna potentially be more vulnerable to security attack. If you have a partner that's offering you some managed services. Now you, again, you've got that backstop and you've got those services and tooling. We, we offer, um, seven different products that are part of our managed services that give the customer the tooling, that for them to go out and buy on their own for a customer to go out today and go buy a new Relic solution on their own, it would cost 'em a fortune. If >>It's training alone would be insane. A risk factor not mean the cost. Yes, absolutely. Opportunity cost is huge, >>Huge, absolutely enormous training and development. Something. I think that is often, you know, it's often overlooked technologists. Typically they want to get their skills up. Yeah. They, they love to get the, the stickers and the badges and the pins, um, at innovative in 2018, when, uh, when we made the decision to go all on the club, I said to the organization, you know, we have this idea that we're gonna pivot and be aligned with AWS in such a way that it's gonna really require us all to get certified. My executive assistant at the time looks at me. She said, even me, I said, yeah, even you, why can't you get certified? Yeah. And so we made, uh, a conscious decision. It wasn't requirement isn't today to make sure everybody in the company has the opportunity to become certified. Even the people that are answering the phones at the front desk >>And she could be running the Kubernetes clusters. I >>Love it. It's amazing. So I'll tell you what, when that customer calls and they have a real Kubernetes issue, she'll be able to assist and get the right >>People involved. And that's a cultural factor that you guys have. So, so again, this is back to my whole point about SMBs and BIS is in general, small and large. It staffs are turning over the gen Z and millennials are in the workforce. They were provisioning top of rack switches. Right. First of all. And so if you're a business, there's also the, I call the build out, um, uh, return factor, ROI piece. At what point in time as an owner or SMB, do I get the why? Yeah. I gotta hire a person to manage it. That person's gonna have five zillion job offers. Yep. Uh, maybe who knows? Right. I got cyber security issues. Where am I gonna find a cyber person? Yeah. A data compliance. I need a data scientist and a compliance person. Right. Maybe one in the same. Right. Good luck. Trying to find a data scientist. Who's also a compliance person. Yep. And the list goes on. I can just continue. Absolutely. I need an SRE to manage the, the, uh, the sock report and we can pen test. Right. >>Right. >>These are, these are >>Like critical issues. This >>Is just like, these are the table stakes. >>Yeah. And, and every, every business owner's thinking about this, that's, >>That's what, at least a million in bloating, if not three or more Just to get that going. Yeah. Then it's like, where's the app. Yeah. So there's no cloud migration. There's no modernization on the app side now. Yeah. No. And nevermind AI and ML. That's >>Right. That's right. So to try to go it alone, to me, it's hard. It's incredibly difficult. And the other thing is, is there's not a lot of partners, so the partner, >>No one's raising their hand boss. I'll do all that exactly. In the it department. >>Exactly. >>Like, can we just call up, uh, you know, our old vendor that's >>Right. <laugh> right. Our old vendor. I like >>It, >>But that's so true. I mean, when I think about how, if I were a business owner starting a business today and I had to build my team, um, and the amount of investment that it would take to get those people skilled up and then the risk factor of those people now having the skills and being so much more in demand and being recruited away, that's a real, that's a real issue. And so how you build your culture around that is, is very important. And it's something that we tell, talk about every, with every one of our small to mid-size >>Businesses. So just, I wanna get, I want to get your story as CEO. Okay. Take us through your journey. You said you bought the company and your progression to, to being the owner and CEO of innovative yeah. Award winning guys doing great. Uh, great bet on a good call. Yeah. Things are good. Tell your story. What's your journey? >>It's real simple. I was, uh, I was a sophomore at the Rochester Institute of technology in 2003. And, uh, I knew that I, I was going to school for it and I, I knew I wanted to be in tech. I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I knew I didn't wanna code or configure routers and switches. So I had this great opportunity with the local it company that was doing managed services. We didn't call it at that time innovative solutions to come in and, uh, jump on the phone and dial for dollars. I was gonna cold call and introduce other, uh, small to midsize businesses locally in Rochester, New York go to Western New York, um, who innovative was now. We were 19 people at the time. And I came in, I did an internship for six months and I loved it. I learned more in those six months that I probably did in my first couple of years at, uh, at RT long story short. >>Um, for about seven years, I worked, uh, to really help develop, uh, sales process and methodology for the business so that we could grow and scale. And we grew to about 30 people. And, um, I went to the owners at the time in 2010 and I was like, Hey, on the value of this business and who knows where you guys are gonna be another five years, what do you think about making me an owner? And they were like, listen, you got long ways before you're gonna be an owner, but if you stick it out in your patient, we'll, um, we'll work through a succession plan with you. And I said, okay, there were four other individuals at the time that were gonna also buy into the business with me. >>And they were the owners, no outside capital, none >>Zero, well, 2014 comes around. And, uh, the other folks that were gonna buy into the business with me that were also working at innovative for different reasons, they all decided that it wasn't for them. One started a family. The other didn't wanna put capital in. Didn't wanna write a check. Um, the other had a real big problem with having to write a check. If we couldn't make payroll, I'm like, well, that's kind of like if we're owners, we're gonna have to like cover that stuff. <laugh> so >>It's called the pucker factor. >>Exactly. So, uh, I sat down with the CEO in early 2015, and, uh, we made the decision that I was gonna buy the three partners out, um, go through an early now process, uh, coupled with, uh, an interesting financial strategy that wouldn't strap the business, cuz they cared very much. The company still had the opportunity to keep going. So in 2016 I bought the business, um, became the sole owner. And, and at that point we, um, we really focused hard on what do we want this company to be? We had built this company to this point. Yeah. And, uh, and by 2018 we knew that pivoting going all in on the cloud was important for us and we haven't looked back. >>And at that time the proof points were coming clearer and clearer 2012 through 15 was the early adopters, the builders, the startups and early enterprises. Yes. The capital ones of the world. Exactly. And those kinds of big enterprises, the GA I don't wanna say gamblers, but ones that were very savvy. The innovators, the FinTech folks. Yep. The hardcore glass eating enterprises >>Agreed, agreed to find a small to mid-size business, to migrate completely to the cloud as, as infrastructure was considered. That just didn't happen as often. Um, what we were seeing where a lot of our small to mid-size as customers, they wanted to leverage cloud-based backup or they wanted to leverage a cloud for disaster recovery because it lent itself. Well, early days, our most common cloud customer though, was the customer that wanted to move messaging and collaboration, the Microsoft suite to the cloud. And a lot of 'em dipped their toe in the water. But by 2017 we knew infrastructure was around the corner. Yeah. And so, uh, we only had two customers on AWS at the time. Um, and we, uh, we, we made the decision to go all in >>Justin. Great to have you on the cube. Thank you. Let's wrap up. Uh, tell me the hottest product that you have. Is it migrations? Is it the app modernization? Is it data? What's the hot product and then put a plug in for the company. Awesome. >>So, uh, there's no question. Every customer is looking to migrate workloads and try to figure out how to modernize for the future. We have very interesting, sophisticated yet elegant funding solutions to help customers with the cash flow, uh, constraints that come along with those migrations. So any SMB that's thinking about migrating to the cloud, they should be talking innovative solutions. We know how to do it in a way that allows those customers not to be cash strap and gives them an opportunity to move forward in a controlled, contained way so that they can modernize. >>So like insurance, basically for them not insurance class in the classic sense, but you help them out on the, on the cash exposure. >>Absolutely. We are known for that and we're known for being creative with those customers and being empathetic to where they are in their journey. >>And that's the cloud upside is all about doubling down on the variable wind. That's right. Seeing the value and Ling down on it. Absolutely not praying for it. Yeah. <laugh> all right, Justin. Thanks for coming on. You really appreciate it. >>Thank you very much for having me. >>Okay. This is the cube coverage here live in San Francisco, California for AWS summit, 2022. I'm John for your host. Thanks for watching. We're back with more great coverage for two days after this short break, >>Live on the floor and see San Francisco for a AWS summit. I'm John ferry, host of the cube here for the next two days, getting all the action we're back in person. We're at a AWS reinvent a few months ago. Now we're back. Events are coming back and we're happy to be here with the cube. Bring all the action. Also virtual. We have a hybrid cube. Check out the cube.net, Silicon angle.com for all the coverage. After the event. We've got a great guest ticking off here. Matthew Park, director of solutions, architecture with innovation solutions. The booth is right here. Matthew, welcome to the cube. >>Thank you very much. I'm glad to be >>Here. So we're back in person. You're from Tennessee. We were chatting before you came on camera. Um, it's great to have to be back through events. >>It's amazing. This is the first, uh, summit I've been to and what two, three years. >>It's awesome. We'll be at the UHS summit in New York as well. A lot of developers and a big story this year is as developers look at cloud going distributed computing, you got on premises, you got public cloud, you got the edge. Essentially the cloud operations is running everything dev sec ops, everyone kind of sees that you got containers, you got Kubernetes, you got cloud native. So the game is pretty much laid out mm-hmm <affirmative> and the edge is with the actions you guys are number one, premier partner at SMB for edge. >>That's right. >>Tell us about what you guys doing at innovative and, uh, what you do. >>That's right. Uh, so I'm the director of solutions architecture. Uh, me and my team are responsible for building out the solutions that are around, especially the edge public cloud for us edge is anything outside of an AWS availability zone. Uh, we are deploying that in countries that don't have AWS infrastructure in region. They don't have it. Uh, give an example, uh, example would be Panama. We have a customer there that, uh, needs to deploy some financial tech and compute is legally required to be in Panama, but they love AWS and they want to deploy AWS services in region. Uh, so they've taken E EKS anywhere. We've put storage gateway and, uh, snowball, uh, in region inside the country and they're running their FinTech on top of AWS services inside Panama. >>You know, it's interesting, Matthew is that we've been covering a, since 2013 with the cube about their events. And we watched the progression and jazzy was, uh, was in charge and became the CEO. Now Adam's in charge, but the edge has always been that thing they've been trying to avoid. I don't wanna say trying to avoid, of course, Amazon would listen to the customers. They work backwards from the customer. We all know that. Uh, but the real issue was they were they're bread and butters EC two and S three. And then now they got tons of services and the cloud is obviously successful and seeing that, but the edge brings up a whole nother level. >>It does computing. It >>Does. That's not centralized in the public cloud now they got regions. So what is the issue at the edge what's driving the behavior. Outpost came out as a reaction to competitive threats and also customer momentum around OT, uh, operational technologies. And it merging. We see that the data at the edge, you got 5g having. So it's pretty obvious, but there's a slow transition. What was the driver for the edge? What's the driver now for edge action for AWS >>Data is the driver for the edge. Data has gravity, right? And it's pulling compute back to where the customer's generating that data and that's happening over and over again. You said it best outpost was a reaction to a competitive situation where today we have over 15 AWS edge services and those are all reactions to things that customers need inside their data centers on location or in the field like with media companies. >>Outpost is interesting. We always used to riff on the cube cause it's basically Amazon and a box pushed in the data center, running native, all the stuff, but now cloud native operations are kind of becoming standard. You're starting to see some standard Deepak syncs. Group's doing some amazing work with open source Rauls team on the AI side, obviously, uh, you got SW, he was giving the keynote tomorrow. You got the big AI machine learning big part of that edge. Now you can say, okay, outpost, is it relevant today? In other words, did outpost do its job? Cause EKS anywhere seems to be getting a lot of momentum. You see local zones, the regions are kicking ass for Amazon. This edge piece is evolving. What's your take on EKS anywhere versus say outpost? >>Yeah, I think outpost did its job. It made customers that were looking at outpost really consider, do I wanna invest in this hardware? Do I, do I wanna have, um, this outpost in my data center, do I want to manage this over the long term? A lot of those customers just transitioned to the public cloud. They went into AWS proper. Some of those customers stayed on prem because they did have use cases that were, uh, not a good fit for outposts. They weren't a good fit. Uh, in the customer's mind for the public AWS cloud inside an availability zone. Now what's happening is as AWS is pushing these services out and saying, we're gonna meet you where you are with 5g. We're gonna meet you where you are with wavelength. We're gonna meet you where you are with EKS anywhere. Uh, I think it has really reduced the amount of times that we have conversations about outposts and it's really increased. We can deploy fast. We don't have to spin up outpost hardware. We can go deploy EKS anywhere or in your VMware environment. And it's increasing the speed of adoption >>For sure. Right? So you guys are making a lot of good business decisions around managed cloud service. That's right. Innovative as that you get the cloud advisory, the classic professional services for the specific edge piece and, and doing that outside of the availability zones and regions for AWS, um, customers in, in these new areas that you're helping out are, they want cloud, like they want to have modernization a modern applications. Obviously they got data machine learning and AI, all part of that. What's the main product or, or, or gap that you're filling for AWS, uh, outside of their availability zones or their regions that you guys are delivering. What's the key is it. They don't have a footprint. Is it that it's not big enough for them? What's the real gap. What's why, why are you so successful? >>So what customers want when they look towards the cloud is they want to focus on, what's making them money as a business. They want on their applications. They want to focus on their customers. So they look towards AWS cloud and say, AWS, you take the infrastructure. You take, uh, some of the higher layers and we'll focus on our revenue generating business, but there's a gap there between infrastructure and revenue generating business that innovative slides into, uh, we help manage the AWS environment. Uh, we help build out these things in local data centers for 32 plus year old company. We have traditional on-premises people that know about deploying hardware that know about deploying VMware to host EKS anywhere. But we also have most of our company totally focused on the AWS cloud. So we're filling that gap in helping of these AWS services, manage them over the long term. So our customers can go to just primarily and totally focusing on their revenue generating business. So >>Basically you guys are basically building AWS edges, >>Correct? >>For correct companies, correct? Mainly because the, the needs are there, you got data, you got certain products, whether it's, you know, low latency type requirements, right. And then they still work with the regions, right. It's all tied together, right. Is that how it works? Right. >>And, and our customers, even the ones in the edge, they also want us to build out the AWS environment inside the availability zone, because we're always gonna have a failback scenario. If we're gonna deploy FinTech in the Caribbean, we talk about hurricanes and we're gonna talk about failing back into the AWS availability zones. So innovative is filling that gap across the board, whether it be inside the AWS cloud or on the AWS edge. >>All right. So I gotta ask you on the, since you're at the edge in these areas, I won't say underserved, but developing areas where you now have data and you have applications that are tapping into that, that required. It makes total sense. We're seeing that across the board. So it's not like it's, it's an outlier it's actually growing. Yeah. There's also the crypto angle. You got the blockchain. Are you seeing any traction at the edge with blockchain? Because a lot of people are looking at the web three in these areas like Panama, you mentioned FinTech. And in, in the islands there a lot of, lot of, lot of web three happening. What's your, what's your view on the web three world right now, relative >>To we, we have some customers actually deploying crypto, especially, um, especially in the Caribbean. I keep bringing the Caribbean up, but it's, it's top of my mind right now we have customers that are deploying crypto. A lot of, uh, countries are choosing crypto to underlie parts of their central banks. Yeah. Um, so it's, it's up and coming a, uh, I, I have some, you know, personal views that, that crypto is still searching for a use case. Yeah. And, uh, I think it's searching a lot and, and we're there to help customers search for that use case. Uh, but, but crypto, as a, as a, uh, technology, um, lives really well on the AWS edge. Yeah. Uh, and, and we're having more and more people talk to us about that. Yeah. And ask for assistance in the infrastructure, because they're developing new cryptocurrencies every day. Yeah. It's not like they're deploying Ethereum or anything specific. They're actually developing new currencies and, and putting them out there on it's >>Interesting. I mean, first of all, we've been doing crypto for many, many years. We have our own little, um, you know, projects going on. But if you look talk to all the crypto people that say, look, we do a smart concept. We use the blockchain. It's kind of over a lot of overhead and it's not really their technical already, but it's a cultural shift, but there's underserved use cases around use of money, but they're all using the blockchain, just for this like smart contracts for instance, or certain transactions. And they go into Amazon for the database. Yeah. <laugh> they all don't tell anyone we're using a centralized service, but what happened to decentralized. >>Yeah. And that's, and that's the conversation performance issue. Yeah. And, and it's a cost issue. Yeah. And it's a development issue. Um, so I think more and more as, as some of these, uh, currencies maybe come up, some of the smart contracts get into, uh, they find their use cases. I think we'll start talking about how does that really live on, on AWS and, and what does it look like to build decentralized applications, but with AWS hardware and services. >>Right. So take me through, uh, a use case of a customer, um, Matthew around the edge. Okay. So I'm a customer, pretend I'm a customer, Hey, you know, I'm, we're in an underserved area. I want to modernize my business. And I got my developers that are totally peaked up on cloud. Um, but we've identified that it's just a lot of overhead latency issues. I need to have a local edge and serve my ad. And I also want all the benefit of the cloud. So I want the modernization and I wanna migrate to the cloud for all those cloud benefits and the goodness of the cloud. What's the answer. Yeah. >>Uh, big thing is, uh, industrial manufacturing, right? That's, that's one of the best use cases, uh, inside industrial manufacturing, we can pull in many of the AWS edge services we can bring in, uh, private 5g, uh, so that all the, uh, equipment inside that, that manufacturing plant can be hooked up. They don't have to pay huge overheads to deploy 5g it's, uh, better than wifi for the industrial space. Um, when we take computing down to that industrial area, uh, because we wanna do pre-procesing on the data. Yeah. We want to gather some analytics. We deploy that with, uh, regular commercial available hardware running VMware, and we deploy EKS anywhere on that. Uh, inside of that manufacturing plant, uh, we can do pre-procesing on things coming out of the, uh, the robotics that depending on what we're manufacturing, right. Uh, and then we can take those refined analytics and for very low cost with maybe a little bit longer latency transmit those back, um, to the AWS availability zone, the, the standard for >>Data, data lake, or whatever, to >>The data lake. Yeah. Data lake house, whatever it might be. Um, and we can do additional data science on that once it gets to the AWS cloud. Uh, but a lot of that, uh, just in time business decisions, just in time, manufacturing decisions can all take place on an AWS service or services inside that manufacturing plant. And that's, that's one of the best use cases that we're >>Seeing. And I think, I mean, we've been seeing this on the queue for many, many years, moving data around is very expensive. Yeah. But also compute going to the data that saves that cost yep. On the data transfer also on the benefits of the latency. So I have to ask you, by the way, that's standard best practice now for the folks watching don't move the data, unless you have to, um, those new things are developing. So I wanna ask you what new patterns are you seeing emerging once this new architecture's in place? Love that idea, localize everything right at the edge, manufacturing, industrial, whatever, the use case, retail, whatever it is. Right. But now what does that change in the, in the core cloud? This is a, there's a system element here. Yeah. What's the new pattern. There's >>Actually an organizational element as well, because once you have to start making the decision, do I put this compute at the point of use or do I put this compute in the cloud out? Uh, now you start thinking about where business decisions should be taking place. Uh, so not only are you changing your architecture, you're actually changing your organization because you're thinking, you're thinking about a dichotomy you didn't have before. Uh, so now you say, okay, this can take place here. Uh, and maybe maybe decision can wait. Right? Yeah. Uh, and then how do I visualize that? By >>The way, it could be a bot too, doing the work for management. Yeah. <laugh> exactly. You got observability going, right. But you gotta change the database architecture on the back. So there's new things developing. You've got more benefit. There >>Are, there are. And, and we have more and more people that, that want to talk less about databases and want to talk more about data lakes because of this. They want to talk more about customers are starting to talk about throwing away data, uh, you know, for the past maybe decade. Yeah. It's been store everything. And one day we will have a data science team that we hire in our organization to do analytics on this decade of data. And >>Well, I mean, that's, that's a great point. We don't have time to drill into, maybe we do another session on this, but the one pattern was income of the past year is that throwing away data's bad. Even data lakes that so-called turn into data swamps, actually, it's not the case. You look at data, brick, snowflake, and other successes out there. And even time series data, which may seem irrelevant efforts over actually matters when people start retrain their machine learning algorithms. Yep. So as data becomes code, as we call it our lab showcase, we did a whole, whole, that event on this. The data's good in real time and in the lake. Yeah. Because the iteration of the data feeds the machine learning training. Things are getting better with the old data. So it's not throw away. It's not just business benefits. Yeah. There's all kinds of new scale. There >>Are. And, and we have, uh, many customers that are run petabyte level. Um, they're, they're essentially data factories on, on, uh, on premises, right? They're, they're creating so much data and they're starting to say, okay, we could analyze this, uh, in the cloud, we could transition it. We could move petabytes of data to the AWS cloud, or we can run, uh, computational workloads on premises. We can really do some analytics on this data transition, uh, those high level and sort of raw analytics back to AWS run 'em through machine learning. Um, and we don't have to transition 10, 12 petabytes of data into AWS. >>So I gotta end the segment on a, on a kind of a, um, fun note. I was told to ask you about your personal background on premise architect, a cloud and skydiving instructor. <laugh> how does that all work together? What tell, what does this mean? Yeah. >>Uh, you >>Jumped out a plane and got a job. You, you got a customer to jump out >>Kind of. So I was jump, I was teaching Scott eing, uh, before I, before I started in the cloud space, this was 13, 14 years ago. I was a, I still am a Scott I instructor. Yeah. Uh, I was teaching Scott eing and I heard out of the corner of my ear, uh, a guy that owned an MSP that was lamenting about, um, you know, storing data and, and how his cus customers are working. And he can't find enough people to operate all these workloads. So I walked over and said, Hey, this is, this is what I went to school for. Like, I'd love to, you know, uh, I was living in a tent in the woods teaching scout. I think I was like, I'd love to not live in a tent in the woods. So, uh, uh, I started in the first day there, uh, we had a, a discussion, uh, EC two, just come out <laugh> um, and, uh, like, >>This is amazing. >>Yeah. And so we had this discussion, we should start moving customers here. And, uh, and that totally revolutionized that business, um, that, that led to, uh, that that guy actually still owns a skydiving airport. But, um, but through all of that and through being an on premises migrated me and myself, my career into the cloud, and now it feels like, uh, almost, almost looking back and saying, now let's take what we learned in the cloud and, and apply those lessons and those services to >>It's. So it's such a great story, you know, I was gonna, you know, you know, the, the, the, the whole, you know, growth mindset pack your own parachute, you know, uh, exactly. You know, the cloud in the early day was pretty much will the shoot open. Yeah. It was pretty much, you had to roll your own cloud at that time. And so, you know, you, you jump on a plane, you gotta make sure that parachute is gonna open. >>And so was Kubernetes by the way, 2015 or so when, um, when that was coming out, it was, I mean, it was, it was still, and I, maybe it does still feel like that to some people. Right. But, uh, it was, it was the same kind of feeling that we had in the early days, AWS, the same feeling we have when we >>It's pretty much now with you guys, it's more like a tandem jump. Yeah. You know, but, but it's a lot of, lot of this cutting edge stuff, like jumping out of an airplane. Yeah. You guys, the right equipment, you gotta do the right things. Exactly. >>Right. >>Matthew, thanks for coming on the cube. Really appreciate it. Absolutely great conversation. Thanks for having me. Okay. The cubes here live and San Francisco for summit. I'm John Forry host of the cube. Uh, we'll be at a summit in New York coming up in the summer as well. Look up for that. look@thiscalendarforallthecubeactionatthecube.net. We'll be right back with our next segment after this break. >>Okay. Welcome back everyone to San Francisco live coverage here, we're at the cube a be summit 2022. We're back in person. I'm John fury host to the cube. We'll be at the eight of his summit in New York city. This summer, check us out then. But right now, two days in San Francisco, getting all the coverage what's going on in the cloud, we got a cube alumni and friend of the cube, my dudes, car CEO, investor, a Sierra, and also an investor and a bunch of startups, angel investor. Gonna do great to see you. Thanks for coming on the cube. Good to see you. Good to see you, sir. Chris. Cool. How are, are you >>Good? How are you? >>So congratulations on all your investments. Uh, you've made a lot of great successes, uh, over the past couple years, uh, and your company raising, uh, some good cash as Sarah. So give us the update. How much cash have you guys raised? What's the status of the company product what's going on? First >>Of all, thank you for having me back to be business with you. Never great to see you. Um, so is a company started around four years back. I invested with a few of the investors and now I'm the CEO there. Um, we have raised close to a hundred million there. Uh, the investors are people like Norwes Menlo, Tru ventures, coast, lo ventures, Ram Sheam and all those people, all well known guys. The Andy Beckel chime, Paul Mo uh, main web. So a whole bunch of operating people and, uh, Silicon valley VCs are involved >>And has it come? >>It's going well. We are doing really well. We are going almost 300% year over year. Uh, for last three years, the space ISR is going after is what I call the applying AI for customer service. It operations, it help desk, uh, the same place I used to work at ServiceNow. We are partners with ServiceNow to take, how can we argument for employees and customers, Salesforce, and ServiceNow to take it to the next stage? >>Well, I love having you on the cube, Dave and I, Dave Valenti as well loves having you on too, because you not only bring the entrepreneurial CEO experience, you're an investor. You're like a GE, you're like a guest analyst. <laugh> >>You know who you >>Get to call this fun to talk. You though, >>You got the commentary, you, your, your finger on the pulse. Um, so I gotta ask you obviously, AI and machine learning, machine