>>Um, okay, thanks to the studio there for the handoff. Appreciate it. We're here for breaking news and it's exciting that we have who's the managing director. Google is breaking some hard news here, Dave. We want to bring him in and get commentary while we end up Dave too. Honestly, the story here is cloud city. We are in the cloud city and all, thanks for coming on remotely into our physical hybrid set here. Thanks for coming >>On. Thank you, John. And very excited to be here. What Juliet. >>Well, we got Bon Jovi ready to play. Everyone's waiting for that concert in the year. The only thing standing between bunch of LV and all the great stuff. So a lot of people watching. Thanks for coming on, sir. So you guys got some big news, um, first Erickson partners with you guys on 5g platform, deal with Anthem, as well as, uh, open ran Alliance. You guys are joining huge, a Testament to the industry. I see Google with all your innovation you guys have in the big three cloud hyperscalers. Obviously you guys invented SRE, so you know, you no stranger to large scale. What's the news. Let's tell us why this Erickson news is so important. Let's start with the Erickson announcement. >>Sure. So John, I mean, we are very excited today to finally bring to the market, the strategic partnership that we've been building with Erickson for the last few months, uh, the partnership to recent retreat, which is very important to the industry is you're actually doing this in conjunction with very large CSPs. So it's not been in isolation. You are in fact in the press release that we have already launched something to get the big telecom Italia in Italy, because you will see that also in the past. And really the partnership is on three pillars. Number one, how can CSBs monetize 5g and edge, which is the real team at the moment using Google clouds solutions like the edge computing platform and, and POS, and Erikson's cutting edge 5g components, 5g solutions. And if we can onboard these together at the CSP, such as telecom Italia, that creates massive pain to market efficiency. So that's 0.1 because speed and agility is key John, but then point to it also unlocks a lot of edge use cases for a bunch of verticals, retail, manufacturing, healthcare, so on, which are already starting to launch together with that. Excellent. And so that's the second pillar. And then the final pillar of course, is this continuously cloud native innovation that you just highlighted. John, we are going to try and double down on it between ourselves and Ericsson to really time created this cloud native application suite or 5g or whatever. >>Talk about the innovations around cloud, because the message we're hearing him this year at mobile world Congress, is that the public cloud is driving the innovation. And, you know, I can be a little bit over the top. So the telcos are slow. They're like glaciers, they move slow, but they're just moving packets. They are there. They're moving the network around. The innovation is happening on top. So there's some hardened operations operating the networks. Now you have a build concept cloud native enables that. So you've got containers. You can put that encapsulate that older technology and integrated in. So this is not a rip and replace. Someone has to die to win. This is a partnership with the tellers. Can you share your thoughts on that piece? >>Smart Antone's photo? We believe that it's a massive partnership opportunity. There's zero conflict or tensions in this sort of ecosystem. And the reason for that is when you talk about that containerization and right once and deploy everywhere type architecture that we are trying to do, that's where the cloud native really helps. Like when you create Ericsson 5g solutions with the operators, adjust telecom Italia, once you build a solution, you don't have to worry about, do I need to kick it back again and again, but every deployment, as long as your mantra, genetics and working, you shouldn't be able to have the same experience. >>Yeah, I'm John. I talk all the time in the cube about how developers are really going to drive the edge. You're clearly doing that with your distributed cloud, building out a telco cloud. I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about how you see that evolving. A lot of the AI that's done today is done in the cloud. A lot of modeling being done. When you think about edge, you think about AI inferencing, you think about all these monetization opportunities. How are you thinking about that? >>So I think David, first of all, it's a fan best six Sigma in how we are looked in at analytics at the edge, right? So we, uh, we have realized that is a very, very, uh, uh, uh, data computing, heavy operation. So certainly the training of the models is still going to stay in cloud for the foreseeable future. But the influencing part that you mentioned is there something that we can offer to the edge? Why is that so important in the pandemic era, think of running a shop or a factory floor, completely autonomously meeting zero minimal human intervention. And if you want to look at an assembly line and look at AI influencing as a way to find out assembly line defects on products in manufacturing, that's very difficult problem to solve unless you actually create those influencing models at the edge. So creating that ecosystem of an Erickson and a Google cloud carrier gives you that edge placement of the workloads that would fit right next to our factory floor in our manufacturing example. And then on top of that, you could run that AI influence thing to really put in the hands of the manufacturer, a visual inspection capability to just bring this to life. >>Great. Thank you for that. And now the other piece of the announcement of course, is the open, open ran. We've been talking about that all weekend and you know, you well, remember when cloud first came out, people were concerned about security. Of course. Now everybody's asking the question, can we still get the reliability and the security that we're used to with the telcos? And of course over time we learned that you guys actually pretty good at security. So how do you see the security component, maybe first talk about the open ran piece, why that's important and how security fits? >>Sure. So first of all, open trend is something that we have taken great interest in the last year or so as it started evolving. And the reason for that is fairly simple. Dave, this aggregation of networks has been happening for some time in the radio layer. We believe that's the final frontier of sort of unlocking and dis-aggregating that radio layer. And why is it so important? 80% of the operators spend globally is on radio. 80% is on radio. If you disaggregate that. And if the internet synergies for your CSP partners and clients, that meant you have standard purpose hardware standard for software with open interfaces, number one, massive difference in VCO. Number two, the supply chain gets streamlined and become still really, really simple way to manage a fairly large distribution. That's about to get larger in 5g and the capital clarity that 5g needs. >>You're thinking of tens of thousands of micro cells and radio cells going everywhere. And having that kind of standardized hardware software with openings of Essex is an extremely important cost dimension to every new site finished that the reason we got to exact open brand was you can now run for a lot of API APIs on the radio net, cetera, that then certainly brings a whole developer community on the radio later. That then helps you do a bunch of things like closed loop automation for network optimization, as well as potentially looking at monetization opportunities by hyper personalizing, yours and mine experiences at the waist level from the self-doubt. And so that really is what is driving us towards this open grind paper. Come on, we go and >>Got a minute and a half. I want to get your thoughts real quick on, on open source and the innovation. Um, Danielle Royston, who's the CEO of telco, Dr. She's at a keynote today. And she mentioned that the iPhone 14 years ago was launched. Okay. And you think about open and you mentioned proprietary with the 5g and having Iran be more commodity and industry standard. That's going to lower the costs increase the surface here of infrastructure. Everyone wins because everyone wants more connectivity options. Software is going to be the key to success for the telco industry. And open source is driving. That is Android. The playbook that you guys pioneered, obviously at Google with the smart phones was very successful. How is that a playbook or an indicator to what could happen at telecom? >>Absolutely. John and the parallel and analogy that you raised is photon. Be believed in the telco world and tossed multi cloud as a unifying software development layer. The app development platform is the way that people will start to drive this innovation, whether it's radio or whether it's in the core or whether it's on the side of pups, same software planning, everywhere that really allows you that whole development models that we are familiar with, but on the telecom side. And that's where we are seeing some massive innovation opportunities for systems to come on board. >>That's great stuff. And I was just heard someone in the hallway just yesterday and say, you want to be the smartphone. You don't want to be the Blackberry going forward. That's pretty much the consensus here at mobile world Congress. I'm all. Thank you for coming on and sharing the hard news and Google regulations on the Erickson Anthem platform, a deal as well as the open Ranton Alliance. Uh, congratulations. Good to see you. And by the way, you'll be keynoting tomorrow on the cube featured segment. So >>Watch that in there. Thank you, John. Thank you. Glad >>To be here. Benching director telecom, industry, solicitor, Google, obviously player. He's managing that business. Big opportunities for Google because they have the technology. They got the chops, Dave, and we're going to now bring this Daniel. Russia says here when to bring up on the stage, Bon Jovi is about to go on behind us Bon Jovi's here. And this is like a nightclub, small intimate setting here in cloud city. Dave Bon. Jovi's right there. He's going to come on stage after we close down here, but first let's bring up the CEO of telco. Dr. And yeah, it was great to see she's hot off the keynote. We're going to see you to Mike. Great to see you. Oh, it's great to be there. We're going to see you tomorrow for an official unpacking of the keynote, but thanks for coming by and closing, >>Swinging by. I never closed down the show. It's been a big, it's been a big day-to-day at MWC and in cloud city, really starting to get packed. I mean, everyone's coming in the band's warming up. You can kind of hear it. Um, I think Elon Musk is about to go on as well. So I mean, it's really happening all the buzz about cloud city out there in the hallway. Yeah. Yeah, no, I mean, I think everyone's talking about it. I'm really, really excited with how it's going. >>Well, this is awesome. While we got you here, we want to put you to work being the cube analyst for the segment. You just heard Google. Uh, we broke them in for a breaking news segment. So hard news Erickson partnership. We're in the factory, former Erickson booth. They're not even here, it's now the Calco VR booth, but that's a relation. And then open ran again, open source, you got five G you got open source all happening. What's your take on this? >>You see, you know, there's two big. And I, I talked about it, my keynote this morning, and there's two big technological changes that are happening in our industry simultaneously. And I don't think we could have had it MWC 21. I certainly wanted to make it about the public cloud. I think I'm sort of successful in doing that. And I think the other piece is open ramp, right? And I think these two big shifts are happening and, um, I'm really thrilled about it. And so, yeah, >>Well I loved your keynote. We were here, live. Chloe was here filling in for Dave while David was going to do some research and some breaking stories to you are on stage. And we were talking well, he's like, there's trillions of dollars, John on the table. And I was making the point, the money is at the middle of the table and it's changing hands if people don't watch it. And then you onstage that this trillions of dollars, this is a real competitive shift with dollars on the table. And you've got cultural collision. You got operators and builders trying to figure out it feels like dev ops is coming in here. Yeah. I mean, what's the, what's the holistic vibe. What's >>The, yeah, I think my message is about, we can use the software and specifically the software, the public cloud to double your ARPU without massive cap X expenditure. And I think the CSPs is always viewed to get the increase in ARPU. I got to build out the network. I got to spend a lot of money. And with these two technologies that require might be dropped. And then in exchange for doubling our poo, why not? We should do that. Absolutely. >>You know, your message has been pretty clear that you got to get on, on the wave that arrived the way you're going to become driftwood. As John said yesterday. And I think it's pretty, it's becoming pretty clear that that's the case for the telcos. I feel like Danielle, that they were entering this decade, perhaps with a little bit more humility than they have in the past. And then, you know, maybe, especially as it relates to developers, we're just talking about building out the edge. We always talk about how developers are really going to be a key factor in the edge. And that's not a wheelhouse necessarily. It's obviously they're going to have to partner for that to have going to have to embrace cloud native. I mean, it's pretty clear that your premise is right on it. We'll see how long it takes, but if it, if they don't move fast, you know, what's going to happen. Well, I >>Think you look at it from the enterprise's perspective. And I think we just heard Google talking about it. We need to provide a tech stack that the enterprises can write to now, historically they haven't had this opportunity historically that CSPs have provided it. Now you're going to be able to write against Google's tech stack. And that's something that is documented. It's available. There's developers out there that know it. Um, and so I think that's the big opportunity and this might be the big use case that they've been looking for with 5g and looking forward to 16th. And so it's a huge opportunity for CSS. >>I think that's an important point because you got to place bets. And if I'm betting on Google or Amazon, Microsoft, okay. Those are pretty safe bets, right. Those guys are going to be around. >>I mean, they're like, no, don't trust the hyperscalers. I'm like, um, are you guys nuts? If they're safe, right. Safe >>Bets in terms of your investment in technology, now you got to move fast. Yeah. That's the other piece of it. You've got to change your business model. >>Well, you gotta be in the right side of history too. I mean, I mean, what is trust actually really mean? The snowflake trust Amazon, it sure did to get them where they are. Um, but now that's a >>Great example, John. It really is because there's a company that can move fast, but at the same time they compete with the same time they add incremental value. And so yeah, >>Here, the, you can see the narrative like, oh no, we're partnering telcos. Aren't bad. No one needs to die to bring in the new containers. Do we'll help them manage that operational legacy. But if they don't move, they're going to have an asset. That'll get rolled up into a SPAC or some sort of private equity deal. And because the old model of building cap backs and extract rents is kind of shifting because the value shifting. So to me, I think this is what we're watching still kind of unknown. Danielle Love to get your thoughts on this because if the value shifts to services, which is a consumption model like cloud, yeah. Then you can, don't have to try and extract the rents out of the cap ex >>Yeah. I don't think you need to own the entire stack to provide value. And I think that's where we are today in telco, right there. I mean, nuts and bolts of the stack, the servers, you know, the cabling, everything. And I'm like, stand on the shoulders of these amazing tech giants that have solved, you know, mega data centers, right. Huge data centers at scale, and just leverage their, their investment and uh, for your own benefit, it starts to focus. And we heard, um, all talking about it starts to focus on your subscriber and driving a great experience for us. Right? Yeah. Well, you're >>Talking about that many times they can do, but you're right. If the conversation hasn't has to go beyond, okay, we're just conductivity. It's gotta be ongoing and be like, oh, it's $10 a month for roaming charges. Ah, great. Yeah. Tick that box, right? It's those value added services that you're talking about and it's an infinite number of those that can be developed. And that's where the partnerships come in a creativity in the industry. It's just >>A blank piece of paper for, well, we, you know, everyone thinks Google knows everything about you, right. We've had the experience on our phone where they're serving of ads and you're like, how did you write Facebook? But you know, who knows more about us than, than Google or your mother, even your telco, you take your phone with you everywhere. Right? And so it's time to start unlocking all of that knowledge and using it to provide >>A really great, by the way, congratulations on the CEO to Toby and the investment a hundred million dollars. That's a game changer statement again, back to the billing. And there's a good, there's a whole new chain, even all up and down the stack of solutions, great stuff. And I want to unpack that tomorrow. I don't hold that. We're going and we're going to meet tomorrow. I want, I wanna want to leave that to stay >>In the data for a second, because you made the point before in your keynote as well. That it's, that it's the data that drives the value of these companies. Why is it that apple, Amazon, Google Facebook now trillion dollar evaluations. It's all about the data and the telcos have the data, but they can't figure out how to turn that into valuation. >>There's two parts of the data problem, which is number one, the data is trapped in on-premise siloed systems that are not open. You can't connect them and they certainly can't do without. And we talked about it, I think yesterday, you know, millions of dollars of expenditure. And I think the other piece that's really interesting is that it's not connected to a mechanism to get it out in a timely manner, right? This is data that's aging by the minute. And when it takes you weeks to get the insight it's useless. Right? And so to Togi we announced the launch to Togi, I'll get a little to Tokyo plug in there, right. To Toby is connecting that insight to the charger, to the engagement engine and getting it out to subscribers. I think that's the beginning of this connection. I think it's a hard problem to solve and would have been solved already. >>But I think the key is leveraging the public cloud to get your data out of on-premise and, and mashing it up against these great services that Google and Azure and Amazon provides to drive it into the hands of the subscriber, make it very actionable, very monetizeable right at the end, that's what they want. More ARPU, more revenue. Right. And you know, we heard some keynotes from GSA yesterday, some big, big guys, you know, talking about how, you know, it's not fair that these other communication platforms are not regulated. You know, telco is heavily regulated and they're like, it's not fair. And I'm like, yep. It's not fair. That's like right. South complaining about it and start treating your customers better. So they are, they're happy to give you more. >>Yeah. And I think that's the message about the assets do, um, well, one thing I will say is this mobile world Congress is that we've been having a lot of fun here in cloud city. I have to ask you a personal question. Have you been having fun? You look great on the keynote of spring to your staff, cloud cities. Beautiful. Spectacular here. Give us some highlights, personal highlights from your trip. So far, >>Number one, I'm, I'm psyched that the keynote is delivered and, and done. I mean, I think it takes my blood pressure down a blind, um, you know, the spring in my step, I wore these fun little tennis shoes and, and that was really fun, but yeah, I'm having, I'm having, I think a lot of things, great conversations. Yes. The attendance has reduced, um, you know, usually you see hundreds of people from the big group carriers, especially the European groups and yeah, the attendance is reduced, but the senior guys are here, right. The senior leadership teams are in the booth or having meetings, running amazing conversations. I think the last year we really did live a decade in one year. I think they woke up to the power of the public cloud. I mean, there was no way that they got business done without cloud based tools. And I think the light bulb went off, I think I'm right in the right moment. Awesome. Do you think that, >>Do you think that they'd think in there, like left money on the table because you look at the pandemic, there were three categories of companies, losers, people who held the line struggled and then winners. Yeah. Big time tailwind booming. Obviously the zooms of the world telcos did well. They were up and running. Uh, this, this was good. You think we might've left some money on the table? They could have done more. >>Yeah. I think the ones that were, you know, people talk about digital transformation where digital telco we're digitally enabled, but I think the pandemic really tested this. Right. Can you deliver a contactless SIM or do you need to go to a store in person to get to go pick it up? And I had a broken SIM during the pandemic. My provider made me go to the store and I'm like, is it even open? And so I heard other stories of telcos that were very digitally enabled, right. They were using Uber to deliver Sims, all sorts of fun, crazy stuff and new ideas. And they were able to pivot right. Agile. And so I think, I think that was a really big telemedicine booming. So >>If you were in a digital business during the pandemic in general, you're out of business maybe unless you were telco, but I think you're right. I think the light bulb went off. It was an aha moment. And they said, oh, if >>We don't, I mean, I am not kidding. Right. As an ex CEO where I was trying to collect signatures on renewals, right. Here's a DocuSign, which for the world is like, duh. I mean, our school uses DocuSign. I had telcos that required an in-person signature, right. In some country once a month on Tuesday between 10 and two. And I'm like, how are you doing business? Like that? That's like the dark ages. >>Yeah. This is where the crypto guys got it right. With know your customer. Right. >>Because they have the data. Well, there's a lot of things that come in wrong. We don't want to get the whole show on that, but then you have great to have you drop biopsy Bon Jovi's here. How did you get Bon Jovi? Huge fan, New Jersey boy Patriots fan. We'd love it. Well, >>Yeah. I mean, who doesn't love Bon Jovi. Right. Um, we knew we wanted a rocker, right. Rock and roll is all about challenging the status quo. Um, that, I mean, since the beginning and that's what we're doing here, right. We're really challenging. Like the way things have been done in telco kind of just shattering the glass ceiling and lots of different ways. Right. Calling the old guys dinosaurs. I'm sure those guys love me. Right. I mean, how much do they hate me right now? Or they're like that girl? Oh, we're punk >>Rock. They're rock and roll. Right, right. I mean, maybe we should have gotten the clash >>Right. Black flag. Right. I'm a little bit old. >>Accessible. Still >>Edgy. Yeah. So really excited to get them here. Um, I've met him before. Um, and so hopefully he'll remember me. It's been a couple of years since I've seen him. So can't wait to connect with him again. I think we have Elon Musk coming up and that's going to be, it's always exciting to hear that guy talk. So >>Yeah, it could be inspiration off after you've talked to space, space X and kind to star lake. >>Right. I mean, those guys are launching rockets and deploying satellites. And >>I think that's really interesting for >>Rural right. In telco. Right. Being able to deploy very quickly in rural where the, maybe the cost, um, you know, per gig doesn't make sense. You know, the cost for deployment of tower. I think, I mean, that's an interesting idea right there. It's exciting. It's exciting. >>He's inspirational. I think a lot of people look at the younger generation coming into this issue. Why are we doing things? A lot of people are questioning and they see the cloud. They're saying, oh, Hey, you're a B, why are we doing this? This is such an easier, better way. Yeah. I think eventually the generation shifts >>It's coming. I'm so excited to be a part of it. Yeah. Great, >>Great leadership. And I want to say that you are real innovative, glad to have us here and presenting with you here. >>Awesome team. I'm psyched to have you guys. We talked last night about how great this partnership has said. Yeah. >>Cuba's keep us rocking inside the cloud city. The streets of the city are packed in here. All stuff. Great stuff. Thanks for coming on. Thanks. Bon Jovi is here. We've got a shot. A bunch of we do we have a screenshot of Bon Jovi? Yup. There it is. Okay. He's about to come on stage and uh, we're gonna take a break here. We're gonna take and send it back to Adam and the team in the studio. Thanks guys.

