>>Good morning, welcome to the cubes coverage of Qube con and cloud native con 21 live from Los Angeles. Lisa Martin, here with Dave Nicholson. David's great to be in person with other humans at this conference. Finally, I can't believe >>You're arms length away. It's unreal. >>I know, and they checked backs cards. So everybody's here is nice and safe. We're excited to welcome kingdom Barrett to the program, flux, maintainer and open source support engineer at we works. He came to him. Welcome to the program. >>Oh, thank you for having me on today. >>So let's talk about flux. This is a CNCF incubating project. I saw catalyze as adopt talk to us about flux and its evolution. >>Uh, so flex is, uh, uh, just got into its second version a while ago. We've been, uh, working on, um, uh, we're an incubating project and we're going towards graduation at this point. Um, flex has seen a great deal of adoption from, uh, infant cloud infrastructure vendors in particular, uh, like Microsoft and Amazon and VMware, all building products on, um, flux, uh, the latest version of flux. And, uh, we've heard, uh, from companies like Alibaba and state farm. We had a, uh, uh, conference, uh, at a co-hosted event earlier on Tuesday called get-ups con, uh, where we presented all about get ops, which is the technology, uh, guiding, uh, set of principles that underlies flux. And, uh, there are new adopters, um, all, all every day, including, uh, the department of defense, uh, who has a hundred thousand developers. Um, it's, it's, it's very successful project at this point, who are the >>Key users of flux flux? >>Excuse me. The key users of flux are, uh, probably, uh, application developers and infrastructure engineers, and platform support folks. So a pretty broad spectrum of people. >>And you've got some news at the event. >>Yeah, we actually, uh, we have a, uh, ecosystem event that's coming up, um, on October 20th, uh, it's free virtual event. Uh, folks can join us to hear from these companies. We have people from high level, uh, CTOs and GMs, uh, from companies like Microsoft, Amazon VMware, uh, we've worked D two IQ, um, that are, uh, going to be speaking, uh, about their, uh, products that you can buy from their cloud vendor, uh, that, uh, are based on flux. Uh, so, so that's a milestone for us. That's a major milestone. These are large vendors, um, major cloud vendors that have decided that they trust, uh, flux with their customers workloads. And it's, it's the way that they want to push get ups. Great >>Validation. Yeah. >>So give us an example, just digging in a little bit on flux and get ops. What are some of the things that flux either enforces or enables or validates? What, how would you describe the flux get ops relationship? >>So the first to get ops principles is declarative infrastructure and that's, uh, that's something that people who are using Kubernetes are already very familiar with. Um, flux has a basic itself, or, or I guess spawned, uh, maybe is a better way to say it. Uh, this, um, uh, whole get ops working group, that's just defined the principles. There's four of them in the formal definition. That's just been promoted to a 1.0 and, uh, the get ups working group, publish, publish this at, uh, open get-ups dot dev where you can read all four. And, um, it's great copy site. If you're not really familiar with get ops, you can, you can read all four, but, uh, the other, uh, the second one I would have mentioned is, uh, version storage is, is, uh, it's called get ups and get as a version store. So it's a good for, um, disaster recovery. >>Uh, and, uh, if you have an issue with a new release, if you're, uh, pushing changes frequently, that's, you know, more than likely you will have issues from time to time. Uh, you can roll back with, get ups because everything is version. Um, and, uh, you can do those releases rapidly because the deployment is automatic, um, and it's continuously reconciling. So those are the four principles of get ups. Uh, and they're, they're not exactly prescriptive. You don't have to adopt them all at once. You can pick and choose where you want to get started. Um, but that's what, uh, is underneath flux. >>How do you help customers pick and choose based on what are some of the key criteria that you would advise them on? >>We would advise them to try to follow all of those principles, because that's what you get out of the box with fluxes is a solution that does those things. But if there is one of those things that gets in a way, um, there's also the concept of a closed loop that is, um, sometimes debated as whether it should be part of the get ops principles or not. Um, that just means that, uh, when you use get-ups the only changes that go to your infrastructure are coming through get-ups. Uh, so you don't have someone coming in and using the back door. Um, it all goes through get, uh, w when you want to make a change to your cluster or your application, you push it to get the automation takes over from there and, um, and makes, uh, developers and platform engineers jobs a lot easier. And it makes it easier for them to collaborate with each other, >>Of course, productivity. You mentioned AWS, Microsoft, VMware, uh, all working with you to deliver, get ups to enterprise customers. Talk to me about some of the benefits in it for these big guys. I mean, that's great validation, but what's in it for AWS and VMware and Microsoft, for example, business outcome wise. >>Well, uh, one of the things that we've been promoting and since June is a flex has been, uh, uh, there's an API underneath, that's called the get ops toolkit. This is, uh, if you're building a platform for platforms like these cloud vendors are, um, we announced that fluxes APRs are officially stable. So that means that it's safe for them to build on top of, and they can, uh, go ahead and build things and not worry that we're going to pull the rug out from under them. So that's one of the major vendors, uh, one of the major, uh, uh, vendor benefits and, um, uh, we've, we've also added a recent improvement, uh, uh, called service side apply that, uh, will improve performance. Uh, we reduced the