learning AI, or you want to phrase it. Isn't every application. Now, AI first, uh, you're seeing a lot of that going on. You're starting to see companies build the modern applications at the top of the stack. So the cloud scale has hit. We're seeing cloud scale. You predicted that we talked about on cube many times. Now you have that past layer with a lot more services and cloud native becoming a standard layer. Containerizations growing DACA just raised a hundred million on a 2 billion valuation back from the dead after they pivoted from an enterprise services. So open source developers are booming. Um, where's the action. I mean, is there data control, plane emerging, AI needs data. There's a lot of challenges around this. There's a lot of discussions and a lot of companies being funded, observability there's 10 million observability companies. Data is the key. What's your angle on this? What's your take. Yeah, >>No, look, I think I'll give you the view that I see right from my side. Obviously data is very clear. So the things that remember system of recorded you and me talked about the next layer is called system of intelligence. That's where the AI will play. Like we talk cloud NA it'll be called AI, NA AI native is a new buzzword and using the AI customer service it operations. You talk about observability. I call it, AIOps applying AOPs for good old it operation management, cloud management. So you'll see the AOPs applied for whole list of, uh, application from observability doing the CMDB, predicting the events insurance. So I see a lot of work clicking for AIOps and service desk. What needs to be helped us with ServiceNow BMC G you see a new ELA emerging as a system of intelligence. Uh, the next would be is applying AI with workflow automation. So that's where you'll see a lot of things called customer workflow, employee workflows. So think of what UI path automation, anywhere ServiceNow are doing, that area will be driven with a AI workflows. So you'll see AI going >>Off is RPA a company is AI, is RPA a feature of something bigger? Or can someone have a company on RPA UI pass? One will be at their event this summer? Um, is it a product company? I mean, I mean, RPA is almost, should be embedded in everything. It's >>A feature. It is very good point. Very, very good thinking. So one is, it's a category for sure. Like, as we thought, it's a category, it's an area where RPA may change the name. I call it much more about automation, workflow automation, but RPA and automation is a category. Um, it's a company, or, but that automation should be embedded in every area. Yeah. Like we call cloud NA and AI NATO it'll become automation. NA yeah. And that's your thinking. >>It's almost interesting me. I think about the, what you're talking about what's coming to mind is I'm kinda having flashbacks to the old software model of middleware. Remember at middleware, it was very easy to understand it. It was middleware. It sat between two things and then the middle, and it was software abstraction. Now you have all, all kinds of workflows, abstractions everywhere. So multiple databases, it's not a monolithic thing. Right? Right. So as you break that down, is this the new modern middleware? Because what you're talking about is data workflows, but they might be siloed or they integrated. I mean, these are the challenges. This is crazy. What's the, >>So don't about the databases become called poly databases. Yeah. I call this one polyglot automation. So you need automation as a layer, as a category, but you also need to put automation in every area like you were talking about. It should be part of service. Now it should be part of ISRA, like every company, every Salesforce. So that's why you see MuleSoft and Salesforce buying RPA companies. So you'll see all the SaaS companies, cloud companies having an automation as a core. So it's like how you have a database and compute and sales and networking. You'll also have an automation as a layer <inaudible> inside every stack. >>All right. So I wanna shift gears a little bit and get your perspective on what's going on behind us. You can see, uh, behind us, you've got the expo hall. We got, um, we're back to vents, but you got, you know, AMD, Clum, Ove, uh, Dynatrace data, dog, innovative, all the companies out here that we know, we interview them all. They're trying to be suppliers to this growing enterprise market. Right. Okay. But now you also got the entrepreneurial equation. Okay. We're gonna have John Sado on from Bel later today. He's a former NEA guy and we always talk to Jerry, Jen. We know all the, the VCs. What does the startups look like? What does the state of the, in your mind, cause you, I know you invest the entrepreneurial founder situation, clouds bigger. Mm-hmm <affirmative> global, right? Data's part of it. You mentioned data's code. Yes. Basically data is everything. What's it like for a first an entrepreneur right now who's starting a company. What's the white space. What's the attack plan. How do they get in the market? How do they engineer everything? >>Very good. So I'll give it to, uh, two things that I'm seeing out there. Remember leaders of Amazon created the startups 15 years back. Everybody built on Amazon now, Azure and GCP. The next layer would be is people don't just build on Amazon. They're going to build it on top of snowflake. Companies are snowflake becomes a data platform, right? People will build on snowflake. Right? So I see my old boss flagman try to build companies on snowflake. So you don't build it just on Amazon. You build it on Amazon and snowflake. Snowflake will become your data store. Snowflake will become your data layer. Right? So I think that's in the of, <inaudible> trying to do that. So if I'm doing observability AI ops, if I'm doing next level of Splunk SIM, I'm gonna build it on snowflake, on Salesforce, on Amazon, on Azure, et cetera. >>It's interesting. You know, Jerry Chan has it put out a thesis a couple months ago called castles in the cloud where your moat is, what you do in the cloud. Not necessarily in the, in the IP. Um, Dave LAN and I had last reinvent, coined the term super cloud, right? He's got a lot of traction and a lot of people throwing, throwing mud at us, but we were, our thesis was, is that what Snowflake's doing? What Goldman S Sachs is doing. You starting to see these clouds on top of clouds. So Amazon's got this huge CapEx advantage. And guys like Charles Fitzgeral out there, who we like was kind of shit on us saying, Hey, you guys terrible, they didn't get it. Like, yeah. I don't think he gets it, but that's a whole, can't wait to debate him publicly on this. <laugh> if he's cool. Um, but snowflake is on Amazon. Yes. Now they say they're on Azure now. Cause they've got a bigger market and they're public, but ultimately without a AWS snowflake doesn't exist. And, and they're reimagining the data warehouse with the cloud, right? That's the billion dollar opportunity. >>It is. It is. They both are very tight. So imagine what Frank has done at snowflake and Amazon. So if I'm a startup today, I want to build everything on Amazon where possible whatever is, I cannot build. I'll make the pass layer. Remember the middle layer pass will be snowflake. So can build it on snowflake. I can use them for data layer. If I really need to size, I'll build it on four.com Salesforce. So I think that's where you'll see. So >>Basically if you're an entrepreneur, the north star in terms of the outcome is be a super cloud. >>It is, >>That's the application on another big CapEx ride, the CapEx of AWS or cloud, >>And that reduce your product development, your go to market and you get use the snowflake marketplace to drive your engagement. >>Yeah. Yeah. How are, how is Amazon and the clouds dealing with these big whales? The snowflakes of the world? I mean, I know they got a great relationship, uh, but snowflake now has to run a company they're public. Yeah. So, I mean, I'll say, I think got Redshift. Amazon has got red, um, but Snowflake's a big customer. They're probably paying AWS think big bills too. >>So John, very good. Cause it's like how Netflix is and Amazon prime, right. Netflix runs on Amazon, but Amazon has Amazon prime that co-option will be there. So Amazon will have Redshift, but Amazon is also partnering with, uh, snowflake to have native snowflake data warehouse as a data layer. So I think depending on the application use case, you have to use each of the above. I think snowflake is here for a long term. Yeah. Yeah. So if I'm building an application, I want to use snowflake then writing from stats. >>Well, I think that comes back down to entrepreneurial hustle. Do you have a better product? Right. Product value will ultimately determine it as long as the cloud doesn't, You know, foreclose your value that's right. But some sort of internal hack, but I think, I think the general question that I have is that I think it's okay to have a super cloud like that because the rising tide is still happening at some point. When does the rising tide stop >>And >>Do the people shopping up their knives, it gets more competitive or is it just an infinite growth cycle? I >>Think it's growth. You call it cloud scale. You invented the word cloud scale. So I think look, cloud will continually agree, increase. I think there's, as long as there are more movement from on, uh, OnPrem to the classical data center, I think there's no reason at this point, the rumor, the old lift and shift that's happening in like my business. I see people lift and shifting from the it operations. It helpless, even the customer service service now and, uh, ticket data from BMCs CAS like Microfocus, all those workloads are shifted to the cloud, right? So cloud ticketing system is happening. Cloud system of record is happening. So I think this train has still a long way to go made. >>I wanna get your thoughts for the folks watching that are, uh, enterprise buyers or practitioners, not suppliers to the market, feel free to, to XME or DMing. Next question's really about the buying side, which is if I'm a customer, what's the current, um, appetite for startup products. Cause you know, the big enterprises now and, you know, small, medium, large, and large enterprise are all buying new companies cuz a startup can go from zero to relevant very quickly. So that means now enterprises are engaging heavily with startups. What's it like what's is there a change in order of magnitude of the relationship between the startup selling to, or a growing startup selling to an enterprise? Um, have you seen changes there? I mean I'm seeing some stuff, but why don't we get your thoughts on that? What, no, it is. >>If I remember going back to our 2007 or eight, it, when I used to talk to you back then when Amazon started very small, right? We are an Amazon summit here. So I think enterprises on the average used to spend nothing with startups. It's almost like 0% or 1% today. Most companies are already spending 20, 30% with startups. Like if I look at a CIO line business, it's gone. Yeah. Can it go more? I think it can double in the next four, five years. Yeah. Spending on the startups. >>Yeah. And check out, uh, AWS startups.com. That's a site that we built for the startup community for buyers and startups. And I want to get your reaction because I reference the URL cause it's like, there's like a bunch of companies we've been promoting because the solutions that startups have actually are new stuff. Yes. It's bending, it's shifting left for security or using data differently or um, building tools and platforms for data engineering. Right. Which is a new persona that's emerging. So you know, a lot of good resources there, um, and gives back now to the data question. Now, getting back to your, what you're working on now is what's your thoughts around this new, um, data engineering persona, you mentioned AIOps, we've been seeing AIOps IOPS booming and that's creating a new developer paradigm that's right. Which we call coin data as code data as code is like infrastructure as code, but it's for data, right? It's developing with data, right? Retraining machine learnings, going back to the data lake, getting data to make, to do analysis, to make the machine learning better post event or post action. So this, this data engineers like an SRE for data, it's a new, scalable role we're seeing. Do you see the same thing? Do you agree? Um, do you disagree or can you share >>Yourself? No, I have a lot of thoughts that plus I see AIOP solutions in the future should be not looking back. I need to be like we are in San Francisco bay. That means earthquake prediction. Right? I want AOPs to predict when the outages are gonna happen. When there's a performance issue. I don't think most AOPs vendors have not gone there yet. Like I spend a lot of time with data dog, Cisco app Dyna, right? Dynatrace, all this solution will go future towards to proactive solution with AOPs. But what you bring up a very good point on the data side. I think like we have a Amazon marketplace and Amazon for startup, there should be data exchange where you want to create for AOPs and AI service that customers are give the data, share the data because we thought the data algorithms are useless. I can come the best algorithm, but I gotta train them, modify them, tweak them, make them better, make them better. Yeah. And I think their whole data exchange is the industry has not thought through something you and me talk many times. Yeah. Yeah. I think the whole, that area is very important. >>You've always been on, um, on the Vanguard of data because, uh, it's been really fun. Yeah. >>Going back to our big data days back in 2009, you know, >>Look at, look how much data bricks has grown. >>It is uh, double, the key >>Cloud kinda went private, so good stuff. What are you working on right now? Give a, give a, um, plug for what you're working on. You'll still investing. >>I do still invest, but look, I'm a hundred percent on ISRA right now. I'm the CEO there. Yeah. Okay. So right. ISRA is my number one baby right now. So I'm looking at that growing customers and my customers are some of them, you like it's zoom auto desk, Mac of fee, uh, grandchildren, all the top customers. Um, mainly for it help desk customer service. AIOps those are three product lines and going after enterprise and commercial deals. >>And when should someone buy your product? What's what's their need? What category is it? >>I think they look whenever somebody needs to buy the product is if you need AOP solution to predict, keep your lights on predict S one area. If you want to improve employee experience, you are using a slack teams and you want to automate all your workflows. That's another value problem. Third is customer service. You don't want to hire more people to do it. Some of the areas where you want to scale your company, grow your company, eliminate the cost customer service, >>Great stuff, man. Doing great to see you. Thanks for coming on. Congratulations on the success of your company and your investments. Thanks for coming on the cube. Okay. I'm John fur here at the cube live in San Francisco for day one of two days of coverage of 80 summit, 2022. And we're gonna be at 80 summit in San, uh, in New York and the summer. So look for that on this calendar, of course go to eight of us, startups.com. I mentioned that it's a site for all the hot startups and of course the cube.net and Silicon angle.com. Thanks for watching. We'll be back more coverage after this short break. >>Okay. Welcome back everyone. This to cubes coverage here in San Francisco, California, a Davis summit, 2022, the beginning of the event season, as it comes back a little bit smaller footprint, a lot of hybrid events going on, but this is actually a physical event, a summit new York's coming in the summer. We'll be there too with the cube on the set. We're getting back in the groove, psyched to be back. We were at reinvent, uh, as well, and we'll see more and more cube, but you're gonna see a lot of virtual cube, a lot of hybrid cube. We wanna get all those conversations, try to get more interviews, more flow going. But right now I'm excited to have Corey Quinn here on the back on the cube chief cloud economists with duck, bill groove, he founder, uh, and chief content person always got great angles, fun comedy, authoritative Corey. Great to see you. Thank you. >>Thanks. Coming on. Sure is a lot of words to describe as shit posting, which is how I describe what I tend to do. Most days, >>Shit posting is an art form now. And if you look at Mark's been doing a lot of shit posting lately, all a billionaires are shit posting, but they don't know how to do it. Like they're not >>Doing it right. Something opportunity there. It's like, here's how to be even more obnoxious and incisive. It's honestly the most terrifying scenario for anyone is if I have that kind of budget to throw at my endeavors, it's like, I get excited with a nonsense I can do with a $20 gift card for an AWS credit compared to, oh well, if I could buy a mid-size island to begin doing this from, oh, then we're having fun. This >>Shit posting trend. Interesting. I was watching a thread go on about, saw someone didn't get a job because of their shit posting and the employer didn't get it. And then someone on the other side, I'll hire the guy cuz I get that's highly intelligent shit posting. So for the audience that doesn't know what shit posting is, what is shit posting? >>It's more or less talking about the world of enterprise tech, which even that sentence is hard to finish without falling asleep and toppling out of my chair in front of everyone on the livestream. But it's doing it in such a way that brings it to life that says the quiet part. A lot of the audience is thinking, but generally doesn't say either because they're polite or not a jackass or more prosaically are worried about getting fired for better or worse. I don't have that particular constraint, >>Which is why people love you. So let's talk about what you, what you think is, uh, worthy and not worthy in the industry right now, obviously, uh, coupons coming up in Spain, which they're having a physical event, you can see the growth of cloud native Amazons, all, all the Adams let see new CEO, Andy move on to be the chief of all. Amazon just saw him. The cover of was it time magazine. Um, he's under a lot of stress. Amazon's changed. Invoice has changed. What's working. What's not, what's rising, what's falling. What's hot. What's not, >>It's easy to sit here and criticize almost anything these folks do. They they're effectively in a fishbowl, but I have trouble imagining the logistics. It takes to wind up handling the catering for a relatively downscale event like this one this year, let alone running a 1.7 million employee company having to balance all the competing challenges and pressures and the rest. I, I just can't fathom what it would be like to look at all of AWS. It's, it's sprawling, immense that dominates our entire industry and say, okay, this is a good start, but I, I wanna focus on something with a broader remit. What is that? How do you even get into that position? And you can't win once you're there. All you can do is hold onto the tiger and hope you don't get mold. Well, >>There's a lot of force for good conversations, seeing a lot of that going on, Amazon's trying to port and he was trying to portray themselves as you know, the Pathfinder, you know, you're the pioneer, um, force for good. And I get that and I think that's a good angle as cloud goes mainstream. There's still the question of, we had a guy on just earlier, who was a skydiving instructor and we were joking about the early days of cloud. Like that was like skydiving, build a parachute open, you know, and now it same kind of thing. As you move to edge, things are like reliable in some areas, but still new, new fringe, new areas. That's crazy. Well, >>Since the last time we've spoken, uh, Steve Schmidt is now the CISO for all of Amazon and his backfill replacement. The AWS CISO is CJ. Moses who as a hobby races, a as a semi-pro race car driver to my understanding, which either, I don't know what direction to take that in either. This is what he does to relax or ultimately, or ultimately it's. Huh? That, that certainly says something about risk assessment. I'm not entirely sure what, but okay. Either way, sounds like more exciting >>Replacement ready <laugh> in case something goes wrong. I, the track highly >>Available >>CSOs. I gotta say one of the things I do like in the recent trend is that the tech companies are getting into the formula one, which I was never a fan of until I watched that Netflix series. But when you look at the formula one, it's pretty cool. Cause it's got some tech angles, I get the whole data instrumentation thing, but the most coolest thing about formula one is they have these new rigs out. Yeah. Where you can actually race in e-sports with other, in pure simulation of the race car. You gotta get the latest and video graphics card, but it's basically a tricked out PC with amazing monitors and you have all the equipment of F1 and you're basically simulating racing. >>Oh, it's great too. And I can see the appeal of these tech companies getting into it because these things are basically rocket shifts. When those cars go, like they're sitting there, we can instrument every last part of what is going on inside that vehicle. And then AWS crops up. And we can bill on every one of those dimensions too. And it's like slow down their hasty pudding one step at a time. But I do see the appeal. >>So I gotta ask you about, uh, what's going in your world. I know you have a lot of great success. We've been following you in the queue for many, many years. Got a great newsletter. Check out Corey Quinn's newsletter, uh, screaming in the cloud program. Uh, you're on the cutting edge and you've got a great balance between really being snarky and, and, and really being delivering content. That's exciting, uh, for people, uh, with a little bit of an edge, um, how's that going? Uh, what's back any blow back late there been uptick. What was, what are some of the things you're hearing from your audience, more Corey, more Corey. And then of course the, the PR team's calling you >>The weird thing about having an audience beyond a certain size is far and away as a landslide. The most common response I get is silence where it's high. I'm emailing an awful lot of people at last week in AWS every week and okay. They must not have heard me it. That is not actually true. People just generally don't respond to email because who responds to email newsletters. That sounds like something, a lunatic might do same story with response to live streams and podcasts. It's like, I'm gonna call into that am radio show and give them a piece of my mind. People generally don't do that. >>We should do that. Actually. I think sure would call in. Oh, I, >>I think >>Chief, we had that right now. People would call in and say, Corey, what do you think about X? >>Yeah. It not, everyone understands the full context of what I do. And in fact, increasingly few people do and that's fine. I, I keep forgetting that sometimes people do not see what I'm doing in the same light that I do. And that's fine. Blowback has been largely minimal. Honestly, I am surprised anything by how little I have gotten over the last five years of doing this, but it would be easier to dismiss me if I weren't generally. Right. When, okay, so you launch this new service and it seems pretty crappy to me cuz when I try and build something, it falls over and begs for help. And people might not like hearing that, but it's what customers are finding too. Yeah. I really am the voice of the customer. >>You know, I always joke with Dave ante about how John Fort's always at, uh, reinvent getting the interview with jazzy now, Andy we're there, you're there. And so we have these rituals at the events. It's all cool. Um, one of the rituals I like about your, um, your content is you like to get on the naming product names. Um, and, and, and, and, and kind of goof on that. Now why I like is because I used to work at ETT Packard where they used to name things as like engineers, HP 1 0 5, or we can't, >>We have a new monitor. How are we gonna name it? Throw the wireless keyboard down the stairs again. And there you go. Yeah. >>It's and the old joke at HP was if they, if they invented sushi, they'd say, yeah, we can't call sushi. It's cold, dead fish. That's what it is. And so the joke was cold. Dead fish is a better name than sushi. So you know is fun. So what's the, what are the, how's the Amazon doing in there? Have they changed their naming, uh, strategy, uh, on some of their, their >>Producting, they're going in different directions. When they named Amazon Aurora, they decided to explore a new theme of Disney princesses as they go down those paths. And some things are more descriptive. Some people are clearly getting bonused on a number of words. They can shove into it. Like the better a service is the longer it's name. Like AWS systems manager, session manager is a great one. I love the service, ridiculous name. They have systems manager, parameter store, which is great. They have secrets manager, which does the same thing. It's two words less, but that one costs money in a way that systems manage your parameter store does not. It's >>Fun. What's your, what's your favorite combination of acronyms >>Combination of you >>Got Ks. You got EMR, you got EC two. You got S three SQS. Well, Redshift the on an acronym, you >>Gots is one of my personal favorites because it's either elastic block store or elastic bean stock, depending entirely on the context of the conversation. >>They still up bean stalk. Or is that still around? Oh, >>They never turn anything off. They're like the anti Google, Google turns things off while they're still building it. Whereas Amazon is like, wow, we built this thing in 2005 and everyone hates it. But while we certainly can't change it, now it has three customers on it. John three <laugh>. >>Okay. >>Simple BV still haunts our dreams. >>I, I actually got an email. I saw one of my, uh, servers, all these C two S were being deprecated and I got an email I'm like, I couldn't figure out. Why can you just like roll it over? Why, why are you telling me just like, give me something else. Right. Okay. So let me talk about, uh, the other things I want to ask you is that like, okay. So as Amazon gets better in some areas, where do they need more work in your opinion? Because obviously they're all interested in new stuff and they tend to like put it out there for their end to end customers. But then they've got ecosystem partners who actually have the same product. Yes. And, and this has been well documented. So it's, it's not controversial. It's just that Amazon's got a database, Snowflake's got a database service. So Redshift, snowflake database is, so you got this co-op petition. Yes. How's that going? And what are you hearing about the reaction to any of that stuff? >>Depends on who you ask. They love to basically trot out a bunch of their partners who will say nice things about them. And it very much has heirs of, let's be honest, a hostage video, but okay. Cuz these companies do partner with Amazon and they cannot afford to rock the boat too far. I'm not partnered with anyone. I can say what I want and they're basically restricted to taking away my birthday at worse so I can live with that. >>All right. So I gotta ask about multi-cloud cause obviously the other cloud shows are coming up. Amazon hated that word. Multi-cloud um, a lot of people are saying, you know, it's not a real good marketing word, like multi sounds like, you know, root canal. Mm-hmm <affirmative> right. So is there a better description for multi-cloud >>Multiple single points? >>Dave loves that term. Yeah. >>Yeah. You're building in multiple single points of failure. Do it for the right reasons or don't do it as a default. I believe not doing it is probably the right answer. However, and if I were, if I were Amazon, I wouldn't want to talk about multi-cloud either as the industry leader, talk about other clouds, bad direction to go in from a market cap perspective, it doesn't end well for you, but regardless of what they want to talk about, or don't want to talk about what they say, what they don't say, I tune all of it out. And I look at what customers are doing and multi-cloud exists in a variety of forms. Some brilliant, some brain dead. It depends a lot on context. But my general response is when someone gets on stage from a company and tells me to do a thing that directly benefits their company. I am skeptical at best. Yeah. When customers get on stage and say, this is what we're doing, because it solves problems. That's when I shut up and listen. Yeah. >>Cool. Awesome. Corey, I gotta ask you a question, cause I know you, we you've been, you know, fellow journeymen and the, and the cloud journey going to all the events and then the pandemic hit where now in the third year, who knows what it's gonna gonna end. Certainly events are gonna look different. They're gonna be either changing footprint with the virtual piece, new group formations. Community's gonna emerge. You got a pretty big community growing and it's throwing like crazy. What's the weirdest or coolest thing, or just big chain angels. You've seen with the pandemic, uh, from your perspective, cuz you've been in the you're in the middle of the whitewater rafting. You've seen the events you circle offline. You saw the online piece, come in, you're commentating. You're calling balls and strikes in the industry. You got a great team developing over there. Duck bill group. What's the big aha moment that you saw with the pandemic. Weird, fun, serious, real in the industry and with customers what's >>Accessibility. Reinvent is a great example. When in the before times it's open to anyone who wants to attend, who can pony up two grand and a week in Las Vegas and get to Las Vegas from wherever they happen to be by moving virtually suddenly it, it embraces the reality that talent is even distributed. Opportunity is not. And that means that suddenly these things are accessible to a wide swath of audience and potential customer base and the rest that hadn't been invited to the table previously, it's imperative that we not lose that. It's nice to go out and talk to people and have people come up and try and smell my hair from time to time, I smell delightful. Let make assure you, but it was, but it's also nice to be. >>I have a product for you if you want, you know. >>Oh, excellent. I look forward to it. What is it putting? Why not? <laugh> >>What else have you seen? So when accessibility for talent, which by the way is totally home run. What weird things have happened that you've seen? Um, that's >>Uh, it's, it's weird, but it's good that an awful lot of people giving presentations have learned to tighten their message and get to the damn point because most people are not gonna get up from a front row seat in a conference hall, midway through your Aing talk and go somewhere else. But they will change a browser tab and you won't get them back. You've gotta be on point. You've gotta be compelling if it's going to be a virtual discussion. >>Yeah. And also turn off your IMEs too. >>Oh yes. It's always fun in the, in the meetings when you're talking to someone and their co is messaging them about, should we tell 'em about this? And I'm sitting there reading it and it's >>This guy is really weird. Like, >>Yes I am and I bring it into the conversation and then everyone's uncomfortable. It