(upbeat music) >> Hi everyone, welcome to this special CUBE conversation and kickoff preview of the Mobile World Congress, Barcelona event. It's a physical event that's going to be taking place in person. It will probably be the first hybrid big event, 68 days until the June 28th kickoff. You might've heard TelcoDR, Telco Disruptor is on a mission to move the Telco industry to the public cloud. And it's taken one of the biggest spaces this year from Ericsson, is the big story everyone's talking about. And of course theCUBE is excited to be there and broadcast and be a partner with TelcoDR. So I'm excited to bring on the founder and CEO of TelcoDR, Danielle Royston. Danielle great to see you. Thanks for coming on for this Mobile World Congress Preview. >> Thank you so much for having me. I'm psyched to talk to you about this, it's going to be great. >> So Ericsson always has the biggest booth 14 years, you're disrupting Barcelona, people are not sure it's going to be on or off. It's officially on, it's happening and there's going to be a physical event, we're coming out of COVID still a risky move. It's going to be a big hybrid event, it's going to be in person. Tell us the story. How did you guys come out of nowhere, a disruptor take the biggest real estate in the place and turn it into a community event, a news event, a media event, everything, tell us. >> Yeah, well, I think it was March 9th, a little over a month ago. Ericsson announced that they were pulling out of MWC and it's very analogous to what happened in 2020. They were one of the first vendors to bail as well. And it kind of started this like tidal wave of people saying, can't do it. And I think the distinction now is that, that was at the beginning of COVID, there's a lot of unknowns. Is it coming, is it not, is it safe, is it not? We're now, year 50 to three, four months into it. I think that when you look at where we are now, cases are trending down, the vaccine is up. And I think the legacy players were sort of backward looking. They're like, this is a repeat of 2020 it's not safe to go, we're going to pull out. And I'm like with the a hundred days to go, in the vaccine ramping, I think I see the different way. I think there's a really big opportunity. John Hoffman, CEO of the GSMA had put out a two page missive on LinkedIn where he was personally responding to questions, about how serious they were about making sure that the event was safe and could be held. And my view was this is going to happen. And with Ericsson pulling out, I mean this is hollowed ground. I mean, this is massively successful company that has customers literally trained like Skinner's chickens to come to the same spot every year. And now I get to put out my shingle right there and say welcome and show them the future. And instead of the legacy past and all the normal rhetoric that you hear from those sort of dinosaurs, Ericsson and Nokia, now they're going to hear about the public cloud. And I'm really excited for this opportunity. I think the ROI on this event is instant. And so it was a pretty easy decision. I think I thought about it for about 30 seconds. >> It's a real bold move. And again it's a risk that pays off if it happens, if it doesn't, didn't happen, but it's like the startups that put a Superbowl commercial off for the first time. It's a big hit and it's a big gamble that pays off huge. Take us through, how did it all happen? Did you just wake up and saw it was open? How did you know that it was open? Was it like, does an email go out and say, hey I got this huge space for 55 years. >> Well, I mean, it was big news. It was big news in the industry that they were pulling out and all other journalists were like, oh, here we go again. Everyone's going to bail, who's next, right? And everyone was sort of like building that sort of negative momentum energy. And I'm like, we got to squash this. So I put out a tweet on Twitter. I mean, I'm not the most followed person but I'm kind of known in Telco. And I was like, hey, GSMA, I'll take over the booth. And I don't think people even liked my tweet, right? Like no likes no retweets. I reached out to a couple of journalists. I'm like, let's do an interview, let's do a story. Everyone's like, we'll have you on the podcast, like in a month, I'm like, what's? So when John Hoffman had put out that letter I had connected to him. And so I was like, oh, I'm connected to the CEO of the GSMA. So I went out on LinkedIn and I referenced the story and I said, John Hoffman, I'll take over the booth. And I think about 30 minutes later he responded and said, let's do it. And I said, great, who do I talk to? And I was in touch with someone within a couple of hours. And I think we put the whole deal together in 48. And I think wrote the press release and announced it on Friday. So happened on Tuesday the 9th, announced by that Friday. And I really, I was like, GSMA, we've got to get this out, and we got to stop the negative momentum of the show, and get people to realize it's going to be different in June. This is going to happen, let's go do it. And so I think they're psyched that I stepped into the booth. It's a big booth it's 65,000 square feet. 6,000 square meters for the rest of the world that use the metric system. And I mean, that's huge. I mean, that's the size of a professional pitch in a football field, a soccer field. That's a one and a half football fields. It's a ton of space, it's a ton of space to fill up. >> I think what's interesting, as this points out that this new business model of being connected you were on LinkedIn, you connect to them, you get a deal done so fast. This is the direct to consumer as a start up, you're literally took over the Primo space, the best face in the area, so congratulations. And the other thing that's notable and why I'm excited to talk to you is that this kind of sets the table for the first global, what I call hybrid event. This will probably be a cornerstone case study in and of itself, because we're still kind of coming out of the pandemic. People are getting vaccinated, people want to fly, they want to get out of the house. You're partnering with theCUBE, and the CUBE 365 platform. And we love hybrid, we love doing events, theCUBE, that's what we do with video. Now, we're going to do a partnership with you to create this hybrid experience. What can people and guests who come to Barcelona or watch remotely expect? >> Yeah so, I think there's a couple of experiences that we're trying to drive in the booth. I think obviously demonstrations, I can't fill 65,000 square feet on my own. I'm a startup small company. And so I am inviting like-minded, forward thinking companies to join me in the booth. I'm paying for it providing a turnkey experience for those vendors. And so I think what we have in common is we're thinking about future technologies, like open ran on the network side and obviously public cloud which is a big part of my message. And so first and foremost, come and see the companies that are driving the change, the new technologies that are out there, and what's available for carriers to start to adopt and think about. MWC is a meeting intensive event. Deals are done at this show. In 2019, I think the stat is $65 billion of deals were put together at the show. And so a big component of the booth will be a place for executives to come together and have private conversations. And so we're going to have that. So that's going to be a big piece of it. And I think the third part is driving education and thought leadership. And so there's going to be a whole talk track, right? Tech topics, business topics, customer case studies, involve the hyperscalers, and really start to educate the telco community around these new technologies. But there'll be shorter talks. They won't be like hour long keynotes. We're talking 15, 20 minutes. And I think one thing that we're going to do with you as you were just talking about with the CUBE is, you know, MWC was the first big show to have to cancel with COVID, I think in 2019, sorry, 2020, the dates, it's always the last Monday in February and the rest of that week. And so that's like right at the beginning of the COVID stuff, Italy was just starting to take off. And so it was one of the first shows that had to make a big call and decide to cancel, which they did. This is going to be one of the first shows that comes back online post COVID, right? And so I don't think things just snap back to the way that they used to be. I don't think we as consumers are going to snap back to the way that we were operating, we're now used to being able to get curbside delivery from any restaurant in the city. I mean, it's just a sort of a different expectation. And so partnering with the CUBE, we really want to provide an experience that brings the virtual people into the booth. Typically in events like this, you really have to be there to see it. Booths are kind of like unveiled the day of the show, what's going on. One thing I'm trying to do is really educate people about what you can expect. What can you see? This is what it's going to look like. And so we're going to start to share some pictures of the booth of what it looks like. Number one, to drive excitement with the partners that are coming, right? Like you're going to be part of something really, really fabulous. I think number two, attendees can wait, I don't know week off, to make the decision to go. And so maybe if COVID continues to trend down and vaccines are picking up steam, maybe they're like it's safe for me to go and I want to go be a part of that. But I think from here on now we're going to have sort of that virtual experience. It's always going to be part of shows. And so we're going to experiment with you guys. We're going to have a live streaming event, over the course of all MWC. It's going to be a way for people who are unable to travel or can't afford it, COVID or whatever, see what's going on in the booth. And it's going to be everything from listen to a talk, to watch what you guys are typically famous for, your awesome interviews. We're going to have man on the street, like we're here at at a demo station, take us through your little demo. We're going to have telepresence robots that people can reserve. And cruise through the booth the robot can go to a talk. The robot can watch on this streaming thing, the robot can go to a demo. The robot can go to a meeting and it's controlled by the the virtual attendees. And so experimenting, right? Like how do we make this great for virtual people? How do we make the virtual people feel part of the physical? How do the physical people feel the virtual people that are attending and really just make it feel like a community or both. So, we're excited. >> That's super awesome, and first of all, thank you for having paying for everyone and including theCUBE in there. But I think this speaks to the ecosystem of open, you're creating an open ecosystem. And I think that is a huge thing. So for people who are at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this is going to be a nice, safe place to hang space as well as get deals done. As we comfortable doing media center, we'll get you on the digital TV, but also you're also designing what I call the first hybrid experience, not just having people, having on-demand videos on their website, connecting Barcelona with other parts of the world, with media and stories and content. I think that to me is going to be a great experiment slash upgrade. We'll see, we'll get to see it how it goes. >> Well, it was really, I mean, we all lived through 2020. I mean, some of the shows went on, AWS's re-invent happened, Google did like a crazy nine week program. It's very lonely to participate in those virtual events. You kind of log on by ourselves. No one's really tweeting about it. You're watching an event, the event is great but it was really lonely. And so I think what people love about the physical events is we're together and we're networking and we're meeting people and so, I think continuing to evolve that experience so that virtual is not as lonely. So we'll see, we'll see how it goes. >> I got to say your vision is really aligned with us and others that are in this open innovation world. Because if you look at like theCUBE, physical went away, we had no events, we did CUBE Virtual, a new brand. It wasn't a pivot, it was an extension, a line extension of theCUBE. Now theCUBE's coming back to the physical, we're going to bring that CUBE Virtual to connect everybody. So this is it, and it just amplifies the value of the physical event. So if done right, it's so much cooler. So that's cool. And what I want to ask you on the physical side to kind of bring it back to physical is, there's still going to be keynotes, there's still going to be talks at Mobile World Congress, and so I saw that scheduled and I just saw last week, GSM may announced you're going to be doing a keynote speech. That's amazing, so, how did that happen? So give us the lowdown on the keynote that you're doing. >> I'm sure the entire industry is like that happened. And it probably has something to do with the fact that I have one of the biggest booths at the space. I always put in a request to speak. I feel that I have a really exciting message to share with the industry. Over the last, I guess it's been nine or 10 months, I really been trying to amplify my voice. I have a podcast, I have a newsletter, I'm talking to execs. I have a list that I literally go down one by one stalking each executive of like, have I talked to them? Like how I told them about like the power of the public cloud. And so I am super thankful that I have this opportunity to spread that this message and I'm planning a really epic talk. I really want to shake the industry And this is my opportunity, right? This is my opportunity to stand on the biggest stage in our industry and command a presence and send out my message. And I'm absolutely thrilled to go do it. And I hope I crush it, I hope it's like a mic drop experience. And can't wait to do it. >> Well, we're looking forward to covering it. And we love the open vision. We love the idea of public cloud and the enablement and the disruption. Because just like you got the deal so fast you can move fast with modern applications with the cloud, moving at cloud scale, complete content game changer, so great stuff. So totally applaud that looking forward to and we're here cheer you on and ask the tough questions. I do want to get to... On Twitter yesterday though, you put out on tweetstorm on Twitter about the plans kind of teasing out the booth, how are you going to plan to build the booth. Are you worried that you're opening up too much of the kimono here and putting too much on the table 'cause it's usually a secret. Mobile World Congress is supposed to be secret, not publicly out there. What's the-- >> Well, I mean, I think this is just a little bit of a change has happened post COVID, right. People usually build their booth at don't reveal it until the first day of the show and it's kind of like this excitement to go see what is their big message and what's the big reveal. And there's always fun stuff. I think this years will be different as a first, like I said, a first big event back. I think I need to create a little bit of excitement for people who are going and maybe entice people that maybe you should think about coming. I realized this is a super personal decision, right? It depends on where you are and the country and your health and your status. But if you can do it, I want people to know that you're going to miss out. It's going to be super fun. So, yeah. >> Let's take a look at the booth 'cause I'm sure my next question wants to see. I know we have guys, do we have that rendering... Let's pull that up and let's talk this through. Let's go look at the rendering. So you can see here on the screen... Take us through this. >> Yeah, so what we want to do is give the sense of of cloud city and that's what we're calling the space. In cloud city there's outdoor space, like you see here. And then there's an indoor space. And indoors is where you work, where you buy, where you meet. And so you can see here on the left, the demonstration that would have different vendors displaying and it goes way back. I mean, what we're feeling like I said is like a football field, an American football field and a half or a European football field, a pitch. It's pretty extensive. And so we think we're going to have, I don't know, 20, 30 vendors showing their different software. I think we're scheduling or planning for about 24 different meeting rooms that we can schedule. All COVID safe with the space requirements in there. But in that outdoor space, it would be where you learn, the education. And then I think we're going to have this fabulous booth for theCUBE. It's going to look just so amazing with the backdrop of this amazing building. And I think I underappreciated or didn't really realize how devastated the event planning industry has been from COVID as well as construction. Obviously when events were shut down, these companies had to lay off thousands of workers. Some of the big firms have laid off 50% of their workforce. And those people they didn't just go home and sit around, they had to come up with a livelihood and those people have pivoted into another job. And they're not really, I mean, events aren't really back yet. So some of these firms are shrunk. The manpower is severely reduced. But then I think on the other side is, and you can see this in just housing construction. There's a lumber shortage, there's a shortage of materials. And so everything that we source for the booth, pretty much has to come from Spain. And so when we look at the booth, we have a pretty significant ceiling, where it looks like the roof of the building. It's an engineering feat to do that we're still working through the... I'm sure someone with a protractor is doing lots of math. The glass, we have those huge beautiful glass spans in the front. Getting a glass that spans that height, I think it's 18 feet. It's six meters tall. That's going to be hard. Things like the flooring. I want to have like hardwood laminate flooring. So it looks like hardwood floors. Don't know if we can find them. There like, why don't you do carpet? I'm like, can you just check one more vendor. I really want my floor. So we'll see how it goes. And yeah, I think that sharing this plan, the trials and tribulations, like how can this small startup, take over a space that usually takes nine months to plan, right? Who is this girl? What is she doing? How are they going to pull this off? I think it's like, grab your popcorn and watch the train wreck or hero's journey. We get it done. And I'm obviously-- >> It's like keeping up with the Kardashians. It's the bachelor, it's theCUBE, reality TV show. We can keep track of everything. It's all the fun. >> No, totally. I don't know how many people would be interested in a reality TV show about how you build a booth but I find it absolutely fascinating. I think a lot of people have eyes on the GMA and MWC coming out of COVID and what does that look like, and what's the attendance like. And so I'm excited to share (murmurs) So, exact. >> Well, people are on clubhouse, they're bored, they want to get out. I think this is a case time. Mobile World Congress has a huge economic impact, as a show it's got its own little economy built around. It impacts the country of Spain in Barcelona, the city, a great city. People love it. And so it certainly is notable and newsworthy. We will be following that story. I have to ask you more kind of a tactical question if you don't mind, while I have you here. Can you talk about some of the vendors that are coming and the kinds of talks you're going to have inside the booth and how do people get involved? You mentioned it's open to people who love open ran and open public cloud, open technologies. I mean, that's pretty much everybody. That's cool and relevant, which is like almost the whole world now. Like, is it going to be a space as a criteria? How do people get involved? What's the collaboration formula? >> Yeah, no, I have been working on putting together a list of potential vendors. You'd be surprised, not everyone is as bullish as I am on the public cloud. And so there was a little bit of a filtering criteria but otherwise anyone can come. Enterprise software vendors in telco where their primary customer is communications service provider. That's their software runs on the public cloud, come on in. People using open ran. And it's still a little sort of small band of cohorts that are really trying to drive this new technology forward and they're going up against some of the biggest companies in telco, right? They're going up against Huawei, they're going up against Ericsson. Both those guys are very anti and they're not really pro open ran 'cause it's hugely disruptive to their business. And so I'm pretty sure those guys are not psyched to see open ran become a thing in telco. And so it's really sort of about disruptive technologies that are in the booth. And so yeah, I'm paying for the space, I'm paying for the build-out, bring your demos, bring your people, come with your marketing message and let's build a community. And so we're talking to open ran vendors like Mavenir which is a pretty big name in the open ran space. I've been talking with Parallel Wireless in LTO Star. Those are also great players. Software vendors like to Tutoki, which is a talk that I did a little over a month ago about this new startup that has a web-scale charger that they're trying to put out there. Auria is another company that I'm really familiar with that has some cloud for software. And in little tiny startups like Sequence and some other up-and-comers that no one's heard of. So we're really excited to invite them into the booth. I've been secretly stalking Elon Musk, and Starlink and Space X to be a part of it. And we'll see. I'm kind of using Twitter and whatever I can to reach out and see if they want to be a part of it. But yeah, it really open arms. Not really excluding-- >> Well, Elon is very disruptive and you can reach out to him on Twitter. He's accessible. I mean, you've got to break through and he's antenna up for innovators, people who think differently, they love people who break down walls and markets lower open wins. I mean, we know there's a history, we've been covering it. I've been involved in all my career. People who bet against open always lose. It's happened in every single wave of innovation. So Elon's gettable. Let's get him. >> Who doesn't love Elon Musk? I mean, I think some people don't, I love him. He's my hero. I model a lot of the things that I do around his approach, his vision. 20 years ago, or close to 20 years ago, 2003, he said he was going to put people on Mars. And I think people laughed at him for being like the PayPal guy and this guy is crazy, but every year he makes progress against his goals. We have a relandable rocket. He's doing a manned mission this week, the second man mission or third man mission. The guy makes progress. And I think I'm on the same mission here. My mission is to move Telco to the public cloud. I think it's a long journey, right? I think people are like, who is this girl? And she's like 12 people and what's her story. And I'm like, I don't care. I have a singular mission is a quest. I am not going to stop until I move the industry to the public cloud. And it's my life's mission and I'm psyched to do it. >> Well, we love the mojo, we love your style. We love Elon Musk's mojo. And again, just to bring the dots together you have that same mindset, which is, love like Elon, he's a builder. He builds things and he delivers. So as you said, so... Danielle, I really appreciate the work you're doing. I love your philosophy. We're in total agreement. Open building. Doing it together as a collective, being part of something? This is what the world needs. You got a lot of great ideas in the works and we can't wait to hear them. And what you got coming up over the next 68 days. This is the first of many conversations together. Thank you. >> Yeah, that's going to be so awesome. Thank you so much for having me. Psyched to talk to you about it. >> Okay. Mobile World Congress is happening in Barcelona on the June 28th. It's going to be in person and it's going to be probably the biggest hybrid event to date. Be there, check out TelcoDR and theCUBE and the space that they took over 14 years at the helm there. Ericson had it, now it's TelcoDR. Danielle Royston, founder and CEO here with me from TelcoDR. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> Narrator: From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world. This is a CUBE conversation. >> As you know by now, Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, is stepping aside from his CEO role and AWS CEO, Andy Jassy, is being promoted to head all of Amazon. Bezos, of course, is going to remain executive chairman. Now, 15 years ago, next month, Amazon launched it's simple storage service, which was the first modern cloud offering. And the man who wrote the business plan for AWS, was Andy Jassy, and he's navigated the meteoric rise and disruption that has seen AWS grow into a $45 billion company that draws off the vast majority of Amazon's operating profits. No one in the media has covered Jassy more intimately and closely than John Furrier, the founder of SiliconANGLE. And John joins us today to help us understand on theCUBE this move and what we can expect from Jassy in his new role, and importantly what it means for AWS. John, thanks for taking the time to speak with us. >> Hey, great day. Great to see you as always, we've done a lot of interviews together over the years and we're on our 11th year with theCUBE and SiliconANGLE. But I got to be excited too, that we're simulcasters on Clubhouse, which is kind of cool. Love Clubhouse but not since the, in December. It's awesome. It's like Cube radio. It's like, so this is a Cube talk. So we opened up a Clubhouse room while we're filming this. We'll do more live hits in studio and syndicate the Clubhouse and then take questions after. This is a huge digital transformation moment. I'm part of the digital transformation club on Clubhouse which has almost 5,000 followers at the moment and also has like 500 members. So if you're not on Clubhouse, yet, if you have an iPhone go check it out and join the digital transformation club. Android users you'll have to wait until that app is done but it's really a great club. And Jeremiah Owyang is also doing a lot of stuff on digital transformation. >> Or you can just buy an iPhone and get in. >> Yeah, that's what people are doing. I can see all the influences are on there but to me, the digital transformation, it's always been kind of a cliche, the consumerization of IT, information technology. This has been the boring world of the enterprise over the past, 20 years ago. Enterprise right now is super hot because there's no distinction between enterprise and society. And that's clearly the, because of the rise of cloud computing and the rise of Amazon Web Services which was a side project at AWS, at Amazon that Andy Jassy did. And it wasn't really pleasant at the beginning. It was failed. It failed a lot and it wasn't as successful as people thought in the early days. And I have a lot of stories with Andy that he told me a lot of the inside baseball and we'll share that here today. But we started covering Amazon since the beginning. I was as an entrepreneur. I used it when it came out and a huge fan of them as a company because they just got a superior product and they have always had been but it was very misunderstood from the beginning. And now everyone's calling it the most important thing. And Andy now is becoming Andy Jassy, the most important executive in the world. >> So let's get it to the, I mean, look at, you said to me over holidays, you thought this might have something like this could happen. And you said, Jassy is probably in line to get this. So, tell us, what can you tell us about Jassy? Why is he qualified for this job? What do you think he brings to the table? >> Well, the thing that I know about Amazon everyone's been following the Amazon news is, Jeff Bezos has a lot of personal turmoil. They had his marriage fail. They had some issues with the smear campaigns and all this stuff going on, the run-ins with Donald Trump, he bought the Washington post. He's got a lot of other endeavors outside of Amazon cause he's the second richest man in the world competing with Elon Musk at Space X versus Blue Origin. So the guy's a billionaire. So Amazon is his baby and he's been running it as best he could. He's got an executive team committee they called the S team. He's been grooming people in the company and that's just been his mode. And the rise of AWS and the business performance that we've been documenting on SiliconANGLE and theCUBE, it's just been absolutely changing the game on Amazon as a company. So clearly Amazon Web Services become a driving force of the new Amazon that's emerging. And obviously they've got all their retail business and they got the gaming challenges and they got the studios and the other diversified stuff. So Jassy is just, he's just one of those guys. He's just been an Amazonian from day one. He came out of Harvard business school, drove across the country, very similar story to Jeff Bezos. He did that in 1997 and him and Jeff had been collaborating and Jeff tapped him to be his shadow, they call it, which is basically technical assistance and an heir apparent and groomed him. And then that's how it is. Jassy is not a climber as they call it in corporate America. He's not a person who is looking for a political gain. He's not a territory taker, but he's a micromanager. He loves details and he likes to create customer value. And that's his focus. So he's not a grandstander. In fact, he's been very low profile. Early days when we started meeting with him, he wouldn't meet with press regularly because they weren't writing the right stories. And everyone is, he didn't know he was misunderstood. So that's classic Amazon. >> So, he gave us the time, I think it was 2014 or 15 and he told us a story back then, John, you might want to share it as to how AWS got started. Why, what was the main spring Amazon's tech wasn't working that great? And Bezos said to Jassy, going to go figure out why and maybe explain how AWS was born. >> Yeah, we had, in fact, we were the first ones to get access to do his first public profile. If you go to the Google and search Andy Jassy, the trillion dollar baby, we had a post, we put out the story of AWS, Andy Jassy's trillion dollar baby. This was in early, this was January 2015, six years ago. And, we back then, we posited that this would be a trillion dollar total addressable market. Okay, people thought we were crazy but we wrote a story and he gave us a very intimate access. We did a full drill down on him and the person, the story of Amazon and that laid out essentially the beginning of the rise of AWS and Andy Jassy. So that's a good story to check out but really the key here is, is that he's always been relentless and competitive on creating value in what they call raising the bar outside Amazon. That's a term that they use. They also have another leadership principle called working backwards, which is like, go to the customer and work backwards from the customer in a very Steve Job's kind of way. And that's been kind of Jobs mentality as well at Apple that made them successful work backwards from the customer and make things easier. And that was Apple. Amazon, their philosophy was work backwards from the customer and Jassy specifically would say it many times and eliminate the undifferentiated heavy lifting. That was a key principle of what they were doing. So that was a key thesis of their entire business model. And that's the Amazonian way. Faster, cheaper, ship it faster, make it less expensive and higher value. While when you apply the Amazon shipping concept to cloud computing, it was completely disrupted. They were shipping code and services faster and that became their innovation strategy. More announcements every year, they out announced their competition by huge margin. They introduced new services faster and they're less expensive some say, but in the aggregate, they make more money but that's kind of a key thing. >> Well, when you, I was been listening to the TV today and there was a debate on whether or not, this support tends that they'll actually split the company into two. To me, I think it's just the opposite. I think it's less likely. I mean, if you think about Amazon getting into grocery or healthcare, eventually financial services or other industries and the IOT opportunity