number of, um, API calls, but also for, for, uh, users, it makes things a lot easier because they don't have to write explicitly health checks on everything. Uh, it's possible for them to say, we'd like to see everything is healthy, and it's a one-line addition, that's it? >>So, you know, there's been a lot of discussion from a lot of different angles of the subject of security, uh, in this space. Um, how does this, how does this dovetail with that? A lot of discussion specifically about software supply chain security. Now this is more in the operations space. How do, how do those come together? Do you have any thoughts on security? >>Well, flux is built for security first. Um, there are a lot of products out there that, uh, will shell out to other tools and, and that's a potential vulnerability and flux does not do that. Uh, we've recently undergone a security audit, which we're waiting for the results and the report over, but this is part of our progress towards the CNCF graduated status. Um, and, uh, we've, we've liked what we've seen and preliminary results. Uh, we've, we've prepared for the security audit on knowing that it was coming and, uh, uh, flexes, uh, uh, designed for security first. Uh, you're able to verify that the commits that you're applying to your cluster are signed and actually come from a valid author who is, uh, permitted to make changes to the cluster and, uh, get ops itself is, is this, uh, model of operations by poll requests. So, um, you, you have an opportunity to make sure that your changes are, uh, appropriately reviewed before they get applied. >>Got it. So you had a session at coupon this week. Talk to me a little bit about that. What were like the top three takeaways, and maybe even share with us some of the feedback that you got from the audience? >>Um, so, uh, the session was about Jenkins and get ups or Jenkins and flux. And the, um, the main idea is that when you use flux, flux is a tool for delivery. So you've heard maybe of CIC, D C I N C D are separate influx. We consider these as two separate jobs that should not cross over. And, uh, when, when, uh, you do that. So the talk is about Jenkins and flux. Jenkins is a very popular CII solution and the messages, uh, you don't have to abandon, if you've made a large infrastructure investment in a CII solution, you don't have to abandon your Jenkins or your GitHub actions or, or whatever other CII solution you're using to build and test images. Uh, you can take it with you and adopt get ups. >>Um, so there's compatibility there and, and usability familiarity for the audience, the users. Yeah. What was some of the feedback that they provided to you? Um, were they surprised by that? Happy about that? >>Well, and talk to us a little bit fast paced. Uh, we'll put it in the advanced CIC D track. I covered a lot of ground in that talk, and I hope to go back and cover things in a little bit smaller steps. Um, I tried to show as many of the features of Fluxus as I could. Uh, and, and so one of the feedback that I got was actually, it was a little bit difficult to follow up as, so I'm a new presenter. Um, this is my first year we've worked. I've never presented at CubeCon before. Um, I'm really glad I got the opportunity to be here. This is a great, uh, opportunity to collaborate with other open source teams. And, um, that's, that's, uh, that's the takeaway from me? No. >>So you've got to give a shout out to, uh, to weave works. Absolutely. You know, any, any organization that realizes the benefit of having its folks participating in the community, realizing that it, it helps the community, it helps you, it helps them, you know, that's, that's what we love about, about all of this. >>Yeah. We're, uh, we're really excited to grow adoption for, um, Kubernetes and get ops together. So, >>So I've asked a few people this over the last couple of days, where do you think we are in the peak Kubernetes curve? Are we still just at the very beginning stages of this, of this as a, as a movement? >>Um, certainly we're, um, it's, it's, uh, for, for people who are here at CubeCon, I think we see that, you know, uh, a lot of companies are very successful with Kubernetes, but, um, I come from a university, it, uh, background and I haven't seen a lot of adoption, uh, in, in large enterprise, um, more conservative enterprises, at least in, in my personal experience. And I think that, uh, there is a lot for those places to gain, um, through, through, uh, adopting Kubernetes and get ups together. I think get ops is, uh, we'll provide them with the opportunity to, uh, experience Kubernetes in the best way possible. >>We've seen such acceleration in the last 18, 19 months of digital transformation for companies to survive, to pivot during COVID to survive, doubt to thrive. Do you see that influencing the adoption of Kubernetes and maybe different industries getting more comfortable with leveraging it as a platform? >>Sure. Um, a lot of companies see it as a cost center. And so if you can make it easier or possible to do, uh, operations with fewer people in the loop, um, that, that makes it a cost benefit for a lot of people, but also you need to keep people in the loop. You need to keep the people that you have included and, and be transparent about what infrastructure choices and changes you're making. So, uh, that's one of the things that get ups really helps with >>At transparency is key. One more question for you. Can you share a little bit before we wrap here about the project roadmap and some of the things that are coming down the pike? Yeah. >>So I mentioned a graduation. That's the immediate goal that we're working towards? Uh, most directly, uh, we have, um, grown our, uh, number of integrations pretty significantly. We have an operator how entry in red hat, open shift there's operator hub, where you can go and click to install flux. And that's great. Um, and, uh, we looked forward to, uh, making flux more compatible with more of the tools that you find in the CNCF umbrella. Um, that's, that's what our roadmap is for >>Increasing that compatibility. And one more time mentioned the event, October 20th, I believe he said, let folks know where they can go and find it on the web. Yeah. >>If you're interested in the get ups days.com, it's the get-ups one-stop shop and it's, uh, vendors like AWS and Microsoft and VMware detour IQ. And we've worked, we've all built a flux based solutions, um, for, uh, that are available for sale right now. So if you're, uh, trying to use get-ups and you have one of these vendors as your cloud vendor, um, it seems like a natural fit to try the solution that's out of the box. Uh, but if you need convincing, you get Upstate's dot com, you can go find out more about the event and, uh, we'll hope to see you there. >>I get upstairs.com kingdom. Thank you. You're joining Dave and me on the program, talking to us about flux. Congratulations on its evolution. We look forward to hearing more great things as the years unfold. >>Thank you so much for having me on our pleasure >>For Dave Nicholson. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the kid live from Los Angeles at CubeCon cloud native con 21 stick around Dave and I, and we'll be right back with our next guest.

>> Live from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE. Covering .conf18, brought to you by Splunk. >> Welcome back to Orlando everybody, home of Disney World, and this week, home of theCUBE. I'm Dave Vellante and he's Stu Miniman. Steven Hatch is here, he's the manager of Enterprise Logging Services at Cox Automotive. Steven, thanks for coming on theCUBE. >> Thank you. >> So, you've been with Splunk for a while, we're here at conf18. Logging services, enterprise logging services. When you think of Splunk, their roots, Splunk go back to, sort of, log files, analyzing log files, it's in your title. (laughs) You must be pretty intimately tied to, as a practitioner, to this capability, but talk about your role and what you do at Cox. >> Primarily, the role is to be the evangelist, the enabler, and the center of excellence when it comes down to getting those best practices propergated within the enterprise. >> So people come to you for advice, council, you play, sort of, internal consultant. What qualified you to do that? You were a practitioner prior to this, so you got your hands dirty and you kind of now, elevated to-- >> My prior role was a Site Operations, or Site Reliability Engineer, and then Manager. And so, having that background, I've been in IT since '96, so I'm a little old in the game, but basically, having that operational knowledge, and knowing how to think big picture when things are happening or transpiring, or the reverse and go back and find that root cause analysis. >> '96, just a pup, my friend, okay? (both laugh) So, talking to Stu, we were talking off camera, about the number of brands that Cox Automotive has, Cox at Kelley Blue Book and at numerous others, like dozens, each of these is kind of it's own data silo. How do you guys go about using Splunk? Are you able to break down some of those silos? Maybe you could share that with us. >> Yeah, so we have been successful on a lot of the big three really, at Kelley Blue Book, Manheim, as well as Auto Trader, to really break in. A lot of that was because of our, already previous, relationships with team members and leaders. On the other side of the coin is the newly acquired companies that are not in Atlanta, Georgia. That are in places like Groton, Connecticut, South Jordan, Utah, Upstate New York, as well as the Toronto area in Canada. And so, WebEx joined me, email just won't cut it. You actually have to sit down with these people and really showcase your business case, your model, and what you're trying to bring to the table. But of course, the approach is always important. >> And are you using Splunk to do that? As a collaboration tool as well? >> Yes sir, yep. >> Explain that a little bit if you would. >> So, a lot of times, as you mentioned, the silos, as a bigger brand now, it's no longer an excuse for you to only be responsible for your data and not showcase it, or share that data. Because we're thinking about the entire life-cycle of Cox Automotive, and this entity of Cox Automotive, that's important to us now. So for you to hold tight, or to hoard your data, or your metrics and not share them, that's not good business anymore. >> Yeah, so Steven, we talked to a lot of companies that do M&A, and it's usually like, well, this is the products we use, these are the structures that we have. One of the things we hear from Splunk is that you can get to your data, your way. How does the Splunk modeling, and how you look at the data, fit into that M&A? Is that an enabler for you to be able to get that in. >> Yeah, and so, when you can showcase the ability of how the data comes in and, quickly. Key word, right? To showcase how that data can be very valuable to them, especially to their stakeholders, that's when light bolts will go off. And, again, it's the stakeholders, and then champions, that we need to bring to the table to make sure that we can get full adoption. >> Yeah, we've also-- Dave's been to the show a few times, it's my first time, and what I've really heard a bunch of is the people that know how to use Splunk, they're super valuable inside of the company. They get training, people inside the company, they look to get hired, tell us a little about what you've seen, what it means to your role inside the company, and as you network with your peers here. >> It's a lot of exposure. A lot of people are very anxious to get some type of insights into their world, their infrastructure, their applications, their business tools. A lot of times, there are people out there that are very savvy from a business perspective, that have a bunch of KPIs in their head, but no one has actually extracted that information from them, and so, our job is to align with their KPIs. You know, over the last couple of years, that's what we've-- the journey that we've been on, is to now revisit the data that we've just ingested. That's the basic foundation. We want to elevate now and really get more mature, and to align with those business KPIs. >> Meaning they got this tribal knowledge in their head, and you want to codify that so that