goes, wow. >>Why not? I love when my wife yells at me over I message. When I'm on a business call, like, do you wanna take that about no, I'm good. >>No, no. It's better off. I don't. No, the only encourager it's fine. >>My kids. Excellent. Yeah. That's fun again. That's another weird thing. And, and then group behavior is weird. Now people are looking at, um, communities differently. Yes. Very much so, because if you're fatigued on content, people are looking for the personal aspect. You're starting to see much more of like yeah. Another virtual event. They gotta get better. One and two who's there. >>Yeah. >>The person >>That's a big part of it too is the human stories are what are being more and more interesting. Don't get up here and tell me about your product and how brilliant you are and how you built it. That's great. If I'm you, or if I wanna work with you or I want to compete with you, or I wanna put on my engineering hat and build it myself. Cause why would I buy anything? That's more than $8. But instead, tell me about the problem. Tell me about the painful spot that you specialize in. Tell me a story there. >>I, I >>Think that gets a glimpse in a hook and >>Makes more, more, I think you nailed it. Scaling storytelling. Yes. And access to better people because they don't have to be there in person. I just did it thing. I never, we never would've done the queue. We did. Uh, Amazon stepped up in sponsors. Thank you, Amazon for sponsoring international women's day, we did 30 interviews, APAC. We did five regions and I interviewed this, these women in Asia, Pacific eight, PJ, they called for in this world. And they're amazing. I never would've done those interviews cuz I never, would've seen 'em at an event. I never would've been in Japan or Singapore to access them. And now they're in the index. They're in the network. They're collaborating on LinkedIn. So a threads are developing around connections that I've never seen before. Yes. Around the content, >>Absolutely >>Content value plus >>The networking. And that is the next big revelation of this industry is going to realize you have different companies. And in Amazon's case, different service teams, all, all competing with each other, but you have the container group and you have the database group and you have the message cuing group. But customers don't really want to build things from spare parts. They want a solution to a problem. I want to build an app that does Twitter for pets or whatever it is I'm trying to do. I don't wanna basically have to pick and choose and fill my shopping cart with all these different things. I want something that's gonna give me what I'm trying to get as close to turnkey as possible. Moving up the stack. That is the future. And just how it gets here is gonna be >>Well we're here with Corey Quinn, the master of the master of content here in the a ecosystem. Of course we we've been following up in the beginnings. Great guy. Check out his blog, his site, his newsletter screaming podcast. Cory, final question for you. Uh, what do you hear doing what's on your agenda this week in San Francisco and give a plug for the duck build group. What are you guys doing? I know you're hiring some people what's on the table for the company. What's your focus this week and put a plug in for the group. >>I'm here as a customer and basically getting outta my cage cuz I do live here. It's nice to actually get out and talk to folks who are doing interesting things at the duck build group. We solve one problem. We fixed the horrifying AWS bill, both from engineering and architecture, advising as well as negotiating AWS contracts because it turns out those things are big and complicated. And of course my side media projects last week in aws.com, we are, it it's more or less a content operation where I indulge my continual and ongoing law of affair with the sound of my own voice. >><laugh> and you good. It's good content. It's on, on point fun, Starky and relevant. So thanks for coming to the cube and sharing with us. Appreciate it. No, thank you. Fun. You. Okay. This the cube covers here in San Francisco, California, the cube is back at to events. These are the summits, Amazon web services summits. They happen all over the world. We'll be in New York and obviously we're here in San Francisco this week. I'm John furry. Keep, keep it right here. We'll be back with more coverage after this short break. Okay. Welcome back everyone. This's the cubes covers here in San Francisco, California, we're live on the show floor of AWS summit, 2022. I'm John for host of the cube and remember AWS summit in New York city coming up this summer, we'll be there as well. And of course reinvent the end of the year for all the cube coverage on cloud computing and AWS. The two great guests here from the APN global APN se Jenko and Jeff Grimes partner leader, Jeff and se is doing partnerships global APN >>AWS global startup program. Yeah. >>Okay. Say that again. >>AWS global startup program. >>That's the official name. >>I love >>It too long, too long for me. Thanks for coming on. Yeah, of course. Appreciate it. Tell us about what's going on with you guys. What's the, how was you guys organized? You guys we're obviously were in San Francisco bay area, Silicon valley, zillions of startups here, New York. It's got another one we're gonna be at tons of startups. Lot of 'em getting funded, big growth and cloud big growth and data security, hot and sectors. >>Absolutely. >>So maybe, maybe we could just start with the global startup program. Um, it's essentially a white glove service that we provide to startups that are built on AWS. And the intention there is to help identify use cases that are being built on top of AWS. And for these startups, we want to provide white glove support in co building products together. Right. Um, co-marketing and co-selling essentially, um, you know, the use cases that our customers need solved, um, that either they don't want to build themselves or are perhaps more innovative. Um, so the, a AWS global startup program provides white glove support, dedicated headcount for each one of those pillars. Um, and within our program, we've also provided incentives, programs go to market activities like the AWS startup showcase that we've built for these startups. >>Yeah. By the way, start AWS startups.com is the URL, check it out. Okay. So partnerships are key. Jeff, what's your role? >>Yeah. So I'm responsible for leading the overall F for, for the AWS global startup program. Um, so I've got a team of partner managers that are located throughout the us, uh, managing a few hundred startup ISVs right now. <laugh> >>Yeah, I got >>A lot. We've got a lot. >>There's a lot. I gotta, I gotta ask the tough question. Okay. I'm I'm a startup founder. I got a team. I just got my series a we're grown. I'm trying to hire people. I'm super busy. What's in it for me. Yeah. What do you guys bring to the table? I love the white glove service, but translate that what's in it. What do I get out of it? What's >>A good story. Good question. I focus, I think. Yeah, because we get, we get to see a lot of partners building their businesses on AWS. So, you know, from our perspective, helping these partners focus on what, what do we truly need to build by working backwards from customer feedback, right? How do we effectively go to market? Because we've seen startups do various things, um, through trial and error, um, and also just messaging, right? Because oftentimes partners or rather startups, um, try to boil the ocean with many different use cases. So we really help them, um, sort of laser focus on what are you really good at and how can we bring that to the customer as quickly as possible? >>Yeah. I mean, it's truly about helping that founder accelerate the growth of their company. Yeah. Right. And there's a lot that you can do with AWS, but focus is truly the key word there because they're gonna be able to find their little piece of real estate and absolutely deliver incredible outcomes for our customers. And then they can start their growth curve there. >>What are some of the coolest things you've seen with the APN that you can share publicly? I know you got a lot going on there, a lot of confidentiality. Um, but you know, we're here lot of great partners on the floor here. I'm glad we're back at events. Uh, a lot of stuff going on digitally with virtual stuff and, and hybrid. What are some of the cool things you guys have seen in the APN that you can point to? >>Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I can point to few, you can take them. Sure. So, um, I think what's been fun over the years for me personally, I came from a startup, ran sales at an early stage startup and, and I went through the whole thing. So I have a deep appreciation for what these guys are going through. And what's been interesting to see for me is taking some of these early stage guys, watching them progress, go public, get acquired, and see that big day mm-hmm <affirmative>, uh, and being able to point to very specific items that we help them to get to that point. Uh, and it's just a really fun journey to watch. >>Yeah. I, and part of the reason why I really, um, love working at the AWS, uh, global startup program is working with passionate founders. Um, I just met with a founder today that it's gonna, he's gonna build a very big business one day, um, and watching them grow through these stages and supporting that growth. Um, I like to think of our program as a catalyst for enterprise sort of scale. Yeah. Um, and through that we provide visibility, credibility and growth opportunities. >>Yeah. A lot, a lot of partners too. What I found talking to staff founders is when they have that milestone, they work so hard for it. Whether it's a B round C round Republic or get bought. Yeah. Um, then they take a deep breath and they look back at wow, what a journey it's been. So it's kind of emotional for sure. Yeah. Still it's a grind. Right? You gotta, I mean, when you get funding, it's still day one. You don't stop. It's no celebrate, you got a big round or valuation. You still gotta execute >>And look it's hypercompetitive and it's brutally difficult. And our job is to try to make that a little less difficult and navigate those waters right. Where everyone's going after similar things. >>Yeah. I think as a group element too, I observe that startups that I, I meet through the APN has been interesting because they feel part of AWS. Yeah, totally. As a group of community, as a vibe there. Um, I know they're hustling, they're trying to make things happen. But at the same time, Amazon throws a huge halo effect. I mean, that's a huge factor. I mean, yeah. You guys are the number one cloud in the business, the growth in every sector is booming. Yeah. And if you're a startup, you don't have that luxury yet. And look at companies like snowflake, they're built on top of AWS. Yeah. I mean, people are winning by building on AWS. >>Yeah. And our, our, our program really validates their technology first. So we have, what's called a foundation's technical review that we put all of our startups through before we go to market. So that when enterprise customers are looking at startup technology, they know that it's already been vetted. And, um, to take that a step further and help these partners differentiate, we use programs like the competency programs, the DevOps compet, the, the security competency, which continues to help, um, provide sort of a platform for these startups, help them differentiate. And also there's go to market benefits that are associated with that. >>Okay. So let me ask the, the question that's probably on everyone's mind, who's watching. Certainly I asked this a lot. There's a lot of companies startups out there who makes the, is there a criteria? Oh God, it's not like his sports team or anything, but like sure. Like there's activate program, which is like, there's hundreds of thousands of startups out there. Not everyone is at the APN. Right? Correct. So ISVs again, that's a whole nother, that's a more mature partner that might have, you know, huge market cap or growth. How do you guys focus? How do you guys focus? I mean, you got a good question, you know, a thousand flowers blooming all the time. Is there a new way you guys are looking at it? I know there's been some talk about restructure or, or new focus. What's the focus. >>Yeah. It's definitely not an easy task by any means. Um, but you know, I recently took over this role and we're really trying to establish focus areas, right. So obviously a lot of the fees that we look after our infrastructure ISVs, that's what we do. Uh, and so we have very specific pods that look after different type of partners. So we've got a security pod, we've got a DevOps pod, we've got core infrastructure, et cetera. And really we're trying to find these ISVs that can solve, uh, really interesting AWS customer challenges. >>So you guys have a deliberate, uh, focus on these pillars. So what infrastructure, >>Security, DevOps, and data and analytics, and then line of business >>Line of business line, like web marketing >>Solutions, business apps, >>Business, this owner type thing. Exactly. >>Yeah, exactly. >>So solutions there. Yeah. More solutions and the other ones are like hardcore. So infrastructure as well, like storage, backup, ransomware of stuff, or, >>Uh, storage, networking. >>Okay. Yeah. The classic >>Database, et cetera. Right. >>And so there's teams on each pillar. >>Yep. So I think what's, what's fascinating for the startup that we cover is that they've got, they truly have support from a build market sell perspective. Right. So you've got someone who's technical to really help them get the technology, figured out someone to help them get the marketing message dialed and spread, and then someone to actually do the co-sell, uh, day to day activities to help them get in front of customers. >>Probably the number one request that we always ask for Amazon is can we waste that sock report? Oh, download it, the console, which we use all the time. Exactly. But security's a big deal. I mean, you know, SREs are evolving, that role of DevOps is taking on dev SecOps. Um, I, I could see a lot of customers having that need for a relationship to move things faster. Do you guys provide like escalation or is that a part of a service or not, not part of a, uh, >>Yeah, >>So the partner development manager can be an escalation point. Absolutely. Think of them as an extension of your business inside of AWS. >>Great. And you guys how's that partner managers, uh, measure >>On those three pillars. Right. Got it. Are we billing, building valuable use cases? So product development go to market, so go to market activities, think blog, posts, webinars, case studies, so on and so forth. And then co-sell not only are we helping these partners win their current opportunities that they are sourcing, but can we also help them source net new deals? Yeah. Right. That's >>Very important. I mean, top asked from the partners is get me in front of customers. Right. Um, not an easy task, but that's a huge goal of ours to help them grow their top >>Line. Right. Yeah. In fact, we had some interviews here on the cube earlier talking about that dynamic of how enterprise customers are buying. And it's interesting, a lot more POCs. I have one partner here that you guys work with, um, on observability, they got a huge POC with capital one mm-hmm <affirmative> and the enterprises are engaging the startups and bringing them in. So the combination of open source software enterprises are leaning into that hard and bringing young growing startups in mm-hmm <affirmative>. Yep. So I could see that as a huge service that you guys can bring people in. >>Right. And they're bringing massively differentiated technology to the table. Mm-hmm <affirmative> the challenge is they just might not have the brand recognition that the big guys have. And so that it's our job is how do you get that great tech in front of the right situations? >>Okay. So my next question is about the show here, and then we'll talk globally. So here in San Francisco sure. You know, Silicon valley bay area, San Francisco bay area, a lot of startups, a lot of VCs, a lot of action. Mm-hmm <affirmative> so probably a big market for you guys. Yeah. So what's exciting here in SF and then outside SF, you guys have a global program, you see any trends that are geography based or is it sure areas more mature? There's certain regions that are better. I mean, I just interviewed a company here that's doing, uh, AWS edge really well in these cases. It's interesting that these, the partners are filling a lot of holes and gaps in the opportunities with AWS. So what's exciting here. And then what's the global perspective. >>Yeah, totally. So obviously a ton of partners, I, from the bay area that we support. Um, but we're seeing a lot of really interesting technology coming out of AMEA specifically. Yeah. Uh, and making a lot of noise here in the United States, which is great. Um, and so, you know, we definitely have that global presence and, and starting to see super differentiated technology come out of those regions. >>Yeah. Especially Tel Aviv. Yeah. >>Amy real quick, before you get in the surge. It's interesting. The VC market in, in Europe is hot. Yeah. They've got a lot of unicorns coming in. We've seen a lot of companies coming in. They're kind of rattling their own, you know, cage right now. Hey, look at us. We'll see if they crash, you know, but we don't see that happening. I mean, people have been projecting a crash now in, in the startup ecosystem for at least a year. It's not crashing. In fact, funding's up. >>Yeah. The pandemic was hard on a lot of startups for sure. Yeah. Um, but what we've seen is many of these startups, they, as quickly as they can grow, they can also pivot as, as, as well. Um, and so I've actually seen many of our startups grow through the pandemic because their use cases are helping customers either save money, become more operationally efficient and provide value to leadership teams that need more visibility into their infrastructure during a pandemic. >>It's an interesting point. I talked to Andy jazzy and Adam Leski both say the same thing during the pandemic necessity, the mother of all invention. Yep. And startups can move fast. So with that, you guys are there to assist if I'm a startup and I gotta pivot cuz remember iterate and pivot, iterate and pivot. So you get your economics, that's the playbook of the ventures and the models. >>Exactly. How >>Do you guys help me do that? Give me an example of walk me through, pretend me I'm a startup. Hey, I am on the cloud. Oh my God. Pandemic. They need video conferencing. Hey cube. Yeah. What do I need? Surge? What, what do I do? >>That's a good question. First thing is just listen. Yeah. I think what we have to do is a really good job of listening to the partner. Um, what are their needs? What is their problem statement and where do they want to go at the end of the day? Um, and oftentimes because we've worked with so many successful startups, they have come out of our program. We have, um, either through intuition or a playbook, determined what is gonna be the best path forward and how do we get these partners to stop focusing on things that will eventually, um, just be a waste of time yeah. And, or not provide, or, you know, bring any fruit to the table, which, you know, essentially revenue. >>Well, we love star rights here in the cube because one, um, they have good stories. They're oil and cutting edge, always pushing the envelope and they're kind of disrupting someone else. Yeah. And so they have an opinion. They don't mind sharing on camera. So love talking to startups. We love working with you guys on our startup showcases startups.com. Check out AWS startups.com and you got the showcases, uh, final. We I'll give you guys the last word. What's the bottom line bumper sticker for AP the global APN program. Summarize the opportunity for startups, what you guys bring to the table and we'll close it out. Totally start >>With you. Yeah. I think the AWS global startup program's here to help companies truly accelerate their business full stop. Right. And that's what we're here for. I love it. >>It's a good way to, it's a good way to put it Dito. >>Yeah. All right, sir. Thanks for coming on. Thanks John. Great to see you love working with you guys. Hey, startups need help. And the growing and huge market opportunities, the shift cloud scale data engineering, security infrastructure, all the markets are exploding in growth because of the digital transformation of the realities here. Open source and cloud all making it happen here in the cube in San Francisco, California. I'm John furrier, your host. Thanks for watching >>John. >>Hello and welcome back to the cubes live coverage here in San Francisco, California for AWS summit, 2022. I'm John for host of the cube. Uh, two days of coverage, AWS summit, 2022 in New York city. Coming up this summer, we'll be there as well at events are back. The cube is back of course, with the cube virtual cube hybrid, the cube.net, check it out a lot of content this year, more than ever, a lot more cloud data cloud native, modern applic is all happening. Got a great guest here. Jeremy Burton, Cub alumni, uh, CEO of observe Inc in the middle of all the cloud scale, big data observability Jeremy. Great to see you. Thanks >>Always great to come and talk to you on the queue, man. It's been been a few years, so, >>Um, well you, you got your hands. You're in the trenches with great startup, uh, good funding, great board, great people involved in the observability hot area, but also you've been a senior executive president of Dell, uh, EMC, uh, 11 years ago you had a, a vision and you actually had an event called cloud meets big data. Um, yeah. And it's here. You predicted it 11 years ago. Um, look around it's cloud meets big data. >>Yeah. I mean the, the cloud thing I think, you know, was, was probably already a thing, but the big data thing I do claim credit for, for, for sort of catching that bus out, um, you know, we, we were on the, the, the bus early and, and I think it was only inevitable. Like, you know, if you could bring the economics and the compute of cloud to big data, you, you could find out things you could never possibly imagine. >>So you're close to a lot of companies that we've been covering deeply. Snowflake obviously are involved, uh, the board level, you know, the founders, you know, the people there cloud, you know, Amazon, you know, what's going on here? Yeah. You're doing a startup as the CEO at the helm, uh, chief of observ, Inc, which is an observability, which is to me in the center of this confluence of data engineering, large scale integrations, um, data as code integrating into applic. I mean, it's a whole nother world developing, like you see with snowflake, it means snowflake is super cloud as we call it. So a whole nother wave is here. What's your, what's this wave we're on what's how would you describe the wave? >>Well, a couple of things, I mean, people are, I think riding more software than, than ever fall. Why? Because they've realized that if, if you don't take your business online and offer a service, then you become largely irrelevant. And so you you've got a whole set of new applications. I think, I think more applications now than any point. Um, not, not just ever, but the mid nineties, I always looked at as the golden age of application development. Now back then people were building for windows. Well, well now they're building for things like AWS is now the platform. Um, so you've got all of that going on. And then at the same time, the, the side effect of these applications is they generate data and lots of data and the, you know, the sort of the transactions, you know, what you bought today or something like that. But then there's what we do, which is all the telemetry data, all the exhaust fumes. And I think people really are realizing that their differentiation is not so much their application. It's their understanding of the data. Can, can I understand who my best customers are, what I sell today. If people came to my website and didn't buy, then I not, where did they drop off all of that they wanna analyze. And, and the answers are all in the data. The question is, can you understand it >>In our last startup showcase, we featured data as code. One of the insights that we got out of that I wanna get your opinion on our reaction to is, is that data used to be put into a data lake and turns into a data swamp or throw into the data warehouse. And then we'll do some query, maybe a report once in a while. And so data, once it was done, unless it was real time, even real time was not good anymore after real time. That was the old way. Now you're seeing more and more, uh, effort to say, let's go look at the data cuz now machine learning is getting better. Not just train once mm-hmm <affirmative> they're iterating. Yeah. This notion of iterating and then pivoting, iterating and pivoting. Yeah, that's a Silicon valley story. That's like how startups work, but now you're seeing data being treated the same way. So now you have another, this data concept that's now yeah. Part of a new way to create more value for the apps. So this whole, this whole new cycle of >>Yeah. >>Data being reused and repurposed and figured out and >>Yeah, yeah. I'm a big fan of, um, years ago. Uh, uh, just an amazing guy, Andy McAfee at the MIT C cell labs I spent time with and he, he had this line, which still sticks to me this day, which is look I'm I'm. He said I'm part of a body, which believes that everything is a matter of data. Like if you, of enough data, you can answer any question. And, and this is going back 10 years when he was saying these kind of things and, and certainly, you know, research is on the forefront. But I, I think, you know, starting to see that mindset of the, the sort of MIT research be mainstream, you know, in enterprises, they they're realizing that yeah, it is about the data. You know, if I can better understand my data better than my competitor than I've got an advantage. And so the question is is, is how, what, what technologies and what skills do I need in my organization to, to allow me to do that. So >>Let's talk about observing you the CEO of, okay. Given you've seen the wave before you're in the front lines of observability, which again is in the center of all this action what's going on with the company. Give a quick minute to explain, observe for the folks who don't know what you guys do. What's the company doing? What's the funding status, what's the product status and what's the customer status. Yeah. >>So, um, we realized, you know, a handful of years ago, let's say five years ago that, um, look, the way people are building applications is different. They they're way more functional. They change every day. Uh, but in some respects they're a lot more complicated. They're distributed. They, you know, microservices architectures and when something goes wrong, um, the old way of troubleshooting and solving problems was not gonna fly because you had SA so much change going into production on a daily basis. It was hard to tell like where the problem was. And so we thought, okay, it's about time. Somebody looks at the exhaust fumes from this application and all the telemetry data and helps people troubleshoot and make sense of the problems that they're seeing. So, I mean, that's observability, it's actually a term that goes back to the 1960s. It was a guy called, uh, Rudolph like, like everything in tech, you know, it's, it's a reinvention of, of something from years gone by. >>But, um, there's a guy called, um, Rudy Coleman in 1960s, kinder term. And, and, and the term was been able to determine the state of a system by looking at its external outputs. And so we've been going on this for, uh, the best part of the all years now. Um, it took us three years just to build the product. I think, I think what people don't appreciate these days often is the barrier to entry in a lot of these markets is quite high. You, you need a lot of functionality to have something that's credible with a customer. Um, so yeah, this last year we, we, we did our first year selling, uh, we've got about 40 customers now. <affirmative> um, we just we've got great investors for the hill ventures. Uh, I mean, Mike SP who was, you know, the, the guy who was the, really, the first guy in it snowflake and the, the initial investor were fortunate enough to, to have Mike on our board. And, um, you know, part of the observed story yeah. Is closely knit with snowflake because all of that time data know we, we still are in there. >>So I want to get, uh, >>Yeah. >>Pivot to that. Mike Pfizer, snowflake, Jeremy Burton, the cube kind of, kind of same thinking this idea of a super cloud or what snowflake became snowflake is massively successful on top of AWS. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and now you're seeing startups and companies build on top of snowflake. Yeah. So that's become an entrepreneurial story that we think that to go big in the cloud, you can have a cloud on a cloud, uh, like as Jerry, Jerry Chan and Greylock calls it castles in the cloud where there are moats in the cloud. So you're close to it. I know you're doing some stuff with snowflake. So a startup, what's your view on building on top of say a snowflake or an AWS, because again, you gotta go where the data is. You need all the data. >>Yeah. So >>What's your take on that? >>I mean, having enough gray hair now, um, you know, again, in tech, I think if you wanna predict the future, look at the past. And, uh, you know, to many years ago, 25 years ago, I was at a, a smaller company called Oracle and an Oracle was the database company. And, uh, their, their ambition was to manage all of the world's transactional data. And they built on a platform or a couple of platforms, one, one windows, and the other main one was Solaris. And so at that time, the operator and system was the platform. And, and then that was the, you know, ecosystem that you would compete on top of. And then there were companies like SAP that built applications on top of Oracle. So then wind the clock forward 25 years gray hairs. <laugh> the platform, isn't the operating system anymore. The platform is AWS, you know, Google cloud. I gotta probably look around if I say that in. Yeah. It's >>Okay. But hyperscale, yeah. CapX built out >>That is the new platform. And then snowflake comes along. Well, their aspiration is to manage all of the, not just human generator data, but machine generated data in the world of cloud. And I think they they've done an amazing job doing for the, I'd say, say the, the big data world, what Oracle did for the relational data world, you know, way back 25 years ago. And then there are folks like us come along and, and of course my ambition would be, look, if, if we can be as successful as an SAP building on top of snow snowflake, uh, as, as they were on top of Oracle, then, then we'd probably be quite happy. >>So you're building on top of snowflake. >>We're building on top of snowflake a hundred percent. And, um, you know, I've had folks say to me, well, aren't you worried about that? Isn't that a risk? It's like, well, that that's a risk. You >>Still on the board. >>Yeah. I'm still on the board. Yeah. That that's a risk I'm prepared to take <laugh> I am long on snowflake you, >>Well, you're in a good spot. Stay on the board, then you'll know what's going on. Okay. No know just doing, but the, this is a real dynamic. It is. It's not a one off it's. >>Well, and I do believe as well that the platform that you see now with AWS, if you look at the revenues of AWS is an order of magnitude more than Microsoft was 25 years ago with windows mm-hmm <affirmative>. And so I believe the opportunity for folks like snowflake and folks like observe it's an order of magnitude more than it was for the Oracle and the SAPs of the old >>World. Yeah. And I think this is really, I think this is something that this next generation of entrepreneurship is the go big scenario is you gotta be on a platform. Yeah. >>It's quite >>Easy or be the platform, but it's hard. There's only like how many seats are at that table left. >>Well, value migrates up over time. So, you know, when the cloud thing got going, there were probably 10, 20, 30, you know, Rackspace and there's 1,000,001 infrastructure, a service platform as a service, my, my old, uh, um, employee EMC, we had pivotal, you know, pivotal was a platform as a service. You don't hear so much about it, these, but initially there's a lot of players and then it consolidates. And then to, to like extract, uh, a real business, you gotta move up, you gotta add value, you gotta build databases, then you gotta build applications. So >>It's interesting. Moving from the data center of the cloud was a dream for starters. Cause then if the provision, the CapEx, now the CapEx is in the cloud. Then you build on top of that, you got snowflake you on top of that, the >>Assumption is almost that compute and storage is free. I know it's not quite free. Yeah. It's >>Almost free, >>But, but you can, you know, as an application vendor, you think, well, what can I do if I assume compute and storage is free, that's the mindset you've gotta get into. >>And I think the platform enablement to value. So if I'm an entrepreneur, I'm gonna get a serious, multiple of value in what I'm paying. Yeah. Most people don't even blanket their Avis pills unless they're like massively huge. Yeah. Then it's a repatriation question or whatever discount question, but for most startups or any growing company, the Amazon bill should be a small factor. >>Yeah. I mean, a lot of people, um, ask me like, look, you're building on snowflake. Um, you, you know, you are, you are, you're gonna be, you're gonna be paying their money. How, how, how, how does that work with your business model? If you're paying them money, you know, do, do you have a viable business? And it's like, well, okay. I, we could build a database as well in observe, but then I've got half the development team working on in that will never be as good as snowflake. And so we made the call early on that. No, no, we, we wanna innovate above the database. Yeah. Right. Snowflake are doing a great job of innovating on the database and, and the same is true of something like Amazon, like, like snowflake could have built their own cloud and their own platform, but they didn't. >>Yeah. And what's interesting is that Dave <inaudible> and I have been pointing this out and he's actually more on snowflake. I I've been looking at data bricks, um, and the same dynamics happening, the proof is the ecosystem. Yeah. I mean, if you look at Snowflake's ecosystem right now and data bricks it's exploding. Right. I mean, the shows are selling out the floor. Space's book. That's the old days at VMware. Yeah. The old days at AWS >>One and for snowflake and, and any platform provider, it's a beautiful thing. You know, we build on snowflake and we pay them money. They don't have to sell to us. Right. And we do a lot of the support. And so the, the economics work out really, really well. If you're a platform provider and you've got a lot of ecosystems. >>Yeah. And then also you get, you get a, um, a trajectory of, uh, economies of scale with the institutional knowledge of snowflake integrations, right. New products. You're scaling that function with the, >>Yeah. I mean, we manage 10 petabytes of data right now. Right. When I, when I, when I arrived at EMC in 2010, we had, we had one petabyte customer. And, and so at observe, we've been only selling the product for a year. We have 10 petabytes of data under management. And so been able to rely on a platform that can manage that is invaluable, >>You know, but Jeremy Greek conversation, thanks for sharing your insights on the industry. Uh, we got a couple minutes left. Um, put a plug in for observe. What do you guys, I know you got some good funding, great partners. I don't know if you can talk about your, your, your POC customers, but you got a lot of high ends folks that are working with you. You getting traction. Yeah. >>Yeah. >>Scales around the corner. Sounds like, are you, is that where you are scale? >>Got, we've got a big announcement coming up in two or weeks. We've got, we've got new funding, um, which is always great. Um, the product is, uh, really, really close. I think, as a startup, you always strive for market fit, you know, which is at which point can you just start hiring salespeople? And the revenue keeps going. We're getting pretty close to that right now. Um, we've got about 40 SaaS companies run on the platform. They're almost all AWS Kubernetes, uh, which is our sweet spot to begin with, but we're starting to get some really interesting, um, enterprise type customers. We're, we're, you know, F five networks we're POC in right now with capital one, we got some interest in news around capital one coming up. I, I can't share too much, uh, but it's gonna be exciting. And, and like I saids hill continued to, to, to stick, >>I think capital one's a big snowflake customer as well. Right. They, >>They were early in one of the things that attracted me to capital one was they were very, very good with snowflake early on. And, and they put snowflake in a position in the bank where they thought that snowflake could be successful. Yeah. And, and today that, that is one of Snowflake's biggest accounts. >>So capital one, very innovative cloud, obviously AIOS customer and very innovative, certainly in the CISO and CIO, um, on another point on where you're at. So you're, Prescale meaning you're about to scale, right? So you got POCs, what's that trick GE look like, can you see around the corner? What's, what's going on? What's on, around the corner. That you're, that you're gonna hit the straight and narrow and, and gas it >>Fast. Yeah. I mean, the, the, the, the key thing for us is we gotta get the product. Right. Um, the nice thing about having a guy like Mike Pfizer on the board is he doesn't obsess about revenue at this stage is questions that the board are always about, like, is the product, right? Is the product right? Is the product right? If you got the product right. And cuz we know when the product's right, we can then scale the sales team and, and the revenue will take care of itself. Yeah. So right now all the attention is on the product. Um, the, this year, the exciting thing is we were, we're adding all the tracing visualizations. So people will be able to the kind of things that back in the day you could do with the new lakes and, and AppDynamics, the last generation of, of APM tools, you're gonna be able to do that within observe. And we've already got the logs and the metrics capability in there. So for us, this year's a big one, cuz we sort of complete the trifecta, you know, the, the logs, >>What's the secret sauce observe. What if you had the, put it into a, a sentence what's the secret sauce? I, >>I, I think, you know, an amazing founding engineering team, uh, number one, I mean, at the end of the day, you have to build an amazing product and you have to solve a problem in a different way. And we've got great long term investors. And, and the biggest thing our investors give is actually it's not just money. It gives us time to get the product, right. Because if we get the product right, then we can get the growth. >>Got it. Final question. Why I got you here? You've been on the enterprise business for a long time. What's the buyer landscape out there. You got people doing POCs on capital one scale. So we know that goes on. What's the appetite at the buyer side for startups and what are their requirements that you're seeing? Uh, obviously we're seeing people go in and dip into the startup pool because new ways to refactor their business restructure. So a lot happening in cloud. What's the criteria. How are enterprises engaging in with startups? >>Yeah. I mean, enterprises, they know they've gotta spend money transforming the business. I mean, this was, I almost feel like my old Dell or EMC self there, but, um, what, what we were saying five years ago is happening. Um, everybody needs to figure out out a way to take their, this to this digital world. Everybody has to do it. So the nice thing from a startup standpoint is they know at times they need to risk or, or take a bet on new technology in order to, to help them do that. So I think you've got buyers that a have money, uh, B prepared to take risks and it's, it's a race against time to, you know, get their, their offerings in this. So a new digital footprint, >>Final, final question. What's the state of AWS. Where do you see them going next? Obviously they're continuing to be successful. How does cloud 3.0, or they always say it's day one, but it's more like day 10. Uh, but what's next for Aw. Where do they go from here? Obviously they're doing well. They're getting bigger and bigger. >>Yeah. They're, they're, it's an amazing story. I mean, you know, we we're, we're on AWS as well. And so I, I think if they keep nurturing the builders in the ecosystem, then that is their superpower. They, they have an early leads. And if you look at where, you know, maybe the likes of Microsoft lost the plot in the, in the late it was, they stopped, uh, really caring about developers and the folks who were building on top of their ecosystem. In fact, they started buying up their ecosystem and competing with people in their ecosystem. And I see with AWS, they, they have an amazing head start and if they did more, you know, if they do more than that, that's, what's gonna keep the jut rolling for many years to come. Yeah, >>They got the silicone and they got the staff act, developing Jeremy Burton inside the cube, great resource for commentary, but also founding with the CEO of a company called observing in the middle of all the action on the board of snowflake as well. Um, great start. Thanks for coming on the cube. >>Always a pleasure. >>Okay. Live from San Francisco to cube. I'm John for your host. Stay with us more coverage from San Francisco, California after the short break. >>Hello. Welcome back to the cubes coverage here live in San Francisco, California. I'm John furrier, host of the cubes cube coverage of AWS summit 2022 here in San Francisco. We're all the developers of the bay area at Silicon valley. And of course, AWS summit in New York city is coming up in the summer. We'll be there as well. SF and NYC cube coverage. Look for us. Of course, reinforcing Boston and re Mars with the whole robotics AI thing, all coming together. Lots of coverage stay with us today. We've got a great guest from Deibel VC. John Skoda, founding partner, entrepreneurial venture is a venture firm. Your next act, welcome to the cube. Good to see you. >>Good to see you, Matt. I feel like it's been forever since we've been able to do something in person. Well, >>I'm glad you're here because we run into each other all the time. We've known each other for over a decade. Um, >><affirmative>, it's been at least 10 years now, >>At least 10 years more. And we don't wanna actually go back as frees back, uh, the old school web 1.0 days. But anyway, we're in web three now. So we'll get to that in >>Second. We, we are, it's a little bit of a throwback to the path though, in my opinion, >><laugh>, it's all the same. It's all distributed computing and software. We ran each other in cube con you're investing in a lot of tech startup founders. Okay. This next level, next gen entrepreneurs have a new makeup and it's software. It's hardcore tech in some cases, not hardcore tech, but using software is take old something old and make it better, new, faster. <laugh>. So tell us about Deibel what's the firm. I know you're the founder, uh, which is cool. What's going on. Explain >>What you're doing. I mean, you remember I'm a recovering entrepreneur, right? So of course I, I, I, >>No, you're never recovering. You're always entrepreneur >>Always, but we are also always recovering. So I, um, started my first company when I was 24. If you remember, before there was Facebook and friends, there was instant messaging. People were using that product at work every day, they were creating a security vulnerability between their network and the outside world. So I plugged that hole and built an instant messaging firewall. It was my first company. The company was called, I am logic and we were required by Symantec. Uh, then spent 12 years investing in the next generation of our companies, uh, early investor in open source companies and cloud companies and spent a really wonderful 12 years, uh, at a firm called NEA. So I, I feel like my whole life I've been either starting enterprise software companies or helping founders start enterprise software companies. And I'll tell you, there's never been a better time than right now to start enter price software company. >>So, uh, the passion for starting a new firm was really a recognition that founders today that are starting in an enterprise software company, they, they tend to be, as you said, a more technical founder, right? Usually it's a software engineer or a builder mm-hmm <affirmative>, uh, they are building products that are serving a slightly different market than what we've traditionally seen in enterprise software. Right? I think traditionally we've seen it buyers or CIOs that have agendas and strategies, which, you know, purchased software that has traditionally bought and sold tops down. But, you know, today I think the most successful enterprise software companies are the ones that are built more bottoms up and have more technical early opts. And generally speaking, they're free to use. They're free to try. They're very commonly community source or open source companies where you have a large technical community that's supporting them. So there's a, there's kind of a new normal now I think in great enterprise software. And it starts with great technical founders with great products and great and emotions. And I think there's no better place to, uh, service those people than in the cloud and uh, in, in your community. >>Well, first of all, congratulations, and by the way, you got a great pedigree and great background, super smart admire of your work and your, and, and your founding, but let's face it. Enterprise is hot because digital transformation is all companies. The is no, I mean, consumer is enterprise. Now everything is what was once a niche. No, I won't say niche category, but you know, not for the faint of heart, you know, investors, >>You know, it's so funny that you say that enterprise is hot because you, and I feel that way now. But remember, like right now, there's also a giant tech in VC conference in Miami <laugh> it's covering cryptocurrencies and FCS and web three. So I think beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder <laugh> but no, I, I will tell you, >>Ts is one big enterprise, cuz you gotta have imutability you got performance issues. You have, I IOPS issues. Well, and, >>And I think all of us here that are, uh, maybe students of history and have been involved in, open in the cloud would say that we're, you know, much of what we're doing is, uh, the predecessors of the web web three movement. And many of us I think are contributors to the web three movement. >>The hype is definitely that three. >>Yeah. But, but >>You know, for >>Sure. Yeah, no, but now you're taking us further east to Miami. So, uh, you know, look, I think, I, I think, um, what is unquestioned with the case now? And maybe it's, it's more obvious the more time you spend in this world is this is the fastest growing part of enterprise software. And if you include cloud infrastructure and cloud infrastructure spend, you know, it is by many men over, uh, 500 billion in growing, you know, 20 to 30% a year. So it it's a, it's a just incredibly fast, >>Let's getting, let's get into some of the cultural and the, the shifts that are happening, cuz again, you, you have the luxury of being in enterprise when it was hard, it's getting easier and more cooler. I get it and more relevant, but it's also the hype of like the web three, for instance. But you know, uh, um, um, the CEO snowflake, okay. Has wrote a book and Dave Valenti and I were talking about it and uh, Frank Luman has says, there's no playbooks. We always ask the CEOs, what's your playbook. And he's like, there's no playbook, situational awareness, always Trump's playbooks. So in the enterprise playbook, oh, higher direct sales force and SAS kind of crushed the, at now SAS is being redefined, right. So what is SAS? Is snowflake a SAS or is that a platform? So again, new unit economics are emerging, whole new situation, you got web three. So to me there's a cultural shift, the young entrepreneurs, the, uh, user experience, they look at Facebook and say, ah, you know, they own all my data. You know, we know that that cliche, um, they, you know, the product. So as this next gen, the gen Z and the millennials come in and our customers and the founders, they're looking at things a little bit differently and the tech better. >>Yeah. I mean, I mean, I think we can, we can see a lot of commonalities across all successful startups and the overall adoption of technology. Uh, and, and I would tell you, this is all one big giant revolution. I call it the user driven revolution. Right. It's the rise of the user. Yeah. And you might say product like growth is currently the hottest trend in enterprise software. It's actually user like growth, right. They're one in the same. So sometimes people think the product, uh, is what is driving. You >>Just pull the >>Product through. Exactly, exactly. And so that's that I, that I think is really this revolution that you see, and, and it does extend into things like cryptocurrencies and web three and, you know, sort of like the control that is taken back by the user. Um, but you know, many would say that, that the origins of this movement maybe started with open source where users were, are contributors, you know, contributors, we're users and looking back decades and seeing how it, how it fast forward to today. I think that's really the trend that we're all writing and it's enabling these end users. And these end users in our world are developers, data engineers, cybersecurity practitioners, right. They're really the users. And they're really the, the beneficiaries and the most, you know, kind of valued people in >>This. I wanna come back to the data engineers in a second, but I wanna make a comment and get your reaction to, I have a, I'm a GenXer technically, so for not a boomer, but I have some boomer friends who are a little bit older than me who have, you know, experienced the sixties. And I've, I've been staying on the cube for probably about eight years now that we are gonna hit a digital hippie revolution, meaning a rebellion against in the sixties was rebellion against the fifties and the man and, you know, summer of love. That was a cultural differentiation from the other one other group, the predecessors. So we're kind of having that digital moment now where it's like, Hey boomers, Hey people, we're not gonna do that anymore. We hate how you organize shit. >>Right. But isn't this just technology. I mean, isn't it, isn't it like there used to be the old adage, like, you know, you would never get fired for buying IBM, but now it's like, you obviously probably would get fired if you bought IBM. And I mean, it's just like the, the, I think, I think >>It's the main for days, those renegades were breaking into Stanford, starting the home brew club. So what I'm trying to get at is that, do you see the young cultural revolution also, culturally, just, this is my identity NFTs to me speak volumes about my, I wanna associate with NFTs, not single sign on. Well, >>Absolutely. And, and I think like, I think you're hitting on something, which is like this convergence of, of, you know, societal trends with technology trends and how that manifests in our world is yes. I think like there is unquestionably almost a religion around the way in which a product is built. Right. And we can use open source, one example of that religion. Some people will say, look, I'll just never try a product in the cloud if it's not open source. Yeah. I think cloud, native's another example of that, right? It's either it's, you know, it either is cloud native or it's not. And I think a lot of people will look at a product and say, look, you know, you were not designed in the cloud era. Therefore I just won't try you. And sometimes, um, like it or not, it's a religious decision, right? It's, it's something that people just believe to be true almost without, uh, necessarily. I mean >>The decision making, let me ask you this next question. As a VC. Now you look at pitch, well, you've made a VC for many years, but you also have the founder, uh, entrepreneurial mindset, but you can get empathize with the founders. You know, hustle is a big part of the, that first founder check, right? You gotta convince someone to part with their ch their money and the first money in which you do a lot of is about believing in the person. So fing, so you make, it is hard. Now you, the data's there, you either have it cloud native, you either have the adaption or traction. So honesty is a big part of that pitch. You can't fake it. Oh, >>AB absolutely. You know, there used to be this concept of like the persona of an entrepreneur, right. And the persona of the entrepreneur would be, you know, somebody who was a great salesperson or somebody who tell a great story. You, I still think that that's important, right? It still is a human need for people to believe in narratives and stories. But having said that you're right, the proof is in the pudding, right? At some point you click download and you try the product and it does what it says it it's gonna do, or it doesn't, or it either stands up to the load test or it doesn't. And so I, I feel like in this new economy that we live in, it's a shift from maybe the storytellers and the creators to, to the builders, right. The people that know how to build great product. And in some ways the people that can build great product yeah. Stand out from the crowd. And they're the ones that can build communities around their products. And, you know, in some ways can, um, you know, kind of own more of the narrative because their products exactly >>The volume back to the user led growth. >>Exactly. And it's the religion of, I just love your product. Right. And I, I, I, um, Doug song was the founder of du security used to say, Hey, like, you know, the, the really like in today's world of like consumption based software, the user is only gonna give you 90 seconds to figure out whether or not you're a company that's easy to do business with. Right. And so you can say, and do all the things that you want about how easy you are to work with. But if the product isn't easy to install, if it's not easy to try, if it's not, if, if the, you know, it's gotta speak to >>The, speak to the user, but let me ask a question now that the people watching who are maybe entrepreneurial entrepreneur, um, masterclass here is in session. So I have to ask you, do you prefer, um, an entrepreneur to come in and say, look at John. Here's where I'm at. Okay. First of all, storytelling's fine. Whether you're an extrovert or introvert, have your style, sell the story in a way that's authentic, but do you, what do you prefer to say? Here's where I'm at? Look, I have an idea. Here's my traction. I think here's my MVP prototype. I need help. Or do you wanna just see more stats? What's the, what's the preferred way that you like to see entrepreneurs come in and engage, engage? >>There's tons of different styles, man. I think the single most important thing that every founder should know is that we, we don't invest in what things are today. We invest in what we think something will become. Right. And I think that's why we all get up in the morning and try to build something different, right? It's that we see the world a different way. We want it to be a different way, and we wanna work every single moment of the day to try to make that vision a reality. So I think the more that you can show people where you want to be, the more likely somebody is gonna align with your vision and, and want to invest in you and wanna be along for the ride. So I, I wholeheartedly believe in showing off what you got today, because eventually we all get down to like, where are we and what are we gonna do together? But, um, no, I >>Show >>The path. I think the single most important thing for any founder and VC relationship is that they have the same vision, uh, have the same vision. You can, you can get through bumps in the road, you can get through short term spills. You can all sorts of things in the middle of the journey can happen. Yeah. But it doesn't matter as much if you share the same long term vision, >>Don't flake out and, and be fashionable with the latest trends because it's over before you can get there. >>Exactly. I think many people that, that do what we do for a living will say, you know, ultimately the future is relatively easy to predict, but it's the timing that's impossible to predict. So you, you know, you sort of have to balance the, you know, we, we know that the world is going this way and therefore we're gonna invest a lot of money to try to make this a reality. Uh, but sometimes it happens in six months. Sometimes it takes six years is sometimes like 16 years. >>Uh, what's the hottest thing in enterprise that you see the biggest wave that people should pay attention to that you're looking at right now with Desel partners, Tebel dot your site. What's the big wave. What's your big >>Wave. There, there's three big trends that we invest in. And they're the, they're the only things we do day in, day out. One is the explosion and open source software. So I think many people think that all software is unquestionably moving to an open source model in some form or another yeah. Tons of reasons to debate whether or not that is gonna happen and on what timeline happening >>Forever. >>But it is, it is accelerating faster than we've ever seen. So I, I think it's, it's one big, massive wave that we continue to ride. Um, second is the rise of data engineering. Uh, I think data engineering is in and of itself now, a category of software. It's not just that we store data. It's now we move data and we develop applications on data. And, uh, I think data is in and of itself as big of a, a market as any of the other markets that we invest in. Uh, and finally, it's the gift that keeps on giving. I've spent my entire career in it. We still feel that security is a market that is under invested. It is, it continues to be the place where people need to continue to invest and spend more money. Yeah. Uh, and those are the three major trends that we run >>And security, you think we all need a dessert do over, right? I mean, do we need a do over in security or is what's the core problem? I, >>I, I keep using this word underinvested because I think it's the right way to think about the problem. I think if you, I think people generally speaking, look at cyber security as an add-on. Yeah. But if you think about it, the whole economy is moving online. And so in, in some ways like security is core to protecting the digital economy. And so it's, it shouldn't be an afterthought, right? It should be core to what everyone is doing. And that's why I think relative to the trillions of dollars that are at stake, uh, I believe the market size for cybersecurity is around 150 billion. And it still is a fraction of what we're, what >>We're and security even boom is booming now. So you get the convergence of national security, geopolitics, internet digital >>That's right. You mean arguably, right? I mean, arguably again, it's the area of the world that people should be spending more time and more money given what to stake. >>I love your thesis. I gotta, I gotta say, you gotta love your firm. Love. You're doing we're big supporters of your mission. Congratulations on your entrepreneurial venture. And, uh, we'll be, we'll be talking and maybe see a Cub gone. Uh, >>Absolutely. >>Certainly EU maybe even north America's in Detroit this year. >>Huge fan of what you guys are doing here. Thank you so much for having me on >>The show. Guess bell VC Johnson here on the cube. Check him out. Founder for founders here on the cube, more coverage from San Francisco, California. After the short break, stay with us. Everyone. Welcome to the queue here. Live in San Francisco, California for AWS summit, 2022 we're live we're back with the events. Also we're virtual. We got hybrid all kinds of events. This year, of course, 80% summit in New York city is happening this summer. We'll be there with the cube as well. I'm John. Again, John host of the cube got a great guest here. Justin Coby owner and CEO of innovative solutions. Their booth is right behind us. Justin, welcome to the cube. >>Thank you. Thank you for having me. >>So we're just chatting, uh, uh, off camera about some of the work you're doing. You're the owner of and CEO. Yeah. Of innovative. Yeah. So tell us a story. What do you guys do? What's the elevator pitch. >>Yeah. <laugh> so the elevator pitch is we are, uh, a hundred percent focused on small to midsize businesses that are moving into the cloud or have already moved to the cloud and really trying to understand how to best control, cost, security, compliance, all the good stuff, uh, that comes along with it. Um, exclusively focused on AWS and, um, you know, about 110 people, uh, based in Rochester, New York, that's where our headquarters is, but now we have offices down in Austin, Texas up in Toronto, uh, key Canada, as well as Chicago. Um, and obviously in New York, uh, you know, the, the business was never like this, uh, five years ago, um, founded in 1989, made the decision in 2018 to pivot and go all in on the cloud. And, uh, I've been a part of the company for about 18 years, bought the company about five years ago and it's been a great ride. It >>It's interesting. The manages services are interesting with cloud cause a lot of the heavy liftings done by AWS. So we had Matt on your team on earlier talking about some of the edge stuff. Yeah. But you guys are a managed cloud service. You got cloud advisory, you know, the classic service that's needed, but the demands coming from cloud migrations and application modernization and obviously data is a huge part of it. Huge. How is this factoring into what you guys do and your growth cuz you guys are the number one partner on the SMB side for edge. Yeah. For AWS, you got results coming in. Where's the, where's the forcing function. What's the pressure point. What's the demand like? >>Yeah. It's a great question. Every CEO I talk to, that's a small to midsize business. They're trying to understand how to leverage technology. It better to help either drive a revenue target for their own business, uh, help with customer service as so much has gone remote now. And we're all having problems or troubles or issues trying to hire talent. And um, you