to me, what they do, John, is they bring in together the cloud, data and AI and they go attack these new industries. I would think Jassy of all people would want to keep this thing together now whether or not the government allows them to do that. But what are your thoughts? I mean, you've asked Andy this before in your personal interviews about splitting the company. What are your thoughts? >> Well, Jon Fortt at CNBC always asked the same question every year. It's almost like the standard question. I kind of laugh and I ask it now too because I liked Jon Fortt. I think he's an awesome dude. And I'll, it's just a tongue in cheek, Jassy. He won't answer the question. Amazon, Bezos and Jassy have one thing in common. They're really good at not answering questions. So if you ask the same question. They'll just say, nothing's ever, never say never, that's his classic answer to everything. Never say never. And he's always said that to you. (chuckles) Some say, he's, flip-flopped on things but he's really customer driven. For example, he said at one point, no one should ever build a data center. Okay, that was a principle. And then they come out and they have now a hybrid strategy. And I called them out on that and said, hey, what, are you flip-flopping? You said at some point, no one should have a data center. He's like, well, we looked at it differently and what we meant was is that, it should all be cloud native. Okay. So that's kind of revision, but he's cool with that. He says, hey, we'll revise based on what customers are doing. VMware working with Amazon that no one ever thought that would happen. Okay. So, VMware has some techies, Raghu, for instance, over there, super top notch. He worked with Jassy, directly in his team Sanjay Poonen when they went to business school together, they cut a deal. And now Amazon essentially saved VMware, in my opinion. And Pat Gelsinger drove that deal. Now, Pat Gelsinger, CEO, Intel, and Pat told me that directly in candid conversation off theCUBE, he said, hey, we have to make a decision either we're going to be in cloud or we're not going to be in cloud, we will partner. And I'll see, he was Intel. He understood the Intel inside mentality. So that's good for VMware. So Jassy does these kinds of deals. He's not afraid he's got a good stomach for business and a relentless competitor. >> So, how do you think as you mentioned Jassy is a micromanager. He gets deep into the technology. Anybody who's seen his two hour, three hour keynotes. No, he has a really fine grasp of the technology across the entire stack. How do you think John, he will approach things like antitrust, the big tech lash of the unionization of the workforce at Amazon? How do you think Jassy will approach that? >> Well, I think one of the things that emerges Jassy, first of all, he's a huge sports fan. And many people don't know that but he's also progressive person. He's very progressive politically. He's been on the record and off the record saying things like, obviously, literacy has been big on, he's been on basically unrepresented minorities, pushing for that, and certainly cloud computing in tech, women in tech, he's been a big proponent. He's been a big supporter of Teresa Carlson. Who's been rising star at Amazon. People don't know who Teresa Carlson is and they should check out her. She's become one of the biggest leaders inside Amazon she's turned around public sector from the beginning. She ran that business, she's a global star. He's been a great leader and he's been getting, forget he's a micromanager, he's on top of the details. I mean, the word is, and nothing gets approved without Andy, Andy seeing it. But he's been progressive. He's been an Amazon original as they call it internally. He's progressive, he's got the business acumen but he's perfect for this pragmatic conversation that needs to happen. And again, because he's so technically strong having a CEO that's that proficient is going to give Amazon an advantage when they have to go in and change how DC works, for instance, or how the government geopolitical landscape works, because Amazon is now a global company with regions all over the place. So, I think he's pragmatic, he's open to listening and changing. I think that's a huge quality >> Well, when you think of this, just to set the context here for those who may not know, I mean, Amazon started as I said back in 2006 in March with simple storage service that later that year they announced EC2 which is their compute platform. And that was the majority of their business, is still a very large portion of their business but Amazon, our estimates are that in 2020, Amazon did 45 billion, 45.4 billion in revenue. That's actually an Amazon reported number. And just to give you a context, Azure about 26 billion GCP, Google about 6 billion. So you're talking about an industry that Amazon created. That's now $78 billion and Amazon at 45 billion. John they're growing at 30% annually. So it's just a massive growth engine. And then another story Jassy told us, is they, he and Jeff and the team talked early on about whether or not they should just sort of do an experiment, do a little POC, dip their toe in and they decided to go for it. Let's go big or go home as Michael Dell has said to us many times, I mean, pretty astounding. >> Yeah. One of the things about Jassy that people should know about, I think there's some compelling relative to the newest ascension to the CEO of Amazon, is that he's not afraid to do new things. For instance, I'll give you an example. The Amazon Web Services re-invent their annual conference grew to being thousands and thousands of people. And they would have a traditional after party. They called a replay, they'd have a band like every tech conference and their conference became so big that essentially, it was like setting up a live concert. So they were spending millions of dollars to set up basically a one night concert and they'd bring in great, great artists. So he said, hey, what's been all this cash? Why don't we just have a festival? So they did a thing called Intersect. They got LA involved from creatives and they basically built a weekend festival in the back end of re-invent. This was when real life was, before COVID and they turned into an opportunity because that's the way they think. They like to look at the resources, hey, we're already all in on this, why don't we just keep it for the weekend and charge some tickets and have a good time. He's not afraid to take chances on the product side. He'll go in and take a chance on a new market. That comes from directly from Bezos. They try stuff. They don't mind failing but they put a tight leash on measurement. They work backwards from the customer and they are not afraid to take chances. So, that's going to board well for him as he tries to figure out how Amazon navigates the contention on the political side when they get challenged for their dominance. And I think he's going to have to apply that pragmatic experimentation to new business models. >> So John I want you to take on AWS. I mean, despite the large numbers, I talked about 30% growth, Azure is growing at over 50% a year, GCP at 83%. So despite the large numbers and big growth the growth rates are slowing. Everybody knows that, we've reported it extensively. So the incoming CEO of Amazon Web Services has a TAM expansion challenge. And at some point they've got to decide, okay, how do we keep this growth engine? So, do you have any thoughts as to who might be the next CEO and what are some of their challenges as you see it? >> Well, Amazon is a real product centric company. So it's going to be very interesting to see who they go with here. Obviously they've been grooming a lot of people. There's been some turnover. You had some really strong executives recently leave, Jeff Wilkes, who was the CEO of the retail business. He retired a couple of months ago, formerly announced I think recently, he was probably in line. You had Mike Clayville, is now the chief revenue officer of Stripe. He ran all commercial business, Teresa Carlson stepped up to his role as well as running public sector. Again, she got more power. You have Matt Garman who ran the EC2 business, Stanford grad, great guy, super strong on the product side. He's now running all commercial sales and marketing. And he's also on the, was on Bezos' S team, that's the executive kind of team. Peter DeSantis is also on that S team. He runs all infrastructure. He took over for James Hamilton, who was the genius behind all the data center work that they've done and all the chip design stuff that they've innovated on. So there's so much technical innovation going on. I think you still going to see a leadership probably come from, I would say Matt Garman, in my opinion is the lead dog at this point, he's the lead horse. You could have an outside person come in depending upon how, who might be available. And that would probably come from an Andy Jassy network because he's a real fierce competitor but he's also a loyalist and he likes trust. So if someone comes in from the outside, it's going to be someone maybe he trusts. And then the other wildcards are like Teresa Carlson. Like I said, she is a great woman in tech who's done amazing work. I've profiled her many times. We've interviewed her many times. She took that public sector business with Amazon and changed the game completely. Outside the Jedi contract, she was in competitive for, had the big Trump showdown with the Jedi, with the department of defense. Had the CIA cloud. Amazon set the standard on public sector and that's directly the result of Teresa Carlson. But she's in the field, she's not a product person, she's kind of running that group. So Amazon has that product field kind of structure. So we'll see how they handle that. But those are the top three I think are going to be in line. >> So the obvious question that people always ask and it is a big change like this is, okay, in this case, what is Jassy going to bring in? And what's going to change? Maybe the flip side question is somewhat more interesting. What's not going to change in your view? Jassy has been there since nearly the beginning. What are some of the fundamental tenets that he's, that are fossilized, that won't change, do you think? >> I think he's, I think what's not going to change is Amazon, is going to continue to grow and develop their platform business and enable more SaaS players. That's a little bit different than what Microsoft's doing. They're more SaaS oriented, Office 365 is becoming their biggest application in terms of revenue on Microsoft side. So Amazon is going to still have to compete and enable more ecosystem partners. I think what's not going to change is that Bezos is still going to be in charge because executive chairman is just a code word for "not an active CEO." So in the corporate governance world when you have an executive chairman, that's essentially the person still in charge. And so he'll be in charge, will still be the boss of Andy Jassy and Jassy will be running all of Amazon. So I think that's going to be a little bit the same, but Jassy is going to be more in charge. I think you'll see a team change over, whether you're going to see some new management come in, Andy's management team will expand, I think Amazon will stay the same, Amazon Web Services. >> So John, last night, I was just making some notes about notable transitions in the history of the tech business, Gerstner to Palmisano, Gates to Ballmer, and then Ballmer to Nadella. One that you were close to, David Packard to John Young and then John Young to Lew Platt at the old company. Ellison to Safra and Mark, Jobs to Cook. We talked about Larry Page to Sundar Pichai. So how do you see this? And you've talked to, I remember when you interviewed John Chambers, he said, there is no rite of passage, East coast mini-computer companies, Edson de Castro, Ken Olsen, An Wang. These were executives who wouldn't let go. So it's of interesting to juxtapose that with the modern day executive. How do you see this fitting in to some of those epic transitions that I just mentioned? >> I think a lot of people are surprised at Jeff Bezos', even stepping down. I think he's just been such the face of Amazon. I think some of the poll numbers that people are doing on Twitter, people don't think it's going to make a big difference because he's kind of been that, leader hand on the wheel, but it's been its own ship now, kind of. And so depending on who's at the helm, it will be different. I think the Amazon choice of Andy wasn't obvious. And I think a lot of people were asking the question who was Andy Jassy and that's why we're doing this. And we're going to be doing more features on the Andy Jassy. We got a tons, tons of content that we've we've had shipped, original content with them. We'll share more of those key soundbites and who he is. I think a lot of people scratching their head like, why Andy Jassy? It's not obvious to the outsiders who don't know cloud computing. If you're in the competing business, in the digital transformation side, everyone knows about Amazon Web Services. Has been the most successful company, in my opinion, since I could remember at many levels just the way they've completely dominated the business and how they change others to be dominant. So, I mean, they've made Microsoft change, it made Google change and even then he's a leader that accepts conversations. Other companies, their CEOs hide behind their PR wall and they don't talk to people. They won't come on Clubhouse. They won't talk to the press. They hide behind their PR and they feed them, the media. Jassy is not afraid to talk to reporters. He's not afraid to talk to people, but he doesn't like people who don't know what they're talking about. So he doesn't suffer fools. So, you got to have your shit together to talk to Jassy. That's really the way it is. And that's, and he'll give you mind share, like he'll answer any question except for the ones that are too tough for him to answer. Like, are you, is facial recognition bad or good? Are you going to spin out AWS? I mean these are the hard questions and he's got a great team. He's got Jay Carney, former Obama press secretary working for him. He's been a great leader. So I'm really bullish on, is a good choice. >> We're going to jump into the Clubhouse here and open it up shortly. John, the last question for you is competition. Amazon as a company and even Jassy specifically I always talk about how they don't really focus on the competition, they focus on the customer but we know that just observing these folks Bezos is very competitive individual. Jassy, I mean, you know him better than I, very competitive individual. So, and he's, Jassy has been known to call out Oracle. Of course it was in response to Larry Ellison's jabs at Amazon regarding database. But, but how do you see that? Do you see that changing at all? I mean, will Amazon get more publicly competitive or they stick to their knitting, you think? >> You know this is going to sound kind of a weird analogy. And I know there's a lot of hero worshiping on Elon Musk but Elon Musk and Andy Jassy have a lot of similarities in the sense of their brilliance. They got both a brilliant people, different kinds of backgrounds. Obviously, they're running different things. They both are builders, right? If you were listening to Elon Musk on Clubhouse the other night, what was really striking was not only the magic of how it was all orchestrated and what he did and how he interviewed Robin Hood. He basically is about building stuff. And he was asked questions like, what advice do you give startups? He's like, if you need advice you shouldn't be doing startups. That's the kind of mentality that Jassy has, which is, it's not easy. It's not for the faint of heart, but Elon Musk is a builder. Jassy builds, he likes to build stuff, right? And so you look at all the things that he's done with AWS, it's been about enabling people to be successful with the tools that they need, adding more services, creating things that are lower price point. If you're an entrepreneur and you're over the age of 30, you know about AWS because you know what, it's cheaper to start a business on Amazon Web Services than buying servers and everyone knows that. If you're under the age of 25, you might not know 50 grand to a hundred thousand just to start something. Today you get your credit card down, you're up and running and you can get Clubhouses up and running all day long. So the next Clubhouse will be on Amazon or a cloud technology. And that's because of Andy Jassy right? So this is a significant executive and he continue, will bring that mindset of building. So, I think the digital transformation, we're in the digital engine club, we're going to see a complete revolution of a new generation. And I think having a new leader like Andy Jassy will enable in my opinion next generation talent, whether that's media and technology convergence, media technology and art convergence and the fact that he digs music, he digs sports, he digs tech, he digs media, it's going to be very interesting to see, I think he's well-poised to be, and he's soft-spoken, he doesn't want the glamorous press. He doesn't want the puff pieces. He just wants to do what he does and he puts his game do the talking. >> Talking about advice at startups. Just a quick aside. I remember, John, you and I when we were interviewing Scott McNealy former CEO of Sun Microsystems. And you asked him advice for startups. He said, move out of California. It's kind of tongue in cheek. I heard this morning that there's a proposal to tax the multi-billionaires of 1% annually not just the one-time tax. And so Jeff Bezos of course, has a ranch in Texas, no tax there, but places all over. >> You see I don't know. >> But I don't see Amazon leaving Seattle anytime soon, nor Jassy. >> Jeremiah Owyang did a Clubhouse on California. And the basic sentiment is that, it's California is not going away. I mean, come on. People got to just get real. I think it's a fad. Yeah. This has benefits with remote working, no doubt, but people will stay here in California, the network affects beautiful. I think Silicon Valley is going to continue to be relevant. It's just going to syndicate differently. And I think other hubs like Seattle and around the world will be integrated through remote work and I think it's going to be much more of a democratizing effect, not a win lose. So that to me is a huge shift. And look at Amazon, look at Amazon and Microsoft. It's the cloud cities, so people call Seattle. You've got Google down here and they're making waves but still, all good stuff. >> Well John, thanks so much. Let's let's wrap and let's jump into the Clubhouse and hear from others. Thanks so much for coming on, back on theCUBE. And many times we, you and I've done this really. It was a pleasure having you. Thanks for your perspectives. And thank you for watching everybody, this is Dave Vellante for theCUBE. We'll see you next time. (soft ambient music)

>>From around the globe. It's the queue cover >>Space and cyber security >>Symposium 2020 hosted by Cal poly. >>Hello and welcome to the space and cybersecurity symposium 2020 hosted by Cal poly and the cube I'm chilling for a, your host. We have a great session here. Space, cyber security, the department of defense perspective. We have bond Google hall, director of C four ISR directorate office of the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment for the DOD and Chris Henson, technical director space and weapons, cybersecurity solutions for the national security agency. Gentlemen, thank you for taking the time for this awesome session. Thank you, John. Thank you. So we're gonna talk about the perspective of the DOD relative to space cybersecurity, a lot, going on congestion, contention, freedom, evolution innovation. So Paul, I'd like to have you start with your opening statement on how you see the space cybersecurity perspective, Don, thanks for the intro. Really appreciate it. First, let me give my thanks to Cal poly for a convening, the space and cybersecurity symposium this year, you know, and despite the pandemic, the organization and the content delivery spreading impressive, I really foot stomping. >>What can possibly be done with a number of these virtual platforms? This has been awesome. Thanks for the opportunity. I also want to recognize my colleague, Chris Nissen from NSA was actually assigned to our staff that LSD, but he brings both policy and technical perspective in this whole area. So I think you'll, you'll find his commentary, uh, and positions on things very refreshing or for today's seminar. Now space cyber security is a pretty interesting terminology for us all. Uh, cyber security means protecting against cyber threats and it's really more than just computers here on earth, right? Uh, space is the newest war fighting domain, and cybersecurity's perhaps even more of a challenge in this domain that and others. Uh, I'm sure it'll turn journal Thompson and major journals Shaw discuss the criticality of this new dorm space force. It's the newest military service in the earlier sessions and they're at the risk of repeating what they already addressed. >>Let me start by talking about what space means to DOD and what we're doing directly from my vantage point as part of the acquisition and sustainment arm of the Pentagon. Uh, what I want to share with you today is how the current space strategy ties into the national defense strategy and supports the department's operational objectives. As the director of CFRI SAR. I have come to understand how the integration of CFRI Sarcic. Billy is a powerful asset to enhance the lethality of the joint war fighter. Secretary Lord, our boss, the sec, the undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment is diligent in her pursuit to adapt and modernize acquisition processes, to influence the strategy and to focus our efforts domain are to make our objectives a reality. I think first and foremost, we are building a more lethal force. This joint force will project low Valley and custom contested environments and across all domains through an operationally integrated and resiliency for ISR infrastructure. >>We are also called debating our alliances, deepening interoperability, which is very important in a future fight and collab, collaboratively planning with those partner with us in the fight most significantly for our work in acquisition and sustainment, we continue to optimize the department for greater performance and affordability through reform of the acquisition process. Now space is our newest war fighting domain. And while it is indeed unique, it shares many common traits with the others land, air and sea all are important to the defense of the U S in conflict. No doubt about this. They will be contested and they must be defended. One domain will not win future conflicts in a joint operation in a future fight in the future conflict. They must all succeed. I see three areas being key to a DOD strategic success in space, one, developing our whole of government approach in close partnership with the private sector and our allies to prioritizing our investments in resiliency, innovation, and adaptive operations, and third responding rapidly and effectively to leverage emerging technologies and seize opportunities to advance your strengths, partnerships and alliances. >>Let me emphasize that space is increasingly congested and tested and demanded as essential delete Valley operational effectiveness and the security of our nation. Now the commercialization of space offers a broad set of investments in satellite technology, potential opportunities to leverage those investments and pathways to develop cost efficient space architecture, where the department and the nation. It's funny, there's a new race, a race for space. If you will, between commercial companies buying for dominance of space. Now the joint staff within DOD is currently building an operational construct to employ and engage as a unified force, coordinated across all domains. We call it the joint, all domain command and control. It is the framework that is under development to allow us to conduct integrated operations in the future. The objective of Jesse too is to provide the war fighter access to the decision making information while providing mission assurance of the information and resilience of the underlying terrestrial air in space networks that support them operationally. >>six to maintain seamless integration, adaptation, and employment of our capability. To sense signal connect, transmit, process control, direct, and deliver lethal capabilities against the enemy. We gain a strategic advantage through the integration of these capabilities across all the domains, by providing balance bowel space, awareness, horse protection, and weapons controlled and deployment capabilities. Now successfully any ratings, the systems and capabilities will provide our war fighters overwhelming superiority on the battlefield environment, challenged by near peer adversaries, as well as non state actors in space. The character of its employment is changing, driven by increasing demands, not just by DOD, but by the commercial sector as well. You know, more and more, uh, we see greater use of small satellite systems to address a myriad of emerging questions, ubiquitous communications, awareness, sensor diversity, and many more. Uh, as I said before, the commercial world is pioneering high rate production of small satellites in our efforts to deploy hundreds, if not thousands of nodes space X, Darlene constellation is one example. >>Another one is Amazon's Kiper, uh, Kuyper just received FCC approval to deploy like over 3000 of these different notes. While a number of these companies continue to grow. Some have struggled. They some pointed as one web, uh, nevertheless, the appetite remains strong and DOD is taking advantage of these advances to support our missions. We are currently exploring how to better integrate the DOD activities involving small satellites under the small satellite coordinating activity, scholarly call it. We want to ensure collaboration and interoperability to maximize efficiency in acquisition and operation. When we started this activity on over a year and a half ago, we documented over 70 plus separate small, small sat programs within DOD. And now we've developed a very vibrant community of interest surrounding a small satellites. Now, part of the work we have identified nine focus areas for further development. These are common areas to all systems and by continuing to expand on these, our plan is they enable a standard of practice that can be applied across all of the domains. >>This includes lawn services, ground processing distribution, and of course, a topic of interest to the symposium space security and Chris we'll, we'll talk more about that being the Houston expert, uh, in this area. Uh, one challenge that we can definitely start working on today is workforce development. Cybersecurity's unique as it straddles STEM and security and policy, the trade craft is different. And unfortunately I've seen estimates recently, so suggesting a workforce gap in the next several years, much like the STEM fields, uh, during the next session, I am a part of a panel with precedent, Armstrong, Cal poly, and Steve Jake's the founder of the national security space association to address workforce development. But for this panel, I'll look forward to having further dialogue surrounding space, opera security with Chris and John. Thank you, John >>Bob, thank you for that whole thing, Steven. Yes. Workforce gaps. We need the new skill space is here. Thank you very much. Chris Henson, technical director of space and weapons, cybersecurity solutions for the national security agency. Your statement, >>Thank you for having me. Uh, I'm one of several technical leaders in space at the national security agency. And I'm currently on a joint duty assignment at the office of under secretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment. I work under mr. GUMA hot in the C four ISR area, but almost 63 years ago on the 4th of October, 1957, Sputnik was the first artificial satellite launched by the Soviet union in space. History was made in each of you can continue to write future space history in your careers. And just like in 1957, the U S isn't alone in space to include our close partnerships and longterm activities with organizations like the Japanese space agency, the European space agency, and, uh, the Canadian space agency, just to name a few. And when we tackle cybersecurity per space, we have to address, address the idea that the communications command and control, uh, and those mission datas will transverse networks owned and operated by a variety of partners, not only.go.mil.com.edu, et cetera. We need to have all the partners address the cyber effects of those systems because the risk excepted by one is shared by all and sharing cyber best practices, lessons learned, uh, data vulnerabilities, threat data, mitigation, mitigation procedures, all our valuable takeaways, uh, in expanding this space community, improving overall conditions for healthy environment. So thank you for having me, and I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you and your audience. And I look forward to the discussion questions. Thank you. >>Thank you, Chris. Thank you, Bob. Okay. I mean open innovation, the internet, you see plenty of examples. The theme here is partners, commercial government. It's going to take a lot of people and tech companies and technologies to make space work. So we asked my first question, Bonnie, we'll start with you is what do you see as the DOD his role in addressing cybersecurity in space? Uh, it's real, uh, it's a new frontier. Um, it's not going away. It's only going to get more innovative, more open, more contested. It seems like a lot to do there. So what's your role in addressing cyber security in space? >>I think our role is to be the leader in developing and only is it the strategy, but the, uh, the implementation plan is to ensure a full of cybersecurity. If you look at the national cyber cyber strategy, I think publishing 2018 calls for like-minded countries, industry academia, and civil society. Once you mentioned John, the support technology development, uh, digital safety policy advocacy, and research you here today, and those listening are fulfilling their strategy. When you, when you develop, enable use cyber hygiene products, as examples of capabilities, you're pushing the goal to fruition. When you know, what's on your network patron network backup, you're in encrypt your network, you're hardening and preventing cyber attacks. And we in government academia in the case of Cal poly civil networks and in commercial companies, we all benefit from doing that cyber security. Uh, and I think Chris will, we'll, we'll definitely back me up on this more than passwords encryption or pharma. It's truly a mindset and a culture of enabling missions to succeed in assured in a resilient fashion. >>Chris, you're taking reaction to, to the cybersecurity challenge involved here, >>That's it, it's starting really at the highest level of governments. We have, uh, you know, the, the recent security policy directive five that just came out just a couple of days ago, recognize all the factors of cybersecurity that need to come into play. And probably the most important outcome of that as mr said, is the leadership role and that leadership, uh, blends out very well into partnership. So partnership with industry partnership with academia partnership, with, uh, other people that are exploring space. And those partnerships lend itself very naturally to sharing cybersecurity issues, topics as we come up with best practices as we come up with mitigation strategies. And as we come up with vulnerabilities and share that information, the, uh, we're not going to go alone in space, just like we're probably not going to go alone in many other industries or areas, uh, that the DOD has to be, uh, involved in many spectrums of deploying to space. >>And that deployment involves as Mr. Guzman said, encryption authentication, knowing what's on the network, knowing the, the fabric of that network. And if nothing else, this, uh, this, uh, internet of things and work from home environment that we've, uh, partaken of these last few months has even explored and expanded that notion even more dramatically as we have people dial in from all over the different, uh, locations, well space will be that natural node that, uh, natural, uh, next network and mesh involvement that we'll have to protect and explore on not just from a terrestrial involvement, but all segments of it. Th the comm segment, the space vehicle