it can be shared. >> Correct. >> How do you go about doing that? Is it sitting in a whiteboard and understanding that? >> It can be a whiteboard, it can be over a coffee. If I need to get on a plane and go see them in person, and to really just listen and ask the questions when it's time but, again, listen and really understand what's important to them, what is important to their business, to their function, to their silos? Cox Automotive has five, of what we call, pillars, where there's international, finance, marketing, retail, or media, and each one of those owners, over time, wants the specific value. >> So if you go and have a chalkboard session, whiteboard session, with one of these folks, how do you operationalize it? You got to figure out where the data exists, so that you can align with what's in their head? Is that right? And then, how do you do that? How do you scale it? >> Well, so, again, you have to start from the top. If you start from the bottom, you'll be in the weeds until the end of time. So that the more efficient manner is to start from the top and realize those KPIs from those leaders, those stakeholders, and then from there, a tool like ITSI, which is basically built around services, entities, and aligning to their service decomposition model, and that right there allows you to stay consistent and efficient on getting that information. >> So you start top down, but ultimately, people are going to want granularity. So you start-- is it top down, bottom up, type of approach? Where you actually drill, drill, drill, drill, drill, and then get to the point where you can answer all those granule questions? And then, by doing that, if I understand it correctly, it sums to the top line, is that fair? >> Yeah, yeah, there's a point in time where you say, you know what? I could really now enhance or enrichen the data by a dataset that I know where it is. So the keypal will get you to a certain point, and then, to find that happy medium, or that common denominator from the data that you already have on premise, or from your apps, wherever they reside, that's where you can meet the gap. >> Otherwise you're never get it done. You'll end up boiling the ocean. >> That's correct, yes sir. >> All right, so, when we talked to you two years ago, you were using Splunk Cloud, you know? And when we talked to practitioners it's-- the things that they're managing, a lot of times now, most of it's not what they own, and so, how do I get the right information? How do I manage that environment? Talk to us a little bit about what you've seen in the maturation of Splunk and Splunk Cloud, if there's anything in 7.2, or Splunk Next, that's exciting you, to help you do your job even better. >> Oh man, so of course, the keynote today, the DSP, the processing layer that's in front of the Cloud, or in front of the indexes now. Where in real time, I can now route data, specifically from a security standpoint. If there's some type of event, without having to go through all the restarts and configuration management and everything else, I can simply put something in there, right there, and move the data, or mask the data. The ability with the infrastructure app, that's exciting to me, as well as all the feature updates for ITSI, enterprise security, as well as the Cloud itself. >> Can we do a little Splunk 101 for my benefit? So I heard today, from one of the product folks, that it used to be when you added another indexer, you had to add storage and compute simultaneously, whether or not you needed the storage, you had to add it, or vise versa. So an indexer is what, is it, essentially, a Splunk node? >> No, it can be a, basically, a Linux host, that actually has the agent running as an indexer with the attached disk. >> Right, okay, and it used to be you had to buy that in chunks, kind of like HCI, right? And you couldn't scale storage independent of compute? >> That's correct. >> What that meant is you were paying for stuff that you might not need. >> Right. >> So, with 7.2, I guess it is, you can split those and you get more granule, or what does that mean for you? >> Well, being a, now four year customer of Splunk Cloud, and anytime we went to the next version of, or license, the next step up, currently we're on about six terabytes. When we go up to eight, that the entailed more indexes being added to the cluster, which meant more time for the replication of search factors to be met, which can take however long, and then, or if there's any kind of issue with the indexer, where one had to be pulled out and another one introduced. How long does that take? Now, with the decoupling of the compute from the storage, it's minutes, and so it's a fraction of the time. >> And if I understand, I understood it real well when it's an appliance, but it's the same architecture if it's done in the Cloud, is that correct? >> It's, essentially, actually, it's a new architecture in my mind, where now it's able to scale more, and then there's-- I'm not sure how much they talked about it, but there's a potential of the elasticity of it. And so, now, I don't have to be so fixed, I can, on certain times, expand the cluster, you know, for search performance, or bring it back down when it's not needed. >> Some of the promise of Cloud. >> Yes, sir, Splunk Cloud. >> So it's like the Billy Dean, the five tool star. You've got the cost, you've got availability, you got speed, you got flexibility, and you've got business value, ultimately, which is what's driving here. So, I take it, I'm inferring here, you'd expect to use this capability in the near future? >> Very much so. >> Great. What else is on your horizon? What are the cool stuff you're working on? And things you want to share with us? >> Well, in addition to our leveraging Splunk Cloud for four years, next year we plan to move away from our current sim tool, into enterprise security. So it's very exciting to hear that they're continually updating that product, and so our security team has been knocking on my door for the last six months to really get that started. So, once we get there, we'll start the migration efforts and get Splunk Cloud now, enabled