know, tech ISNT really at the, at the forefront and the center of that. So most customers are coming to us and they're like, listen, we gotta move to the cloud or we move some things to cloud and we want to do that better. And um, there's this big misnomer that when you move to the cloud, you gotta automatically modernize. Yeah. And what we try to help as many customers understand as possible is lifting and shifting, moving the stuff that you maybe currently have OnPrem and a data center to the cloud first is a first step. And then, uh, progressively working through a modernization strateg, always the better approach. And so we spend a lot of time with small to midsize businesses who don't have the technology talent on staff to be able to do >>That. Yeah. They want get set up. But then the dynamic of like latency is huge. We're seeing that edge product is a big part of it. This is not a one-off happening around everywhere. It is. And it's not, it's manufacturing, it's the physical plant or location >>Literally. >>And so, and you're seeing more IOT devices. What's that like right now from a challenge and problem statement standpoint, are the customers, not staff, is the it staff kind of old school? Is it new skills? What's the core problem you guys solve >>In the SMB space? The core issue nine outta 10 times is people get enamored with the latest and greatest. And the reality is not everything that's cloud based. Not all cloud services are the latest and greatest. Some things have been around for quite some time and are hardened solutions. And so, um, what we try to do with technology staff that has traditional on-prem, uh, let's just say skill sets and they're trying to move to a cloud-based workload is we try to help those customers through education and through some practical, let's just call it use case. Um, whether that's a proof of concept that we're doing or whether we're gonna migrate a small workload over, we try to give them the confidence to be able to not, not necessarily go it alone, but to, to, to have the, uh, the Gusto and to really have the, um, the, the opportunity to, to do that in a wise way. Um, and what I find is that most CEOs that I talk to, yeah, they're like, listen, the end of the day, I'm gonna be spending money in one place or another, whether that's OnPrem or in the cloud. I just want to know that I'm doing that in a way that helps me grow as quickly as possible status quo. I think every, every business owner knows that COVID taught us anything that status quo is, uh, is, is no. No. >>Good. How about factoring in the, the agility and speed equation? Does that come up a lot? It >>Does. I think, um, I, there's also this idea that if, uh, if we do a deep dive analysis and we really take a surgical approach to things, um, we're gonna be better off. And the reality is the faster you move with anything cloud based, the better you are. And so there's this assumption that we gotta get it right the first time. Yeah. In the cloud, if you start down your journey in one way and you realize midway that it's not the right, let's just say the right place to go. It's not like buying a piece of iron that you put in the closet and now you own it in the cloud. You can turn those services on and off. It's gives you a much higher density for making decisions and failing >>Forward. Well actually shutting down the abandoning the projects that early and not worrying about it, you got it. I mean, most people don't abandon cause like, oh, I own it. >>Exactly. And >>They get, they get used to it. Like, and then they wait too long. >>That's exactly. Yeah. >>Frog and boiling water as we used to say. So, oh, it's a great analogy. So I mean, this is a dynamic that's interesting. I wanna get more thoughts on it because like I'm a, if I'm a CEO of a company, like, okay, I gotta make my number. Yeah. I gotta keep my people motivated. Yeah. And I gotta move faster. So this is where you, I get the whole thing. And by the way, great service, um, professional services in the cloud right now are so hot because so hot, you can build it and then have option optionality. You got path decisions, you got new services to take advantage of. It's almost too much for customers. It is. I mean, everyone I talked to at reinvent, that's a customer. Well, how many announcements did am jazzy announce or Adam, you know, the 5,000 announcement or whatever. They do huge amounts. Right. Keeping track of it all. Oh, is huge. So what's the, what's the, um, the mission of, of your company. How does, how do you talk to that alignment? Yeah. Not just processes. I can get that like values as companies, cuz they're betting on you and your people. >>They are, they are, >>What's the values. >>Our mission is, is very simple. We want to help every small to midsize business leverage the power of the cloud. Here's the reality. We believe wholeheartedly. This is our vision that every company is going to become a technology company. So we go to market with this idea that every customer's trying to leverage the power of the cloud in some way, shape or form, whether they know it or don't know it. And number two, they're gonna become a tech company in the process of that because everything is so tech-centric. And so when you talk about speed and agility, when you talk about the, the endless options and the endless permutations of solutions that a customer can buy in the cloud, how are you gonna ask a team of one or two people in your, or it department to make all those decisions going it alone or trying to learn it as you go, it only gets you so far working with a partner. >>I'll just give you some perspective. We work with about a thousand small to midsize business customers. More than 50% of those customers are on our managed services. Meaning they know that we have their back Andre or the safety net. So when a customer is saying, all right, I'm gonna spend a couple thousand dollars a month in the cloud. They know that that bill, isn't gonna jump to $10,000 a month going in alone. Who's there to help protect that. Number two, if you have a security posture and let's just say you're high profile and you're gonna potentially be more vulnerable to security attack. If you have a partner, that's all offering you some managed services. Now you, again, you've got that backstop and you've got those services and tooling. We, we offer, um, seven different products, uh, that are part of our managed services that give the customer the tooling, that for them to go out and buy on their own for a customer to go out today and go buy a new Relic solution on their own. It, it would cost 'em a fortune. If >>Training alone would be insane, a factor and the cost. Yes, absolutely. Opportunity cost is huge, >>Huge, absolutely enormous training and development. Something. I think that is often, you know, it's often overlooked technologists. Typically they want to get their skills up. Yeah. They, they love to get the, the stickers and the badges and the pins, um, at innovative in 2018, when, uh, when we made the decision to go all in on the club, I said to the organization, you know, we have this idea that we're gonna pivot and be aligned with AWS in such a way that it's gonna really require us all to get certified. My executive assistant at the time looks at me. She said, even me, I said, yeah, even you, why can't you get certified? Yeah. And so we made, uh, a conscious decision. It wasn't requirement and still isn't today to make sure everybody in the company has the opportunity to become certified. Even the people that are answering the phones at the front desk >>And she could be running the Kubernetes clusters. I love it. It's amazing. >>But I'll tell you what, when that customer calls and they have a real Kubernetes issue, she'll be able to assist and get >>The right people involved. And that's a cultural factor that you guys have. So, so again, this is back to my whole point about SMBs and businesses in general, small en large, it staffs are turning over the gen Z and millennials are in the workforce. They were provisioning top of rack switches. Right. First of all. And so if you're a business, there's also the, I call the build out, um, uh, return factor, ROI piece. At what point in time as an owner or SMB, do I get the ROI? Yeah. I gotta hire a person to manage it. That person's gonna have five zillion job offers. Yep. Uh, maybe who knows? Right. I got cybersecurity issues. Where am I gonna find a cyber person? Yeah. A data compliance. I need a data scientist and a compliance person. Right. Maybe one and the same. Right. Good luck. Trying to find a data scientist. Who's also a compliance person. Yep. And the list goes on. I can just continue. Absolutely. I need an SRE to manage the, the, uh, the sock report and we can pen test. Right. >>Right. >>These are, these are >>Critical issues. This >>Is just like, these are the table stakes. >>Yeah. And, and every, every business owner's thinking about. So that's, >>That's what, at least a million in bloating, if not three or more Just to get that going. Yeah. Then it's like, where's the app. Yeah. So there's no cloud migration. There's no modernization on the app side though. Yeah. No. And nevermind AI and ML. That's >>Right. That's right. So to try to go it alone, to me, it's hard. It it's incredibly difficult. And, and the other thing is, is there's not a lot of partners, so the partner, >>No one's raising their hand boss. I'll >>Do all that >>Exactly. In it department. >>Exactly. >>Like, can we just call up, uh, you know, <laugh> our old vendor. That's >>Right. <laugh> right. Our old vendor. I like it, but that's so true. I mean, when I think about how, if I was a business owner, starting a business to today and I had to build my team, um, and the amount of investment that it would take to get those people skilled up and then the risk factor of those people now having the skills and being so much more in demand and being recruited away, that's a real, that's a real issue. And so how you build your culture around that is, is very important. And it's something that we talk about every, with every one of our small to midsize business. >>So just, I want to get, I want to get your story as CEO. Okay. Take us through your journey. You said you bought the company and your progression to, to being the owner and CEO of innovative award winning guys doing great. Uh, great bet on a good call. Yeah. Things are good. Tell your story. What's your journey? >>It's real simple. I was, uh, was a sophomore at the Rochester Institute of technology in 2003. And, uh, I knew that I, I was going to school for it and I, I knew I wanted to be in tech. I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I knew I didn't wanna code or configure routers and switches. So I had this great opportunity with the local it company that was doing managed services. We didn't call it at that time innovative solutions to come in and, uh, jump on the phone and dial for dollars. I was gonna cold call and introduce other, uh, small to midsize businesses locally in Rochester, New York go to Western New York, um, who innovative was now. We were 19 people at the time. And I came in, I did an internship for six months and I loved it. I learned more in those six months that I probably did in my first couple of years at, uh, at R I T long story short. >>Um, for about seven years, I worked, uh, to really help develop, uh, sales process and methodology for the business so that we could grow and scale. And we grew to about 30 people. And, um, I went to the owners at the time in 2010 and I was like, Hey, I'm growing the value of this business. And who knows where you guys are gonna be another five years? What do you think about making me an owner? And they were like, listen, you got long ways before you're gonna be an owner, but if you stick it out in your patient, we'll, um, we'll work through a succession plan with you. And I said, okay, there were four other individuals at the time that we're gonna also buy the business with >>Me. And they were the owners, no outside capital, >>None zero, well, 2014 comes around. And, uh, the other folks that were gonna buy into the business with me that were also working at innovative for different reasons. They all decided that it wasn't for them. One started a family. The other didn't wanna put capital in. Didn't wanna write a check. Um, the other had a real big problem with having to write a check. If we couldn't make payroll, I'm like, well, that's kind of like if we're owners, we're gonna have to like cover that stuff. <laugh> so >>It's called the pucker factor. >>Exactly. So, uh, I sat down with the CEO in early 2015, and, uh, we made the decision that I was gonna buy the three partners out, um, go through an earn out process, uh, coupled with, uh, an interesting financial strategy that wouldn't strap the business, cuz they care very much. The company still had the opportunity to keep going. So in 2016 I bought the business, um, became the sole owner. And, and at that point we, um, we really focused hard on what do we want this company to be? We had built this company to this point. Yeah. And, uh, and by 2018 we knew that pivoting all going all in on the cloud was important for us and we haven't looked back. >>And at that time, the proof points were coming clearer and clearer 2012 through 15 was the early adopters, the builders, the startups and early enterprises. Yes. The capital ones of the world. Exactly the, uh, and those kinds of big enterprises. The game don't, won't say gamblers, but ones that were very savvy. The innovators, the FinTech folks. Yep. The hardcore glass eating enterprises >>Agreed, agreed to find a small to midsize business, to migrate completely to the cloud as, as infrastructure was considered. That just didn't happen as often. Um, what we were seeing were a lot of our small to midsize business customers, they wanted to leverage cloud based backup, or they wanted to leverage a cloud for disaster recovery because it lent itself. Well, early days, our most common cloud customer though, was the customer that wanted to move messaging and collaboration. The, the Microsoft suite to the cloud and a lot of 'em dipped their toe in the water. But by 2017 we knew infrastructure was around the corner. Yeah. And so, uh, we only had two customers on eight at the time. Um, and we, uh, we, we made the decision to go all in >>Justin. Great to have you on the cube. Thank you. Let's wrap up. Uh, tell me the hottest product that you have. Is it migrations? Is the app modernization? Is it data? What's the hot product and then put a plug in for the company. Awesome. >>So, uh, there's no question. Every customer is looking to migrate workloads and try to figure out how to modernize for the future. We have very interesting, sophisticated yet elegant funding solutions to help customers with the cash flow, uh, constraints that come along with those migrations. So any SMB that's thinking about migrating to the cloud, they should be talking innovative solutions. We know how to do it in a way that allows those customers not to be cash strapped and gives them an opportunity to move forward in a controlled, contained way so that they can modernize. >>So like insurance, basically for them not insurance class in the classic sense, but you help them out on the, on the cash exposure. >>Absolutely. We are known for that and we're known for being creative with those customers, empathetic to where they are in their journey. And >>That's the cloud upside is all about doubling down on the variable wind. That's right. Seeing the value and doubling down on it. Absolutely not praying for it. Yeah. <laugh> all right, Justin. Thanks for coming on. You really appreciate it. Thank >>You very much for having >>Me. Okay. This is the cube coverage here live in San Francisco, California for AWS summit, 2022. I'm John for your host. Thanks for watching with back with more great coverage for two days after this short break >>Live on the floor in San Francisco for 80 west summit, I'm John ferry, host of the cube here for the next two days, getting all the action we're back in person. We're at AWS reinvent a few months ago. Now we're back events are coming back and we're happy to be here with the cube, bringing all the action. Also virtual, we have a hybrid cube, check out the cube.net, Silicon angle.com for all the coverage. After the event. We've got a great guest ticketing off here. Matthew Park, director of solutions, architecture with innovation solutions. The booth is right here. Matthew, welcome to the cube. >>Thank you very much. I'm glad >>To be here. So we're back in person. You're from Tennessee. We were chatting before you came on camera. Um, it's great to have to be back through events. >>It's amazing. This is the first, uh, summit I've been to and what two, three years. >>It's awesome. We'll be at the, uh, New York as well. A lot of developers and a big story this year is as developers look at cloud going distributed computing, you got on premises, you got public cloud, you got the edge. Essentially the cloud operations is running everything dev sec ops, everyone kind of sees that you got containers, you got Kubernetes, you got cloud native. So the, the game is pretty much laid out. Mm. And the edge is with the actions you guys are number one, premier partner at SMB for edge. >>That's right. >>Tell us about what you guys doing at innovative and, uh, what you do. >>That's right. Uh, so I'm the director of solutions architecture. Uh, me and my team are responsible for building out the solutions that are around, especially the edge public cloud out for us edge is anything outside of an AWS availability zone. Uh, we are deploying that in countries that don't have AWS infrastructure in region. They don't have it. Uh, give >>An example, >>Uh, example would be Panama. We have a customer there that, uh, needs to deploy some financial tech data and compute is legally required to be in Panama, but they love AWS and they want to deploy AWS services in region. Uh, so they've taken E EKS anywhere. We've put storage gateway and, uh, snowball, uh, in region inside the country and they're running their FinTech on top of AWS services inside Panama. >>You know, what's interesting, Matthew is that we've been covering Aw since 2013 with the cube about their events. And we watched the progression and jazzy was, uh, was in charge and then became the CEO. Now Adam Slosky is in charge, but the edge has always been that thing they've been trying to, I don't wanna say, trying to avoid, of course, Amazon would listen to customers. They work backwards from the customers. We all know that. Uh, but the real issue was they were they're bread and butters EC two and S three. And then now they got tons of services and the cloud is obviously successful and seeing that, but the edge brings up a whole nother level. >>It does >>Computing. It >>Does. >>That's not central lies in the public cloud. Now they got regions. So what is the issue with the edge what's driving? The behavior. Outpost came out as a reaction to competitive threats and also customer momentum around OT, uh, operational technologies. And it merging. We see with the data at the edge, you got five GM having. So it's pretty obvious, but there was a slow transition. What was the driver for the <affirmative> what's the driver now for edge action for AWS >>Data is the driver for the edge. Data has gravity, right? And it's pulling compute back to where the customer's generating that data and that's happening over and over again. You said it best outpost was a reaction to a competitive situation. Whereas today we have over fit 15 AWS edge services, and those are all reactions to things that customers need inside their data centers on location or in the field like with media companies. >>Outpost is interesting. We always used to riff on the cube, uh, cuz it's basically Amazon in a box, pushed in the data center, uh, running native, all the stuff, but now cloud native operations are kind of become standard. You're starting to see some standard Deepak sings group is doing some amazing work with open source Rauls team on the AI side, obviously, uh, you got SW who's giving the keynote tomorrow. You got the big AI machine learning big part of that edge. Now you can say, okay, outpost, is it relevant today? In other words, did outpost do its job? Cause EKS anywhere seems to be getting a lot of momentum. You see low the zones, the regions are kicking ass for Amazon. This edge piece is evolving. What's your take on EKS anywhere versus say outpost? >>Yeah, I think outpost did its job. It made customers that were looking at outpost really consider, do I wanna invest in this hardware? Do I, do I wanna have, um, this outpost in my data center, do I wanna manage this over the long term? A lot of those customers just transitioned to the public cloud. They went into AWS proper. Some of those customers stayed on prem because they did have use cases that were, uh, not a good fit for outpost. They weren't a good fit. Uh, in the customer's mind for the public AWS cloud inside an availability zone. Now what's happening is as AWS is pushing these services out and saying, we're gonna meet you where you are with 5g. We're gonna meet you where you are with wavelength. We're gonna meet you where you are with EKS anywhere. Uh, I think it has really reduced the amount of times that we have conversations about outposts and it's really increased. We can deploy fast. We don't have to spin up outpost hardware. We can go deploy EKS anywhere in your VMware environment and it's increasing the speed of adoption >>For sure. So you guys are making a lot of good business decisions around managed cloud service. Innovative does that. You have the cloud advisory, the classic professional services for the specific edge piece and, and doing that outside of the availability zones and regions for AWS, um, customers in, in these new areas that you're helping out are they want cloud, like they want to have modernization a modern applications. Obviously they got data machine learning and AI, all part of that. What's the main product or, or, or gap that you're filling for AWS, uh, outside of their available ability zones or their regions that you guys are delivering. What's the key is it. They don't have a footprint. Is it that it's not big enough for them? What's the real gap. What's why, why are you so successful? >>So what customers want when they look towards the cloud is they want to focus on, what's making them money as a business. They wanna focus on their applications. They want focus on their customers. So they look towards AWS cloud and say, AWS, you take the infrastructure. You take, uh, some of the higher layers and we'll focus on our revenue generating business, but there's a gap there between infrastructure and revenue generating business that innovative slides into, uh, we help manage the AWS environment. We help build out these things in local data centers for 32 plus year old company, we have traditional on-premises people that know about deploying hardware that know about deploying VMware to host EKS anywhere. But we also have most of our company totally focused on the AWS cloud. So we're filling that gap in helping deploy these AWS services, manage them over the long term. So our customers can go to just primarily and totally focusing on their revenue generating business. >>So basically you guys are basically building AWS edges, >>Correct? >>For correct companies, correct? Mainly because the, the needs are there, you got data, you got certain products, whether it's, you know, low latency type requirements, right. And then they still work with the regions, right. It's all tied together, right. Is that how it works? Right. >>And, and our customers, even the ones in the edge, they also want us to build out the AWS environment inside the availability zone, because we're always gonna have a failback scenario. If we're gonna deploy FinTech in the Caribbean, we're gonna talk about hurricanes and gonna talk about failing back into the AWS availability zones. So innovative is filling that gap across the board, whether it be inside the AWS cloud or on the AWS edge. >>All right. So I gotta ask you on the, since you're at the edge in these areas, I won't say underserved, but developing areas where now have data, you have applications that are tapping into that, that requirement. It makes total sense. We're seeing across the board. So it's not like it's, it's an outlier it's actually growing. Yeah. There's also the crypto angle. You got the blockchain. Are you seeing any traction at the edge with blockchain? Because a lot of people are looking at the web three in these areas like Panama, you mentioned FinTech in, in the islands. There are a lot of, lot of, lot of web three happening. What's your, what's your view on the web three world right now, relative >>To we, we have some customers actually deploying crypto, especially, um, especially in the Caribbean. I keep bringing the Caribbean up, but it's, it's top of my mind right now we have customers that are deploying crypto. A lot of, uh, countries are choosing crypto underly parts of their central banks. Yeah. Um, so it's, it's up and coming. Uh, I, I have some, you know, personal views that, that crypto is still searching for a use case. Yeah. And, uh, I think it's searching a lot and, and we're there to help customers search for that use case. Uh, but, but crypto, as a, as a tech technology, um, lives really well on the AWS edge. Yeah. Uh, and, and we're having more and more people talk to us about that. Yeah. And ask for assistance in the infrastructure because they're developing new cryptocurrencies every day. Yeah. It's not like they're deploying Ethereum or anything specific. They're actually developing new currencies and, and putting them out there on it's >>Interesting. And I mean, first of all, we've been doing crypto for many, many years. We have our own little, um, you know, projects going on. But if you look talk to all the crypto people that say, look, we do a smart contract, we use the blockchain. It's kind of over a lot of overhead. It's not really their technical already, but it's a cultural shift, but there's underserved use cases around use of money, but they're all using the blockchain, just for this like smart contracts for instance, or certain transactions. And they go into Amazon for the database. Yeah. <laugh> they all don't tell anyone we're using a centralized service, but what happened to decent centralized. >>Yeah. And that's, and that's the conversation performance. >>Yeah. >>And, and it's a cost issue. Yeah. And it's a development issue. Um, so I think more and more as, as some of these, uh, currencies maybe come up, some of the smart contracts get into, uh, they find their use cases. I think we'll start talking about how does that really live on, on AWS and, and what does it look like to build decentralized applications, but with AWS hardware and services. >>Right. So take me through a, a use case of a customer, um, Matthew around the edge. Okay. So I'm a customer, pretend I'm a customer, Hey, you know, I'm, we're in an underserved area. I want to modernize my business. And I got my developers that are totally peaked up on cloud. Um, but we've identified that it's just a lot of overhead latency issues. I need to have a local edge and serve my a and I also want all the benefits of the cloud. So I want the modernization and I wanna migrate to the cloud for all those cloud benefits and the good this of the cloud. What's the answer. Yeah. >>Uh, big thing is, uh, industrial manufacturing, right? That's, that's one of the best use cases, uh, inside industrial manufacturing, we can pull in many of the AWS edge services we can bring in, uh, private 5g, uh, so that all the, uh, equipment inside that, that manufacturing plant can be hooked up. They don't have to pay huge overheads to deploy 5g it's, uh, better than wifi for the industrial space. Um, when we take computing down to that industrial area, uh, because we wanna do pre-procesing on the data. Yeah. We want to gather some analytics. We deploy that with, uh, regular commercially available hardware running VMware, and we deploy EKS anywhere on that. Uh, inside of that manufacturing plant, uh, we can do pre-processing on things coming out of the, uh, the robotics that depending on what we're manufacturing, right. Uh, and then we can take the, those refined analytics and for very low cost with maybe a little bit longer latency transmit those back, um, to the AWS availability zone, the, the standard >>For data lake or whatever, >>To the data lake. Yeah. Data Lakehouse, whatever it might be. Um, and we can do additional data science on that once it gets to the AWS cloud. Uh, but I'll lot of that, uh, just in time business decisions, just in time, manufacturing decisions can all take place on an AWS service or services inside that manufacturing plant. And that's, that's one of the best use cases that we're >>Seeing. And I think, I mean, we've been seeing this on the queue for many, many years, moving data around is very expensive. Yeah. But also compute going of the data that saves that cost yep. On the data transfer also on the benefits of the latency. So I have to ask you, by the way, that's standard best practice now for the folks watching don't move the data unless you have to. Um, but those new things are developing. So I wanna ask you, what new patterns are you seeing emerging once this new architecture's in place? Love that idea, localize everything right at the edge, manufacture, industrial, whatever the use case, retail, whatever it is. Right. But now what does that change in the, in the core cloud? There's a, there's a system element here. Yeah. What's the new pattern. There's >>Actually an organizational element as well, because once you have to start making the decision, do I put this compute at the point of use or do I put this compute in the cloud? Uh, now you start thinking about where business decisions should be taking place. Uh, so not only are you changing your architecture, you're actually changing your organization because you're thinking, you're thinking about a dichotomy you didn't have before. Uh, so now you say, okay, this can take place here. Uh, and maybe, maybe this decision can wait. Yeah. Uh, and then how do I visualize that? By >>The way, it could be a bot tube doing the work for management. Yeah. <laugh> exactly. You got observability going, right. But you gotta change the database architecture in the back. So there's new things developing. You've got more benefit. There >>Are, there are. And, and we have more and more people that, that want to talk less about databases and want to talk more about data lakes because of this. They want to talk more about out. Customers are starting to talk about throwing away data, uh, you know, for the past maybe decade. Yeah. It's been store everything. And one day we will have a data science team that we hire in our organization to do analytics on this decade of data. And well, >>I mean, that's, that's a great point. We don't have time to drill into, maybe we do another session on this, but the one pattern we're seeing of the past year is that throwing away data's bad, even data lakes that so-called turn into data swamps, actually, it's not the case. You look at data, brick, snowflake, and other successes out there. And even time series data, which may seem irrelevant efforts over actually matters when people start retraining their machine learning algorithms. Yep. So as data becomes code, as we call it in our last showcase, we did a whole whole event