and the ground portion, >>No bond. We talked about this in our other segment, um, around with the president of Cal poly, but the operating models of the space force and the DOD and getting space. It's a software defined world, right? So cybersecurity is a real big issue. Cause you have an operating model that's requiring software to power, these low hanging satellites. That's just an extension to the network. It's distributed computing, know what this is. If you understand what technology we do in space, it's no different, it's just a different environment. So it's software defined that just lends itself well to hacking. I mean, if I'm a hacker I'm going, Hey, why not just take out a satellite and crash it down or make the GPS do something different? I mean, it's definitely an attack vector. This is a big deal. It's not just like getting credentials that are cashed on a server. You gotta really protect, >>Right? Because in one hand it space will carry not only, uh, uh, you know, for local national security information. Uh, but the, uh, I feel like at the economic wellbeing, the financial state of allowed a lot of countries and institutions, you know, more and more John lb, they'll be using space assets to, uh, uh, to make, uh, make, make all that happen. Right. So, and if you look at the, you talk, you mentioned the attack vectors in space, you know, it's not just the computers in the ground, but if you look at the whole life cycle for satellite systems in space, you know, that the, the, the tasking that you need to do that the command, the controlling of the vehicle, the data that comes down in the ground, even when you launch the, the birds, the satellites, you know, they only need to be protected because they're all somewhat vulnerable to, uh, to hacking, uh, to cyber attacks. Especially as we grow into commercialization space, it's going to be a lot more people out there playing in this world. It's going to be a lot more companies out there. And, you know, it's hard to track, uh, uh, you know, the, the potential of, of, of foreign influences as an example, and therefore the potential of being vulnerable in terms of the cyber threat. >>Gentlemen, I like you guys said to move on to this leadership role, you mentioned that you want to be a leader. I get it. The DOD is department of defense. That's a new frontier to defend war time zone. You mentioned war time opportunity potentially, but how do you guys assist that's term hat to getting done? Because there's public and private space operations happening, um, there's security challenge. What does being a leader mean? And how does the DOD department of defense assist driving the public and private? Do you lead from a project standpoint, you lead from a funding standpoint? Is it architectural? I mean, you're talking about now a new end to end architecture. It's not just cloud it's on premise. It's in devices, it's offloaded with new AI technology and Nicks and devices. It's IOT, it's all, this is all new, this is all new. What does it mean for the DOD to be a leader and how do you assist others to get involved? And what does that mean? >>Yeah, I think, uh, the one hand, you know, DOD used to lead, uh, in terms of, uh, uh, being the only source of funding for a lot of, uh, highly developmental efforts. Uh, we're seeing a different story in space. Again, I keep going back to the commercialization of space. We're seeing a lot more players, right? So in many ways >>Ally's commercial companies are actually legally leading the R and D uh, of a lot of different technologies. So we want to take, we certainly want to take advantage of that. So from a leadership standpoint, I think we, we, Lucia can come in, you know, by partnering a lot more with, with the commercial companies, uh, in 2022, the DOD released the defense, uh, uh, space strategy as an example that highlights the threats, the challenges and opportunities the United States has faced by, by sending a example of how we, how we, uh, how we counter, uh, the threats that are out there, not just the DOD, but, but the disability and the commercial sector as well. Our current conditions are strong, but we want to use four lines of effort to meet our challenges and capitalize on our desire state space, uh, lines of effort include building a comprehensive military badges space, integrating space into a national joint and combined operations. Like I mentioned before, shaping that strategic environment and cooperating with allies, partners, and industry and other U S governmental agencies, departments, and agencies to advance the cost of space to take full advantage of what space can provide us, uh, in DOD, uh, and the nation. Chris has a domain. Now, what's your take on all that? >>That's because again, it's going to take more people, >>More diverse, potentially more security >>Halls. What's your view on it? >>Well, let's, let's look at how innovation and new technologies can help us in these areas. So, uh, and, and mentioned it a couple of topics that you hit on already. One of the areas that we can improve on is certainly in the, uh, the architecture, uh, where we look at a zero trust architecture, one of the NIST standards that's come about where it talks about the authentication, uh, the need to know a granular approach, this idea of being able to protect, not just data, but the resources and how people can get access to those, whether they're coming in through an identification, authentication Prudential, or, uh, other aspects of, uh, the, the idea of not just anybody should be able to have access to data or anybody should have access once they're on the inside of the network. So that zero trust architecture is, is one approach where we can show some leadership and guidance. >>Another area is in, uh, a topic that you touched on as well was in the software area. So some innovations are coming on very rapidly and strong in this artificial intelligence and machine learning. So if we can take this AI and ML and apply it to our software development areas, they can parse so much information very quickly. And, uh, you know, this vast array of code that's going into system nowadays, and then that frees up our human, uh, explicit talent and developers that can then look at other areas and not focus on minor bawling to Beverly fix a vulnerability. Uh, they, they can really use their unique skills and talents to come up with a better process, a better way, and let the artificial intelligence and machine learning, find those common problems, those, those unknown, hidden lines of code that, uh, get put into a software alarm Prairie, and then pull down over and over again from system to system. So I think between, uh, an architecture leadership role and employee innovation are two areas that we can show, uh, some benefits and process improvement to this whole system. >>That's a great point, Chris, and you think about just the architectural computer architecture, you know, S you know, network attached storage is an advantage software defined there. You could have flash all flash arrays for storage. You could have multiple cores on a device and this new architecture, offloads things, and it's a whole new way to gain efficiencies. I mean, you got Intel, you got Nvidia, you've got armed all the processors all built in. Um, so there's definitely been commercial best practices and benefits to a new kind of architecture that takes advantage of these new things. It's just, just efficiencies. Um, but this brings up the whole supply chain conversation. I want to get your thoughts on this, because there is talk about predatory investments and access and tactics to gain supply chain access to space systems, your thoughts. >>Yeah. It's a serious threat and not just for, uh, the U S uh, space. So supply chain, if you will, is the supply chain. And I says, you know, writ large, I think, uh, I think it's a, it's a, it's a threat that's, that's real, we're we're seeing today. I just saw an example recently, uh, involving, uh, our, I think our launch services were, there was a, uh, a foreign, uh, threat that was those trying to get into a true through with predatory investments. Uh, so, uh, it is something that we need to, uh, be aware of it it's happening, uh, and is continuing to happen. Uh, it's an easy way to gain access, to, uh, do our IP. Uh, and, uh, so it's something that we, uh, are serious about in terms of, uh, awareness and, and countering >>Chris, your thoughts. I mean, we've see, I mean, I'm an open source guy. I was seen it when I grew up in the industry in the eighties, open source became a revolution, but with that, it enabled new tactics for, um, state sponsored attacks on it that became a domain in of itself. Um, that's well-documented and people talk about that all the time in cyber. Now you have open innovation with hardware, software connected systems. This is going to bring supply chain nightmare. How do you track it all? Who's got what software and what device, where the chip come from, who made it, this is the potential is everywhere. How do you see the, these tactics, whether it's a VC firm from another country or this, that, and the other thing startup. >>Yeah. So when we see, when we see coal companies being purchased by foreign investors, and, you know, we can get blocked out of those, whether it's in the food industry, or if it's in a microchip, then that microchip could be used in a cell phone or a satellite or an automobile. So all of our industries that have these companies that are being purchased, or a large born investment influx into those, you know, that could be suspect. And we, we have to be very careful with those, uh, and, and do the tracking of those, especially when those, uh, some of those parts of mechanisms are coming from off shore. And then going again, going back to, uh, the space policy directive five, it calls out for better supply chain, resource management, the tracking, the knowing the pedigree and the, the quantitative of ability of knowing where those software libraries came from, where the parts came from and the tracking and delivery of that from an end to end system. >>And typically when we have a really large vendor, they can, they can do that really well. But when we have a subcontractor to a subcontractor, to a subcontractor, their resources may not be such that they can do that. Try tracking in mitigation for counterfeits or fraudulent materials going into our systems. So it's a very difficult challenge, and we want to ensure as best we can that as we ingest those parts, as we ingest those software libraries and technologies into the system, that, uh, before we employ them, we have to do some robust testing. And I don't want to say that the last line of defense, but that certainly is a mechanism for finding out, do the systems perform as they stated, uh, on a test bench or a flat set, whatever the case may be before we actually deploy it. And then we're relying on the output or the data that comes from that, that system that may have some corrupt or suspect parts in it. >>Great point, this federal grant, >>The problem with space systems is kind of, you know, is once you, once you launch the bird or the sunlight, uh, your access to it is, is diminished significantly, right? Unless you, you go up there and take it down. Uh, so, you know, kind of to Chris's point, we need to be able to test all the different parts of insurer that is performing as, as described there ass, I spent as specified, uh, with, with good knowledge that it's, uh, it's, uh, it's trustworthy. Uh, and, uh, so we that all on the ground before we, we take it up to launch it. >>It's funny. You want agility, you want speed and you want security, and you want reliability and risk management all aggressive, and it's a technical problem. It says it's a business model problem. I'd love to get real quick. Before we jump into some of the more workforce and gap issues on the personnel side, have you guys should just take a minute to explain quickly what's the federal view. If you had to kind of summarize the federal view of the DOD and the roll with it wants to take, so all the people out there on the commercial side or students out there who are, you know, wanting to jump in, what is the current modern federal view of space cybersecurity. >>Chris, why don't you take that on I'll follow up. Okay. Uh, I don't know that I can give you the federal view, but I can certainly give you the department of defense. That cybersecurity is extremely important. And as our vendors and our suppliers, uh, take on a very, very large and important role, one area that we're looking at improving on is a cyber certification maturity model, where we, where we look at the vendors and how they implement an employee cyber hygiene. So that guidance in and of itself shows the emphasis of cyber security that when we want to write a contract or a vendor, uh, for, for a purchase, that's going to go into a space system. We'd like to know from a third party audit capability, can that vendor, uh, protect and defend to some extent the amount that that part or piece or software system is going to have a cyber protection already built into it from that vendor, from the ground floor up before it even gets put into a larger system. >>So that shows a level of the CMMC process that we've thought about and, uh, started to employ, uh, beginning in 2021 and will be further built on in, in the out years. How, how important the DOD takes that. And other parts of the government are looking at this, in fact, other nations are looking at the CMMC model. So I think it shows a concern in very many areas, uh, not just in the department of defense that they're going to adopt an approach like this. Uh, so it shows the, the pluses and the benefits of a cybersecurity model that, uh, all can build on boggy reaction. Yeah, I'll just, uh, I'll just add to that, John, you, you, you, you asked earlier about, you know, how do we, uh, track, uh, commercial entities or, or people in the space and cyber security domains? Uh, I can tell you that, uh, at least my view of it, you know, space and cyber security are new, it's exciting, it's challenging a lot technical challenges there. So I think in >>Terms of attracting the right people, personnel to work those areas, uh, I think it's, it's not only intellectually challenging, uh, but it's important for, for the dependency that NASA States, uh, and it's important for, for, for economic security, uh, writ large for, for us as well. So I think, uh, in terms of a workforce and trying to get people interested in, in those domains, uh, I hope that they see the same thing we do in terms of, of the challenges and the opportunities it presents itself in the future. >>Awesome. I love your talk on intro track there falling. You mentioned, uh, the three key areas of DOD sec success, developing a government whole government approach to partnership with the private sector. I think that's critical and the allies prioritizing the right investments on resilience, innovation, adaptive operations, and responding to rapidly to effectively emerging technology. So you can be fast, all think are all things. I all, all those things are relevant. So given that, I want to get your thoughts on the defense space strategy in 2020, the DOD released dispense defense space, strategy, highlighting threats, and challenges and opportunities. How would you summarize those threats and those challenges and opportunities? What are the, what are those things that you're watching in the defense space area? Right. >>Well, I think, I think I saw, as I said before, of course, as well, you know, uh, or, or seeing that a space will be highly contested, uh, because it's a critical element in our, in our war fighting construct, uh, Dwayne, a future conflict, I think we need to, to win space as well. So when you, when you look at our near peer adversaries, there's a lot of efforts, uh, in trying to, to, to take that advantage away from the United States. So, so the threat is real, uh, and I think it's going to continue to evolve and grow. Uh, and the more we use space, both commercial and government, I think you're going to see a lot more when these threads some AFAs itself, uh, in, in forms of cyber, cyber attacks, or even kinetic attacks in some cases as needed. Uh, so yeah, so with the, the, the threat is need growing, uh, space is congested, as we talked about, it will continually be contested in the future as well. So we need to have, uh, like we do now in, in, in all the other domains, a way to defend it. And that's what we're working on with India, with the, how do we pilot with tech, our assets in space, and how do we make sure that the data information that traverses through space assets are trust 40, um, and, uh, and, and, and free of any, uh, uh, interference >>Chris, exciting time. I'm your, if you're in technology, um, this is crossing many lines here, tech society will war time, defense, new areas, new tech. I mean, it's security, it's intoxicating at many levels, because if you think about it, it's not one thing. It's not one thing anymore. It spans a broader spectrum, these opportunities. >>Yeah. And I, and I think that expansion is, is a natural outgrowth from, as our microprocessors and chips and technology continue to shrink smaller and smaller. You know, we, we think of our, our cell phones and our handheld devices and tablets, and so on that have just continued to, uh, get embedded in our everyday society, our everyday way of life. And that's a natural extension when we start applying those to space systems. When we think of smallsats and cube sets and the technology that's, uh, can be repurposed into, uh, a small vehicle and the cost has come down so dramatically that, you know, we, we can afford to get a rapid experiments, rapid, um, exploitations and, and different approaches in space and learn from those and repeat them very quickly and very rapidly. And that applies itself very well to an agile development process, dev sec ops, and this notion of spins and cycles and refreshing and re uh, addressing priorities very quickly so that when we do put a new technology up, that the technology is very lean and cutting edge, and hasn't been years and years in the making, but it's, uh, relevant and new, and the, uh, the cybersecurity and the vulnerabilities of that have to be addressed because of, and allow that DevSecOps process to take place so that we can look at those vulnerabilities and get that new technology and those new, new experiments and demonstrations in space and get lessons learned from them over and over again. >>Well, that brings us to the next big topic I want to spend the remainder of our time on that is workforce this next generation. If I wasn't so old, I would quit my job and I would join medially. It's so much, it's a fun, it's exciting. And it's important. And this is what I think is a key point is that cybersecurity in and of itself has got a big gap of shortage of workers, nevermind, adding space to it. So this is, uh, the intersection of space and cybersecurity. There is a workforce opportunity for this next generation, a young person to person re-skilling, this is a big deal. Bong, you have thoughts on this. It's not just STEM, it's everything. >>Yeah. It's everything, you know, uh, the opportunities would have in space it's significant and tremendous. And I think, uh, if I were young, again, as you pointed out, John, uh, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm lucky that I'm in this domain in this world and I started years ago. Uh, but it continues to be exciting, uh, lots of, lots of opportunities, you know, and when you, when you look at, uh, some of the commercial space, uh, systems that are being, being put up, uh, if you look at, I mentioned Starlink before, and, and, uh, Amazon's Kuyper constellation. These guys are talking about couple of thousand satellites in space to provide ubiquitous communications for internet globally and that sort of thing. Uh, and they're not the only ones that are out there producing capability. Uh, we're seeing a lot more commercial imagery products being developed by bike, by companies, both within the U S and, and, uh, foreign foreign elements as well. So I think it's an exciting time to be in space. Certainly lots of opportunities, there's technical challenges, uh, galore in terms of, you know, not only the overcoming the physics of space, but being able to operate, uh, flexibly, uh, in, uh, get the most you can out of the capabilities we have, uh, uh, operating up as high as being cool. I mean, everyone looks at launch. >>She gets millions of views on live streams, the on demand, reruns get millions and millions of views. Um, it's, there's a lot of things there. Um, so Chris, what specifically could you share are things that people would work on? Um, jobs skills, what are some, what's the aperture, what's it look like if you zoom out and look at all the opportunities from a scale standpoint, what's out there, >>We'll talk to the aperture, but I want to give a shout out to our space force. And I mean, their, their job is to train and equip, uh, future space and, uh, that, that space talent. And I think that's going to be a huge plus up, uh, to have, uh, uh, a space force that's dedicated to training equipping, uh, the, an acquisition and a deployment model that, uh, will benefit not just the other services, but all of our national defense and our, uh, you know, our, our strategic way of, uh, how, how this company, country, employees space, uh, altogether. So having, having a space for us, I think, as a, is a huge, uh, a huge issue. And then to get to that aperture aspect of, of what you're, what you're asking and, you know, that addresses a larger workforce. Uh, we need so many different talents in, in this area. >>Uh, we can, we can have, we can employ a variety of people, uh, from technical writers to people who write, uh, write in developed software to those who, uh, are bending metal and actually, uh, working in a hardware environment. And, uh, those that do planning and launch operations and all of those spectrums and issues of jobs, or are directly related to a workforce that can contribute to, to space. And then once that data gets to the ground and employed out to a user, whether it's a data or we're looking at, uh, from a sensor recent, uh, recent events on, uh, shipping lanes, those types of things. So space has such a wide and diverse swath that the aperture's really wide open, uh, for a variety of backgrounds. And, and those that, uh, really just want to take an opportunity, take a, take a technical degree or a degree that, uh, can apply itself to a tough problem, uh, because they certainly exist in space. And we can, we can use that mindset of problem solving, whether you come at it from a hacker mindset, an ethical, a white hat approach to testing and vulnerability exploration, or somebody who knows how to actually, um, make, uh, operations, uh, safer, better, uh, through space situation awareness. So there's a, there's a huge swath of opportunity for us >>Bon talk about the, um, the cyber security enabled environment, the use cases that are possible when you have cybersecurity in play with space systems, um, which is in and of itself, a huge range of jobs, codings supply chain. We just talked about a bunch of them. There's still more connected use cases that go beyond that, that, that are enabled by it. If you think about it, and this is what the students at Cal poly and every other college and university community college, you name it, or watching videos on YouTube, anyone with a brain can jump in. If they, if they see the future, it's an all net new space force is driving awareness, but there's a whole slew of these new use cases that I call space enabled by cybersecurity systems. Your thoughts. >>Absolutely. I, you know, I was, uh, had planned on attending the, uh, uh, the cyber challenge that's Cal poly had planned in June, of course, a pandemic, uh, uh, took care of that plan. But, but I was intrigued by, by the approach that the Cal poly was taking with, with, uh, middle school and high school kids of, of, of, of exposing him to a problem set here. You have a, a satellite that came down from space, uh, and, uh, part of the challenge was to do Porensic analysis on the debris, uh, the remaining pieces of the sound like to figure out what happened. Uh, it had a, uh, a cybersecurity connotation. It was hacked. It was attacked by, by cyber threat nation, took it down. And the beauty of having these kids kind of play with, with the remaining parts of the satellite figure out what happened. >>So I was pretty exciting. I was really looking forward to participating in that, but again, the pandemic kind of blew that up, but I, I look forward to future events like that to, to get our young people intrigued and interested in, uh, in this new field of space. Now, you know, Chris was talking earlier about opportunities, the opportunity that you talk about, you know, while I would like to have people come to the government, right. To help us out. It's not, it's not just focused on government, right? There's not lots of opportunities in commercial space. I, if you will, uh, for, for a lot of talent to, uh, uh, to have, uh, to participate in. So the challenge is a man's government and the commercial sector, John, >>I mean, you get the hardcore, you know, I want to work for the DOD. I want to work for NSA. I want to work for the government. You clearly got people who want to have that kind of mission, but for the folks out there, Chris and bong that are like, I'll do I qualify it? It's like the black box of the DOD. It's like a secret thing. You got any clearance, you've got to get all these certifications. And you've got to take all kinds of tests and background checks. And, um, is it like that? And will that continue? Cause some people might say, Hey, can I even get involved? What do I do? So I know there's some private partnerships going on with companies out there in the private sector. So this is now a new, you guys seem to be partnering and going outside the comfort zone of the old kind of tactical things. What are some of those opportunities that people could get involved that they might not know about >>PR for NSA, there's a variety of workforce, uh, initiatives that, uh, uh, for anybody from a high school work study can take advantage of to, uh, those that would like have to have internships. And those that are in a traditional academic environment, there's, uh, several NSA schools across the country that have a academic and cyber acts, uh, sites of excellence that participate in projects that are shepherded and mentored by those at NSA that can get those tough problems that don't have maybe a classified or super sensitive, uh, nature that that can be worked in and in an academia environment. So, so those are two or three examples of how somebody can break into, uh, the, uh, an intelligence organization and the, and the other agencies have those, uh, opportunities as well across the intelligence community and the, the partnership between and collaborative collaboration between private industry and the agencies and the department of defense just continue to grow over and over again. And even myself being able to take care advantage of a joint duty assignment between my home organization and the Pentagon just shows another venue of somebody that's in one organization can partner and leverage with another organization as well. So I'm an example of, of that partnering that's going on today. >>So there's some innovation, bong, non traditional pathways to find talent. What are out there? What are new, what are these new nontraditional ways >>I was going to add to what Chris was, was mentioning John? Yeah. Even within view and under the purview of our chief information officer, back in 2013, the deputy surfed dirty defense signed the, uh, what we call the DOD cyberspace workforce strategy, uh, into effect. And that included a program called the cyber information technology exchange program. It's an exchange program in which a, uh, you know, private sector employee and worked for the DOD in cyber security positions, uh, span across multiple mission critical areas. So this is one opportunity to learn, uh, you know, in inside the DOD what's happening as a private sector person, if you will, uh, going back to what we talked about, you know, kinda, uh, opportunities, uh, within the government for, for somebody who might be interested, uh, you know, you don't have to be super smart, Bork and space. Uh, there's a lot of like, like Chris pointed out, there's a lot of different areas that we need to have people down within people to do, uh, to conduct the mission space. So you don't have to be mathematician mathematician. You don't have to be an engineer to succeed in this business. I think there's plenty of opportunities for, for any types of, of talent, any type of academic disciplines that, that, that, that they're out there. >>And I think, you know, Chris is shout out to the space force is really worth calling out again, because I think to me, that's a big deal. It's a huge deal. It's going to change the face of our nation and society. So super, super important. And that's going to rise the tide. I think it's gonna create, uh, some activation, uh, for a younger generation, certainly, and kind of new opportunities, new problems to solve new threats to take on and, and move it on. So really super conversation space in cybersecurity, the department of defense perspective, Von and Chris, thank you for taking the time. I'd love you guys just to close out. We'll start with you bong. And then Chris summarize for the folks watching, whether it's a student at Cal poly or other university or someone in industry and government, what is the department of defense perspective for space cybersecurity? >>Chris, won't go and take that on. I started, thank you. Uh, cyber security applies to much more than just the launch and download of mission data or human led exploration and the planning, testing, and experiments in the lab prior to launch require that cyber protection, just as much as any other space link, ground segment, trust rail network, or user data, and any of that loss of intellectual property or proprietary data is an extremely valuable and important, and really warrants, cybersecurity safeguards in any economic espionage or data exfiltration or denied access to that data I E ransomware or some other, uh, attack that can cripple any business or government endeavor. Uh, no matter how small or large, if it's left in our economic backbone, uh, clearly depends on space and GPS is more than just a direction finding our banking needs that a T and timing from P and T or whether it says systems that protect our shipping and airline industry of whether they can navigate and go through a particular storm or not, uh, even fighting forest fires picked up by a remote sensor. >>All those space-based assets, uh, require protection from spoofing date, uh, data denial or total asset loss. An example would be if a satellite sensitive optics were intentionally pointed at the sun and damaged, or if a command, uh, to avoid collision with another space vehicle was delayed or disrupted or a ground termination command. As we just saw just a few days ago at T minus three seconds prior to liftoff, if those all don't go as planned, uh, those losses are real and can be catastrophic. So the threat to space is pervasive real and genuine, and your active work across all those platforms is a necessary and appreciated. And your work in this area is critical, uh, going forward going forward. Uh, thank you for this opportunity to speak with you and, uh, talking on this important topic. >>Thank you, Chris Henson, goodbye. >>Closing remarks. Yeah. Likewise, John, uh, again, uh, as, as Chris said, thank you for, for the opportunity to discuss this very important, uh, around space, cyber security, as well as addressing, uh, at the end there, we were talking about workforce development and the need to have, uh, people, uh, in the mix for four features. We discussed with you. We need to start that recruiting early, uh, as we're doing to address, uh, the STEM gap today, we need to apply the same thing for cybersecurity. We, we absolutely need smart, innovative people to protect both Iraq. Anomic wellbeings a nation as well as our national defense. So this is the right conversation to have at this time, John and I, again, thank you and our Cal poly hose for, or, uh, having a symposium and, and having this opportunity to have this dialogue. Thank you, >>Gentlemen. Thank you for your time and great insights. We couldn't be there in person. We're here virtual for the space and cybersecurity symposium, 2020, the Cal poly I'm Jennifer with Silicon angle and the cube, your host. Thank you for watching.