with the enterprise security, to really empower our security team, and stay ahead of our threats. >> So, I've been around a long time, and, ever since I can remember being in this business, customers have wanted to consolidate the number of vendors with whom they work. But the allure of best of breed always sucks them in to, oh, lets try this, or you get shadow IT. It sounds like, with Splunk, you're approaching this as a platform that you can use for a variety of different use cases. >> That is correct. >> Now, whether or not you reduce the number of vendors is, maybe a separate conversation, but I guess the question I have is, how are you using Splunk in new ways? It sounds like its permutating a line of business, SecOps, etc, is that an accurate picture? If you could describe it. >> Yeah, so Splunk itself, the core is the platform for so many different other functions within the business. You have security, you have the development group, DevOps, where, from a CICD perspective, now they can measure the metrics or the latency in between, when they create a car, say in rally, all the way to the very end of the line, what are all those metrics that are there, that they can leverage to increase their productivity? Obviously, infrastructure. As we consolidate all of our data centers down, wouldn't it be nice to know if these specific low bouncers or switchers are still having traffic to verse them? And to actually get a depiction of the consolidation effort. From a virtualization standpoint, isn't it powerful to know how many devices E6 hosts are actually fully being utilized, and how many are actually vacant? And how much money can be saved if we were actually to turn down those specifics blades or hosts? Or VMs that aren't being leveraged, but they're sitting there, taking up valuable resources. >> I remember when Splunk, right around the time they went public, I remember two instances, maybe three. There was a MPP database company, there was a large three letter firm, and there was an open-source specialist, and I heard the same thing from each of them, was we have the Splunk killer, this was like, five, six years ago. It seems like this Splunk killer was Splunk. And it really never happened. Why is it? Why is Splunk so effective? You obviously see, you know, you're independent, you want to use the best thing for Cox Automotive. What is it about Splunk that sets them apart, puts them in the lead? >> The scale capabilities, having this type of environment with the conferences and the sales group and the support groups, very intentional about listening. Having workshops where they come on premise to help us out on our use cases, to really educate their users, because the more their users are elevated from a knowledge standpoint, the more they will then exercise the application. If they all stay basic, why would I need another component of Splunk? Why would I need enterprise security? Why would I need to expand my subscription into the Cloud? The more I can exercise it, the more I'll need. >> So this is kind of a give, get. They come in knowing that if they expose you to other best practices, you'll going to be more effective in the use of Splunk and you might apply it in to other parts of your business. >> My appetite will grow and my users appetite will grow. >> And these are freebies that they're doing? Services freebies, or are they paid for services? >> Oh yeah, they have no problem coming in, supplying the necessary ammunition, or food, to entice, to have folks come in, but it's powerful to have all the engineers in there to really show us how things work. 'Cause, again, it's a win, win. >> And you're a football fan, I understand? >> Oh, yes, sir. >> Chiefs are your team, right? >> That's correct. >> Were you a football player? >> For a little while, yes. Now I coach, so that's my-- >> And you coach, what? >> Little girls. >> Kiddie football, huh, awesome. Is that Pop Warner these days, still? >> I guess you call it that. >> Flag football or tackle? >> Tackle football >> Really? >> Yep. >> Eight years old? >> Yes, my son is eight and he's playing full back right now, I'm very excited, happy father. >> Is he a big boy, like his dad? >> He's going to be bigger, I think, than his father, yes, sir. (both laugh) >> That's awesome. Well, listen, thanks very much, Steven, for coming on theCUBE, it's really a pleasure meeting you. >> That's appreciated, thank you very much. All right, keep it right there everybody. Stu and I will be back with our next guest. We're live from Splunk .conf18, you're watching theCUBE.

>> From the Amazon meeting Center in downtown Seattle, it's theCUBE, covering IMAGINE: A Better World, a global education conference sponsored by Amazon Web Services. >> Hey, welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in Seattle, Washington at the first ever AWS IMAGINE education conference. I think they said there was 900 registrants. Teresa Carlson did the key note, just finished, really fantastic. 900 people, it's funny, she equated it to AWS Public Sector which, seven years ago, had 50 people. And this year it had, I think, 15,000 people. So I think we'll see a similar growth here. Really, application of all the things that AWS does for education specifically, and there's all the cost saving and shutting down data centers and all that kind of stuff. But much more importantly is educating the workforce and getting a new class of kids and educators involved in cloud computing 'cause, let's face it, it's the dominant paradigm going forward. I don't think there's much question about that. So we're excited to be here, talk to some of the great people, all educators. And our first guest is Dr. David Dimmett. He's the SVP and Chief Engagement Officer at Project Lead the Way. David, great to see you. >> Yeah, great, thanks for having us here. So we're excited to be here as part of this first ever education conference that AWS is hosting. So great event, lots of fantastic energy, excited to present later today on diversity inclusion and computer science education, a space where we're doing a lot of really great work. And want to share, and also here to