>> Live, from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering AWS re:Invent, 2018. Brought to you by Amazon web services, Intel, and their ecosystem partners. >> Well, we are nearly two days strong into our coverage, here at AWS re:Invent. If you look behind us, here on the set, this show floor is still jam packed, still a lot of activity, as 40,000 plus have made their way to Las Vegas, for this year's show. Along with Justin Warren, and I'm John Walls. we're joined now by Josh Yulish, who's the CEO of TmaxSoft, and Sri Akula, who's the CIO of HealthPlan Services. Gentlemen, welcome to theCUBE, glad to have you >> Thank you for having us. >> Thank you for having us. Well, first, let's just share the story at home, a little bit, about TmaxSoft, and HealthPlan. What your core functions are, and then we'll get into why your here. >> Sure, great question. So, TmaxSoft one of the key things we're doing right now, is helping companies take their old, legacy mainframe applications, and moving them into the future, running them on the cloud. Enabling that digital transformation, of taking the old, integrating it in, with the new. >> And you're one of those companies, I assume. >> Yes, we are on of those companies, and we're a technology solutions company, in health care. And, we're the market leaders in providing the platform for the archive business. And then we have a group, and other health care solutions, as well. >> Alright, so you've got to get rid of the old, at some point, you've got to move over to the new, at some point, you can't do it all at once. How do you start making those decisions about, what legacy, what are we moving, what aren't we, what are we going to redo? I assume a lot of it's budget, but there've got to be other implications, and other considerations, as well. >> Yeah, you some of the systems evolve, over the last two decades, especially in health care. And, I think it's fair to say health care has been lagging in adapting the cloud technology. Whether it be PII, or PHI, or HIPAA regulations, but now starting to embrace cloud more. And that opens up the opportunity for us to take investments, which was them, and move to the cloud, so that we can get agility into our systems, and get some efficiency, so that we can double up the modern technologies, and get more to our customers, our members. >> Yeah. That's often a challenge, about how you choose which ones to do, at what time. Because, I mean, IT projects don't have a great track record of being completed successfully. So, when you decide to move something to cloud, you are taking on a bit of risk, there, so you need to be able to manage that risk, reward. How do you consider which projects you should be running, so that I can get a bit of short term gain, now, but also to make those more strategic decisions about, well, we actually wanted to have this happen over a longer period of time, and we're willing to take a little bit more. How do you balance that risk, reward ratio? >> I think there's multiple lenses we apply together. A, first you need the right technology, to get up on the mainframe. And then you need the right partner, not just the technology, but who understands the nuances of software, you well over the gates, to get to that. >> Yeah. >> And, also, you know, if the change is less, it's working, don't fix something that's not broken. But, still bring the agility, and then leverage the cloud, what cloud has to offer. I think that's where Tmax comes into picture, where, helps us from a technology, and as a partner, to kind of guide us through this journey. Identify the path, you can't do this in isolation. You've got to have the right technology, and the right partner to help us to get to a better place. >> Yeah. And, Josh, with customers who are running through, there's plenty of customers out there, I'm sure, who are considering this, and struggle with this themselves. What are some of the behaviors you see, from people who do this well? So, when you've seen people who are succeeding at this transformation journey, what are some of the key things you look at and say, these are the markers of someone who really understands how to do this well? >> Sure, that's a great question. So, everybody wants to do this. Nobody really wants to stay in the past. The people that do it successfully, are the people that have a change agent mentality. That understand if I ignore the problem, my business, not just my IT, but my business is going to suffer. And, the IT leaders, and the CIO's that can see that vision, are the one's that enable the business to move forward, and give them a competitive differentiator. So that, to us, is what we really see as the differentiator for who's successful, faster, versus who isn't. >> You know, Justin was talking about the long view, right, and having a firm strategy, and taking a much deeper perspective. But, how do you do that when you know, whatever course you're going to take, is going to change. Because there's going to be a new technology, there's going to be a wrinkle that's going to come along, and it's going to upset the apple cart. And it might happen in six months. >> Amazon will announce something this afternoon. (laughs) >> So how do you have that long view strategy, both of you, when you know that, whatever road we're going on right now, a year from now it's probably not going to look like this. >> I'll take a stab at