>> Announcer: From around the globe, it's The Cube, covering Space and Cybersecurity Symposium 2020, hosted by Cal Poly. >> Everyone, welcome to this special virtual conference, the Space and Cybersecurity Symposium 2020 put on by Cal Poly with support from The Cube. I'm John Furey, your host and master of ceremony's got a great topic today, and this session is really the intersection of space and cybersecurity. This topic, and this conversation is a cybersecurity workforce development through public and private partnerships. And we've got a great lineup, we've Jeff Armstrong is the president of California Polytechnic State University, also known as Cal Poly. Jeffrey, thanks for jumping on and Bong Gumahad. The second, Director of C4ISR Division, and he's joining us from the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for the acquisition and sustainment of Department of Defense, DOD, and of course Steve Jacques is Executive Director, founder National Security Space Association, and managing partner at Velos. Gentlemen, thank you for joining me for this session, we've got an hour of conversation, thanks for coming on. >> Thank you. >> So we've got a virtual event here, we've got an hour to have a great conversation, I'd love for you guys to do an opening statement on how you see the development through public and private partnerships around cybersecurity and space, Jeff, we'll start with you. >> Well, thanks very much, John, it's great to be on with all of you. On behalf of Cal Poly, welcome everyone. Educating the workforce of tomorrow is our mission at Cal Poly, whether that means traditional undergraduates, masters students, or increasingly, mid-career professionals looking to upskill or re-skill. Our signature pedagogy is learn by doing, which means that our graduates arrive at employers, ready day one with practical skills and experience. We have long thought of ourselves as lucky to be on California's beautiful central coast, but in recent years, as we've developed closer relationships with Vandenberg Air Force Base, hopefully the future permanent headquarters of the United States Space Command with Vandenberg and other regional partners, We have discovered that our location is even more advantageous than we thought. We're just 50 miles away from Vandenberg, a little closer than UC Santa Barbara and the base represents the Southern border of what we have come to think of as the central coast region. Cal Poly and Vandenberg Air Force Base have partnered to support regional economic development, to encourage the development of a commercial space port, to advocate for the space command headquarters coming to Vandenberg and other ventures. These partnerships have been possible because both parties stand to benefit. Vandenberg, by securing new streams of revenue, workforce, and local supply chain and Cal Poly by helping to grow local jobs for graduates, internship opportunities for students and research and entrepreneurship opportunities for faculty and staff. Crucially, what's good for Vandenberg Air Force Base and for Cal Poly is also good for the central coast and the U.S., creating new head of household jobs, infrastructure, and opportunity. Our goal is that these new jobs bring more diversity and sustainability for the region. This regional economic development has taken on a life of its own, spawning a new nonprofit called REACH which coordinates development efforts from Vandenberg Air Force Base in the South to Camp Roberts in the North. Another factor that has facilitated our relationship with Vandenberg Air Force Base is that we have some of the same friends. For example, Northrop Grumman has as long been an important defense contractor and an important partner to Cal Poly, funding scholarships in facilities that have allowed us to stay current with technology in it to attract highly qualified students for whom Cal Poly's costs would otherwise be prohibitive. For almost 20 years, Northrop Grumman has funded scholarships for Cal Poly students. This year, they're funding 64 scholarships, some directly in our College of Engineering and most through our Cal Poly Scholars Program. Cal Poly scholars support both incoming freshmen and transfer students. These are especially important, 'cause it allows us to provide additional support and opportunities to a group of students who are mostly first generation, low income and underrepresented, and who otherwise might not choose to attend Cal Poly. They also allow us to recruit from partner high schools with large populations of underrepresented minority students, including the Fortune High School in Elk Grove, which we developed a deep and lasting connection. We know that the best work is done by balanced teams that include multiple and diverse perspectives. These scholarships help us achieve that goal and I'm sure you know Northrop Grumman was recently awarded a very large contract to modernize the U.S. ICBM armory with some of the work being done at Vandenberg Air Force Base, thus supporting the local economy and protecting... Protecting our efforts in space requires partnerships in the digital realm. Cal Poly has partnered with many private companies such as AWS. Our partnerships with Amazon Web Services has enabled us to train our students with next generation cloud engineering skills, in part, through our jointly created digital transformation hub. Another partnership example is among Cal Poly's California Cyber Security Institute College of Engineering and the California National Guard. This partnership is focused on preparing a cyber-ready workforce, by providing faculty and students with a hands on research and learning environment side by side with military law enforcement professionals and cyber experts. We also have a long standing partnership with PG&E most recently focused on workforce development and redevelopment. Many of our graduates do indeed go on to careers in aerospace and defense industry. As a rough approximation, more than 4,500 Cal Poly graduates list aerospace or defense as their employment sector on LinkedIn. And it's not just our engineers in computer sciences. When I was speaking to our fellow panelists not too long ago, speaking to Bong, we learned that Rachel Sims, one of our liberal arts majors is working in his office, so shout out to you, Rachel. And then finally, of course, some of our graduates soar to extraordinary heights, such as Commander Victor Glover, who will be heading to the International Space Station later this year. As I close, all of which is to say that we're deeply committed to workforce development and redevelopment, that we understand the value of public-private partnerships, and that we're eager to find new ways in which to benefit everyone from this further cooperation. So we're committed to the region, the state and the nation, in our past efforts in space, cyber security and links to our partners at, as I indicated, aerospace industry and governmental partners provides a unique position for us to move forward in the interface of space and cyber security. Thank you so much, John. >> President Armstrong, thank you very much for the comments and congratulations to Cal Poly for being on the forefront of innovation and really taking a unique, progressive view and want to tip a hat to you guys over there, thank you very much for those comments, appreciate it. Bong, Department of Defense. Exciting, you've got to defend the nation, space is global, your opening statement. >> Yes, sir, thanks John, appreciate that. Thank you everybody, I'm honored to be in this panel along with Preston Armstrong of Cal Poly and my longtime friend and colleague Steve Jacques of the National Security Space Association to discuss a very important topic of a cybersecurity workforce development as President Armstrong alluded to. I'll tell you, both of these organizations, Cal Poly and the NSSA have done and continue to do an exceptional job at finding talent, recruiting them and training current and future leaders and technical professionals that we vitally need for our nation's growing space programs, as well as our collective national security. Earlier today, during session three, I, along with my colleague, Chris Samson discussed space cyber security and how the space domain is changing the landscape of future conflicts. I discussed the rapid emergence of commercial space with the proliferation of hundreds, if not thousands of satellites, providing a variety of services including communications, allowing for global internet connectivity, as one example. Within DOD, we continued to look at how we can leverage this opportunity. I'll tell you, one of the enabling technologies, is the use of small satellites, which are inherently cheaper and perhaps more flexible than the traditional bigger systems that we have historically used and employed for DOD. Certainly not lost on me is the fact that Cal Poly pioneered CubeSats 28, 27 years ago, and they set a standard for the use of these systems today. So they saw the value and benefit gained way ahead of everybody else it seems. And Cal Poly's focus on training and education is commendable. I'm especially impressed by the efforts of another of Steven's colleague, the current CIO, Mr. Bill Britton, with his high energy push to attract the next generation of innovators. Earlier this year, I had planned on participating in this year's cyber innovation challenge in June, Oops, Cal Poly hosts California middle, and high school students, and challenge them with situations to test their cyber knowledge. I tell you, I wish I had that kind of opportunity when I was a kid, unfortunately, the pandemic changed the plan, but I truly look forward to future events such as these, to participate in. Now, I want to recognize my good friend, Steve Jacques, whom I've known for perhaps too long of a time here, over two decades or so, who was an acknowledged space expert and personally I've truly applaud him for having the foresight a few years back to form the National Security Space Association to help the entire space enterprise navigate through not only technology, but policy issues and challenges and paved the way for operationalizing space. Space, it certainly was fortifying domain, it's not a secret anymore, and while it is a unique area, it shares a lot of common traits with the other domains, such as land, air, and sea, obviously all are strategically important to the defense of the United States. In conflict, they will all be contested and therefore they all need to be defended. One domain alone will not win future conflicts, and in a joint operation, we must succeed in all. So defending space is critical, as critical as to defending our other operational domains. Funny, space is the only sanctuary available only to the government. Increasingly as I discussed in a previous session, commercial space is taking the lead in a lot of different areas, including R&D, the so-called new space. So cybersecurity threat is even more demanding and even more challenging. The U.S. considers and futhered access to and freedom to operate in space, vital to advancing security, economic prosperity and scientific knowledge of the country, thus making cyberspace an inseparable component of America's financial, social government and political life. We stood up US Space Force a year ago or so as the newest military service. Like the other services, its mission is to organize, train and equip space forces in order to protect U.S. and allied interest in space and to provide spacecape builders who joined force. Imagine combining that U.S. Space Force with the U.S. Cyber Command to unify the direction of the space and cyberspace operation, strengthen DOD capabilities and integrate and bolster a DOD cyber experience. Now, of course, to enable all of this requires a trained and professional cadre of cyber security experts, combining a good mix of policy, as well as a high technical skill set. Much like we're seeing in STEM, we need to attract more people to this growing field. Now, the DOD has recognized the importance to the cybersecurity workforce, and we have implemented policies to encourage its growth. Back in 2013, the Deputy Secretary of Defense signed a DOD Cyberspace Workforce Strategy, to create a comprehensive, well-equipped cyber security team to respond to national security concerns. Now, this strategy also created a program that encourages collaboration between the DOD and private sector employees. We call this the Cyber Information Technology Exchange program, or CITE that it's an exchange program, which is very interesting in which a private sector employee can naturally work for the DOD in a cyber security position that spans across multiple mission critical areas, important to the DOD. A key responsibility of the cyber security community is military leaders, unrelated threats, and the cyber security actions we need to have to defeat these threats. We talked about rapid acquisition, agile business processes and practices to speed up innovation, likewise, cyber security must keep up with this challenge. So cyber security needs to be right there with the challenges and changes, and this requires exceptional personnel. We need to attract talent, invest in the people now to grow a robust cybersecurity workforce for the future. I look forward to the panel discussion, John, thank you. >> Thank you so much, Bob for those comments and, you know, new challenges or new opportunities and new possibilities and freedom to operate in space is critical, thank you for those comments, looking forward to chatting further. Steve Jacques, Executive Director of NSSA, you're up, opening statement. >> Thank you, John and echoing Bongs, thanks to Cal Poly for pulling this important event together and frankly, for allowing the National Security Space Association be a part of it. Likewise, on behalf of the association, I'm delighted and honored to be on this panel of President Armstrong, along with my friend and colleague, Bong Gumahad. Something for you all to know about Bong, he spent the first 20 years of his career in the Air Force doing space programs. He then went into industry for several years and then came back into government to serve, very few people do that. So Bong, on behalf of the space community, we thank you for your lifelong devotion to service to our nation, we really appreciate that. And I also echo a Bong shout out to that guy, Bill Britton. who's been a long time co-conspirator of ours for a long time, and you're doing great work there in the cyber program at Cal Poly, Bill, keep it up. But Professor Armstrong, keep a close eye on him. (laughter) I would like to offer a little extra context to the great comments made by President Armstrong and Bong. And in our view, the timing of this conference really could not be any better. We all recently reflected again on that tragic 9/11 surprise attack on our homeland and it's an appropriate time we think to take pause. While a percentage of you in the audience here weren't even born or were babies then, for the most of us, it still feels like yesterday. And moreover, a tragedy like 9/11 has taught us a lot to include, to be more vigilant, always keep our collective eyes and ears open, to include those "eyes and ears from space," making sure nothing like this ever happens again. So this conference is a key aspect, protecting our nation requires we work in a cyber secure environment at all times. But you know, the fascinating thing about space systems is we can't see 'em. Now sure, we see space launches, man, there's nothing more invigorating than that. But after launch they become invisible, so what are they really doing up there? What are they doing to enable our quality of life in the United States and in the world? Well to illustrate, I'd like to paraphrase elements of an article in Forbes magazine, by Bongs and my good friend, Chuck Beames, Chuck is a space guy, actually had Bongs job a few years in the Pentagon. He's now Chairman and Chief Strategy Officer at York Space Systems and in his spare time, he's Chairman of the Small Satellites. Chuck speaks in words that everyone can understand, so I'd like to give you some of his words out of his article, paraphrase somewhat, so these are Chuck's words. "Let's talk about average Joe and plain Jane. "Before heading to the airport for a business trip "to New York city, Joe checks the weather forecast, "informed by NOAA's weather satellites, "to see what to pack for the trip. "He then calls an Uber, that space app everybody uses, "it matches riders with drivers via GPS, "to take him to the airport. "So Joe has launched in the airport, "unbeknownst to him, his organic lunch is made "with the help of precision farming "made possible to optimize the irrigation and fertilization "with remote spectral sensing coming from space and GPS. "On the plane, the pilot navigates around weather, "aided by GPS and NOAA's weather satellites "and Joe makes his meeting on time "to join his New York colleagues in a video call "with a key customer in Singapore, "made possible by telecommunication satellites. "En route to his next meeting, "Joe receives notice changing the location of the meeting "to the other side of town. "So he calmly tells Siri to adjust the destination "and his satellite-guided Google maps redirect him "to the new location. "That evening, Joe watches the news broadcast via satellite, "report details of meeting among world leaders, "discussing the developing crisis in Syria. "As it turns out various forms of "'remotely sensed information' collected from satellites "indicate that yet another banned chemical weapon "may have been used on its own people. "Before going to bed, Joe decides to call his parents "and congratulate them for their wedding anniversary "as they cruise across the Atlantic, "made possible again by communication satellites "and Joe's parents can enjoy the call "without even wondering how it happened. "The next morning back home, "Joe's wife, Jane is involved in a car accident. "Her vehicle skids off the road, she's knocked unconscious, "but because of her satellite equipped OnStar system, "the crash is detected immediately, "and first responders show up on the scene in time. "Joe receives the news, books an early trip home, "sends flowers to his wife "as he orders another Uber to the airport. "Over that 24 hours, "Joe and Jane used space system applications "for nearly every part of their day. "Imagine the consequences if at any point "they were somehow denied these services, "whether they be by natural causes or a foreign hostility. "In each of these satellite applications used in this case, "were initially developed for military purposes "and continued to be, but also have remarkable application "on our way of life, just many people just don't know that." So ladies and gentlemen, now you know, thanks to Chuck Beames. Well, the United States has a proud heritage of being the world's leading space-faring nation. Dating back to the Eisenhower and Kennedy years, today, we have mature and robust systems operating from space, providing overhead reconnaissance to "watch and listen," provide missile warning, communications, positioning, navigation, and timing from our GPS system, much of which you heard in Lieutenant General JT Thomson's earlier speech. These systems are not only integral to our national security, but also to our quality of life. As Chuck told us, we simply no longer can live without these systems as a nation and for that matter, as a world. But over the years, adversaries like China, Russia and other countries have come to realize the value of space systems and are aggressively playing catch up while also pursuing capabilities that will challenge our systems. As many of you know, in 2007, China demonstrated its ASAT system by actually shooting down one of its own satellites and has been aggressively developing counterspace systems to disrupt ours. So in a heavily congested space environment, our systems are now being contested like never before and will continue to be. Well, as a Bong mentioned, the United States have responded to these changing threats. In addition to adding ways to protect our system, the administration and the Congress recently created the United States Space Force and the operational United States Space Command, the latter of which you heard President Armstrong and other Californians hope is going to be located at Vandenberg Air Force Base. Combined with our intelligence community, today we have focused military and civilian leadership now in space, and that's a very, very good thing. Commensurately on the industry side, we did create the National Security Space Association, devoted solely to supporting the National Security Space Enterprise. We're based here in the DC area, but we have arms and legs across the country and we are loaded with extraordinary talent in scores of former government executives. So NSSA is joined at the hip with our government customers to serve and to support. We're busy with a multitude of activities underway, ranging from a number of thought-provoking policy papers, our recurring spacetime webcasts, supporting Congress's space power caucus, and other main serious efforts. Check us out at nssaspace.org. One of our strategic priorities and central to today's events is to actively promote and nurture the workforce development, just like Cal-Poly. We will work with our U.S. government customers, industry leaders, and academia to attract and recruit students to join the space world, whether in government or industry, and to assist in mentoring and training as their careers progress. On that point, we're delighted to be working with Cal Poly as we hopefully will undertake a new pilot program with them very soon. So students stay tuned, something I can tell you, space is really cool. While our nation's satellite systems are technical and complex, our nation's government and industry workforce is highly diverse, with a combination of engineers, physicists and mathematicians, but also with a large non-technical expertise as well. Think about how government gets these systems designed, manufactured, launching into orbit and operating. They do this via contracts with our aerospace industry, requiring talents across the board, from cost estimating, cost analysis, budgeting, procurement, legal, and many other support tasks that are integral to the mission. Many thousands of people work in the space workforce, tens of billions of dollars every year. This is really cool stuff and no matter what your education background, a great career to be part of. In summary, as Bong had mentioned as well, there's a great deal of exciting challenges ahead. We will see a new renaissance in space in the years ahead and in some cases it's already begun. Billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Sir Richard Branson, are in the game, stimulating new ideas and business models. Other private investors and startup companies, space companies are now coming in from all angles. The exponential advancement of technology and micro electronics now allows a potential for a plethora of small sat systems to possibly replace older satellites, the size of a Greyhound bus. It's getting better by the day and central to this conference, cybersecurity is paramount to our nation's critical infrastructure in space. So once again, thanks very much and I look forward to the further conversation. >> Steve, thank you very much. Space is cool, it's relevant, but it's important as you pointed out in your awesome story about how it impacts our life every day so I really appreciate that great story I'm glad you took the time to share that. You forgot the part about the drone coming over in the crime scene and, you know, mapping it out for you, but we'll add that to the story later, great stuff. My first question is, let's get into the conversations, because I think this is super important. President Armstrong, I'd like you to talk about some of the points that was teased out by Bong and Steve. One in particular is the comment around how military research was important in developing all these capabilities, which is impacting all of our lives through that story. It was the military research that has enabled a generation and generation of value for consumers. This is kind of this workforce conversation, there are opportunities now with research and grants, and this is a funding of innovation that is highly accelerated, it's happening very quickly. Can you comment on how research and the partnerships to get that funding into the universities is critical? >> Yeah, I really appreciate that and appreciate the comments of my colleagues. And it really boils down to me to partnerships, public-private partnerships, you have mentioned Northrop Grumman, but we have partnerships with Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, Space X, JPL, also member of an organization called Business Higher Education Forum, which brings together university presidents and CEOs of companies. There's been focused on cybersecurity and data science and I hope that we can spill into cybersecurity and space. But those partnerships in the past have really brought a lot forward. At Cal Poly, as mentioned, we've been involved with CubeSat, we've have some secure work, and we want to plan to do more of that in the future. Those partnerships are essential, not only for getting the R&D done, but also the students, the faculty, whether they're master's or undergraduate can be involved with that work, they get that real life experience, whether it's on campus or virtually now during COVID or at the location with the partner, whether it may be governmental or industry, and then they're even better equipped to hit the ground running. And of course we'd love to see more of our students graduate with clearance so that they could do some of that secure work as well. So these partnerships are absolutely critical and it's also in the context of trying to bring the best and the brightest in all demographics of California and the U.S. into this field, to really be successful. So these partnerships are essential and our goal is to grow them just like I know our other colleagues in the CSU and the UC are planning to do. >> You know, just as my age I've seen, I grew up in the eighties and in college and they're in that system's generation and the generation before me, they really kind of pioneered the space that spawned the computer revolution. I mean, you look at these key inflection points in our lives, they were really funded through these kinds of real deep research. Bong, talk about that because, you know, we're living in an age of cloud and Bezos was mentioned, Elon Musk, Sir Richard Branson, you got new ideas coming in from the outside, you have an accelerated clock now in terms of the innovation cycles and so you got to react differently, you guys have programs to go outside of the defense department, how important is this because the workforce that are in schools and/or folks re-skilling are out there and you've been on both sides of the table, so share your thoughts. >> No, thanks Johnny, thanks for the opportunity to respond to, and that's what, you know, you hit on the nose back in the 80's, R&D and space especially was dominated by government funding, contracts and so on, but things have changed as Steve pointed out, allow these commercial entities funded by billionaires are coming out of the woodwork, funding R&D so they're taking the lead, so what we can do within the DOD in government is truly take advantage of the work they've done. And since they're, you know, paving the way to new approaches and new way of doing things and I think we can certainly learn from that and leverage off of that, saves us money from an R&D standpoint, while benefiting from the product that they deliver. You know, within DOD, talking about workforce development, you know, we have prioritized and we have policies now to attract and retain the talent we need. I had the folks do some research and it looks like from a cybersecurity or workforce standpoint, a recent study done, I think last year in 2019, found that the cyber security workforce gap in U.S. is nearing half a million people, even though it is a growing industry. So the pipeline needs to be strengthened, getting people through, you know, starting young and through college, like Professor Armstrong indicated because we're going to need them to be in place, you know, in a period of about maybe a decade or so. On top of that, of course, is the continuing issue we have with the gap with STEM students. We can't afford not have expertise in place to support all the things we're doing within DoD, not only DoD but the commercial side as well, thank you. >> How's the gap get filled, I mean, this is, again, you've got cybersecurity, I mean, with space it's a whole other kind of surface area if you will, it's not really surface area, but it is an IOT device if you think about it, but it does have the same challenges, that's kind of current and progressive with cybersecurity. Where's the gap get filled, Steve or President Armstrong, I mean, how do you solve the problem and address this gap in the workforce? What are some solutions and what approaches do we need to put in place? >> Steve, go ahead., I'll follow up. >> Okay, thanks, I'll let you correct me. (laughter) It's a really good question, and the way I would approach it is to focus on it holistically and to acknowledge it upfront and it comes with our teaching, et cetera, across the board. And from an industry perspective, I mean, we see it, we've got to have secure systems in everything we do, and promoting this and getting students at early ages and mentoring them and throwing internships at them is so paramount to the whole cycle. And that's kind of, it really takes a focused attention and we continue to use the word focus from an NSSA perspective. We know the challenges that are out there. There are such talented people in the workforce, on the government side, but not nearly enough of them and likewise on the industry side, we could use more as well, but when you get down to it, you know, we can connect dots, you know, the aspects that Professor Armstrong talked about earlier to where you continue to work partnerships as much as you possibly can. We hope to be a part of that network, that ecosystem if you will, of taking common objectives and working together to kind of make these things happen and to bring the power, not just of one or two companies, but of our entire membership thereabout. >> President Armstrong-- >> Yeah, I would also add it again, it's back to the partnerships that I talked about earlier, one of our partners is high schools and schools Fortune, Margaret Fortune, who worked in a couple of administrations in California across party lines and education, their fifth graders all visit Cal Poly, and visit our learned-by-doing lab. And you've got to get students interested in STEM at an early age. We also need the partnerships, the scholarships, the financial aid, so the students can graduate with minimal to no debt to really hit the ground running and that's exacerbated and really stress now with this COVID induced recession. California supports higher education at a higher rate than most states in the nation, but that has brought this year for reasons all understand due to COVID. And so our partnerships, our creativity, and making sure that we help those that need the most help financially, that's really key because the gaps are huge. As my colleagues indicated, you know, half a million jobs and I need you to look at the students that are in the pipeline, we've got to enhance that. And the placement rates are amazing once the students get to a place like Cal Poly or some of our other amazing CSU and UC campuses, placement rates are like 94%. Many of our engineers, they have jobs lined up a year before they graduate. So it's just going to take a key partnerships working together and that continued partnership with government local, of course, our state, the CSU, and partners like we have here today, both Steve and Bong so partnerships is the thing. >> You know, that's a great point-- >> I could add, >> Okay go ahead. >> All right, you know, the collaboration with universities is one that we put on lot of emphasis here, and it may not be well known fact, but just an example of national security, the AUC is a national centers of academic excellence in cyber defense works with over 270 colleges and universities across the United States to educate and certify future cyber first responders as an example. So that's vibrant and healthy and something that we ought to take advantage of. >> Well, I got the brain trust here on this topic. I want to get your thoughts on this one point, 'cause I'd like to define, you know, what is a public-private partnership because the theme that's coming out of the symposium is the script has been flipped, it's a modern era, things are accelerated, you've got security, so you've got all of these things kind of happenning it's a modern approach and you're seeing a digital transformation play out all over the world in business and in the public sector. So what is a modern public-private partnership and what does it look like today because people are learning differently. COVID has pointed out, which is that we're seeing right now, how people, the progressions of knowledge and learning, truth, it's all changing. How do you guys view the modern version of public-private partnership and some examples and some proof points, can you guys share that? We'll start with you, Professor Armstrong. >> Yeah, as I indicated earlier, we've had, and I could give other examples, but Northrop Grumman, they helped us with a cyber lab many years ago that is maintained directly, the software, the connection outside it's its own unit so the students can learn to hack, they can learn to penetrate defenses and I know that that has already had some considerations of space, but that's a benefit to both parties. So a good public-private partnership has benefits to both entities and the common factor for universities with a lot of these partnerships is the talent. The talent that is needed, what we've been working on for years of, you know, the undergraduate or master's or PhD programs, but now it's also spilling into upskilling and reskilling, as jobs, you know, folks who are in jobs today that didn't exist two years, three years, five years ago, but it also spills into other aspects that can expand even more. We're very fortunate we have land, there's opportunities, we have ONE Tech project. We are expanding our tech park, I think we'll see opportunities for that and it'll be adjusted due to the virtual world that we're all learning more and more about it, which we were in before COVID. But I also think that that person to person is going to be important, I want to make sure that I'm driving across a bridge or that satellite's being launched by the engineer that's had at least some in person training to do that in that experience, especially as a first time freshman coming on campus, getting that experience, expanding it as an adult, and we're going to need those public-private partnerships in order to continue to fund those at a level that is at the excellence we need for these STEM and engineering fields. >> It's interesting people and technology can work together and these partnerships are the new way. Bongs too with reaction to the modern version of what a public successful private partnership looks like. >> If I could jump in John, I think, you know, historically DOD's had a high bar to overcome if you will, in terms of getting rapid... pulling in new companies, miss the fall if you will, and not rely heavily on the usual suspects, of vendors and the like, and I think the DOD has done a good job over the last couple of years of trying to reduce that burden and working with us, you know, the Air Force, I think they're pioneering this idea around pitch days, where companies come in, do a two-hour pitch and immediately notified of, you know, of an a award, without having to wait a long time to get feedback on the quality of the product and so on. So I think we're trying to do our best to strengthen that partnership with companies outside of the main group of people that we typically use. >> Steve, any reaction, any comment to add? >> Yeah, I would add a couple and these are very excellent thoughts. It's about taking a little gamble by coming out of your comfort zone, you know, the world that Bong and I, Bong lives in and I used to live in the past, has been quite structured. It's really about, we know what the threat is, we need to go fix it, we'll design as if as we go make it happen, we'll fly it. Life is so much more