learn. >> Great, so give us the overview on Project Lead the Way. >> Sure, so Project Lead the Way, we are a 20-year-old national nonprofit. We were started in upstate New York, and we're working today with over three million students in pre-K all the way through 12th grade in high school. And we work with them in computer science education, biomedical science engineering; our job is to inspire kids. We want them to have access to a lifetime of opportunity. We know these skills are essential. Students who have these skills have opportunities, have doors open to them. Students without these skills really, today, face a lifetime of consequences. >> Right, so how do you get the skills into the education? It's such a frustration, and typical K through 12 education, computer science has not been part of the standard curriculum. There's the math track, which you take trig and calc, and there's the science track with bio and physics and chem, but computer science really hasn't done a great job of weaseling its way into the standard curriculum that everybody takes. So how do you get this curriculum in? How do you get the education to the kids? >> Sure, and we're seeing some movement in this area, which is really exciting. AWS has been a big part of that. But what we look at, we for the last 20 years have really put an emphasis on testing students primarily in those subjects that are easy to test, so core academic content; we definitely need students to have knowledge in those areas. What's been missing for a long time is the connection to that core academic knowledge to real-world problem solving. And that's where kids come in to a Project Lead the Way classroom and get excited. So we're starting with them early as pre-K, working all the way through, and it's, like I said, all those career pathways. But they're applying what they're learning in their algebra class, they're applying what they're learning in their physics class. And we know the research indicates that students decide really early if they like or are good at math or science. And gone are the days where it's okay to just brush off those content areas. We need to rethink the way kids get excited and inspired at an early age. >> So do you pull them, then, into a separate classroom experience outside of their everyday at school? How does the mechanics actually work? >> Right, so we're working with about 14,000 programs all across the country this year, all 50 states. And there are a variety of implementation models. In the early grades, in pre-K through five, a lot of times that's integrating into the homeroom or into the primary classroom. So we're training teachers all across buildings in a lot of elementary schools all across the country. When you work your way into middle school and high school, students rotate through, sometimes as an elective. But increasingly we're seeing schools require those courses because it exposes students to some of the careers that they may not understand and opportunities that they don't know exist. >> Right, it's so funny, right? 'Cause technology, over and over and over again, back to the Luddites, right, destroys certain industries, creates new industries, right? You don't want to be the guy making buggy whips anymore; it's probably not a great industry. But there didn't use to be web developers. There didn't use to be integration specialists. There didn't use to be SEO people. So there's a whole new class of applications that continue to be created with each of these huge information technology transformations. >> Yeah, it really is, and we have an increasing gap, really, unfortunately, in equality of opportunity. Increasingly today, we see students who have access to these opportunities in their pre-K, 12 experiences. Those students have a chance to go on to all kinds of careers, whether it's AWS, Verizon, Toyota, Lockheed Martin, you can go down the list. Companies are recruiting students that have these skills. Students who happen to not get exposed to these opportunities early really struggle to catch up later in life or later in their education system. So we really look at a variety of on-ramps for students. We work in the school day primarily. We also support a lot of work outside the school day. One of the key things that we do is we help teachers gain confidence in these areas. We were talking earlier about the skills gap that exists for adults in getting into some of these careers; same thing exists for teachers. We have teacher shortages all across the country. And what we're really looking to do is inspire not just students but the teachers who teach them. We'll train over 10,000 teachers this summer and get them ready to go in and inspire and prepare their students. >> It's really interesting, especially you get smarter kids once they're in high school and college. And they're looking for that connection. "Come on, Dad, what am I taking in chemistry? "I'm not going to be a doctor, "I'm not going to be a chemical scientist. "How does it relate to what I'm going to do "or philosophy or whatever." But these types of skills are really, really cogent. And not to mention that, but the kids are interacting with these types of applications all the day. So the connection between what I'm doing at school versus what I might be doing when I get out of school has got to be so much tighter than when you take a philosophy class or an American lit class. >> Yeah, we're rolling out, and with AWS's support. AWS has provided us with subject matter experts with a lot of the technological tools to help us deliver a brand new cybersecurity course this year all across the country. We're really excited about that. And you look at what's happening in terms of the cybersecurity threats that our country faces, that other countries face. It's both an economic issue but also a national security issue. And we just don't have the skilled workforce to be effective in those areas. We're inspiring kids, through AWS's help, to get excited and not just get excited but to have the skills to go out and be successful. So what I love, too, is a lot of the advances that we anticipate in healthcare are not going to be necessarily biomedical advancements. They will be, but they'll also be technological advances. We've worked with Cerner to train teachers in our computer science courses; they're one of the world's largest medical records companies. How do we provide data and information, big data, to medical providers, so that they can provide the best targeted treatment to their students? And so one of the things that we thrive on in our work is the connection to business and industry. And we want to provide that talent, that workforce, of the future. >> Right, so let me just drill in on that a little bit in terms of the role. You said you've been around for 20 years, your foundation. The role of private companies in general, and AWS specifically in helping on some of these really big problems, these really big efforts. 