on this. The data's good in real time and in the lake. Yeah. Because the iteration of the data feeds the machine learning training. Things are getting better with the old data. So it's not throw it away. It's not just business better. Yeah. There's all kinds of new scale. >>There are. And, and we have, uh, many customers that are running pay Toby level. Um, they're, they're essentially data factories on, on, uh, on premises, right? They're, they're creating so much data and they're starting to say, okay, we could analyze this, uh, in the cloud, we could transition it. We could move Aytes of data to the AWS cloud, or we can run, uh, computational workloads on premises. We can really do some analytics on this data transition, uh, those high level and sort of raw analytics back to AWS run 'em through machine learning. Um, and we don't have to transition 10, 12 petabytes of data into AWS. >>So I gotta end the segment on a, on a kind of a, um, fun note. I was told to ask you about your personal background, OnPrem architect, Aus cloud, and skydiving instructor. <laugh> how does that all work together? What tell, what does this mean? Yeah. >>Uh, you >>Jumped out a plane and got a job. You got a customer to jump out >>Kind of. So I was, you jumped out. I was teaching having, uh, before I, before I started in the cloud space, this was 13, 14 years ago. I was a, I still am a sky. I instructor, uh, I was teaching skydiving and I heard out of the corner of my ear, uh, a guy that owned an MSP that was lamenting about, um, you know, storing data and, and how his customers are working. And he can't find an enough people to operate all these workloads. So I walked over and said, Hey, this is, this is what I went to school for. Like, I'd love to, you know, uh, I was living in a tent in the woods, teaching skydiving. I was like, I'd love to not live in a tent in the woods. So, uh, uh, I started and the first day there, uh, we had a, a discussion, uh, EC two had just come out <laugh> and, uh, like, >>This is amazing. >>Yeah. And so we had this discussion, we should start moving customers here. And, uh, and that totally revolutionized that business, um, that, that led to, uh, that that guy actually still owns a skydiving airport. But, um, but through all of that, and through being in on premises, migrated me and myself, my career into the cloud, and now it feels like, uh, almost, almost looking back and saying, now let's take what we learned in the cloud and, and apply those lessons and those services tore >>It's. So it's such a great story, you know, was gonna, you know, you know, the whole, you know, growth mindset pack your own parachute, you know, uh, exactly. You know, the cloud in the early days was pretty much will the shoot open. Yeah. It was pretty much, you had to roll your own cloud at that time. And so, you know, you, you jump on a plane, you gotta make sure that parachute is gonna open. >>And so was Kubernetes by the way, 2015 or so when, uh, when that was coming out, it was, I mean, it was, it was still, and maybe it does still feel like that to some people. Right. But, uh, it was, it was the same kind of feeling that we had in the early days of AWS, the same feeling we have when we >>It's now with you guys, it's more like a tandem jump. Yeah. You know, but, but it's a lot of, lot of this cutting edge stuff, like jumping out of an airplane. Yeah. You got the right equipment. You gotta do the right things. Exactly. >>Right. >>Yeah. Thanks for coming. You really appreciate it. Absolutely great conversation. Thanks for having me. Okay. The cubes here live in San Francisco for eight of us summit. I'm John for host of the cube. Uh, we'll be at a summit in New York coming up in the summer as well. Look up for that. Look up this calendar for all the cube, actually@thecube.net. We'll right back with our next segment after this break. >>Okay. Welcome back everyone to San Francisco live coverage here, we're at the cube a be summit 2022. We're back in person. I'm John fury host of the cube. We'll be at the eighties summit in New York city this summer, check us out then. But right now, two days in San Francisco, getting all the coverage what's going on in the cloud, we got a cube alumni and friend of the cube, my dos car CEO, investor, a Sierra, and also an investor in a bunch of startups, angel investor. Gonna do great to see you. Thanks for coming on the cube. Good to see you. Good to see you. Cool. How are you? Good. >>How hello you. >>So congratulations on all your investments. Uh, you've made a lot of great successes, uh, over the past couple years, uh, and your company raising, uh, some good cash as Sarah. So give us the update. How much cash have you guys raised? What's the status of the company product what's going on? >>First of all, thank you for having me. We're back to be business with you, never after to see you. Uh, so is a company started around four years back. I invested with a few of the investors and now I'm the CEO there. We have raised close to a hundred million there. The investors are people like Norwes Menlo ventures, coastal ventures, Ram Shera, and all those people, all well known guys. And Beckel chime Paul me Mayard web. So whole bunch of operating people and, uh, Silicon valley VCs are involved >>And has it gone? >>It's going well. We are doing really well. We are going almost 300% year over year. Uh, for last three years, the space ISRA is going after is what I call the applying AI for customer service. It operations, it help desk, uh, the same place I used to work at ServiceNow. We are partners with ServiceNow to take, how can we argument for employees and customers, Salesforce, and service now to take you to the next stage? Well, >>I love having you on the cube, Dave and I, Dave LAN as well loves having you on too, because you not only bring the entrepreneurial CEO experience, you're an investor. You're like a, you're like a guest analyst. <laugh> >>You know, who does >>You, >>You >>Get the call fund to talk to you though. You >>Get the commentary, your, your finger in the pulse. Um, so I gotta ask you obviously, AI and machine learning, machine learning AI, or you want to phrase it. Isn't every application. Now, AI first, uh, you're seeing a lot of that going on. You're starting to see companies build the modern applications at the top of the stack. So the cloud scale has hit. We're seeing cloud scale. You predicted that we talked about in the cube many times. Now you have that past layer with a lot more services and cloud native becoming a standard layer. Containerizations growing Docker just raised a hundred million on a $2 billion valuation back from the dead after they pivoted from enterprise services. So open source developers are booming. Um, where's the action. I mean, is there data control plan? Emerging AI needs data. There's a lot of challenges around this. There's a lot of discussions and a lot of companies being funded, observability there's 10 billion observability companies. Data is the key. This is what's your end on this. What's your take. >>Yeah, look, I think I'll give you the few that I see right from my side. Obviously data is very clear. So the things that rumor system of recorded you and me talked about the next layer is called system of intelligence. That's where the AI will play. Like we talk cloud native, it'll be called AI. NA AI enable is a new buzzword and using the AI for customer service. It, you talk about observability. I call it, AIOps applying AOPs for good old it operation management, cloud management. So you'll see the AOPs applied for whole list of, uh, application from observability doing the CMDB, predicting the events insurance. So I see a lot of work clicking for AIOps and AI services. What used to be desk with ServiceNow BMC GLA you see a new ALA emerging as a system of intelligence. Uh, the next would be is applying AI with workflow automation. So that's where you'll see a lot of things called customer workflows, employee workflows. So think of what UI path automation, anywhere ServiceNow are doing, that area will be driven with AI workflows. So you, you see AI going >>Off is RPA. A company is AI, is RPA a feature of something bigger? Or can someone have a company on RPA UI S one will be at their event this summer? Um, is it a product company? I mean, or I mean, RPA is, should be embedded in everything. It's a >>Feature. It is very good point. Very, very good thinking. So one is, it's a category for sure. Like, as we thought, it's a category, it's an area where RPA may change the name. I call it much more about automation, workflow automation, but RPA and automation is a category. Um, it's a company also, but that automation should be embedded in every area. Yeah. Like we call cloud NATO and AI. They it'll become automation data. Yeah. And that's your, thinking's >>Interesting me. I think about the, what you're talking about what's coming to mind is I'm kinda having flashbacks to the old software model of middleware. Remember at middleware, it was very easy to understand it was middleware. It sat between two things and then the middle, and it was software abstraction. Now you have all kinds of workflows, abstractions everywhere. So multiple databases, it's not a monolithic thing. Right? Right. So as you break that down, is this the new modern middleware? Because what you're talking about is data workflows, but they might be siloed. Are they integrated? I mean, these are the challenges. This is crazy. What's the, >>So remember the databases became called polyglot databases. Yeah. I call this one polyglot automation. So you need automation as a layer, as a category, but you also need to put automation in every area like you, you were talking about, it should be part of service. Now it should be part of ISRA. Like every company, every Salesforce. So that's why you see it MuleSoft and sales buying RPA companies. So you'll see all the SaaS companies, cloud companies having an automation as a core. So it's like how you have a database and compute and sales and networking. You'll also have an automation as a layer embedded inside every stack. >>All right. So I wanna shift gears a little bit and get your perspective on what's going on behind us. You can see, uh, behind, as you got the XPO hall got, um, we're back to vis, but you got, you know, AMD, Clum, Dynatrace data, dog, innovative, all the companies out here that we know, we interview them all. They're trying to be suppliers to this growing enterprise market. Right? Okay. But now you also got the entrepreneurial equation. Okay. We're gonna have John Sado on from Deibel later. He's a former NEA guy and we always talk to Jerry, Jen, we know all the, the VCs, what does the startups look like? What does the state of the, in your mind, cause you, I know you invest the entrepreneurial founder situation. Cloud's bigger. Mm-hmm <affirmative> global, right? Data's part of it. You mentioned data's code. Yes. Basically. Data's everything. What's it like for a first an entrepreneur right now who's starting a company. What's the white space. What's the attack plan. How do they get in the market? How do they engineer everything? >>Very good. So I'll give it to, uh, two things that I'm seeing out there. Remember leaders of Amazon created the startups 15 years back. Everybody built on Amazon now, Azure and GCP. The next layer would be people don't just build on Amazon. They're going to build it on top of snow. Flake companies are snowflake becomes a data platform, right? People will build on snowflake, right? So I see my old boss playing ment, try to build companies on snowflake. So you don't build it just on Amazon. You build it on Amazon and snowflake. Snowflake will become your data store. Snowflake will become your data layer, right? So I think that's the next level of companies trying to do that. So if I'm doing observability AI ops, if I'm doing next level of Splunk SIM, I'm gonna build it on snowflake, on Salesforce, on Amazon, on Azure, et cetera. >>It's interesting. You know, Jerry Chan has it put out a thesis a couple months ago called castles in the cloud where your moat is, what you do in the cloud. Not necessarily in the, in the IP. Um, Dave LAN and I had last re invent, coined the term super cloud, right? It's got a lot of traction and a lot of people throwing, throwing mud at us, but we were, our thesis was, is that what Snowflake's doing? What Goldman S Sachs is doing. You're starting to see these clouds on top of clouds. So Amazon's got this huge CapEx advantage. And guys like Charles Fitzgeral out there, who we like was kind of hitting on us saying, Hey, you guys terrible, they didn't get him. Like, yeah, I don't think he gets it, but that's a whole, can't wait to debate him publicly on this. <laugh> cause he's cool. Um, but snowflake is on Amazon. Yes. Now they say they're on Azure now. Cause they've got a bigger market and they're public, but ultimately without a AWS snowflake doesn't exist and, and they're reimagining the data warehouse with the cloud, right? That's the billion dollar opportunity. >>It is. It is. They both are very tight. So imagine what Frank has done at snowflake and Amazon. So if I'm a startup today, I want to build everything on Amazon where possible whatever is, I cannot build. I'll make the pass layer room. The middle layer pass will be snowflake. So I cannot build it on snowflake. I can use them for data layer if I really need to size, I'll build it on force.com Salesforce. Yeah. Right. So I think that's where you'll >>See. So basically the, the, if you're an entrepreneur, the, the north star in terms of the, the outcome is be a super cloud. It >>Is, >>That's the application on another big CapEx ride, the CapEx of AWS or cloud, >>And that reduce your product development, your go to market and you get use the snowflake marketplace to drive your engagement. Yeah. >>Yeah. How are, how is Amazon and the clouds dealing with these big whales, the snowflakes of the world? I mean, I know they got a great relationship, uh, but snowflake now has to run a company they're public. Yeah. So, I mean, I'll say, I think got Redshift. Amazon has got Redshift. Um, but snowflake big customer. The they're probably paying AWS big, >>I >>Think big bills too. >>So John, very good. Cause it's like how Netflix is and Amazon prime, right. Netflix runs on Amazon, but Amazon has Amazon prime that co-option will be there. So Amazon will have Redshift, but Amazon is also partnering with the snowflake to have native snowflake data warehouse as a data layer. So I think depending on the use case you have to use each of the above, I think snowflake is here for a long term. Yeah. Yeah. So if I'm building an application, I want to use snowflake then writing from stats. >>Well, I think that comes back down to entrepreneurial hustle. Do you have a better product? Right. Product value will ultimately determine it as long as the cloud doesn't, you know, foreclose your value. That's right. With some sort of internal hack, but I've think, I think the general question that I have is that I think it's okay to have a super cloud like that because the rising tide is still happening at some point, when does the rising tide stop and the people shopping up their knives, it gets more competitive or is it just an infinite growth cycle? I >>Think it's growth. You call it closed skill you the word cloud scale. So I think look, cloud will continually agree, increase. I think there's as long as there more movement from on, uh, on-prem to the classical data center, I think there's no reason at this point, the rumor, the old lift and shift that's happening in like my business. I see people lift and shifting from the it operations, it helpless. Even the customer service service. Now the ticket data from BMCs CAS like Microfocus, all those workloads are shifted to the cloud, right? So cloud ticketing system is happening. Cloud system of record is happening. So I think this train has still a long way to go made. >>I wanna get your thoughts for the folks watching that are, uh, enterprise buyers are practitioners, not suppliers to the market. Feel free to text me or DMing. Next question is really about the buying side, which is if I'm a customer, what's the current, um, appetite for startup products. Cause you know, the big enterprises now and you know, small, medium, large, and large enterprise, they're all buying new companies cuz a startup can go from zero to relevant very quickly. So that means now enterprises are engaging heavily with startups. What's it like what's is there a change in order of magnitude of the relationship between the startup selling to, or growing startup selling to an enterprise? Um, have you seen changes there? I mean seeing some stuff, but why don't we get your thoughts on that? What it >>Is you, if I remember going back to our 2007 or eight, when I used to talk to you back then when Amazon started very small, right? We are an Amazon summit here. So I think enterprises on the average used to spend nothing with startups. It's almost like 0% or one person today. Most companies are already spending 20, 30% with startups. Like if I look at a C I will line our business, it's gone. Yeah. Can it go more? I think it can double in the next four, five years. Yeah. Spending on the startups. Yeah. >>And check out, uh, AWS startups.com. That's a site that we built for the startup community for buyers and startups. And I want to get your reaction because I, I reference the URL causes like there's like a bunch of companies we've been promoting because the solution that startups have actually are new stuff. Yes. It's bending, it's shifting left for security or using data differently or um, building tools and platforms for data engineering. Right. Which is a new persona that's emerging. So you know, a lot of good resources there. Um, and goes back now to the data question. Now, getting back to your, what you're working on now is what's your thoughts around this new, um, data engineering persona, you mentioned AIOps, we've been seeing AIOps IOPS booming and that's creating a new developer paradigm that's right. Which we call coin data as code data as code is like infrastructure as code, but it's for data, right? It's developing with data, right? Retraining machine learnings, going back to the data lake, getting data to make, to do analysis, to make the machine learning better post event or post action. So this, this data engineers like an SRE for data, it's a new, scalable role we're seeing. Do you see the same thing? Do you agree? Um, do you disagree or can you share? >>I, a lot of thoughts that Fu I see the AI op solutions in the futures should be not looking back. I need to be like we are in San Francisco bay. That means earthquake prediction. Right? I want AOPs to predict when the outages are gonna happen. When there's a performance issue. I don't think most AOPs vendors have not gone there yet. Like I spend a lot of time with data dog, Cisco app dynamic, right? Dynatrace, all this solution will go future towards predict to pro so solution with AOPs. But what you bring up a very good point on the data side. I think like we have a Amazon marketplace and Amazon for startup, there should be data exchange where you want to create for AOPs and AI service that customers give the data, share the data because we thought the data algorithms are useless. I can give the best algorithm, but I gotta train them, modify them, make them better, make them better. Yeah. And I think their whole data exchange is the industry has not thought through something you and me talk many times. Yeah. Yeah. I think the whole, that area is very important. >>You've always been on, um, on the Vanguard of data because, uh, it's been really fun. Yeah. >>Going back to big data days back in 2009, you know that >>Look at, look how much data bricks has grown. >>It is doubled. The key cloud >>Air kinda went private, so good stuff. What are you working on right now? Give a, give a, um, plug for what you're working on. You'll still investing. >>I do still invest, but look, I'm a hundred percent on ISRA right now. I'm the CEO there. Yeah. Okay. So right. ISRA is my number one baby right now. So I'm looking year that growing customers and my customers, or some of them, you like it's zoom auto desk, McAfee, uh, grand <inaudible>. So all the top customers, um, mainly for it help desk customer service. AIOps those are three product lines and going after enterprise and commercial deals. >>And when should someone buy your product? What's what's their need? What category is it? >>I think they look whenever somebody needs to buy the product is if you need AOP solution to predict, keep your lights on, predict ours. One area. If you want to improve employee experience, you are using a slack teams and you want to automate all your workflows. That's another value problem. Third is customer service. You don't want to hire more people to do it. Some of the areas where you want to scale your company, grow your company, eliminate the cost customer service, >>Great stuff, man. Doing great to see you. Thanks for coming on. Congratulations on the success of your company and your investments. Thanks for coming on the cube. Okay. I'm John fur here at the cube live in San Francisco for day one of two days of coverage of a us summit 2022. And we're gonna be at Aus summit in San, uh, in New York in the summer. So look for that on the calendar, of course, go to a us startups.com. That's a site for all the hot startups and of course the cube.net and Silicon angle.com. Thanks for watching. We'll be back more coverage after this short break. >>Okay. Welcome back everyone. This the cubes coverage here in San Francisco, California, a Davis summit, 2022, the beginning of the event season, as it comes back, little bit smaller footprint, a lot of hybrid events going on, but this is actually a physical event, a summit in new York's coming in the summer. We'll be two with the cube on the set. We're getting back in the Groove's psych to be back. We were at reinvent, uh, as well, and we'll see more and more cube, but you're gonna see a lot of virtual cube outta hybrid cube. We wanna get all those conversations, try to get more interviews, more flow going. But right now I'm excited to have Corey Quinn here on the back on the cube chief cloud economist with duck bill groove, he's the founder, uh, and chief content person always got great angles, fun comedy, authoritative Corey. Great to see you. Thank you. >>Thanks. Coming on. Sure is a lot of words to describe is shit posting, which is how I describe what I tend to do. Most days, >>Shit posting is an art form now. And if you look at mark, Andrew's been doing a lot of shit posting lately. All a billionaires are shit posting, but they don't know how to do it. They're >>Doing it right. There's something opportunity there. It's like, here's how to be even more obnoxious and incisive. It's honestly the most terrifying scenario for anyone is if I have that kind of budget to throw at my endeavors, it's like, I get excited with a nonsense I can do with a $20 gift card for an AWS credit compared to, oh well, if I could buy a mid-size island to begin doing this from, oh, then we're having fun. >>This shit posting trend. Interesting. I was watching a thread go on about, saw someone didn't get a job because of their shit posting and the employer didn't get it. And then someone on this side I'll hire the guy cuz I get that's highly intelligent shit posting. So for the audience that doesn't know what shit posting is, what, what is shitposting >>It's more or less talking about the world of enterprise technology, which even that sentence is hard to finish without falling asleep and toppling out of my chair in front of everyone on the livestream, but it's doing it in such a way that brings it to life that says the quiet part. A lot of the audience is thinking, but generally doesn't say either because they're polite or not a Jack ass or more prosaically are worried about getting fired for better or worse. I don't have that particular constraint, >>Which is why people love you. So let's talk about what you, what you think is, uh, worthy and not worthy in the industry right now, obviously, uh, Cuban coming up in Spain, which they're having a physical event, you see the growth of cloud native Amazon's evolving Atos, especially new CEO. Andy move on to be the chief of all. Amazon just saw him the cover of was it time magazine. Um, he's under a lot of stress. Amazon's changed. Invoice has changed. What's working. What's not, what's rising, what's falling. What's hot. What's not, >>It's easy to sit here and criticize almost anything. These folks do. They're they're effectively in a fishbowl, but I have trouble. Imagine the logistics, it takes to wind up handling the catering for a relatively downscale event like this one this year, let alone running a 1.7 million employee company having to balance all the competing challenges and pressures and the rest. I, I just can't fathom what it would be like to look at all of AWS. And it's, it's sprawling immense, the nominates our entire industry and say, okay, this is a good start, but I, I wanna focus on something with a broader remit. What is that? How do you even get into that position? And you can't win once you're there. All you can do is hold onto the tiger and hope you don't get mold. >>Well, there's a lot of force for good conversations. Seeing a lot of that going on, Amazon's trying to a, is trying to portray themselves, you know, the Pathfinder, you know, you're the pioneer, um, force for good. And I get that and I think that's a good angle as cloud goes mainstream. There's still the question of, we had a guy on just earlier, who was a skydiving instructor and we were joking about the early days of cloud. Like that was like skydiving, build a parachute open, you know, and now it's same kind of thing. As you move to edge, things are like reliable in some areas, but still new, new fringe, new areas. That's crazy. Well, >>Since the last time we've spoken, uh, Steve Schmidt is now the CISO for all of Amazon and his backfill replacement. The AWS CISO is CJ. Moses who as a hobby races, a as a semi-pro race car, our driver to my understanding, which either, I don't know what direction to take that in either. This is what he does to relax or ultimately, or ultimately it's. Huh? That, that certainly says something about risk assessment. I'm not entirely sure what, but okay. Either way, it sounds like more exciting. Like they >>Better have a replacement ready in case something goes wrong on the track, highly >>Available >>CSOs. I gotta say one of the things I do like in the recent trend is that the tech companies are getting into the formula one, which I was never a fan of until I watched that Netflix series. But when you look at the formula one, it's pretty cool. Cause it's got some tech angles, I get the whole data instrumentation thing, but the most coolest thing about formula, the one is they have these new rigs out. Yeah. Where you can actually race in e-sports with other people in pure simulation of the race car. You gotta get the latest and video graphics card, but it's basically a tricked out PC with amazing monitors and you have all the equipment of F1 and you're basically simulating racing. Oh, >>It's great too. And I can see the appeal of these tech companies getting it into it because these things are basically rocket shifts. When those cars go, like they're sitting there, we can instrument every last part of what is going on inside that vehicle. And then AWS crops up. And we can bill on every one of those dimensions too. And it's like slow down their hasty pudding one step at a time. But I do see the appeal. >>So I gotta ask you about, uh, what's going on in your world. I know you have a lot of great SA we've been following you in the queue for many, many years. Got a great newsletter. Check out Corey Quinn's newsletter, uh, screaming in the cloud program. Uh, you're on the cutting edge and you've got a great balance between really being snarky and, and, and really being delivering content. That's exciting, uh, for people, uh, with a little bit of an edge, um, how's that going? Uh, what's the blowback, any blowback late leads there been tick? What was, what are some of the things you're hearing from your audience, more Corey, more Corey. And then of course the, the PR team's calling you >>The weird thing about having an audience beyond a certain size is far and away as a landslide. The most common response I get is silence where it's hi, I'm emailing an awful lot of people at last week in AWS every week and okay. They not have heard me. It. That is not actually true. People just generally don't respond to email because who responds to email newsletters. That sounds like something, a lunatic might do same story with response to live streams and podcasts. It's like, I'm gonna call into that am radio show and give them a piece of my mind. People generally don't do that. >>We should do that. Actually. I think sure would call in. Oh, I, I >>Think >>I guarantee if we had that right now, people would call in and Corey, what do you think about X? >>Yeah. It not, everyone understands the full context of what I do. And in fact, increasingly few people do and that's fine. I, I keep forgetting that sometimes people do not see what I'm doing in the same light that I do. And that's fine. Blowback has been largely minimal. Honestly, I am surprised anything by how little I have gotten over the last five years of doing this, but it would be easier to dismiss me if I weren't generally. Right. When, okay, so you launch this new service and it seems pretty crappy to me cuz when I try and build something, it falls over and begs for help. And people might not like hearing that, but it's what customers are finding too. Yeah. I really am the voice of the customer. >>You know, I always joke with Dave Avante about how John Fort's always at, uh, um, reinvent getting the interview with jazzy now, Andy we're there, you're there. And so we have these rituals at the events. It's all cool. Um, one of the rituals I like about your, um, your content is you like to get on the naming product names. Um, and, and, and, and, and kind of goof on that. Now why I like is because I used to work at ETT Packard where they used to name things as like engineers, HP 1 0, 0 5, or we can't, we >>Have a new monitor. How are we gonna name it? Throw the wireless keyboard down the stairs again. And then there you go. Yeah. >>It's and the old joke at HP was if they, if they invented sushi, they'd say, yeah, we can't call sushi. It's cold, dead fish, but that's what it is. And so the joke was cold. Dead fish is a better name than sushi. So you know is fun. So what's the, what are the, how's the Amazon doing in there? Have they changed their naming, uh, strategy, uh, on some of their, their product >>They're going in different directions. When they named Aurora, they decided to explore a new theme of Disney princesses as they go down those paths. And some things are more descriptive. Some people are clearly getting bonus on number of words, they can shove into it. Like the better a service is the longer it's name. Like AWS systems manager, a session manager is a great one. I love the service ridiculous name. They have a systems manager, parameter store with is great. They have secrets manager, which does the same thing. It's two words less, but that one costs money in a way that systems manage through parameter store does not. It's fun. >>What's your, what's your favorite combination of acronyms >>Combination of you >>Got Ks. You got EMR, you got EC