complicated than that and so it's really, to me, I mean, you take an example of the pitch days of Bong talks about, I think taking a gamble by attempting to just do a lot of pilot programs, work the trust factor between government folks and the industry folks and academia, because we are all in this together in a lot of ways. For example, I mean, we just sent a paper to the white house at their request about, you know, what would we do from a workforce development perspective and we hope to embellish on this over time once the initiative matures, but we have a piece of it for example, is a thing we call "clear for success," getting back to president Armstrong's comments so at a collegiate level, you know, high, high, high quality folks are in high demand. So why don't we put together a program that grabs kids in their underclass years, identifies folks that are interested in doing something like this, get them scholarships, have a job waiting for them that they're contracted for before they graduate, and when they graduate, they walk with an SCI clearance. We believe that can be done, so that's an example of ways in which public-private partnerships can happen to where you now have a talented kid ready to go on day one. We think those kinds of things can happen, it just gets back down to being focused on specific initiatives, giving them a chance and run as many pilot programs as you can, like pitch days. >> That's a great point, it's a good segue. Go ahead, President Armstrong. >> I just want to jump in and echo both the Bong and Steve's comments, but Steve that, you know, your point of, you know our graduates, we consider them ready day one, well they need to be ready day one and ready to go secure. We totally support that and love to follow up offline with you on that. That's exciting and needed, very much needed more of it, some of it's happening, but we certainly have been thinking a lot about that and making some plans. >> And that's a great example, a good segue. My next question is kind of re-imagining these workflows is kind of breaking down the old way and bringing in kind of the new way, accelerate all kinds of new things. There are creative ways to address this workforce issue and this is the next topic, how can we employ new creative solutions because let's face it, you know, it's not the days of get your engineering degree and go interview for a job and then get slotted in and get the intern, you know, the programs and you'd matriculate through the system. This is multiple disciplines, cybersecurity points at that. You could be smart in math and have a degree in anthropology and be one of the best cyber talents on the planet. So this is a new, new world, what are some creative approaches that's going to work for you? >> Alright, good job, one of the things, I think that's a challenge to us is, you know, somehow we got me working for, with the government, sexy right? You know, part of the challenge we have is attracting the right level of skill sets and personnel but, you know, we're competing, oftentimes, with the commercial side, the gaming industry as examples is a big deal. And those are the same talents we need to support a lot of the programs that we have in DOD. So somehow we have do a better job to Steve's point about making the work within DOD, within the government, something that they would be interested early on. So attract them early, you know, I could not talk about Cal Poly's challenge program that they were going to have in June inviting high school kids really excited about the whole idea of space and cyber security and so on. Those are some of the things that I think we have to do and continue to do over the course of the next several years. >> Awesome, any other creative approaches that you guys see working or might be an idea, or just to kind of stoke the ideation out there? Internships, obviously internships are known, but like, there's got to be new ways. >> Alright, I think you can take what Steve was talking about earlier, getting students in high school and aligning them sometimes at first internship, not just between the freshman and sophomore year, but before they enter Cal Poly per se and they're involved. So I think that's absolutely key, getting them involved in many other ways. We have an example of upskilling or work redevelopment here in the central coast, PG&E Diablo nuclear plant that is going to decommission in around 2024. And so we have a ongoing partnership to work and reposition those employees for the future. So that's, you know, engineering and beyond but think about that just in the manner that you were talking about. So the upskilling and reskilling, and I think that's where, you know, we were talking about that Purdue University, other California universities have been dealing with online programs before COVID, and now with COVID so many more Faculty were pushed into that area, there's going to be a much more going and talk about workforce development in upskilling and reskilling, the amount of training and education of our faculty across the country in virtual and delivery has been huge. So there's always a silver linings in the cloud. >> I want to get your guys' thoughts on one final question as we end the segment, and we've seen on the commercial side with cloud computing on these highly accelerated environments where, you know, SAS business model subscription, and that's on the business side, but one of the things that's clear in this trend is technology and people work together and technology augments the people components. So I'd love to get your thoughts as we look at a world now, we're living in COVID, and Cal Poly, you guys have remote learning right now, it's at the infancy, it's a whole new disruption, if you will, but also an opportunity enable new ways to encollaborate, So if you look at people and technology, can you guys share your view and vision on how communities can be developed, how these digital technologies and people can work together faster to get to the truth or make a discovery, hire, develop the workforce, these are opportunities, how do you guys view this new digital transformation? >> Well, I think there's huge opportunities and just what we're doing with this symposium, we're filming this on Monday and it's going to stream live and then the three of us, the four of us can participate and chat with participants while it's going on. That's amazing and I appreciate you, John, you bringing that to this symposium. I think there's more and more that we can do. From a Cal Poly perspective, with our pedagogy so, you know, linked to learn by doing in-person will always be important to us, but we see virtual, we see partnerships like this, can expand and enhance our ability and minimize the in-person time, decrease the time to degree, enhance graduation rate, eliminate opportunity gaps for students that don't have the same advantages. So I think the technological aspect of this is tremendous. Then on the upskilling and reskilling, where employees are all over, they can re be reached virtually, and then maybe they come to a location or really advanced technology allows them to get hands on virtually, or they come to that location and get it in a hybrid format. So I'm very excited about the future and what we can do, and it's going to be different with every university, with every partnership. It's one size does not fit all, There's so many possibilities, Bong, I can almost imagine that social network that has a verified, you know, secure clearance. I can jump in, and have a little cloak of secrecy and collaborate with the DOD possibly in the future. But these are the kind of crazy ideas that are needed, your thoughts on this whole digital transformation cross-pollination. >> I think technology is going to be revolutionary here, John, you know, we're focusing lately on what we call visual engineering to quicken the pace of the delivery capability to warfighter as an example, I think AI, Machine Language, all that's going to have a major play in how we operate in the future. We're embracing 5G technologies, and the ability for zero latency, more IOT, more automation of the supply chain, that sort of thing, I think the future ahead of us is very encouraging, I think it's going to do a lot for national defense, and certainly the security of the country. >> Steve, your final thoughts, space systems are systems, and they're connected to other systems that are connected to people, your thoughts on this digital transformation opportunity. >> Such a great question and such a fun, great challenge ahead of us. Echoing my colleagues sentiments, I would add to it, you know, a lot of this has, I think we should do some focusing on campaigning so that people can feel comfortable to include the Congress to do things a little bit differently. You know, we're not attuned to doing things fast, but the dramatic, you know, the way technology is just going like crazy right now, I think it ties back to, hoping to convince some of our senior leaders and what I call both sides of the Potomac river, that it's worth taking this gamble, we do need to take some of these things you know, in a very proactive way. And I'm very confident and excited and comfortable that this is going to be a great time ahead and all for the better. >> You know, I always think of myself when I talk about DC 'cause I'm not a lawyer and I'm not a political person, but I always say less lawyers, more techies than in Congress and Senate, so (laughter)I always get in trouble when I say that. Sorry, President Armstrong, go ahead. >> Yeah, no, just one other point and Steve's alluded to this and Bong did as well, I mean, we've got to be less risk averse in these partnerships, that doesn't mean reckless, but we have to be less risk averse. And also, as you talk about technology, I have to reflect on something that happened and you both talked a bit about Bill Britton and his impact on Cal Poly and what we're doing. But we were faced a few years ago of replacing traditional data, a data warehouse, data storage, data center and we partnered with AWS and thank goodness, we had that in progress and it enhanced our bandwidth on our campus before COVID hit, and with this partnership with the digital transformation hub, so there's a great example where we had that going. That's not something we could have started, "Oh COVID hit, let's flip that switch." And so we have to be proactive and we also have to not be risk-averse and do some things differently. That has really salvaged the experience for our students right now, as things are flowing well. We only have about 12% of our courses in person, those essential courses and I'm just grateful for those partnerships that I have talked about today. >> And it's a shining example of how being agile, continuous operations, these are themes that expand the space and the next workforce needs to be built. Gentlemen, thank you very much for sharing your insights, I know Bong, you're going to go into the defense side of space in your other sessions. Thank you gentlemen, for your time, for a great session, I appreciate it. >> Thank you. >> Thank you gentlemen. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, thank you all. I'm John Furey with The Cube here in Palo Alto, California covering and hosting with Cal Poly, the Space and Cybersecurity Symposium 2020, thanks for watching. (bright atmospheric music)

>> Narrator: From around the globe. It's theCUBE covering space in cybersecurity symposium 2020 hosted by Cal Poly. >> Hello, everyone. Welcome to the space and cybersecurity symposium, 2020 hosted by Cal Poly where the intersection of space and security are coming together. I'm John Furrier, your host with theCUBE here in California. I want to welcome our featured guest, Lieutenant General, John F. Thompson with the United States Space Force approach to cybersecurity. That's the topic of this session. And of course he's the commander of the space and missile system center in Los Angeles Air Force Base. Also heading up Space Force. General, thank you for coming on. I really appreciate to you kicking this off. Welcome to the symposium. >> Hey, so thank you very much, John, for that very kind introduction. Also very much thank you to Cal Poly for this opportunity to speak to this audience today. Also a special shout out to one of the organizers, Dustin Debrun, for all of his work, helping get us to this point. Ladies and gentlemen as a John mentioned, I'm JT Thompson. I lead the 6,000 men and women of the United States Space Force's Space and Missile System Center, which is headquartered here at Los Angeles Air Force Base and El Segundo. If you're not quite sure where that's at, it's about a mile and a half from LAX. This is our main operating location, but we do have a number of other operating locations around the country. We're about 500 people at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and an about another 500 people on the front range of the Rockies between Colorado Springs and Denver plus a smattering of other much smaller operating locations nationwide. We're responsible for acquiring, developing and sustaining the United States Space Force's, critical space assets. That includes the satellites in the space layer and also on the ground layer our ground segments to operate those satellites. And we also are in charge of procuring launch services for the US Space Force and a number of our critical mission partners across the Department of Defense and the intelligence community. Just as a couple of examples of some of the things we do, if you're unfamiliar with our work we developed and currently sustain the 31 satellite GPS constellation that satellite constellation, while originally intended to help with global navigation, those GPS signals have provided trillions of dollars in unanticipated value to the global economy over the past three decades. GPS is everywhere. I think everybody realizes that. Agriculture, banking, the stock market, the airline industry, separate and distinct navigation systems. It's really pervasive across both capabilities for our Department of Defense and capabilities for our economy and individuals, billions of individuals across our country and the planet. Some of the other work we do for instance, in the communications sector, secure communications satellites that we designed and build that link America's sons and daughters serving in the military around the world and really enable real time support and comms for our deployed forces. And those of our allies. We also acquire infrared missile warning satellites that monitor the planet for missile launches that provide advanced warning to the US Homeland and to our allies in case some of those missile launches are nefarious. On a note, that's probably a lot closer to home, maybe a lot closer to home than many of us want to think about here in the state of California. In 2018, SMC jumped through a bunch of red tape and bureaucracy to partner with the US Forest Service during two of the largest wildfires in the state's history, the Camp and Woolsey fires in Northern California. As those fires spread out of control, we created processes on the fly to share data from our missile warning satellites. Those are satellites that are systems that are purpose built to see heat sources from thousands of miles above the planet. And we collaborated with the US Forest Service so that firefighters on the ground could track those fires more in real time and better forecast fires and where they were spreading, thereby saving lives and property by identifying hotspots and flareups for firefighters. That data that we were able to working with our contractors pass to the US Forest Service and authorities here in California, was passed in less than an hour as it was collected to get it into the hands of the emergency responders, the first responders as quickly as possible and doing that in an hour greatly surpassed what was available from some of the other assets in the airborne and ground-based fire spotters. It was really instrumental in fighting those fires and stopping their spread. We've continued that involvement in recent years, using multiple systems to support firefighters across the Western US this fall, as they battled numerous wildfires that unfortunately continue. Working together with the US Forest Service and with other partners we'd like to think that we've made a difference here, but there's still a lot more work to go. And I think that we should always be asking ourselves what else can space data be used for and how can we more rapidly get that space data to stakeholders so that they can use it for purposes of good, if you will. How else can we protect our nation? How else can we protect our friends and allies? I think a major component of the discussion that we will have throughout this conference is that the space landscape has changed rapidly and continues to change rapidly. Just over the past few years, John and I were talking before we went live here and 80 nations now have space programs. Nearly 80 space faring nations on the planet. If you just look at one mission area that the Department of Defense is interested in, and that's small launch, there are currently over 100 different small launch companies within the US industrial base vying for commercial DoD and civil payload capabilities, mostly to lower earth orbit. It's truly a remarkable time. If you factor in those things like artificial intelligence and machine learning, where we're revolutionizing really, the ways that we generate process and use data. It's really remarkable. In 2016, so if you think about this four years ago, NASA estimated that there were 28 terabytes of information transiting their space network each day. And that was four years ago. Obviously we've got a lot of desire to work with a lot of the people in the audience in this conference, we need to work with big thinkers, like many of you to answer questions on how best we apply data analytics to extract value and meaning from that data. We need new generations of thinkers to help apply cutting edge theories of data mining, cyber behaviorism, and Internet of Things 2.0, it's just truly a remarkable time to be in the space business and the cyber aspects of the space business are truly, truly daunting and important to all of us. Integrating cyber security into our space systems, both commercial and government is a mandate. it's no longer just a nice to have as the US Space Force and Department of the Air Force leadership has said many times over the past couple of years, space is becoming congested and contested. And that contested aspect means that we've got to focus on cyber security in the same way that the banking industry and cyber commerce focus on cybersecurity day in and day out. The value of the data and services provided is really directly tied to the integrity and availability of that data and services from the space layer, from the ground control segments associated with it. And this value is not just military, it's also economic and it's not just American, it's also a value for the entire world, particularly our allies, as we all depend upon space and space systems. Your neighbors and friends here in California that are employed at the space and missile system center work with network defenders. We work with our commercial contractors and our systems developers, our international allies and partners to try and build as secure and resilient systems as we can from the ground up that keep the global comments of space free and open for exploration and for commerce as John and I were talking earlier, before we came online, there's an aspect of cybersecurity for space systems, especially for some of our legacy systems, that's more, how do we bolt this on? Cause we fielded those space systems a number of years ago, and the challenges of cybersecurity in the space domain have grown. So we have a part that we have to worry about, bolting it on, but then we have to worry about building it in as we field new systems and build in a flexibility that realizes that the cyber threat or the cybersecurity landscape will evolve over time. It's not just going to be stagnant. There will always be new vulnerabilities and new threat vectors that we all have to look at. Look, as Secretary Barrett, who is our secretary of the air force likes to say most Americans use space before they have their first cup of coffee in the morning. The American way of life really depends on space. And as part of the United States Space Force, we work with defense leaders, our Congress joint, and international military teammates and industry to ensure American leadership in space. I really thank you for this opportunity to address the audience today, John, and thanks so much to Cal Poly for letting me be one of the speakers at this event. I've really looked forward to this for several months. And so with that, I look forward to your questions as we kind of move along here. >> General, thank you very much for those awesome introductory statement. For the folks watching on the stream, Brigadier General Carthan's going to be in the chat, answering any questions, feel free to chat away. He's the vice commander of Space and Missile System Center, he'll be available. A couple of comments from your keynote before I get to my questions. Cause it just jumped into my head. You mentioned the benefits of say space with the fires in California. We're living that here. That's really realtime. That's a benefit. You also mentioned the ability for more people launching payloads into space. I'm only imagined Moore's law smaller, faster, cheaper applies to rockets too. So I'm imagining you have the benefits of space and you have now more potential objects flying out sanctioned and maybe unsanctioned. So is it going to be more rules around that? This is an interesting question cause it's exciting Space Force, but for all the good there is potentially bad out there. >> Yeah. So John, I think the basics of your question is as space becomes more congested and contested, is there a need for more international norms of how satellites fly in space? What kind of basic features satellites have to perhaps de orbit themselves? What kind of basic protections should all satellites be afforded as part of a peaceful global commons of space? I think those are all fantastic questions. And I know that US and many allied policy makers are looking very, very hard at those kinds of questions in terms of what are the norms of behavior and how we field, and field as the military term. But how we populate using civil or commercial terms that space layer at different altitudes, lower earth orbit, mid earth orbit, geosynchronous earth orbit, different kinds of orbits, what the kind of mission areas we accomplished from space. That's all things that need to be definitely taken into account as the place gets a little bit, not a little bit as the place gets increasingly more popular day in and day out. >> I'm super excited for Space Force. I know that a new generation of young folks are really interested in it's an emerging, changing great space. The focus here at this conference is space and cybersecurity, the intersection. I'd like to get your thoughts on the approach that a space force is taking to cybersecurity and how it impacts our national goals here in the United States. >> Yeah. So that's a great question John, let me talk about it in two basic ways. At number one is an and I know some people in the audience, this might make them a little bit uncomfortable, but I have to talk about the threat. And then relative to that threat, I really have to talk about the importance of cyber and specifically cyber security, as it relates to that threat. The threats that we face really represented a new era of warfare and that new era of warfare involves both space and cyber. We've seen a lot of action in recent months from certain countries, notably China and Russia that have threatened what I referred to earlier as the peaceful global commons of space. For example, it threw many unclassified sources and media sources. Everybody should understand that the Russians have been testing on orbit anti-satellite capabilities. It's been very clear if you were following just the week before last, the Department of Defense released its 2020 military and security developments involving the People's Republic of China. And it was very clear that China is developing ASATs, electronic jammers, directed energy weapons, and most relevant to today's discussion, offensive cyber capabilities. There are kinetic threats that are very, very easy to see, but a cyber attack against a critical command and control site or against a particular spacecraft could be just as devastating to the system and our war fighters in the case of GPS and important to note that that GPS system also impacts many civilians who are dependent on those systems from a first response perspective and emergency services, a cyber attack against a ground control site could cause operators to lose control of a spacecraft or an attacker could feed spoofed data to assist them to mislead operators so that they sent emergency services personnel to the wrong address. Attacks on spacecraft on orbit, whether directly via a network intrusion or enabled through malware introduced during the system's production while we're building the satellite can cripple or corrupt the data. Denial-of-service type attacks on our global networks obviously would disrupt our data flow and interfere with ongoing operations and satellite control. If GPS went down, I hesitate to say it this way, cause we might elicit some screams from the audience. But if GPS went down a Starbucks, wouldn't be able to handle your mobile order, Uber drivers wouldn't be able to find you. And Domino's certainly wouldn't be able to get there in 30 minutes or less. So with a little bit of tongue in cheek there from a military operations perspective, it's dead serious. We have become accustomed in the commercial world to threats like ransomware and malware. And those things have unfortunately become commonplace in commercial terrestrial networks and computer systems. However, what we're seeing is that our adversaries with the increased competition in space these same techniques are being retooled, if you will, to use against our national security space systems day in and day out. As I said, during my opening remarks on the importance of cyber, the value of these systems is directly tied to their integrity. If commanders in the field, firefighters in California or baristas in Starbucks, can't trust the data they're receiving, then that really harms their decision making capabilities. One of the big trends we've recently seen is the move towards proliferated LEO constellations, obviously Space X's Starlink on the commercial side and on the military side, the work that DARPA and my organization SMC are doing on Blackjack and Casino, as well as some space transport layer constellation work that the space development agency is designing are all really, really important types of mesh network systems that will revolutionaries how we plan and field war fighting systems and commercial communications and internet providing systems. But they're also heavily reliant on cybersecurity. We've got to make sure that they are secured to avoid an accident or international damage. Loss of control of these constellations really could be catastrophic from both a mission perspective or from a satellites tumbling out of low earth orbit perspective. Another trend is introductions in artificial intelligence and machine learning, onboard spacecraft are at the edge. Our satellites are really not so much hardware systems with a little software anymore in the commercial sector and in the defense sector, they're basically flying boxes full of software. And we need to ensure that data that we're getting out of those flying boxes full of software are helping us base our decisions on accurate data and algorithms, governing the right actions and that those systems are impervious to the extent possible to nefarious modifications. So in summation, cybersecurity is a vital element of everything in our national security space goals. And I would argue for our national goals, writ large, including economic and information dimensions, the Space Force leadership at all levels from some of the brand new second lieutenants that general Raymond swore in to the space force this morning, ceremonially from the air force associations, airspace and cyberspace conference to the various highest levels, General Raymond, General DT Thompson, myself, and a number of other senior leaders in this enterprise. We've got to make sure that we're all working together to keep cyber security at the forefront of our space systems cause they absolutely depend on it. >> You mentioned hardware, software threats, opportunities, challenges. I want to ask you because you got me thinking of the minute they're around infrastructure. We've heard critical infrastructure, grids here on earth. You're talking about critical infrastructure, a redefinition of what critical infrastructure is, an extension of what we have. So I'd love to get your thoughts about Space Force's view of that critical infrastructure vis-a-vis the threat vectors, because the term threat vectors has been kicked around in the cyberspace. Oh you have threat vectors. They're always increasing the surface area. If the surface area is from space, it's an unlimited service area. So you got different vectors. So you've got new critical infrastructure developing real time, really fast. And you got an expanded threat vector landscape. Putting that in perspective for the folks that aren't really inside the ropes on these critical issues. How would you explain this and how would you talk about those two things? >> So I tell you, just like, I'm sure people in the security side or the cybersecurity side of the business in the banking industry feel, they feel like it's all possible threat vectors represent a dramatic and protect potentially existential threat to all of the dollars that they have in the banking system, to the financial sector. On the Department of Defense side, we've got to have sort of the same mindset. That threat vector from, to, and through space against critical space systems, ground segments, the launch enterprise, or transportation to orbit and the various different domains within space itself. Like I mentioned before, LEO, MEO and GEO based satellites with different orbits, all of the different mission areas that are accomplished from space that I mentioned earlier, some that I did mention like a weather tactical or wide band communications, various new features of space control. All of those are things that we have to worry about from a cyber security threat perspective. And it's a daunting challenge right now. >> Yeah, that's awesome. And one of the things we've been falling on the hardware side on the ground is the supply chain. We've seen, malware being, really put in a really obscure hardware. Who manufactures it? Is it being outsourced? Obviously government has restrictions, but with the private sector, you mentioned China and the US kind of working together across these peaceful areas. But you got to look at the supply chain. How does the supply chain in the security aspect impact the mission of the US space Force? >> Yeah. Yeah. So how about another, just in terms of an example, another kind of California based historical example. The very first US Satellite, Explorer 1, was built by the jet propulsion laboratory folks, not far from here in El Segundo, up in Pasadena, that satellite, when it was first built in the late 50s weighing a little bit, over 30 pounds. And I'm sure that each and every part was custom made and definitely made by US companies. Fast forward to today. The global supply chain is so tightly coupled, and frankly many industries are so specialized, almost specialized regionally around the planet. We focus every day to guarantee the integrity of every component that we put in our space systems is absolutely critical to the operations of those satellites and we're dependent upon them, but it becomes more difficult and more difficult to understand the heritage, if you will, of some of the parts that are used, the thousands of parts that are used in some of our satellites that are literally school bus sized. The space industry, especially national security space sector is relatively small compared to other commercial industries. And we're moving towards using more and more parts from non US companies. Cybersecurity and cyber awareness have to be baked in from the beginning if we're going to be using parts that maybe we don't necessarily understand 100% like an Explorer one, the lineage of that particular part. The environmental difficulties in space are well known. The radiation environment, the temperature extremes, the vacuum, those require specialized component. And the US military is not the only customer in that space. In fact, we're definitely not the dominant customer in space anymore. All those factors require us along with our other government partners and many different commercial space organizations to keep a very close eye on our supply chains, from a quality perspective, a security perspective and availability. There's open source reporting on supply training intrusions from many different breaches of commercial retailers to the infectious spread of compromised patches, if you will. And our adversaries are aware of these techniques. As I mentioned earlier, with other forms of attack, considering our supply chains and development networks really becomes fair game for our adversaries. So we have to take that threat seriously. Between the government and industry sectors here in the US. We're also working with our industry partners to enact stronger defenses and assess our own vulnerabilities. Last fall, we completed an extensive review of all of our major contracts here at Space and Missile System Center to determine the levels of cyber security requirements we've implemented across our portfolio. And it sounds really kind of businessy geeky, if you will. Hey, we looked at our contracts to make sure that we had the right clauses in our contracts to address cybersecurity as dynamically as we possibly could. And so we found ourselves having to add new language to our contracts, to require system developers, to implement some more advanced protective measures in this evolving cyber security environment. So that data handling and supply chain protections from contract inception to launch and operations were taken into account. Cyber security really is a key performance parameter for us now. Performance of the system, It's as important as cost, it's as important as schedule, because if we deliver the perfect system on time and on cost, it can perform that missile warning or that communications mission perfectly, but it's not cyber secure. If it's doesn't have cyber protections built into it, or the ability to implement mitigations against cyber threats, then we've essentially fielded a shoe box in space that doesn't do the CA the war fighter or the nation any good. Supply chain risk management is a major challenge for us. We're doing a lot to coordinate with our industry partners. We're all facing it head on to try and build secure and trusted components that keep our confidence as leaders, firefighters, and baristas as the case may be. But it is a challenge. And we're trying to rise to that challenge. >> This is so exciting this new area, because it really touches everything. Talk about geeking out on the tech, the hardware, the systems but also you put your kind of MBA hat on you go, what's the ROI of extra development and how things get built. Because the always the exciting thing for space geeks is like, if you're building cool stuff, it's exciting, but you still have to build. And cybersecurity has proven that security has to be baked in from the beginning and be thought as a system architecture. So you're still building things, which means you got to acquire things, you got to acquire parts, you got acquire build software and sustain it. How is security impacting the acquisition and the sustainment of these systems for space? >> Yeah. From initial development, through planning for the acquisition, design, development, our production fielding and sustainment, it impacts all aspects of the life cycle, John. We simply, especially from the concept of baking in cybersecurity, we can't wait until something is built and then try and figure out how to make it cyber secure. So we've moved way further towards working side by side with our system developers to strengthen cybersecurity from the very beginning