it. Probably Josh has, looking at other customers, may have more insights into it. The only list I see is, the member experience is the key, right now. The digital journey is all revolving around member experience. You take any vertical, client facing, client touching, is changing, evolving much faster, but your core systems don't need to change that fast. So, if you take the core systems, which are legacy, and move to a modern, and then embed with, maybe a mobile native, in a multi only channel, digital, and there, probably you don't want to modernize it. The most systems, they seem to stay there, anyway. So, take something core, data change is low, move them to cloud, and monetize, and get the most ROI, out of the investment you made. At least, that's what we are looking at it. >> Yeah, I think that we see the same thing with most of our customers. So, when they look at, how do I get off the mainframe? These things have been around 20, 30, 40 years. If it was easy, they would have done it. It's not, it's a very closed, difficult to disrupt system. And, when they think about, we'll re-write our application, or we'll do something else, that's a five to 10 year journey, on average. So, then your disruption, or the new thing comes out in a year, it impacts that project for them, and it makes it very difficult. So, we've helped them move off six to 12 months, on average. So now you can more rapidly, solve your initial pain, and then look at your longer term journey in a way that allows you to do it all at once, and over time. >> I think, being able to react to what's coming new, as you said, John, but also have that longer term vision, that's a tricky thing to be able to do, but it is so important to be able to balance that short term benefits, that then actually support the longer term vision. >> That's spot on. So, get the TCO under control now, and then that gives us the flexibility to re-write which is going to be more forward looking, and not necessarily re-writing the same old, in a new way. >> And it builds credibility with the rest, because then we're customers as well. If you were to go and try something like this, that actually disrupts the business, and disrupts customers, then they're probably not going to trust you when you try to do this again. But if you've got a few wins on the board, then they're going to trust you with a slightly bigger project, and you can actually get further with it, I think. >> Yeah, absolutely. And, I think what we've seen, and we're working with HealthPlan Services, and all of our customers in the same way, is they can free up cash, from their operational spend, and IT, very quickly. That they can then invest into innovation. And, everything that you see here at the show, they can now go do those things. Where, before, most of there money is stuck in operating, just keeping the lights on. Keeping the lights on, on something 40 years old. Now, you can invest in innovation, without disrupting the customer, the experience is the same. Performance is the same, all of those things are the same, but they get that value of, we can make it new as well. >> I know there's plenty CFO's that'd be happy to hear that. Because they go, you want me to invest how much of new money? Oh, no, no, we found plenty of money, it was just sort of lying over here. We were setting it on fire, for some reason. (laughs) Let's not do that. >> And it's an easy conversation, as a CIO, getting to the CEO saying, hey, I'm going to take the cost out, invest back into the product. That's an easy conversation to have. >> Josh talks about this, I guess, multi-faceted process that you're going to go through, right. How do you decide, on the customer side, how do you prioritize, particularly in your space, health care, what's going to go first, what's going to go second, and then what can we put off long enough, there's probably going to be something else coming, that we can adopt a different approach. So, who are your stakeholders, who do you answer to, how do you come up with that? >> Multiple ways to look at it. Especially in our domain, at least the technology Tmax has to offer, they're taking out most of the risk for us. Because, it's a lot of lift, and shift, and the technology was so much. They are minimizing the risk. And, the timeline's also shrinking. Because the longer it takes, by the time you realize the ROI, and the projects move on, the changes, I think that's where the technology maturity's coming in. It's really helping us a lot. And, again, we look at more member experience, we do ground up building. Take the core assets, do a lift, and shift, and shrink the time. But, again, Josh if there is one thing I look at, it's the timeline before the shrink. I know, it used to be two years, 18 months, 24 months, coming to nine months to 12 months. I would like to see that more, and more, happen, maybe six to nine months. And, that gives us more leverage, and more confidence, to customers. The longer the project stays, the failure rate goes up, higher, and higher. >> Right. >> Yes. >> We all want it now. (laughs) So, Josh, go deliver, would you please? >> That's the goal. >> You've got the mission. Thank you for the time, we appreciate it. And, wish you both success down the road. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, very much >> Thank you. >> We're back with more, we're live at AWS re:Invent, in Las Vegas, Nevada. (mellow music)