'Cause we know the public school systems never have enough money, getting pulled in a ton of different directions. So what kind of impact does somebody like AWS coming in help you complete your mission? >> Right, so AWS, AWS Educate have provided us with a variety of supports, and they're really helping us do a lot of really great work for students all across the country. A couple of specific examples. I mentioned subject matter experts. Having AWS come in and help us not just with this cybersecurity course but also how do we infuse into our other computer science coursework cloud career skilled development? And so we're doing that now with AWS's support. And Ken Eisner and his team have really helped us for the last couple of years; it's a great partnership. Additionally, providing us with the infrastructure, the applications, the AWS ecosystem of supports are helping us do a variety of things to secure student data, to also drive down cost to schools. All of those things together provide a great opportunity to the students that we're serving, three million plus, all across the country. >> Three million plus, that's great. So there's a real specific program that I want to give you a chance to talk about, the Kentucky Cloud Careers Pathways. That's kind of an example; give us a little bit more color. And we talked before, I got a lot of family in Kentucky, so it touched me a little bit. And, of course, Teresa's from there as well. >> So Kentucky is one of our strongest states for Project Lead the Way and has been for a lot of years. The governor and his cabinet have really done a lot of work to advance career opportunities, workforce development, economic development. And what we have and what we announced last year in Kentucky is the Cloud Career Pathway program. And that is a partnership between AWS; Project Lead the Way; the community college system in Kentucky; the governor's economic, labor, development, education departments; all of us working together to get kids exposed to cloud careers early in their education experience. And we've started training teachers to that end this year. We think it's going to be a real model for the country. >> David, I think you said it in every one of your answers, adding the "and the teachers, too." Such an important part, right? Such a key enabler to make this thing actually go. It can't just be about the kids. >> Absolutely, teachers are the bedrock of what we do in education. I say that as a lifelong educator. We've got a lot of work to do, and teachers are under attack in some places. And you've seen this last year, the work that's happened to put teachers in a position to be successful. And we've got a lot of work to do there. But our job, we want to go out and inspire the country's best teachers to go in and work in some of the most difficult work situations that exist in our country and inspire kids and with limited resources. And teachers are pouring their hearts out to do that. We think we've got a great opportunity, but we trained 10,000 plus teachers this year alone. And we see those teachers gain confidence. They go back to their classrooms, they're excited, and they know more about the opportunities that exist for their students. And I say that as a lifelong educator. In fact, my wife and I met 20 years ago as first-year teachers, so that, to me, is really core to what we do. >> Well, I see the passion in your eyes. So thank you for following up on this mission and doing good work and spending a few minutes with us on theCUBE. >> Yeah, that's great, thanks Jeff. >> All right, he's David, I'm Jeff. You're watching theCUBE from AWS IMAGINE Educate. Thanks for watching. (electronic music)

>> Narrator: From Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusets, it's theCUBE, covering VTUG Winter Warmer 2018. Presented by SiliconANGLE. (upbeat music) >> I'm Stu Miniman and this is theCUBE's fifth year at the VTUG Winter Warmer. 2018 is the 12th year of this event, always love when we get to talk to some of the users at the conference which's why I'm really happy to introduce to our audience Sue Morrow, who is a network manager at United Methodist Homes. Thanks for joining me Sue. >> No problem. >> First, tell me a little bit about yourself and what brings you all the way from Upstate New York to come to the VTUG. >> Well, I like to go to conferences whenever I can continue my education in IT. I grew up with computers in my house in the '80s. My dad was a physics teacher and a scientist so we always had a Commodore 64 or an Amiga in our house, growing up, when most people had Atari, we had computers. >> Totally, so Commodore 64, classic. I myself was a Tandy Radioshack, the TRS-80 Model III. So, in a similar era. >> Yep, I actually took a basic coding class on a TRS-80 when I was around 10, I think. Anyway, grew up with computers and somehow stumbled into IT later in life. So, that's why I'm here. >> United Methodist Homes, tell us just a little bit about what the mission of the company is. >> United Methodist Homes is a longterm care corporation. We have four facilities, two in the Binghamton area and two in Northeastern Pennsylvania. We have all levels of care from nursing homes, skilled care, up to independent living, and everything in between. >> Okay, and as network manager, what's under your purview? >> Well, it's