of a systems development, cyber security, and the resilience associated with it really have to be treated as a key system attribute. As I mentioned earlier, equivalent with data rates or other metrics of performance. We like to talk in the space world about mission assurance and mission assurance has always sort of taken us as we technically geek out. Mission assurance has always taken us to the will this system work in space. Can it work in a vacuum? Can it work in as it transfers through the Van Allen radiation belt or through the Southern hemisphere's electromagnetic anomaly? Will it work out in space? And now from a resiliency perspective, yeah, it has to work in space. It's got to be functional in space, but it's also got to be resistant to these cybersecurity threats. It's not just, I think a General D.T Thompson quoted this term. It's not just widget assurance anymore. It's mission assurance. How does that satellite operator that ground control segment operate while under attack? So let me break your question a little bit, just for purposes of discussion into really two parts, cybersecurity, for systems that are new and cybersecurity for systems that are in sustainment are kind of old and legacy. Obviously there's cyber vulnerabilities that threatened both, and we really have to employ different strategies for defensive of each one. For new systems. We're desperately trying to implement across the Department of Defense and particularly in the space world, a kind of a dev sec ops methodology and practice to delivering software faster and with greater security for our space systems. Here at SMC, we have a program called enterprise ground services, which is a toolkit, basically a collection of tools for common command and control of different satellite systems, EGS as we call it has an integrated suite for defensive cyber capabilities. Network operators can use these tools to gain unprecedented insight to data flows and to monitor space network traffic for anomalies or other potential indicators of a bad behavior, malicious behavior, if you will, it's rudimentary at this point, but because we're using DevSecOps and that incremental development approach, as we scale it, it just becomes more and more capable. Every product increment that we feel. Here at LA Air Force Base, we have the United Space Force's West Coast Software Factory, which we've dubbed the Kobayashi Maru. They're using those agile DevOps software development practices to deliver a space awareness software to the combined space operations center. Affectionately called the CSpock that CSpock is just on the road from Cal Poly there in San Luis Obispo at Vandenberg Air Force Base. They've so securely linked the sea Spock with other space operation centers around the planet, our allies, Australia, Canada, and the UK. We're partnering with all of them to enable secure and enhanced combined space operations. So lots of new stuff going on as we bake in new development capabilities for our space systems. But as I mentioned earlier, we've got large constellations of satellites on orbit right now. Some of them are well in excess of a decade or more or old on orbit. And so the design aspects of those satellites are several decades old. But we still have to worry about them cause they're critical to our space capabilities. We've been working with an air force material command organization called CROWS, which stands for the Cyber Resiliency Office for Weapon Systems to assess all of those legacy platforms from a cyber security perspective and develop defensive strategies and potential hardware and software upgrades to those systems to better enable them to live through this increasingly cybersecurity concerned era that we currently live in. Our industry partners have been critical to both of those different avenues. Both new systems and legacy systems. We're working closely with them to defend and upgrade national assets and develop the capabilities to do similar with new national assets coming online. The vulnerabilities of our space systems really kind of threatened the way we've done business in the past, both militarily and in the case of GPS economically. The impacts of that cybersecurity risk are clear in our acquisition and sustainment processes, but I've got to tell you, as the threat vectors change, as the vulnerabilities change, we've got to be nimble enough, agile enough, to be able to bounce back and forth. We can't just say, many people in the audience are probably familiar with the RMF or the Risk Management Framework approach to reviewing the cyber security of a system. We can't have program managers and engineers just accomplish an RMF on a system. And then, hey, high five, we're all good. It's a journey, not a destination, that's cybersecurity. And it's a constant battle rhythm through our weapon systems lifecycle, not just a single event. >> I want to get to this commercial business needs and your needs on the next question. But before I go there, you mentioned agile. And I see that clearly because when you have accelerated innovation cycles, you've got to be faster. And we saw this in the computer industry, mainframes, mini computers, and then we started getting beyond maybe when the internet hit and PCs came out, you saw the big enterprises, the banks and government start to work with startups. And it used to be a joke in the entrepreneurial circles is that, there's no way if you are a startup you're ever going to get a contract with a big business enterprise. Now that used to be for public sector and certainly for you guys. So as you see startups out there and there's acquisition involved, I'm sure would love to have a contract with Space Force. There's an ROI calculation where if it's in space and you have a sustainment view and it's software, you might have a new kind of business model that could be attractive to startups. Could you share your thoughts on the folks who want to be a supplier to you, whether they're a startup or an existing business that wants to be agile, but they might not be that big company. >> John, that's a fantastic question. We're desperately trying to reach out to those new space advocates, to those startups, to those what we sometimes refer to, within the Department of Defense, those non traditional defense contractors. A couple of things just for thinking purposes on some of the things that we're trying to highlight. Three years ago, we created here at Space and Missile System Center, the Space Enterprise Consortium to provide a platform, a contractual vehicle, really to enable us to rapidly prototype, development of space systems and to collaborate between the US Space Force, traditional defense contractors, non traditional vendors like startups, and even some academic institutions. SPEC, as we call it, Space Enterprise Consortium uses a specialized contracting tool to get contracts awarded quickly. Many in the audience may be familiar with other transaction agreements. And that's what SPEC is based on. And so far in just three years, SPEC has awarded 75 different prototyping contracts worth over $800 million with a 36% reduction in time to award. And because it's a consortium based competition for these kinds of prototyping efforts, the barrier to entry for small and nontraditional, for startups, even for academic institutions to be able to compete for these kinds of prototyping has really lowered. These types of partnerships that we've been working through on spec have really helped us work with smaller companies who might not have the background or expertise in dealing with the government or in working with cyber security for their systems, both our developmental systems and the systems that they're designing and trying to build. We want to provide ways for companies large and small to partner together in support kind of mutually beneficial relationships between all. Recently at the Annual Air Force Association conference that I mentioned earlier, I moderated a panel with several space industry leaders, all from big traditional defense contractors, by the way. And they all stressed the importance of building bridges and partnerships between major contractors in the defense industry and new entrance. And that helps us capture the benefits of speed and agility that come with small companies and startups, as well as the expertise and specialized skill sets of some of those larger contractors that we rely on day in and day out. Advanced cyber security protections and utilization of secure facilities are just a couple of things that I think we could be prioritizing more so in those collaborations. As I mentioned earlier, the SPEC has been very successful in awarding a number of different prototyping contracts and large dollar values. And it's just going to get better. There's over 400 members of the space enterprise consortium, 80% of them are non traditional kinds of vendors. And we just love working with them. Another thing that many people in the audience may be familiar with in terms of our outreach to innovators, if you will, and innovators that include cyber security experts is our space pitch day events. So we held our first event last November in San Francisco, where we awarded over a two day period about $46 million to 30 different companies that had potentially game changing ideas. These were phase two small business innovative research efforts that we awarded with cash on the spot. We're planning on holding our second space pitch day in the spring of 2021. We're planning on doing it right here in Los Angeles, COVID-19 environment permitting. And we think that these are fantastic venues for identifying and working with high-speed startups, and small businesses who are interested in really, truly partnering with the US Air Force. It's, as I said before, it's a really exciting time to be a part of this business. And working with the innovation economy is something that the Department of Defense really needs to do in that the innovation that we used to think was ours. That 80% of the industrial base innovation that came from the Department of Defense, the script has been flipped there. And so now more than 70%, particularly in space innovation comes from the commercial sector, not from the defense business itself. And so that's a tsunami of investment and a tsunami of a capability. And I need to figure out how to get my surfboard out and ride it, you know what I mean? >> Yeah, It's one of those things where the script has been flipped, but it's exciting because it's impacting everything. When you're talking about systems architecture? You're talking about software, you're talking about a business model. You're talking about dev sec opsx from a technical perspective, but now you have a business model innovation. All the theaters are exploding in innovation, technical, business, personnel. This brings up the workforce challenge. You've got the cyber needs for the US Space Force, It's probably great ROI model for new kinds of software development that could be priced into contracts. That's a entrepreneurial innovation, you've got the business model theater, you've got the personnel. How does the industry adopt and change? You guys are clearly driving this. How does the industry adjust to you? >> Yeah. So I think a great way to answer that question is to just talk about the kind of people that we're trying to prioritize in the US Space Force from an acquisition perspective, and in this particular case from a cybersecurity perspective. As I mentioned earlier, it's the most exciting time to be in space programs, really since the days of Apollo. Just to put it in terms that maybe have an impact with the audience. From 1957 until today, approximately 9,000 satellites have been launched from the various space varying countries around the planet. Less than 2000 of those 9,000 are still up on orbit and operational. And yet in the new space regime players like Space X have plans to launch, 12,000 satellites for some of their constellations alone. It really is a remarkable time in terms of innovation and fielding of space capabilities and all of those space capabilities, whether they're commercial, civil, or defense are going to require appropriate cybersecurity protections. It's just a really exciting time to be working in stuff like this. And so folks like the folks in this audience who have a passion about space and a passion about cybersecurity are just the kind of people that we want to work with. Cause we need to make sure our systems are secure and resilient. We need folks that have technical and computing expertise, engineering skills to be able to design cyber secure systems that can detect and mitigate attacks. But we also, as you alluded to, we need people that have that business and business acumen, human networking background, so that we can launch the startups and work with the non traditional businesses. Help to bring them on board help, to secure both their data and our data and make sure our processes and systems are free as much as possible from attack. For preparation, for audience members who are young and maybe thinking about getting into this trade space, you got to be smart on digital networking. You got to understand basic internet protocols, concepts, programming languages, database design. Learn what you can for penetration or vulnerability testing and a risk assessment. I will tell you this, and I don't think he will, I know he will not mind me telling you this, but you got to be a lifelong learner and so two years ago, I'm at home evening and I get a phone call on my cell phone and it's my boss, the commander of Air Force Space command, General, J. Raymond, who is now currently the Chief of Space Operations. And he is on temporary duty, flying overseas. He lands where he's going and first thing he does when he lands is he calls me and he goes JT, while I was traveling, I noticed that there were eBooks available on the commercial airliner I was traveling on and there was an ebook on something called scrumming and agile DevSecOps. And I read it, have you read it? And I said, no, sir. But if you tell me what the title of the book is, I will read it. And so I got to go to my staff meeting, the very next week, the next time we had a staff meeting and tell everybody in the staff meeting, hey, if the four star and the three star can read the book about scrumming, then I'm pretty sure all of you around this table and all our lieutenants and our captains our GS13s, All of our government employees can get smart on the scrumming development process. And interestingly as another side, I had a telephone call with him last year during the holidays, where he was trying to take some leave. And I said, sir, what are you up to today? Are you making eggnog for the event tonight or whatever. And the Chief of Space Operations told me no, I'm trying to teach myself Python. I'm at lesson two, and it's not going so well, but I'm going to figure this out. And so that kind of thing, if the chief of staff or the Chief of Space Operations can prioritize scrumming and Python language and innovation in his daily schedule, then we're definitely looking for other people who can do that. And we'll just say, lower levels of rank throughout our entire space force enterprise. Look, we don't need people that can code a satellite from scratch, but we need to know, we need to have people that have a basic grasp of the programming basics and cybersecurity requirements. And that can turn those things into meaningful actions, obviously in the space domain, things like basic physics and orbital mechanics are also important spaces, not an intuitive domain. So under understanding how things survive on orbit is really critical to making the right design and operational decisions. And I know there's probably a lot, because of this conference. I know there's probably a whole lot of high speed cybersecurity experts out in the audience. And I need those people in the US Space Force. The country is counting on it, but I wouldn't discount having people that are just cyber aware or cyber savvy. I have contracting officers and logisticians and program managers, and they don't have to be high end cybersecurity experts, but they have to be aware enough about it to be able to implement cyber security protections into our space systems. So the skill set is really, really broad. Our adversaries are pouring billions of dollars into designing and fielding offensive and destructive space, cybersecurity weapons. They repeatedly shown really a blatant disregard of safety and international norms for good behavior on orbit. And the cyber security aspects of our space systems is really a key battleground going forward so that we can maintain that. As I mentioned before, peaceful global comments of space, we really need all hands on deck. If you're interested in helping in uniform, if you're interested in helping, not in uniform, but as a government employee, a commercial or civil employee to help us make cyber security more important or more able to be developed for our space systems. And we'd really love to work with you or have you on the team to build that safe and secure future for our space systems. >> Lieutenant General John Thompson, great insight. Thank you for sharing all that awesome stories too, and motivation for the young next generation. The United States Space Force approach to cybersecurity. Really amazing talk, thank you for your time. Final parting question is, as you look out and you have your magic wand, what's your view for the next few years in terms of things that we could accomplish? It's a super exciting time. What do you hope for? >> So first of all, John, thanks to you and thanks to Cal Poly for the invitation and thanks to everybody for their interest in cybersecurity, especially as it relates to space systems, that's here at the conference. There's a quote, and I'll read it here from Bernard Schriever, who was the founder, if you will, a legend in a DoD space, the founder of the Western development division, which was a predecessor organization to Space and Missile System Center, General Schriever, I think captures the essence of how we see the next couple of years. "The world has an ample supply of people "who can always come up with a dozen good reasons "why new ideas will not work and should not be tried, "but the people who produce progress are breed apart. "They have the imagination, "the courage and the persistence to find solutions." And so I think if you're hoping that the next few years of space innovation and cybersecurity innovation are going to be upon a pony ride at the County fair, then perhaps you should look for another line of work, because I think the next few years in space and cybersecurity innovation are going to be more like a rodeo and a very dynamic rodeo as it goes. It is an awesome privilege to be part of this ecosystem. It's really an honor for me to be able to play some small role in the space ecosystem and trying to improve it while I'm trying to improve the chances of the United States of America in a space war fighting environment. And so I thank all of you for participating today and for this little bit of time that you've allowed me to share with you. Thank you. >> Sir, thank you for your leadership and thank you for the time for this awesome event, Space and Cyber Cybersecurity Symposium 2020, I'm John Furrier on behalf of Cal Poly, thanks for watching. (mellow music)

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube covering HP Discover Virtual experience brought to you by HP. >>Hi. And welcome back to the Cube's coverage of HP Discover 2020. The virtual experience. I'm stew Minimum and happy to welcome back to the program. One of our cube alumni, Partha Narasimha He is the chief technology officer of Aruba. Which, of course, Aruba is an H p e company. Partha. Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you. Alright, so HP Discover is a big event. But, you know, for the networking people, of course, Aruba has its own event atmosphere, which happened, you know, just ahead of Discover you gave a keynote there some news there that we'll talk about. But, you know, just, you know, we bring our audience up to speed a little bit about, you know, the role of the networking inside of HP with Aruba. >>And so you know, when everybody's primary focus is networking and security. Uh, we really have expanded in the past few years and scope of the problems that we work on, what we call the intelligent edge and we define the edge is where people are, where the action is And how do you think about the kinds of experiences that end users care about? In addition to just connecting security into their absence of data on the upside, but also about the experiences in the physical world? And then there are these stakeholders that care about in an efficiency, productivity and so on. So the intelligent edge is it includes networking and security, but it really focuses on people and businesses. Hooks. >>Yeah, that's great. You know, Often we talk. It's, you know, the business outcomes that matter and experiences. It's you know so much about people. The current global pandemic absolutely has put a real focus on people. Um, you know, from a networking standpoint, of course, everybody's working from home a lot more. Um, you know, VPN services need to be considered. And you know what? I'm curious the impact from your business and your customers as to what's happening. >>I think this is where you know the focus on on the intelligent edge on people's experiences and business outcomes. Uh, is actually it was being having now, with the presence of endemic, if you're defining and go back to the definition of the edge as where people are and where the action is in the last 2 to 3 months. A lot of that exists in people's hearts in all of our homes. That's where that's where I am right now. And that's where we all of being, Um, so what does that mean for where the edges? And so we kind of see at least three phases in here, where right now we're focused on business continuity, Which is how do you know enable employees to continue to stay productive and connect securely to be enterprise data? Perhaps, but also, when you know some of the subsides, how do you bring people back safely? Go into physical spaces? And that's what we call business recovery. And then, as I talk to customers, you know, there's there's a spectrum of opinions about what is going to stake. And, you know, if you call that the new normal Andi, when an image goes out of our in our lives, it doesn't look like they're all going back to everywhere in January of Apple Siri. And so what is the new normal? And how do you how does a painful that's that's really what we're focused. >>Yeah, it's so important right now. Parts you know, when you look at enterprise is rapidly adjusting to to ah, situations is not necessarily what we think of. Of course, in the last few months, we've had to move very fast to be able to enable the workforce. Uh, I would love to hear what you're hearing from CEOs that there and customers and, you know, how are you helping them react to things you know much faster than they might have. >>So a lot of the business part unity. Actually, the focus is on 19 right? Because you know, how do you deploy technologies are actually leverage the technologies that have already been deployed in order to allow employees to stay productive from their homes? And there's been a spike in demand from for work from home solutions. Believe it or not, Aruba had we have built a solution for the remote access point way back in 2005 or 2006 when there was a different endemic, a time as a business continuity solution. But given the intensity of how this pandemic is affected all of our lives there was a strike and demand for work from home solutions not just from a connectivity and security perspective, but also every employee is home eyes very different, right? Based on the speed of your Internet connection. How many other people are home? How many other devices are connecting to the home network and what else is happening in the three Netflix streams running in parallel? And in this case, in that kind of environment, how do we now provide some visibility for key help employees getting there? So while we built a remote access point as a security solution, we ended up realizing that would be really solved. For the end user was a better user experience where they just see the same network that they see in the office. They see that home but more again, helping I t get some visibility and maybe troubleshoot some issues employees might have. So all three of these have been integral components of that solution and, you know, it became even more front and center well, when the wind and make it in terms of the site. >>Yeah, you know, when I think about security, has really, you know, in the last five years or so escalated only to the C suite. But the board level for constant consideration, has Has the current situation really raise the visibility of networking, you know, to the C suite. >>It has essentially, you know, the focus Until now. Could be in that. Okay, I my all of my employees get into the office and also and create an environment within the office building that allows for collaboration that allows for seamless connectivity and security. Um, but the pace at which we all have to go to this work from home situation, what's the time? And I was so shocked. I have to respond quickly on day after this phone, quickly where, you know, they could have done with a few dozen office buildings to now thousands of employees homes, and so >>be bigger. >>The all of the effort that we put in to create that solution earlier now pick off because we were already but this for for this situation. Even though, you know, we all live in interesting times, and I never want to see this again in my lifetime. But the fact that you know we had a focus on it for the last 15 years or so made it ready for us. But more importantly, as we look at, you know, as the business community face was about I p the business recovery, which is which is probably very a starting point right now. How do we now bring people back safely into lying to physical spaces? Now the stakeholders are you know, that set is expanding, right? Whether it's, you know, maybe we have the steam called the crisis management that is looking at Okay, how do I now manage Not just the crisis, but bringing people back in facilities is important, because if things space has to get rearranged in order to make certain density or spacing objectives, so they know they have some interest in there marketing. If you're a retailer, you know, hospitality and so on, they get interested in it. So there's a lot of other stakeholders now the lie on the infrastructure that I be has deployed primarily for security and security. Now that same infrastructure, it's gonna go benefit other stakeholders so that you get a competitive advantage in the business recovery face. Like if I'm able to safely brain a lot of my key employees that are required to be in physical spaces back in while addressing all of their concerns about the health and the safety associated with the recovery. That definitely gives me a competitive. And I believe that the solutions and Aruba has provided to I t. Until now are now. There's a There's a spark like Chinese on it because a lot of people, a lot of other stakeholders, could benefit from that infrastructure. That is already, >>Yeah, there's a lot of conversation going on in the industry about what things look like post endemic. And, you know, while there is still obviously a lot of uncertainties, we really think there will be some hybrid modes going on. So, you know, work from home might not stay permanent. But many companies, we're talking about being more flexible. So how does that impact? You know what you're offering? Cause, you know, I think about, you know, from the enterprise. You know, I needed a certain density. Now I need to think about Okay. How do I make sure that whether you're in the office or working remotely that I can have you participate and have the same kind of experience wherever you >>are? And, you know, this is again this is where we rely on the network infrastructure, right? Because if you dig ah, connected with the network that enables mobility is secure and is always available, it drives participation. That participation leverages net flow data to provide visibility toe into physical space. Right, And you think about even the recovery face. And we see, actually, three achieves three interesting scenarios and organizations with customers on how the network can help them in the recovery face. And it points to dispensing requirements are how do I reduce density so that I get some level of increased distancing amongst my employees. So that way you can look at naked data and figure out okay where the hearts thoughts are in terms of people density and can go make changes to those to try and lower that meet my internal guidelines or public safety guidelines to shared spaces are also medium of transmission, you know, off this particular virus or disease, and so shakes faces like conference route cafeteria tables and others that we can again use the network to figure out usage of those and potentially provide guidelines to cleaning crews to pay more attention to certain spaces in favor of others necessarily seeing the same level of usage on three. If in the unfortunate situation that some individual becomes a person of interest, we can quickly figure out all of the spaces that they have seen in the past. A certain window, including who else they could have overlap are being close to within that space, right? So at least you're not relying purely on human memory for contact tracing, there's a certain level of additional data that can be used to enhance a refresh human memory. That is really what we see happening in the business recovering. But you made a good point on what is the new normal. Because as we again after customers, I'm trying to gauge what is going to stick beyond the beyond the recovery feet, striking that you fast forward, let's say, a year from now we have a vaccine and the viruses control. We are going to go back to everywhere before the widest entered our lives in and on. The common opinion seems to be that some things are here to stay, and you look at work from home. You made a reference to that. You know, a lot of our customers do believe that there is gonna be an increased amount of work from home that stays with us, even even after the biases off all of our lives. That again, the special things we built for the business continuity continues forward. Even as you know, some of you know we start to get back into physical spaces security again. It's paramount rate the home, essentially as far as I t is concern is an uncontrolled in mind because they just don't have control over many things that happen in brackets homes. And so how do we bring in a layer of visibility and some degree of control in an environment that is inherently not subject to that level through the same way that that an office building can be? And those are the kinds of things that we're looking at. When we talk to higher education customers, for example, they are looking at plans for them. You know this upcoming fall semester, or for the next I can make your off running the classrooms at 30% occupancy. So if you had 100 students sign up for a class physically in the classroom, they only want to have the respondents and the other 70 could be on campus, but they're all dialed in remotely online past. But how do you manage this process or which study people get to be in the classroom learning way? And we believe that a lot of these work, the work flows and interesting use cases that directly address the intelligent edge are gonna become important as we get into that. >>Alright. And I'm glad you talked about the intelligent edge. So your keynote that you gave that atmosphere was accelerating innovation at the edge. And you have the tough task of being right before the Space X Speaker two. So give us a little bit our audience a little bit about you know, the innovation. How should we be thinking about the edge? >>So atmosphere visitor Two weeks ago, we announced the manage services platform on the SP for sharp and it's a little bit of a play because we really believe that we're building solutions that have 1/6 sense in in sensing what end users looking for what stakeholders looking for when problems show up and how do we quickly resolve that right, So that degree of focus on our data driven AI operations was key in us starting to coin the term DSP on it services platform. So it really looks at addressing not just connectivity connect and protect. We're also analyze and act because the telemetry data coming out of the network is really the same data that is that helps with the business recovery. But we won't actually bubble that up and put it into a common daily that helps us deliver a better connection and connectivity and security services, but also enable all of these experiences and outcomes at the edge. And so the CSP or then Ed services platform was the key announcement atmosphere this year. And we see that as the the foundation on which everything that we're gonna do starting now is going to get >>Yeah, I'm curious. You know, we talked about some of the the things that have been accelerated due to the current situation. After that respond work from home in the and the like. When you look at edge environment, is that something that you know? Is that something you see people, you know, accelerating them or they pausing them. Is it just kind of happening at the same pace any data or sense that you have from users right now. >>So edge is going to become even more important that we used to focus on the edge. We had the focus on edge for a while, but uncle, now until the pandemic it us. The assumption is always that people are going to show up in physical spaces and then let's focus on the experiences of the hour. I believe with the pandemic coming in, some of the power of choice has shifted towards the towards the user of the person in choosing whether they want to consume a particular service experience by going to a physical space or by staying at home and doing it on the radio. I look at the past few weeks, we've had a few. Both parties were used to me in person, and now we are doing it over a zoom or other video conferencing policies. So that choice moving over to the person means that we can't just assume that people are going to show up in physical spaces and then focus only on okay once they show up, what can I do about the experience of the outcomes? The focus on edge is now shifting to where we have even before, we have even look at enabling the technologies and experiences that entice people that convince people come into the physical space and consume that service on. But our experience and that means that the scope of what we do at the intelligent edge actually is gonna increase is gonna whiten. And that's the reason why it was timely that we were working on the ed Services platform. Even, you know, it started working on it long before the panoramic ever showed up. But that focus is now putting us in the right place. You know, from a competitive perspective, leverage all of the technologies that people so far, the package it up together to offer our customers something that is far beyond just connectivity and security. >>Great final question I have for you. You're talking about these, you know, not necessarily in person. Experience is here. We have, you know, did the Discover virtual experience give our audience just a little bit as to what they expect from Ruba and what you want people to take away from the Discover virtual experience when it comes to Aruba and networking at hp, >>right? And you know, the common way we kind of when we talked to some customers is always an association off of the Aruba brand todo a wireless lan. And you know what time in the past five years is being part of Hewlett Packard Enterprise? We've kind of expanded that into other networking and some some of the security functions that we also. But more importantly, I encourage everybody to go look at some of the technologies that we packaged together as orderly it services platform and how they can help. Our customers are not just like we are also all of the other stakeholders within their organizations, but to create that compelling experiences and outcomes at the edge. >>Excellent. Well, thank you so much for joining us. Appreciate all the updates. >>Thanks. Thanks for having me. >>Alright. Stay tuned for more coverage. HP discover virtual experience. I'm Stew Minimum. And thank you for watching the Cube. >>Yeah, yeah, yeah.