two. You got S three SQS. Well, RedShift's not an acronym. You got >>Gas is one of my personal favorites because it's either elastic block store or elastic bean stock, depending entirely on the context of the conversation, >>They still got bean stock or is that still >>Around? Oh, they never turn anything off. They're like the anti Google, Google turns things off while they're still building it. Whereas Amazon is like, wow, we built this thing in 2005 and everyone hates it. But while we certainly can't change it, now it has three customers on it, John. >>Okay. >>Simple BV still haunts our >>Dreams. I, I actually got an email on, I saw one of my, uh, servers, all these C twos were being deprecated and I got an email I'm like, I couldn't figure out. Why can you just like roll it over? Why, why are you telling me just like, gimme something else. Right. Okay. So let me talk about, uh, the other things I want to ask you is that like, okay, so as Amazon gets better in some areas where do they need more work? And you, your opinion, because obviously they're all interested in new stuff and they tend to like put it out there for their end to end customers. But then they've got ecosystem partners who actually have the same product. Yes. And, and this has been well documented. So it's, it's not controversial. It's just that Amazon's got a database Snowflake's got out database service. So, you know, Redshift, snowflake database is out there. So you've got this optician. Yes. How's that going? And what are you hearing about the reaction to any of that stuff? >>Depends on who you ask. They love to basically trot out a bunch of their partners who will say nice things about them. And it very much has heirs of, let's be honest, a hostage video, but okay. Cuz these companies do partner with Amazon and they cannot afford to rock the boat too far. I'm not partnered with anyone. I can say what I want. And they're basically restricted to taking away my birthday at worse so I can live with that. >>All right. So I gotta ask about multi-cloud cause obviously the other cloud shows are coming up. Amazon hated that word. Multi-cloud um, a lot of people are saying, you know, it's not a real good marketing word. Like multicloud sounds like, you know, root canal. Mm-hmm <affirmative> right. So is there a better description for multicloud? >>Multiple single >>Loves that term. Yeah. >>You're building in multiple single points of failure. Do it for the right reasons or don't do it as a default. I believe not doing it is probably the, the right answer. However, and if I were, if I were Amazon, I wouldn't want to talk about multi-cloud either as the industry leader, let's talk about other clouds, bad direction to go in from a market cap perspective. It doesn't end well for you, but regardless of what they want to talk about, or don't want to talk about what they say, what they don't say, I tune all of it out. And I look at what customers are doing and multi-cloud exists in a variety of some brilliant, some brain dead. It depends a lot on context. But my general response is when someone gets on stage from a company and tells me to do a thing that directly benefits their company. I am skeptical at best. Yeah. When customers get on stage and say, this is what we're doing because it solves problems. That's when I shut up and listen. >>Yeah. Cool. Awesome. Corey, I gotta ask you a question cause I know you we've been, you know, fellow journey mean in the, in the cloud journey, going to all the events and then the pandemic hit where now in the third year, who knows what it's gonna end, certainly events are gonna look different. They're gonna be either changing footprint with the virtual piece, new group formations community's gonna emerge. You've got a pretty big community growing and it's growing like crazy. What's the weirdest or coolest thing, or just big changes you've seen with the pan endemic, uh, from your perspective, cuz you've been in the you're in the middle of the whitewater rafting. You've seen the events you circle offline. You saw the online piece come in, you're commentating, you're calling balls and strikes in the industry. You got a great team developing over there. Duck bill group. What's the big aha moment that you saw with the pandemic. Weird, funny, serious, real in the industry and with customers what's >>Accessibility. Reinvent is a great example. When in the before times it's open to anyone who wants to attend, who >>Can pony. >>Hello and welcome back to the live cube coverage here in San Francisco, California, the cube live coverage. Two days, day two of a summit, 2022 Aish summit, New York city coming up in summer. We'll be there as well. Events are back. I'm the host, John fur, the Cub got great guest here. Johnny Dallas with Ze. Um, here is on the queue. We're gonna talk about his background. Uh, little trivia here. He was the youngest engineer ever worked at Amazon at the age. 17 had to get escorted into reinvent in Vegas cause he was underage <laugh> with security, all good stories. Now the CEO of company called Z know DevOps kind of focus, managed service, a lot of cool stuff, Johnny, welcome to the cube. >>Thanks John. Great. >>So tell a story. You were the youngest engineer at AWS. >>I was, yes. So I used to work at a company called Bebo. I got started very young. I started working when I was about 14, um, kind of as a software engineer. And when I, uh, it was about 16. I graduated out of high school early, um, working at this company Bebo, still running all of the DevOps at that company. Um, I went to reinvent in about 2018 to give a talk about some of the DevOps software I wrote at that company. Um, but you know, as many of those things were probably familiar with reinvent happens in a casino and I was 16. So was not able to actually go into the, a casino on my own. Um, so I'd have <inaudible> security as well as casino security escort me in to give my talk. >>Did Andy jazzy, was he aware of >>This? Um, you know, that's a great question. I don't know. <laugh> >>I'll ask him great story. So obviously you started a young age. I mean, it's so cool to see you jump right in. I mean, I mean you never grew up with the old school that I used to grew up in and loading package software, loading it onto the server, deploying it, plugging the cables in, I mean you just rocking and rolling with DevOps as you look back now what's the big generational shift because now you got the Z generation coming in, millennials on the workforce. It's changing like no one's putting and software on servers. Yeah, >>No. I mean the tools keep getting better, right? We, we keep creating more abstractions that make it easier and easier. When I, when I started doing DevOps, I could go straight into E two APIs. I had APIs from the get go and you know, my background was, I was a software engineer. I never went through like the CIS admin stack. I, I never had to, like you said, rack servers, myself. I was immediately able to scale. I was managing, I think 2,500 concurrent servers across every Ables region through software. It was a fundamental shift. >>Did you know what an SRE was at that time? >>Uh, >>You were kind of an SRE on >>Yeah, I was basically our first SRE, um, was familiar with the, with the phrasing, but really thought of myself as a software engineer who knows cloud APIs, not a SRE. All >>Right. So let's talk about what's what's going on now as you look at the landscape today, what's the coolest thing that's going on in your mind in cloud? >>Yeah, I think the, I think the coolest thing is, you know, we're seeing the next layer of those abstraction tools exist and that's what we're doing with Z is we've basically gone and we've, we're building an app platform that deploys onto your cloud. So if you're familiar with something like Carku, um, where you just click a GitHub repo, uh, we actually make it that easy. You click a GI hub repo and it will deploy on ALS using a AWS tools. So, >>Right. So this is Z. This is the company. Yes. How old's the company about >>A year and a half old now. >>All right. So explain what it does. >>Yeah. So we make it really easy for any software engineer to deploy on a AWS. It's not SREs. These are the actual application engineers doing the business logic. They don't really want to think about Yamo. They don't really want to configure everything super deeply. They want to say, run this API on S in the best way possible. We've encoded all the best practices into software and we set it up for you. Yeah. >>So I think the problem you're solving is that there's a lot of want be DevOps engineers. And then they realize, oh shit, I don't wanna do this. Yeah. And some people want to do it. They loved under the hood. Right. People love to have infrastructure, but the average developer needs to actually be as agile on scale. So that seems to be the problem you solve. Right? >>Yeah. We, we, we give way more productivity to each individual engineer, you know? >>All right. So let me ask you a question. So let me just say, I'm a developer. Cool. I build this new app. It's a streaming app or whatever. I'm making it up cube here, but let's just say I deploy it. I need your service. But what happens about when my customers say, Hey, what's your SLA? The CDN went down from this it's flaky. Does Amazon have, so how do you handle all that SLA reporting that Amazon provides? Cuz they do a good job with sock reports all through the console. But as you start getting into DevOps <affirmative> and sell your app, mm-hmm <affirmative> you have customer issues. How do you, how do you view that? Yeah, >>Well, I, I think you make a great point of AWS has all this stuff already. AWS has SLAs. AWS has contract. Aw has a lot of the tools that are expected. Um, so we don't have to reinvent the wheel here. What we do is we help people get to those SLAs more easily. So Hey, this is AWS SLA as a default. Um, Hey, we'll fix you your services. This is what you can expect here. Um, but we can really leverage S's reliability of you. Don't have to trust us. You have to trust ALS and trust that the setup is good there. >>Do you handle all the recovery or mitigation between, uh, identification say downtime for instance? Oh, the server's not 99% downtime. Uh, went down for an hour, say something's going on? And is there a service dashboard? How does it get what's the remedy? Do you have a, how does all that work? >>Yeah, so we have some built in remediation. You know, we, we basically say we're gonna do as much as we can to keep your endpoint up 24 7 mm-hmm <affirmative>. If it's something in our control, we'll do it. If it's a disc failure, that's on us. If you push bad code, we won't put out that new version until it's working. Um, so we do a lot to make sure that your endpoint stay is up, um, and then alert you if there's a problem that we can't fix. So cool. Hey S has some downtime, this thing's going on. You need to do this action. Um, we'll let you know. >>All right. So what do you do for fun? >>Yeah, so, uh, for, for fun, um, a lot of side projects. <laugh> uh, >>What's your side hustle right now. You got going on >>The, uh, it's >>A lot of tools playing tools, serverless. >>Yeah, painless. A lot of serverless stuff. Um, I think there's a lot of really cool WAM stuff as well. Going on right now. Um, I love tools is, is the truest answer is I love building something that I can give to somebody else. And they're suddenly twice as productive because of it. Um, >>It's a good feeling, isn't it? >>Oh yeah. There's >>Nothing like tools were platforms. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, you know, the expression, too many tools in the tool. She becomes, you know, tools for all. And then ultimately tools become platforms. What's your view on that? Because if a good tool works and starts to get traction, you need to either add more tools or start building a platform platform versus tool. What's your, what's your view on a reaction to that kind of concept debate? >>Yeah, it's a good question. Uh, we we've basically started as like a, a platform. First of we've really focused on these, uh, developers who don't wanna get deep into the DevOps. And so we've done all of the pieces of the stacks. We do C I C D management. Uh, we do container orchestration, we do monitoring. Um, and now we're, spliting those up into individual tools so they can be used. Awesome in conjunction more. >>All right. So what are some of the use cases that you see for your service? It's DevOps basically nano service DevOps. So people who want a DevOps team, do clients have a DevOps person and then one person, two people what's the requirements to run >>Z. Yeah. So we we've got teams, um, from no DevOps is kind of when they start and then we've had teams grow up to about, uh, five, 10 men DevOps teams. Um, so, you know, as is more infrastructure people come in because we're in your cloud, you're able to go in and configure it on top you're we can't block you. Uh, you wanna use some new AWS service. You're welcome to use that alongside the stack that we deploy >>For you. How many customers do you have now? >>So we've got about 40 companies that are using us for all of their infrastructure, um, kind of across the board, um, as well as >>What's the pricing model. >>Uh, so our pricing model is we, we charge basically similar to an engineering salary. So we charge a monthly rate. We have plans at 300 bucks a month, a thousand bucks a month, and then enterprise plan for >>The requirement scale. Yeah. So back into the people cost, you must have her discounts, not a fully loaded thing, is it? >>Yeah, there's a discounts kind of asking >>Then you pass the Amazon bill. >>Yeah. So our customers actually pay for the Amazon bill themselves. So >>Have their own >>Account. There's no margin on top. You're linking your, a analyst account in, um, got it. Which is huge because we can, we are now able to help our customers get better deals with Amazon. Um, got it. We're incentivized on their team to drive your costs down. >>And what's your unit main unit of economics software scale. >>Yeah. Um, yeah, so we, we think of things as projects. How many services do you have to deploy as that scales up? Um, awesome. >>All right. You're 20 years old now you not even can't even drink legally. <laugh> what are you gonna do when you're 30? We're gonna be there. >>Well, we're, uh, we're making it better, better, >>Better the old guy on the queue here. <laugh> >>I think, uh, I think we're seeing a big shift of, um, you know, we've got these major clouds. ALS is obviously the biggest cloud and it's constantly coming out with new services, but we're starting to see other clouds have built many of the common services. So Kubernetes is a great example. It exists across all the clouds and we're starting to see new platforms come up on top that allow you to leverage tools for multiple times. At the same time. Many of our customers actually have AWS as their primary cloud and they'll have secondary clouds or they'll pull features from other clouds into AWS, um, through our software. I think that's, I'm very excited by that. And I, uh, expect to be working on that when I'm 30. <laugh> awesome. >>Well, you gonna have a good future. I gotta ask you this question cuz uh, you know, I always, I was a computer science undergrad in the, in the, and um, computer science back then was hardcore, mostly systems OS stuff, uh, database compiler. Um, now there's so much compi, right? Mm-hmm <affirmative> how do you look at the high school college curriculum experience slash folks who are nerding out on computer science? It's not one or two things. You've got a lot of, lot of things. I mean, look at Python, data engineering and emerging as a huge skill. What's it, what's it like for college kids now and high school kids? What, what do you think they should be doing if you had to give advice to your 16 year old self back a few years ago now in college? Um, I mean Python's not a great language, but it's super effective for coding and the datas were really relevant, but it's, you've got other language opportunities you've got tools to build. So you got a whole culture of young builders out there. What should, what should people gravitate to in your opinion and stay away from or >>Stay away from? That's a good question. I, I think that first of all, you're very right of the, the amount of developers is increasing so quickly. Um, and so we see more specialization. That's why we also see, you know, these SREs that are different than typical application engineering. You know, you get more specialization in job roles. Um, I think if, what I'd say to my 16 year old self is do projects, um, the, I learned most of my, what I've learned just on the job or online trying things, playing with different technologies, actually getting stuff out into the world, um, way more useful than what you'll learn in kind of a college classroom. I think classroom's great to, uh, get a basis, but you need to go out and experiment actually try things. >>You know? I think that's great advice. In fact, I would just say from my experience of doing all the hard stuff and cloud is so great for just saying, okay, I'm done, I'm banning the project. Move on. Yeah. Cause you know, it's not gonna work in the old days. You have to build this data center. I bought all this, you know, people hang on to the old, you know, project and try to force it out there. Now you >>Can launch a project now, >>Instant gratification, it ain't working <laugh> or this is shut it down and then move on to something new. >>Yeah, exactly. Instantly you should be able to do that much more quickly. Right. So >>You're saying get those projects and don't be afraid to shut it down. Mm-hmm <affirmative> that? Do you agree with that? >>Yeah. I think it's ex experiment. Uh, you're probably not gonna hit it rich on the first one. It's probably not gonna be that idea is the genius idea. So don't be afraid to get rid of things and just try over and over again. It's it's number of reps >>That'll win. I was commenting online. Elon Musk was gonna buy Twitter, that whole Twitter thing. And someone said, Hey, you know, what's the, I go look at the product group at Twitter's been so messed up because they actually did get it right on the first time. And we can just a great product. They could never change it because people would freak out and the utility of Twitter. I mean, they gotta add some things, the added button and we all know what they need to add, but the product, it was just like this internal dysfunction, the product team, what are we gonna work on? Don't change the product so that you kind of have there's opportunities out there where you might get the lucky strike right outta the gate. Yeah. Right. You don't know. >>It's almost a curse too. It's you're not gonna hit curse Twitter. You're not gonna hit a rich the second time too. So yeah. >><laugh> Johnny Dallas. Thanks for coming on the cube. Really appreciate it. Give a plug for your company. Um, take a minute to explain what you're working on. What you're look looking for. You hiring funding. Customers. Just give a plug, uh, last minute and kind the last word. >>Yeah. So, um, John Dallas from Ze, if you, uh, need any help with your DevOps, if you're a early startup, you don't have DevOps team, um, or you're trying to deploy across clouds, check us out z.com. Um, we are actively hiring. So if you are a software engineer excited about tools and cloud, or you're interested in helping getting this message out there, hit me up. Um, find us on z.co. >>Yeah. LinkedIn Twitter handle GitHub handle. >>Yeah. I'm the only Johnny on a LinkedIn and GitHub and underscore Johnny Dallas underscore on Twitter. All right. Um, >>Johnny Dallas, the youngest engineer working at Amazon, um, now 20 we're on great new project here in the cube. Builders are all young. They're growing into the business. They got cloud at their, at their back it's tailwind. I wish I was 20. Again, this is a I'm John for your host. Thanks for watching. Thanks. >>Welcome >>Back to the cubes. Live coverage of a AWS summit in San Francisco, California events are back, uh, ADAS summit in New York cities. This summer, the cube will be there as well. Check us out there lot. I'm glad we have events back. It's great to have everyone here. I'm John furry host of the cube. Dr. Matt wood is with me cube alumni now VP of business analytics division of AWS. Matt. Great to see you. Thank >>You, John. Great to be here. >>Appreciate it. I always call you Dr. Matt wood, because Andy jazzy always says Dr. Matt, we >>Would introduce you on the he's the one and only the one and >>Only Dr. Matt wood >>In joke. I love it. >>Andy style. And I think you had walkup music too on, you know, >>Too. Yes. We all have our own personalized walk. >>So talk about your new role. I not new role, but you're running up, um, analytics, business or AWS. What does that consist of right now? >>Sure. So I work, I've got what I consider to be the one of the best jobs in the world. Uh, I get to work with our customers and, uh, the teams at AWS, uh, to build the analytics services that millions of our customers use to, um, uh, slice dice, pivot, uh, better understand their day data, um, look at how they can use that data for, um, reporting, looking backwards and also look at how they can use that data looking forward. So predictive analytics and machine learning. So whether it is, you know, slicing and dicing in the lower level of, uh Hado and the big data engines, or whether you're doing ETR with glue or whether you're visualizing the data in quick side or building models in SageMaker. I got my, uh, fingers in a lot of pies. >>You know, one of the benefits of, uh, having cube coverage with AWS since 2013 is watching the progression. You were on the cube that first year we were at reinvent 2013 and look at how machine learning just exploded onto the scene. You were involved in that from day one is still day one, as you guys say mm-hmm <affirmative>, what's the big thing now. I mean, look at, look at just what happened. Machine learning comes in and then a slew of services come in and got SageMaker became a hot seller, right outta the gate. Mm-hmm <affirmative> the database stuff was kicking butt. So all this is now booming. Mm-hmm <affirmative> that was the real generational changeover for <inaudible> what's the perspective. What's your perspective on, yeah, >>I think how that's evolved. No, I think it's a really good point. I, I totally agree. I think for machine machine learning, um, there was sort of a Renaissance in machine learning and the application of machine learning machine learning as a technology has been around for 50 years, let's say, but, uh, to do machine learning, right? You need like a lot of data, the data needs to be high quality. You need a lot of compute to be able to train those models and you have to be able to evaluate what those mean as you apply them to real world problems. And so the cloud really removed a lot of the constraints. Finally, customers had all of the data that they needed. We gave them services to be able to label that data in a high quality way. There's all the compute. You need to be able to train the models <laugh> and so where you go. >>And so the cloud really enabled this Renaissance with machine learning, and we're seeing honestly, a similar Renaissance with, uh, with data, uh, and analytics. You know, if you look back, you know, five, 10 years, um, analytics was something you did in batch, like your data warehouse ran a analysis to do, uh, reconciliation at the end of the month. And then was it? Yeah. And so that's when you needed it, but today, if your Redshift cluster isn't available, uh, Uber drivers don't turn up door dash deliveries, don't get made. It's analytics is now central to virtually every business and it is central to every virtually every business is digital transformation. Yeah. And be able to take that data from a variety of sources here, or to query it with high performance mm-hmm <affirmative> to be able to actually then start to augment that data with real information, which usually comes from technical experts and domain experts to form, you know, wisdom and information from raw data. That's kind of, uh, what most organizations are trying to do when they kind of go through this analytics journey. It's >>Interesting, you know, Dave LAN and I always talk on the cube, but out, you know, the future and, and you look back, the things we were talking about six years ago are actually happening now. Yeah. And it's not a, a, a, you know, hyped up statement to say digital transformation. It actually's happening now. And there's also times where we bang our fist on the table, say, I really think this is so important. And Dave says, John, you're gonna die on that hill <laugh>. >>And >>So I I'm excited that this year, for the first time I didn't die on that hill. I've been saying data you're right. Data as code is the next infrastructure as code mm-hmm <affirmative>. And Dave's like, what do you mean by that? We're talking about like how data gets and it's happening. So we just had an event on our 80 bus startups.com site mm-hmm <affirmative>, um, a showcase with startups and the theme was data as code and interesting new trends emerging really clearly the role of a data engineer, right? Like an SRE, what an SRE did for cloud. You have a new data engineering role because of the developer on, uh, onboarding is massively increasing exponentially, new developers, data science, scientists are growing mm-hmm <affirmative> and the, but the pipelining and managing and engineering as a system. Yeah. Almost like an operating system >>And as a discipline. >>So what's your reaction to that about this data engineer data as code, because if you have horizontally scalable data, you've gotta be open that's hard. <laugh> mm-hmm <affirmative> and you gotta silo the data that needs to be siloed for compliance and reasons. So that's got a very policy around that. So what's your reaction to data as code and data engineering and >>Phenomenon? Yeah, I think it's, it's a really good point. I think, you know, like with any, with any technology, uh, project inside an organization, you know, success with analytics or machine learning is it's kind of 50% technology and then 50% cultural. And, uh, you have often domain experts. Those are, could be physicians or drug experts, or they could be financial experts or whoever they might be got deep domain expertise. And then you've got technical implementation teams and it's kind of a natural often repulsive force. I don't mean that rudely, but they, they just, they don't talk the same language. And so the more complex the domain and the more complex the technology, the stronger that repulsive force, and it can become very difficult for, um, domain experts to work closely with the technical experts, to be able to actually get business decisions made. And so what data engineering does and data engineering is in some cases team, or it can be a role that you play. >>Uh, it's really allowing those two disciplines to speak the same language it provides. You can think of it as plumbing, but I think of it as like a bridge, it's a bridge between like the technical implementation and the domain experts. And that requires like a very disparate range of skills. You've gotta understand about statistics. You've gotta understand about the implementation. You've gotta understand about the, it, you've gotta understand and understand about the domain. And if you could pull all of that together, that data engineering discipline can be incredibly transformative for an organization, cuz it builds the bridge between those two >>Groups. You know, I was advising some, uh, young computer science students at the sophomore junior level, uh, just a couple weeks ago. And I told 'em, I would ask someone at Amazon, this questions I'll ask you since you're, you've been in the middle of of it for years, they were asking me and I was trying to mentor them on. What, how do you become a data engineer from a practical standpoint, uh, courseware projects to work on how to think, um, not just coding Python cause everyone's coding in Python mm-hmm <affirmative> but what else can they do? So I was trying to help them and I didn't really know the answer myself. I was just trying to like kind of help figure it out with them. So what is the answer in your opinion or the thoughts around advice to young students who want to be data engineers? Cuz data scientists is pretty clear in what that is. Yeah. You use tools, you make visualizations, you manage data, you get answers and insights and apply that to the business. That's an application mm-hmm <affirmative>, that's not the, you know, sta standing up a stack or managing the infrastructure. What, so what does that coding look like? What would your advice be to >>Yeah, I think >>Folks getting into a data engineering role. >>Yeah. I think if you, if you believe this, what I said earlier about like 50% technology, 50% culture, like the, the number one technology to learn as a data engineer is the tools in the cloud, which allow you to aggregate data from virtually any source into something which is incrementally more valuable for the organization. That's really what data engineering is all about. It's about taking from multiple sources. Some people call them silos, but silos indicates that the, the storage is kind of fungible or UND differentiated. That that's really not the case. Success requires you to really purpose built well crafted high performance, low cost engines for all of your data. So understanding those tools and understanding how to use 'em, that's probably the most important technical piece. Um, and yeah, Python and programming and statistics goes along with that, I think. And then the most important cultural part, I think is it's just curiosity. >>Like you want to be able to, as a data engineer, you want to have a natural curiosity that drives you to seek the truth inside an organization, seek the truth of a particular problem and to be able to engage, cuz you're probably, you're gonna have some choice as you go through your career about which domain you end up in, like maybe you're really passionate about healthcare. Maybe you're really just passionate about your transportation or media, whatever it might be. And you can allow that to drive a certain amount of curiosity, but within those roles, like the domains are so broad, you kind of gotta allow your curiosity to develop and lead, to ask the right questions and engage in the right way with your teams. So because you can have all the technical skills in the world, but if you're not able to help the team's truths seek through that curiosity, you simply won't be successful. >>We just had a guest on 20 year old, um, engineer, founder, Johnny Dallas, who was 16 when he worked at Amazon youngest engineer at >>Johnny Dallas is a great name by the that's fantastic. It's his real name? >>It sounds like a football player. Rockstar. I should call Johnny. I have Johnny Johnny cube. Uh it's me. Um, so, but he's young and, and he, he was saying, you know, his advice was just do projects. >>Yeah. That's get hands on. >>Yeah. And I was saying, Hey, I came from the old days though, you get to stand stuff up and you hugged onto the assets. Cause you didn't wanna kill the cause you spent all this money and, and he's like, yeah, with cloud, you can shut it down. If you do a project that's not working and you get bad data, no one's adopting it or you don't want like it anymore. You shut it down. Just something >>Else. Totally >>Instantly abandoned it. Move onto something new. >>Yeah. With