kind of a silly title, actually. In longterm care or in healthcare or nonprofits, as we are, you often wear many hats and so that's, sort of, a weird title for me, but I supervise our help desk which we serve centrally from our corporate office. We serve about 600 actual computer users and, all in total, about 1200 employees who interface with the technology, in some way. So, I supervise the help desk, I make sure our network is running well. IT has changed over the years so that we're now providing more of a service and making sure that everything is up and running, network-wise, for everyone instead of keeping our servers running all the time. >> Yeah, reminds me of the old saying, it was like oh, the network is the computer, things like that, so you've got both ends of it. >> Sue: Yes. >> What kind of things are you looking at from a technology standpoint when you come to event like this? Did you catch some of the keynotes this morning, there was a broad spectrum? >> Yes. >> What are the kind of things that you're digging in to and find interesting? >> Yeah, the keynotes are really interesting. I think the first one that I went to with Luigi and Chris was great just to, kind of, expand your thinking about your own career personally, and where you want to go with your life was really interesting. I also watched Randall do his coding which is completely outside of what I do everyday, but was fascinating. And then the last major keynote was fantastic. I think that from my perspective in my company, we're kind of small and we don't do a whole lot of, we don't run apps and things like that, so the things that we have ritualized is mostly storage, so I'm looking at better ways that we can manage our storage and stuff. Most of the applications that we run now are SAS applications hosted by somebody else and their cloud, or a public cloud, or wherever, so I'm not so much looking at the cloud technologies like more businesses are that are providing an application for their company. >> It sounds like cloud and SAS's being a part of the overall strategy, have you been seeing that dynamic change in your company? How does it impact what you're doing or is it just a separate organization. >> It's definitely been a shift in the last few years, we used to run all of our applications in-house. Longterm care has caught up now, with the hospitals, so we have our electronic medical record which is a hosted application, whereas, up until five years ago, that was an on-premises application that we hosted and had to run and maintain, and update and upgrade, and make sure was available. That is definitely been a shift, that everything is now hosted. So we just make sure that our network is up and running and support our users and all of their issues when they break things, flip their screens, drop something, provide hardware for them all that sorts of stuff. >> The constant pace of innovation change. On the news this week they were saying, okay, medical records on your iPhone is up for debate. Does regulation impact your day to day activities and what are some of the challenges in that area? >> Absolutely. One of the other things we have to do is interface with the providers. We have medical providers that come in from the outside and they need to access our EMR also, so we need to provide access for them on, sometimes, whatever device they bring in, which is not always compatible, so we have a whole other set of challenges there. Where we can manage our computers for our employees by pushing out policies and things that are required for the application. When someone comes in from the outside, it isn't, necessarily, setup right, so we have that other set of challenges, and regulation-wise, yes. The government is always pushing out new and updated regulations for healthcare and we have to keep on top of that too. Of course, we have HIPAA concerns and things like that, which is also comes into play when you're talking about cloud host, and any hosted application. We have to be concerned about HIPAA, as well. >> Yeah, wondering when I look at the space that you're in, the ultimate goal is you want the patients, the people at your company, be able to spend more time, help them, not be caught up in the technology of things. Could you, maybe, talk a little bit about that dynamic? >> Yeah, one of the things that I always say is, we need to give our employees the tools that they need to do their job most efficiently. A nurse needs to be ready to go at the beginning of her shift on her laptop, ready to pass meds, and when they can't remember their password or that computer isn't working, my team needs to work as quickly as we can to get them back to work. We serve our users, really. We're not there being all techy. They want us to fix them and get them back to work, and that's what we do. We put tools in their hands, any device that they need to make them more efficient. I try hard to provide a variety of devices, people have different preferences on how they do their work. Some people prefer a laptop, some people prefer to stand at a wall-mounted touchscreen and document, some people want to carry a tablet with them. I try to provide a range of devices so that they can have whatever suits them and makes them most comfortable to get their job done. >> Love that, it's not, necessarily, about the cool or trendier thing, it's about getting business done, helping, and in you're case, enabling your employees to really help the people that are there. Anything you want to highlight as to things you're excited to look at this show, or just technology in general? >> I'm just kind of here for the general nature of it. I enjoy the networking and getting to talk to people, and keeping current in what's happening in the industry and my career, so that's why I come. >> Alright, well Sue Morrow, really appreciate you coming, sharing with our audience. >> Absolutely. >> User groups like this, all about the users. Happy to have lots of them on the program, so big thanks to the VTUG group for bringing us some great guests. We'll be back with more coverage here. I'm Stu Miniman, you're watching theCUBE. (upbeat music)