>>live from Las Vegas. It's the Cube covering Splunk dot com. 19. Brought to You by spunk >>Hey, welcome back. Everyone's two cubes coverage here in Las Vegas for spunk dot com. 19 dot com 19. This is slugs. 10th year doing dot Com Cube seventh year of coverage. We've watched the progression have security data market log files. Getting the data data exhaust turned into gold nuggets now is the centerpiece of data security, data protection and a variety of other great things and important things going on. And we're here to great guests from slug i n songs. Vice president and general manager of security markets and Friedrichs, a VP of security automation. Guys, great to see you again. We just saw you and there's reinforce. Thanks for coming back. >>Thank you for having us. >>So you guys announced security operation Sweet last year. Okay, now it's being discussed here. What's the update? What our customers doing? How are they embracing the security piece of it? >>Wow. Well, it's being a very busy year for us. Way really updated the entire suite. More innovation going in. Yes, six. Tato got announce and phantom and you be a every product is getting some major enhancement for concealing scale. For example, years now way have customers running in the cloud like 15 terabytes, and that's like three X and from It's like 50 terrifies 50 with Search has classes. So that's one example and fend him throughout the years is just lots of capabilities. We're adding a case. Management was a major theme, and that's actually the release before the current one. So we'll be, really, you know, 80 and focusing on that just to summarize sort of sweet right. You be a continue to be machine learning driven, and there's a lot of maturity that's that's going into the product, and there's a lot of more scale and backup. Restore was like one of the major features, because become more mission critical. But what's really, really, really exciting? It's how we're using a new product called Mission Control to bring everything all together. >>I want to get into the Mission control because I love that announcement. Just love The name was behind it, but staying on the sweet when they're talking about it's a portfolio. One of the things that's been consistent every year at dot com of our coverage and reporting has been wth e evolution of a platform on enabling platform. So has that evolves? What does the guiding principles remain? The same. How you guys sing because now you're shipping it. It's available. It's not just a point. Product is a portfolio and an ecosystem falling behind it. You know the APP, showcase, developer, Security and Compliance Foundation and platforms on Just I T ops and A I ops are having. So you have a variety of things coming out of for what's the guiding principle these days is continuing to push the security. You share the vision >>guiding principle and division. It's really way believe the world. As we digitize more as everything's happening, machines speed as people really need to go to analytics to bring insides into things and bring data into doing that's that's really turning that into doing so. It's the security nerve center vision that continue guide what we do, and we believe Security nerve center needs really data analytics and operations to come together and again, I'm gonna tell you, Mission Control is one of the first examples that we bring all of the entire stack together and you talk about ecosystem. It takes a village is a team sport. And I'm so excited to see everybody here. And we've done a lot of integrations as part of sweets to continue to mature more than 1900 AP I integrations more than 300 APS. Justice Phantom alone. That's a lot of automated actions. People can take >>the response from the people in the hallways and also the interviews have been very positive. I gotta get to Mission Control. Phantom was a huge success. You're a big part of building taking that into the world now. Part was flung. Mission Control. Love the name Mission Control. This is the headline, by the way, Splunk Mission Control takes off super sharp itching security operations. So I think Mission Control, I think NASA launching rockets Space X Really new innovation. Really big story behind his unification. You share where this came from, what it is what's in the announcement? >>Yeah. So this is all about optimizing how sock analysts actually work. So if you think about it, a sock typically is made up of literally a dozen different products and technologies that are all different consuls, different vendors, different tabs in your Web browser, so it for an analyst to do their job literally pivoting between all of these consoles. We call it swivel chair syndrome, like you're literally are frantically moving between different products. Mission Control ties those together, and we started by tying slugs products together. So we allow you to take our sin, which is enterprise security, or you be a product's monkey. Be a and phantom, which is our automation and orchestration platformer sore platform and manage them and integrate them into one single presentation layer to be able to provide that unified sock experience for the analyst So it it's an industry first, but it also boosts productivity. Leading analysts do their job more effectively to reduce the time it takes. So now you're able to both automate, investigate and detect in one unified presentation, layer or work surface. >>You know, the name evokes, you know, dashboards, NASA. But what that really was wasn't an accumulation, an extraction of data into service air, where people who were analysts do their job and managed launching rockets. But I want to ask you a question. Because of this, all is based on the underpinnings of massive amounts of volume of data and the old expression Rising tide floats all boats also is rising tide floats, Maur adversaries ransomware attacks is data attacks are everywhere. But also there's value in that data. So as the data volume grows, this is a big deal. How does mission Control help me manage to take advantage of that all you How do you guys see that playing out? >>Yes, Emission control really optimizes the time it takes to resolving incident. Ultimately, because you're able to now orient all of your investigation around a single notable event eso It provides a kn optimal work surface where an analyst can see the event interrogated, investigated triage, they can collaborate with others. So if I want to pull you into my investigation, we can use a chat ops that capability, whether it's directly in mission control or slack integration waken manage a case like you would with a normal case management toe be ableto drive your incident to closure, leveraging a case template. So if I want to pull in crisis communications team my legal team, my external forensics team, and help them work together as well. Case management lets me do that in triage that event. It also does something really powerful. High end mentioned. The operations layer the analytics in the data layer. Mission Control ties together the operational layer where you and I are doing work to the data layer underneath. So we're able to now run worries directly from our operational layer into the data layer like SPL quarries, which spunk is built on from the cloud where Mission Control is delivered from two on premise Face Plunk installations So you could have Michigan still running in the Cloud Splunk running on premise, and you could have multiple Splunk on premise installs. You could have won in one city, another one in another city or even another country. You could have a Splunk instance in the Cloud, and Mission Control will connect all of those tying them together for investigative purposes. So it's very powerful. >>That's a first huge, powerful when this comes back to the the new branding data to everywhere, and I see the themes everywhere, the new colors, new brake congratulations. But it's about things. What do ours doing stuff, thinking and making things happen. Connecting these layers not easy, okay? And diverse data is hard. Thio get access to, but diverse data creates great machine learning. Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay creates great business value. So way see a flywheel development and you guys got going on here. Can you elaborate on that? Dated everywhere And why this connective tissue that you're talking about is so important? Is it access to the war data? Is that flywheel happening? How do you see that playing out? >>I'll start with that because they were so excited where data to everything company or new tagline is turning data into doing. And this wouldn't be possible without technologies like Phantom coming in right way have traditionally been doing really great with enterprise was data platforms. And with an Alex now was phantom. We can turn that into doing now with some of the new solutions around data stream processing. Now we're able to do a lot of things in real time. On you mentioned about the scale, right scales changes everything. So for us, I think we're uniquely positioned in this new age of data, and it's exploding. But we have the technology to help your payment, and it's representing your business way. Have the analytics to help you understand the insights, and it's really the ones gonna impact day today enabling your business. And we have two engine to help you take actions. That's the exciting part. >>Is that what this flywheel, because diverse data is sounds great, makes sense more data way, see better? The machines can respond, and hopefully there's no blind spots that creates good eye. That kind of knows that if they're in data, but customers may not have the ability to do that. I think that's where the connecting these platforms together is important, because if you guys could bring on the data, it could be ugly data on his Chuck's data data, data, data. But it's not always in the form you need. Things has always been a challenge in the industry. How do you see that Flywheel? Yeah, developing. >>Yeah, I think one of the challenges is the normalization of the data. How do you normalize it across vendors or devices, you know. So if I have firewalls from Cisco, Palo Alto Checkpoint Jennifer alive, that day is not the same. But a lot of it is firewall blocked data, for example, that I want to feed into my SIM or my data platform and analyze similarly across endpoint vendors. You know you have semantic McAfee crowdstrike in all of these >>vendors, so normalization >>is really key and normalizing that data effectively so that you can look me in at the entire environment as a single from a single pane of glass. Essentially, that's response does really well is both our scheme on reed ability to be able to quarry that data without having a scheme in place. But then also, the normalization of that data eyes really key. And then it comes down to writing the correlation searches our analytics stories to find the attacks in that data. Next, right. And that's where we provide E s content updates, for example, that provide out of the box examples on how to look for threats in that data. >>So I'm gonna get you guys reaction to some observations that we've made on the Q. In the spirit of our cube observe ability we talked to people are CEOs is si sos about how they cloud security from collecting laws and workloads, tracking cloud APS and on premise infrastructure. And we ask them who's protecting this? Who is your go to security vendors? It was interesting because Cloud was in their cloud is number one if it's cloud are not number one, but they used to clear rely on tools in the cloud. But then, when asked on premise, Who's the number one? Splunk clearly comes up and pretty much every conversation. Xanatos. Not a scientific survey, it's more of it handpicks. But that means it's funk is essentially the number one provider with customers in terms of managing those workloads logs across ABS. But the cloud is now a new equation because now you've got Amazon, Azur and Google all upping their game on cloud security. You guys partner with it? So how do you guys see that? How do you talk cutters? Because with an enabling platform and you guys are offering you're enabling applications. Clouds have Apple case. So how do you guys tell that story with customers? Is your number one right now? How do you thread that needle into this explosive data in the cloud data on premise. What's the story? >>So I wish you were part of our security super session. We actually spent a lot of energy talking about how the cloud is shifting the paradigm paradigm of how software gets billed, deployed and consumed. How security needs to really sort of rethink where we start, right? We need to shift left. We need to make sure that I think you use the word observe ability, right? T you got to start from there. That's why as a company we bought, you know, signal effects and all the others. So the story for us is start from our ability to work with all the partners. You know, they're all like great partners of ours AWS and G, C, P and Microsoft. In many ways, because ecosystem for cloud it's important. We're taking cloud data. We're building cloud security models. Actually, a research team just released that today. Check that out and we'll be working with customers and building more and more use cases. Way also spend a lot of time with her. See, So customer advisory council just happened yesterday talking about how they would like us to help them, and part of that they were super super excited. The other part is what we didn't understand how complicated this is. So I think the story have to start in the cloudy world. You've gotto do security by design. You gotta think about automation because automation is everywhere. How deployment happens. I think we're really sit in a very interesting intersection off that we bring the cloud and on prime together >>the mission, See says, I want to get cameras in that room. I'm sure they don't want any cameras in the sea. So room Oliver taking that to the next level. It's a complexity is not necessarily a bad thing, because software contract away complexity is from the history of the computer industry that that's where innovation could happen, taking away complexity. How do you see that? Because Cloud is a benefit, it shouldn't be a hindrance. So you guys were right in the middle of this big wave. What? You're taking all this? >>Yeah. Look, I think Cloud is inevitable. I would say all of our customers in some form or another, are moving to the cloud, so our goal is to be not only deliver solutions from the cloud, but to protect them when they're in the cloud. So being able to work with cloud data source types, whether it's a jury, w s, G, C P and so on, is essential across our entire portfolio, whether it's enterprise security but also phantom. You know, one exciting announcement that we made today is we're open sourcing 300 phantom maps and making making him available with the Apache to get a license on get hubs so you'll be able to take integrations for Cloud Service is, like many eight of US service is, for example, extend them, share them in the community, and it allows our customers to leverage that ecosystem to be able to benefit from each other. So cloud is something that we work with not only from detection getting data in, but then also taking action on the cloud to be. Will it protect yourself? Whether it's you, I want to suspend an Amazon on your instance right to be able to stop it when it's when it's infected. For example, right those air it's finishing that whole Oodle Ooh and the investigate monitor, analyze act cycle for the cloud as we do with on from it. >>I think you guys in a really good position again citizen 2013. But I think my adjustment today would be talking to Andy Jackson, CEO of AWS. He and I always talk all the time around question he gets every year. Is Amazon going to kill the ecosystem? Runs afraid Amazon, he says. John. No, we rely on third party. Our ecosystem is super important. And I think as on premises and hybrid cloud becomes so critical. And certainly the Io ti equations with industrial really makes you guys really in a good position. So I think Amazon would agree. Having third party if you wanna call it that. I mean, a supplier is a critical linchpin today that needs to be scalable, >>and we need equal system for security way. You know, you one of the things I shared is really an asymmetric warfare. Where's the anniversary? You talk about a I and machine learning data at the end of the day is the oxygen for really powering that arm race. And for us, if we don't collaborate as ecosystem, we're not gonna have a apprehend because the other site has always say there's no regulations. There's no lawyers they can share. They can do whatever. So I think as a call to action for our industry way, gotta work together. Way got to really sort of share and events or industry together. >>Congratulations on all the new shipping General availability of E s six point. Oh, Phantoms continue to be a great success. You guys on the open source got an APB out there? You got Mission Control. Guys, keep on evolving Splunk platform. You got ABS showcase here. Good stuff. >>Beginning of the new date. Excited. >>We're riding the waves together with Splunk. Been there from day one, actually 30 year in but their 10th year dot com our seventh year covering Splunk. I'm John Ferrier. Thanks for watching. We'll be back with more live coverage. Three days of cube coverage here in Las Vegas. We'll be right back.

>>live from Boston, Massachusetts. It's the Q covering I. F s World Conference 2019. Brought to you by I. F s. >>Welcome back to I f s world Everybody, This is David Dante with Paul Dillon and you're watching the Cube, The leader in live tech coverage. Where here from? From the Heinz Auditorium. Nick Ward is here. He's the head of OM Digital Solutions for Rolls Royce and Scott Helmer, president of the F S aerospace and defense. Gentlemen, welcome to the Cube. Thanks for coming on. Thank you. Scott. I want to start with you. We heard a lot about digital transformation. You guys are in the heart of that. Ah, defense. Aerospace is one of those industries that hasn't been dramatically disrupted. Like publishing. Are you seeing taxis? It's a It's a high risk business. It's one that's highly in trench, but it's not safe from disruption. What are the major trends that you're seeing in your space and paint a picture for us? If you would, >>uh, that's a very good question. You're right. The same level of disruption related digital transformation has not yet common aerospace. Defense is that has come to some of the other league leading industries. But this is a whether it's land based operations, naval operations or aircraft operations. This is an asset intensive industry. It's characterized by a very connected network of organizations. Be the manufacturer's operators, subsystem, part suppliers or just maintainers. They stay connected throughout the asset life cycle in its entirety. I f F f s has a portfolio capability. There's four purpose underpinning the critical business processes of those organizations that enables us to be the digital thread to continue the connection of those organizations throughout that outs of life cycle, if you will, that sees this fall come to come to be at the heart of asset lifecycle Management on provides us with the opportunity to inform information insights for our customers. Like return on experience data on aircraft engines where an old GM like Rolls Royce, for example, can harvest that data to analyze the performance of those assets and ultimately optimized thereafter after service offerings. >>Who are the customers? I mean, there's a limited number of companies that make aircraft engines so you don't have a huge domain been numbers of those kinds of companies. But are the customers channel their partners the supply chain network >>Well, the ecosystem is actually large and extensive. They're very recognizable names, and it's certainly an industry that's characterized by significant growth. On the commercial side. Amaro continue is in the midst of a boom and is likely to continue to grow, are expected to continue to grow for at least another decorate decade. And on the defense side, we see military budgets continue or increasingly moving towards sustainment and serve it ization on a performance basis. So the number of organizations that are participating in that value chain whether they're just the upstream, only am so I should just upstream. But the Austrian Williams participate in the design and development are moving into the aftermarket sustainment and service support parts and subsystem supply, or ultimately, third part repair organizations. It's actually quite an extensive network participating in that asset life cycle. >>So, Nick, you know people here Rolls Royce, they think you know the iconic brand. We're gonna talk about cars, talk about your role at Rolls Royce and what's going on in your business. >>So my role I lead our product management function looking are digitally enabled. Service's so for 20 years we've been running a service we call total care. Total care is like a fixed dollar rate. Every time an aircraft flies, we paid a dollar rate for it. Flying. What's really great about that is we're incentivizing. No, I am exactly the same way that airline isn't said device. Keep the aircraft flying. It owns revenue for the airline. It owns revenue for us on that revolutionized relationship between oh am on operator. So within my role, it's about taking four division we call The Intelligent Engine. Intelligent Engine is recognizing the way that digital is starting to pervade the way we think about service is so we've talked about physical engine, big rotating piece of metal that people see service. Is that wrap around that on the digital brain that sits behind all of those sources? That's what we call the intelligent engine. >>Yes, so people sometimes think the mission critic critical piece of air travel is the reservation system. It's not. It's the thinness of the engines available that was lost in critical system, right? You mean like it? If you don't get your reservation Oh, well, somebody else will get it. Not not the end of the world But for the maintenance piece, that's all right. >>Job. You know, our fundamental mission is every rose was powered. Aircraft flies on time every time. All right, there's no disruption. There's no delay that works for the operator, for the airlines are owner of the aircraft. It works for us. And this is why the confluence of our incentives comes together and it really works well. >>So what role has technology played in terms of evolving that that experience? I mean, I'm sure, you know, years ago, it used to be a lot of tribal knowledge. Gut feel. Joe the mechanic really knew his stuff. Etcetera, etcetera, Powers. Technology evolved and changed your your business. >>So you had to go back to the business model, right? So technology should follow. The business model business model is fundamental risk transfer. So we take the risk off cost, fluctuation, availability, whatever it is away from the airline and we take it on to us is the Obama's Rolls Royce said the money's at risk. You gotta get really good forecasting. Four. Custom becomes your core skill almost because you've got to understand all the risk drivers understand how to optimize him, understand out of work around that in order to have a successful business. And you can't forecast without data without digital twins without all I ot and cloud and all the while the enablers allow you to sort of new to new generations of capability. >>So you're forecasting what probability of, ah, component failure, the life of ah, failure. How long it takes to bring stuff back on sure >>cost really on three different levels. So we do an engine forecast which is looking at the health of the life of the components in the engine, looking for any reasons why the engine might be forced off the wing. We're looking at a fleet level. So we're looking at all of the things that might affect the global fleet in terms of maintenance demands need for overhaul of those such things. And we forecast that out after 30 years, really accurately, as an engine leaves the factory, we know pretty much within 90 something percent everything that engine is going to require from the maintenance 20 to 30 years and then a network level. We're forecasting the capacity demand that we then need to meet within our maintenance shops globally. >>Well, He's obviously Paul. Been progress, right? We used to fly with very common four engine plains across the pond right now. Two engines. In fact, you don't want to fly in the four engine to engine more reliable. >>You've You've been a Rolls Royce for over 15 years. What have you seen as a result of all this technology is predicted maintenance technology. What impact is that? Had on equipment of reliability on life cycle on fuel efficiency. >>Huge, huge. I think if you don't have the data and you don't have the digital twin kind of capability behind you, you have to treat every engine like it's the worst engine in the fleet because you don't have the data tell you it isn't right. So everything is treated extremely extreme conservatism. If you have the data and you have the models and you have everything else around you, you treat engines, individuals. They have individual histories, individual configuration, individual experiences. Because of individuals. You tailor your maintenance intervention to keep that engine flying as long as you can on, you don't have to be his conservative. You can weed that conservatism out of the process, and that means it stays on wing 40 50% longer. It's flying for the airline that much longer. Revenues. Passengers are flying. There's less disruption. >>So what do you What do you do with my f s? What's the what's >>So Because we created this intelligent engine kind of next generation leap forward in that capability, we need data. So we have, ah, program we call the Blue Data Threat. The blue data traded in a global initiative that we're rolling through all of our 200 plus airline customers. How do we form a win win transaction with the airlines? Give us better data will make smarter decisions. You'll see less disruption, more availability. We'll share our data. Back with you is an operator. So this is a very simple, very nice cashless transactions. So with my intern X, because we share a number of customers, Scott has got a number of airline customers. Big airline customers were operating the maintenance system. What way do together? Is reform a plug in? It's like for us. We can go to an airline, and we can say you have total care inside to borrow an intel phrase. So he complied into the rosary service is seamlessly automated. The data can flow very little burden or effort on to the I t group of the outline. The data flows into our organization. We do what we do when we can push our date again back into the airline systems with updated form, their availability >>so key to that key to that value, Jane is obviously that common customer base. But critical to the work that Rolls Royce stuns does is the accuracy and reliability of the data They get to inform their own performance analysis and maintenance, availability information and the eye if it's made installed. Base leverage is a very rich data from the return on experience of the engine utilization that Nick and is able to use this part of the Blue data threat offering back to their customers. And together we're able to deliver unprecedented levels of value to airline customers and optimizing the availability of their assets. >>Nick, have you? Are you finding new ways to monetize this data beyond just improving the customer experience, a bond with your customers or their new revenue avenues >>for you? So I think within this is absolutely key that everybody within this transaction recognizes this is this is not a revenue opportunity for Rosa. This is a cashless transactions because there's a lot of sensitivity that data belongs to the airline, right? So you have to be very clear and open. That data is driving Rolls Royce to make internal improvements, so we will save a little bit on our bottom line of delivering the service's they've already bought in order to get better. Outcomes of those service is so It's a little early for the service. You were thinking about >>this a little bit like security. In that sense, you know of bad guys are trying to get there. So So the good guys to share data. It's a cashless transaction, and everybody we >>believe is a market collaboration on data is got to be the way Ford's >>Scott could. You double click on the Ecosystem and A and D, obviously different from the sort of core traditional you know, e r. P world. The importance of the ecosystem may be what it looks like, described the >>That's an insightful question, Dave, certainly the partner ecosystem in inner space and defense is somewhat differentiated. I don't want to go so far as to say that it's unique, but it's somewhat differentiated from Corey RPS. As you duly noted partner, our four persecuted for four purpose capability around the critical process is for manufacturers. Maintainers on, uh, parts and subsystem supply organizations is all the potential, and it's a promise. But that value can only be realized to the collaboration with partners who doom or an aerospace and defense and just support delivery and implementation capability. They provide value added service is around business process, reengineering, change, enablement as well as their partners and co innovation as well. Certainly the collaboration we have with Rolls Royce is certainly a new level of collaboration around innovation that hasn't been seen before. So those partners are critical to our ability to deliver that value to our customers. Secondarily, we have our partners are actually a route to market in the traditional sense of referral system like you would see in Corriere P. But more importantly, as an indirect route to market as channels to their end customers, almost I s v ng. Our capability to support the delivery of service is to their customers. >>So it's the it's the manufacturers of the Plains, For example, it's the airlines themselves. It's manufactured the engine defectors, >>the maintainers. So the M R organizations that do the work around repair, and it's the entire ecosystem of organizations to support the supply chain. Our partners are both in themselves as well as partners in delivering the capability to those organizing. >>And it's a data pipeline throughout that value chain a digital thread that you guys actually have visibility on, correct your value. Add to the and >>we have the opportunity to play a vital role between within that equal system in allowing and enabling the connective ity of that network between Williams and their customers between the operators and their maintainers. For example, we've got a collaboration with an airline right now where we're going to connect them directly with the third party organizations that they rely on for airframe repair. For example, >>I want to ask you about the aerospace business it used to be that used to be a very small market in terms of the number of customers. Now we've got Space X. We've got the private areas, three private aerospace companies. We've got different countries now. India, China getting involved. What impact is that having on your business. >>Certainly we're seeing the emergence of spatial program's playing a taking up a larger share of off of government or public sector budgets. And people are beginning to think about how to leverage or harvest the value from utilization of spatial assets and again are enabling capability. To be a collector of that data and supply it back as an information in sight to those were reliant on the data that is collected is a vital role that we play in that ecosystem. >>So when I was when you were describing the ecosystem value chain, it strikes me that there's there's clearly a whole lot of metrics going on. Are there new levers, new metrics, emerging new levers that you can pull to really drive a flywheel effect in the industry? One of the key key performance indicators that you're really trying to optimize visiting? This is >>Certainly this is certainly an industry that characterizes as an intensive, complex mobile and in this case complex in mobile or a pseudonym for very expensive assets. So everything around availability, reliability are all key drivers are performance indicators of our customers ability to realise the value from those assets and our role in that is to provide them with the information inside to be able to make optimal decisions to maximize that availability. >>Anything you dad, >>I think in this day and age things like technical dispatcher alive. Relative engines is so high, high 99 sort of percentage. You have to start focusing on things like the maintenance costs to achieve that. Driving your maintenance costs down, but still retaining your really high availability. That becomes a really interesting balance. You could have under percent of relevancy. What it's gonna cost a fortune. You don't want that. >>Well, gentlemen, thanks so much for coming on. The cute, really fascinating discussion. Thank you. Great to have you. All right, you're welcome. And keep it right there, buddy. Paul Gill on day Volante from I F s World in Boston. You're watching the Cube right back Right after this short break

>> Narrator: From Hell's Kitchen in New York City, it's theCUBE, on the ground at Serverlessconf brought to you by SiliconAngle Media >> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman, here with theCUBE at Serverless Conference in New York City, Hell's Kitchen. Happy to have with me, first time guest on the program Sam Kroonenburg, we had your brother on the program at the AWS Summit not far from here, at the Javits Center in New York City, but you're also one of the co-founders its the two brothers for A Cloud Guru. Thanks so much for joining me, and thank you for allowing us to come get some phenomenal content here. >> Yeah, no problem. Thank you for coming for the conference today. >> Alright, so Sam, take me back, you know, we talked to your brother a little bit about, well it was an interesting story, he said actually I got turned down for a job from Amazon and ended up creating a training company. But you built this and you built it on Serverless. >> I did yeah. >> So walk us through a little bit the thought process, the timing, you know, aren't you a little bit ahead of your time on that? >> Yeah, it was mid 2015, it was a strange time. We decided we wanted to build this school, this online learning platform, but the challenge we had was that we didn't have a lot of time, we both had families, kids, you know, mortgages, financial commitments. Basically I had four weeks. I had four weeks of leave owing to me, from my employer at the time. My wife and I had been planning this big family holiday with the kids for years and we were about to take it, and I remember having this phone call with Ryan and we were talking about how there were these people taking these online courses and they were really liking them. And we thought, what if we could build this school to teach people cloud computing. It was such a buzz and we just thought, there's something in this. But the challenge was the timing. I remember my wife turned to me and she said, "Look you've got to do it, we'll cancel the holiday, "take the four weeks and give it a try." So that's what we did, we actually flew down to live with Aaron, my in-laws and help look after the kids and I locked myself in a bedroom for four weeks and tried to build an online school. And that was there was no epiphany to go Serverless there was no grand plan. It was, we had a constraint, which was time. I had no time to build this thing. And so ended up using some of the latest technologies like AWS Lambda, API Gateway, a whole bunch of Serverless technologies because I saw that they would help me build this faster. And I could get something to market in the four weeks that I had. I actually spent the first couple of days trying to skin and configure Moodle, the learning management system and I tore my hair out and yeah, ended up putting this thing together with Serverless technologies. >> Ryan just walked by-- >> Oh, there he is. >> It's a llama unicorn with a cat or something like that. >> I'm going to put in the background. >> In the back of our video. Sam, what's your brother doing here? >> He's always trying to troll me. >> So talk to us, you know one of the things the maturation, kind of the speed of change in the industry for new technologies is just so fast these days. Take us through from those early days to you know Serverless today. What's your experience been? What would you say to people that look at this technology? >> I think it's a lot easier to get into now than it was two years ago. The ecosystem has grown around it, the core technologies are pretty much the same as they were two years ago, function as a service, execute functions in the cloud very similar, but the tooling around it, the ecosystem around it has grown. There's great deployment tools, orchestration systems that have come along. It's a lot easier to just get in now and early on, when we started we had to roll a lot of things ourselves, which took a lot of time, and that's what you're trying to stop, is losing time. Yeah, so there's that and the community has really grown, there's a lot of support in the community now. >> So if you had to do it all over, you could have done it in a weekend, rather than the four weeks. >> Yeah, instead of the four weeks. >> Yeah, I mean what's-- >> That's the interesting thing about what happened to us, we would not exist, our business would not exist if it wasn't for Serverless technologies. I literally couldn't, we could not have, built that school. It's not like it was the most amazing school when we launched it, but it was enough. It was just enough to get people using it, to get to market, to start to build a business around it. >> Alright, talk to me about this event. So, its the 5th Serverlessconf, not unheard of a company that does training to get involved with physical events, 'cause you bring them together, you know, what's the thought process, talk to us a little bit about that journey and this event itself. >> Yeah, I mean, a lot of this is organic for us. We built, it was early last year, you know we're part of the Serverless communities, a lot of pioneering going on here, a lot of people facing the same challenges. And we thought, well there's no event to bring all of these people together. And there's a lot of very fast pace of change here, a lot of rapid ideation and new technologies. Let's bring everyone together and see what we can do. That's what we did with Serverlessconf. We've never run a conference before, we just hired a warehouse in Brooklyn, a bunch of Australians and British guys coming over and we just invited a bunch of people on Twitter and 250 people turned out to the first one. It just got bigger and bigger from there. So this is actually the 5th Serverlessconf now. >> Well, its a hot week again, so we appreciate that the air conditioning works at this one. >> Yes, we have air conditioning at this one. >> 460 people here, you brought in some great speakers, we had a number of them on our program this week, speak to us, I mean you've got sponsors here, you've got good speakers, give us some of the highlights. >> We've got all of the main Cloud vendors are here, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Amazon and it's actually the product teams who build this stuff. That's what I love about this event, it's actually the people who build it. It's vendor neutral, it's really cool. You get great thought leaders from the community, Simon Wardley was a highlight this morning, his talk on Value Chain Mapping and Strategy was really interesting. Randall Hunt from AWS X Space X, talking about the continuous integration process when building rockets. Space X was absolutely fascinating and what bugs in production mean when you're building a rocket. It means the rocket blows up. Really interesting variety of talks from those tooling providers, companies like us who are just building on Serverless and then Serverless tooling companies and vendors. Really fascinating. >> Alright, Sam what should we be looking for in the future from Serverless and from A Cloud Guru? >> We're going to be doing a whole lot more Serverless content. You're going to see a lot of really interesting new content through our site, a lot of teaching on Serverless, we're going to be doing more Serverless Conferences. You'll see a lot from us, not just us, but from the wider community who come to the conference, who we know well, a lot of the experts, we're going to be doing a lot of work with those people. >> Well Sam Kroonenburg, really appreciate you joining us, appreciate the media sponsorship to allow theCube to come get some great content and share it with our communities, hope to see you at many more events in the future. >> Thank you for coming. >> Thank you so much. Sam Kroonenburg, I'm Stu Miniman. Thank you for watching theCUBE. (upbeat music)