progression. Totally. And it, the, the blast radius of, um, decisions is just way reduced, gone. Like we talk a lot about like trying to, you know, in the old world trying to find the resources and get the funding. And it's like, right. I wanna try out this kind of random idea that could be a big deal for the organization. I need 50 million in a new data center. Like you're not gonna get anywhere. You, >>You do a proposal working backwards, document >>Kinds, all that, that sort of stuff got hoops. So, so all of that is gone, but we sometimes forget that a big part of that is just the, the prototyping and the experimentation and the limited blast radius in terms of cost. And honestly, the most important thing is time just being able to jump in there, get fingers on keyboards, just try this stuff out. And that's why at AWS, we have part of the reason we have so many services because we want, when you get into AWS, we want the whole toolbox to be available to every developer. And so, as your ideas developed, you may want to jump from, you know, data that you have, that's already in a database to doing realtime data. Yeah. And then you can just, you have the tools there. And when you want to get into real time data, you don't just have kineses, but you have real time analytics and you can run SQL again, that data is like the, the capabilities and the breadth, like really matter when it comes to prototyping and, and >>That's culture too. That's the culture piece, because what was once a dysfunctional behavior, I'm gonna go off the reservation and try something behind my boss's back or cause now as a side hustle or fun project. Yeah. So for fun, you can just code something. Yeah, >>Totally. I remember my first Haddo project, I found almost literally a decommissioned set of servers in the data center that no one was using. They were super old. They're about to be literally turned off. And I managed to convince the team to leave them on for me for like another month. And I installed her DUP on them and like, got them going. It's like, that just seems crazy to me now that I, I had to go and convince anybody not to turn these service off, but what >>It was like for that, when you came up with elastic map produce, because you said this is too hard, we gotta make it >>Easier. Basically. Yes. <laugh> I was installing Haddo version, you know, beta nor 0.9 or whatever it was. It's like, this is really hard. This is really hard. >>We simpler. All right. Good stuff. I love the, the walk down memory lane and also your advice. Great stuff. I think culture's huge. I think. And that's why I like Adam's keynote to reinvent Adam. Lesky talk about path minds and trail blazers because that's a blast radius impact. Mm-hmm <affirmative> when you can actually have innovation organically just come from anywhere. Yeah, that's totally cool. Totally. Let's get into the products. Serverless has been hot mm-hmm <affirmative> uh, we hear a lot about EKS is hot. Uh, containers are booming. Kubernetes is getting adopted. There's still a lot of work to do there. Lambda cloud native developers are booming, serverless Lambda. How does that impact the analytics piece? Can you share the hot, um, products around how that translates? Sure, absolutely. Yeah, the SageMaker >>Yeah, I think it's a, if you look at kind of the evolution and what customers are asking for, they're not, you know, they don't just want low cost. They don't just want this broad set of services. They don't just want, you know, those services to have deep capabilities. They want those services to have as lower operating cost over time as possible. So we kind of really got it down. We got built a lot of muscle, lot of services about getting up and running and experimenting and prototyping and turning things off and turn turning them on and turning them off. And like, that's all great. But actually the, you really only most projects start something once and then stop something once. And maybe there's an hour in between, or maybe there's a year, but the real expense in terms of time and, and complexity is sometimes in that running cost. Yeah. And so, um, we've heard very loudly and clearly from customers that they want, that, that running cost is just undifferentiated to them and they wanna spend more time on their work and in analytics that is, you know, slicing the data, pivoting the data, combining the data, labeling the data, training their models, uh, you know, running inference against their models, uh, and less time doing the operational pieces. >>So is that why the servers focus is there? >>Yeah, absolutely. It, it dramatically reduces the skill required to run these, uh, workloads of any scale. And it dramatically reduces the UND differentiated, heavy lifting, cuz you get to focus more of the time that you would've spent on the operation on the actual work that you wanna get done. And so if you look at something just like Redshift serverless that we launched a reinvent, you know, there's a kind of a, we have a lot of customers that want to run like a, uh, the cluster and they want to get into the, the weeds where there is benefit. We have a lot of customers that say, you know, I there's no benefit for me though. I just wanna do the analytics. So you run the operational piece, you're the experts we've run. You know, we run 60 million instant startups every single day. Like we do this a lot. Exactly. We understand the operation. I >>Want the answers come on. So >>Just give the answers or just let, give me the notebook or just give the inference prediction. So today for example, we announced, um, you know, serverless inference. So now once you've trained your machine learning model, just, uh, run a few, uh, lines of code or you just click a few buttons and then yeah, you got an inference endpoint that you do not have to manage. And whether you're doing one query against that endpoint, you know, per hour or you're doing, you know, 10 million, but we'll just scale it on the back end. You >>Know, I know we got not a lot of time left, but I want, wanna get your reaction to this. One of the things about the data lakes, not being data swamps has been from what I've been reporting and hearing from customers is that they want to retrain their machine learning algorithm. They want, they need that data. They need the, the, the realtime data and they need the time series data, even though the time has passed, they gotta store in the data lake mm-hmm <affirmative>. So now the data lakes main function is being reusing the data to actually retrain. Yeah, >>That's >>Right. It worked properly. So a lot of, lot of postmortems turn into actually business improvements to make the machine learning smarter, faster. You see that same way. Do you see it the same way? Yeah, >>I think it's, I think it's really interesting. No, I think it's really interesting because you know, we talk it's, it's convenient to kind of think of analytics as a very clear progression from like point a point B, but really it's, you are navigating terrain for which you do not have a map and you need a lot of help to navigate that terrain. Yeah. And so, you know, being, having these services in place, not having to run the operations of those services, being able to have those services be secure and well governed, and we added PII detection today, you know, something you can do automatically, uh, to be able to use their, uh, any unstructured data run queries against that unstructured data. So today we added, you know, um, text extract queries. So you can just say, well, uh, you can scan a badge for example, and say, well, what's the name on this badge? And you don't have to identify where it is. We'll do all of that work for you. So there's a often a, it's more like a branch than it is just a, a normal, uh, a to B path, a linear path. Uh, and that includes loops backwards. And sometimes you gotta get the results and use those to make improvements further upstream. And sometimes you've gotta use those. And when you're downstream, you'll be like, ah, I remember that. And you come back and bring it all together. So awesome. It's um, it's, uh, uh, it's a wonderful >>Work for sure. Dr. Matt wood here in the queue. Got just take the last word and give the update. Why you're here. What's the big news happening that you're announcing here at summit in San Francisco, California, and update on the, the business analytics >>Group? Yeah, I think, you know, one of the, we did a lot of announcements in the keynote, uh, encouraged everyone to take a look at that. Uh, this morning was Swami. Uh, one of the ones I'm most excited about, uh, is the opportunity to be able to take, uh, dashboards, visualizations. We're all used to using these things. We see them in our business intelligence tools, uh, all over the place. However, what we've heard from customers is like, yes, I want those analytics. I want their visualization. I want it to be up to date, but you know, I don't actually want to have to go my tools where I'm actually doing my work to another separate tool to be able to look at that information. And so today we announced, uh, one click public embedding for quick side dashboards. So today you can literally, as easily as embedding a YouTube video, you can take a dashboard that you've built inside, quick site cut and paste the HTML, paste it into your application and that's it. That's all you have to do. It takes seconds and >>It gets updated in real time. >>Updated in real time, it's interactive. You can do everything that you would normally do. You can brand it like this is there's no power by quick site button or anything like that. You can change the colors, make it fit in perfectly with your, with your applications. So that's sitting incredibly powerful way of being able to take a, uh, an analytics capability that today sits inside its own little fiefdom and put it just everywhere. It's, uh, very transformative. >>Awesome. And the, the business is going well. You got the serverless and your tailwind for you there. Good stuff, Dr. Matt with thank you. Coming on the cube >>Anytime. Thank >>You. Okay. This is the cubes cover of eight summit, 2022 in San Francisco, California. I'm John host cube. Stay with us with more coverage of day two after this short break.

>>Hello everyone. And welcome to the cubes presentation of the AWS startup showcase open cloud innovations. This is season two episode one of our showcase ongoing series. We're covering very exciting startups from the AWS ecosystem. And we're going to be talking about the open source community. I'm your host, Lisa Martin. And today I'm excited to be joined by Robbie, Myra, the head of product and partner marketing at sneak. Robbie's here to talk with me about developer security for your digital transformation. Robbie, it's great to have you on the cube. >>Thanks Lisa. Nice to be here. >>So talk to me about what's going on in developer land. They're under a lot of pressure. A lot of them are building apps with open source, but what does sneak seeing from the developers lens >>From the developer's lens? There's a lot of pressure to build fast and that's probably the biggest challenge, right? We're in a world of digital transformation where everybody's trying to compete no matter what industry you're in, right on the technology and on the quality of your software or the capabilities of your software, which puts a lot of pressure on developers to build fast. That causes them to do a few things. One, it causes them to build, to develop in a way where they're doing constant iteration and so models that would have enabled a security check to come in at the end, aren't working anymore because they don't have time for those security checks. And it also causes them to do a good thing, which is to leverage other people's code when they can like open source. So they can just focus on, on their own functionality. And that's true, whether they're building new functionality or modernizing legacy applications by moving them to the cloud. >>So it's a high percentage of, of app code 80 to 90% is open source. Then that opens up. Talk to me about w where the vulnerabilities are and how you guys help customers and developers address that. >>Yeah, the vulnerabilities can be anywhere, but the key is that that point, right? If you're using open source in a typical application, 80 to 90 plus percent of the lines of code in that application are going to be open source code, their code. Somebody else wrote that you don't have a direct relationship with, and yet you own the risk that whatever they may have, whatever vulnerabilities may be in their code, you now own that risk. So what we're trying to do with sneakers, trying to do is enable developers to leverage open source, but do that securely. And then we also help them with the 10% that they rent as well, and, and do that all in one really easy environment for a developer that fits into their workflow and into their daily life. >>So security should shift left. I've had the chance to talk with a couple of, do you call them sneakers sneakers? Oh, you do a couple of sneakers recently. We've talked about security shifting lab. That's not a new concept, but I'd love to dig in more to how sneak and AWS do that. And I'm also curious if what you're doing helps. We've talked about the cybersecurity skills got for a long time. Now, just what you guys do, help address that >>It does because it's really leveraging a resource that, that is there, right? There's the number of developers worldwide is growing from, depending on who you believe for these numbers and their estimated numbers, right? But 25 million to 50 million over roughly a five-year period that's already started. So we're somewhere in the 30 now, right? Meanwhile, the security jobs, there's something like 9 million cyber security people in the world, and that's all cyber security roles. It's a much shorter, a smaller chunk that are application security folks. And there's three and a half million unfilled cybersecurity roles. So you can't get cyber security people and keep using the current model you're using. But just scale it linearly, you have to change things. And sneaks belief is the way you change things is you have the developers be part of your security solution, which means they need to have the ability to not only develop, but to develop securely. And that's our concept of developer security. We build tools and a platform that enables developers to be the first part of the security solution and enable security teams rather than individually auditing and fixing things to develop a process, govern the process, guide the development teams, but let the developers own that first step of security. And that's really how you solve that scale problem. >>When you're talking with customers, is this kind of a better together scenario, developers and security folks? Are you helping them align culturally because this is a change? >>Absolutely. I think one of the biggest misconceptions out there is that there's a tension between security and development. And I think that's because organizationally there might be right. Security is responsible for risk and developers responsible for speed of innovation and the faster you innovate, potentially there's more risk. So there might be some organizational tension, but at the human level, people understand each other, they understand the pressures that the other one's going through. They just don't have an easy way to work together. And if you can help them get that, then they, it really takes off it. The relationships form they'll build human to human programs like security champion programs and things to, to integrate the teams because they're both going after the same goal, both sides want to build awesome technology and grow in whatever market they're in. >>Right. And of course, with the need to do that at today's markets speed and scale is a great thing that you guys are doing to facilitate that collaboration. And of course the security let's kind of take a double-click now into the different integrations that sneek has with AWS services. I know there's quite a few, >>There's quite a few. The biggest one, probably the easiest one for the integrations is the native integration that we have with code pipeline. So it makes it easy for developers as they're finishing their builds and deploying to have an automatic security check that comes in, understands if there's things that need to be fixed before this really should be released, and then they can fix it and go forward. But we integrate across with our API across a lot of other services, ECR EKS code builder, so that wherever the developer is working, there's a way for us to integrate with them as they're building across their AWS development process. >>Okay. So giving them plenty of opportunity, let's dig into the platform. Talk to me about the platform, how it's really aimed at developers. You alluded to this a little bit, but I'd like to kind of take a double-click into the technology. >>Sure. That the platform, it, part of it is that idea of it we've wrapped it all as a developer tool. But the thing that makes sneak unique in this is not only we have the idea that we wanted to shift left in time, but we wanted to shift left in ownership. So the developers are primary user and we built a tool that is a developer tool that happens to do security. And we've extended that tool into a platform by enabling it to connect into the developers tools, sharing information, across different elements of what it securing. So for example, the open source that we're scanning for you and testing to find for vulnerabilities, we're also looking at the vulnerabilities in your code and where they may overlap or intersect. We can adjust priorities so that you might not need to fix something. Let's say you're using an open source, vulnerable, a package that has a vulnerability, but your code is never going to access that you don't need to fix it. >>So you can prioritize that one lower, right? Same thing with Kubernetes and containers. You may have a container vulnerability, but the way you're going to leverage the container that won't be used so we can adjust the priority to make it easy for the developer. And that's the other big thing that's different about a developer security platform than a typical security tool. A typical security tool is an audit tool it's designed to output. Here are all the things you have a problem with a developer security tool is a fixing tool. It's just defined as a, here are the problems you have developed with here's how you fix it and go back to building on that. That prioritization is a big part of that, because you can say, here's what you don't need to worry about. And then you can focus the rest of your energy on helping developers fix the problem either by giving them really good advice or automating it for them and saying, Hey, here's a button click that will generate a pull request. And your problem is this fixed. >>It must go a long way to improving developer productivity, one facilitating that speed and the agility with which they need to work, but also from a developer kind of crowd sourcing, crowd swell perspective. I imagine, talk to me about what some of the voices are, the developers that are in your community. What are some of the things that they're saying in terms of how much faster they're able to work, they're able to get those priorities established with automation so much faster? >>Well, that's the biggest thing. Is there a, the productivity gain happens because of the benefit of shift left, right? You're testing earlier. You're finding it at an earlier time when it's easier to fix, but that's because they're the ones doing it, right. If they're waiting to hand off to an auto report and then it comes back, even if somebody is, is giving them them audit faster, it's still after they've moved on. And the other way people try to solve it as well. They'll say, well, I'll take a security tool then to hand it to the developer and they can run it. But so developers are not security experts. So the tool needs to understand what they know and what they don't know, and, and working in an upload. And that's what developers generally say to us because sneak makes it easy to work, but also focuses on the fix and helps them guide them to that, to that answer. Then they're able to go much faster when we're evaluated by companies who are looking for a security solution. If the developers get involved in that evaluation, they'll choose sneak. >>So I'm curious a little bit about as, as the head of product marketing, I'm thinking customer advisory boards, things like that. What's the collaboration like between sneak and the developers to really tune and push the technology forward. I imagine it's quite collaborative, >>Quite collaborative and it's across a lot of, of spectrum. So we do have a customer advisory board and that's generally leaders, right? That's either security leaders or development leaders or operations leaders who are in that advisory board. And they're giving us input on things they need for program-wide governance or program wide adoption. We also have a developer community where we're talking directly to developers and that's where we get a lot of, Hey, here's how I could use this better as a developer. And that guides where we focus features that help developers work better, whether it's integrations with our IDs or whether it's the way we present information, help them prioritize. And then the third part is we have a lot of people using the tool because it has a free model, right? We're as a developer tool, we have a freemium model. There's a level of sneak that developers can use that they don't need to pay for. That's not a temporary trial, it's forever. If you want to use it at that level and we can observe what they're doing. So that observability gives us another insight into where folks get challenged run into, to struggles. And then we can look to address those in our roadmap as well. So, so all of that together really helps us drive the product forward. >>What is the perspective from the analyst view? You talked a little bit about the perspective from the customer. We'll get into a customer story in a bit, but I'd love to know what are the gardeners saying? >>Well, Gardner especially put us, we debuted in their magic quadrant for application security last year. And we did David as a visionary and sort of the highest part of the visionary quadrant you could get in before you crossed over into leader, which is kind of unheard of for a first time into the, into the quadrant. And the main reason for that is that they have built the way those, those magic quadrants are built is they have key capabilities and then they score companies against key capabilities and they weight those capabilities, you know, by order of importance. And Gardner has started to put some of this notion of developer security and cross cloud native application security into those key capabilities. And those tend to align really well with what sneakers. So they have a, for example, a software composition, which is sort of open source security analysis, where first, w w w where the top ranking in that, where the top ranking and container security, where the top ranking and developer enablement. So that's pulling us, they are so-so Gardner and the analyst community is seeing this same demand coming from their customers. And that's really aligning to where our vision is. >>And in terms of kind of propelling that vision forward, the voice of the customer, the voice of the analyst, aligning with what you guys are doing to kind of lead the vision going forward. I want to get into some of the intelligence before we kind of break into a customer example. Talk to me a little bit about snakes security intelligence, what the key capabilities are, and some customers that are leveraging it. Sure. >>The biggest thing is with all the developer tool wrapping that needs to be in this product than it is a developer tool. It's got a developers heart, but it has to have a security brain because it still is a security tool. There are some developer tools. We try to have little check the box capabilities of security and they'll crowdsource for vulnerabilities potentially. But if you're doing this, you need to make sure that all the vulnerabilities that could be found are in the database to be able to be found that the database is comprehensive, that it's timely. They get in very quickly that it's accurate. You don't waste time on false positives because that will turn developers off faster than anything. And that it's actionable. So when it does find something, it helps you go forward with it. And that's where sneaks really focused on. So we collect data from multiple public sources. >>We also have a fairly large proprietary research team that curates that information determines what needs to go in. Sometimes we'll adjust priorities. And we also get a lot of contributions from other sources like community contributions. Again, that big free user base of ours is giving us input academia. Open source groups are also in their social media trends. So if we see something trending on Twitter, then that'll not only get it into the database, but it'll drive prioritization. And that's a big part of what's in sneak Intel, which is the name we use for our vulnerability database. We also have a machine learning algorithm. That's constantly looking at all the code in public, in public applications and repositories. And we use that to train for our own proprietary code testing tool, but it also just gets a lot of it finds things there as well. So it brings a really good source of information that helps people make sure you're finding the vulnerabilities, you're prioritizing them correctly and fixing them. And so Amazon's one who is the, you know, one of the folks that using that tool where one of the primary sources of, of Amazon inspector for open source vulnerabilities, as well as a bunch of other security companies like rapid seven tenable and, and others. >>One of the things I was reading from, I'm always kind of looking at the differentiators and I'm sure you are as the head of product marketing and partner marketing, but it sounds like the database can, is, is a key differentiator finding vulnerabilities up to what is it? 46 days faster than competitors. >>Yeah. I mean, faster than especially public sources, which are the easier ones to, to know how you're doing against, but that's a big part of us. So when I talked about those categories, that's really what we measure ourselves against. How are we doing in terms of comprehensive? Do we have the vulnerabilities that we should have? So we have over four times the number of vulnerabilities as the next largest publicly available database, we find them faster, so timely. So that's at 46 days getting it in faster or faster than other public sources, they get into our solution and then accuracy. Again, we, it's not a stat we can test because you can't test it just from the database. You have to run the tools of our, of others in this space. And we don't have those, but making sure that you're not hitting a lot of false positives is a big part of it as well. >>Got it. Okay. And we only have a couple minutes left, but there's two more areas that I want to dig into with you just crack crack. The surface one is log four, shallow was reading. Snake says this. We were the perfect solution at the perfect time. Unpack that for me in the next minute or so. >>Yeah. And that's a bit, and it kind of wraps back to what we were talking about earlier. Everybody's using open source. If you're in the Java world, a lot of folks had logged for shell and we're using lock for shell for logging as a part of their, as a part of their applications. And so a lot of our customers, I think it was over 30%, 36% of our paying customers had the vulnerability. And you would only have the vulnerability of your Java. So it's a very large percentage of our Java using my customers had the vulnerability, but because they were using sneak, they were able, once we put it in the database, which we did the day, it was disclosed, they were able to find it and fix it very quickly. So 91% of our customers fixed that vulnerability in just two days, 98%, because this was a rolling thunder event, right. There was a vulnerability. And then there was a second vulnerability in the, in the fix. And then there was a vulnerability, even in the fix of that. So the second vulnerability that came out because everybody had been ready for it from the first time 98% picks within two days. Whereas the median number of days to generally fix a vulnerability is over two months. So really fast addressing the solution. >>So those are really impressive. And speaking of stats, I wanted to get into just really quickly a case study that really shows that lasting is one of your customer. One of your many customers, big developer community there about 3,500 developers. Give me some kind of the high level of business outcomes that at Lasagne is, is, is achieving thanks to sneaky. >>Yeah. I mean the biggest one is that almost 99% of their applications are deployed in containers. So being able to have the containers tested for vulnerabilities as they're being deployed before they're being deployed is huge for them to reduce the risk of a vulnerability. They, they had a 65% reduction in high severity container volumes a few months after using sneak across all those developers, which really reduces your, your risk profile of your, of your cloud native applications. They're obviously a big AWS user as well. So, so for them, that was the big thing. And again, it goes to that scale, right? They've got 3 3500 developers, more than 3,500 developers. If you try to go through the security team and have the security team fixing all those things, you'll just never catch up. >>Got it. Last question. Where can I get this available through the AWS market prays marketplace? You mentioned the freemium model, give folks kind of a direction on where to go. >>Yeah. So I would say if you are a, if you're someone in the security team, if you're a buyer, the AWS marketplace is a great place to go because you can probably leverage your existing spend commits with AWS. It's easy to purchase, easy billing, et cetera. If you're a developer, then there is this free version where you might go and just start using it and get comfort for it. And if you are a buyer, talk to your developers because there's a pretty good chance. Someone in your company, that's a developer is already using. Sneak will be comfortable with it. These solutions are only successful. If the developers actually use it, you can't shift left unless the developers pick it up and use it. So using the one that developers are already using is probably a good idea. >>Awesome. Robbie, this has been a great conversation, so much momentum at snake. You're the third sneaker I'd gotten to speak to you in the last month and I have, it's pretty exciting, but thanks for walking us through the technology, the capabilities, the differentiators, the voice of the customer, the voice of the analyst, we appreciate your insights and your time. And we look forward to next time we talk to you. >>Terrific. Lisa, I look forward to it as well, but there's a lot more Smith sneakers to go through before you get back to me again. I guess >>I look forward to adding to my repertoire of sneaker interviews, Ravi. Thanks so much. Thank you for Ravi Myra. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching this cube interview as part of the AWS startup showcase. Stick around more great content coming up next.